Betrayals (29 page)

“Then we’d better get to it,” Rion said, straightening where he stood. “Tamrissa, can you direct me to the wagons which have other than captives in them?”

“Good idea,” I said, knowing immediately what he meant. “If you put those guardsmen out first, we won’t have to worry about what they’re doing when we go after their friends. The wagons they’re in are the third, seventh, and ninth ones, counting from the first in line.”

Rion nodded and looked toward the wagons, and three minutes later the sources of body heat that had to mean guardsmen were horizontal instead of vertical. All three of them had gone down together, which means I was impressed.

“All right, it’s done,” Rion said once the bodies had been down for an additional minute. “Please keep a watch on them if you can, Tamrissa, to see if they come awake again too quickly. If they do and we haven’t won yet, I’ll have to put them down a second time. What do we do next?”

“Next it’s my turn,” Valiant said, also drawing himself up. “If Tamrissa will guard the wagons against anyone doin’ anythin’ foolish with the last of their strength, we’ll see if it works.”

Alsin and Grath exchanged a glance filled with nervous curiosity, but neither of them asked Valiant what he meant. And Valiant was too absorbed in gazing toward the wagons to notice them. We could now see quite a number of men in uniforms—and men in ordinary clothes—running about around the wagons, mostly shouting and pointing in the direction of my distraction. I watched those men, some of them having begun to look in other directions as well—and then many of them began to stagger! It was as if something had hit all of them at the same time, as if they were puppets and someone had begun to cut their strings.

Most of the men in view sat or fell to the ground, and so did the heat sources I was still able to detect on the far side of the camp. Valiant was putting the lethe directly into them, into their blood, probably, and the idea of that was rather startling. It’s one thing to put a liquid into a small jar, quite another to put it into the tiny channels which carry our blood around our bodies. But he seemed to be doing it, and the guardsmen and drivers were responding by falling over.

But not all of them. When I found myself moving toward the line of wagons Rion and Valiant were right with me, and Valiant still wore that look of concentration. Probably because some of the men were still fighting to stay on their feet, struggling to keep awake despite the sedative being put into them. They were the only ones still between us and our Blendingmates so we didn’t let their stubbornness keep us away, but we did watch them.

And that turned out to be a very wise decision. I suppose there are always people around who don’t react to things the way everyone else does, and three of those guardsmen refused to fall over. They were big men, taller and huskier than those around them, and when they saw us coming toward them they drew long, ugly-looking knives, and one led the other two in attacking us.

If you’ve ever been attacked by screaming, wild-looking men coming toward you at a shambling run, you may be able to understand how I felt. That sort of thing has to be terrifying even if you’re used to it, although I can’t imagine how anyone might get used to it. The part of me not touching the power wanted to scream and run in the other direction, away from the madmen who were clearly ready to end my life.

But the part of me which did touch the power reacted differently to that sort of thing. One of the three came directly toward me, and he was the one given full attention. I stopped to regard him calmly while he came near enough to slash down at me with that long knife, and then—and then his knife moved through a flash of flame so intense that most of the blade vaporized as it passed through. Lack of balance caused him to stumble when the downward arc of his swing found him left with little more than a hilt, and he stood gawking stupidly between me and what was left of his weapon.

Rion stood to my left, and out of the corner of my eyes I’d been able to see that the man who swung his knife at him had also not reached his target. The knife came to a jarring stop in front of and above Rion’s head, probably because of a shield of hardened air. Fear paled the man’s face, just as it did with the man in front of Valiant, who stood to my right. That time it was a thick layer of ice which stopped the knife, and all three men were clearly shaken. Then they were choking and falling to their knees, which obviously meant that Rion had taken away their air. They might have resisted the sedative, but lack of air to breathe can’t be resisted.

As soon as the three stopped moving, Rion, Valiant, and I continued toward the wagons with Alsin and Grath trailing along behind. I’d expected to have to look through all of them, but now that Rion and Valiant stood so close to me, something about the sixth and ninth wagons seemed to draw me. And I wasn’t the only one who felt that, as Valiant gestured toward the ninth wagon.

