At first many of the company looked about, especially up at the slow, milk-white waterfall far overhead to the left, water laden with pulverized rock crashing down, to be filtered by the land before emerging again as the sweet, slow rivers they had grown up with. It was odd not to be riding, but they were young and strong, eager to prove that a stroll up a mountain was easier than a charge across the plains.
The trail ran with trickles where it wasn’t deep mud. Shoots of ferns thrust up on both sides, and the nubs that would be wildflowers poked up from the soil on the sunny sides of the mountain slopes. Slowly it became a relief to plunge downhill into still-sheltered gorges and ravines, where snow still extended in long white fingers toward the rushing water below.
Gradually the climb became toilsome, their packs heavier. Connar forced himself to keep a brisk pace, until the westering sun hiding behind the bluffs deepened the shadows to danger on an already slippery path.
No one said much when at last the signal to halt was passed down, but Quill was aware of the easing shoulders and long breaths of relief as they emerged onto a clearing shaded by enfolding crags. Connar climbed a little ways up farther, satisfied himself that any fire they made couldn’t be seen from the plans below, and gave permission.
Many, with furtive looks, pulled off boots and rubbed tender feet.
Quill unslung his pack onto a rock and helped to set up a picket for the ponies, aware of the warmth of muscles he’d spent an entire year strengthening on his previous climb. He was not the least tired, but said nothing as mutters and whispers here and there indicated what he’d experienced, painfully, and would have warned them if they’d listened: they were unused to walking long distances. A Rider could be as strong as a tree—except for the bottoms of his feet, which were primarily used to lock down in stirrups.
They enjoyed a balmy night, rising in the pale blue of impending dawn. Men swung their arms and tried to stamp the stiffness out, calves cramping. Some wore the inward looks of suppressed discomfort, gazes cast downward as their captains—after a low-voiced conference at the far end of the clearing—roused them for drill. Blisters, Quill suspected, would only worsen.
The eddies of cooking food mitigated the discomfort. Ghost, used to those winter games in Halivayir, had seen to it they brought baskets of eggs. These wouldn’t last, but they would get them off to a good start; after a heartening breakfast of shirred eggs and pan biscuits, they set out once more at a brisk pace.
This day was more grueling. The sun was merciless where it shone, baking them in their heavy layers. Many stripped off their coats and threw those over the ponies’ backs—catching sour looks from the runners in charge of the animals, who had carefully worked out how much each animal would carry without slowing its pace.
Several men who had grown up along riversides, going barefoot for long seasons, took off boots and stockings entirely to walk barefoot in the mud. More joined them as they made their way up a north-facing slope, until the sun began to hide behind a stately sailing of patchy clouds that, as they accumulated, darkened to a heavy gray.
When the long line rounded the slope and entered shadow, quite suddenly the air chilled. Snow appeared again in crevasses and sheltered gorges below which unseen water rushed and thundered. When they encountered rocks and ice, back on came the boots, their owners running hastily to catch up, breathing like bellows as they resumed their place in the line.
They had slowed that hard pace by the time Connar, invisible to Quill at the front of the long snaking line, at last called a halt. A slanting storm battered them with sleet. They crowded against a hillside under overhangs of rock and twisted trees. That night it was a cold meal, and what sleep they could get sitting back to back on boulders as water rushed down the trail. Quill fell asleep, aware of the soft sound of a whetstone as Jethren’s first runner honed a thin-bladed knife.
Nobody changed their clothes. When the light lifted the next morning, they could see their breath. More than one reflective gaze was cast up the trail to where the mountain vanished under low clouds.
Quill knew they had yet to see the worst.
The only relief from mud was an occasional scattering of bright yellow aspen leaves that had somehow survived through the months of winter, and lay on the trail in a dappling of brightness over the unending mud, slush, and snow.
The steady tread of foot and hoof was broken now and then by the stamp of feet to shake loose thick cakings of muddy snow. Colonies of aspen stretched upward, broken by ancient, wind-gnarled willows and poplars, the orange leaves of the latter scattered here and there among those yellow aspen leaves, a trail of bright gold obscured by the melt.
