by Robin Hobb
My food had run out and I’d stopped to see what I could buy. The inhabitants of two other houses had already turned me away. They had little enough for themselves and no use for my coins. The irony was that I’d discovered, too late, that I was not as poor as I’d thought. When I repacked my panniers as I left Franner’s Bend, I discovered a little yellow purse tucked in among my shirts. When Yaril had slipped it in, I didn’t know. It contained fifteen hectors, a very substantial sum coming from a young woman. I resolved to use it well, and to pay it back to her when we were reunited. The extra money could not restore my battered self-respect, but it did shore up my sagging confidence. I invested some of my windfall in a battered draft saddle with a tree that fit Clove’s back and a seat that didn’t insult my own. After several fruitless efforts, I admitted that Sirlofty’s bridle and bit would never adjust to Clove. I traded them away for a bridle that fit my plug horse, some straps to adapt my cavalla panniers, and a couple of heavy blankets in case I had to sleep outside. In the market, I stocked my panniers with hard bread, smoked meat, raisins, tea, and charily, a Plains food of meat and fruit ground together into a sort of sausage bound with sweetened suet. I bought tools for rough travel: a small hatchet, sulfur matches dipped in wax, and some strips of leather to make a sling. I wanted a firearm, but that was beyond the reach of my coins. The sword I bought was not well balanced and the blade was pitted from poor care. It was better than nothing. When I rode away from Franner’s Bend, I felt I was as well supplied for the road as a man of my means could be.
In return, the road offered me next to nothing. Water was not a problem while my trail followed the river. Heat, flies, and boredom were my chief irritations by day, cold and mosquitoes by night. Clove ambled along.
For my first day’s travel from Franner’s Bend, the road was good. I passed several small villages huddled on the riverbank. They seemed prosperous, feeding off both the river and the road trade. They were older than the explosive growth of town around Franner’s Bend, but in some ways they still exuded the rough, raw aspect of a frontier settlement. All the buildings were constructed from river offerings: stone rounded by the passage of water, mortar speckled with the tiny pebbles one always found in the river sand, and an occasional embellishment of wood. There was little real timber on the plains or plateaus, but rafts of immense spond logs from the wilderness passed by on the river. Spond timber was far too dear for these townspeople to afford; the wooden parts of their houses came from river driftwood largesse or salvage from broken log rafts.
Despite their humble roots, these settlements were growing into organized towns. The road between the towns was better maintained, as were the way stations for the king’s couriers. Between the towns, fields had been cleared and the discarded stones used for rough fences. The brush that had sprouted among those stones had grown into hedgerows. Most of the outbuildings were still of mud brick, but the farmhouses were of worked stone. Gernian settlers were making their tenuous grip on the land more certain. Those households would stay.
On the evening of the second night, I came to a well-maintained farm with a signboard that showed a dangling cup and a handful of feathers, the old symbols for board and lodging. I stopped there for the night, and discovered that it meant a cold meal and a blanket spread over straw in the barn. Still, I’d slept in worse places, and I rose the next day better rested than if I’d slept by the side of the road.
The draft horse was not a bad mount, for what he was. Clove was big-boned and ponderous. I put him through his paces on our third day of travel. By then, he was answering the bridle and my heels, though not sharply. He didn’t seem to mind being ridden, but he was not my partner in it as Sirlofty had been. He made no effort to stay under me. His trot rattled my teeth. His canter was actually rather smooth, once I finally persuaded him to that pace, but he could not sustain it for long, and I had no fixed destination or schedule. I followed the road, hoping that one of the fortifications along the way would take in a stray recruit.
