Free Bonemender's Oath by Holly Bennett Page B

ditch, fringed with stringy shrubs, and strained his ears. For a long minute he heard nothing. Then the breeze gusted and with it came the unmistakable sound of men, louder now, voices raised as if in argument. There was a short burst of rough laughter, and the voices died down into silence.
    Derkh flattened himself into the dust and stones, wondering what to do. The men were not gone, for though he heard no more talk, other noises came to him on the wind. Clanking—of weapons, or maybe cook pots. The scrape of loose scree underfoot. Caution and curiosity battled within him. Just before the last light failed, he decided to creep away out of earshot while he could still see to do so. He would head north and slightly east, hunker down for the night and in the morning cut above the sentries back to the pass. He stood cautiously and took his bearings.
    A thud, a metallic crash, a roar of pain or rage and a hurled oath: “WHORESON BASTARD!”
    Greffaire, Derkh thought dazedly. He spoke in Greffaire.
    “W E’RE LOSING THE light, Gabrielle.”
    For two hours Féolan and Gabrielle had scrambled through the mountain terrain, following the intermittent cries. There had been none for a long time now—but their hope had faded even before that. Acoustics in the mountains were deceptive and straight routes nonexistent; it was like trying to track an echo.
    Gabrielle wiped the sweat from her face and glared at the surrounding country, as if willing it to give up its secrets. Then she glared at Féolan, as though this fruitless hunt were his doing. With a groan, she threw herself on the stony ground and concentrated on catching her breath and easing the burning fatigue in her legs.
    Féolan hunkered down too and passed her the waterskin. “We’d better find a place to spend the night while we can still see. Even if there was still something to follow, it would be too dangerous to keep going once the sun is down.” The summer sky was bright yet, but the sun hung low over the peaks in the west. Once it fell behind the mountains, night would come swiftly.
    Gabrielle raised herself on one elbow. “But what if it’s Derkh?”
    “If it is Derkh, we could walk right past him in the dark,” replied Féolan. “And if it’s not, every hour we spend at this search takes us farther from his path.”
    He was right. He was right, but it felt wrong. Throat tight, eyes prickling with tears, Gabrielle struggled against her own frustration and fear. Flipping onto her stomach, she lay against the rough grass, letting her heart slow, seeking the stillness that led to wisdom. She felt the strength of the mountain’s great shoulder under her, the quiet thrusting of life in the grass and lichens andinsects surrounding her. Yet the alarm in her heart did not fade; it grew clear and insistent as a ringing bell.
    She sat up. “Derkh’s in danger,” she said. “I know he is.”
    Féolan had no answer. “We will keep looking tomorrow,” he said. Tomorrow, they both knew, might be too late.
    T EN MINUTES LATER they were climbing again, heading for a place where a wall of rock was scored and pitted with dark openings. “There should at least be a cave or fissure there where we can get out of the wind,” suggested Féolan. Though the summer sun brought bright warm days, the mountain air was chilly at night. They passed and rejected several possibilities, where the cracks in the rock were too narrow or shallow for comfort. Then came a great break in the cliff-side, several paces wide. They peered into the crevice, already deeply shadowed at the far end.
    “It may be sheltered from the wind, but it hardly looks cozy,” offered Féolan doubtfully. “Let’s look a little ways farther. We can return here at need.”
    Gabrielle picked her way across the yawning gap. Then, from deep within the passage, she heard a wheezing sigh—wind maybe, whistling through some narrow outlet. But the crunch of rock that accompanied it was no trick of the wind.