That first week, they drilled once a day, either on rising or if they’d had to shelter in miserable conditions as they had their second night, somewhere along the trail. Connar led each drill with a grim determination that silenced outward complaint, though Quill—who had endured a year in these mountains—observed the lowered gazes and set mouths of ferocious moods.
Jethren’s men stood apart, in precise rows. At first they finished drill with sparring; Quill was distracted by Jethren’s first runner, a thin pale-haired figure who displayed brutal strength, grinning in a rictus as he slammed his opponent down and wrenched limbs.
Quill helped repack the gear each day as they consumed their supplies, distributing the weight evenly among the ponies.
Eight days in, Quill overheard that young runner of Jethren’s muttering to a companion, “When we halt next I’m going to rip the darn-knots out of these shit socks.”
“And have your blisters rubbing right on the soles of your boots?” his companion retorted with no sympathy. “Turn ‘em over, and wear the heel side up top, that’s my advice.”
Quill, from ahead, turned back to say, “Don’t do that. They’ll slip down under your heel and torment you more.”
The redheaded runner cast him an ugly look, as if everything were his fault, and at their brief halt for a meal, Quill glimpsed him pulling off his boots, wincing at the bloody blisters over his toes and the sides of his feet, and turning one sock so the heel bunched over his instep.
Quill knew how that was going to go—and as they started again, he spotted the young man muttering increasing curses under his breath as he had to stop every twenty paces or so, insert his fingers into his boot and yank the sock up again.
When they stopped that night, as usual, Jethren’s men watched Stick’s and Ghost’s men for signs of weakness, and the other way about. When Stick Tyavayir walked up to their gray-haired medic, who had kept pace, more than half the rest joined in twos and threes until there was quite a line.
While dispensing salve and bandages, the medic warned each of them, from the young, sullen runner to the captains, to dip their socks in the purified bucket.
“Will they dry?” Stick Tyavayir asked doubtfully.
Everyone was listening. Quill, sitting apart from the rest with his freshly grilled fish, wondered if it took their captains admitting to normal human pain before the rest would dare.
The medic put his fists on his hips, and glared at Quill. “You’re the only one with experience. Will they?” His voice rasped with unhidden exasperation.
Quill understood in that moment that the medic had seen what Quill had—but was misinterpreting his silence.
“Not unless you have a firestick to dry them over,” Quill said, and all eyes turned his way. “I didn’t, so I hooked ‘em through my belt when I walked. Changed my socks every night.”
“I’m already wearing all mine,” someone protested.
That cause a brief, bitter spurt of laughter, as those who had firesticks looked appreciatively at their fires, which they had been building into a circle in order to share and magnify the heat.
The medic warned, “It’s only going to get colder. So preserve those sticks, and use the salve I passed out.”
“How cold?” Stick asked, turning to Quill as Connar watched from the other side of the clearing.
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Quill said, “I don’t know how to measure, except by externals. The sound of the snow squeaking underfoot changes. At its coldest the sky is so intense a cobalt you feel you’re falling into it. The shadows on the snow change from the color of slate to a blue close to violet. The cold is so much colder than any cold you’ve ever felt that it burns.”
“Burns?” someone repeated, eyebrow cocked skeptically.
“Any skin you leave exposed frostburns, not over time as happens if you’re not careful in our winters. It’s fast. Almost instant. Then there’s snow blindness, unless you wrap your face to let in as little glare as possible. Also, your nose hair and eyelashes freeze from your own breath. And you have to breathe slowly, or your lungs feel like they’re on fire.”
A man muttered, “That’s what’s coming ahead?”
Quill said, “I hope not. That was winter on Skytalon. Spring, even summer at times, were more like winters at home. But every so often there was a day like that. You can’t predict them.”
A brooding silence met that, then the rest broke into muttered conversations.
