The Window and the Mirror

by Henry Thomas

  Oestern ale in my cup, he thought, Wat and me in the tavern. He pictured the two of them all bandaged up by the tavern wenches, clinking mugs together next to a roaring fire. The image gave him strength, as silly as it seemed, as he was slipping and clawing his way up the backside of the slope in the wilderness. He found Wat just how he had left him, sleeping on his good side underneath the overhanging rock with his back to the wall. He nudged him gently.

  “Wat. I’ve got two horses for us. You have to come now.”

  “Right. Help me.”

  It was slow going. Wat had not had time to regain any strength and twice he stopped because the pain was too great for him to keep moving. It was all that Joth could do to wait, the urgency of their escape captured in the beat of his pounding heart, and his head swiveling around at the slightest noise or hint of movement. Every fiber in his being was telling him to run, to get clear of this place lightning quick. It was hard not to simply bolt down the hill, jump on his stolen horse, be away and clear of the Dawn Tribe, and never look back. Wat wouldn’t leave me here, he thought, and I won’t let him die out here if I can help it.

  The wounded man gathered his strength and made his way to the bottom of the hill with Joth helping and guiding him to where the two horses were tied.

  “Bloody Joth, you stole a white horse! We’ll be spotted for sure now.”

  “You are a funny man, Wat. Give us your foot.” Joth laced his fingers and bent his knees, making an easy step up for Wat, who swung his leg painfully over the leather saddle, grimacing as he moved his feet around.

  “No stirrups. Bloody Dawn Tribe.”

  That would make for harder riding and slower going on account of Wat’s wound, he knew, but faster than walking.

  “You’d complain about a sunrise at dawn.”

  Wat gave him a slight grin.

  Joth had mounted his own horse, a bay with a slightly dished face and mismatched eyes that he just then noticed. They had seemed the finest mounts he’d seen when he took them from the picket. Wat caught his expression and raised his eyebrows.

  “Go on, we know you picked them out in a hurry.”

  They began their way eastward through the foothills in the misty early hours before sunrise, moving as swiftly as they could through the wild country with only the moonlight and Wat’s wound keeping them from spurring their mounts into a break neck run for the border. They rode north, to clear a great dense wood of ash and cedar as the sky was lightening. The darkness faded, giving way to a dull blue gray in the heavens. They managed a trot across the open ground at the mouth of the narrow vale they had entered, and then they turned eastward again and skirted the forest at the base of the hill that marked its northernmost edge.

  They would be easy to track, Joth knew, but they could not afford to sacrifice speed for caution with Wat’s condition already hampering their progress. His great hope was that the savages had simply let them go. Don’t be a fool, Joth, he thought as he looked behind to check Wat’s progress up the slope. He knew that was absurd. The Magistry could never allow a transgression like this to go unpunished, and the leaders of the warband that attacked Lord Uhlmet’s company had to know that there would be retaliation once word made it back to Oesteria. On the other hand, sending an army into Tribe lands would be folly as well. The savages simply would refuse to wage war. They would steal horses, ambush and trap, separate their enemies, then melt away into the mountains and forests and let the harsh seasons starve and demoralize their foes until they simply got fed up and left for home. You won’t catch me volunteering, Joth mused. Not that they would ask him what he thought about it. Joth was a simple soldier, and he knew they would order him wherever they pleased. Still, knowing that he hoped for a simple garrison post where he could ride out the end of his tour in a relatively quiet manner. He had two years left to serve in his ten-year tour, and this had been quite enough excitement and high adventure under the cursed command of Lord Uhlmet.

  Wat winced each time his mount would step or surge forward over broken ground, and every bit of the ground here was rough and ripe for stumbling horses. Joth knew they would have to rest soon, but he was determined to push onward until Wat said something, and he knew that Wat would say nothing until sunset or one of their mounts pulled up lame, so he just kept pushing his mount hard as he dared. He dozed more than once and would have slipped from his saddle if Wat had not called out to him in time.

