Fors found himself answering with the story of their capture and stay in the Plains camp and their escape from Cantrul’s tent city. By the time he had finished Arskane was already out of sight. But still Jarl made no move to let him go. Instead he was studying the patterns he traced in the dust with the tip of his long bow. Fors impatiently shifted weight from one foot to the other. But when the Star Captain spoke it was as if he followed his own thoughts.
“Now do I better understand the events of these past two days.”
He whistled high and shrill between his teeth, the sound carrying far as Fors knew.
And he was answered when out of the grass came two lithe furry bodies. Fors did not notice the black one that rubbed against Jarl-for he was rolling across the ground where the force of the other’s welcome had sent him, rolling and laughing a little hysterically as Lura’s rough tongue explored his face and her paws knocked him about with heavy tenderness.
“Yesterday Nag came back from hunting and brought her with him.” Jarl’s hand rubbed with steady strokes behind the ears of the huge cat whose black fur, long and silky and almost blue in the sun, twisted in his fingers. “There is a lump on her skull. During your fight she must have been knocked unconscious. And ever since Nag brought her in she has been trying to urge me into some task-doubtless the single-handed rescue of your person—”
Fors got to his feet while Lura wove about him, butting at him with her head and rubbing against his none too steady legs with the full force of her steel-tendoned body.
“Touching sight—”
Fors winced. He knew that tone from Jarl. It had the ability to deflate the most confident man and that speedily. With an unspoken suggestion to Lura he started down the trail after the vanished Arskane. Although he did not look back he knew that the Star Captain was following him at the easy, mile-eating pace his own feet had automatically dropped into.
Jarl did not speak again, remaining as silent as Nag, that black shadow which slipped across the land as if he were only in truth the projection of a bush in the sun. And Lura, purring loudly, kept close to Fors’ side as if she were afraid that should she return to her old outflanking ways he would disappear again.
They found Arskane’s people encamped in a meadow which was encircled on three sides by a river. The two-wheeled carts were a wooden wall around the outer edges and in the center showed the gray backs of sheep, the dun coats of ponies in rope corrals with the lines of family cooking fires running between low tents. There were only a few men there and those were fully armed. Fors suspected that he must have come through some picket line unchallenged because of the Star Captain’s companionship.