“Let’s start with that one,” he suggested, staring at it in the same way I did. “I have this feelin’…”

“And so do I,” Rion agreed after glancing at me. “It seems to be drawing me in some way, and I’d say that Tamrissa also feels it. Are either of you getting anything from that wagon three places ahead?”

“You mean the sixth wagon,” I said as Valiant simply nodded. “Yes, it’s just the same. But this one is closer, so let’s start here.”

“Wait just a minute,” Alsin called from behind us as we began to move again. “What about the rest of the guardsmen and drivers? I don’t see more than half of them scattered around on the ground here.”

“The rest are scattered around on the ground beyond the wagons,” I replied, smiling over my shoulder in order to soothe his nervousness. “Aren’t you close enough to them to tell?”

“Only just barely,” he said after a second’s worth of hesitation, his brow wrinkled with effort. “And yes, you’re right, they are all out of it. If you three are starting with the ninth wagon, Grath and I will start with the tenth.”

“Good idea,” Valiant told him, an odd … reserve of sorts in his voice. “Just keep half a talented eye open in case some of these guardsmen start comin’ around too soon. If you find one that does, just give us a shout.”

Alsin nodded, and he and a disturbed-looking Grath headed for the wagon behind the one we had the most interest in….

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Rion helped Tamrissa into the wagon, then followed with Valiant close behind. It was dim inside the wagon with the canvas closed tight all around, but Tamrissa took care of that by creating a ball of brightness which she hung in the air above them. That let them look around, to see the six pallets on which six people lay, the pallets arranged three to each side of the wagon. The people, men and women both, were moving in discomfort, as though they were getting ready to awaken. In the middle of the wagon a guardsman lay slumped in unconsciousness, one of those Rion had put down earlier. And at the front of the wagon, moving even more than the others, was—

“Jovvi!” Tamrissa cried, stepping quickly over the unconscious guardsman to rush to their sister’s side. She knelt and raised Jovvi with an arm around her shoulders, then smoothed the tangle of her once-beautiful hair. “Jovvi, it’s Tamrissa. Can you hear me? Can you wake up all the way?”

“Tam-ma…” The word was slurred and garbled and very soft, but Jovvi was actually trying to speak! “Too… much … floating… Help… wake up …”

“I think she means she needs help to wake up,” Tamrissa said, looking up at them with distress. “We can’t do anything to help, but maybe Alsin can. Rion, please go and call him in here.”

“I don’t think that will do it,” Valiant said, putting a hand to Rion’s arm to keep him from leaving. “Now that I’ve got the feel of that sedative, I can tell it’s in Jovvi’s blood— but it’s too spread out for me to remove it. Meerk’s just a Middle, so it’s probably beyond him to remove it as well. We’ll just have to wait until the lethe is washed out of their systems by their own bodies.”

“Lorand could probably filter it out, but Alsin’s not Lorand,” Rion was forced to agree when Tamrissa looked as though she might argue with what Valiant had said. “Most likely they’ll all have to come out of it on their own, which might actually be for the best. We should prepare for their awakening, and do something permanent about the guardsmen and drivers.”

“And while we’re at it, let’s get Lorand and put him in here with Jovvi,” Valiant said with a nod. “That way Tamrissa can be guardin’ the two of them together while we take care of the ones who kept them like this.”

Tamrissa’s nod showed she’d changed her mind about arguing, and she went back to paying attention to Jovvi while Rion and Valiant gave their own attention to the unconscious guardsman. The two of them carried the man out of the wagon and put him on the ground near his companions, then Rion followed Valiant to the sixth wagon. They climbed inside and peered through the dimness, and sure enough, the middle pallet on the left-hand side held Lorand’s feebly struggling body. Once they found him, Valiant went to one knee beside the pallet.

“It’s Valiant and Rion, Lorand,” Valiant said slowly and clearly, a hand on their brother’s shoulder. “You keep tryin’ to wake up, but don’t worry about what’s happenin’. They had you for a while, but we’ve got you back now.”

“Val-nt,” Lorand croaked, obviously trying to open his eyes. “Where am I?”

“Right now you’re in a wagon,” Valiant answered, “but in a few minutes you’ll be in a different wagon. I’m goin’ to carry you to where Jovvi and Tamrissa are, and Tamrissa will keep you both company until you wake up. You won’t be worryin’, will you?”

