For now, though, Tomm padded a few strides behind her. He hadn’t tied her hands, for which she was grateful. Probably he would when they stopped to sleep. She’d been walking slowly, and so far he hadn’t hurried her. He was tired too.
Tall clouds had built and a wind had risen, swooshing the trees overhead, and she considered suggesting they look for shelter. Thinking about that, she missed the sound of the arrow that struck Tomm. Then men were all around. Tomm, a feathered shaft protruding from his chest, tried to stand, and one of them raised his sword to finish him. Varia screamed, and lunged reflexively to stop it, but strong hands grabbed and held her. The blade chopped down, taking Tomm through the back, and she screamed again. Then her knees buckled, but whoever held her, kept her upright.
“You’re all right,” another said. “You’re safe now.”
She looked around to see who’d spoken. A tall man . . . No, a tall ylf, his eyes tilted like hers but blue, his skin fair, his hair raven black. His eyes and coloring and magician’s aura all gave him away: an ylf, though he stood before her in the fringed and greasy buckskins of a fur hunter. “We know who he was, and who you are. A tomttu told us. He was afraid for you, the tracker was so close behind.”
Safe now? Did he mean it? Hope surged. “Am I free then? Free to go?”
He looked long at her without answering. “Free of him,” he said at last. “Free of those you fled from.”
“Not truly free then? Just new captors?”
“There are things we need to learn from you.”
“I heard how you questioned my Sisters at Ferny Cove.” Her words were little more than a hoarse whisper now. “When your army raped sixty of them repeatedly before you killed them. In front of the people there.”
“No,” he said quietly. “Not the army.”
“Who then?” The question was defiant.
His expression was bleak. “The Kormehri. Men and boys of the town. Farmers of the district.”
“You lie!”
He shook his head. “General Quaie ordered it. The original plan had been to capture all the Sisters and their children, or as nearly all as might be, and bring them to the Empire. Unharmed so far as possible. But your magic was more powerful than we’d supposed, and most escaped. So those we caught—” He paused, took a deep breath. “Those we caught, Quaie required the local men to rape publicly. Even the dogs that afterward destroyed the victims were war dogs of King Vertorus. They’d been useless against us, against our magic. Now Quaie made his own use of them. The story would spread, Quaie said, and no one in the Rude Lands would ever regard the Sisterhood as they had before. They’d see a Sister and remember them humiliated, raped by a line of men like themselves, their magic broken. Then torn—even eaten—by dogs.
“He didn’t even bring one home to question. Said it was needless. Pointless. That the Sisterhood was finished, and the lesson of Ferny Cove was best taught his way.”
The ylf’s face had twisted as if the words were bitter in his mouth. He stopped, breathed, stabilized. “That was Quaie’s reasoning,” he went on, “and to some degree it worked as he’d said. But the business was vile, and on our return, the Emperor dismissed him, both from command and from his seat on the council.” He shrugged. “And as the story spread, it has harmed us everywhere. As I warned Quaie it would when he gave the orders.”
Varia stared. “You were there!”
He nodded. “I was there.”
She looked around and saw six others. Except for the leader, they were men. Or no—half-ylver who could pass for men. Six that she could see; there might be others. Her voice became little more than a whisper. “What will you do with me?”
He looked down at her from his six-feet-four, and shook his head. “Not that. Nothing like that, I promise you. But we have to take you with us. To be questioned.”
“Take me where?”
“To our own country. The Empire.”