Late afternoon saw no respite from the cloudy gloom. Grim and frowning, Serovek rode a slow circle around their party as they tightened the distance between riders and wagon. “I don't like this,” he said. “We're traveling blind through this soup but stopping to camp is a worse alternative.” He rode closer to Anhuset. “How good are the Kai at seeing through fog?”
“Unfortunately, no better than humans,” she said.
“I was afraid such was so.” He addressed all three of them. “Keep moving and your eyes and ears open. We'll journey until full dark and get as far as we can before we stop to make camp. With any luck, this will have burned off or faded, and we'll have clear weather.”
As fate would have it, luck laughed at Serovek's optimism. The fog only thickened and rose higher until the wagon and team were vague shapes in front of Anhuset and the riders with her as phantasmal as the ghosts on the bridge they'd left behind days earlier.
“Methinks this stuff is thick enough to walk on.” Erostis's muffled complaint hung in the clinging mist, disembodied and far away though Anhuset knew him to be just ahead of her.
“I might as well be blindfolded for all I can see where I'm driving this team,” Klanek added.
“Hush.” Anhuset's command silenced them instantly. She reined her mount to a stop and listened. Almost indiscernible from the clop of horse hooves and the creak of wagon wheels, the faint sounds of movement teased her ears. The slide of leather on leather, the bend of wood from the draw of a bow. A furtive step. A careful inhalation.
“Close in,” she said, hoping her party heard her near whisper. “Shields.”
The hard thunk of an arrow hitting flesh, followed by Klanek's pained cry, set off a chaotic melée between their group and a half-glimpsed band of silent attackers. Obscured by the mists, they targeted the horses first.
Anhuset's horse squealed its terror as the tip of a whip snaked through the fog to land a welt across its rump. The animal bucked beneath her, thrashing even when a second whip crack heralded a strike across its withers, leaving a bloody welt.
Anhuset fought the reins with one hand and slashed at a shadowy figure darting toward her.
“Defend the wagon!” Serovek, invisible in the mist, commanded.
She was useless to help at the moment, working hard to control the half-mad equine under her. The horse reared, arching too far back to come back down on its front hooves. Anhuset leapt from the saddle to avoid being crushed as the horse fell backwards. She still held her sword but lost her shield.
More shapes hurtled through the mist, swarming them. Three rushed her, solidifying into men armed with blades and an ax. Undaunted by their number, she took the first man down with a quick cut to the torso, disemboweling him. Blood splashed hot across her arm and hand. The second she decapitated. The third reversed his charge and fled. Anhuset grabbed the ax the headless attacker had dropped and flung it, sinking it between the man's shoulder blades. He fell, disappearing into the mist without a sound.
“Anhuset!” Serovek's bellow carried to her, followed by a curse and more shouts before abruptly going silent.
She bolted in the direction from which his voice had come, praying she wouldn't stumble over a downed horse or worse a dead Serovek. She glimpsed the wagon, abandoned by both driver and team. She dared not shout in return and give their attackers her location.
Her caution came to naught. The slide of a rope sounded right at her ear before one looped around her neck and was jerked so hard, her head snapped back, and she lost her footing. The ground rose up hard and unforgiving, driving the air out of her lungs in one thin, constricted whoosh.
She worked at the rope collaring her, trying to slide a claw between it and her throat to keep from being strangled. The noose tightened even more, choking off her air. Rough fibers cut into her skin as she thrashed on the ground, this time reaching back to find her killer and sink her claws into him. Her hands met only air and the end of a long baton to which the rope was attached. Whoever held it was far out of her reach.
The gray of the mists became the gray of strangulation that finally closed over her eyes in a black curtain, and she knew no more.
Chapter Nine
What's to come won't be fair.
She woke with a muffled gasp, wincing at the fiery pain flaring in her throat, as if she'd swallowed a live ember. A thick cloth gag covered the lower half of her face, muzzling her. An attempt to stretch resulted in muscles cramping in protest. She was bound in a fetal position, wrists to ankles, the leather strips wrapped so tight her fingers were numb. Forced into a hunch and unable to straighten, she was afforded only a sliver of view of her surroundings.
A cluster of horses gathered nearby, shuffling away as human legs strode back and forth. Raucous voices filled the air, all male, some joking, others angry, a few drunken.
Anhuset twisted her shoulder and craned her neck, trying to see better. She lay in the middle of a camp surrounded by strangers who, for the moment, hadn't noticed she'd woken.
There was no sign of Serovek, though she thought she caught a glimpse of Magas half hidden behind the large tent at the edge of her line of sight. Sadness weighed on her as she remembered the sound of an arrow striking a body, then Klanek crying out in pain. Was he dead? Was Erostis? Serovek himself? And if so, why had their attackers chosen to keep her alive for now?
The pain in her throat was nothing compared to what swelled in her chest and threatened to choke her more effectively than the lasso someone had noosed around her neck to strangle her into unconsciousness. The margrave who'd battled and won against the galla surely hadn't met his end at the hands of a bunch of roving marauders and thieves.
She tugged on her bonds, testing their strength. Her captors had trussed her more thoroughly than a pig set for slaughter, and if her blurring vision and pounding head were clues, they'd drugged her for good measure.
A pair of muddy boots suddenly planted themselves in front of her. Anhuset arched her neck for a better view of their wearer. He crouched in front of her, revealing a boyish visage with a sweet smile and the empty-eyed stare of a murderer. She didn't have to be human to discern the trappings of madness lurking behind his eyes. Whatever stared at her from black pupils and hazel irises, it made her think of the galla in Haradis. Every hair on her nape stood on end.
“Finally awake,” he said in Common tongue. “I'm surprised you aren't dead with as many darts as we shot into you once you fainted. There was enough sleep elixir on those points to drop a warhorse. It really is true what they about the Kai—as strong as you are hideous.”
He was less than subtle with his baiting, and Anhuset didn't rise to the insult. She met his stare with an unwavering one of her own until he stood up and put some distance between them. He motioned to someone standing nearby. “Remove her gag.”
“What if she tries to bite?”
Count on it, she thought.
The chill in the killer's tone would have frozen a lit brazier. “Then I suggest you don't get your fingers too close to her mouth.”
Coward. For all his posturing and the dead gaze, this man was craven. Was he the group's leader? And if so, what idiot followed a commander who ordered his men to do what he wouldn't do himself?