The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,50
a simple coincidence of position. I had no proof, damn it, and no more time for speculation. Not with so much urgent work to do. Mage or not, I had no choice but to dump Kiran at the outrider wagon for now and worry about the truth of his identity later.
When my laden mare cantered up to the wagon, I found Cara already digging through crates and throwing probe poles into a stack on the ground. Deep lines bracketed her mouth, and the shadow of her father stood in her eyes.
“Mother of maidens, not the kid, too?” She hurried over and helped me lift Kiran into the back of the wagon.
“What d’you mean, ‘too’?”
“Found Harken two wagons down, with Bartel and Korro. All three of ’em barely breathing and limp as dead shiftmice. Merryn says he can’t wake them.” She tossed me a blanket and the box of old cloth strips Harken used for quick bandages.
“Damn it, I gave Kellan’s horse to Harken, told him to ride.” My voice came out all rough. Proof be damned, my gut insisted this crazy mess had something to do with Kiran. In which case Harken and all the other downed men were my fault, for bringing him along on the trip. An awful weight settled beneath my ribs.
“Bartel’s two sons showed up on Kellan’s gelding just as I left,” Cara said. “Harken must have passed the gelding off to them. You know he and Bartel are friends from way back.”
“Khalmet’s hand, what a crazy thing to do. If that avalanche had run true, they’d never have had time to get clear.” I twisted a ragged strip of linen around Kiran’s palm with unnecessary force.
“Good thing it didn’t, then.” Cara’s voice was tight, and I knew she was thinking of the catastrophic casualties if it had.
“You didn’t make a bad call.” I shoved a wadded blanket under Kiran’s head. “Conditions weren’t right for the couloir to slide.” That was as close as I dared come to my suspicions. That sharp crack right beforehand, almost too loud to be natural...sign of a magical trigger?
The bleak look didn’t leave her eyes. “Maybe not, but men are dead anyway.” She dropped a hand on my shoulder. “Merryn’s moving down the line, tending to the injured. He’ll help Kellan if he can. I need you to come work the probe teams.”
“I know.” I snatched up a pair of shovels. When Kiran woke up, I wanted answers. If he woke. I pictured Harken lying crumpled and silent, and my throat closed. No, damn it. Surely they’d all recover.
The avalanche debris formed a vast white wall across the trail, dwarfing the remaining wagons. Soon as we reached it, the first thing I saw was Pello, sitting on the trail wrapped in a score of blankets and surrounded by a group of excited drovers. I fought to look happy over a successful rescue, instead of disgusted. How in Shaikar’s name had Pello survived? Gods all damn it, the man was like a cockroach.
Jerik kicked his way down a set of boot-packed steps from the surface of the slide. He jerked a thumb at Pello. “We saw his foot sticking up through the snow and dug him out first thing. No other survivors, so far.”
Cara eyed Pello and shook her head in amazement. “Somebody owes Khalmet a favor.”
Yeah, and it sure as hell wasn’t me. I cursed under my breath.
Pello didn’t glance our way. One arm was braced over his ribs, and his copper skin had a sallow tinge. He was the very picture of a shaken survivor; but when an anxious drover offered him a flask of heated tea, the abruptness of his reach spoke more of anger than of nervous relief.
I knew the feeling. If Kiran was a mage, he was a fucking incompetent one. Men dead, wagons destroyed, and for what?
The rest of the day was long and frustrating. Cara, Jerik, and I spent hours leading men in carefully spaced lines down the path of the avalanche debris, stabbing our poles into the snow as deep as we could. All we found were two dead bodies and a few splintered crates. The rest was buried too deep. If the summer proved a hot one, enough snow might melt off by season’s end for later groups to find more, but with debris this thick, maybe not. The drovers plied their poles in grim-faced silence. Some of them wore so many charms they clinked as they walked.