“At night, brigands don’t care if you are a hubite or a willot,” Quint said.
“You don’t look like you could protect anyone,” Amaria said.
Quint shook his head. “I’m a Level 3. I won’t admit I’m proficient at all the strings I’ve learned, but I know enough to make a few robbers think twice about attacking me. Are you proficient enough to be confident in a fight?”
Quint almost winced when he said that. He might have laid out a challenge Amaria would feel she’d have to take.
If she hadn’t readily agreed to follow his route, Quint might have suspected she was part of a plan to attack him, but she wasn’t reacting the way he would have expected.
Amaria held out her hand. “Give me your map. I don’t care what Father asked. I’m not going to travel another step with you. Promise you’ll find me when you get to the camp.”
Quint chuckled. “I can do that as long as you remember that splitting up was your idea.”
“Do you think my memory is that faulty?” Amaria said with eyes flashing.
“Not at all,” Quint said, handing over the map he memorized. “I’ll be using the same route.”
“Then go ahead of me. I don’t want you following.”
Quint moved ahead and took off at a gallop to get some distance, but he hid until she had passed him. He could not be honorable and have her proceed behind him.
Chapter Fourtee
n
Two days later, Quint followed Amaria’s tracks on the dirt roads that Pozella suggested. One of her mount’s horseshoes had an end missing. Better roads were more dangerous, but he still worried about Amaria.
After a quick lunch at a roadside stop in the middle of an expanse of woods, Quint stopped at a crossroads. The server at the stop said a solitary woman had been at the same stop less than two hours previous. Amaria was to go straight ahead, but there was a cluster of recent horse tracks, and Quint sighed. He hadn’t read tracks since he worked for his father and played with his friends back in the village.
It looked like Amaria had been stopped and led in a different direction. After he followed the tracks, he could identify three horses and Amaria’s.
He looked around the woods to make sure he wasn’t being followed and continued until a track showed all four horses moving east. Quint rode along the track until he couldn’t be seen from the road and stopped.
He heard nothing besides forest sounds: No horses, no talking. He continued until a horse neighed to his left, followed by another. Quint dismounted and found a small clearing to tie his horse. He reviewed his spell list and cast two shield spells to calm his nerves. The weakness spell was still his best alternative. He was tempted to cast a portent but didn’t have the nerve.
The forest wasn’t thick enough to impede his progress toward the horses in a straight line off the track. In about one hundred yards, he stopped at the edge of a meadow. A stream curved into the meadow, closer to a log cabin, and then out again.
Four horses were tied underneath a lean-to away from the stream. A tiny curl of smoke wound into the sky from a low chimney. Quint didn’t hear any screaming as he continued to observe the scene, seeking out the best way to approach the cabin unobserved.
He moved toward the stream and saw the back of the cabin didn’t even have a window. Quint stepped into the stream and crouched down, following its course to the back of the cabin before running through the grass to the wall. The logs were in terrible shape and there were gaps in between. He couldn’t see through the chinks, but he could hear what was said.
“He will follow you, right?”
“I told him not to,” Amaria said. “Quinto Tirolo is an idiot. Of course, he said he would follow me, but Tirolo wouldn’t know how to find his way out of headquarters if he wasn’t shown.”
“So, we won’t be able to complete our job. Is that what you are saying?” a man’s voice said.
“He will follow my horse,” Amaria said. “He could be out there now, listening to us.”
The men laughed. “No one knows you are here, then?”
“Of course not. I didn’t know anything about this,” Amaria said. “Is this my father’s doing?”
Quint heard laughter.
“It doesn’t matter who hired us. A pretty young thing like you disappearing in the big bad forest. That means we can do whatever we want with you.”
“No! No!” Amaria said. “Stay away from me!”
Quint heard struggling. “You’ll pay for this,” Amaria said.
“Where are you going to go? You are all trussed up like the holiday goose, little girl.”
Quint put his back against the cabin wall and took deep breaths. In a sense, Amaria was part of this, and she was about to pay an awful price. He took another deep breath and thought of the strings he would use before creeping to the front door.
He stepped on the cabin’s porch, but a creaking board destroyed his stealth. He wove his tendrils into a weakness string and kicked the door open, except his kick didn’t open the door.
Quint pulled down on the latch, and the door swung open. Three angry thugs stared at him. One had his hand on Amaria’s shoulder as Quint flooded the room with weakness.
Just like during the invaders of the camp, one of the men still stood. He had an evil grin on his face.
“You showed up after all. She didn’t think you had it in you, and I wouldn’t have thought a hubite could muster that much ability, either.” He looked down at his sleeping companions.
The thug began to weave a string and tossed a string against Quint’s shield. The string died in a cloud of sparkles.
