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  “Gunfire,” Teer said. “Two shots, close together… Double-barreled thunderbuss, probably a half-mile that way.”

  He pointed along the trail they were following.

  “She’s found trouble, hasn’t she?” Kard said grimly. “All right. Let’s go save the girl so we can arrest the girl.”

  Teer chuckled, but he touched his heels to Star’s flanks. His quickshooter was in his hand, the five-chambered handgun a better weapon for this than his hunter.

  Kard, on the other hand, drew his short repeater. The gun was designed for cavalry work, after all. It was probably the best gun for this work, but Teer had hesitated to spend any of his stones on weapons.

  He had a significant stash of funds at this point but no idea when they’d get more. Spending it wisely seemed a requirement to him.

  The horses answered to the wordless commands with eagerness, going from trot to canter in moments as they charged forward. That eagerness didn’t last forever, and Star started trying to veer away just as a new scent hit Teer’s nose.

  The blood-and-shit scent of death—with an overlay he wasn’t familiar with, an acrid musk he’d never encountered before.

  “Come on, girl,” he told Star, patting her neck with his free hand. That was enough for now, but he could tell she was unhappy.

  Star was a brave horse and her concern was infectious. Teer closed the distance toward a new round of gunfire with his weapon out, training toward a danger he couldn’t see yet.

  And then he heard them. Multiple creatures, yelping and barking in a twisted, high-pitched tone. Teer knew dogs…and that sound was not dogs.

  Star crested the edge of a small dip and Teer took in the entire scene. Half a dozen wolfen, larger than their wolf cousins and with venomous teeth and claws, circled through a mid-sized copse of trees.

  A horse lay at the edge of the copse, with two more wolfen tearing into its guts as they ate. The rest of the pack, though, had something treed.

  As Teer drew nearer, he spotted her. And Lora spotted him—and the dark-skinned young woman dropped her half-loaded thunderbuss in shock.

  The gun went off as it hit the ground, catching one of the wolfen in the belly. The beast recoiled and fell, whining loudly enough to be heard from almost a hundred feet away.

  A moment later, it got back up on its feet and fled. It had taken the full blast of a thunderbuss at point-blank range and walked away.

  Teer swallowed. This was going to be unpleasant.

  “Do what needs, no more,” Kard told him as the other Hunter drew up besides him. Those had been Doka’s words, but the El-Spehari had clearly known them before they’d hired the tracker. “No need to kill them. This is their territory, after all.”

  “Right.”

  Teer lifted his pistol and fired. He hit the closest wolfen in the middle of its chest as it turned to him. The heavy round should have gone all the way through the beast but instead merely sent it crumpling to the ground.

  It was back on its feet and charging him angrily a few moments later, so Teer shot it again. This time, the bullet hit the creature right between the eyes, and it skidded to a halt in an awkward pile of limbs and fur.

  Teer wasn’t sure if it was dead, but the rest of the pack was now heading their way, smelling horseflesh and people flesh alike.

  He shot three of them in the chest in rapid succession, emptying the quickshooter in a heartbeat as Kard’s repeater cracked next to him. Half of the pack hit the ground, but even the wolfen he’d shot between the eyes was getting back up.

  “What are they made of?” Teer snapped as Star shied under him. He had three bullets in his fingers, but lining them up with the quickshooter wasn’t easy, even for him.

  “Anger, hate and hunger,” Kard replied, firing three shots into the lead wolfen’s head and torso. “I take it back. Kill them,” he ordered.

  “Right.” Teer slammed the rounds into the top chambers of the revolver and leveled it again. The wolfen he’d first shot was coming right for him. He shot it in both eyes, the bullets punching clear into the creature’s skull.

  The animal dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, and the rest of the pack stopped at some unseen signal. They howled as one and Teer shot the next-closest wolfen in the top of the head as Kard emptied the last two bullets from his repeater into it.

  That wolfen was the first to flee, but the rest of the pack followed a moment later.

