“The centaur’s right,” Dunnald said. “We need to get moving.” He offered Karrell his hand, as if to help her into the wagon. “We’ll be right behind you, Tanglemane, in the wagon,” he told the centaur. He gave Karrell a sly look. “Won’t we?”
Karrell took a step back, folding her arms across her chest.
“We’re not moving,” Arvin said. “Nor is Tanglemane,” he added. “We’ll take our chances with the centaurs.”
Dunnald climbed into the wagon, muttering under his breath. Then, louder, “You’ll all see in a moment there’s nothing to fear.”
Tanglemane continued to unfasten his harness. “Stop that,” the captain ordered. “Get moving.” One of the harness straps fell away from the centaur’s broad chest.
“Move!” Dunnald shouted, drawing a crossbow bolt and slapping it against the centaur’s flank.
At the sting of the improvised whip, Tanglemane’s eyes went wide and white. He slammed a hoof against the wagon, splintering its boards. The wagon shot backward, yanking the partially unfastened harness from his shoulder.
Dunnald sprawled onto the floor of the wagon as it rolled away. “You stupid beast!” he shouted from inside the wagon. “When we get back to the fort, I’ll have you—”
As the wagon rumbled to a stop just beyond the line in the snow, Arvin suddenly realized the shouting had stopped. Karrell took a hesitant step forward. Arvin caught her arm, holding her back.
Beside them, Tanglemane whiskered nervously. “I have killed him,” the centaur said. “Killed the sergeant. When the baron hears of it….”
“It was an accident,” Karrell said softly. “You didn’t mean to.”
Behind them, Arvin heard the sound of pounding hooves. Glancing in that direction, he saw a dozen centaurs racing toward them across the open plain. They skidded to a stop just outside the symbol and aimed powerful composite bows at Arvin, Karrell, and Tanglemane.
One of the centaurs—a male with a white body and straw-colored mane—snorted loudly and stared at them. “Soldiers of Sespech,” he said in heavily accented Common. “You yet live?” He tossed his mane then pulled a white feather from a leather pouch that hung at his hip and waved it over the line in the snow. The magical darkness that filled it seeped away and the trail through the snow became just that: an ordinary trail of hoofprints. The centaur put the feather away and gestured curtly. “Come you with us.”
“What are they saying?” Arvin whispered to Tanglemane.
The centaur swiveled an ear to listen to the combination of whinnies, snorts, and whickers that made up the centaur language. Thirteen centaurs surrounded Arvin, Karrell, and Tanglemane, herding them along through the ankle-deep snow north along the river, toward Ormpetarr. The Chondalwood lay to their right, but it was falling farther behind with each step. The forest was still close enough that they could have reached it by dawn at a walking pace, even hindered by the snow. But it might as well have been a continent away. Six of the centaurs had their bows in hand with arrows loosely nocked; if the prisoners tried to flee, they’d quickly be shot down.
When the centaurs had first captured them, they had confiscated Karrell’s club and Tanglemane’s knife, giving the centaur several swift kicks when he didn’t surrender it quickly enough. They’d taken an intense dislike to Tanglemane, perhaps because he’d allowed himself to be harnessed to a wagon. Tanglemane, however, showed a stoic indifference to the kicks the other centaurs had aimed at him, bearing them with only the slightest of winces.
The centaurs had also forced Arvin to turn out the contents of his pack. They seemed to have an aversion to rope—they’d tossed aside his magical ropes and twines as if they were poisonous snakes, and declined to search the pack further. Fortunately, they’d made no protest when Arvin gathered the ropes up again and returned them to his pack. Nor had they confiscated his glove, which he’d managed to vanish his dagger into.
The centaurs finished speaking. Tanglemane bowed at the waist to speak in Arvin’s ear. “They serve Lord Wianar,” he said. “They will turn us over to his soldiers.”
Arvin had been afraid of that. Chondath wasn’t officially at war with Sespech… yet. But the larger state was overdue for another attempt to oust Baron Foesmasher and reclaim lands they had never given up title to. Lord Wianar would be keen to question “soldiers from Sespech” to learn the current strength of Fort Arran’s defenses. The questioning would no doubt be brutal and long.
Arvin swallowed nervously. “Would you tell them we’re not soldiers?” he asked Tanglemane.
Tanglemane’s eyes blazed. “I am a soldier,” he said. Then his voice softened. “I tried to convince them earlier that you and the female are not the baron’s vassals, but it was no use. They say you are spies.”
Arvin swallowed. “That’s worse than being a soldier, right?”
