Pathfinder's Way by T.A. White Page A

looked
back at Dane and shrugged. “Doesn’t matter how you came to be here,
only that you are. Fallon Hawkvale, Warlord over the Trateri Clans,
owns your ass. He’s your master now. Forget wherever you came from.
Maybe if you get lucky you’ll become a horseman or foot soldier,
but whatever life you lived before is gone.”
    Dane’s skin turned a sickly shade of white at
this pronouncement.
    Shea, for her part, felt like she’d been
punched in the stomach at Fallon’s name.
    Looks like she’d been right about him. Fat
lot of good that did her now.
    Darius leaned forward and cuffed the side of
Dane’s head. “Don’t worry, you’ll grow to like the clans soon
enough. Now, let’s see what kind of recruits we have this
time.”
    Dane made a strangled sound as Darius
straightened. Witt sent Dane a look that said pull it together.
    It dawned on the others the situation had
turned bad. They shifted uneasily under the weight of Darius’s
regard.
    Shea stared grimly at her saddle.
    The men shifted away as the steady clop,
clop, clop of a horse approached. Her mare sidestepped as the other
horse invaded her space.
    Shea tried to hold the animal in place, but
there wasn’t much she could do against hundreds of pounds of
determined horseflesh.
    Abandoned by even her horse, Shea glared at
the ground. Maybe he wouldn’t remember her. They’d only met
briefly, and he’d been focused on Fallon for most of that time.
    “What do we have here? A girl?” an amused
voice said above her. When she didn’t respond, he added, “Glaring
at the ground won’t make me go away.”
    Fine then. She’d glare at him instead. Might
as well get it over with anyway. At least this way, she’d know; he
either recognized her or he didn’t.
    No comprehension registered in his eyes, just
a mild interest.
    Perhaps she was safe.
    Recognition dawned. He gave a shout.
    Shea frowned even harder at him as he threw
his head back and roared with laughter.
    Witt and Dane gave her equal looks of
puzzlement. The wheels spun in their brains as they looked at her,
then at him and then back at her.
    Witt lifted his hands slightly in
question.
    She’d told him about Fallon’s men in the
canyon, so he knew how she’d escaped.
    Curious as to what had caught Darius’s
interest, his companion prodded his horse forward. By the look on
his face, he didn’t understand why his friend found her so
amusing.
    “Cale, you won’t believe who this is,” Darius
finally said, his laughter winding down, though humor still glinted
in his eyes.
    “Especially if you don’t stop laughing like a
loon,” Cale complained acerbically, drawing his horse to a stop.
“You’re supposed to be intimidating these dirt grubbers. I don’t
see how this is going to instill fear in their hearts and terror in
their minds.”
    “This is her.” Darius tilted his head towards
Shea.
    “Her?” Cale frowned.
    “Her.”
    Cale’s eyes went sharply to Shea as he
scanned her up and down, realization settling in. “You mean?”
    Darius grinned and nodded.
    “I’ll be damned.” Cale settled back in his
saddle and looked at her with amazement. “Guess this village has
something to recommend it after all.”
    “I take it Fallon will be pleased with this
tribute,” another man said, joining the two. He was brown.
Everything about him was some variation of the color. He had brown
hair, brown eyes and his skin had been tanned a deep walnut by the
sun. With his addition, there were now three men on horseback
surrounding Shea.
    She kept her attention trained on them,
acutely aware of the unrest behind her as Paul and Sid began
muttering in discontent.
    All of the men in front of her had scars on
various parts of their bodies and carried swords in scabbards at
their sides. They were muscled, but it was the kind that came from
lifting a sword and riding a horse everyday rather than the kind
developed from plowing fields and harvesting its bounty. Given the
air of danger each man exuded,