Roland knew that Baron Poll really believed his own warning: armies were hiding down on that plain, and Raj Ahten’s men had been waylaying messengers all along the roads.
“Leave me somewhere while you carry the message,” Averan begged. “The green woman is following me, not you. She’ll stay wherever you put me. Then you could come back for me.”
Baron Poll scratched his chin. Riding so close to Carris would be dangerous enough, but the child was asking him to risk his life going both directions.
Still, the girl was right to be worried for the fate of the green woman. Baron Poll’s eyes flickered over Roland, as he considered what to do. “It’s too dangerous. I won’t allow it.”
He spoke in a tone of authority, as if to end all discussion.
“First you say you won’t take me north to Heredon, now you say you won’t leave me here! Can’t I have any say in the matter!” Averan asked.
“No,” Baron Poll said reasonably. “I may be a fat old knight, but I am a lord and you’re not. We’re at war. I’m only doing what’s best for you.”
“You’re only doing what’s best for you,” Averan cried. “I don’t matter.”
“I’m only thinking about what’s best for people, not”—he waved his hand at the green woman in dismissal—“some green monster.”
“I know what’s best for me!” Averan said.
“Do you?” Baron Poll asked. “Last night you pouted because you wanted to go to Heredon. Now you’re in a fit because you want to stay here. So what’s best?”
“I can change my mind,” Averan said too loudly.
“True,” Baron Poll said, “but you won’t change mine.”
He grabbed Averan roughly by the arm and dragged her to his charger. Averan yelped, and Baron Poll slapped her across the backside.
“Damn you, girl, if you call Raj Ahten’s troops with all of your noise, I swear I’ll cut your throat before they get me, even if it’s the last thing I do.”
Baron Poll leapt up onto his charger, his great strength belying his size, and tried to pull Averan on with him.
“Wait!” Roland said. “Let her ride with me. And I’ll not have you slapping the child, or threatening to slit her throat.”
“What do you care?” Baron Poll asked. Both the Baron and the child stared at him in surprise. Roland was no knight, no warrior who could hope to best Baron Poll in a fight, yet he had spoken harshly.
“I care,” Roland said, gazing at the child. “I was thinking last night, I could petition Paldane to become her guardian, her … father.”
There was a clumsy silence as the child recognized that he spoke not just a statement, but a question. Then she lurched toward him. “Yes!” she cried.
Roland mounted up, taking Averan in the saddle before him. In moments they were thundering down the mountainside, the green woman loping behind, and as they neared the plain, Baron Poll suddenly veered his charger sideways and raced it through the trees, cutting across a spur of the mountain on a game trail. The green woman ran at their back, struggling to keep up. Roland felt amazed that she could do so at all. No human could run with such grace and ease.
The Baron no longer seemed to trust the road, and perhaps his own fear finally touched the girl, for Averan fell silent. He raced the horses down the mountainside, and Roland leaned back in his saddle, gripping Averan before him, afraid that the girth strap on his saddle might slip or break so that he’d go rolling downhill. But Baron Poll never slowed.
After several heart-stopping minutes, they found an old woodcutter’s road and raced along it for a while, then they rode the horses hard across a creek and let them leap a farmer’s fence and gallop across a pasture.
For several miles they rode this way, never trusting a road, often peering off to either side. The green woman ran just behind.
They reached a large village and raced through it, let the horses stop for rest just outside. A number of walnut trees lined the lane, the nuts just beginning to split open from their green pouches, and Averan, still huddled in her robes, looked up at them longingly. “Are we going to eat today?”
“When we reach the castle, you might get some dinner,” Baron Poll said.
“You gave me nothing more than hope for dinner last night, and now I shan’t even have that to chew on for breakfast. They’ve done with breakfast at the castle and won’t eat again until tonight. I didn’t get any food yesterday at all.”
“Well,” Baron Poll said, “all the better to help you maintain a dainty figure.”
“You should try it yourself sometime,” Averan groused. “Your horse would like you better if you did.”
