Snare. Katharine Kerr
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the dominant bull.
It threw up its orange head and bellowed, slapping the ground with its tail. The hunters kicked their horses to a gallop and charged, shrieking a warcry. The browzars lashed out with striped tails, then bounded away, turning uphill. The men loosed their first volley and grabbed for second arrows while the well-trained horses sped after the fleeing prey.
Zayn loosed an arrow, missed badly, and rode hard for the main herd. Arrows arched overhead as the other men shot again. Bleeding and howling, a young female browzar fell. Zayn aimed for another, missed again, and pulled another arrow as they raced up the side of the hill. He swore under his breath – his reflexes were simply all wrong for this sort of bow. Almost directly in front of him a young bull, smarter than most, broke from the herd and headed downhill. With a curse Zayn loosed, missed, and shifted his weight in the saddle to turn his horse after it.
Down through the treacherous tall grass they raced. Zayn was hoping that the thorny brush along the stream would stop the bull and force it to stay in range. He was determined to hit at least one target for the day, and the determination got the better of his common sense. When they reached the flat, Zayn’s horse gained ground, but even from this close a distance Zayn’s arrow sailed wide. The bull gave one last leap and charged into the tangled cover. Cursing, Zayn let his horse come to a halt and swung himself off.
Shrubs rose waist-high among the nodding frond-trees in an infuriating orange and red tangle. Zayn could see the bull pushing its way through ahead of him as it struggled to reach the stream. He would have gone after it with his last two arrows, but from behind him he heard someone yell.
‘Stay right there!’ Dallador shouted. ‘Don’t go in!’
Zayn obeyed. He mounted his horse, but he let it rest while the others rode down. They surrounded him, and he could see the concern on all their faces.
‘What’s wrong?’ Zayn said.
‘Firesnakes, that’s what,’ Dallador said. ‘Don’t you remember what I told you? We’ve already made a kill. You don’t need to risk getting bitten and poisoned to make another one.’
‘Sorry. It just makes me so damn mad that I can’t hit anything with this bow.’
‘You’ll get it eventually. Come on, let’s get the kill back to camp.’
When the men left for the hunt, Ammadin had taken her crystals and walked out into the grass. Over the past few days, she’d been trying at every pass of the Riders to contact Water Woman, but so far she’d failed. On this occasion as well she heard nothing but the mysterious ocean waves that seemed to emanate from somewhere inside Long Voice. Finally she gave up, took Spirit Eyes, and scanned, sweeping outward from the camp in a spiral. Off to the east, at the very limit of the spirit’s power, she saw three figures who looked like ChaMeech, but the image was too indistinct to reveal their gender.
Ammadin did, however, find the hunting party. On one of her sweeps she saw the tiny figures of men on horseback, driving browzars along the crest of a down. All at once a bull broke free and charged downhill with one of the men riding hard after it. She recognized Zayn’s sorrel gelding.
‘Closer!’
Spirit Eyes obliged. The view shifted, and she was looking down as if from a height of some fifty feet. It was Zayn, all right, risking the horse’s legs and his own neck. By the time he reached the flat, the browzar had plunged into the brush, just under mark twelve on the crystal. Zayn started to follow, then pulled up to wait for the other men, riding more cautiously down the hill after him.
‘Go to twelve.’
In the red and gold tangle of foliage she saw the bull shoving its way through the brush. It tossed its head from side to side, raised its muzzle as if it were bellowing, and thrust with its thick shoulders. At last it splashed across the river, burst out on the other side, and rushed off into the grass. The hunters had lost it. Some yards downstream, however, something moved. Someone stood up – a Kazrak, the same older man with a black beard she’d seen before. He held a hunting bow, and he was visibly angry.
‘Long Voice,’ Ammadin said. ‘Listen for.’
Dimly she heard his voice, humming in the bone behind her left ear. Arkazo, come on, we might as well give it up.
Another Kazrak, the young man with the beaky nose, rose from his hiding place some feet away. Although he spoke a few words, his voice was too faint to understand. Apparently Spirit Eyes could see farther than Long Voice could hear. When she shifted the focus back in Zayn’s direction, she saw that he and the other men were riding away, leading a pack horse burdened with a dead browzar cow. They would be heading back to camp, most likely. She closed the vision down.
In about an hour the hunting party rode in. Ammadin hurried out to meet them and watched while they turned their horses into the herd. The younger men, carrying their saddles over one shoulder, led the pack horse with the kill back to the tents. Zayn and Dallador followed more slowly, their arms full of horse gear.
‘I need to talk with you, Zayn,’ Ammadin said. ‘I happened to scan you, and that bull you were chasing? It was leading you into an ambush. I saw your enemies on the far side of the stream.’
Zayn muttered something in Kazraki under his breath.
‘One of them is named Arkazo,’ Ammadin went on. ‘Do you know him?’
‘I don’t, but I’ve heard the name. It’s not all that common.’ Zayn paused, thinking. ‘I can’t place it, though.’ He looked at her blandly. She could smell the change in his scent, but she would have known he was lying even without her shaman’s talents – Zayn with his phenomenal memory, not remember where he’d heard a name? In front of Dallador she said nothing, but she was beginning to regret her earlier gesture, when she’d promised Zayn that she wouldn’t pry into his private affairs.
As for the sorcerer, she had been spending every available moment on working with her crystals, trying out new commands and exploring different ways of using them. Sooner or later, she knew, she would have to test her new knowledge and challenge him.
‘He was so close!’ Arkazo was scowling at the bow in his hands. ‘We had a shot at him. Why –’
‘Five other Tribesmen just happened to be close, too,’ Warkannan said.
‘They were still on top of the hill! And they would have had to dismount, and we could have been out of the underbrush and across the stream before they could come after us.’
‘You’ve forgotten that they have bows. The arrows could have crossed the stream easily enough.’
Arkazo winced and looked down at the ground.
‘Listen, Kaz,’ Warkannan softened his voice. ‘I know how much you want to avenge Tareev, but you won’t do his memory any good if you’re dead.’
Arkazo threw the bow on the ground and strode off to tend to the horses. Warkannan shook his head and turned to Soutan.
‘He’s young,’ Warkannan said in a near-whisper. ‘But he’ll learn.’
‘This is true,’ Soutan said. ‘Well, now what? If Zayn’s going to go everywhere in a pack of Tribesmen, we’re not going to have much of a chance at him.’
‘Yes, I have to agree.’ Warkannan paused, thinking, but no clever ideas occurred to him. ‘We may have to leave him be and ride on ahead. He doesn’t know about Jezro, after all, so if we reach the khan first, we can give him the slip and head back to Andjaro by a different route.’
‘Maybe, but that sounds risky to me. Risky and extremely stupid.’
‘Oh, does it? Suppose you tell me why.’
Soutan merely smirked. Warkannan took one step forward. Soutan squeaked and flinched.
‘Oh very well,’ Soutan said. ‘This Zayn, suppose he finds out about Jezro. Will he try to kill him?’
‘Mostly likely,