I'd removed the heads from two arrows, and stood my pack on a boulder for a target. “When you're ready, look at the target, draw, and open the fingers on the string. Don't think, just do it.”
I watched him will himself—there was no other word to describe it—into calmness, and shoot. The arrow fell short, but only by a tiny distance. “Try again.” I said. I helped him position. This time he hit the pack. I had him shoot a dozen times. He'd done well, for the first time.
I told him so. He just nodded. “Better next time,” he said. “Thank you, Lena.”
We climbed on. I kept my bow strung; I'd seen several rabbits. The next one I saw fell to my bow. I gutted it quickly, and tied it to my pack. “When you can kill one, I'll teach you to do this, too,” I told Cillian.
Mid-afternoon, we reached another wide meadow. “I suggest we camp,” Cillian said. “We've come far enough for the first day.” I assented, gladly. He went to gather firewood; I searched for water, finding a stream coming down off the mountainside. I filled waterskins, thinking about how to cook the rabbit. We had one pot, two drinking mugs, a spoon each, and our knives. I could stew it, or I could roast it. Stewing was easier.
Cillian proved as adept at building a fire as he said he was, and good with flint and tinder, too. By late afternoon the rabbit bubbled over coals. I'd stretched out on the sparse grass, staring at the sky, wondering if we needed tents tonight. No clouds marred the blue. A gyring speck caught my eye.
“Is that a fuádain?” I asked Cillian, pointing upward at the bird. He was sitting on the other side of the fire.
“Your pronunciation is appalling,” he said drily, “but I think it is.”
“I didn't exactly have much time for language lessons,” I replied. His mockery had been light, and I couldn't find the energy to take offense. “How long have you spoken my language?”
“I began to learn when I was seven,” he said. “So, yes, I have somewhat more experience. My comment was unfair.”
Had he just apologised? Again? “I didn't take offense,” I told him. “Seven? Is that usual?”
“Not usual, no,” he said, reluctantly, I thought. “I was sent to the Ti'ach at seven; my grandfather thought it best.”
“Then you've been there...” I did the sum in my head, “twenty-six years?”
“I lived there until I was eighteen,” he corrected. “Since then, I have stayed occasionally, for differing lengths of time, but never more than a month or two.”
“Then where is home? Was home, I suppose I should say.”
He didn't reply. I sat up to check the rabbit. Another while, I decided. I didn't want it half-cooked. “It'll be ready in about half an hour,” I told Cillian. He nodded.
“Home,” he said. “I have been considering. I don't—didn't—have one.”
“Nowhere you thought of as home? I haven't lived in Tirvan for three years, but I still think of it as home.”
“No. I was welcome at any of the Ti'acha, and at many estates, but none of them were home.”
“So exile isn't such a change, for you?”
“I am used to a greater level of physical comfort,” he said, “but in some ways, you are correct.”
That silenced me. At least he won't be homesick, I thought.
We continued to climb. Half-way through the next day, we reached a place where the game trail we followed began to descend. I could see where it went, along the shoulder of the mountain and onto the next, where it began to climb again. I glanced at the sun. The trail continued eastward, roughly.
We stopped to eat. Afterwards, I gave Cillian his archery lesson. I had to touch him again, to correct his stance; he turned too much to the left, a common error for a right-handed archer. He tolerated it, but I could see that it took effort.
He shot better. “Take a few steps back, and try again,” I proposed. Again, he wasn't bad. I retrieved the arrows. “You are picking this up quickly,” I told him. “I've taught before, and it usually takes someone longer than this. I—” I started to cough, deep, racking spasms. I bent over, hands on knees, trying to catch my breath. Cillian watched me, frowning. He handed me his waterskin.
“Should we camp?” he asked, as I drank.
“No,” I said. “I'm all right. Let's keep going.”
But by late afternoon I had to give in. The coughing fits were coming more frequently. At a sheltered spot, Cillian stopped walking. “We're camping here,” he told me. I didn't argue. My heart pounded, and my head hurt.
