It smacked into the head of the figure. The figure pitched forward. I gaped a second, then released a long breath. So easy...
The Lady took three quick steps forward, frowning. There was a rapid rustle to our right. Something rattled brush. She whirled and ran for open country, slapping my arm as she passed.
In seconds we were on the road. Another arrow lay across my bow. Her arm rose, pointing... A squarish shape slid out of the woods fifty yards away. A figure aboard made a throwing motion our way. I staggered under the impact of the blow from no visible source. Spiderwebs seemed drawn across my eyes, blurring my vision. Vaguely, I sensed the Lady making a gesture. The webs disappeared. I felt whole. She pointed as the carpet began to rise and move away.
I drew and loosed, with no hope my arrow would strike a moving target at that range.
It did not, but only because the carpet jerked violently downward and to one side while the arrow was in the air. My shaft ripped past inches behind the carpet rider’s head.
The Lady did something. The air hummed. From nowhere came a giant dragonfly like the one I had seen in the Forest of Cloud. It streaked toward the carpet, hit. The carpet spun, flipped, jerked around. Its rider fell free, plummeted with a despairing cry. I loosed another shaft the instant the man hit earth. He twitched a moment, lay still. And we were upon him.
The Lady ripped the black morion off our victim. And cursed. Softly, steadily, she cursed like a senior sergeant.
“What?” I filially asked. The man was dead enough to satisfy me.
“It’s not her.” She whirled, faced the wood. Her face blanked for several seconds. Then she faced the drifting carpet. She jerked her head at the wood. “Go see if that’s a woman. See if the horse is there.” She began making come-hither gestures at Catcher’s carpet.
I went, mind aboil. Catcher was a woman, eh? Crafty, too. All prepared to be chased here, by the Lady herself.
Fear grew as I slipped through the wood, slow, silent. Catcher had played a game on everyone, and far more shrewdly than even the Lady had anticipated. What next, then? There had been so many attempts on my life... Might this not be the moment to end whatever threat I represented?
Nothing happened, though. Except that I crept up to the corpse in the wood, ripped off a black morion, and found a handsome youth inside. Fear, anger, and frustration overwhelmed me. I kicked him. Some good, abusing dead meat.
The fit did not last. I began looking around the camp where the substitutes had waited. They had been there a while, and been prepared to stay a while longer. They had supplies for a month.
A large bundle caught my eye. I cut the cords binding it, peeped inside. Papers. A bale that must have weighed eighty pounds. Curiosity grabbed me.
I looked around hastily, saw nothing threatening, probed a little deeper. And immediately realized what I had. These were part of the hoard we had unearthed in the Forest of Cloud.
What were they doing here? I’d thought Catcher had turned them over to the Lady. Eh! Plot and counterplot. Maybe he had delivered some. And maybe he kept back others he thought would be useful later. Maybe we had been so close on his heels he had not had time to collect them...
Maybe he would be back. I looked around again, frightened once more.
Nothing stirred.
Where was he?
She, I reminded myself. Catcher was one of the shes.
I looked around, hunting evidence of the Taken’s departure, soon discovered hoofprints leading deeper into the wood. A few paces beyond the camp they reached a narrow trail. I crouched, looking down an aisle of forest, through golden motes floating in shafts of sunlight. I tried to work myself up to go on.
Come, a voice said in my mind. Come.
The Lady. Relieved not to have to follow that trail, I turned back. “It was a man,” I said as I approached the Lady.
“I thought so.” She had the carpet under one hand, floating two feet off the earth. “Get aboard.”
I swallowed, did as I was told. It was like climbing aboard a boat from deep water. I almost fell off twice. As she followed me aboard, I told her, “He-she-stayed on the horse and went on down the trail through the woods.”
“What direction?”
“South.”
The carpet rose swiftly. The dead horses dwindled beneath us. We began to drift over the wood. My stomach felt like I had drunk several gallons of wine the night before.
The Lady cursed softly under her breath. Finally, in a louder voice, she said, “The bitch. She ran a game on us all. My husband included.”
I said nothing. I was debating whether or not to mention the papers. She would be interested. But so was I, and if I mentioned them now I’d never get a chance to poke through them.
