I could have used some more of that comic relief, I decided. Where was Gerald when I needed him?

"I'm right here, Tisana," Gerald said quietly as he jumped up behind me. "Don't feel much like being funny, though."

*153 *31*.

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Really, there was no need for such bloodshed! I know that men train for combat, but I've always considered it to be more of a sport than a necessity-or possibly a deterrent to actual violence. As far as I can see, it was a waste of three perfectly good men who had no reason to hate us; they were simply following orders."

As so many soldiers had done in so many wars.

Earth's history had been a turbulent one, whereas ours had been relatively peaceful overall, and it saddened me to think that it might be taking a turn for the worse. I smiled at Leo as bravely as I could, but I wasn't feeling particularly brave at the time. No, actually, now that it was all over, I was beginning to feel the aftereffects, realizing how close we had all come to meeting our deaths. There had been heroism, bravery, and valor, to be sure-all those words we use when we have to fight to stay alive, and often in the face of insurmountable odds-but the truth was, we shouldn't have been there to begin with. This whole rescue mission shouldn't have been necessary, and Rafe's children should have been at home, safe in their beds. It was all so wrong, just as it was wrong for Leo to belong to Rafe.

"Tisana, I love you very much," Leo said gently.

"Whether we are together or not will not change the way I feel." He edged Calla closer and leaned from his saddle to kiss me. Our lips met urgently, desperately, as though it might have been for the last time. I prayed to the gods that it was not, but as we all know, there are no guarantees in this life. I looked away from him, not wanting to let him see how much despair I felt. He meant more to me all the time, and I simply couldn't *154 *31*.

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lose him! He was everything! And Rafe held the key to my happiness in his pocket.

"We shouldn't let Rafe see you kiss me, Leo."

"He can see," Leo said. "He knows."

"How?" I demanded. "I know we slept together last night, but there was a good reason for that-well, maybe not all that good, but at least it was plausible."

Leo raised a skeptical brow. "If you could see your eyes when you look at me, Tisana, you would not need to ask that. He must know. He has seen that look before, has he not?"

"I seriously doubt that," I said scathingly. "I've never felt about him the way I feel about you, and most of the time I'm scowling at him."

"But you loved him once."

I began to form a reply, but my words died unspoken.

He was right, of course, because Rafe did know. It had been foolish of me to think I could hide it from him, for he not only knew the look, but also knew precisely what it meant. It might be stronger when I looked at Leo, but it was still the same. The charade was pointless. Rafe might have let me think I had him convinced that I only wanted Leo in order to set him free, but it wasn't true at all, and he knew it. Love was the reason I wanted Leo-perhaps not the only reason, but certainly the most important one.

The question remained as to whose happiness Rafe would see as the most important: mine, or Carnita's.

I think he was beginning to understand that there was something about Leo which women found irresistible-and it wasn't only the way he looked or his sexual nature; no, it was the man himself. Leo was a *155 *31*.

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Rafe wordlessly handed me a sword, a shield, and a knife when I caught up with him. As I took the reins of the chestnut, I tried not to look at the bodies of the three men where they lay, but whispered a prayer for the destination of their souls. I felt badly for them. This violence was pointless; they should still be alive and well and pursuing their own lives-lives I could only wonder about. Did they leave behind wives, children, lovers-those who would mourn them, even knowing that mourning would not bring them back?

No one ever came back from the dead-I might have been a witch, but it was beyond my powers-or anyone else's-to bring about such a thing. Death is the end, and whether you believe in an afterlife or not, with respect to this life, it is final, and killing is one of the few acts which can't be undone. The finality of death is such that no one can deny it, nor can anyone deny the utter futility of praying that it was not so. The gods know it, too, and if they ever pay any attention to such prayers, there is never the slightest evidence. Those who suffer such losses are left to seek the silver lining to the cloud of death all by themselves.

These depressing thoughts clung to me as we left the battlefield and re-entered the depths of the forest.

My menagerie stayed close by, but I didn't want to talk about what had occurred-any of it-and I believe they must have known it, for my thoughts went undisturbed by anyone for the next several miles. Morgana took the lead once again, as if she still knew where she was *156 *31*.

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headed, and by that I had to assume that she could still smell the other horses. I couldn't have cared less which direction we took; I only wanted to get away from that place where the bodies of the men we had killed lay stiffening in the snow, waiting for the carrion eaters to pick their bones.