Connar said nothing. He’d already revised his assumption that royal runners—or this royal runner, who had endured long rides, and who had swooped out of nowhere and dropped those assassins with only a couple of little knives—could not endure what his warriors could. A stupid assumption, which he knew arose out of that old sense of competition, to prove he was good enough. Better.
“We have a target,” he reminded them.
His mood lightened at the unthinking obedience as everyone picked up their gear and formed into lines. The competition was over. He was where he wanted to be, that was what truly mattered.
From then on, especially as the climbing got slower, and only Quill seemed to finish the day much as he’d begun it, there were no more remarks about the cossetted royal runners.
They walked into fog a week later. The icy vapors seeped into everything, rendering them damp and miserable. Four and a half days they spent enduring the thick, swirling mists, sometimes unable to see the man in front of them except as a silhouette. Only the ponies seemed undisturbed, though they moved much slower. Finally the line emerged at last above the clouds into pale sunlight, which glared brightly on the soft blanket extending westward to the horizon.
Everything around them had changed. Gone were the occasional antlered beasts peering at them from crags, and leaping up and down the rocks. Gone also were the familiar trees, replaced by conifers stretching to the intensely blue sky.
Three days into their climb above the fog, the ponies had slowed to a stop, snorting and finally balking altogether.
“They can’t breathe under these loads,” the runner in charge stated to Connar. “Time to let them go.”
They’d all known that this time was coming, but hearing the words and experiencing what they meant was profoundly different.
Silently the runners helped unload the animals; at last all were free but one, and began to nose their way back down the ice-crusted trail, some traveling in a herd, and others seeking a new herd. They didn’t give a thought to the humans they left behind, who stood staring at the gear piled on the slushy ground.
Quill watched from the side, resigning himself to what was to come. The company was really two companies, Jethren’s men competing against the others, each side trying to prove, without actually saying it, that they were tougher.
As they eyed one another, no one moving, the medic slowly unloaded the last pony, set the medical supplies on a rock, then replaced them with his bedroll and personal gear.
Then he led the pony up to Connar. “I told you I didn’t think I could make it. This is as high as I can go, so I might as walk back down with Twitchears here. I’ve enough travel bread to make it, I think, and I have my own firestick. Your runners all know how to set a limb, how to bandage. You all know to use the salve. I suggest you stop as often as you can to breathe.”
When Connar didn’t speak, the medic turned his scrawny shoulder and started down the trail, leading the small pony.
Connar flicked his hard gaze to the three captains. “Divide up the rest of our stores.”
Quill bent down to heft one of the packs of medical supplies. He slung it around his shoulder as others began to move.
When everything had been shouldered, Connar turned toward the trail, blinking up at Mt. Skytalon’s peak, which didn’t look much closer than it ever had. “Let’s move,” he said.
TWENTY-SIX
From the open door leading to Halivayir Castle’s stableyard, Leaf Dorthad heard the approach of a quick heel-to-toe step. A familiar step, but not one she heard every day. The breathing was quick, higher in tone, a female, tall—
“Neit?” she asked, wondering.
“Leaf!” The footsteps stopped. “They told me you woke up blind. You got your eyes back?”
Leaf’s hand flattened in negation. “Only a little on the extreme right. Mostly shifting lights. And of course if I try to look that way, it shifts with me. I was turning around in circles until I figured it out.” Leaf snorted a laugh.
Neit looked at her fondly. Leaf had never been what anyone called tight—those goggly-round eyes protruding from a round head, and round cheeks, stuck atop a body that never seemed to get any shape no matter how much she ate. But she’d always been a fine rider, and nobody their age shot better: Neit was glad to see the wink of gold on Leaf’s robe, from her wins that first year girls were allowed at the royal city Victory Day games.
Neit grabbed Leaf’s skinny form in a massive hug, suspecting that Leaf didn’t even know the medals were on her robe, if she couldn’t see ‘em. What it meant was, the Halivayir people were taking good care of her.
As they should. Leaf had always taken good care of them, from the time she left the border Riders at age fourteen to take care of that crusty old grand jarlan, a job nobody else had been willing to undertake.
