squealed and kicked and Dom felt a throb up his arm into his head. Definitely the key. ‘Stop,’ he said, making his voice hard. ‘We’re trying to save you.’
He dragged her to her feet and she shrieked as her torn leg took her weight. Dom and Ash slung her between them and made their way down the mountain and back towards the river and dubious safety.
They didn’t go to the scout camp. Ash left Dom to drag her further downhill and went to fetch Lim and Sarilla.
Dom went a half-mile straight down, into thicker forest and patchy snow, and eased her down beneath a fir tree. He took off his wolfskin and wrapped her in it, hooked his bow and quiver on a low-hanging branch and loosened the long dagger in its sheath. She watched him with big grey eyes in a pinched face.
‘You have got to be joking.’ Lim didn’t even look at him, just crouched opposite the girl and stared at her. The bites to her calf were bad, the blood the brightest, cleanest thing about her. The exposed flesh of her arms and legs was filthy, scratched and too pale with cold.
‘You’re safe, you’re safe,’ Dom said as Sarilla and Ash loomed above her. ‘We’re here to help, all right? Your pursuers are dead’ – he glanced at Ash – ‘mostly. There’s nothing to fear.’
‘What’s your name, girl?’ Lim asked. Dom pulled a roll of linen from the pouch on his belt, rubbed gently at the bite marks with snow, and then bandaged her leg. He shivered, saw her note it and glance at the wolfskin she was wearing. Come on, two nice things I’ve just done for you, not including saving your life. So give us something in return.
She was silent.
‘She’s your key? A Mireces?’ Lim asked. Sarilla and Ash were eyeing the landscape as they listened and Dom knew the scout camp would be on high alert.
Dom licked his lips and squinted. ‘She’s the key,’ he murmured, the words again coming from somewhere just a little outside of him, a touch beyond his control. ‘But not Mireces.’ She glanced at him at that, and then away. ‘I’d say an escaped slave—’
‘She’s a spy,’ Ash interrupted. ‘What better way to infiltrate us? A young woman, cold and filthy and starving … they know we’d take her in. So we don’t.’
‘Send her on her way?’ Lim asked.
‘Knife in the throat’d do it,’ Sarilla muttered.
Dom winced, but he couldn’t blame either of them. Except that they were wrong.
‘What’s your name?’ Lim asked again. Still nothing. ‘We’re trying to help here, lass, but you’ve got to help us too.’
‘My name’s Dom Templeson,’ Dom tried with his most ingratiating smile. ‘This is Lim. He’s our chief. The scary woman is Sarilla and that’s Ash. He’s a hothead despite the cold.’
‘Fuck off,’ Ash said. ‘I wish they’d finished her off. You do realise you’ve compromised the camp, and possibly the village, by taking her and killing the Mireces? And for what? Some fucking mute who’ll likely murder us all in our sleep.’
‘You don’t wish that, because then she’d be dead and we wouldn’t know anything,’ Dom snapped as Lim snorted. Best get it over then, he thought. He reached for her face and she squirmed backwards, got her good leg under her and stood, cracking her head on a branch and sending a flurry of snow down on them all. Dom paused, secretly glad of the delay. The tremor he’d felt while carrying her had been strong, verging on painful. He wasn’t all that keen on repeating it, but if she wouldn’t talk, there was little choice. He needed to learn what she knew and he could probably force a knowing if he held on to her long enough.
‘The Mireces are hunting you,’ he said and saw her shudder, ‘so we will protect you. But you need to help us do that.’
Lim looked at him, surprised, and Sarilla and Ash turned from their study of the terrain with identical expressions of disbelief. ‘We’re helping her,’ Dom said firmly. He ignored the mutters and focused on her again. ‘Are you Rilporian?’
The girl nodded and Dom felt a flicker of triumph. ‘Were you captured by the Mireces?’ Another nod. ‘I need you to say something now, lass,’ Dom murmured, taking a soft step forward. She wasn’t fooled; she slid sideways out of his reach. He stopped moving and exhaled softly. ‘I need you to tell me where you escaped from. Can you do that?’
As expected there was silence and Lim puffed out his cheeks. ‘It’s important, child. We need to know which village was tracking you, who it is we’ve killed on your behalf.’
‘Eagle Height.’ The girl’s voice was rusty with disuse, her accent thick with Mireces harshness. ‘Two days ago.’ Lim’s eyes narrowed, and Dom flinched.
‘You’re sure it was Eagle Height? Seat of Liris, King of the Mireces?’ Lim asked and then grimaced. The girl’s filthy robe darkened down the front, steaming piss streaking her legs and soaking into Dom’s careful bandaging.
‘Take her away, Ash, we need to talk,’ Lim grunted in disgust. ‘I’ll fill you in later.’
Dom opened his mouth to protest but Lim gave a hard shake of his head and he waited until Ash had escorted her out of earshot. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Dom hissed then.
‘I agree with Ash. She’s likely a spy.’
‘Really? You think she pissed herself on command?’
‘Yes.’
Dom’s eyebrows rose. ‘She’s Rilporian and she’s managed to escape after who knows how many years serving the Mireces and you say she’s a spy. She needs our help.’ He flicked hair off his forehead and rubbed delicately at his right eye.
‘Don’t be taken in by a pretty face,’ Lim said.
Dom scowled. ‘Don’t you be taken in by her accent,’ he retorted. ‘She’s Rilporian.’
‘So she says,’ Sarilla interjected and Dom threw up his hands in frustration, staring from one to the other.
‘It’s more than that,’ he insisted.
‘This is really what you meant, then?’ Lim asked. ‘You said a message, or a messenger. She’s it? What can she tell us?’
Dom bit his lip, shook his hair out of his eyes again and stared at the girl. She was looking around, backing off slowly. Ash grabbed her arm and pulled her to a halt. ‘I’m not sure, but she’s important. I just don’t know how yet.’
‘Then find out,’ Lim said, ‘one way or another. Either she’s important or she’s dead, but we need to know which and we don’t have time. Gods,’ he muttered and rubbed the back of his neck.
‘You said there was no immediate danger,’ Sarilla said in a tone that was nearly accusatory.
‘I said there was always danger,’ Dom contradicted her, but quietly. Last thing he needed was to start an argument.
Lim growled in frustration. ‘Fine, take her back to the village and get her some decent clothes or she’ll have her throat opened for her, Rilporian or not. I’ll stay here for a day or two, make sure they don’t come back with reinforcements. When I get back to the village, she’d better be ready to talk.’
‘I’m staying too,’ Sarilla said. ‘You’ll need my bow,’ she added when Lim would have protested.
‘Thank you,’ Dom said.
‘Just make sure you’re right about this, and about her,’ Sarilla muttered. ‘We don’t want to start a war over nothing.’
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign