The Widow's Wrinkles: The 13th Advocate, #3 by Jefferson Smith

Author:Jefferson Smith
Format: epub

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“Poxing highwaymen! On my road!”

Karsten opened his eyes as the world shook against his back. He tried to look around but a tight cord across his throat made him think twice. The girl’s voice was close, but he couldn’t see her. Behind him somewhere, and up higher, which wasn’t hard. He was sitting in the muck with his legs out in front and his wrists bound to the cart rails above his head, forcing him into the time-honored gesture of surrender.

“Not bloody likely,” he muttered.

It was still pissing rain which had his bindings proper soaked and they’d been tied tight, allowing him little movement—especially the one at his throat. Any attempt to turn his head only made it cut deeper, threatening his air. From what he could tell, he was lashed to the wheel of the cart. Most of what he could see was the rising slope of mud across from him, scarcely beyond his feet. To his left, he could just make out the pony in his peripheral. Something was making the beast nervous, nickering in a breathy panic and tossing her head left and right, trying to get a look back behind her.

The cart at his back shook again, and the cord bit in, choking Karsten’s air and dissolving his vision into a foam of black.

“You leave her be! You hear me?” When the shouting stopped, the bindings relaxed and he sucked in a lungful quickly.

“Whatever you’re shaking up there, stop it!” he said. “Less ye want to be facing this by yourself.”

The world shuddered a third time, less violently this time, and everything leaned a trifle toward him.

“You’re alive?” the girl said. “Where are you?”

So. She must be tied tight as well. “Down here,” he said. “Lashed to the wheel.” Judging by the way her weight shifted, the girl must be in the back of the cart, to his left. “Where’d they go?”

“The donkey’s still lying in the road. I don’t think he can get up. I can’t see the boy, but I think he’s doing something to Carlotta. She sounds terrified.”

“Nah, yer pony’s proper skittish but she’s fine. Whatever’s agitating her, it’s behind her. But he’ll be back, soon enough. Tell me what happened.”

Before the girl could begin, a low moan rose up from the mud to Karsten’s left.

“Crevus! They’s talkin’ now!” The voice was deep and oddly sloppy sounding, as though the road itself had decided to speak. Karsten could just make out the low lump of donkey, now laying on its side, half buried in the muddy road.

“Don’t fret none, Mok!” came an answering call from somewhere down the road. That would be the lad. “I tied ‘em tight. Is they moving about?”

“I can’t see ‘em, Crevus! They’s behind me!”

“Well if they got free they’d’ve killed you again, so yer still safe. Now hold yer water. I’ll just be a titch.”

“Don’t want to get killed again, Crevus! Hurt something awful last time.”

The boy called something in reply, but Karsten couldn’t make it out. He needed to know what was going on.

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