Allegiance (River of Souls 3)

It had nearly killed Bela, who tried to roll free of her mount. She had not succeeded. Ilse recited the list of her companion’s injuries: Three ribs cracked. One foot crushed. Her leg scraped raw by the gravel, when she and the horse had slid helplessly down the mountainside. Ilse had managed to stop the bleeding with magic, but the wounds healed only partway. Within a day, they had begun to fester.

She rubbed a hand over her face, suddenly aware of how exhausted she was. Two weeks since they had fled Taboresk. Five days since the rockfall. It seemed a dozen lifetimes.

A hand rested lightly on her shoulder. “We will do what we can,” Jannik said. “Come. Let us get your friend to Ana and Maryshka.”

The men carried Bela across the river. Ilse followed, leading the horse. A half dozen men and women had gathered just below Ryz. All of them carried weapons. All of them watched silently. Ilse resisted the urge to summon the magic current, or to reach for her sword.

Two men came forward, both gray-haired, their faces weathered and lined. Strong men. Angry ones. Jannik hurried to meet them halfway. An argument broke out. Ilse could not hear what they said, but the gestures were eloquent.

A young woman ran past the men. She was thin, like the edge of a shadow. Her hair was tied back with a rag and fell in tumbles over her shoulders and down her back. At her orders, Vilém and the others lowered their burden carefully to the ground. Bela herself must have fallen into a stupor. She lay silent and sweating, her chest rising and falling in shallow breaths.

The young woman knelt. She thrust back her hair and laid a hand on Bela’s forehead. Her mouth thinned. She touched two fingers to Bela’s throat and her lips moved rapidly. Not an invocation to the gods and magic, not here in Duszranjo. As she continued to examine Bela with swift light touches, her movements recalled the figure running down the hillside.

Ana’s daughter, Ilse thought. Maryshka.

Maryshka glanced over her shoulder at the still-arguing men. “Jannik, she’s dying. Louka, if you insist, I can make the pledge myself to Lir, Toc, and your blessed honor, that she won’t hurt anyone or anything.”

“What about the other one?” Louka said.

The young woman’s gaze swung around to meet Ilse’s. “What do you say? Shall I pledge myself for you as well? Speak quickly.”

“I pledge whatever I must,” Ilse said. “Only help her.”

Louka gave an angry snort and spun away. Jannik continue to speak with a handful of others, but most of the villagers had dispersed to their own huts.

“They won’t bother us,” Maryshka said. “Tell me what happened.”

Ilse described the accident and what she knew about Bela’s injuries. Throughout her recitation, Maryshka continued to examine her patient, her brows drawn together in a frown of concentration. “I cannot promise anything,” she said quietly. “We are not surgeons here.”

“If you can stop the fever…”

The frown eased somewhat. “That much is possible, I think. For the rest…”

She stood and gestured for the men to lift the sling once more, then directed them toward the nearest of Ryz’s huts, where a woman waited in the doorway. Easy enough to tell that this was Maryshka’s mother, Ana. By that time, a stream of children poured down from the upper slopes, followed by several women and older boys and girls. One, a boy with rough-cut dark hair that fell over his face, slipped between Jannik and the rest, so that he came up on the other side of Ilse’s horse.

“I can take her,” he said. “The horse, I mean. I’m good with horses.”

His smile was a bright flash against his sun-brown skin, but Ilse saw how his gaze was on her sword, not the horse.

To her relief, Jannik intervened. “We’ll tend to the horse, Damek. Your father needs you in the fields.” To Ilse, he said, “Follow me. We’ll get you and your things settled. You can trust Ana and her daughter long enough for that.”

Ilse disliked leaving Bela alone, but it was a matter of trust, hers for theirs. Besides, I have to sleep at some point.

But as she turned away to follow Jannik, she caught a glimpse of the boy Damek staring after them. She had seen such a look before, with Galena Alighero, back in Osterling Keep, with others throughout her lives, and her skin prickled with apprehension.

We’ve met before, you and I.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

JANNIK LED THE way up a broad, well-worn path that wound between Ryz’s households. Ilse followed with the horse, glancing around as she went. The village was much larger than others she had sighted while crossing the mountains. A dozen log huts, most with thatched roofs, but a few with wooden shingles. Sheds cobbled together from bits of planking. A number of the larger homes had stone chimneys, but many more had just a hole in the roof from which the smoke escaped. On the upper slopes, at the forest’s edge, stood a large rambling structure, with expertly cut planks instead of the split logs, and a door hung on metal hinges. Like the ford, the building seemed a remnant of more prosperous days.

“We’ve empty stalls for both the horse and you in the barn,” Jannik said, nodding toward the building. “Unless you want to sleep with Alexej Zenkl’s goats in their shed. We aren’t so rich here that anyone has an excess of room in their homes. Except for me, but you’d find the barn more comfortable than my floor.”

“I’ve slept in worse places,” Ilse said mildly.

His cough sounded suspiciously like a laugh. “You mean the goats, or me?”

She had not expected humor from this man. She smiled, if wearily. “I like goats.”