The Baron shot Averan a warning glare. The child had an endowment of brawn, but Baron Poll had more than one, and he knew he could beat her soundly.
Roland thought him a hard man, to starve a child that way. “I’ll get you some walnuts,” Roland offered, and he leapt from his horse.
The green woman had been lagging behind for several moments, and now she stood, sweat pouring off her, as she gasped for air.
Baron Poll seemed to fear that the child would ride off, so he nudged his horse toward Averan, grabbed her and hefted her onto his own saddle.
Sweat drenched Roland’s horse and it breathed like a bellows. Several cottages clustered together here at the north end of the village, and there was little forage for the mounts. Sheep had eaten down the grass near the road. Roland could see no sign of the sheep now. They had probably been driven off to the castle. With little else to eat, the mount went over to a window box outside a cottage and began to chew voraciously on some white geraniums, eating as quickly as only a horse with endowments of metabolism can.
Meanwhile, Roland looked in vain for walnuts on the ground, but pigs rooted there, and they’d taken the nuts. He ended up climbing the tree to pick a few.
“I have to relieve myself,” Averan said, squirming in the saddle where Baron Poll held her firm.
“Hold it for another hour,” Baron Poll commanded her. “A girl with an endowment of brawn can hold her bladder all day.”
“I’ve been holding it since last night,” Averan apologized.
Baron Poll rolled his eyes. “Go then. There should be a privy behind the cottage.”
Averan dropped from the horse and scurried away. The green woman followed at her heels like a faithful dog.
Roland climbed into the crook of a walnut tree and began filling his pockets. He’d been at it only a minute when he glanced back down the road to the south.
Dust rose from the road in the direction they’d just come. The dust clouds were back a couple of miles, so trees and houses obscured it. Still, at the speed a force horse could race, those riders would be on them quickly.
“Riders, coming fast,” Roland warned Baron Poll. His heart hammered. If he’d not been standing in the tree, he’d not have seen them.
“What colors?”
He saw a flash of yellow. “Raj Ahten’s, they’re close on our tails.”
He leapt from the tree, landed hard enough to jar his ankles.
“Averan,” Baron Poll shouted. “Stop peeing and get over here now!”
He spun his charger and raced around the corner of the cottage, shouting and cursing. Roland leapt onto his own mount, circled the cottage, just in time to see Baron Poll kick over a weathered privy in the backyard. No one was inside.
“The damned girl ran off!” the Baron shouted.
Roland bit his lip, struggled against panic. He did not want to lose the child or see her harmed. He wanted to help her, yet he understood her fears, and applauded her desire to do what she knew was right.
Stone fences divided the land behind this cottage from the yards and gardens behind. Roland searched nervously. He saw no sign of Averan or the green woman.
“They couldn’t have gotten far,” Roland said. But he knew that it didn’t matter. Even if the girl hid nearby, he couldn’t take the time to search for her.
“Leave her!” Baron
Poll said. “The girl wanted to stay, let her stay!”
The Baron wheeled his mount, but Roland was slow to follow. He feared to leave the green woman and Averan there alone. He cared about them more than he’d dare admit.
He rose up in his saddle, searching for the child, vainly hoping to spot the green woman, as Baron Poll raced away. Moments later, he began to hear the thunder of hooves on the far side of town.
“Luck to you!” Roland called to Averan. “I’ll come back for you, daughter!” he promised. He turned and sped for Carris.
Four cottages away from Baron Poll, Averan huddled behind a lilac bush by a stone fence and watched Roland and the Baron gallop north. She had taken off the green woman’s bearskin cloak, so that now her skin blended in with the lilac bush, concealing her.
Averan clutched the green woman tight and cooed softly, to keep her from moving.
She could not explain to Roland and Baron Poll why she needed to leave. The men would never understand. But Averan had had a strange feeling growing in her since yesterday.
It had made her nervous to look at the campfire last night, and the morning sun hurt her eyes, made them burn. And this morning, when she’d knelt over the corpse of Raj Ahten’s assassin, pretending to eat, Averan had craved the taste of the man’s blood.
