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for a while, but probably wouldn't be able to best them both. They would wear her down and kill her before dragging me off for the ransom or whatever they'd decided they could get, and I couldn't let that happen. They were protected against my magic just then, but there's more than one way to use magic.

The proper gesture and word put the long, heavy piece of squared wood into my left hand, and I lost no time in bringing it up and back with alt my strength, catching the man who held me in the side of the head. He grunted at the blow and immediately began falling, nearly taking me down with him before his grip relaxed enough for me to free myself- As soon as I had pulled loose I ran over to the three who were swinging away at each other with swords and did a little swinging of my own, directly at the head of the second bearded man. Su had been swiping toward his middle just then, and when his guard dropped she opened him from side to side. He went straight down to the ground without making any sound, first unconscious and then dead.

The beardless man was left to face Su, and that didn't make him very happy. She had been able to hold off two swords against her own, and once the odds had been evened she went on the offensive. He suddenly found himself defending frantically against an attack that had almost as much strength behind it as his own, and didn't seem quite able to match the speed of it. Su drove him back step by step, and when he tried to disengage and run she didn't allow it. One quick, strong lunge put her point in his chest, and when she jerked it out again he never felt it. He dropped his sword, then folded to the ground, and that was the end of that.

"That was really nice," I began, moving forward with the block of wood still in my hand, but was interrupted by a commotion coming from the other end of the alley. Su and I both immediately turned that way, sword and wood coming up together, but all it turned out to be was three familiar male figures rushing up with swords in their hands, one small female figure hurrying along behind them. In- stead of us finding the group, me group had done the finding.

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"What's going on here?" Rikkan Addis demanded as the three stopped beside us, all of them looking around at the mess Su had made. "What happened?"

"Didn't listen when we said to move on," Su told him.

bending to wipe her weapon on her second opponent.

"Tried to take Laciel along with them, didn't think I'd draw on numbers. Some men are d.a.m.n fools. Good swing with mat wood, girl."

"My pleasure," I told her with a smile, gesturing the wood back to the air it had come from. "Most especially with the one who was still holding me."

I turned my head to look at my first victim, but all that was left of him was a mark in the scuffed dirt where he'd fallen. He'd probably come around soon enough to find himself outnumbered, and had faded back into the wood- work where his kind came from.

"Did they harm you?" Kadrim demanded from my right elbow, and when I looked back saw that he was talking only to me, a scowl on his smooth, handsome face.

"You must surely be greatly upset from so harrowing an experience."

"Why would I be upset?" I asked, amused at me way he slammed his sword back into ite scabbard as though disap- pointed that he had no one to use k on. "It's been a good number of years, but when I lived on the streets this sort of tiling happened all the time- Not to me, of course, but I wasn't worth ransoming back then. And no, they didn't hurt me, just mussed me a little."

"This wouldn't have happened if you two had stayed with tile rest of us as you were told to do," Rikkan Addis interrupted with a growl, moving nearer to glare at Su and myself. His weapon had also been returned to its scab- bard, but his bronze eyes glowed with the sharpness of a sword edge. "Do you know where we'd be if Su had been badly wounded or killed? We'd be without anyone to find the trail for us, and therefore stopped even before we started! We'd be able to turn this expedition around and go crawling back to the wizard on our bellies, beaten by our own stupidity. Didn't that even occur to you?"

By the end of his speech / was me only one those eyes were accusing, his broad face adding to their anger, tight

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fists set on hips. Su had been endangered because of me, because I had disobeyed our great, bronze-eyed leader, and that could have meant the end of our quest. Rikkan Addis was a little taller than Su, but that wasn't the reason he was looking down at me. I'd been a bad little girl, and now was being scolded for it.

"Since I didn't set out to get Su hurt, it certainly did not occur to me what might happen," I came back at him, finding that I'd straightened to my full height, somewhat aware of the absolute silence holding the rest of our group.

"For your information Su's safety is more important to me than just in relation to this quest, and if it came right down to it, I would not have let her get hurt. And even if she was, for one reason or another, unable to follow the trail for us, there would still be nothing to stop me from doing it. Or didn't you know that if I had to, I could bring her abilities under my control? It would not be particularly easy, but I could do it."

For someone who had had so many words eariier, he seemed to have no immediate response to that. I was standing there and glaring up at him with my own fists on my hips, furious that he'd lecture me like a child, and in front of a crowd of people at that. If it hadn't been possible that Graythor was watching us I would have taken the leadership from him then and there, but knowing Graythor he probably was watching. Once we pa.s.sed through the first gate, though, he would no longer be able to watch, and that's when I would make my move. Our fearless leader absorbed my justifiable truculence with no more than a thoughtful blink of those bronze eyes, and then he had brushed it all aside.

"What you can or can't do is completely beside the point," he said in a flat-voiced growl, making the only kind of judgment his sort was capable of, "We were brought together for a purpose, and wandering around separately, getting into trouble, isn't it. From now on no one leaves this group without my permission, or the worst trouble they'll find will come from my direction. Now, let's get to the horses and back on the road."

He moved one step away and just waited, as though expecting me to jump to it as fast as I could, desperate to

keep from finding the awftu, hovering doom he'd prom- ised for disobedience. I let my eyes move down his rust- colored leather to his boots and then back up to his thick black hair, then deliberately turned to look at Su.

