The Warslayer(47)

"Slayer, forgive me."

Glory lowered the waterskin suspiciously. "For?"

"I doubted you. When the Oracle spoke to me—"

"Well, you don't have to believe everything you read in the newspapers," Glory said hastily. If the Oracle had told Belegir she was going to fail, she really didn't want to hear it. Not when she was starting to believe in the lot of them: the Oracle, the Warmother, maybe even in the Dreamer of Worlds. "We heroes have a way of coming through in the backstretch, y'know. It isn't over till it's over. Now all we have to do," she said with a sigh, "is get you back to the fountain, and take stock."

The ponies tugged at the lead again. Probably they were thirsty, and could smell the water. Too bad she couldn't hitch them to the cart. That would solve several problems at once.

Or maybe she could.

"Wait here," she told the surprised Allimir mage. "I'll be right back. No worries." She took her sword out of its sheath and laid it in the cart with Belegir. It weighed close to four pounds, and by now she felt every extra ounce.

"No worries," Belegir echoed, a smile in his voice.

It took a bit more doing than before to get a leg up over the back of one of the ponies—the beasts felt they'd been ill-done-by, and wanted everyone to know it—but she managed. It took very little urging to get the two of them moving toward the fountain, still linked together by the awkwardly tied braided leather rope. All she had to do was hang on.

When they got there, the ponies headed straight for the fountain. Glory slid off, and staggered over toward the supplies.

There was, as she'd hoped, more grain with the supplies, and several more of the compressed fruit cakes. She took some of each to use as lures while the ponies occupied themselves at the fountain, wolfed a fruit cake down herself, and turned her attention to the packsaddle. It was a simple device: a thick sheepskin pad, two cinches, a light framework of curved ash spokes to hold a pack in place. She didn't have a horse collar, and the cart didn't have any kind of hitching tree, but if she could get one of the ponies strapped into this, she bet she could use pony-power to pull the cart back here.

She went over to the fountain and pulled the horses away from the water—she didn't know how much water was too much, but they'd get another crack at it soon—and began the ticklish process of getting one of the ponies buckled into the packsaddle. She didn't even know if Marchiel was one of the two survivors, or if this animal had ever done anything like this before—but she managed. She did know that however tight she thought the cinches were now, she'd have to tighten them again later. She tossed the two saddle-pads up onto its back and added the coiled leather reins that the Allimir favored, and the basket filled with equine bribes. She wasn't going to bother to try to ride the other horse back, but all that leather should come in handy. Then she led the animals back down the corridor one more time.

Her feet hurt. Her back hurt. Her head hurt, and the gash on her shoulder was hot and swollen now to the touch. Sleep had rarely seemed so desirable. But short term temporary conditional victory was nearly within her grasp.

She used one of the saddle-pads to make a chest-pad for her designated carthorse, and ran a length of the rope over that as well. Then, if nothing broke, if the pony didn't kick the whole arrangement to flinders, she'd just re-invented the horse-drawn cart. She untied the two ropes, and lashed its mate to the back of the cart, hoping the beasts were still as docile and gregarious as they'd seemed the day before. Belegir was asleep again, which was probably the best possible thing, all things considered.

"Come on," she said, taking a handful of mane in one hand and holding out a palmful of grain in the other.

The pony started, and stopped when it felt the unfamiliar pull of the cart and heard the noise behind it. Started again at Glory's urging, trying to turn to look behind it. After a few minutes of that, she got the inspiration of bringing the second animal up and tying it to the packsaddle instead of the cart. Finally, after an eternity of coaxing, both ponies moved forward, and the cart followed. And she wasn't the one dragging it.

Though short, it was not a journey she would care to repeat.

There were probably a dozen useful things she ought to have done, once she finally got the cart to the fountain, but she didn't do any of them. She got the makeshift harness off the ponies and watered them again, then tied them up to the cart once more so they didn't either wander off or go rummaging through the supplies, giving them a bit of grain to sweeten the deal.

Belegir was asleep again, or at least unconscious. His breathing sounded steady, but his skin was hot. She wasn't sure whether it was a fever, or if it was normal with the Allimir—it wasn't like she'd spent a lot of time feeling up the little people before the balloon went up. Either way, there wasn't much she could do, and right now she was so tired she was stupid.