Free The Gate of Bones by Emily Drake Page A

carry Stef’s bulky weight. Everyone else just shrugged and took whatever horse Mantor assigned to them.
    Once up, Renart looked a lot more composed. He flushed deeply when Pyra appeared at her tent flap and gave a wave which could have been directed at any of them, and almost lost his seat when his horse sidestepped suddenly. He grabbed for its mane with both hands, and suffered the snickers with grace. Mantor leveled his consideration on Renart. Finally, he said, “A trader would be an asset to the family line.”
    That remark made Renart blush even deeper and Mantor swung his horse about and into a trot before the flustered man could stammer out a reply of any kind. His garbled words were lost in the thunder of hoofbeats as the horses broke into a trot, following their leader.
    True to her Talent, Bailey had chosen well. The gold moved with steadiness and a smooth gait that made it easy for her to sit the saddle, although she had rarely had a chance to go riding. Southern California, a world and a lifetime away, with its bustling, ever growing cities, had few stables left, and riding had become more and more the hobby of those with time and money to burn. She had neither.
    The others rode much as she did, with flapping arms, legs ramrod stiff in their stirrups, trying to maintain as comfortable a seat as possible. Mantor moved among them, giving hints, reaching out and adjusting lanky frames when he felt like it. Trent rode as he walked through life, as though he heard an inner music and moved to it. His horse seemed to trot to the same rocking beat. Stef didn’t ride his horse so much as conquer it, and Rich seemed about to fall off at any given minute, his attention far more on the plants dotting the ground about them. It was only a matter of time, Bailey thought, till he dove into those selfsame plants nose first. Only Gavan showed any horse sense at all, settling into his saddle, his cape flowing like a stormy ocean behind him. Of course, he’d probably been on a horse or in a carriage far more than any of them. Bailey watched him, thinking of the times he’d come from. All of the older Magickers had adapted quickly. But was Haven almost like home for him—or just as eerily strange as she found it?
    By late morning, her bottom was sore, her stomach and her pack rat were reminding her noisily that they hadn’t had breakfast, and she was pondering bringing all those subjects into public knowledge when they came to the top of a rocky crag and Mantor halted his horse.
    â€œDown there,” he said. “Although they’re making no attempt to hide their whereabouts.” He crossed his wrists, resting them on the pommel of his saddle and looked down into a valley crisscrossed with darkness. “That was an old fortress belonging to a warlord who died of a terrible disease, so his troops abandoned it many years ago. They have gone in, rebuilt much of it, added new outbuildings, most of it for barracks and stabling. To attack them directly would be to risk much, especially with their sorcery.”
    Gavan dismounted. He tapped Trent on the knee. “What do you see?”
    Trent stood in his stirrups. Bailey gazed at Trent. He couldn’t work Magick but he could see it, and that was more than they could, because the working of it seemed to blind them to subtle underlying traps and strands. It wasn’t a Talent exactly. . . . He shaded his eyes as he stared across the encampment of the Dark Hand, and then nodded to Gavan. “There are ward lines everywhere, that’s the shadowing you see. Add that to the sentries positioned about, and they’re armed to the teeth for trouble.”
    â€œWhich we won’t give them today.” Gavan smothered a faint sigh. He pulled his staff free and ran his hand over the crystal diamond in the wolfhead. It flared, then clouded.
    Stef grunted. He scrubbed a thick hand over his brushy golden-brown hair. “I came to fight,”