  They were moving eastward through a narrow defile at the top of the valley when the sun broke through the clouds and bathed the entire vale in brilliant hue, sparkling with the new rain.

  Joth pulled up and looked behind him, waiting for Wat to catch up. Joth’s belly rumbled incessantly and his vision was blurred with fatigue. Joth needed sleep and a hot meal above all else. He remembered the feast days when he had first signed on to military service with the Magistry, tables piled high with meats and cheeses, breads and every condiment one could think of in every house of the town. Joth and the other youths who enlisted were given freedom of the town and treated like lords everywhere they went, given food and gifts and laden with praise. Many a merchant’s daughter and serving girl praised the lads in their own ways that week, virtue be damned. It was an historic event for the town and everyone had felt a part of something larger, as though the veil between the world of the simple and that of the Magistry lifted, and both were close and palpable. He had become a soldier of the first army of the Magistry, an elite corps of fighting men assigned to work hand in hand with the Mage Imperators on their most perilous and important tasks. Well he remembered the words of the officer. He had sung such a pretty tune about service in the army. Halfway up a hill in tribe country in the pissing rain on a dish-faced gelding was not in the song he remembered hearing.

  His father had died in the winter. Joth had fallen out with the bowyer he was apprenticed to and shamed his family by carrying on with his master’s daughter. Dierna with her blonde hair and her pale eyes always watching him, hanging about to wait for him to be done with her father’s tasks.

  He thought he loved her, but he was just a boy, and he stupidly thought that because he loved her that it would set things right somehow. But it ended in tears and a broken apprentice contract for Joth’s father to deal with. He settled the suit with the bowyer and died a fortnight later. Joth joined the army in the spring, his mother and sister collecting his home-wages and living off of them while he earned his barracks-pay and saved whatever he liked for his own fancy.

  New boots, a coat in winter, the odd flagon here and there—Joth was not prone to spending his pay on frivolous things like some of the men, preferring instead to make due with what he could and send the rest home to his mother and sister. Besides, he thought grimly, a fancy silver belt and tooled scabbard meant nothing out here. How many of the lads who flaunted their fine purchases in the barracks were dangling from ash trees or lying in hastily dug graves in this cursed country? At first it was guilt that kept him saving his pay, shame keeping him from rewarding himself with anything. They never said anything to him to suggest it, but he knew his mother and sister blamed him for the death of his father. It had been hard to arrange the apprenticeship, costly for his father, who saw an opportunity for his son to gain a better trade, perhaps a better life than the one he had been given, only to watch it all fail and end in shame. It had been too much for the man, and Joth was left feeling ashamed and brokenhearted by his own actions, feelings that amplified with guilt and grief upon his father’s death. He knew he could never make things right, but he had made sure that his mother and sister lived in comfort and ease. For him that was a great consolation.

  Sometimes he would think of Dierna, but he told no one of it—not even Wat. He would remember the first day she came to him outside of her father’s workshop asking for help with the fish weirs at the river. He was working at the baskets when suddenly her hands were on him, and then they were both falling in the s
hallows. It was clumsy at best those first few times that she came to him, but they were magic times and they grew bold in their desire for each other; bold and ultimately too careless to keep things secret. He wondered if Dierna was married now and knew she must be. He wondered if some other apprentice boy married her like he had wanted to do all those years ago. He remembered the way her shift clung to her wet form as she climbed onto the riverbank, how he could see every curve of her body…

  “Bloody wake up, Joth!” Wat was picking his way past him, scowling through the drizzle. Joth gave his head a quick shake in an effort to clear it. He was exhausted and now the fatigue was settling into his mind and playing tricks on him. Dierna would have to wait there by the river without him.

