White Road

shoulder; you couldn’t run on a bellyful. “Do you have a boat?”
    “Yes, hidden over there.”
    “Good. I need your sword.” He glanced down at the smooth, egg-shaped rocks he was kneeling on. “And your shirt.”
    “I’m coming with you!”
    “No, you’re going to row out and signal the ship any way you can. You saw the direction I came from? If we don’tcome back, have Rhal send a force up the road to a little cottage over that rise, on the seaward side of the road. He can make up his mind what needs to be done once he gets there.”
    Quentis watched unhappily as Seregil buckled on the sword. “What are you going to do, my lord?”
    “Whatever I can.”
    “How many do you make it now?” Alec asked, leaning against the barred door.
    “Closer to thirty, and there are archers among them,” said Micum, peering out. Their pursuers had reined in on the road. Some dismounted and came running forward with swords drawn. They made easy targets.
    “All right, then.” Alec threw open one shutter at the other window and set an arrow to his bowstring. He took down three before the rest retreated, and two more still on horseback. A moment later, an arrow sang past his cheek and embedded itself in the wall behind him. Others followed, and Alec stepped back into cover. Picking up a fallen shaft, he looked at it closely.
    “What do you make of it?” Micum asked.
    “’Faie made, I’d say. That’s a relief of sorts,” Alec replied. “If we are captured, I’d rather it be by Ulan.” The head was chipped, but he sent it speeding back the way it had come anyway. His range was longer than they’d guessed. Another man fell. “That’s six, but not a kill.”
    Micum grinned over at Rieser. “How does it feel, fighting beside a Tírfaie?”
    Reiser hardly spared him a glance. “Necessary. They’re flanking us.”
    He was probably right. There were more missing out there than Micum could account for by the dead. The archers were apparently well supplied, for they continued for quite a while. Alec finished the last of his arrows and those he could salvage, then slammed the shutter closed and barred it again. In the midst of it all they heard a commotion in back of the house.
    “There go the horses,” said Micum, checking through the shutters.
    “Now what?” Rieser asked.
    “Attack or parley, I expect,” said Micum.
    “Yes, here comes a man holding up a white scarf,” Alec told them. “It’s a parley.”
    A moment later a man called out to them, “You in the house. We outnumber you and have no desire to kill you. Surrender now.”
    “Who are you and why should we?” Micum called back.
    “My name is Urien, captain of Ulan í Sathil’s personal guard. I speak for Ulan í Sathil of Virésse.”
    “What does this Ulan fellow want with us?” Micum drawled back, stalling for time, trying to estimate if Seregil could possibly be on the way back yet. Most likely not. “We’re just humble travelers making our way, until you lot put Bilairy’s wind up our ass.”
    “If that is so, then you should have no fear of showing yourselves.”
    “No fear?” Micum scoffed. “With more arrows around us than sprills on a hedgehog’s back? Oh, no! You’ll kill us first and make certain of us afterward.”
    “If you are innocent, then why did you run?”
    “Where I’m from, the only men who ride around in gangs are bandits and soldiers, and they can both be trouble to travelers. As you have only just proven, I might add. It’s an outrage! And what, may I ask are Aurënfaie doing gadding about the Plenimaran countryside?”
    “That’s no concern of yours, if you are what you say you are,” Urien retorted, sounding a little amused now. “You have some things that belong to the khirnari and he wants them back. Three books and a boy with blue eyes. Give those over and you’re free to go.”
    “Books!” Micum feigned disbelief. “Who in their right mind busts into the house of a—what do you call it—Keer-nair-ey, and steals
books?
Don’t tell me you mistook us for scholars, too? And boys?”
    Darkness was falling and torches were being lit.
    “Send out Seregil the Bôkthersan!” a different, slightly higher voice called out.
    “No one here by that name,” Micum called back. “Really, this is getting damned tiresome.”
    “I know that voice,” Alec whispered, looking out through the shutters to be sure. “That’s Ilar!”
    “The traitor who fancies your lover?” asked Rieser.
    Alec