Rafe rode on without speaking, leaving me to wonder what he was thinking. Was his mind occupied with the fate of his children or with the fate of the men who lay dead behind us? Did he spare a thought for my happiness, or Leo's, or Carnita's? Or was he focused on the possibilities of what lay ahead? When I looked back at him from time to time, his face was unreadable, but the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that he was trying to figure out how to turn all of these events to his own advantage.

I knew this to be unkind of me, no matter how much in character it might have been for Rafe, and I rode on, seeing nothing ahead of me but the way through the dense forest. I could barely make out a faint, snowcovered trail ahead, but it was getting colder, and as Morgana picked her path carefully, it began to snow again, shrouding us in silence once more.

It was so quiet that when Gerald gave a little chirp, it startled me, my sudden movements nearly sending Morgana into headlong flight and almost landing me in the snow.

"What is it?" Rafe whispered fiercely. "Do you see anything?"

"I can't see anything at all," I said irritably as I regained my seat. This was true, for the snow was now falling thick and fast, and anything beyond a few yards *157 *31*.

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Cheryl Brooks was completely obscured. Royillis should get his family to the clearing soon, I thought idly, because before long, they were going to have a very hard time finding the bodies of those men.

It was difficult to see much of anything and had we been following that trail of footprints I'd glimpsed earlier, we'd have had to give up the search long before this. I wasn't so sure I could have been found myself, had anyone been searching for me, dusted with snow as I was and sitting astride a grey mare. From time to time, I shook the snow from my cloak and hood, but they soon became thickly shrouded once again. It wouldn't have been stretching disbelief to say that I could have passed unseen within ten feet of an enemy. You could barely even hear the horse's footfalls unless they stumbled.

Of course, Rafe hadn't been referring to "sight" in the usual sense. "You know what I mean!" he hissed.

"Yes, I do," I replied. "Gerald just chirped and startled me was all. It was nothing."

"Nothing, hell!" Gerald disagreed, fairly quivering with excitement. "I think we're on to something!"

"Onto what?"

"The bad guys! They're right ahead of us!"

"Oh, that's impossible, Gerald!" I protested. "We stopped to fight and everything! We were behind them by a good day or so at the very least."

"I don't care," he declared. "Maybe these are waiting for the others to catch up."

"Well, that certainly wouldn't be very smart," I said tartly. "Whoever it is should have kept on going, no matter what. They couldn't have been so sure that at least one of us wouldn't have escaped their little trap."

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"Whoever said they were smart?" Gerald inquired reasonably. "Besides, the ones ahead of us might be waiting to learn the outcome of the fight."

"I'd be curious, myself," I conceded. "But it's still stupid. They should have kept on going, no matter what..." I stopped and gazed ahead into the swirling wall of snowflakes, suddenly feeling...something, just on the edge of my awareness. I'd never thought of myself as clairvoyant, but as I quieted the logical arguments in my mind, I knew all at once that Gerald was right. They were out there, and not very far away.

"There's another squirrel up in the tree there," he said, in answer to my unconscious question. "She told me someone passed this way not long ago."

"Not waiting for us, then?"

"No, but not far ahead and moving slowly."

"Well, we aren't exactly moving very fast ourselves."

Actually, our progress had been hampered considerably by the horses we'd acquired. I couldn't prove it, but I think they might have been deliberately dragging their feet to slow us down.

"Rafe," I said aloud. "They're just ahead of us."

"How many?" Rafe asked, not questioning my sudden assurance. "Are the boys with them?"

I posed the question to Gerald, whose information, unfortunately, hadn't included such pertinent details, and I reported this to Rafe.

"Well, they're as blind as we are in this storm," Rafe remarked. "I don't suppose we can still follow them, can we?"

As Morgana was still continuing on without hesitation-at least, with regard to direction-it was safe *159 *32*.

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Cheryl Brooks to assume that there had been no change in the scent trail she had been following. "My 'sight' is as good as ever," I said cheerfully. "We can keep going until the snow gets too deep for the horses to move, though I'm beginning to believe this snow is falling on purpose to slow us down."

"Do you mean to say that the gods don't want me to find my sons?" Rafe said sharply. "For what reason would they do such a thing?"

I personally didn't think the gods cared one way or the other, but I didn't say that, merely shrugging.

Rafe didn't see fit to leave it at that, however, and demanded a reply.

"I said the snow was trying to slow us down, not the gods," I said by way of clarification. "Didn't say anything about the gods."

Perhaps Rafe knew why the divines might be holding a grudge against him and simply wanted to discover whether I knew it or not. I didn't, of course.

"Snowfall is directed by the gods," Rafe reminded me. He was one who tended to believe that everything- and I do mean everything-has something to do with the intervention of some higher power. Perhaps he was right, and the gods truly had nothing better to do than to wreak havoc on those of us unfortunate enough to be mortal, but I thought not.