  He swept his gaze back across the way they had come, searching for any sign of pursuers entering the valley but he found nothing. The misty rain hid much from his vision, a double-edged sword that Joth was somewhat more thankful for than not. The rain was hiding them as well. He turned his mount and continued to climb the narrow trail through the pass and out of the vale. Wat was looking miserable, sitting his saddle stiffly and grimacing with pain. They were both soaked through to the bone within an hour of climbing through the pass. Pale and blue-lipped, teeth chattering, they rode their mounts determinedly eastward through the hills and short valleys without rest until the dwindling sunset shone palely through the clouds behind them and darkness began to settle in.

  “We had best stop now, Wat. I can’t go any farther.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that hours ago,” he wheezed back.

  Joth dismounted stiffly east of the hilltop in a stand of birch. He looked behind him and thought he could just make out the pass they had come through that morning in the misty distance. This was a good place to rest. If pursuers came they would see them through the pass a good day’s journey ahead of time. Joth knew no one had followed them through the pass yet, but how could he be certain that they would not slip through in the night and take them unawares? He could hardly stay awake as it was, and he knew Wat could not be relied upon to keep watch, and soon they would be unable to see the pass in any case. He wanted to keep going, but a few hours rest was needed for the horses now if they were to make it. He helped ease Wat painfully out of the saddle and propped him against the smooth trunk of a birch tree. Wat mumbled something and fell to sleep immediately. Joth knelt down and held the reins to both horses in his hands and looked back in the misty darkness toward the pass not truly seeing it, yet playing the game in his mind of where it was in the unknowable stillness. In this way he drifted into sleep within minutes of his watch.

  Four

  When he woke in the predawn, his panic spooked the horses and sent them both half rearing and tossing their heads. He had not wanted to fall asleep and now he briefly imagined it was midday and feared that if he look down the slope he would see an army on their heels. Cursing and stumbling to the treeline, Joth peered out into the darkness but saw no sign of anyone or anything. He trotted back over to Wat and touched the man’s shoulder.

  “We overslept.”

  “Help me up.”

  Wat’s horse was still jittery from getting startled. Through clenched teeth and cursing, the big man settled into his saddle with a sharp intake of breath as the horse danced about nervously.

  “Hold still,” Wat hissed pulling in his reins and cursing in pain.

  When Wat’s mount had settled, Joth mounted the dish-faced bay again and they headed down the hillside toward the glow in the east. By mid-morning Joth felt as though he had never slept at all. Twice that morning the two swung north then south to avoid what they took for settlements by the plumes of smoke they saw on the wind. They kept to the edges of the valleys and the highlands and avoided the broad flats. What they sacrificed in speed they made up for in the safety of going unnoticed. At midday Wat had to dismount and relieve himself and they took a short rest and shared some fresh water and the last of their field rations. It was not particularly satisfying, but it did quell the immediate feeling of starvation and kept the sound of Joth’s belly at bay as they trudged on. Wat was pale and feverish and starting to slump in his saddle by late afternoon. When he fell and was holding himself up weakly with one arm, Joth turned and helped him, and they were forced to stop their flight while Wat recovered. Just in the treeline Joth propped Wat up as best he could and tended to his dressing. The wound was festering where he had cauterized it, a yellowish mucous forming on the surface. He cleansed it as best he could and redressed the wound with a fresh bandage cut from inside Wat’s jack. Joth was amazed at how clean the linen was on the inside of Wat’s filthy armor. Sure, he thought, once you cut through the soiled lining it was not so bad, the stitching that kept missiles out also worked against grime. He doubted that the sour smell of stale sweat could ever be washed out, and the thought of it made him wrinkle his nose. The festering was worrying Joth, but there was nothing for it now. How close were they to the border? He wondered. They had made good speed by his reckoning, but he had no idea how quickly the ground they covered on horseback compared to marching men’s pace. Lord Uhlmet had certainly whipped them along at a horse’s pace from village to village. It had seemed that way to Joth at any rate. He knew that the land to the west of Oesteria all fell away to harborless coasts and beaches, another way by which the tribes were isolated, conducting much of their trade only with their countrymen. There was nothing to the west of here past the settlements. Just the ocean. Perhaps beyond that some islands or another land, but Joth did not know of such things. He sat there on his haunches, looking west and thinking about the tall sailing ships that traded in exotic things from far off lands, ships he had never laid eyes upon. Yet he knew ships sailed upon those same seas beyond the hills and mountains at that very moment. He wondered what life would be like in a distant land, whether the world elsewhere was like Oesteria or more akin to these hills and valleys. He wondered if he would make it away from these hills alive. There were no signs of pursuers.

