“Wait—” Tan began, nodding toward the table.
“Shut up!” Geroen ordered curtly. “Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused? I’ll give you a hint for free! Not near as much as there’ll be if we’re caught this side of the river. Keier—”
“Tan, can you…” Mienthe looked at him in concern, her voice trailing off. She closed the book again and tucked it back in the abandoned satchel, so that was all right. And she began to collect the inks and quills as well. The instincts of a spy, Tan thought, to take away anything odd for later perusal at leisure. He was almost amused despite the brutal circumstances, but he was glad to see someone had the right impulse, since Geroen clearly did not.
“I’m well, I’m well,” Tan assured Mienthe, through his teeth because he had to choke back a groan of pain as he tried to take a step. The attempt proved ill-advised. “You have that book safe, all those things?”
“Yes—”
“You, and you.” Captain Geroen pointed a thick finger at two of his men. “Get him up and out. Lady, if you will, this is not the time to dither about looking at—Did you find anyone?” he interrupted himself to demand as some of his men reemerged from the far gloomy reaches of the barn. And, to the reluctant shakes of their heads, “Too much to expect, I suppose. Lady—”
Mienthe said meekly to Geroen, “Yes, Captain, of course. Is everyone here? Wasn’t there any sign of the, um, the men who…”
“Nothing but shadows and starlight as far as we could see,” said one of the men who’d gone after Istierinan. He added a little defensively, “Once they were out of this building, there were a thousand places to hide, and there’s not much moon tonight.”
“It’s not likely a lot of Delta guardsmen off the streets will find Istierinan Hamoddian or his men,” Tan put in. “Those weren’t some petty street-thugs, Geroen. That was the Linularinan spymaster. He might have been struck by an arrow, but those men he had won’t be fools. Although you might have taken them by surprise, you aren’t likely to take them up now.”
Geroen grunted, scowling at any possible excuses. But he didn’t order his people after Istierinan, either. He said instead, “Nor I wouldn’t want to. Last thing we need here, another spy! You men, get our spy out of that chair. Our way’s still clear, is it, Jerren?”
Tan wondered, briefly, what kind of animal Jerren bespoke. Something that could see in the dark, presumably. Rats? Owls? But then the two young men the captain had assigned to him lifted him up and he lost all interest in any questions other than How far to the river? and How long till I can lie down? and, impolite but honest doubt: So do you have a half-skilled healing mage anywhere in Tiefenauer?
The barn proved to be set to one side of an abandoned farmyard, not far from a decrepit house. A stretch of briars and poison ivy and other coarse brush indicated an abandoned pasture, and a timber fence in ill-repair outlined a rutted gravel road. It was not quite raining, but heavily overcast, with a fine mist blowing on the wind.
A lot of horses came up out of the brush. In the dark, the sound of their hooves crunching through the undergrowth took at least a year or two off Tan’s life, until he managed at last to make out their riderless state. Strangely, the animals moved all together, not one straying away from the herd—ah. Of course some of Geroen’s men would be able to speak to horses; living in Linularinum, Tan had become less accustomed to everyone and his cousin having that sort of gift, but there was a lot of Feierabianden blood in the Delta.
“You can’t hardly ride with that leg,” Geroen began.
“I’d rather ride than walk, and I’d drag myself along by my teeth to get out of this place,” Tan assured him. “Just get me up on a horse and I’ll stay there, I promise you.”
Though this claim was true in its essentials, getting up into the saddle of even the most patient beast proved even less entertaining in practice than Tan had envisioned. But he was up at last, and they were all moving.
Tan had opted to allow his bad leg to hang loose rather than try to get his foot into the stirrup. Now he rapidly decided that had been a mistake—though he knew any other decision would have been just as agonizing—yes, and falling off would be even worse, though at the moment, even worse was something of a theoretical construct. He braced himself against swirling dizziness with a hand on the pommel and tried not to scream or sob or throw up, all bad for his reputation as well as inconvenient when trying to run away.
He’d have liked to sink into blind misery and just endure while Geroen’s men got him home. In fact, he rather felt that he deserved to. He could hardly kick his horse to get it up beside Geroen’s, but when the captain came past him, he managed to gather enough shards of control and rationality to ask, “How far to the border? What do you figure are the chances of meeting the wrong sort of patrol between here and there? Are these all the men you have?” There were nineteen men, Tan knew, some distant part of his mind having made an automatic count. Nineteen men and Bertaud’s little cousin. Not the sort of force he could quite imagine facing down, say, a company of regular Linularinan soldiers under Istierinan’s command. Even if they had any right to try, which they arguably didn’t, on this side of the river.