Two to Conquer by Marion Zimmer Bradley Page B

and grabbed the rein, trying to hold his own horse with one hand.
    “Hold them! In the name of all the gods, hold them! Back to the bank!” he shouted. “Keep together!”
    The surprise was the worst; his horse was used to mountain streams and fords. Warned in advance, he could perhaps have held her against this. Gripping with his knees, urging her carefully against the water that now raced up to her neck, he managed to get her back to dry land, stood grabbing the bridles of the others as they came up. One horse was down and had broken a leg; it lay kicking, screaming like a woman in the torrent, until it drowned. Bard swore, his throat tight. The poor creature had never harmed any living thing, and it had died a terrible death. Of the rider there was no sign. Another horse had gone down, and its rider, leaping off into the water, had managed to get it up, limping, and drag it back to the shore; he went down himself and floundered, half-drowned, until one of the men, leaping down the bank, grabbed him and hauled him out.
    Bard saw the last man out of the water; then cried out in awe and dismay. For once again the water lay calm and shallow before them, the peaceful, normal ford of Moray’s Mill.
    So that was what the little man had meant…
    Grimly, they took stock of their losses. The horse that had broken a leg lay motionless now, lifeless; and of his rider there was no sign whatever. Either he lay dead beneath the waters of the ford or had been swept away on the torrent and his body would surface far downstream. Another man had gotten free but his horse was lamed and useless; still a third horse had thrown his rider and gotten to shore, but the man lay senseless, his body washing up and down at the edge of the water. Bard motioned to one of his fellows to go and drag him to dry land, ran his fingers briefly across the gaping wound in the skull.
    It was likely he would never waken.
    Bard blessed whatever precognitive warning had prompted him to send only a quarter of the men into the stream. At that rate they would have lost half a dozen men, instead of two men and horses, and perhaps had more horses lamed or damaged. But he beckoned to Master Gareth and his voice was grim.
    “So this is what lay in the darkness your girl could not read!”
    He man shook his head, sighing. “I am sorry, vai dom … We are psychics, not sorcerers, and our powers are not infinite. May I venture to say in our defense that without us your men would have ridden completely unwarned into the ford?”
    ‘True,“ Bard admitted, ”but now what do we do? If the ford is spelled against us—have we sprung the trap, or will it rise again the moment we set foot within it?“
    “I cannot say, my lord. But perhaps Mirella’s Sight will tell us,” he said, beckoning her forward. He spoke in a low voice, and again the girl gazed into her starstone, finally saying in her wandering, neutral, drugged spell-voice, “I can see nothing… there is a darkness on the water…”
    Bard swore, morosely. The spell was still there against them, then. He said to Beltran, “Do you think we can take the ford now we are warned?”
    Beltran said, “Perhaps; if the men know what they must face, they are picked men and good riders, all of them. But Master Gareth, and the leroni , probably cannot pass, and certainly the one who rides on a donkey cannot…”
    Master Gareth said, “We are trained leroni , sir; we take what risks the army takes, and my daughter and my foster daughter go where I go. They are not afraid.”
    “It is not their courage I am doubting,” Bard said impatiently. “It is their skill as horsewomen. Besides, that little donkey would be drowned at the first wave. I don’t want to see any woman killed out of hand, but we will need you when battle is joined, too. And before we do anything, can you keep us from being spied on?” He gestured up impatiently at the sentry bird wheeling above them.
    “I would do what I can, sir, but I think our