Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

She dismounted and flipped the reins of the gray mare over her ears, so they hung down to the ground. The mare stood for a moment, then bent her head and cropped at the rich grass. Leaving her, Laeka moved over to the gelding, gesturing for him to kneel as he had before. This time, the kyree required no aid to jump off the saddlepad, only holding up her left foreleg as she landed. Again, Laeka pulled out some meat for the kyree, who settled to feed while she tended to the horses. She loosened the saddle girths, reaching underneath the tack to test for swelling or heat, running her hands down each of the horses’ legs, checking their hooves. When the horses were as comfortable as she could make them, Laeka retrieved the jar of salve, returning to the kyree and reapplying the ointment. The wounds seemed to have improved after the day of travel, not worsened as she would have guessed. Laeka raised her eyebrows but kept her silence. The kyree had Healers of their own, after all.

:I will scout their camp,: the kyree said. :Even wounded, I can move more quietly and in smaller places than you. And I will know their thoughts.: Laeka nodded, and the kyree stood, shaking herself and stretching, then trotting into the underbrush with only a little stiffness in her stride.

Dusk was beginning to settle when the kyree

slipped back into the clearing, sitting on her haunches in the bracken.

:They are confident. Only one guard sits to the south edge, looking toward where they will meet their buyer at the main road tomorrow. There is a tent, where most of them sleep. My cubs are in a woven cage to the east, just on the other side of the fire. One bandit sleeps on each side of the cage.: The kyree paused, then bared her teeth in a fiercely lupine grin. :They are mine.:

“Their horses?”

:Loosely hobbled in a separate clearing. Unguarded.:

Laeka smiled. “We’ll take care of them first.”

Laeka went back to her horses, tightening the saddle girths and fastening the stirrups securely up underneath the saddles. She untied the lead lines from the two mares, flipping their reins back and tying them to the pommels so that they would neither constrict the horses’ movements nor drag and catch in the brush. She pulled the rigged saddlepad off the gelding’s saddle, stowing it in one of the saddlebags that she had filled with meat for the kyree, and mounted. She held out her hand, and the two mares followed the gelding into the trees as surely as if she still held lead lines.

She kept the pace slow, letting the horses choose their way carefully, guiding them where the grass was still soft and avoiding brush and deadfall that would give away their approach. The kyree moved noiseless through the trees, a shadow in the twilight.

:Over the crest of this hill. The horses are in the clearing on this side.:

Laeka dismounted, ground-tying the gelding with his reins as she had earlier, then slipped into the trees behind the kyree, moving toward the bandits’ horses with steps as quiet as she could make them. While the kyree stayed downwind in the trees, she walked into the clearing, speaking to the horses in the soft whistling words she had learned from the Shin’a’in. A few of the animals chuffed nervously, but she soothed them with gentle hands on their necks. Working quickly, always keeping the bodies of the animals between herself and the camp, she used her boot knife to slit the hobbles. When all the horses were untied, she backed out of the clearing.

Mounting the gelding again, Laeka loosened the sword in its scabbard and looked down at her strange partner.

“Well,” she whispered, “we’ll never have a better chance, hai?” She shook out the reins and gestured to the two mares, then kneed the gelding into a run, over the crest and straight through the center of the bandit camp. With an eerie howl, the kyree followed her.

As she passed the lone guard, Laeka lashed out with her sword, catching him on the side of his head and neck. He slumped to the ground, and she tried not to notice the spray of blood that spattered her arm and the side of the horse. Somehow it was very different from the cow’s-blood-filled bags she and her trainers used when sword practicing with the horses that, like the gelding, would be sold to fighters.