「RIDE!」 ALESSAN CRIED, POINTING TOWARDS A GAP IN THE hills. "Theres a village beyond!」
Devin swore, lowered his head over his horses neck, and dug his heels into the animals flanks, following Erlein di Senzio west towards the gap and the low red disk of the sun.
Behind him, thundering out of the brown twilight hills, were at least eight, possibly a dozen brigands of the highlands. Devin hadnt looked back, after their first startled glimpse of the outlaws and the shouted and to halt.
He didnt think they had a ce, however close this village might be. They had been riding at a bone-jarring pace for hours and the horses Alienor had given them were tired. If this was to be a flat-out race against fresh-mounted outlaws they were probably dead. He gritted his teeth and rode, ign the ache in his leg and the sting of reopened cuts from his leap in the mountains earlier that day.
The wind whistled past him as they rode. He saw Alessan turn in his saddle, an arrow notched to his fully drawn bow. The Prince fired backwards ond then again into the twilight, his muscles ridged and corded with the effort. An improbable, desperate attempt at such speed in the wind.
Two men screamed. Devin quickly looked bad saw one of them fall. A handful of erratic arrows dropped well short of the three of them.
"Theyve slowed!" Erlein rasped, glang back as well. "How far to this village!」
"Through the gap and twenty minutes beyond! Ride!" Alessan did not shoot again, bending low te more speed from his owhey fled into the wind along the track of the suween the shadowy bulk of two heathery hills and into the gap between.
They did out.
Just where the path bent to follow the curve of the encroag ridges eight riders were waiting in a line across the gap, bows calmly leveled at the three of them.
They pulled their horses to rearing halts. Devin flung a glance back over his shoulder and saw the pursuing outlaws entering the pass behind them. There was one riderless horse, and another man clutched at his shoulder where an arrow was still embedded.
He looked at Alessan, saw the desperate, defiant look in the Princes eye.
"Dont be a fool!" Erlein snapped. "You t run through and you t kill this many men.」
"I try," Alessan said, his eyes darting across the defile and up the steep hills oher side, wild to find a way out. He had stopped his horse though, and did not raise the bow.
"Straight into a trap. What a splendid ending to two decades of dreaming!" His voice was corrosively bitter, raw with self-laceration.
It was true though, Devin realized, rather too late. This pass between the hills was a natural place for an ambush, and the Triad khere were enough outlaws hi the wilds of southerando, where even the Barbadian meraries seldom went, and ho men were never abroad this close to the fall of night.
Oher hand, they hadnt had much choice, given how far they had to go, and how fast.
It didnt seem as if they were going to get there. Or anywhere. There was still enough light to make out the outlaws, and their appearance did not reassure. Their clothing might be random and carelessly worn, but the horses were far from the beaten-dowures most brigands rode. The men in front of them looked disciplined, and the onry leveled at the three of them was formidable. This had also been, very clearly, a carefully laid trap.
One man rode a few paces forward from the silent line. "Rel