“I haven't hunted,” I said, after I'd rested for a while. He was gathering firewood.
“We have dried meat and cheese,” he reminded me. “I think you should rest.”
“I'll be fine.”
“Lena.” He put down the wood he carried. “Are you going to always be this stubborn? Or would it help you to know that I also need to rest? I am short of breath and I have a headache. Perhaps we have climbed too fast, forgetting what Galen said. What is our hurry, after all?”
He was, annoyingly, right. “None, I suppose,” I said. “I have willow-bark; I can make enough tea for us both, if you wish.”
“Not for me,” he replied. He built the fire and lit it. I found my bag of remedies, putting a handful of shredded bark into water in the one pot and setting it at the edge of the fire. Cillian came over to me. “What medicine do you have?” he asked. “I should know, in case you are hurt, or ill.”
“Not much,” I said. “Willow-bark, anash, a salve. Some mint and ginger root. And a very small amount of poppy syrup, all Birel could get me.”
“I don't know anash.” I showed him the silvery-grey leaves, finely divided. “What is it used for?”
“A tea that helps with the pain I have when I bleed each month,” I told him. “It's also supposed to be good for the Eastern Fever, whatever that is. And if it is drunk regularly, it prevents pregnancy.”
Surprise showed on his face. “Reliably?”
“In my experience, yes. It isn't used in the north?”
“Not to my knowledge. There is mention of a similar plant in some ancient writings from Casil, but nothing known in Linrathe that I am aware of.”
“The Ti'ach had ancient writings from Casil?” I had seen a map, but books?
“Copies, of course,” he replied.
“In what language?”
“Casilan. The language of the inscription on Casilla's wall, you will recall.”
Casil e imitaran ne. I did remember. “You can read Casilan?”
“Yes. Anyone taught at a Ti'ach can, to some extent. Some of us learn it more thoroughly.”
“Can you speak it?”
“In theory. But as no one has heard it in many hundred years, how I was taught to pronounce the words may have little or no resemblance to how it should actually be spoken.”
“If we reach Casil, you might find out,” I said.
He actually smiled, a fleeting expression. “Unlikely. But a tantalizing suggestion.”
We spent two days at the camp. By the end of the second day, walking was easier, and our headaches had gone. On the first full day, Cillian had wandered around the area, picking up pebbles. “What are you doing?” I had asked.
“Do you play xache?”
“Badly. Why?”
“I am looking for enough differently coloured pebbles to use as a xache set. We will have some long evenings to pass. I thought xache might help.”
“I'm not very good,” I said. I suspected Cillian played the game well. “Promise me you won't be sarcastic about my play.”
“You can get better, if you will let me teach you. Consider it fair exchange for teaching me to use the bow.” He paused. “I take promises very seriously, Lena. I will undertake to be gentle with you, about errors, but I would prefer to leave promises to larger matters. Is that acceptable?”
“Of course,” I said. I'd used the word casually, but I was beginning to understand that almost nothing was casual with this man.
By the evening, he'd found
what he needed. The board proved a problem. We finally drew a grid on bare soil with a twig, and used that. “Xache,” Cillian said, “is a game of both tactics and strategy. Tactics are concerned with immediate actions, or those in the short term. Strategy looks at the longer goals, and at setting up the board for those goals, thinking ahead to what your moves will accomplish.”
“Casyn told me it teaches leaders to think in terms of acceptable losses,” I remembered.
“It does. Among other things. How would you start your game?”
I moved a piece; he moved one of his. I responded. “If you do that,” he said, “I can take your piece in the next move. But if you had done this—” he showed me, “then you limit my moves. Do you see?” We tested moves; I explained my thinking, he evaluated and suggested.
“You teach well,” I told him.
“And you are a good student; you see patterns. You could be a skilled player, if you choose.”
I laughed. “You want me to learn so you have someone to play against,” I teased.
He smiled, slightly. “There is some truth in that.”