My body was more at fault than my horse’s for the discomforts of that journey. As an engineer, I could see that I was like an overburdened suspension bridge. Too much flesh was heaped around my bones and dependent on my muscles. My body no longer worked as it had been designed to do. Flexibility had been lost. Strength had been gained in my major muscles, but my back complained constantly. Clove’s bone-shaking trot was also a fat-wobbling quake for me. My cheeks shook, my belly jounced, and the flesh along my arms and legs jostled in syncopation to his hooves. At the end of each day’s ride, my ass hurt more than it had the day before. My expectation that I would soon toughen up and regain my ability to ride a full day without soreness was a vain hope. There was simply too much of me pressing my buttocks against the saddle, with the predictable consequences of developing sores. I tried to be grateful that they were on my flesh rather than my horse’s, but that was grim comfort. I steeled my will and went on, wondering how long my determination would last.
Three days past Franner’s Bend, I passed the site where Cayton’s Horse and Doril’s Foot had met their end. Someone had put up a wooden sign. The crude letters read “SITE OF THE SPECK PLAGUE BATTLE.” If it was meant to be humor, it left me cold. Beyond it, row upon row of shallow depressions in the earth showed where the ground had sunk on the hastily buried bodies. Beyond them, a large ominous scorch mark on the earth was gradually giving way to encroaching grasses. I fancied that a smell of death lingered there; Clove and I hastened past it.
The first time the sun began to set with no shelter of any sort in sight, I turned Clove from the road and followed a tiny trickle of a stream up a gentle hill and into the brush. The faint trail I followed and a blackened ring of fire stones at the end showed I was not the first traveler to camp here. Hopeful, I lifted my eyes and soon found the sign that Sergeant Duril had taught me to look for so many years ago. Carved into a tree trunk was the outline of two crossed sabres. Wedged into a crotch of branches well above it was a bundle of dry firewood. Farther out on the branch dangled the bag that would hold kindling and emergency food. The courtesy among scouts and cavalla troopers was to take what one needed from such caches and replace it with whatever one could spare. The smoked fish I could smell was far more appetizing than the travel bread in my pack.
Hunger was a constant companion that rode heavily in the pit of my belly. It hurt, but less than my saddle sores. I could, by an act of will and intellect, ignore it. Despite its pangs, I knew I was not starving, and for the most part, I pitted my will against the magic’s outrageous demands for food with determination. I knew that my rations were sufficient to my needs, and by that logic I could ignore my hunger pangs until I saw or smelled food. Then my appetite awoke, a ravening bear roused out of hibernation and commanding all my attention.
The smell of the savory smoked fish overpowered me. To scent it was to taste it, smoke, salt, and oil rich flesh upon my tongue. I had to have it. My body demanded it.
I was too fat to climb the tree. I broke branches and scraped my knees and belly trying. I threw stones at the food, trying to knock it free. I stood and shook the tree like a bear, hoping to make it fall. I even tried, futilely, the edge of my small firewood hatchet against the tree’s thick trunk. In short, I exhausted myself trying to get at a bit of smoked fish.
It was full dark before I came to my senses. It was like waking from a dream. I suddenly decided that the food in my pannier would have to suffice. With a startling abruptness, my obsession with the fish departed. I used some of the branches I’d broken to start a small fire.
I made a very rudimentary camp beside my little fire, ate cold food with hot tea, and rolled myself in a blanket to sleep. The ground was hard and I was cold. Toward dawn, the mosquitoes came out and discovered me. Even pulling my blanket up over my head did not discourage them, and I rose earlier than I was inclined to and traveled on my way. My only act of virtue was to cut the broken branches into firewood and leave them at the base of the supply tree.
As I traveled on, towns became less frequent and houses more scattered. Traffic dwindled. Every day, two couriers would ride past me, one headed east and one headed west, usually at a canter or a gallop. They carried the king’s dispatches and, if there was room in their pouches, high-ranking officers’ letters home. They did not acknowledge me at all as they passed. Some credited Gernia’s expansion to the king’s dedication to regular communication with even his most distant forts. Daily reports were sent on their way to Old Thares. Some of the courier stations rented space for profit-making messenger services as well. They were becoming more popular as Gernia’s boundary and far-flung population expanded, but they were still an expensive service, patronized only by the wealthy. I did not see their riders as often.
