Echoes of Betrayal Read Free

snow on their sides. Which mountains, those to the west or those north of Valdaire? The pass to the north? After the blows to his head and riding in that closed wagon, he had little idea of direction. He glanced at Dattur and pointed. “The pass?”
    “Dwarfmounts. Dasksinyi,” Dattur said. “We cannot cross until spring.”
    “I don’t want to go north now,” Arvid said. “I want to kill that man and get the necklace back. And my horse.” The shaggy beasts they were on had the short plodding stride of a typical farm chunk and jolted his bruises and strained joints.
    “You think he has the necklace?”
    “I think he knows where it is,” Arvid said. “And if I’m beaten up, robbed, starved, and left to die in a cold rain because I’m running errands for the Marshal-General of Gird, then I intend to finish the job.” He rubbed his cold nose. “And I want my own Guildmaster medallion back.” That treacherous scum Mathol, the Valdaire Guildmaster, would have it locked safe away.
    “Are you sure?” Dattur asked. “You don’t act much like a thief, really. Maybe you will reform—”
    “Of course I am … well, not an ordinary thief …”
    “You’re a liar—I’ve seen that—but I’ve never seen you steal.”
    “I used to,” Arvid said. “When I was a lad; we all had to. But stealing … it’s boring, mostly. And when the Guildmaster asked me to check on some businesses we had a contract with, he found my insight into accounting most useful.” He sniffed. Was that a hint of woodsmoke? A current of air brushed his left cheek. He looked at the gnome. “Do you smell smoke?”
    “Aye,” Dattur said. He pointed. “Upslope and ahead. It’ll be woodsfolk, I don’t doubt.”
    In the north that would mean woodcutters on some lord’s estate. Here he had learned to be wary of his assumptions. “Do you know anything about them?”
    “Sly. Dirty, thieving, mischievous—” Dattur looked disapproving, not frightened.
    “My brethren,” Arvid said, grinning. “Apart from ‘dirty,’ though right now we qualify there. I wonder if they’re under the Guild, though … We could be walking into danger.”
    “I don’t know,” Dattur said. “If you help me down, stand me on a rock, I can find out more.”
    The horses had shambled to a halt; Arvid slid off, then lifted Dattur down to stand on one of the many snow-capped boulders. He himself was stiff, cold, and still very hungry. One horse snuffled hopefully at the sack of oats across the other’s withers; Arvid led them a length apart, tied Dattur’s to a small tree, and considered whether to give them a handful of oats. Might as well. It wasn’t the horses’ fault that his stomach felt glued to his backbone.
    By the time he’d untied the sack and put oats in both nose bags, Dattur had finished whatever gnomes did with the rock and hopped down. “They’re not Guild connected,” he said. “Woodsfolk.” He sniffed.
    “They have a fire and maybe a cooking pot, and we have meal, onions, and redroots.” Which would be better for being cooked in a pot. When the horses finished munching, Arvid lifted Dattur back onto his horse and mounted his own.
    The horses told him where the woodsfolk were before he could see them, ears pointing at both sides of the track. Arvid could see the drift of smoke through the trees now and smell baking bread. His mouth watered. He reined in.
    “I would share,” he said loudly. For a long moment, no one answered, then a stocky man wearing a dirty sheepskin as a crude cloak stepped out from behind the very tree Arvid had picked as most likely. He had a short bow in his hands and a wicked-looking arrow to the string.
    “You not us,” the man said in Common so accented that Arvid could barely understand.
    Arvid’s horse flicked both ears backward; Arvid glanced back and saw that another man had stepped into the trail behind them, also with a bow. In the distance, another horse whinnied; Arvid’s horse