When we left the meadow, we moved more slowly. I'd stopped coughing after the first rest day, but I'd learned my lesson. We were deeper into the mountains now, but from the highest vantage points, all we could see were endless ridges and folds extending ahead of us, seemingly forever. “Did any of the maps show how wide the Durrains were?” I asked Cillian, as we stood looking eastward.
“Not that I remember.” I'd asked him one or two similar questions, and I could recognize now the distant look in his eyes when he was thinking. He shook his head, looking frustrated. “I can't be sure,” he said.
Over the days, I'd come to realize how self-disciplined he was, almost to the point of asceticism. He ate sparingly, less than I thought he should, and only relaxed when his self-imposed tasks, whether building our nightly fire or practicing with the bow, were completed. I guessed he had admitted to physical strain on the second day only to encourage me to rest.
But where failure on his part irritated him; failure on mine was met by quiet patience, and usually by a different approach to the problem. This was most obvious in our xache lessons, but he also told me stories in the evenings, usually of long-past battles, and asked me what I would have done, had I been a commander. A different sort of game. I realized he had imposed a definition on our relationship, at least while in camp: he was treating me as I guessed he had his students.
He squatted, pushing aside some broken rock to clear a path of earth. With the sharp edge of one stone, he sketched a map in the soil. “If the proportions of the map were correct,” he said, “then the mountains here were shown as very wide.” He sketched them in. “But that was only one map. Another one—it was older, and I have only seen it once or twice—had them perhaps half that width. So, truthfully, Lena, I don't know.”
I looked eastward again. “These next peaks look higher,” I observed. Snow lay on the peaks and slopes. I hoped we didn't need to go that high. We followed trails made by a goat-like creature, mostly. The goat-deer, as we'd christened them, dark, horned animals with pale faces, were too large for our bows; we ate mountain hare and a fat, squirrel-like creature that lived among the rocks, and the occasional grouse. Cillian could hunt the rock squirrels now; they moved slowly, and were not afraid of us, making them easy targets. I'd taught him how to gut and skin them, too, and he did it competently. If I did fall down a mountainside and die, he had a fair chance of surviving without me.
“Shall we keep going?” he said. We began to descend, Cillian in the lead. We clambered over some boulders, and he stopped. I came up beside him. Ahead of us lay an open area, steeply sloping and covered with flat rocks about the size of my hand, piled on top of each other like the stones of a shingle beach. The trail ran, faintly, across the slope.
“I don't like the look of that,” I murmured.
“Neither do I,” he replied. He looked up. Above us the rocky side of the mountain rose in jagged pinnacles. “But I don't see a lot of choice.”
I looked down the slope. The rocks ended far below us at the edge of a valley. If we could get down there, I thought, we could walk along that edge—but then we'd have to climb back up. “What about going down?”
“Won't the rocks slide more if we go down them?”
“Yes,” I said reluctantly. “They probably will.”
I stepped forward. The rocks gave a little, slipping beneath my feet, but only slightly. I dug my heels and my stick in with every step. Slowly we moved further out onto the slope. “A bit like walking on a snowy hillside,” Cillian said from behind me.
“Mmm,” I agreed, concentrating on my footing. I kept my eyes on my feet and the trail, occasionally looking forward to gauge our progress. I stepped forward, and the rocks beneath my foot gave. I dug the walking stick in as my left leg slid down the slope. Shoving my heels down, I tried to keep my balance. Canted towards the hillside, my right knee almost touching the rocks, I came to a stop. Rocks bounced down the slope and into the valley below.
Cillian grabbed my right arm, and with his help I got myself upright again. I stood panting, waiting for my pounding heart to slow. “Thank you,” I said after a minute.
“Ready?” he asked. We began to walk again. The rocks did not slide again, and after a few minutes I regained most of my confidence.
“Lena!” I turned to see Cillian, down on his side, sliding, the rocks beneath him flowing like water. I scanned the slope. Below him, to his right, a small tree held precariously to the rock.