One windy morning, I passed a place where a spring freshet had washed the road out. It had been repaired, but badly, with a stream still trickling through a wide dip in the road. I could see the remains of the stone culvert; the mortar had failed, I judged, and I suspected that next spring would see the road cut through when the waters ran high again.
It was not a real challenge for Clove and I, but the deep muddy wagon wheel ruts testified that it was an unpleasant passage for any wheeled vehicle. I saw few other travelers that day, and began to understand why some of the king’s nobles in the west mocked this project and called it the King’s Road to Nowhere.
Early in the day, I passed a relay station for the king’s couriers. As there were no towns nearby, a small contingent of soldiers were stationed there to protect and maintain the station. There was little there except a stable for the post horses, a small storehouse, and a barracks. The buildings were set up in a defensible square with a stockade wall closing the gaps. The tall gates stood open, and coarse grasses grew along the bottoms of them. Months had passed since they’d last been closed. The surly soldier on watch eyed me unenthusiastically. Not an exciting post, I surmised. I wondered if being stationed here was regarded as punishment.
I rode Clove in and dismounted. As I let him water from the horse trough alongside their well, I looked around. The barracks and mess were painted in Gernia’s standard green and white. I estimated their strength at about a dozen men. There was a watchtower at one corner of the fortification; a uniformed soldier ostensibly kept watch there for approaching messengers. A couple of men leaned in the open door of the barracks, smoking. Only one courier was currently in residence, lounging on a tipped-back chair on the long porch that ran across the front barracks. The young, skinny rider seemed very full of himself, openly rolling his eyes at my girth and making faces and gestures when he thought I wouldn’t see him. I took some satisfaction in seeing that the men who kept up the station seemed to regard him as a jackanapes. When I mounted the steps to the barracks’ porch, an older man in shirtsleeves came out to meet me.
“Do you need something?” he asked me brusquely.
“News of the road ahead would be welcome. And I thought I’d report that there’s a culvert washed out, about an hour’s ride back.” Military regulations stated that the courier stations were to aid travelers, monitor the road, and report conditions to the proper authority. I considered it my duty, still, to apprise them of the road’s condition.
The man scowled at me. It had been at least three days since he’d shaved. The only clean spot on his cheek was an old knife scar. Even without his jacket and stripes, I could tell he was in charge here. “I’ve been reporting that for two months. They keep saying they’ll send a road crew, but the plague hit everybody hard. They don’t have the men to spare. Nothing happens.”
“And the road east of here?” I pressed him.
“It’s no better. It was built fast with unskilled men, and the need for maintenance was underestimated. It’s passable for a man on horseback, and there are only a few places that would give a wagon serious trouble. But once the rains start again, that story will change quickly.” He spoke as if it were my fault.
Intending it more as a pleasantry than as a true query, I asked where their command was, and if their regiment had any openings for recruits. The old veteran looked me up and down and gave a contemptuous snort. “No. We’ve plenty of our own youngsters to sign up when we need more men. No need for outsiders.”
I took that rebuff in stride. “Well. Any chance I can replenish my supplies here? Any food you could sell me?”
The courier had been listening in on our exchange. He interrupted mockingly with “You need to buy food? It doesn’t look to me as if you’ve been going without! Or are you fattening up before you hibernate for the winter?”
It was a feeble jest, but the other man laughed at it. I forced myself to smile. “I’ve a way to travel. I’d buy whatever you could spare—flour, grain, travel bread, bacon?” I could smell stew simmering and longed to beg for a hot bowl. As always, any aroma of food roused a ravenous hunger in me.
“We’ve nothing to spare,” the sergeant decided abruptly. “This is a way station for couriers, not an inn. The supply wagons haven’t been as regular as they should. I’m saving what I’ve got for my own men here.”
“Of course. But could I at least buy some oats for my horse?” Clove was not the forager that Sirlofty was. The constant travel and sparse grazing were starting to show on him. Because my father was responsible for the king’s courier station closest to Widevale, I knew they were required to keep well stocked with feed for the horses.
The men exchanged glances with each other. Then the sergeant spoke again. “No. I’ve told you. We’ve nothing to spare. Best you be on your way.”
