“I’ve never had any trouble with bandits out here,” Dregydd was saying, “and now you tell me there’s a whole pack of them waiting in ambush. It doesn’t make any sense. How the hells can you know?”
“I can know and I do know,” Aderyn said. “We’ve got to do something, or we’ll be slaughtered on the road.”
“How many of them are there?”
“At least thirty, and they seemed to be as well armed as a lord’s warband.”
“We might be able to hold them off long enough for Jill to get back from Cannobaen with some of the tieryn’s men,” Cullyn suggested.
“What?” Jill snapped. “You can’t send me away!”
Cullyn slapped her across the face so hard she staggered.
“You’ll follow orders. You’re riding to the tieryn and begging for aid. Do you hear me?”
“I do.” Jill rubbed her aching cheek. “But you’d best be alive when I ride back.”
The way Cullyn smiled, a cold twitch of his mouth, told Jill that he doubted he would be. For a moment she thought that her body had turned to water, that she was going to flow away and dissolve like one of the Wildfolk. Cullyn grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.
“You’re riding for the life of every man in this caravan. Do you understand me?”
