Still holding her ankle in one hand and fondling with the other, the leader spoke, tried again, and finally found a word she knew and reacted to: ”Outsider!”
He glanced at the others, then at her again, and he discarded his smile. ”Outsider?” he repeated in his strange accent. He turned his head and spat on the grass. “Outsider!”
It made sense. Outsiders—intruders. Nonpixies were fair game. Shoot down the men, rape the women. Then what? And what had they done to Kade? Whole legions could vanish in Thume.
“No!” She shook her head wildly and tried to struggle again. The same thing happened as before—her captor crushed her into helplessness. She whimpered, trying to wrestle her leg free, trying to butt, but she had slid down until her head was against her chest and butting did no good. Again she slumped into quiescence, but her heart was going mad inside her.
One of the others spoke sharply, impatiently.
The leader snapped, telling him to be quiet, but he dropped her ankle and began unlacing his shirt. She was half sitting now, unable to straighten her legs, and gradually sliding lower in her captor’s arms.
The leader threw down his shirt, grinning at her. By some trick of the light, she could see the sweat glint on his chest with every harsh breath. He hooked his right heel under his left boot and tugged out his right foot.
“You bunch of animals!” she sneered, not shouting now. ”Beasts! Filth! What sort of man treats—”
Again a sound of hooves, many hooves, shrills of alarm from the horses.
The men looked around, and Inos twisted her head to see. The shirtless man rammed his foot back in his boot and took to his heels, bellowing orders. The other two followed at once, leaving only the one holding Inos. He turned to watch, giving her a better view also.
The three men were running as if chased by lions, running for their horses. Horses and mules were in wild panic and uproar. In their midst, one horse plunged and leaped as its rider scrolled the dark with lines of fire, waving a flaming branch.
Nothing like fire to spook horses! Two were off into the trees already. The third had caught in one of the mules’ tethers and was down. The mules were breaking loose but two of them had gone over also, and all were screaming in terror. Still the mysteriously glimmering figure on the horse flailed the torch around, and now the mules were up. Pounding hooves seemed to shake the clearing, gradually dwindling as the stampede faded into the forest, until all the animals had gone into the night and only two horses remained: one rolling helplessly, obviously injured, the other still bearing the maniac with the torch. Three young men ran impotently, uselessly, over the meadow, howling in wordless rage.
Then the rider hurled down the dying brand and wheeled the horse, and came across the clearing like an avenging hurricane, hooves hardly seeming to touch the ground. It was Kade! Incredible Kade, riding a mad horse as if she were Azak himself, wearing nothing but her flimsy cotton slip, white hair fluttering in the night.
Had she been armed with a lance, she might have skewered one of the marauders in her charge. As it was, he leaped to catch the reins, stumbled aside at the last minute, and fell heavily.
The jailer’s grip had slackened. Inos straightened her legs, slamming her head up into his face with a satisfying impact, throwing all her weight back against him, then letting it all drop again. The two of them sat down simultaneously, hard. She lashed out backward with an elbow, hoping to hit him in the belly, but he grabbed her hair and pulled her over at just the same moment, so she tilted and missed and caught him between the legs instead. He seemed to have a sensitive spot there, for he spasmed and cried out. She pounded again, harder, and he lost interest in her altogether. She scrambled free.
She was on her feet and running as the horse came thundering by, and she made a wild grab for the harness as if she were an acrobat, but all she caught was a glimpse of Kade’s terrified face above her. Brutal impact threw her aside and into the ground hard enough to explode the world into fragments.
For a moment she was stunned . . . in pain and breathless and too battered to care what happened. She tried to rise. A stab of white-hot agony in her ankle stopped her. Reality flooded back.
Grass was burning over by the shelter, a fountain of yellow light in the dusk. Kade was still somehow clinging to that berserk horse. It must have balked at the river, or she had wheeled it, for now it was pounding back toward the two men still on their feet. Again it seemed one must be ridden down. Again the man leaped aside in time, and this one did not fall.
And the other stepped between Inos and the spreading grass fire—and he had a bow! He was taking aim; the horse had turned again. The arrow flew, Inos yelled a warning, the horse reared, hooves flailing the sky. Then it sank back on its haunches and toppled over sideways. Kade! Inos could not see what had happened to Kade.
Silence.
No rider rose from the fallen horse.
Again Inos tried to stand, and again was stopped by that fearful pain. She must have broken her ankle.
One by one the men limped over and stood, glaring down at her.
The one who had fallen was clutching his arm in a way that reminded her of Kel breaking his collarbone years ago, going after birds’ eggs on Windle Scarp. The man who had been her jailer was holding his groin, bent over and muttering horribly. His nose had bled darkly all over his chin and his shirt. The other two were gasping for breath and looking just as mad.
She wanted to cringe, to make herself as tiny as possible before their fury. There was no amusement or mockery now in their slanted eyes, only Hurt and Pain and Revenge. Two of their mounts had run off, two been killed or crippled, two men injured, and all four had been made to look like idiots. They were not after fun now. They were going to make her pay. Long and hard.
Her fingers scrabbled on the ground, gathering sand and grit for throwing in eyes. She wasn’t going to cringe and she wasn’t going to cry out no matter what they did. She was a queen, for Gods’ sakes!
“Animals!” she shouted. “Serves you right. Wait till my other friends arrive! You! Go and bring my robe from over there . . .”
One of the younger pair, one of the uninjured, said something emphatic and stripped off his shirt. She couldn’t do much against those muscles, even if the other men did not help him. He kicked off his boots, glaring at her. Then he dropped his pants, and she instinctively averted her eyes. Oh, Gods! The drumming of her heart was making her feel giddy. This time there could be no escape, but whatever happened she wasn’t going to give in. She would make them fight for every scrap of satisfaction, and if she could claw out an eye or two then Evil take the consequences because they would surely kill her afterward anyway.
Was all that noise just the beating of her heart? Hooves? A third time Inos was saved by a distant sound of hooves. A third time they all turned to look.
A horse came galloping out of the trees. It was huge and spectral, gleaming white as if wrapped in glory. Its rider was garbed all in white, and his cloak streamed like aurora in the night. Horse and rider glowed alike with unearthly silver radiance that brightened as they came thundering across the meadow, making the ground tremble. The pixies started to shout in alarm, the stripper hastily hauling up his pants. And they all fell silent, freezing in position. Inos felt a wave of calm and peace flood over her. She was saved. The occult had arrived.
3
The sense of serenity was as distinctive as a signature. That, and a flicker of red fire around his head, told Inos who her savior was even before he drew close and reined in his magnificent luminous stallion.
When she had first met him in the seclusion of his home,
Sheik Elkarath had worn a sumptuous robe of many colors. On leaving Arakkaran he had set aside such unbusinesslike ostentation in favor of plain white garb. Of all his finery, he had retained only his gem-adorned agal, as if it were a small vice he could overlook in himself. Now a halo like blood flashed from its rubies. The trailing edges of his kaffiyeh shone brighter than moonlight alongside his snowy eyebrows and beard, making them seem to glow also, while the draperies of his kibr flowed to his boots in waves of white glory. He was almost too bright to look upon, and he lighted the glade as far as the trees.