well. Ista turned her face away and declined to notice the soldiers raucously playing about with her clothing. The officer inquired more closely into her relationship with the provincar of Baocia, and Ista trotted out Sera dy Ajelo’s imaginary family tree. He seemed anxious to ascertain that the wealthy provincar would actually deliver a ransom for her.
“Oh, yes,” said Ista distantly. “He will come in person, I expect.” With ten thousand swordsmen at his back, five thousand archers, and the Marshal dy Palliar’s cavalry as well. It occurred to her that if she did not want men to die for her, she’d gone about it in exactly the wrong way. But no. There might yet be chances to escape, or be traded out at a tiny fraction of her real worth, if her incognito held. Liss . . . had Liss made it away? No soldiers had yet returned along the track dragging her resisting behind them, nor as a limp corpse tossed over a saddle.
The officers argued over the maps, while the men and animals rested in what shade could be found, and the flies buzzed around them. The Ibran-speaking officer brought her water in a rather noisome skin bag, and she hesitated, licked dusty cracked lips, and drank. It was fairly fresh, at least. She indicated he should take it to Ferda and his troop, and he did. At length, she was put back up on her own horse, with her hands lashed to the pommel, the horse in turn roped with several others following the baggage train. Ferda’s men were towed in a like line, but farther forward, surrounded by more armed soldiers. The advance scouts were redeployed, and the column started north once more.
Ista stared around at her fellow prisoners, tied to horses as she was. They were oddly few in number, some dozen debilitated men and women, and no children at all. Another older woman rode near her, jerked along in another string of tired horses. Her clothes, though filthy, were finely made and elaborately decorated—clearly no common woman, but someone whose family might offer a rich ransom. Ista leaned toward her. “Where do these soldiers come from? Besides Jokona.”
“Some Roknari hell, I think,” said the woman.
“No, that would be their destination,” murmured Ista back.
A sour smile lifted one corner of the woman’s mouth; good, she was not shocked stupid, then. Or at least, not anymore. “I do pray so, hourly. They took me in the town of Rauma, in Ibra.”
“Ibra!” Ista glanced leftward at the mountain range rising in the distance. They must have scrambled out of Ibra over some little-used pass, and dropped down into Chalion to cut north for home. And the pursuit must have been fiery, to drive them to such a desperate ploy. “No wonder they seemed to have fallen from the sky.”
“Where in Chalion are we?”
“The province of Tolnoxo. These raiders still have over a hundred miles to go to safety, across the rest of Tolnoxo and all of Caribastos, before they reach the border of Jokona. If they can.” She hesitated. “I have hopes that they have lost their secrecy. I think some of my party escaped.”
The woman’s eyes flared hot, briefly. “Good.” She added after a little, “They fell upon Rauma at dawn, by surprise. It was well planned—they must have swung wide around some dozen better-prepared towns closer to the border. I had brought my daughters into town to make offerings at the Daughter’s altar, for my eldest was—pray the goddess, still is—to be married. The Jokonans were more interested in booty than rapine and destruction, at first. They left the rest of the temple alone, though they held all they’d caught there at sword’s point. But then they delayed their withdrawal to pull down the Bastard’s Tower, and to torment the poor divine who had it in her charge.” The woman grimaced. “They caught her still in her white robes; there was no chance to hide her. They slew her husband, when he tried to defend her.”
For a woman devoted to the fifth god, the Quadrenes would also start with the thumbs and tongue. Then rape, most likely, prolonged and vicious.
“They burned her in her god’s tower, in the end.” The woman sighed. “It seemed almost a mercy by then. But their blasphemy cost them all they’d gained, for the march of Rauma’s troops came upon them while they were still in the town. The Son give him strength for his sword arm! He