Jin reined in her horse and stared down at the ground.
Behind her the war-host was letting their mounts drink from the stream, filling water bottles, chewing on cured meat and hard biscuit.
Jin felt frozen, just staring at the blue deel and lamellar vest on the grass beside the stream.
Tark was already on the ground, looking at tracks. He approached the deel and vest, prodded it with the butt end of his spear shaft.
“That is what he was wearing,” Tark said. “When he gave me this.” He touched a red scar on his cheek, still raw, not quite healed.
Rage bubbled up inside her, a pressure within her chest. It had been close to boiling over from dawn’s first light, when she had seen Bleda’s warband on a hillside in the distance. Not the thousand she thought she was following. Not even two hundred. She had been tricked.
Tark squatted and stuck his spear butt into the stream, fished out a sodden torch.
“A good trick,” he said.
Jin flashed him a dark look.
“We could go back,” Tark said. “They have spare horses here, many hoof-prints were deeper, heavier than others. My guess is the bulk of the warband went south-west from their camp, but it is these who have the spare mounts. That would make sense now. Speed is their only hope of escaping from us.”
Jin pulled in a deep breath, trying to dispel the red fog in her head. All she could think about was Bleda, of pushing a sword into his chest, slowly, watching his mouth open to scream, seeing in his eyes the knowledge that Jin had won.
She shook her head, looked behind, then forwards. Gerel sat his horse close by, silent and brooding.
“No, we go forwards,” Jin said. “Bleda is here. We find him, kill him, then the Sirak have no lord, they are finished.”
“And the other warband, the bulk of their strength?” Tark asked.
“The other warband is heading for the Tethys Pass,” Jin said. “Once we have killed Bleda and his two hundred, then we shall travel west. We shall either catch them before the pass and kill them, or follow them into the west and kill them there.” She shrugged.
“I like it. Either way, all the Sirak die,” Gerel said.
“Yes. But Bleda first,” Jin said.
Tark prodded the deel and lamellar vest.
“This could be a ruse, to keep you on this trail, stop you from turning back. Bleda might not even be here.”
“It could be a ruse,” Jin acknowledged. “But I don’t think so. Bleda is too proud. He would not allow someone else to lead this band, so outnumbered and unlikely to survive. He is too noble to allow that. No, Bleda is with them, I am sure of it.”
“Well, then,” Tark said, swinging up into his saddle with a grimace, his arm not healed yet. “Let’s be about catching him.”
“Find Bleda, help me catch him, and your place and fame amongst the Cheren will be guaranteed for all generations.”
“I will find him for you, my Queen. It is what I do.”
Tark slowed in front of Jin.
They had been riding hard for more than half the day, the sun high and hot. Beneath them the ground was changing. Rolling foothills shifting to steeper inclines, valleys and cliffs, the ground moving from grassland to dusty shingle.
“What is it?” Jin asked as she reined in beside him.
“Something… strange,” Tark muttered, swinging from his saddle.
They were in a wide, stony valley, a number of gullies separated by cliffs leading up into the mountains. Tark walked to the end of the valley, stooping before the entrance to each gully. Jin clicked her tongue and her horse trotted after him.
“What is it?” Jin asked again.
Tark looked up at her, shaking his head.
“He is a clever one, this Bleda.”
“Tell me,” Jin said.
“They have separated. Riders have entered each gully.”
Inside, Jin screamed.
“Bleda must be heading for the west,” Jin said. “Not Tarbesh in the south. If he goes to Tarbesh he would be trapped. From there he would have to sail to the Land of the Faithful. So, which route leads west?”
“It’s impossible to say,” Tark said. “Unless you know the land. This is the Sirak southlands. I have raided Sirak territory all my life, but never have I been within fifty leagues of these southlands. To answer your question would need local knowledge. Does anyone know these lands?” he asked.
Jin’s captains were all standing together. Hulan, Jargal, Vachir, Medek, Essen, all captains who had led smaller warbands in Jin’s campaign against the Sirak Heartland. They all shook their heads, said no.
Jin drew in a long breath.
“Then we must split up,” Jin said. “How many different routes, Tark?”
“Six,” the scout said.
Another indrawn breath, Jin struggling to control her simmering rage.
“Hulan, Jargal, Medek, Essen, Vachir, take five hundred warriors each. The rest with me.”
The gully steepened rapidly, the ground littered with shingle and rocks. It was slow going, Jin felt the passage of time like a burning candle in her chest. The wax melting, the light fading. Tark was in front of her, riding a while, then slowing, observing the ground.
He pointed to lichen on a boulder as Jin passed it, a scuff, horsehair stuck to it. A little further up the gully, a pile of horse dung.
It was still warm.
The sun was starting to dip into the horizon, the temperature dropping.
No. If darkness falls we will never find him.
A shout from Tark, other warriors behind Jin calling out.
The silhouette of a horse and rider up ahead, standing beside a boulder. The horse’s head was dipped, eating a patch of grass. The rider sat straight-backed, clothed in a leather surcoat and iron helm, apparently uncaring that Jin was riding up the gully towards them, fifteen hundred Cheren at her back.
Before she knew it Jin had her bow in her hands, an arrow nocked and sent speeding through the air. It punched into the rider’s shoulder.
The rider swayed, then was still. No cry of pain. They didn’t even look Jin’s way.
The sound of arrows loosed all around, a dark cloud rising and falling, a ripple of thunks as thirty arrows slammed into the rider. They toppled from the saddle, disappearing. The horse shied slightly, then calmed and continued to eat.
Jin kicked her horse into a canter, oblivious of the terrain, and was the first to reach the horse and rider.
Cheren were about her heartbeats later, bows pointing in all directions, waiting for the ambush and arrows that all thought was coming.
The gully levelled off here, a pool of clear water, dark green grass growing about it. More horses and riders were here, scattered about. Some of the horses were drinking from the pool, others cropping at grass, all of their riders strangely straight-backed and wholly uninterested in Jin and her Cheren warriors.
Jin looked at the warrior on the ground, a mass of arrows protruding from him.
Protruding from it.
Jin jumped from her horse and kicked the warrior. The leather coat fell away to reveal a branch of wood, the coat stuffed with grass and straw. She stood and stared at it, for a moment her mind struggling to understand what she was seeing.
Then she raised her head to the sky and screamed.
Far in the distance, horns echoed through the mountains.