“When I heard you woke out of that coma, I wanted to come right away,” Neit said, setting Leaf down again. “But I’ve been riding my ass off, so much has happened, and of course the rankers all have to write a lot of letters about it. Well, better than being cooped up, I always say. Except in a blizzard.”
“What brings you here now?” Leaf asked, leading her to the side chamber where the old jarlan had received guests. Leaf knew the room by the smell of hemp. It had become their basket-making center, but it still had good cushions, and the firestick in the fireplace kept it warm.
“Riding straight down the river on my way to Ku Halir, then either the royal city or back to Nevree. I was in Larkadhe. Took the east road. Stopped in Farendavan. You know the gunvaer always awards a thumping bonus to anyone bringing letters from her nephew to the Chief Weaver.”
“I met Andas a couple years ago,” Leaf said, her gaze vague in a way that Neit found disturbing only because it was so unlike Leaf, whose gaze had been quick and bright. She’d been able to correctly name a bird on the horizon, part of why she’d been such an excellent shot.
But this was Leaf now, Neit reminded herself, as Leaf went on, “Brother Farendavan asked his Fath connections to take Andas on a perimeter ride that one summer, before the trouble. They stopped here before turning west.” Leaf’s chin lifted, and she said, “Oh, good, Lnand is bringing fresh biscuits.”
Neit glanced around the empty room, startled. Was this another of those weird ghost things, like Lineas after the Chalk Hills disaster? But then she heard the approach of footsteps, bringing the warm aroma of rye biscuits just out of the oven.
A maidservant almost as tall as Neit, and as muscular, hefted a tray full of good things to eat and drink. She set this down on the scarred table at Leaf’s right. “Cook says, you’re to make a good showing, or she won’t get up apple-layer tarts anymore. Steep on the right, fizz on the left.”
“You’ve got berry-fizz?” Neit asked, reaching.
Lnand smacked her hand away. “Jarlan first,” she scolded. “She needs to put some flesh ba
ck on.”
“I’m not a jarlan,” Leaf sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that. If they do appoint someone, they won’t like hearing that.”
“You will be the next jarlan,” Lnand stated, flinging up the back of her hand to the idea of anyone else. “That gunvaer hasn’t forgotten what you did. She won’t stab you in the back, putting some woman over you, leaving you in that nasty cottage. You’ll see.”
“I like my cottage. It’s quiet,” Leaf said—but under her breath after Lnand had marched virtuously out.
Neit watched Leaf’s hands drift over the tray, checking where everything was, then efficiently fill her plate. After that she poured out two cups of the deep purple fizz, not spilling a drop.
“Help yourself,” Leaf said. “Tell me how Andas is doing. Such a sunny boy.”
“He’s gonna be a looker, like his ma,” Neit stated judiciously. “Too early to tell if he’ll run for boys or girls or both, but one thing for sure, they’ll all be after him. And yes, he’s still sunny. No strut, though you’d expect some of anybody with four, no six, parents, if you count his ma in the royal city, and the king, who they told me writes once a week, always begging him to come visit. But that tough old Ma Farendavan won’t let him a step past the river bend. Anyway, all six of ‘em in their various ways all slathering him with butter, you’d think it would spoil him rotten.”
Leaf smiled. “Ma Farendavan is too strict for that, all the Faths say. I expect Uncle Brother would spoil him if he could. Tialan Fath, too. I used to ride with her. She’s got a good heart, and I hear she’s a good ma for that pack of brats. So’s Hanred,” she finished, naming Brother Farendavan’s favorite of ten years.
“Add in Young Miller, Tialan’s pillow-jig, and you have it,” Neit said with satisfaction. “The gunvaer’s reward is good—it buys me a prime weekend at the Shield whenever I hit the royal city—but truth is, I like stopping there. There’s always something fun going on, and even that old crabapple Ma Farendavan cracks a smile once a year.”
Time of Daughters II Page 41
