Free The Betrayal by Pati Nagle Page A

latter over his shoulder. The Stonereaches were with him, thundering down the slope, leaving the remnants of their meal scattered on the forest floor.
    Turisan glanced at Eliani and saw her eyes flash back at him—not angrily but lit with the fire of the hunt—and he felt a thrill of delight as they pressed forward. Ahead, shadows moved, lumbering clumsily, noisily through the wood. They were swift but no match for the horses, and soon their number could be discerned: six kobalen on foot, crashing downhill southward and westward.
    The two Stonereach males veered off to the right, leaving Turisan and Eliani to strike from the left. Turisan nocked an arrow and let it fly, missing his aim by a hairbreadth. Eliani's found its mark, and a grunting cry signaled first blood.
    Bowstrings thrummed as all four ælven struck and struck again, circling their horses around the kobalen, who snarled and swore but could not save themselves. The few darts they let fly were easily avoided. It was over in moments, the raiders a huddled heap pierced with many shafts.
    “Hold!”
    They all halted at Eliani's cry, horses stamping until soothed back to calmness. She dismounted and approached the kobalen. The others followed.
    Breathing hard, Eliani turned a scowling face towardGharinan. “What are these vermin doing in the South Wood?”
    He frowned, matching her disgust as he gazed at the kobalen. “I know not, my lady, but they are done.”
    Luruthin nudged a kobalen with his foot. “This one lives yet.”
    The creature bled sluggishly from its wounds, dark liquid oozing into its fine black fur. Eliani stood over it and addressed it in its own tongue, a guttural language of coarse inflection. She must have learned it on patrol; what little of it Turisan knew he had acquired during his service in Southfæld's Guard.
    “What brings you so far from your sandpits, rogue?”
    The kobalen made no answer. Eliani touched the flights of an arrow lodged in its shoulder. It snarled but said nothing.
    “There is no plunder within leagues of here. Why came you hither?”
    Turisan saw its arm begin to move and loosed an arrow to pin the wrist. A knife dropped from the gnarled fingers, its blade of ebonglass, the black volcanic glass that kobalen shaped into weapons.
    Belated dread washed through him as he realized how close Eliani had been to danger. She glanced at him, then picked up the knife and examined it, its evil edge glinting in the sunlight. She turned back to the kobalen.
    “Tell me where you came from and why and I will end it. A clean death.”
    Turisan, watching closely, thought he saw a change in the kobalen's eyes. Hope seemed to lighten them, but an instant later fear chased it out.
    “My lady, I think you should see this.”
    Eliani straightened and went to Gharinan, who hadbegun collecting their arrows and searching the dead kobalen. Turisan hung back, keeping an eye on the survivor.
    He watched Eliani join Gharinan beside the body of a kobalen. The theyn pointed toward its head, and Eliani crouched to peer more closely at it.
    “By the spirits!”
    She glanced up at her nextkin, then with the ebon-glass knife sliced the ear from the dead creature's head in one swift motion. Standing, she carried it to Turisan and held it out for him to see.
    Amid the black fur he saw a glint of gold. He took the severed ear, careful to avoid dripping blood on himself, and peered at the small hoop of metal that pierced it.
    “No kobalen made this.”
    He glanced up, and his gaze met Eliani's. She nodded, then looked over her shoulder.
    “Gharinan, do any of the others wear these rings?”
    “I have seen no others.”
    “Search them all.”
    Turisan stared at the earring. It was finely wrought, adorned with elaborate coiling scrollwork. Even had it been plain, it could not have been made by kobalen, for they had no skill with metals.
    Suddenly a pattern of seeming leaves wrought into the gold resolved into something else. Turisan's heart went