Valdemar 05 - [Vows & Honor 02] - Oathbreakers by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online

trickle down her neck, and muddy water from every puddle they splashed through had soaked through her breeches long ago. She was going numb with cold; the rest of them must be in worse case.
    â€œKyra,” she called forward, “You in territory you know yet?”
    The girl turned in her saddle, rain trickling down her nose. “Hmm—eh, I’d say so. Think this’s Domery lands, they’re kin of my kin—”
    â€œI don’t want to stretch anybody’s hospitality or honesty, but we need to dry off a bit. There any herders’ huts or caves or something around here? Something likely to be deserted this time of year?”
    â€œI’ll think on’t.”
    A few soggy furlongs later—as Kyra scanned her memory and the land around them—
    â€œScoutmaster,” she called back, “ ‘Bout three hills over there be a cave; used for lambin’ and shearin’ and never else. That do?”
    â€œRoom for all of us? I mean horses, too. No sense in shouting our presence by tethering them out, and plain cruel to make them endure more of this than we do.”
    Kyra’s brow creased with thought. “If I don’t misremember, aye. Be a squeeze, but aye.”
    Â 
    Kyra had misremembered—but by undere stimating the size of the cave. There was enough room at the back for all five horses to stand shoulder to shoulder, with enough space left over for one rider at a time to rub his beast down without getting trampled on. An overhanging shelf of limestone made it possible to build a fire at the front of the cave without all of them eating smoke. And there was wood stocked at the side, dry enough that there wasn’t much of that smoke in the first place.
    More to the point, where concealment was concerned, the rain dissipated what trickled past the blackened overhang.
    â€œHow much farther?” Tarma asked, chewing on a tasteless mouthful of trail-biscuit.
    â€œNot much,” Kyra replied. “We better be cuttin’ overland from here if m’ mem‘ry be still good. Look you—”
    She dipped a twig in muddy, black water and drew on a flat rock near the cave’s entrance.
    Tarma got down on her knees beside her and studied her crude map carefully. “One, maybe two candlemarks, depending, hmm?”
    â€œAye, depending.” Kyra chewed on the other end of the twig for a moment. “We got to stick t’ ridges—”
    â€œWhat?” Beaker exclaimed. “For every gossip in the hills to see us?”
    â€œOh, bad to be seen, but worse to be bogged. Valleys, they go boggy this time of year, like. Stuff livin’ in the bogs is bad for a beast’s feet. Y’ want yer laddy’s hooves t’ rot off ‘fore we reach trail’s end, y’ ride the valleys.”
    â€œNo middle way?” Tarma asked.
    â€œWell.... We won’t be goin’ where there’s likely many, an’ most of those’d be my kin. They see me, they know what I was abaht, and they keep their tongues from clackin‘.”
    â€œThat’ll have to do.” Tarma got up from her knees, and dusted the gravel off the knees of her breeches—which were, she was happy to find, relatively dry. “All right, children, let’s ride.”
    Â 
    â€œI dunno—” Garth said dubiously, peering up through the drizzle at what was little better than a worn track along the shale cliffside.
    Tarma studied the trail and chewed at the comer of her lip. “Kyra,” she said, finally, “your beast’s the weakest of the lot. Give it a try. If she can make it, we all can.”
    â€œAye,” Kyra saluted, and turned her mare’s head to the trail. She let the mare take her time and pick her own places to set her feet along the track. It seemed to take forever—
    But eventually they could see that she was waving from the top.
    â€œSend the first bird, Beaker,” Tarma said,