“On your right!” I screamed. “A tree! Try to grab it!”
He looked, saw the tree, and twisted his body, reaching out. I saw him grab the tree. It bent almost parallel with the slope, exposing a root. Cillian got his other hand on the trunk, rocks bouncing and clattering around him. The tree held.
Cillian lay on his stomach, both arms over his head. He wriggled upwards slightly, then half-turned his body, digging one heel in, edging into a half-seated, half-prone position. Holding the tree with one hand, he used the other to help push himself up the slope until he was above the tree, his legs on either side of it. Then he looked up.
“Are you all right?” I shouted.
“My left ankle is hurt,” he shouted back. “Possibly broken, but I don't believe so.”
I swore. “I'm coming down,” I shouted. I lined myself up with Cillian and the tree, then sat down, my knees bent. “Don't look up!” I called. A deep breath, and I pushed off with both hands.
A couple of seconds later I realized I should have put my gloves on: nicks and scrapes on my hands already stung. Ignoring that, I controlled my slide as best I could, conscious of Cillian, directly in my path. I splayed my body out as I slid towards him, hoping to slow my trajectory. “Behind you!” I warned him, and twisted to curl my body around his.
We both wrapped around the tree, shielding our heads as rocks bounced around us. I sat up first, hitching my way uphill to let Cillian get up. I could see him control a wince as he pushed himself back into a sitting position.
“Let me see,” I said. I edged down below him. “I have to touch you,” I warned him. I unlaced his boot, easing it off. My fingers explored his ankle. “Move it?” He did. “Not broken,” I concluded. “But it will need rest. Stay here.”
“Where would I go?”
I slid down the last part of the rockfall to the edge of the valley. There was no path, but we could walk along it. We needed to reach a spot where we could camp for several days, one close to water and preferably sheltered. “Cillian?” I called back to him. “I'm going to scout out a camp. Get your boot back on and lace it as tightly as you can, to keep the swelling down. If you can edge down to the bottom, where I am, do it. I won't be long, I hope.”
I followed the valley edge. It began to slope downward, widening into a shallow bowl. A stream trickled along one side. This would do.
Cillian had managed to manoeuvre down the slope, when I returned. “C
an you get up?” I asked.
“I lost my walking stick. I can't do it without one.” I gave him mine. He pushed himself to his feet. I grasped his upper arm to steady him.
“Lean on me,” I told him.
“I'll unbalance you.”
“And if you fall? Who's being stubborn now?”
He grimaced, but he placed one hand on my shoulder. It took a long time to reach the place I had found, and his face was white and drawn by the time we did.
“Fire first, so I can make willow-bark tea,” I told him. “Then I'll see to your ankle.” I gathered enough wood to boil water. With the pot heating, I knelt beside him. He'd taken off his boot. I could see swelling, and the beginning of discolouration. From my pack, I took the cloth I used to dry myself after washing. I tore several strips from it, and found the salve. I began to rub it in, gently.
“Lena,” Cillian said, “I would prefer to do that myself.”
I handed him the pot. “Fine. But at least be practical, and let me bind the sprain.”
He allowed it. I poured him tea, and left the pot close. “I am going to find more wood,” I told him, “and something to eat. I'll pitch the tents when I return, if we think we need them.”
I'd got used to sharing camp chores. The length of time it all took surprised me. But we ate grouse while the sky still held some light. The fire had burned to coals, but I would build it up again, before we slept.
“I trust,” I said to Cillian, as I tended the fire, “you can manage to relieve yourself, without help?” I had cut a second walking stick for him.
“I trust so, too,” he said, proving it a bit later by making his clearly painful way to privacy.
“No more tea,” he said on returning.
“You need to drink, though,” I replied. “Tea or water, but something. My mother always said it helped the body heal.”
“You did not want to be a healer, Lena?” he asked. I looked up, surprised. It was the first personal question I could remember.
“No. I need to be outdoors, moving, doing something. Healers are too constrained, and there are always people demanding attention.”
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