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.“I was beginning to wonder if I was going to spend the night in this tree.”She caught the branch she was sitting on and swung down to the one below.Eldan followed her, marveling at her agility, and her ability to move so well in the twilight gloom.“Oh, I can think of worse places to spend the night than in a tree,” he replied lightly, as he lowered himself down onto the ground beside her.“So can I, and I’ve probably been in most of them.Can we take to the road?” She dusted her hands off on her breeches, and unwound Hellsbane’s reins from the snag she’d tethered the mare to.“So far.Ratha’s going on ahead.He says he’s found a goat-track we can use if more of those patrols show up.”She turned a sober face toward him.“I hope he’s finding cover for us in case more of thosethingsshow up.I don’t want to meet one of them out in the open with nowhere to hide.”“No more do I.” He shuddered at the thought of it, and marveled at her courage, who’d encountered the creatureswhatever they werealone, without panicking.She’s incredible, he thought for the hundredth time, as he followed directly in Hellsbane’s tracks.I have to get her back to Valdemar.I have to.She’ll never want to leave….FourteenThey're thinking at each other again, Kero observed, trying not to cringe.With Eldan sitting and the Companion lying beneath a roof of living pine boughs, the Herald gazed deeply into Ratha’s eyes, both of them oblivious to everything around them.The ground was invisible under a litter of pine needles that must date back ten or twenty years.They’d left Kero on guard while the two of them conferred.If Kero hadn’t known the sky was clear, she’d have sworn there was a storm coming; it was that dark under this tree.She looked away after a few moments, and decided that halfway up this same pine tree would be just about the best lookout point.She should be able to see quite a distance up the main valley from there.And she wouldn’t have to watch Eldan and his Companion.As usual, they’d traveled by night, stopping just before dawn to find a place to hole up in during the day.For the past night they’d been paralleling the main road down the center of a series of linked valleys.The closer they got to the Valdemar border, the less populated the countryside becamebut the terrain was a lot rougher, and the alternatives to the main roads fewer.Their hiding place this time had been a little pocket-valley off the main vale.And it wasn’t a place where Kero would have stopped if she’d had any choice.There was a shepherd’s townnot a village, but a town, rating a main square, a marketplace, and the largest temple of the Sunlord Kero had seen yetat the head of the valley.This had been the best they could do, and it hadn’t been a terribly secure place to stay.A good-sized stand of tall pines with branches that drooped down to the ground ensured that there was no grass here; there was no water either, no one would stumble across them bringing his sheep to pasture.The pines themselves provided cover; one sheltered Hellsbane, one protected Ratha, and one kept the two of them hidden beneath the tentlike boughs.But it was still open, and too close to that town to make any of them feel comfortable.Kero knew she slept lightly, and she was fairly certain the same could be said of Eldan and Ratha.After they woke, Eldan seemed preoccupied, and finally asked Kero to stand watch while he and his Companion talked.Kero had a shrewd notion that strategy was not going to be the subjectthat she was.She had gotten the impression more than once that Ratha liked her, but didn’t entirely approve of her.Certainly the Companion wasn’t likely to approve of her as a long-term liaison for his Herald.He thinks a lot like his Herald, she reflected, climbing through the scratchy pine boughs carefully, to avoid making the tree shake.They couldn’t afford any carelessness; there had been too many near-escapes in the past few days.The hunters were getting thicker, and more, not less, persistent.Somehow, in the next couple of days, they had to make a try at the Border.Which meant that parting from him was only days away.She settled herself on a sturdy limb, and blinked her burning, blurring eyes back into focus.Blessed Agnira, what am I going to do? Standing watch didn’t occupy a great deal of her attention, which meant she had more than enough left over to worry.I’m in love with this man.He’s in love with me.Should be a happy ending in there somewhere, if this was only a ballad….She bit her lip to keep from crying.The whole relationship is impossible, that’s all there is to it.It’s all the same problems that I had with Daren, only worse, because I do love him.I want to be with him more than I’ve ever wanted any other person in my life.But that was the key: any other person.Her independence had been dearly bought, and she wasn’t about to give it up now.If she went with him, giving up her position in the Skybolts, what would she do in Valdemar? The regular army might not take her, and if they did, she would undoubtedly find herself on the wrong end of rules and regulations every time she turned around.With her record, she could ask for concessions from a Company that she could never get from a regular army force.Her peculiar talents did not fit into the parameters of a regular army.She wasn’t a foot or line soldier, she wasn’t heavy or even light infantry, and she was in no way going to fit into heavy or light cavalry.She was a scoutwell, that was a job for the foot soldier.She was a skirmisherthat was under the aegis of either light infantry (bow) or light cavalry (sword).She knew more about tactics than most of the regulation officers she’d met, and that would certainly earn her no points.Lerryn encouraged the input of his junior officers, but that simply wasn’t so, outside of mercenary Companies.That assumed they’d even take her in the first place; many regular armed forces wouldn’t accept former mercs because they tended to have an adverse effect on discipline.Which would leave me living on his charity.Not a chance.I won’t ever put myself in that position again.Despite the lump in her throat and the ache in her chest at the thought of parting from Eldan, the resolution remained.Never.I have my own life, and I’m going to lead it.He just didn’t understand what could lead someone to fight for a living, and it didn’t look as though he ever would.She’d tried to point out that if a relatively ethical person didn’t do the fighting, that would leave it to unethical peoplehe’d stared at her as if she was speaking Shin’a’in.For her part, she could not understand his fanatical devotion to an abstract: a country.What on earth was there about a piece of property that made it worth dying for? Never mind that territorial disputes were what paid for a merc’s talents, more often than notshe still didn’t understand it.In a way, she was as alien to him as one of those Karsite priestesses.She disturbed him more than they did, because he knew they were alienshe was the woman he loved, and seemed completely rational to himuntil she would say something that completely eluded him, or he would say something that made no sense to her.There were other differences, too; serious ones.Like his attitude toward Mindspeech [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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