LITMIR.BIZ

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mount than that of a tribesman. His horse was about as gaunt as its former owner, but it felt Timon’s experience and obeyed willingly as Timon gave Lazarus the command to run.

      They crossed the ridge, the shouts of the men behind them, and plunged down into the next narrow ravine, splashing through a creek that still carried a trickle of water. Timon whistled to Lazarus, signaling him to take the lead, and he fell behind again, preparing his rifle.

      After following the creek for a good quarter mile, Timon turned his mount up the slope. Lazarus climbed ahead of him, Jamie clinging like a burr to his back. The sounds of pursuit grew louder again. The horses galloped full-out along the ridge and into another dense stand of oak and underbrush. The wider Santa Clara valley lay below, a grassy expanse broken only by the occasional low hill or clump of trees.

      The tribesmen knew these hills; they preferred the protection the higher ground afforded, but Timon had no doubt that they’d follow him and Jamie onto the plain.

      He pushed the horses on to the foot of the final hill and brought them to a halt beneath a single oak at the edge of the valley. “Stay on Lazarus,” he commanded Jamie. “If we can’t stop them here, you run. Lazarus is very fast and strong. He can outrun the tribesmen’s mounts easily. You have to ride low and stay on until there’s no one left chasing you. Cross the valley to the old highway and the pass through the hills to the east. Do you understand?”

      “Yes,” she said. “But I won’t leave you.”

      “I’ve fought these kinds of men many times in the past. If they take you, your life will be slavery and degradation.” He checked his rifle again. “I didn’t come after you to see you fall to that.”

      “You shouldn’t have come,” she said, her thick, dark hair falling over her face. “You should have stayed with the others, to protect them.”

      “Get behind the tree, and be ready to run at my signal.”

      But he knew she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t abandon him because she believed she owed him her life. And so he would have to make sure that their pursuers lost their nerve before they got to the bottom of the hill.

      Crouching behind a thorny bush, Timon took aim. The first of the enemy riders crested the hill and began to descend at a breakneck pace. Timon shot the ground just ahead of the first horse, who squealed and hopped to the side, unseating his rider. Another tribesman, close behind, took a shot at Timon, but the bullet fell short. Timon returned the favor by shooting the man in the shoulder.

      After that, the rest of the world went away. Timon saw nothing but the enemy, felt nothing but the rifle in his hands. Bullets whizzed past him, some close enough to stir the air near his body. He continued to fire, aiming, as most Riders did, to wound rather than kill, scaring the horses into throwing their riders.

      It took a moment for him to realize when the tribesmen began to retreat, some on foot with their horses temporarily lost to panic and fear. A few paused to help their wounded; one man screamed threats down at Timon and shook his fist ineffectually before plodding uphill.

      Ineffectual for now, perhaps. But Timon knew that Jamie was too great a prize for the tribesmen to simply give up. They’d try again.

      Setting his rifle aside, Timon crawled backward to the base of the tree trunk. Lazarus peeked around and nickered, his ears swiveling back.

      Jamie was slumped on the ground just behind Lazarus, her wrist bent oddly, blood flowing steadily from the bullet wound in her outer thigh. Her eyes were closed. Timon dropped to his knees beside her and felt for her pulse. It was a little thready but still regular. He cursed steadily as he examined the wound. The bullet had passed in and out of muscle, and hadn’t nicked any major blood vessels. But she was still bleeding freely, and her wrist appeared to be fractured, possibly a result of her falling out of the saddle. Only the luckiest of shots could have caught her without also wounding Lazarus.

      He knew he had to stop the bleeding, bind Jamie’s wound and splint her arm. He had his medical kit and oak branches littering the ground around him, but he’d only be able to do a quick fix under the circumstances. He needed to find them a place where he could give full attention to her injuries without fear of attack.

      “Jamie,” he said, stroking her cheek. “Can you hear me?”

      She moaned softly, and her eyelids fluttered.

      “Lie very still. You’re injured, but I’m going to do what I can so we can get out of here quickly and find a better hiding place. It’s going to hurt.”

      “I...know.” She reached out with her good hand, and he gripped it gently. “Do what you have to.”

      She made barely a sound while he cut a long slit in her pants, carefully lifted her leg atop a heap of saddlebags so that the wound was above her heart and got the bleeding under control. Once the worst of it had stopped, he started a fire and boiled water to clean out the wound before bandaging it with more clean cloth and an outer covering cut from a bedroll.

      Tears ran down Jamie’s cheeks as he set her wrist, but she never flinched. He bound the wrist and lower forearm to straight, sturdy branches with additional cloth and fashioned a sling with the rest of the blanket.

      It seemed little better than butcher’s work to Timon, but at least now he could carry her on horseback without worrying that she might bleed to death.

      “You’re very brave,” he told her, “and I’ll need you to keep your courage up a little longer. We have to run before the tribesmen come after us again.”

      She nodded, her face drained of color. “I won’t...disappoint you.”

      “I know you won’t,” he said. Overwhelmed by a feeling of gratitude and tenderness, he kissed her dirt-smudged forehead. “I’ll get the other horse.”

      But the tribesman’s horse had gone lame sometime during the chase, and the best Timon could do was leave him for his previous owners to reclaim. He loaded the saddlebags on Lazarus’s back and returned to Jamie.

      “Hold on,” he said.

      He lifted her in his arms and placed her in the saddle, then hopped up behind her. She collapsed against him. He wrapped one arm around her waist, gathered up the reins in his other hand and turned Lazarus toward the valley.

       Chapter 7

      As Timon had predicted, the raiders began to follow again when he and Jamie were halfway across the valley. But Lazarus had all the heart and courage of the Riders’ specially bred horses, and he didn’t slow until they reached the hills on the opposite side. The tribesmen never had a chance.

      By the time the chase ended, Jamie was deadweight in his arms. Timon found a place in the hills just south of the pass through which the delegates and their escorts would have gone only a short while before. He laid the half-conscious Jamie down under a tree and reexamined the bandages around her thigh.

      The wound wasn’t bleeding heavily, but the pain would be excruciating, and he doubted she’d ever have experienced anything like it before. He was driving her body to move instead of rest when it had two injuries to heal.

      He propped her head on his thighs and urged her to drink from his canteen. Most of the water dribbled down her chin, but a little got into her mouth, and she opened her eyes.

      “Where are we?” she whispered.

      “Away from the tribesmen,” he said. “They won’t find us now.”

      “Thank...God,” she said. Her lips twitched. “And thank you.”

      Timon felt deeply uncomfortable with her gratitude. Protecting the Enclave delegates was, after all, his job. If he’d observed well enough in the first place, this never would have happened.

      He didn’t like owing anything to anyone, nor did he like others owing him. If she felt there was a debt

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