The man considered his gloved hands. “My people have been living in these lands since the dawn of time, my lord. Then in my father’s youth, the outsiders came. You mages brought down the anger of the god over all the countryside.” He glanced at me. “The mage houses and their princely allies rule us now. They take our young men to build roads and to fight, and our young women to be servants and to be shamed. For this privilege, my lord, we must be paying a tithe of our furs and meat to the mages likewise.”
Snow dusted down over us. The men watched with the caution of servants. They were five and we were two, and yet they showed no sign of being eager to attack us.
Vai spoke. “Did you know there is a man, General Camjiata, who has written a legal code that outlaws clientage? A law that says no person may own another person as property or claim another community as its possession?”
“Do you mean the Iberian Monster, my lord?” asked the senior man. Unaware of how he was twisting his hands, he had almost pulled off one of his gloves.
“You have the look of a soldier about you,” I said. “Perhaps you fought in the war twenty years ago.”
His gaze flashed to me before settling back to Vai. “We should go on, my lord. We’ll nurse the horses along and get to the next hostel. There is moonlight, and your magic, to light our way.”
“I’ll scout ahead.” In full sight of the riders I wrapped the shadows around me. They exclaimed as I vanished, and I was glad of it, because if they refused to like or trust me, then I wanted them to be scared of me.
Vai walked in front of the horses with a lamp fashioned of cold fire. The clop of horses’ hooves and the stamp of the men’s footfalls faded into winter’s silence as I ran ahead. It was so quiet that the ambush revealed itself by the heavy breathing and restless shifting of men hiding alongside the road in a ditch. There were only ten, armed with iron weapons. I trotted back to the coach.
“Wait here,” Vai said to the attendants. “By no means come forward until you hear sounds of fighting. Catherine, no killing unless we have no choice.”
“They mean to kill us!”
“Maybe so, but they are not without fair grievances and no means to gain a hearing. If we have no choice, we won’t spare them.”
I acquiesced rather than argue; I would do what I must when the time came. Sparks of cold fire bobbing along the ground gave us just enough light to creep off the road and thus up behind them. At the ditch I stalked in among them where they shivered, waiting patiently.