“I thought so.”
He set her on her feet on the opposite side, but left an arm around her shoulders. Caliban followed them across the river, his eyes unreadable. Slate stifled a sigh.
This is probably just another example of pissing in a circle. Oh, well …
The gnole bounced up to her, and she abandoned Brenner’s embrace for her small, foul-smelling crutch. They limped up the hillside together.
“Do you have a name, crazy gnole?”
“Yeah, crazy lady. Name’s Grimehug.”
“I’m Slate.”
“Crazy Slate. Good name. Could almost be a gnole name.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Learned Edmund led her horse forward. Slate scrubbed at her eyes. “They’ve all got saddles on. You struck camp. They’re ready to go.”
The scholar nodded, and then, much to her surprise, leaned down and offered her his hands as a mounting block.
“Why’d you saddle them all? I told you not to leave until noon…”
He was much slighter than Caliban, but he held steady enough as she climbed into the saddle. “I knew you’d be back with them. I thought we should be ready to move when you were.”
“How’d you know that? I was sure I was a goner.”
The scholar sketched a benediction in her general direction. “I had faith.”
Huh.
“Bowels turned to water yet?” asked Brenner snidely, passing the scholar on the way to his own horse.
“It appears to be a very slow process.”
There are limits to what horses can do in the dark. They could not go at a canter, nor even a trot. They went at a steady, shambling walk instead. Learned Edmund led, with the bright-eyed gnole before him. It had excellent night-vision, and it kept up a cheery stream of talk to the scholar. Oddly enough, they seemed to be getting along.
Slate clung to her saddle. Her clothes were stuck to her wounds, making crude bandages, so she wasn’t going to bleed todeath any time soon. She was dreading getting the shirt off when they finally stopped.
We just have to get away. If we can reach the road, we can put enough distance between us and the rune. We’ve just got to keep moving.
It seemed much darker on the back of the horse than it had when she was moving under her own power. She couldn’t see where the animal was setting its feet. This would have worried her, but she was rapidly too exhausted to care.
It had been at least an hour, probably more, and she was sunk in a dumb haze of pain and exhaustion and feeling generally ill-used by the universe when Learned Edmund pulled the horses up.
“We haven’t hit the road,” he said worriedly. “We weren’t that far off it, and we’ve headed straight for where it should be. We should have been there half an hour ago.”
This sounded bad. Slate lifted her chin off her chest, wincing as dried blood pulled at her skin. “Are we lost?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Could we have passed the road in the dark?” asked Caliban.
“I don’t think so. The ground hasn’t changed at all.”
Slate realized that the scholar was looking at her to make a decision.Oh, sure, now he trusts me…She waved a hand. “Let’s keep going for another half hour or so. If we don’t hit the road, we’ll assume we’re lost and look for a defensible place to hole up.”
