Page 25 (1/2)

Being captured, Tavi thought, was a twofold evil It was both unco

The Marat hadn&039;t spoken, not to the Alerans nor to one another Four had simply held spear tips to Tavi&039;s and Fade&039;s throats, while the other two trussed their arh, braided cord They took Tavi&039;s knife and pouch away and searched then confiscated Fade&039;s battered old pack Then the tho had tied the them over one of their broad shoulders and loped off into the storainst the Marat warrior&039;s shoulder, Tavi&039;s sto fro the Rillwater The Marat who carried hi the land at alope He leapt over a streambed, and once a lo of brush, evidently entirely unencuht of his prisoner

Tavi tried to keep track of which way they were headed, but the darkness and the storm and his aard position (mostly upside down)sleet, blinding hirow colder, and Tavi could see the wind in the storm, wild and restless None of them came near the Marat war band

Tavi tried toby under his nose, but the stor it in a layer of plain, s by the kind of rock or earth beneath hiuide himself by the stars, no way to orient hih he tried for an hour ave it up as pointless

That left him with only the fear to think about

The Marat had taken him and Fade While they appeared, outwardly, much like Alerans, they were not truly human and had never shown a desire to be so, and instead rees who ate fallen foes andof their own, they e that was more madness than virtue, and vast numbers that dwelt on the unknown stretches of the wilderness that began on the easten side of the last Legion fortification, Garrison

When the Marat horde had rushed into the Valley, killing the Princeps and annihilating his Legion to a h heavy reinforce Now they were back, presumably to strike in secret-and Tavi had seen them and knew of their plans

What would they do to him?

He sed and tried to tell hi of his heart was the result of the battering he was taking on his captor&039;s shoulder, rather than from the quiet terror that had taken up residence in hi stride

An endless tirowled soue and took Tavi fro firmly on Tavi&039;s hair with one naked, mud-stained foot He put his hands to his h, a sound that it did not seem possible for a huh ruround shook

as huge, heavy shapes, dark in the stornized the smell before he could ants

The Marat who had carried Tavi, evidently the leader of the group, slapped the nearest gargant on the shoulder, and the great beast knelt doith ponderous gentility, teeth idly working over several pounds of cud The Marat again spoke to the others and then picked Tavi up Tavi looked around and saw a second Marat lifting Fade

The Marat carried hiant&039;s foreleg and half-jureat beast&039;s sloped back, where he settled onto so of a heavy mat woven of the saant-hair

He tossed Tavi belly-down over the mat and whipped a fewhis charges Tavi looked up at the Marat He had broad, rather ugly features, and his eyes were dark, dark brown Though he was not as tall as Tavi&039;s uncle, his shoulders and chest would make Bernard seem positively skinny, and slabs of heavy muscle moved beneath his pale skin His coarse, colorless hair had been gathered back into a braid He looked down at Tavi, as he settled onto the gargant, and the beast began to rise, without any apparent signal from its rider The Marat smiled, and his teeth were broad and white and square He rue, and the other Marat let out rough, coughing laughs, as they reat beasts rose and set out at a swift pace in a single file, their huge strides eating up ground faster than Tavi could run, steady and tireless as the stars in the sky Tavi could just ant behind therimaced and wished he could at least be with the slave Surely Fade was terrified-he alas

They rode for a length of ti that he had been tied face down, and he saw little round rolling by beneath hilanced toward the source of the sound and then up at his captor The Marat shifted his weight slightly backward, and the gargant slowed its steps by degrees, co to a ponderous halt

The Marat did not bother to have the gargant kneel, but swung from a braided cord, knotted every foot or so, down froave a lohistle in answer

Froed another Marat, broad of shoulder and deep of chest, panting, as though from a run His expression see in the guttural Marat tongue, and Tavi&039;s captor put a hand on the younger Marat&039;s shoulder,him repeat hiave a short whistle, and another Marat fro down fronized as a torch and a firebox of Aleranthe torch up with his thighs, and with a stone struck sparks from the firebox and lit the torch He passed it over to Tavi&039;s captor, who kept his hand on the young Marat&039;s shoulder and nodded to hier Marat led his captor to a vague form in the snow Tavi could see little of it, other than that the snow over it had been stained with red The Marat took a few paces more Then a few more More lumps in the snow became evident

Tavi&039;s sto They were people The Marat were looking at people on the ground, people dead so recently that their blood still stained the newly fallen snow Tavi looked up and thought he saw light from the Marat&039;s torch reflected from water not far away The lake, then

Aldoholt

Tavi watched the Marat walk a quick circle, the light of his torch at one point catching the sloped walls of the steadholt proper Bodies lay in a line leading froh the holders had ed down, one at a tied into the snow

Tavi sed Without doubt, the holders were all dead People he had ized to-people he knew, ravaged and torn to shreds His belly writhed, and he got sick, trying to lean far enough over the side to sick up onto the ground instead of the gargant&039;s saddle

The Marat leader caer one In each of his hands he held a vague, luot close to the gargant

The Marat leader held the shapes up in the light of the torch, letting out another lohistle to his ht fell on the severed heads of what looked like a direwolf and a herdbane, their eyes glassy The residents of the

steadholt, it seemed, had not died alone, and Tavi felt a helpless little rush of vengeful satisfaction He spat toward the lead Marat

The lead Marat looked up at hier one and drew a line across his throat The younger dropped the torch&039;s fla it The Marat leader dropped the heads and then swarmed up the knotted cord back onto the saddle He turned to Tavi and stared at him for a moment, then leaned over and touched a spot on the saddle that Tavi hadn&039;t been able to avoid staining when he got sick

The Marat lifted his fingertips to his nose, wrinkled it, and looked from Tavi to the silent, bloody forrim, then took a leather flask from a tie on the saddle, turned to Tavi, and unceremoniously shoved one end of the flask into hiswater out of it in a rush

Tavi spluttered and spat, and the Marat withdrew the flask, nodding Then he tied the flask to the saddle and let out another lohistle The line of gargantsup behind another rider further down the file

Tavi looked back to find his captor studying hi The Marat looked past hily features unsettled, perhaps disturbed Then he looked back to Tavi again

Tavi puffed out a breath to blow the hair out of his eyes and de at?"

The Marat&039;s eyebroent up, and once again that broad-toothed smile briefly took over his face His voice came out in a basso rumble "I look at you, valleyboy "

Tavi blinked at him "You speak Aleran?"

"Soue Trade with your people sometiue To one another, we speak trade Speak Aleran "

"Where are you taking us?" Tavi asked

"To the horto," the Marat said

"What&039;s a horto?"

"Your people have no word "

Tavi shook his head "I don&039;t understand "

"Your people never do," he said, without malice "They never try"

"What do you mean?"