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Empress’s spies, in the pay of the High Court of Eagles?’
    Once more Pryn shook her head.
    ‘That’s what
you
say.’ The youngster lowered his voice. ‘But how do
we
know?’ His gappy grin remained. ‘The Liberator isn’t the most popular man in Nevférÿon. The Empress’s spies are cunning and conniving.’
    Pryn stepped onto the road. ‘
You
know I’m not a spy the same way
I
know you’re not slavers.’ What she thought was that they might be bandits; she did not want to act afraid. ‘You don’t look like slavers. I don’t look like a spy.’
    The youngster leaned even lower, till he looked at her right between his mount’s red ears. ‘While you and I both may very well have seen slavers, and so know what slavers look like, what if we here have never seen a spy …?’
    Pryn frowned. She had never seen a spy either.
    The squat one said: ‘Spies often look like other than spies. It’s one sign by which you know them.’ He moved thick fingers in the graphite-gray mane.
    The naked one with the headrag and the scars said: ‘This road runs from the Faltha mountains to port Kolhari. Which way do you go?’
    ‘There.’ Pryn pointed toward the city.
    ‘Good. Come up on my horse. We’ll take you into town.’
    Again Pryn shook her head, ‘I can get there by myself.’
    The scarred rider pulled a four-foot lance from a holder on his horse’s flank, ‘If you don’t come with us,’ he said evenly, ‘we’ll kill you. Make your choice, spy.’
    Pryn thought of bolting from them, thought of running between them, and stood.
    The rider held his lance with his elbow against his scarred side so that his forearm was at a right angle to his body. The metal point showed the hammer marks of its forging. ‘Our friend here –’ he jerked his chin toward the bearded boy – ‘has said more than he should have. You’re going into the city anyway. Ride with us. You
may
be a spy. We can’t take chances.’
    Pryn walked across the road toward his horse. ‘You don’t give me much choice.’
    The scarred man said: ‘Sit in front of me.’
    Angry and frightened, Pryn reached up to grapple the horse’s hard neck. The naked man bent. He shoved his lance back into its holder and slid his hand under Pryn’s raised thigh to tug her up, while she got one leg awkwardly before his belly. (I’ve climbed on a dragon without help!) As she slid back against him, one of his hands came around her stomach. The mare stamped dirt. The rider behind her, stomach against her, flapped reins before her. She felt him kick the horse – not to a gallop but a leisurely trot. The others, trotting, cantering, trotting again, came abreast. Pryn’s capitulation made her anger more acute. ‘Since I am being punished for what your young friend knows and almost said, at least let me know what it is. Who is this Liberator – and take your hand off my breast!’ She pushed the rider’s hand from where the dark fingers had moved.
    The squat rider laughed. ‘You want to know about Gorgik? Once he was a slave; now he’s vowed to end all slavery throughout Nèvdrÿon. Some say that someday, if not soon, he may be a minister! Myself, I knew him yearsago when he was an officer in the Child Empress’s army. One of the best, too.’ The squat man rubbed a wide, studded belt bound high on hairy ribs. ‘I fought under him – but only for a month. Then they broke up our division and sent me off with another captain. But we’re going to fight under him again – if he’ll have us. Hey, boys?’
    ‘Aye!’ came from the one boy beside her.
    The naked man put his hand lightly back on Pryn’s stomach.
    ‘Only with him a month, yes.’ The squat rider grew pensive. ‘He won’t remember me. But we loved that man, we did – every one of us under him. And slavery is an evil at least two of us know first hand.’ He laughed again and guided his horse around a branch fallen on the road. Other hooves smashed leaves. ‘That’s why we three go to