"We haven't had our ale yet, have we?" I remembered aloud, seeing the instant amus.e.m.e.nt in her brown eyes before she lowered her gaze to inspect the back of her left hand. "I think we'd better get to it fast, to keep the others from being impatient. I'm sure they're eager to be back on me road."

Rikkan Addis seemed to have forgotten that / was the only one who could get behind me fence to the horses, but apparently me others hadn't. They stirred where they stood and exchanged quick glances, and for the most part looked everywhere but at the man who was playing leader. In actual fact I was even more anxious than he was to take up the trail again, but considering what we had ahead of us, ten minutes wasn't likely to make that much of a differ- ence, and the man had to be taught where he stood with me. Su hesitated, not quite sure what to say, but good old Rik took care of that for her,

"You can either walk back to the horses now on your own, or get carried there over my shoulder," he stated, me words surprisingly mild in view of his previous anger. "If I'm leader of this expedition I'm leader over everyone, which includes you, girl. I don't know why the wizard wants you in on something as important as this, but if he thinks we'll need a bad-tempered, ill-mannered trouble- maker, it's my job to see that she goes with us. You have your choice, now make it."

The flat challenge hung in the air behind my left shoul- der, just about where mat stupid man stood, and everyone was silent again, waiting to see what I'd do. What I wanted to do was something cla.s.sical but tacky, like turn- ing him into a toad or making him three inches high and then doing a stomp-dance around him, but I couldn't afford to forget about Graythor and that obedience spell he'd promised to use. Challenge-answering would have to wait until we pa.s.sed through the first gate, but that didn't mean I had to put up with nonsense. Without even glanc- ing at me man I put both hands out between Su and

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myself, palms upward and fingers slightly bent, then said the proper word. When the two pewter mugs of ale appeared I handed one to a startled Su, then took the other by the grip and turned part way back to Rikkan Addis.

"At your service, master, anything you say, master, yessir, boss," I acknowledged, raising my mug to him in salute before taking a good swallow from it. The ale was delicious, dark and cold and just right for the heat of the day, and after I'd had my swallow I began leading the way out of the alley- The rest of them came after me without comment, a silence that lasted all the way back to the horses. Rikkan Addis should have been thrilled that he'd gotten his way, but from the last glimpse I'd had of his expression, I didn't think he was.

CHAPTER 3.

Beyond the town there were more fields, and beyond the fields there were stands of woods, some open gra.s.sland, one stretch of flats, and occasional solitary farms with neat rows of plantings and fenced in pastures right in the mid- dle of nothing else. The horses had been satisfied with the rest and me gra.s.s they'd found inside their fence, and moved along as strongly and evenly as they had that morning. It took at least an hour before the general silence was broken, and then only to a certain degree. Su rode out ahead again with Rikkan Addis not far behind her, Kadrim had begun a conversation with Soffann Dra, and that left Zail T'Zannis with something of a problem. He clearly wanted to talk to somebody, but Su was busy studying the road, Soffann Dra was exchanging low-voiced chatter with an absorbed, redheaded boy, and as far as our still-silent leader went, if the expression on his face meant anything he probably would have shredded anyone who dared to approach him. That left only me, but it took the curly- haired man a minute or two to decide to chance it. The way he made an effort to ease back without bringing himself to Rikkan Addis' attention showed he knew how popular anyone in my company was likely to be with our leader. Bravely and deftly he did it anyway, though, and men his black was moving beside my gray where 1 brought up the rear of our company.

"I wanted to tell you that that ale looked better than

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what we had," he offered, grinning widely with an amuse- ment he didn't seem able to hold down any longer. "I must say, though, that you giris deserved it. There wasn't anything left for us men to do."

"It was a lucky thing Su is that good with a sword," I said, unbending a little at his att.i.tude. "That was just about the worst time for something like that to happen, but kidnappers don't usually stop to make convenient appoint- ments. It also would have been easier if they hadn't been warded against spells."

"Well, they certainly had good taste when it came to picking victims," he said, his gray eyes laughing, and then a more sobering thought came to him. "What do you mean, they were warded against spells? Does that mean you couldn't use magic against them?"

"Exactly," I answered with a nod, wondering why they all seemed to know so little about magic. "If you're going into the kidnapping business, your best bet is to get some gold acc.u.mulated first, and then go to an apprentice sor- cerer or sorceress and have a warding spell put on you.

Most apprentices can't yet see gold or silver in fine enough detail to reproduce it, but warding is simple enough for just about anybody to do. And a lot of honest people, like those who deal in jewels or precious metals, pay to be warded against dishonest magic. If you can manage to look upright enough, the apprentice will pay more atten- tion to the fee than the reason you want to be warded, and you're in business."

"The kidnapping business," he said, distaste briefly wrinkling his expression. "What makes these warding spells so simple?"

"The fact that they're nothing more than invisible re- flecting surfaces," 1 said, this time wondering if I ought to set up a general lecture series. "What the speH does is put a thin, undetectable mirror bubble around the person, one specifically designed to reflect back magic, but the minor details make it hard to crack. The bubble doesn't necessar- ily have to be round, and its thickness can also vaiy.

which means no one who doesn't know its exact shape and thickness can dissolve it. In order to have power over it 73.