Free TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate by Janny Wurts Page B

shod horse's tracks and mounded the ditches in drifts. Men floundered and swore, forced to bang upon cottars' doors to recover their sense of direction.
    Granted a hard-won few minutes' reprieve, Arithon happened into a pasture of hacks. He briefly dismounted to open the gate. Back in the saddle, he used the shrill whistle for fiend bane to set the freed herd to a gallop. The hazed animals melded their fleeing prints with those of his winded gelding. That ploy bought him a widening lead, until the loose livestock encountered a stud plowhorse, and the stallion's neighed challenge alerted the countryside.
    The fist-shaking farmer who unleashed his mastiffs found his dogs in a thicket, snarling over the shreds of a discarded jacket. Whipped off, and urged into a wind that froze scent, the brutes were lackluster trackers. When they gave tongue at last, their master was deterred by a shadow-wrought form that convinced him the fugitive had stolen refuge within the stone walls of his icehouse.
    While guardsmen converged on the farmer's hue and cry, and the dogs whined and circled over the ground trampled up by the destriers, Arithon nursed his winded gelding out of sight over the next hillcrest. He could do very little to offset the bloodstains splashed by the cornrick where he had stolen a short breather for his horse. Koriathain would assuredly seize on that slip and flag the site on their next scrying. Night and storm masked his form from the notice of men, a double-edged kindness, as the bitter chill flayed to the skin.
    Luhaine ached as the immediate past converged with a desperate present. He came up from behind with no sound at all, while Jaelot's sought quarry yanked off the shreds of his glove with his teeth. Arithon fumbled open the saddlebag, fished inside, and located Dakar's spare cloak. Shivering in sodden doublet and shirtsleeves, he whispered a snatched phrase of relief as he pulled on the garment's stained folds. The wound inflicted by Fionn Areth's sword left his right hand useless. He had no chance to arrange makeshift bandaging. His awkward efforts to pin Dakar's garment plundered the last of his lead.
    Jaelot's lancers bore in, hot set in pursuit.
    Nerve strung and desperate, Arithon spun. Overtaken on a blown horse, he prepared to recut the darkness into nightmare shapes of illusion. His strength was long spent, to bear weapons or sword. Exposed without cover, his birth gift of shadow became his last hope of evasion.
    The manifest image of Luhaine unfurled and utterly caught him aback. He sucked a hissed breath, defenses half-woven before recognition woke reason.
    'Dharkaron avert!' Rathain's prince dropped his veiling of shadow with a wrenching, breathless start. 'Luhaine! Daelion forfend, I thought you were Koriathain, come to claim vengeance and gloat.' Through the oncoming pound of his mounted pursuit, he added, 'Are you here to help doubleblind witches or horsemen? I need to know very quickly.'
    'Be at peace.' Luhaine loosed a swift binding to hide the scatter of bloodstains from scryers. While the snowfall laced through him, scribing gaps like flung static, he added, 'The Koriani plot's broken, and the guardsmen will pass and see nothing.' A small permission of air, a rearrangement of wind, and the pernicious cold bit less deeply. 'Bide here a few minutes. The packhorse is freed, and will find you. No guardsman's had time to pilfer for spoils. You'll recover your bow and provisions.'
    Arithon propped his lamed hand on the gelding's damp crest, eyes closed as he absorbed the tactful implication that the Sorcerer lacked means to see him to shelter and safety. Too proud to plead, he still showed a gratitude that wounded for its sincerity. 'That gelding carries everything I need to be comfortable. Thank you from the depths of my heart.'
    'Well, the officer who held him was foolishly negligent,' Luhaine excused, embarrassed that freeing a horse from a lead rein had been the best help he could