Now, she thought she knew what the green woman needed, probably understood it better than the green woman did herself.
She needed the Earth. She needed to be renewed by its power.
So Averan huddled with the green woman while Baron Poll cursed and Roland promised to return. Averan fought to keep tears from her eyes.
She’d been surprised that he asked to be her father, surprised and delighted. She wanted someone to take care of her, to be a friend. But right now, she had to put her own wants aside.
She dared whisper, “Come back for me then, Father, when you can.”
Moments later, twenty of Raj Ahten’s knights went racing past along the tree-lined lane, armor rattling, the hooves of their warhorses thundering on the hard road.
The green woman did not move, leaned into Averan’s embrace until the Invincibles had passed. Then she lifted her nose in the air like a hound trying to catch a scent, and asked, “Blood, yes?”
“Blood, yes,” Averan promised, glad that the green woman had recognized the scent of Raj Ahten’s soldiers. “But not now. You must rest now. I know what you need.”
Averan had seen it in a vision, she felt sure. She didn’t understand what she saw, but she felt a need driving her, a craving that went to the bone. The green woman was a creature of the Earth, and right now, she needed its embrace.
Still, Averan felt afraid to move. A morning breeze sighed through town, stirred the lilac bush. The green woman stared up at the leaves, as if in terror of this ominous force.
“It’s nothing,” Averan said. “Only the wind. Wind.”
She held up the green woman’s hand, let her feel the wind flow between her fingers. But the green woman jerked her hand back in terror.
“Wind, no!” she said. She looked about desperately, as if searching for a place to hide.
The Invincibles had been gone long enough, Averan decided. She led the green woman to a walled garden behind a cottage. The soil was deep and well tended, but the owners had fled. Before doing so, they’d dug up all of their carrots and turnips.
Averan tasted the rich soil, and approved. She found a mattock in a shed, and in a few minutes was able to dig a shallow trench.
Without any coaxing, the green woman stepped into the trench and lay down, spreading herself out—naked, luxuriating, delighted to feel the soil on her bare skin.
Averan stood over her, prepared to heap the dirt on the green woman, bury her there. But right now she felt a craving of her own, an itching. The sun shone fiercely on her neck, and when she glanced up, it hurt her eyes.
Her robe seemed too thin to protect her from its rays. She looked down at her fist where the green woman’s blood had touched her yesterday while Averan had tried to clean her after the fall.
Dark green blotches still stained her hand. The green spots had not gone away—not even when she washed them or tried to rub the skin away. Instead, the dark green blood had merely seeped down lower, into her skin. Now it looked as if she had been tattooed with ink. The blotches would likely never go away, she realized. Or maybe someday the green woman’s blood would just seep down farther into her, until it fused with her bones.
“The same blood flows through us now,” Averan said to the green woman. “I don’t even know what you are, but you and I are one.”
Having said that, Averan stripped off her own clothes and climbed into the shallow trench beside the green woman. She used her hands to pull mounds of dirt over her feet and body, to hide her skin from the sun, but she could not bury herself properly.
On a sudden inspiration, she hugged the green woman tightly and commanded the soil, “Cover me.”
The soil responded, flowing over her like water.
Averan wondered if Roland or any Invincibles would return, see the signs of their shallow grave. Even if they did, what would they do? Dig her up?
No, she realized. We’re safe. Safe from sun and fire. Safe for a little while, until nightfall.
17
BENEATH A DUSTY GARMENT
The Durkin Hills Road was a trail of dust. Erin Connal had ridden down it a couple of days ago, when last week’s rains had made the road slick at its low points. But at least then the dirt had clung to the ground, and she’d been riding alone.
Now, after only a couple of days of heat, the road south was as dry as if it were midsummer. Beyond that, it had been much traveled during the past week, and the hooves of countless animals and the wheels of thousands of wagons had churned the soil and ground it into a fine powder that rose dirty and brown all about, marking their passage. Time and again, Erin wished that she could ride off into the trees of the Dunnwood, ride parallel to the army, to get clear of the dust. But the brush beside the road was thick, the trails uneven, and she could not afford to slow her trek. Right now the army had need of haste.
