Players of the Game. Graeme Talboys K.

      She shrugged. He didn’t sound convinced and she certainly wasn’t. The little band of refugees had been heading north, had likely come down from the mountains, perhaps from beyond them.

      ‘If you wish,’ she said and went on up the ravine to find Alltud, and maybe some sleep as well.

       Chapter Seven

      ‘What’s eating you?’

      Jeniche looked up from where she was making a mess of packing her bedroll. She sat back on her heels.

      ‘I don’t like being treated with such contempt.’

      Alltud waited. He had long since packed up his own stuff and had even saddled his horse. This was an event. Normally, Jeniche was the one who waited whilst he stumbled around half asleep gathering his things.

      ‘Come on,’ he said, and knelt beside her. He took her roll, shook it out, and packed it for her. ‘Explain.’

      ‘Tohmarz. Trying to imply it was one of those refugees that had been watching us.’

      They both turned their heads as she spoke, looking across at the battered huddle by the smouldering fire. Some of them still slept. The others were listless. One of the children watched the remains of the fire with eyes that saw no future. Jeniche cursed under her breath. Children shouldn’t even be looking for the future, let alone discovering it may not actually be there.

      ‘You told me all this last night. Remember? During that bit when I was trying to get back to sleep.’

      She turned her gaze back to him. Most men would have flinched.

      Taking a moment, she stood and approached her horse, strapped the bedroll on behind the cantle of the saddle. ‘Not that. It’s just the way he wasn’t even trying to make it seem convincing.’

      ‘So what?’ He climbed to his feet and glanced around with a casual air to make sure no one was too close. ‘This time tomorrow, with a bit of care, we’ll be well away from them and whatever idiot plan they have.’

      Jeniche smiled, but she wasn’t sure it reached her eyes. Like the child, she was looking for a future and discovered that she, too, couldn’t see one.

      Leaving the refugees with what food they could spare, the troop mounted and, as they walked down the ravine, picking their way over the rough ground, formed up in twos. At the mouth of the ravine they turned south, the early morning sun obscured by the side of the valley on their left. Each time they trotted across the mouth of one of the ravines, the sunlight struck them. Hard light in pure air, casting shadows that slowly shortened.

      The side wall of the valley grew ever taller and the ravines grew further apart and deeper. Substantial dry water courses cut across their track, slowing their progress. The far side of the main valley was now visible as a hazy smudge on the western horizon. Vegetation on the flat valley floor was little more than low scrub and scattered, withered trees. There was no shelter worth speaking of. Yet Jeniche and Alltud knew they would have to cross it at some time if they were to get away. The ravines on their side at least gave them some hope that the far side would offer similar shelter.

      As the gullies became deeper, they offered protection to increasing amounts of vegetation. Aromatic scrub, dwarf trees, taller evergreens, grazing. Shelter, shade, pools of water in the bleached stream beds. At least the season was in favour of an escape. Had it been winter, water would be pouring down from the hills and distant mountains, funnelling into these ravines and making them dangerous. The main valley floor looked like it would become soft underfoot, if not impassable with the river in full flood.

      Alltud and Jeniche took careful note of each ravine as they passed, memorising landmarks to argue about later. By some bond they neither of them understood, they turned and looked at each other, breaking into broad grins. The day seemed less harsh.

      As the morning wore on, a gentle breeze began blowing from the south. Warm, but pleasant, it cleared away the stale odours of baked clay and stone, of drifted desert dust, and lifted the scents of wild thyme and lavender. The sky had changed as well. A milky gauze of high cloud filtered the worst of the midday sun and to the south and west the horizon had become a slate grey.

      Into the long afternoon they rode, alternating between walking and trotting. Alltud dozed in the saddle when he could; Jeniche watched the landscape and calculated distances. They would need to be under cover before dawn without working the horses too hard. To her it seemed that cutting straight across the valley would be the best course.

      She spent so much time watching the far side that it came as a surprise to see how high the valley wall beside them now was. A broken slope of loose soil and stones covered with patches of grass and small shrubs. Along the top, bushes softened the edge and prevented worse erosion than was already apparent. And provided excellent cover for anyone who might be watching them. Like that small cluster of bushes beside a jutting slab of rock.

      Still angry about Tohmarz’s reaction and just a little on edge about their plan to sneak away, she turned her horse and urged it up the slope toward the bushes. Something moved out of sight as they began to climb. Dust rose from her mount’s feet and loose stones began to clatter back down the steep incline. It was slower going than she had hoped and by the time they reached the top, there was no one to be seen.

      Behind her she heard other horses climbing the slope and turned in her saddle to see. Dust drifted away from the track and dispersed northward on the breeze. She looked back that way, surprised at how much could be seen from the top of the bank. Taking advantage of the few seconds left to her, she turned the other way and looked directly across the valley, checking for hazards and hiding places.

      There seemed to be none, but she didn’t have much time to be sure before Tohmarz, Alltud and two others appeared, urging their horses up onto the flat area at the top where she waited. Ignoring them, she turned and looked eastward, standing in her stirrups for more height.

      Tohmarz drew up alongside her. ‘I really must ask you not to do that again,’ he said.

      Jeniche was surprised at the mildness of the request, but did not take her eyes off what she could see.

      ‘Your mysterious snooper again, I suppose?’

      ‘No. That is, there was someone.’ Without moving her gaze from the horizon, she pointed to clear tracks on the ground. ‘A horse went that way just a few minutes ago. You could probably track it if you wanted. But a rider could easily hide in these broken lands.’

      She sat down, still staring intently into the distance, aware of Tohmarz and the others taking in the landscape. At first glance it seemed like a flat expanse, but it was cut through as far as the eye could see with gullies and ravines, the tops of trees showing where depressions offered shelter for all sorts of plants from the winter winds. And people. It would take them months to search. Ultimately a pointless exercise as it would be easy for someone to move about unseen in the dark.

      ‘If not your phantom watcher …?’ Tohmarz let the half-asked question tell her he had been paying attention.

      She pointed. Alltud drew up beside her and leaned across so he could squint along her arm. He straightened and the pair of them exchanged a worried glance.

      ‘Shit.’

      ‘What?’ Tohmarz sounded alarmed.

      Jeniche swapped arms so that Tohmarz could look to where she was pointing.

      ‘I don’t see… That speck? A bird?’

      ‘No.’

      They watched until their eyes began to water. Jeniche heard Tohmarz sigh just before he turned his horse and walked the few steps back to the top of the slope. He called out a series of orders and she heard the troop respond.

      ‘You two,’ he said. ‘Stay close to me.’

      With