  But a gnawing fear was growing in Joth’s mind, and that was the question of whether or not they were even being chased, or if they were running into a trap that was waiting for them at Rhael’s pass. His enemy was cunning. They knew the terrain, and perhaps they knew short-cuts through the passes. Perhaps the rain had covered their trail. Perhaps the natives had celebrated their victory well into the next morning and lost a day. They had made good time. Wat had only slowed them up by a few hours today. Still, they were moving much more quickly than Joth had imagined possible when he thought of Wat riding with his cracked ribs and bloody, festering stab wound.

  If indeed they had gained a day, he and Wat were in good standing to escape alive, if Wat could stay in the saddle until they made the border. Now Wat was not looking too well. Joth could hear the man’s labored wheezing almost a bowshot away. He worsens, Joth thought. Wat had gotten a chill in his bones and needed the warmth of a good fire, but building one was lunacy. Even if they could risk a fire, the last two days of rain had made that nigh impossible. Joth went to the horses and loosened their girths and inspected them. They had been ridden hard but they were sturdy, and he had chosen well that night on the outskirts of the village. He thought about it for a moment, then he slipped their headstalls down over their necks and let them graze at the clover and grasses that were growing on the hillside near the edge of the trees. He found an apple tree growing a short way in from where the horses were grazing and let them gorge themselves on the fallen fruit. The apples were small and hard and bitter, but he gorged himself as well and spent the last hour of daylight climbing and gathering the best specimens he could and threw to the horses those he could not stomach for himself. He longed for a crust of bread. He tied the horses to the apple tree and carried a few of the more select fruit back to Wat.

  “Good lad,” he wheezed as he weakly accepted it. Wat polished off three more of the withered apples before muttering “bloody awful” and closin
g his eyes. He roused himself long enough to have a sip of water at Joth’s insistence and then he was sleeping like a stone. Joth listened to his wheezing until he could stand it no more, and he moved off to the treeline and took in the fading sunlight as the sun sank low behind the mountains to the west. There was still no sign of pursuit, and it made Joth all the more uneasy. What if they were waiting ahead for them?

  He only knew one route out of these cursed valleys and it was Rhael’s Pass. It was a famous battle fought there in ancient days between his people and the Dawn Tribes named after the great Oestern general Ulno Rhael. A famed victory for Oestermen, one in which they sealed the borders of their country from the natives and drove them back over the mountains for good. Everyone knew the story, and all Oestern boys pretended to be General Rhael fighting the Dawn Tribe at their play growing up. It was from those stories that Joth knew the geography of the borderland—from the tales and from the survey, and no more.

  He had never seen a map or a globe in all his life. The education of his youth dealt directly with things of a more physical and practical nature. All he knew was the way they had come, and by all that he could reckon that was Rhael’s Pass and it lay due east of them. One more day’s ride and they would make the pass, and to think beyond that was impossible to Joth. He would get Wat to Oesteria, he swore to himself and to the first star he saw in the west as the sunlight fell away and the cold night settled in over the bedraggled pair of refugees. In the night he unfolded the horse blankets and piled them atop himself and Wat, but it did little good. By morning Joth had slept very little and Wat was burning with a fever and could barely sit upon his horse unassisted. As they climbed over the last of a series of low rises a few hours before midday, a broad vale opened before them bordered in the east by a steep impenetrable mountain wall. Joth knew this valley; he remembered it! Across the vale to the south in the distance Joth could see the jagged outcrop and the shadow of the pass.