Free Longeye by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee

blast, and howls of the sort that small boys are wont to make when they have the barnyard cat on the run, and beneath it all the sound of hoofbeats, pounding against the land.
    Brume lengthened into a gallop, mane flying, Sian low on his neck.
    Becca threw herself forward. "Follow!" she cried.
    Rosamunde needed no more urging. She stretched into her silk-smooth run and was through the long corner in a flash, bursting out into a wide clearing.
    Becca shook the hair from her eyes. Ahead, Sian and Brume raced, angling to the right, where three horses bearing three of the High Fey were at full gallop through the long grass, in hot pursuit of what Becca at first thought must be a rabbit.
    Bandy legs flashed, a tufted tail slashed among the weeds. Becca urged Rosamunde to greater speed, angling as Brume did, to get between the exuberant riders and the desperate wild thing—one of the very wild things that Elyd had warned her against!
    "What's this! They'll spoil the sport!" One of the pursuing Fey shouted. "Fendri, your cord!"
    Becca looked up, seeing the rider farthest from her throw a long line weighted with stones into the air over his head. The cord danced between long white fingers, stones blurring. The quarry threw itself forward, the weeds catching at its scanty breech, cuts and scrapes showing on one hairy forearm. It carried one hand tucked into the opposite armpit, which put its gait off, and that hand was bleeding—profusely.
    "Stop!" Sian's voice rang clarion across the clearing, echoing back from the trees they had just quit. She threw her hand out, and a turquoise wave burst from her fingertips, rolling across the grasses toward the three riders—
    Who passed through it as if it were the merest nothing.
    " You have no power of command here!" the middle rider shouted—and in that instant, the farthest rider loosed his cord.
    Becca leaned; obedient, Rosamunde flung herself at right angles, making a turn that should have broken her back and her rider's too, and was flying over the hard ground, hooves thundering.
    They would be too late, Becca saw with anguish. The spinning cord cut the air with horrifying quickness. Even if she and Rosamunde got between it and the fleeing creature, however would they bring it harmlessly down?
    The cord whistled by, two horse-lengths ahead and well above Becca's reach—there was a flash of jeweled wings, the cord stopped in midflight, spinning crazily in place as Nancy held on to the center, feet braced against the air, wings spread as the cord spun slower, and slower—and stopped altogether, hanging limp from tiny hands.
    Becca pulled back on the reins and Rosamunde danced to a stop.
    "Well done, Nancy!" she cried, even as the hunted creature threw itself to the ground and rolled between Rosamunde's hooves, where it cowered, its good arm over its unkempt head.
    " You have no power of command here!" the center youth cried again, but his horse stuttered beneath him, as if unsure of its direction, then stopped as Brume pushed forward and Sian snatched the bridle.
    "Warded land or no!" she snapped. "It is against the compact to hunt the Brethren, as well you know it, Narstaft!"
    "I know that you are interfering in a private affair!" the youth shouted, petulantly, to Becca's ear.
    Bright colors flashed at the edge of her vision, she looked up—and bit her lip to keep from laughing aloud. Two arm-lengths above her head, Nancy was solemnly skipping rope with the captured hunting-cord.
    "That is mine! Return it!" Fendri, who had thrown the cord, commanded, his voice flattening the grasses. A whimper came from the creature trembling between Rosamunde's feet.
    Up in the air, Nancy stopped her game and stood pensive, wings half-furled, hunting-cord held negligently in a diminutive hand, head tipped consideringly to one side. As clearly as if it were happening, Becca saw her maid toss the cord above her head, twirling it until it was less than a smear upon the air, and release it to its