weren’t people with light eyes in the Makabaki region, though they had kings, and practically everyone in Iri had light yellow eyes.
He jogged over, hand on his weapon, watching Bluth and Tag with overt hostility. The woman said something to him in a tongue Shallan didn’t know, and he nodded, then jogged off toward the caravan below. The woman followed.
“Wait,” Shallan called to her.
“I don’t have time to talk,” the woman snapped. “We’ve got two bandit groups to fight.”
“Two?” Shallan said. “You didn’t defeat the one that attacked you earlier?”
“We fought them off, but they’ll be back soon.” The woman hesitated on the side of the hill. “The fire was an accident, I think. They were using flaming brands to scare us. They pulled back to let us fight the fires, as they didn’t want to lose any more goods.”
Two forces, then. Bandits ahead and behind. Shallan found herself sweating in the cold air as the sun finally vanished beneath the western horizon.
The woman was looking northward, toward where her group of bandits must have retreated. “Yeah, they’ll be back,” the woman said. “They’ll want to be done with us before the storm comes tonight.”
“I offer you my protection,” Shallan found herself saying.
“Your protection?” the woman said, turning back to Shallan, sounding baffled.
“You may accept me and mine into your camp,” Shallan said. “I will see to your safety tonight. I will need your service after that to convey me to the Shattered Plains.”
The woman laughed. “You are gutsy, whoever you are. You can join our camp, but you’ll die there with the rest of us!”
Cries rose from the caravan. A second later, a flight of arrows fell through the night from that direction, pelting wagons and caravan workers.
Screams.
Bandits followed, emerging from the blackness. They weren’t nearly as well equipped as the deserters, but they didn’t need to be. The caravan had fewer than a dozen guards left. The woman cursed and started running down the hillside.
Shallan shivered, eyes wide at the sudden slaughter below. Then she turned and walked to Tvlakv’s wagons. This sudden chill was familiar to her. The coldness of clarity. She knew what she had to do. She didn’t know if it would work, but she saw the solution—like lines in a drawing, coming together to transform random scribbles into a full picture.
“Tvlakv,” she said, “take Tag below and try to help those people fight.”
“What!” he said. “No. No, I will not throw my life away for your foolishness.”
She met his eyes in the near darkness, and he stopped. She knew that she was glowing softly; she could feel the storm within. “Do it.” She left him and walked to her wagon. “Bluth, turn this wagon around.”
He stood with a sphere beside the wagon, looking down at something in his hand. A sheet of paper? Surely Bluth of all people didn’t know glyphs.
“Bluth!” Shallan snapped, climbing into the wagon. “We need to be moving. Now!”
He shook himself, then tucked the paper away and scrambled into the seat beside her. He whipped at the chull, turning it. “What are we doing?” he asked.
“Heading south.”
“Into the bandits?”
“Yes.”
For once, he did as she told him without complaint, whipping the chull faster—as if he were eager to just get this all over with. The wagon rattled and shook as they went down one hillside, then climbed another.
They reached the top and looked down at the force climbing toward them. The men carried torches and sphere lanterns, so she could see their faces. Dark expressions on grim men with weapons drawn. Their breastplates or leather jerkins might once have held symbols of allegiance, but she could see where those had been cut or scratched away.
The deserters looked at her with obvious shock. They had not expected their prey to come to them. Her arrival stunned them for a moment. An important moment.
There will be an officer, Shallan thought, standing up on her seat. They are soldiers, or once were. They’ll have a command structure.
She took a deep breath. Bluth raised his sphere, looking at her, and grunted as if surprised.
“Bless the Stormfather that you’re here!” Shallan cried to the men. “I need your help desperately.”
The group of deserters just stared at her.
“Bandits,” Shallan said. “They’re attacking our friends in the caravan just two hills over. It’s a slaughter! I said I’d seen soldiers back here, moving toward the Shattered Plains. Nobody believed me. Please. You must help.”
Again, they just stared at her. A little like the mink wandering into the whitespine’s