“No … won’t… worry,” Lorand mumbled, his agitation eased quite a bit. “Need … t’wake … up.”

“That’s right, you concentrate on wakin’ up,” Valiant agreed, then looked up at Rion. “I’ll pick him up, then you ought to take that pallet so we’ll have somethin’ to put him on in the other wagon. But I’ll need help gettin’ him out of here without droppin’ him.”

“Helping is my specialty,” Rion answered with a smile. “I’ll climb out with the pallet, and then I’ll take half his weight. That ought to let you get out easily enough.”

Valiant nodded his agreement, then reached down to pick up Lorand. Rion used his ability to help with that, too, as Lorand was far from being a small man. After that it was simply a matter of taking the pallet out and giving the same kind of help with Lorand a second time, which let Valiant just slide out of the wagon. Then they carried their burdens back to the wagon Jovvi was in, and in another few moments Lorand was settled right beside Jovvi.

“You two and Alsin and Grath had better get on with doing something about those guardsmen,” Tamrissa said once she had settled herself between their groupmates. “Some of them are beginning to stir, especially the ones you put out first, Rion.”

“Then we’ll take care of them first,” Rion said, his agreement more grim and merciless than his feelings had ever been before. He’d had no idea that he had it in him to be so hard and harsh, but these people deserved nothing better. Even if they weren’t privy to what would be done with their captives, they still had to know that they were taking innocent people to what might just be their doom. Claiming they were simply following orders was an excuse Rion was unwilling to accept.

The guardsmen he’d put out first were indeed stirring, so he simply put them out again—along with the others who were trying to fight against the sedative. Alsin and Grath had come out of the tenth wagon by then, and Alsin admitted that there was nothing he might do to hurry along the process of waking. With that in mind they all put their backs into carrying the guardsmen and drivers to the middle of the camp, where they lined them up in easy-to-see rows. Tying them with rope would have been a waste of time, of course, since anyone with even a Low talent in Fire magic could have gotten themselves and the rest of their friends loose with very little effort.

But chains were another matter, and it was Alsin who discovered that each guardsman had a set of fetters in his saddlebags. That meant there weren’t quite enough to chain the guardsmen and drivers both, at least not individually. It did prove possible, though, to chain their prisoners wrist to ankle in the row, one man’s wrist chained to the next man’s ankle, and that man’s ankle chained to the next man’s wrist.

It took quite a while to get all that done, and once they were through Rion quieted everyone who was beginning to stir again. Then they began to look for the convoy’s supplies, as they were now hungry enough to eat some of the surrounding trees. That, at least, was the way Rion felt, but the quick way the others agreed to look for food suggested that they felt the same. They’d decided against buying their lunch at the inn in which they’d spent the night, contrary to what had become their habit with other inns.

The previous night had seen them squeezed into three small rooms—the third grudgingly supplied by the landlord—and breakfast that morning had actually been reheated rather than freshly made. Rion had accepted that with dinner the night before, but a breakfast done the same was inexcusable. So they hadn’t bought any lunch, and now needed something to remove the memory of their terrible breakfast.

The supplies carried by the convoy were surprisingly lavish, and Grath took over preparing the meal while the others looked on. The scout insisted on doing so, and simply glanced at Rion and the others.

“You three don’t have to stand there watching me,” he said with a look of amusement. “I promise not to eat it all myself, and I’ll even call you when it’s ready.”

“What else have we got to do?” Alsin asked as he stretched a large tarpaulin across a section of the wet grass. At least it had stopped raining, for the moment, anyway. “Everything else is taken care of, and now all we can do is wait for the captives to wake up.”

“You might try getting some of them up and walking,” Grath suggested as he added wood to the sheltered fire which had been built by the convoy people. “I’m told that sedatives wear off more quickly like that, and the sooner they’re all awake and alert, the sooner we can be on our way.”

“There must be sixty people in those wagons,” Valiant pointed out as Alsin’s expression said he was in the midst of considering the suggestion. “Since it will take two of us to walk one of them around, we’ll still be here next week if walkin’ is the only way to wake them. I’m for waitin’ and lettin’ them do it by themselves.”