The SteelMaster of Indwallin, Book 2 of The Gods Within by J. L. Doty Page B

enemy lines meeting and joining forces. But then, stranger things had happened in war. And then late yesterday he’d come across the trail of three more. Of course he took up the trail, intending to catch up with them and kill them in their sleep like the others, and of course it troubled him that there were three such groups of halfmen wandering through these hills, but for the third group to join up with a fourth . . . Morddon didn’t need magic to know that something was up.
    About midday the rain stopped, though the clouds hung close and gray. But now, without the constant patter of raindrops on the forest leaves, Morddon’s ability to hear danger improved. Several hours later when, without warning, he caught a hint of sound at the edge of his hearing, he pulled Mortiss to a stop and waited, and after many seconds it came again: a faint, distant cry of death.
    He dismounted and led Mortiss carefully off the trail, while Morgin pulled a cloak of shadow about both man and horse. He found it difficult moving through the undergrowth of the forest, but earlier he’d spotted a high ridge from which he should be able to see a good distance through the mist shrouded hills, and a direct route appeared to be the only means of gaining access to it. The climb was difficult, but as he approached the ridge his ears picked up certain sounds with increasing clarity: a shout, the clash of a sword, silence for a long time, the whinny of a frightened horse, the hoof beats of a charging animal on a muddy road.
    At the summit of the climb he left Mortiss to graze, then dropped to his hands and knees and crawled to the lip of the ridge. Far below, in the middle of a long strip of road that wound its way through the misty hills of the forest, a coach lay on its side. The coachman, two attendants, and two guards lay sprawled and lifeless in the road, while nine Kulls swarmed over and about the coach. He reasoned that the seven he was following had met up with another two, then as a group had stumbled across an unlucky traveler on the road below.
    While Morddon looked on the Kulls pried open the door of the overturned coach. Three of them dropped down into the body of the coach, and moments later lifted the unconscious form of a woman from its interior. And though the distance was too great to distinguish any detail, Morddon caught a momentary flash of bone white skin and knew the woman to be AnneRhianne.
    The Kulls moved quickly, tying her to the bottom of the coach between its axles in an upright position with both arms and legs spread wide, which meant she was still alive. The Kulls were probably going to have a little fun, and since Morgin understood all too well what the Kulls considered fun, Morddon started hastily down the slope leading Mortiss on foot.
    With the Kulls concentrating on looting the coach, and their minds preoccupied in anticipation of torture and rape, Morddon took the chance of depending almost wholly on Morgin’s shadowmagic and his own sure footing. The Kulls would wait for AnneRhianne to regain consciousness before beginning, so he had only a little time to spare. But a deep ravine cut in the side of the hill forced him to veer far to one side, and by the time he reached the road the overturned coach was hidden around a sharp bend far in the distance.
    Leading Mortiss he trotted up the road, and at the bend he pulled her into the forest and started to tie her reins to a nearby tree. But she shook her head wildly and refused to let him do so, though she was careful to avoid making any noise by snorting, and at the intelligence he saw in her eyes he changed his mind. “Have it your way then,” he whispered, tying her reins loosely to the saddle horn. “But stay here until you’re needed.”
    He untied the bow case from the saddle, unwrapped the canvas and strung the bow quickly. The bow pleased him. He’d made it from the best ash, spent hours shaping and treating the wood. It could fire one of the steel