The Warslayer(85)

"What's going on here?" the Amazon queen bawled, in a voice that would wake the dead on battlefields six counties over. "Where's the commander of the Night Watch? Is that liquor I smell on you?"

Bluff. It was all sheer bluff, and they had a bare instant to use it.

Ivradan was up. The stirrups were far too long for him. He reached a hand down to Glory and hauled her up behind him with surprising strength. She got her feet into the empty stirrups and held on one-handed, still clutching the short-sword.

Ivradan drove the mare forward with a sudden lurch. The mercenaries scattered.

"Stop her!" the Amazon queen shouted a moment later. "She's stealing my horse!"

Glory looked back. For some reason, the other six Amazons had all lost control of their mounts at the same time. The animals were plunging back and forth through the mob of drunken sellswords, scattering them and completing their disorganization. Not one of the women reached for her quiver of spears.

Then they were past even the stragglers, out of the glare of the torches, with only the light of the moons to steer by. Ivradan was leaning over the mare's neck, stroking her and talking to her in a low voice. Glory's eyes, still dazzled by the torches, saw only darkness, no matter how hard she strained. The wind whipped tears from her eyes, blinding her, until she gave up and closed them. She leaned over Ivradan's back, holding onto him tightly and concentrating on not falling off.

Then the mare slowed from a gallop to a trot, and lunged up the embankment to the ridge. A few minutes more, and they were under the trees of the forest road. The mare slowed to a walk.

We made it, Glory thought in disbelief. She looked around, but there wasn't much to see. The trees had shut out what little light there was from the stars and moon, and there was nothing to see but darkness. She twisted around in the saddle to get a better look behind her—everything hurt, and her bad shoulder was a sullen constant ache as the adrenaline wore off, but she guessed it didn't matter much now—but she saw nothing behind them but darkness, and heard nothing but the sound of the horse's hooves on the leaf-strewn trail, the jingle of her tack, and the creak of her own leather.

It had all happened so fast. From the moment she'd first hit Bakar till now was . . . what? Ten minutes, if that? She had no way to be really sure. But she knew it hadn't been as long as it seemed.

Ivradan pulled the mare to a halt.

"I'd better lead her the rest of the way," Ivradan said, slipping down from the saddle. "Poor lady, she is lost and far from home, and these paths are strange to her."

"And how do you know all that?" Glory asked, shifting forward in the saddle. She laid the sword across her thighs, so as not to drop it in the dark, and gripped the front of the saddle with both hands. Gingerly. Her palms felt puffy and swollen, like a combination of a bad burn and a fresh bruise. Funny how she hadn't really noticed it back there while she'd been fighting for her life.

"She told me," Ivradan said simply. "Her name is Maidarence."

"Yeah?" Glory said intelligently. Ivradan began to lead the mare forward at a slow walk.

"I'll get down and walk," Glory said reluctantly.

"No," Ivradan said firmly. "She can carry you without trouble, and you are weary from your labors."

Got that right, mate, Glory thought with guilty relief. Killed a dragon, climbed down a mountain, fought a mercenary army . . . it might all be in a day's work for Vixen the Slayer, but it was damned tiring work all the same.

And she'd killed someone, she remembered with a belated pang of realization. At least, Swordsman thought Bakar was dead. And she'd been trying to kill some others when they'd been rescued—by a woman whose name she didn't even know. Not to mention Ivradan's contribution to the evening's festivities. Slitting Tadmar's throat as cool as you please. And Glory hadn't even blinked.

God's teeth, what am I turning into here?

Best to leave off wondering about that until the sun comes up, she decided wisely.

"Think they'll come after us?" she asked, after a few minutes of silence.

"Erchane protects Her own," Ivradan answered.

Not noticeably, Glory thought, but then she wondered. It was true that they'd gotten out of all of these scrapes by the skin of their teeth, but they had gotten out. No thanks to Cinnas and his magic, though. It was Cinnas who'd made this whole mess in the first place, him and his great idea to get rid of War forever.

That's not the way it works, chum.

Maidarence's rocking walk was soothing, lulling her, if not to sleep, then at least into a comfortable absence of thought. They were going home, if nothing killed them first, and soon all the Allimir could go home, and if it wasn't going to be quite the happily ever after anybody'd been looking for, it was better than the alternative.