  Teer breathed a sigh of relief as he scrabbled in his cartridge pouch for new rounds, slowly loading the revolver as he watched the creatures flee. It was only now that he realized that the dead horse had been dragged away by several of the wolfen while the others had been attacking him and Kard.

  The pack had lost a member and picked up some hopefully impressive bruises, but they also had dinner.

  He shook his head and kneed Star past the dead wolfen on the ground. The horse shied away from the body but obeyed.

  “You’re a good girl,” he murmured to the horse. “I’m impressed.”

  Both Star and Clack had held up surprisingly well to a wolfen charge while their riders had opened fire. They’d done well, and Teer was going to have to find some treats to give them from the saddlebags.

  “I’m impressed,” Kard told him. “Clack is a warhorse. He’s getting old now, but he was trained to keep his nerve while cannon roared. I wouldn’t have expected a ranch horse to stand up to that.”

  Teer patted Star.

  “She trusts me,” he said. “That’s all it is.”

  Kard snorted as they reached the cluster of trees.

  “Miss, it’s safe enough now,” he called out. “You can come down.”

  “Who are you?” the woman demanded. “Ain’t no one s’posed to be out here.”

  “We heard gunfire,” Kard told her. “We came to help. We could always have left you.”

  “Well, you can leave me now,” she said. “I thank you, but I’ve nothin’ to give you. May as well let you on your way and I’ll stay up here.”

  Teer looked over at Kard, who gestured for him to start circling the trees.

  “That’s not going to happen, I’m afraid,” Kard said with a sigh. “We were following your trail, Miss Lora. I have a Writ of Seizure for you, to bring you before the Magistrate at Carlon for attempted murder.”

  “You stay back,” Lora barked. “You know nothin’, Hunter man. I’m armed!”

  “Is that the thunderbuss you dropped or something that actually might hurt the wolfen if we leave you?” Kard asked.

  Teer was now on the far side of the copse of trees, watching the motion as Lora climbed down her tree as quietly as she could while shouting back.

  “I will kill you; I won’t go back,” she snapped. She grabbed the thunderbuss from the ground and then took off at a sprint.

  She’d guessed what Teer had done and ran in a direction away from both of them: north, toward the river.

  Teer had been expecting that and kneed Star after her. He made the split-second judgment that his lasso would probably hurt her more than he wanted and that Star could catch up to her.

  He rose in the mare’s stirrups as Star closed the distance, galloping toward the running woman. Both of them knew how the chase would end, so Lora tried to dodge to the right…and Teer jumped a moment later, colliding with her and sending them both tumbling to the ground.

  She ended up on top of him, pointing the thunderbuss at his face. He knocked the empty weapon aside and bodily picked the smaller woman up as he rose from the ground—and got kicked in the groin for his efforts.

  They both fell, and this time, she somehow had his gun out. He froze.

  “I’m leavin’,” she growled.

  “No.” Teer had been trying not to hurt her. Now he moved at full speed, yanking the gun out of her hand and using her gun hand to lever her to the ground. Now he was on top of her, with the gun in his hand.

  Of course, he was holding it by the barrel, so it wasn’t much use to either of them.r />
  “You’ll not be going anywhere but back to Carlon, Miss Lora,” Teer told her quietly. “You beat a man to the edge of death and left him to bleed out. There are penalties for crimes like that.”

  She spat in his face but didn’t resist much more as Kard tossed him a rope and he swiftly bound her.

  7

  Bound or not, Lora broke down when they reached the spot where her horse had been dragged away.

  “Oh, Toss, you didn’t deserve this,” she muttered, kneeling on the ground next to the spatter of blood.

  “Horses generally don’t deserve what we drag them into,” Kard said from behind her. “Neither, I suspect, do most people who get beaten to death.”

  She said nothing, ignoring him as she knelt on the ground and muttered soft words.

  Teer could probably make them out, but he intentionally focused his hearing on the distant river. That felt like something that should be private, between the young woman and her horse.

