Read Valdemar 05 - [Vows & Honor 02] - Oathbreakers for Free Online Page A

mounted on a heavy, wild-eyed warhorse. He blocked their path until Tarma gave an elaborate countersign. Even then, he wouldn’t clear the path entirely. He left only enough room for them to ride past in single file, unless they wanted to desert the firm ground and ride on the mushy banks. And he backed off with some show of reluctance, and much induced rearing and prancing of his gelding.
    â€œScoutmaster—”
    Garth eased his horse alongside Tarma’s and whispered angrily to her:
    â€œI’d like to feed that little son of a bitch his own damned gauntlet!”
    â€œPeace,” Tarma said, “Let me handle this. Give me rear for long enough to teach him a lesson.”
    Garth passed the word; wry grins appeared and vanished in an instant, and the scout ranks opened and closed so that Beaker had point and Tarma had dropped back to tail. The scouts squeezed past the arrogant sentry, one by one, Tarma the last. She didn’t move, only stared at him for a long moment, letting Ironheart feel her ground and set her feet.
    Then she dropped her hands, and signaled the battlemare with her knees.
    Black as a nightmare in the rain, the battlesteed reared up to her full height—and stayed there, as perfectly balanced as only a Shin‘a’in trained warsteed could be. Another invisible command from Tarma, and she hopped forward on her hind hooves, forefeet lashing out at the stranger-gelding, who, not being the fool his rider was, cleared off the path and up onto the mucky shoulder. Then Ironheart settled to all four hooves again, but only for as long as it took to get past the arrogant sentry. As Tarma had figured he would, he spurred his beast down onto the path again as soon as they got by. Whatever he’d thought to do then didn’t much matter. As soon as he was right behind them and just out of range of what was normally an attack move, Tarma gave her mare a final signal that sent her leaping into the air, lashing out with her rear hooves in a wicked kick as she reached the top of her arc. Had the boy been within range of those hooves, his face would have been smashed in. As it was (as Tarma had carefully calculated), the load of mud Ironheart had picked up flicked off her heels to splatter all over him, his fancy panoply, and his considerably cowed beast.
    â€œNext time, boy,” she called back over her shoulder, as her scouts snickered, “best know whose tail it is you plan to twist, and be prepared for consequences.”
    Â 
    The edge of the camps was held by the freefighters—little clots of scum no good company would take into itself. They were one of the reasons each levy and company had its own set of sentries; politics was the other. Tarma didn’t much understand politics—scum, she knew. It had been a band of this sort of flotsam that had wiped out her Clan.
    But a sword was a sword, and Leamount was not above paying them so long as someone he trusted could keep an eye on them. That, thank the Warrior, is not Idra’s job, Tarma thought to herself, wrinkling her nose at the stench of their huddle of makeshift shelters. Unwashed bodies, rotting canvas, garbage, privy pits right in the camp—the mix was hardly savory. Even the rain couldn’t wash it out of the air. They rode past this lot (too sodden with drink or drug, or just too damn lazy to set one of their own to sentry duty) without a challenge, but with one hand on their knives and shortswords at all times. There’d been trouble with this lot before—and five were not too many for them to consider mobbing if they thought it worth their while.
    Once out of the camps, they rearranged their order. Now it was Kyra who had point, and Tarma who took tail. This side of the mountains, danger would be coming at them from the rear—Kelcrag’s scouts, sniffing around the edges of the Royalist army. All of them had taken care long ago to replace metal harness pieces with leather where