"That's a matter of opinion," I said neutrally. Then I decided to probe more deeply. "So, Rafe, have you done something to offend the gods?"

His reply was inaudible over the howling of the wind, but his gesture was distinctly surly, leading me to believe that he had committed some sort of misdemeanor-or *160 *32*.

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at least he thought he had-which was all the evidence needed to convict him. Of course, that was assuming that the gods truly gave a damn, and I didn't think that Rafe had ever done anything remarkable enough to bring down the wrath of the gods upon himself and his family.

I doubted that he'd ever killed anyone before now, and if being attacked and fighting for your life didn't absolve you of that particular offense, what did?

"It's only snow, Rafe," I said soothingly, regretting that I'd ever brought up the subject. "Just snow-and I'm sure it's slowing them down, too." I looked back at Leo, noting that he was as covered in snow as I was and also that the horses were struggling. None of them were complaining as yet, but it was fairly obvious that they were having difficulty. I thought of the boys in the group ahead and wondered how they were faring.

No one had mentioned that any of their own clothing was missing. Would a kidnapper be concerned enough for their welfare to provide them with warm cloaks? I had no idea and didn't care to raise the question. Rafe already felt bad enough.

"It could be that the kidnappers had some way of knowing that this storm was coming and made their plans accordingly," I pointed out. "Under normal circumstances, this sort of weather would have made tracking them impossible." I couldn't see Rafe's face at the time, but he grunted in what I assumed was agreement. "And even Leo's nose isn't that good," I muttered. "Though we should probably be thanking the gods for Morgana's."

"What did you say?" Leo asked, attempting to ride closer to me.

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162.

Cheryl Brooks "Morgana," I replied. "We're following her lead-or hadn't you guys figured that out yet?"

This time when I turned around to speak, I could see Rafe's face, and he rolled his eyes in apparent disdain.

"Do you mean to say that your mare is leading us?"

"Well, yeah, Rafe," I grumbled. "She is, actually- and has been for some time now." Noting that Rafe's expression was a mixture of disbelief and annoyance, I felt the need to remind him about a few innate equine abilities. "Honestly, Rafe! Haven't you ever been lost and just dropped the reins and let your horse find his own way home?"

"Home, yes," he conceded. "They always seem to know where their stable is. But tracking someone? I've never heard of a horse doing that."

"That's because you never knew how to ask your horse to do it," I pointed out. "They can understand human speech better than most animals, but only up to a point. I can be more clear about what I'm trying to say through my thoughts." I had never tried to explain the process before-it just came naturally to me-and it sounded peculiar when put into words.

Leo smiled. "And how do they feel about being ridden?" he asked.

One slave to another, I thought, favoring him with a rueful glance. "I don't think you really want to know that, Leo," I said evasively. "And if it's all the same to you, I'd just as soon not get them started. They're having enough trouble with the snow as it is." As if to illustrate this fact, the chestnut gelding I was leading nearly fell, almost wrenching the reins from my grasp. "We may want to think about turning these others loose."

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Leo nodded, and Rafe appeared to consider this. "If we did that, then they would return to their home, and we could follow them. They might clear a path for our own horses." Rafe's next question seemed to cost him something to ask. "Have you...spoken with them?"

"No," I replied. "I thought it best not to." I know it sounds odd, but I still saw them as the enemy, though I doubted that they truly held a grudge against us just because their masters did. Horses are generally pretty neutral when it comes to taking sides in the disputes between men-well, after the battle, anyway. During a skirmish, they can fight like another comrade on your behalf, though this is usually more a matter of training than loyalty.

"What's the matter, Tisana?" Rafe said scathingly.

"Afraid they'll give us away?"

"That idea had occurred to me," I replied. Rafe might have been being sarcastic, but he was right, because that was exactly why I hadn't. Knowing that these horses couldn't talk to any other humans should have been a given, but the fact remained that we were traveling outside my domain now, and for all I knew, there might have been another witch nearby who possessed similar abilities-though I doubted it. Any animal I'd ever spoken with thus far seemed to consider me to be unique in that respect, and since the borders of a witch's domain meant nothing to them, they were bound to encounter others of my kind.

"Those horses might be able to give us some useful information, you know," Rafe said reasonably.

Obviously he wasn't having much trouble grasping the valuable nature of direct communication with *163 *32*.

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"If they'll talk at all," I reminded him. "They might not trust me."

For some reason, Leo found this remark terribly amusing.