  “It’s later than I like, but I don’t want to camp where we know wolfen are prowling,” Kard told Teer. “She’ll ride double with you. It’ll slow us, but Clack isn’t going to be any better at carrying two.”

  “Should we check for any of her stuff?” Teer asked.

  “Wolfen have it all, I think,” the Hunter replied. “I’m not going to beard a venomous animal pack in their den for horse brushes and rations.”

  He gestured toward their bounty.

  “Keep an eye on her,” Kard continued quietly. “She’s shocked right now, but she’s a clever one and it’ll take us at least three days to get back to Carlon with a horse carrying double.”

  “Then we’d better get going,” Teer replied. He whistled Star over to him and crossed to Lora. “Time to go, miss,” he said gently. “You’re riding with me.”

  “Do I get a choice?” she snapped.

  “No.”

  It took both Teer and Kard working together to lift her intentionally limp form onto Star and then tie her to both Teer and the horse. Both men were being extremely careful with their hands, which earned them at least one exasperated sigh before she finally started cooperating a little bit.

  “I’d ask if you’re enjoyin’ this, but ’twould make it easier on me if you were,” she hissed to Teer as he checked the reins and got Star moving.

  “Wardkeeper pays us to bring you to face trial,” Teer told her as they road. “You still a person, still…”

  He trailed off, not sure of the words for what he was trying to say. Somehow, though, he figured he’d come close enough to buy some relaxation on Lora’s part.

  “Come on,” Kard ordered. “I want at least a candlemark’s ride between us and this place before we rest. Should get us back to somewhere with water, at least.”

  They made camp by the same stream Lora had followed to get away from the Carahassee River, with the woman spending the first ten minutes sitting against a rock with her hands and feet tied together while Teer and Kard set up camp.

  “You watch her,” Kard ordered. “I’ll get dinner started.”

  “Oh, the mighty Hunters can cook, can they?” she asked. “I’m impressed.”

  Teer shook his head as he took a seat across from her.

  “We’ll even feed you,” he told her. “We’re taking you to trial, not torturing you.”

  “Right. Because fair trials are so common round here,” Lora said. “I’m kidnapped by a bloody child.”

  “You tried to kill a man,” Teer pointed out, feeling awkward. “That was your choice.”

  That silenced her for a moment, and she seemed to shrink into herself at the reminder. Teer kept half an eye on the campfire while most of his attention was on her. If anything, keeping his attention on her felt more awkward than anything else.

  She was very pretty now that she was out of the tree. Her skin was only a bit paler than his, but her features were much sharper and more elegant. He figured her hair was the same shoulder length as his own, but Lora had done a much better job of cutting it and had it tied back into a practical bun that kept it out of the way as she traveled.

  Paying attention to her to make sure she didn’t escape also meant he was trying not to stare. The conflict between what he knew was rude and what he had to do to do his job was harder than he expected.

  “I need some privacy,” she finally told him. “Nature calling.”

  “We can walk away from Kard a bit, but I can’t leave you on your own,” Teer replied.

  “I guess that’s somethin’,” she conceded. “Help me up.”

  He did, carefully balancing himself to make sure she didn’t yank him down. They walked off into the bushes, out of sight of the camp to give her some privacy. Then she stopped and glared at him.

  “Turn around,” she ordered.

  “Can’t, sorry,” he said, feeling awkward himself. “This ain’t gonna be pretty for either of us, but it is what it is.”

  The next few minutes were even more awkward than he’d expected, and he suspected Lora was doing everything in her power to make it worse.

  At the last moment, before he could retie her wrists, she tried to bolt. His emotional awkwardness didn’t translate to physical awkwardness, and he caught her wrist before she made it four steps.

  “Really?” he asked. “How did you expect that to go?”

  She spat at him again.

  “You’re fast,” she said in an accusing tone. “I don’t trust courts and I don’t trust you. Don’t expect this to be easy, Hunter boy.”

  “I never did,” he told her. “The last people we hauled to Carlon were bandits with blood on their hands. You’re much calmer.”

  “Then why aren’t you hunting more killers?” she snapped.

