Sword by Amy Bai Page B

teacher.
    Panic and annoyance shot through her in equal parts, banishing all her weariness. She opened her mouth to shout for him, but thought better of that and instead urged Ainhearag aside quickly, pointing them into deeper cover. There they came to a halt.
    It was no doubt one of Arlen's lessons—he had ambushed her far too many times in the last year, until now her nerves twitched at every unexpected noise and shadow—but it was impossible to tell. She'd been too focused on her horse. She couldn't even remember when she'd stopped hearing Itairis's careful hooves behind them. And this was not a place to make assumptions of safety.
    Ainhearag had gone still and tense in response to her own tension. They stood, listening to the wind whisper through the leaves. Far off, birds chattered at one another, but Kyali heard none around her.
    She drew her sword.
    She didn't question why. It was an act as necessary as breath, and every nerve in her was insisting on it. As soon as its comforting weight was balanced in her hands, Ainhearag shifted to a wider, more dangerous-feeling stance and turned one white-rimmed eye back toward her rider.
    "Easy," Kyali murmured, listening hard. "Be easy."
    Far off, a branch snapped. Closer, the bushes rustled.
    She took a slow breath, willing herself calm, and pressed Ainhearag gently forward. Then the brush behind them spoke and she hissed a curse and kicked her horse into a run, not questioning that instinct either. Ainhearag bolted forward. Branches whipped into her face and eyes. Suddenly, a bow seemed like a very useful weapon.
    Behind and all around them, the woods were coming alive.
    Ainhearag launched into a full gallop and Kyali leaned forward, pressing her face to a neck wet with sweat and lively with straining, moving muscle. In their wake she could hear an increasing din of feet and hooves and shouts.
    She'd sprung something, gods help her, and there was no telling even now if it was one of Arlen's surprises, but she was dreadfully afraid it wasn't. Arlen might, in fact, be caught in it.
    Ainhearag made for the thinning edge of the deep woods, her powerful neck stretched completely out and her ears back. Kyali spared a single thought toward the possibility that they were about to run off a cliff, but it was impossible to turn or to stop: it sounded like at least fifteen men behind her, several of them mounted.
    "Gods!" she gasped as the daylight hit her full in the face. Something whined past her ear; something else struck her leather-armored shoulder with numbing force, and she understood that whoever they were, they had bows, damn it all.
    It wasn't a lesson. It was an ambush, and it was deadly.
    She heard something else then, something worse—the rattle and ring of steel being pulled from sheaths—and she set her heels into Ainhearag's sides. Allaida: It had to be a party of Allaida that had gotten well inside the Fraonir's defenses. No band of outlaws, however well-organized, would be so armed.
    " Raiders!" Kyali cried to any Fraonir who might be in earshot as they broke from the trees and Ainhearag's hooves struck rock.
    The first man came alongside. She saw the horse first and then his short sword flashed in her vision and all she saw was sky: she had flattened herself backwards without even knowing that she was going to try such a mad move. Her horse's flanks roiled under her shoulders. Her arms came up, again without her conscious direction. A jolt like a thunderbolt rattled up to her shoulders and steel sang out as his blade went flying free from his grip. He shouted and went down, then she was past him and Ainhearag was shouldering another man aside.
    Kyali sat up, saw a party ahorse breaking cover from the other side of the clearing, and felt an icy inevitability sink into her belly. She gripped her sword, thinking bleakly of Taireasa, of Devin, of everything she was to do that would, after today, have to be done by somebody else. She set her feet more firmly in the