There was no more talking after that.
Crouching in the brush for cover, they drew nearer to the fire and the sounds of the four men making an early breakfast around it.
“This is my year, lads,” one was boasting over the clatter of a pan on the coals and the packhorse’s soft snorts. “I’m going to win it all.”
More of that laughter they had heard earlier on the wind followed this claim.
“What?” the man insisted, sounding slightly hurt. “We come from a whole city of bards; we have an advantage here.”
Griff realized they must be headed to the big music competition held across the mountains in Cardraine every summer; these were hardly bandits, and they had no idea that they were about to be less one horse simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He turned to ask Mal whether they shouldn’t reconsider when Mal drew something from his cloak, a flash of silver gleaming where it caught the firelight: his flask. He motioned as if to press it into Griff’s hands—a first, in all the times he’d seen the item so far, and clearly an offering of some significance—but Griff shook his head, and Mal shrugged before taking a sip himself and stashing it away again.
Mal didn’t know he was sober these days, Griff realized on a heavy exhale. There was so much he didn’t know. So much still unsaid.
Evidently suitably fortified, Mal now pointed toward the object of their mission tied up several yards away. Not apackhorse at all, Griff saw as he took in the beast’s smaller profile, its large, almost comical ears. A mule.
Mal pointed next to Griff, as if to indicate he should be the one to seize the creature. Then he pointed to himself, motioning toward a traveler’s pack on the ground just outside the warm circle of firelight. One of the men had just pulled something from it—a wooden bow that he seemed intent on polishing, given the soft cloth in his hand.
Griff was just trying to work up the courage to step out of the shadows without feeling like a total lowlife when Mal’s eyes squinted like he was fighting back a yawn.
Mal stepped back hardly an inch as the shudder of exhaustion ran through him, but it was enough for his heel to crack a twig.
The mule snorted a steamy breath into the dark morning, and the laughter around the fire stopped. The man holding the bow had been smiling, but now that smile was gone. “You all don’t suppose …?” he began softly, no need to finish the thought. Traveling the road east was a well-known way to be swiftly relieved of all a person owned.
Mal certainly looked awake now.
In fact, he was looking to Griff, as if, for once, he didn’t have a map and a plan. Of course, Griff didn’t either. He thought quickly of what his father might do if he’d decided to steal a horse—never mind that Seimon would never lower himself to such an act. He thought of his father’s long unbreakable stride, the way he moved with purpose, always impressing someone when he walked by.
He wanted, more than anything in that moment, to impress Mal, to see those silver eyes spark with admiration rather than mocking.
And like a hawk having sighted its prey, Griff shot from their place of concealment and swooped toward the mule.
Chapter TenThe Warg of the West
“Bandits!” one of the men cried. His shout rang in Mal’s ears as the mule snorted and stamped. It jerked at its tether as its eyes flashed on the sight of the crimson-clad figure running toward it with a sword raised, intent on cutting its ties.
At the corner of his gaze, Mal noticed the man with the bow reaching for his quiver, a sight that chilled him worse than any shadow.
Another traveler, the quickest to his feet, started after Griff but tripped over the handle of his cast-iron pan, sending up a shower of sparks that sprayed into the nearby brush.
Embers danced along the sleeve of Mal’s cloak, drawing a grunt of surprise and startling him from the shadows before he had time to think how he was going to get himself and Griff out of this with all limbs intact and no arrow wounds, never mind the mule now.
Arrows. The archer. Shit.
He was slotting an arrow, aiming at Griff in the dark as the foreman, oblivious, quickly cut the mule’s rope.
Mal set himself on a collision course with the man, drawing a hunting knife swiftly from his belt as he ran, shouting, “This ishardly being careful on the job!” to Griff as he closed in on the archer and swung his fist to ensure that arrow misfired. Then, “Go, I’ve got this!”
Taking the mule’s lead, Griff started urging the creature back toward the hill and Alys, making frantic gestures like there was an owlbear on their heels.
He didn’t get far.
The arrow didn’t fly true, but rather than landing in Griff’s back, it sank into his right calf just above the ankle. He managed to take a few stumbling steps forward with the creature—momentarily filling Mal with a wild, false hope—but then he crumpled to the ground.
Still, he was amazed Griff didn’t let go of that mule’s lead. If anything, he seemed to cling tighter to the rope as the mule began to drag him forward.
The archer swore as Mal hit him again, though he managed to hold on to his bow. The two were locked in a struggle of elbows and fists and muffled grunts and the knock of the wooden bow against various body parts. A sharp twang echoed as Mal managed to use his knife to sever the bowstring, feeling a grin of victory coming on as he gripped the archer in a tight headlock, squeezing the air from the man’s throat—but just then, the cook who had tripped over his own pan threw a rock that struck Mal in the neck.