  “Because we found one.”

  Once again, that silenced her. Teer figured she was trying not to think about her crime, trying so hard, she’d forget until she was reminded.

  He could sympathize…but he was still going to deliver her to Carlon.

  Kard had dinner—it was almost always stew on the road—ready by the time Teer escorted Lora back to the fire.

  “Watch how much you untie her,” Teer warned as he took his own food. “She’s like to run.”

  The older Hunter chuckled.

  “You do seem the type, don’t you, miss?” he asked Lora. He carefully loosened the ropes around Lora’s wrists but didn’t remove them entirely. Instead, he did something with the knots that gave her enough flexibility to eat but looked like it would tighten again if she tried to do more.

  “You need to show me that,” Teer told Kard quietly, between mouthfuls of stew. “I thought I was good at knots, but I don’t know that one.”

  “Someday, when we don’t have a prisoner,” Kard agreed, picking up his own bowl. “For now, we’ll get her in safely and get paid.”

  “That’s all I am to you, is it? A payday?” Lora growled.

  “Yes,” the older Hunter said bluntly. “And a criminal, to be fair. You tried to kill a man, girl. Unity is better off with you in custody.”

  “’Cause you’ve never killed anyone, you with your guns and ready hands,” she said.

  “I’ve killed more than a few,” Kard said calmly. “Most of them facing me, all of them armed. I won’t say they all deserved it, but most that didn’t were during the war.”

  That sent a shiver down Teer’s spine, and he focused on his food. It was entirely possibly that Kard had killed his father—and Kard had taken that responsibility when challenged. “If not by my own hand, then by my orders.”

  Teer had less hesitation about his own body count. He’d put a bullet through the bandit leader Boulder when the man had drawn on Kard. The brigand hadn’t known Teer was there, but there’d been no question of whether he’d deserved it.

  Lora tossed her half-empty bowl aside.

  “I’m done,” she snapped. “You going to tie me to the tree to sleep?”

  “Basically,” Kard confirmed. “Not upright, though. You may a
s well have held on to that; I’m not moving you until I’ve eaten, and you’ll need your strength.”

  Somehow, caring for one prisoner was more awkward than dealing with an entire chain of them for Teer. There’d been more direct evidence of their bandits’ crimes, too, what with the women they’d rescued from their camp.

  Still, Kard was right. He needed his strength too. He finished the stew and collected the bowls to clean them, sighing as he shoveled dirt over the remains of Lora’s meal.

  As he set to cleaning, Kard moved their prisoner over to the sturdiest-looking nearby tree. The Hunter had set up a bedroll there and now looped new ropes around the tree and Lora, tying her ankle to the tree while still making sure she could lie down.

  For all of Kard’s gruff callousness so far, Teer realized that they didn’t have a spare bedroll. The one Kard was settling Lora down in was the El-Spehari’s own bedding.

  Teer had finished up the dishes and was packing them away when Kard returned to the fire.

  “You take first watch,” Kard instructed. “It’s going to take me longer than I’d like to find a soft patch of dirt.”

  “You’re a softer heart than you pretend,” Teer said quietly.

  “I don’t know what happened that she beat Carind down, but I know it wasn’t planned,” Kard replied. “And no matter… She’s a young girl who didn’t know what she was getting into. No point in being cruel while we bring her in.”

  “I remember somebody else who didn’t know what they were getting into,” Teer admitted. “Might be part of why this bothers me.”

  “Guard your heart, Teer,” the El-Spehari ordered. “You didn’t actually hurt anyone. She left a man on the edge of death. We do what needs, no more. No cruelty, but we bring her in and leave her fate to a court and a magistrate.”

  “We’re just the delivery, are we?”

  “We’re certainly not her magistrate,” Kard said. “Not our place to judge what she did.”

  8

  Teer let the fire die down after Kard went to lie down, trusting his ears and night vision better than the firelight now. He’d always done that, but now he knew that his ears and night vision were not just better than others’ but much better than most.