away, turning on to the cart-track leading south from the bridge – there was
nothing down there but swamp, and wasteland, and at the end of it. Fisherman’s
Row and the sea … nothing, that is, but the witch Roxane’s fortified estate.
‘Do you think – Stealth, was that them?’
‘Quiet, curse you; I’m trying to tell.’ It might have been; his heart was far
from quiet, and the passengers he sensed were drugged and
nearly somnambulant.
But from the house, he could no longer sense the girlish trails which had been
there, among the blue/archmagical/anguished ones of its owner and those of men.
Boys’ auras still remained there, he thought, but quiet, weaker, perhaps dying,
maybe dead. It could be the fellow Crit had left there, and not the young scions
of east-side homes.
The moon, above Niko’s head, was near at zenith. Seeing him look up, Janni
anticipated what he was going to say: ‘Well Stealth, we’ve got to go down there
anyway; let’s follow the wagon. Mayhap we’ll catch it. Perchance we’ll find out
whom they’ve got there, if we do. And we’ve little time to lose – girls or no,
we’ve a witch to
attend to.’
‘Aye.’ Niko reined his horse around and set it at a lope after the wagon, not
fast enough to catch it too soon, but fast enough to keep it in earshot. When
Janni’s horse came up beside his, the other mercenary called: ‘Convenience of
this magnitude makes me nervous; you’d think the witch sent that wagon, even
snared those children, to be sure we’d have to come.’
Janni was right; Niko said nothing; they were committed; there was nothing to do