“I see,” I said, though I didn’t. Plainly he was lying. I could not discern why, but I suspected it was simply because I was fat. I think he perceived me as self-indulgent and felt justified, even righteous, in denying me food. I looked at the circle of faces around me. Every one of them evinced some level of satisfaction in my disappointment. They put me in mind of how Trist had rejected Gord from the first moment he’d met the fat cadet. Gord hadn’t had to say or do anything. Just being fat had made Trist despise him and seek to thwart him at every opportunity.
I needed supplies. My horse needed something more than grass. My experience with Jirry flashed back through my mind. On some level, I’d already accepted that the magic that had so cursed me could also work in my favor. I tried it. “I really need fresh supplies to continue on my journey.” It was my first effort to bend the magic to my will. I pushed insistence through my words and deliberately sought to bend their wills to mine.
A few of the idle men got the same poleaxed look that Jirry had worn. But the old sergeant was made of sterner stuff. His eyes widened, and then, as if he sensed what I was trying to do, his face reddened with anger. “I said no!” he barked. He came to his feet and pointed commandingly at my mount. I’d failed. I turned away from him, trying to keep my dignity. But anger at their self-satisfaction seethed through me. I mounted Clove and then looked back at them. My own anger suddenly rose to meet the sergeant’s, as if they were two swords clashing.
“As you have seen to the needs of the stranger, so may your own wants be met in your time of need.” It was a verse from the Holy Writ, and I’d heard it most often used as a formal thanks at dinner parties. I’d never said it with such vehemence, nor had I ever moved my hand in such a strong gesture of dismissal as I said it. I had deliberately sought the magic’s intervention, but now as I felt it rattle through my blood like pebbles tumbled in a torrent, I feared it. The gesture meant something, and the words I had uttered in a mockery of thanks now bristled like a curse. I saw one man startle, as if I’d dashed him with cold water, and the rider’s chair tipped over under him, dumping him to the porch with a crash. The sergeant was transfixed for a moment, and then he charged at me with an angry shout. I kicked Clove hard, and for once he surged immediately into a canter that carried us away from their stronghold and back out onto the road.
I leaned forward on my big horse and urged him to run until his sides were heaving and sweat runneled
the sides of his neck. When I pulled him in and let him walk, the courier’s station was lost behind us. No riders swarmed out to pursue me, as I had half-feared they might. I knotted my fists and shivered suddenly. I’d done magic. I had felt the power surge through me and pass out of me. But exactly what I had done, I did not know. I passed a patch of brush by the riverbank, and a flock of black-and-white croaker birds flew up screaming, angry that I had frightened them off whatever carrion they had found. They seemed an ill omen, a sign from an elder god that he would take my blackened soul if the good god would no longer have me. I rode grimly on.
My meals for the next few days consisted of whatever game I could bring down with my sling. It wasn’t much. In the short time between stopping for the night and falling asleep, I hunted what I could, and if I got a rabbit or a bird every other day, I thought myself fortunate. I still had a good supply of tea, sugar, salt, and oil, but a man cannot make a meal from those things alone. The lean meat of hares did not satisfy me, and if my clothes hung a bit looser on me for a few days, I attributed it to my diet.
For several long days, the scenery did not change. It seemed as if Clove and I followed an endless circular path, with the river always to the right of us, wide and gray between its brushy, gravelly banks, and to the left of us, the gentle rise of the rolling prairie. The hills were ahead of us. Their flanks were gray-green or purplish with gorse, and in the higher regions, clumps of buckbrush and nettleme grew. Regularly spaced towns and real inns were left far behind me.
The next courier station I passed was larger and better fortified. They sold me oats and journey bread, but other than that, they seemed as unfriendly as the last station had been. A full troop of foot soldiers was stationed there, with a score of cavalla. A small village of former penal laborers flanked the station, and were engaged in making more formidable the wall and ditch defenses that surrounded both station and village. If any engineering had been applied to the enterprise, it was well concealed from my eyes.