She rode now to war in the vanguard of the army, near the very front, beside King Gaborn Val Orden and fat King Orwynne, a gaggle of lords, and of course all of their attendant Days.
A few dozen scouts and guards were strung out on the road ahead, yet the dust of their passage rose high in the air. Grit caught in Erin’s teeth and burned her eyes and sinuses. Grime clung to the oiled links of her armor and heavy powder settled in the folds of her clothes. Though they had ridden but half the day, she figured it would take a week’s worth of baths to ever feel clean again.
There was nothing she could do about it for now. She was only grateful that she was not riding farther behind in the ranks, for near the rear, the dust would have been unbearable.
Many warriors in Gaborn’s retinue wore helms that covered their faces, and so they merely put the visors down, affording the face and eyes some small protection from the dust. Erin envied them. She imagined that even the infernal heat inside the blasted helm would have been more bearable than the dust.
But her own helm was merely a horsewoman’s helm, a round thing with guards for ears, without even a bridge for the nose. A horse’s tail, dyed royal-blue, adorned the top.
So she rode holding a cloth to her face. From behind, the sound of hoofbeats reverberated as a rider raced along the edge of the road.
He glanced at Erin and made to pass her, when suddenly he spotted Gaborn and reined his horse in. The man’s face was a study in surprise. Erin realized that he’d been looking for the Earth King, but King Gaborn Val Orden and King Orwynne were both so dirty that one could not distinguish them from common soldiers.
“Your Highness,” the fellow implored Gaborn, “the troops in the rear beg permission to fall back. The dust is fouling the horse’s lungs.”
Erin nearly laughed. Apparently these warriors of Heredon could breathe the dust just fine. It wa
s only their horses that suffered.
“Have them fall back,” Gaborn said. “I see no reason to keep close ranks, so long as we all reach Castle Groverman by nightfall.”
“Thank you, milord,” the fellow said with a nod. Yet he did not fall back to spread the word. Instead, he rode beside Gaborn as if he would beg another boon.
“Yes?” Gaborn asked.
“Beg your pardon, milord, but since you are the Earth King, could you not do something more?”
“Would you like me to get rid of the dust altogether?” Gaborn asked, bemused.
“That would be greatly appreciated, milord,” the knight said, gratitude thick in his voice.
Gaborn laughed, but whether he laughed from mirth or laughed the fellow to scorn, Erin could not tell. “I may be the Earth King,” Gaborn said, “and I like the taste of trail dust no better than you do. But believe me, there is a limit to my powers. If I could make the dust settle, I would. Open ranks. Have every man pace his horse. Those with the quickest horses will reach Groverman first.”
The fellow studied Gaborn from head to foot. The Earth King was covered in grime. “Yes, milord,” the fellow said, and he wheeled back, calling the orders for the formation to disband.
At that point, the kings gave the horses their heads, and galloped ahead of the more common mounts. In moments, Erin was racing along and even Gaborn’s scouts, at the very front of the line, had to hurry to keep ahead of the army.
Erin stood in her stirrups, riding to the flank of the king, and let the wind clean some dust from her clothing and from her hair.
Beside her, Prince Celinor did the same. She glanced over, caught the Prince staring at her. He turned away when she noticed his scrutiny.
Erin did not have an endowment of glamour to mar her face. Fleeds was a poor land, and so by the High Queen’s decree, endowments of glamour were never given. One could not waste precious blood metal on forcibles that would enhance a woman’s beauty, not when the same ore could be put to some better use.
Still, even without an endowment of glamour, men sometimes found Erin attractive. Yet she thought it odd that Prince Celinor would gaze at her so. He had at least two endowments of glamour, and so was a fine-looking man. His hair was platinum in color, almost white, his face narrow but strong. His eyes shone like dark sapphires. He was a big man who stood roughly twenty hands tall. A handsome man, indeed, she thought, though she had no desire to bed him. For as they said in Fleeds, “His reputation follows him as flies follow filth.”
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