Shadow's Son by Shirley Meier, S.M. Stirling and Karen Wehrstein ...

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
the city. Duff crunched under her feet, and there was little undergrowth beneath that shade; she crouched
and examined the wound in her thigh. The swelling had not gone down; the edges of the deep narrow
puncture were more puffy than ever, reddish-purple, and it leaked clear puss. Shkai'ra swallowed
experimentally and assessed herself; there was the slightest hint of fever-hum in her ears.Not
light-headed , she thought grimly.Yet . There was still some brandy in the flask; she lay on her back and
hauled the knee back to her ear so that she could pour liquor into the cut and let it stand for a moment.
The pain was much worse than the initial wound, enough to make her swear softly under her breath.
Have to do, she thought, as she re-bandaged it and tested her weight. But it would slow her, and if there
was going to be a fight it had better come in the next little while. She pulled the rear of the skirt up
between her legs and tucked it into the belt at the front, and unwrapped her weapons with an
unconscious sigh of relief. Having them out of reach made her feel considerably more naked than walking
unclothed would have. She took the sheathed sword in her left hand, the one that held the buckler by its
single central grip, and tucked the dagger into the folds of skirt that circled her waist.
Fifteen minutes, she estimated, squinting up at the flickers of morning sun that shone through the
bird-clamorous branches of the pines. That would let thefessas get enough of a lead on her, and he was
city-bred if she had ever seen such, used to pavement under his sandals. Shkai'ra had been a hunter from
the time she could walk, mostly on horseback and on the steppe, but often enough in woods. Her bare
feet made little sound on the needles. She ran stooping until she found the scuff-marks of her quarry's
passage, then upright at a steady walk.
The pinewoods gave way to terraced fields planted with grapevines and fruit trees, and she followed
cautiously through the fields as the man took to a secondary road, graveled and graded and good enough
for a main highway outside the Empire. Cautiously around a village, and then past the hedges ofAitzas
country-seats, a nerve-wracking half hour creeping through ditches while watchdogs barked and the
fessas stopped and looked, suspicious.
Into oak woods at last, in a district even more rocky and tumbled than most of the land to the west of
the great crater of Arko; slabs of porous volcanic rock reared up through the forest. The huge trees were
shaggy with moss and laced with wild grapevines thicker than her thigh, tangled with masses of lilac bush
and wild rhododendron. That forced her back onto the road, as it shrank to a rutted and overgrown
carriage-track, one that had not seen wheeled traffic in years, from the look of it.
Horses much more recently, or mules—hoofprints and dung both. Shod, but not too large, probably
riding hackneys. Shkai'ra slowed to let the man get well ahead of her, and because her leg was bad
enough that she could not do more than a hobbling limp. The sun was declining; a day's quick march, but
they had covered only about twenty kilometers.
She was sweating heavily; her ears buzzed, and her breath came far more quickly than it should. She
almost walked into the yard of the stone house at the end of the lane. Only the whisper of movement in
the air as the forest opened out warned her, and she sank to the ground behind a topiary bush gone wild
with neglect, shivering as the sweat turned cold on her skin. She could smell chimney-smoke, and a light
gleamed through the gathering dusk ahead.
Rasas gripped his five cards tighter and thrust a full copper chain into an already heavy pot, with a
poorly repressed smirk.
"Look, boy of gold," Glikasonas scolded, taking a swig of the harder gold-colored liquor he preferred