Page 13 of The Sorcerer's Alpha

Agasti muttered a curse.

“How close?” Marut asked.

“Closer than they should be.” The wizard looked up, mouth a grim line. “The Skopoy have sorcerers, too.”

“All right.” Marut tucked the meat back into his bag and hauled himself into the saddle. “Ride out.”

When before Marut had thought the badlands were silent, now he could hear nothing but how loudly the horse’s hooves struck the ground, resounding off the hillsides. There was no cover here and no way to hide their tracks. He kept them to deer paths when they passed through meadows, which was better than nothing, but also the obvious route to take. Once, he signaled to the others to split up going around a hill, but the landscape was so convoluted that Chandran couldn’t find his way back and had to call to them by whistling. After that, Marut kept them together.

The horses began to flag as the day went on. Marut was reluctant to press them further, knowing there was a long ride ahead. He called a halt when they came across a trickle of water seeping from a crack in the rocks. As the horses drank, he said, “Nilay, your eyes are sharpest. Climb up and tell me what you can see.”

Nilay nodded and scrambled up the hill. Marut crouched against the steep slope and rested his head on his folded arms. He had slept only a few hours before the attack on the camp. The thrill and anxiety of combat could only sustain one for so long. Lack of sleep led to carelessness and stupid mistakes. They all needed to rest.

The wizard sat down nearby, just past arm’s length of Marut, and leaned back against the hill with his eyes closed. His dark skin looked chalky with dust. Marut watched him for a moment before closing his own eyes. A hawk cried overhead. A crisp breeze stirred his hair. He hoped it would rain soon to help cover their movements.

He sat up when he heard Nilay sliding down the hill, coming down fast. They were signaling to ride out, and everyone scrambled to their feet and into their saddles.

As they rode, Nilay used hand signs to report what they had seen: twenty or thirty people on horseback, heading in their direction and riding fast. Marut mentally filled in what hand signals couldn’t say: that their pursuers were riding more quickly than they should be, as if instead of tracking a quarry they already knew their destination.

Ahead of him, the wizard began dropping pebbles from his fist, one at a time. Marut winced at even the tiny dull noise each stone made as it hit the ground. He hoped whatever the wizard was doing was worth the risk.

Near midday, Rhododendron slowed to a walk and couldn’t be urged to go any faster despite the wizard patting and whispering to her. Marut saw signs of weariness in Bunny as well, and in all the other horses when he turned to look. The horses hadn’t slept much, either. They could only ride so far without rest.

He signaled for a halt. The wizard dismounted and squatted on the ground, communing with the rocks as the rest of them watered the horses. When he rose again, he said, “We have some time. An hour or two.”

“What did you do?” Marut asked.

The wizard’s mouth twitched. “They discovered some large boulders blocking their path and will need to find another way around. They’ve decided to stop and rest.”

Marut exhaled. “Then we rest, too.”

They slept in a cleft in the hillside, all of them wrapped in blankets on the hard ground. The wizard used a stick to draw a line across the opening of the cleft, and after muttering over it for a few minutes said there was no need to post a guard. Marut was too tired to question him or argue. They would die or they wouldn’t.

He slept hard and didn’t stir until Jyoti shook his shoulder and murmured, “The wizard says we should go.” Everyone else was up and yawning, eating a little; the horses were grazing in the meadow. Marut drank some water and pissed in a corner. Then they rode out.

They went on like that the rest of the day and all through the night, riding as long as they could and stopping when they had to. At each stop, the wizard looked grimmer. “They’re gaining ground,” he said at midnight, and the next time they stopped, an hour or two before dawn, he immediately signaled to ride out again, using the hand sign he had presumably picked up from observing the rest of them.

“We can’t,” Jyoti whispered to Marut, slouched at her horse’s side. All of the horses had their heads down. They were good horses, hardworking, eager to please, but they were reaching the limits of what their bodies were capable of. They all were, horses and scouts alike.

The wizard signaled again, with a sharp motion of his hand, urgent. Marut signed his agreement and mounted.

Soon he could hear hoofbeats behind them. Whether the Skopoy knew the territory better, or whether they had sent men and horses who had slept all day in preparation of a long pursuit, or whether they were using magic, Marut didn’t know; but he knew the Skopoy were going to catch up with them.

The sky above them was shading blue and purple as dawn approached. A break in the hills revealed a thin band of red and orange along the horizon. The meadow they were crossing ended in another narrow canyon. Instead of leading her horse through the opening, Jyoti raised her fist to call for a halt. The others closed around Marut and the wizard in a half-circle and stopped there.

If they were going to mutiny, Marut wouldn’t stop them. He would deal with the wizard and let the others surrender.

“We’ll hold them here,” Jyoti said quietly. “We’ll give you time to get him away.”

“What?” Marut asked, and then his exhausted mind caught up with him and he said, “No. Jyoti—”

“We’ve all decided.” To either side of her, Ganak and Agasti nodded. “You said it yourself. It’s our duty to protect the wizard.”

“All of us together,” Marut said. So this was what they had all been doing while he slept: conspiring against him.

“We can’t ride any faster or farther,” Agasti said. “But we can fight like bears and speed you safely back to Banuri.”

Marut shook his head mutely. Twenty or thirty men against five. The odds were impossible. And they all knew it; he could see it in their eyes. His dear friends, who had ridden so far with him.