The Hob's Bargain

hob, unconcerned. “They’re hunting a few archers and the berserker down by the other bridge.”
    â€œKith?” I asked, forgetting that he could have no way of knowing who it was.
    The hob looked at me without slackening his pace and nodded. “The one-armed man.”
    I shifted my weight forward, and Duck broke into a gallop. As we started to pass Caefawn, he reached out and grasped the gelding’s nose, pulling him to a halt. “They’ll still be there. No sense killing this lad to get there.”
    I closed my eyes briefly and nodded. When I looked up, I noticed a paving stone in the middle of the dirt path. Frowning at it, I sent Duck after the hob, who had resumed an easy jog. Scattered cobbles lay on the trail ahead, growing more numerous as we approached the King’s Highway.
    When we reached the rise before the bridge, I slowed Duck to a brisk walk to allow him to pick his way among the broken cobbles. It looked as if some giant had plowed the highway under. The earthquake hadn’t felt that bad to me.
    Caefawn slowed with me. “Good. The mountain wasn’t certain she could do this, but the bloodmagic seems to be weaker than she thought. Are you any good with the knife you wear?”
    I couldn’t pull my eyes from the damaged roadway. The mountain had done this? “My knife? No. Kith’s been teaching me, but I doubt I’d stand up against anyone with experience.”
    â€œYou’ll do,” he said. “When we get to the bridge, we’ll let your horse return to his stable, and then you and I’ll take care of the raiders.”
    That caught my attention. I looked incredulously at the top of his hood as I ran through his words again. I thought of several questions, but discarded them before they touched my tongue. “The two of us,” I said finally.
    He made a noise that could have been agreement, laughter, or both.

SIX
    T he hob made little noise threading his way through the trees. I tried to imitate him, but the thin yearling growths of willow snagged at my clothing and rustled as I moved past. Not that I couldn’t move quietly in the woods, but I did it by avoiding dry leaves and dense growth like the stuff we were currently wading through.
    I was so busy grumbling to myself that when Caefawn dropped to hands and knees, I almost tripped over him. I crouched and followed the motion of his chin to see a small group of raiders talking among themselves not much over a stone’s throw away.
    They were using the garbled language Wandel called the patois, so I couldn’t tell what they were saying. If they’d been quieter, they would have heard me scuttling through the leaves.
    The hob drew a hollow reed from a pocket of his cloak and slipped a dart made from a porcupine quill into the reed. Placing the tube against his lips, he blew, propelling the dart toward the raiders. I lost sight of it as it traveled through the air, but one of the men jumped and rubbed his thigh. Battle-roused, the others dropped low and looked for their unseen foe.
    I held my breath and tried not to rustle.
    The man who’d jumped first shook his head, laughing a little. “Just a bug,” he said in the king’s tongue.
    The others relaxed—so did I. Then the man hit by the dart collapsed in the grass.
    Eight of the men remaining held their weapons at the ready and crouched, each looking in a different direction. Both the hob and I held still. The ninth man dropped to his knees next to the hob’s victim. From the relief on his face, I could tell the fallen man wasn’t dead.
    After we’d crouched there long enough for my feet to fall asleep, the raiders relaxed.
    â€œMust have gone,” said one, a big man with graying brown hair who seemed to be their leader.
    â€œOr it really was a bug,” commented another.
    â€œWhat do you suppose it was?” asked the man who still crouched on the ground.
    The leader shook his head. “How should I know? We’ve got people what disappear, leaving behind nothing but blood and weaponry. We’ve got horses lame from bug bites nastier’an anything I’ve ever seen—not even when we worked the swamps a couple of years back. Food goes foul too fast, and something’s been robbing our supplies and scattering them. Now there’s some freaking berserker lurking in the woods. Maybe the same bugs what got the horses got Henwit, too. I don’t