by Diane Magras
“Should I shoot, sir?” came a younger voice.
“Stay ready, Ewart. You there! Halt, and tell me where you’ve put my nephew’s body!”
He’s pretending for the bowman that you killed the lord, murmured Gobin’s voice. But he’s also asking you where you’re hiding him.
“Halt at once! We’ve a crossbow trained on your back and you’ve a price on your head!”
Drest quailed, but did not stop climbing. If that bowman let loose a bolt—
“God’s blood,” said the younger voice. “Look at her go.”
“Now!” Sir Oswyn.
There was a familiar muted thump—a crossbow firing.
Drest flung her body to the left, still clinging to the rope.
A bolt slammed against the rock face inches from her hand. It hovered there, then fell.
Had she not swung away, that iron tip would have plunged between her shoulders.
“Are you listening?” roared Sir Oswyn. “Climb down and I will spare your life!”
“God’s bones, she’s going to fall!” said the younger voice.
God’s bones, Drest, keep climbing!
Emerick’s voice.
Drest lunged for a new hold. She hauled herself up, hand over hand. Her mind was numb, but her instinct was alive again and forcing her on.
“Load your weapon!”
A scrape, a fumble.
“Faster, Ewart! If this beast will not tell us where she’s hidden my nephew, she shall die. Halt, villain! Do you hear me? Halt, or my man will shoot, and he’ll not miss this time!”
There was too much cliff. The bowman would shoot again before she reached the top.
Thorkill’s voice came into her mind, tense, as if he were beside her:
You have five seconds, lass. It takes me five seconds to load a crossbow. Do you remember? Five seconds to put my foot in the stirrup and pull back the string.
Hand over hand, a relentless rhythm.
He’s putting the string on its hold. Thorkill. He’s setting in the bolt.
Drest, try a drop-and-grab. Nutkin’s voice, pleading. Remember how I taught you that when we were climbing ropes?
“Now!”
Another muted thump.
Drest released the rope, ducking as she did so, and grabbed the rough fibers again, a foot below where she had held them before.
Nicely done! Nutkin called.
The bolt slammed into the cliff directly beside the rope, spraying bits of stone.
“My God,” said the lighter voice. “How did she do that?”
Five seconds to load. Thorkill’s voice. Hurry, lass.
She hauled herself up, passing her former hold.
Hand over hand, as fast as she had ever climbed.
And then she was at the swath of moss. The rough part that led to the top was above it.
Drest dug her feet into the moss, and propelled herself up, even faster now.
The rock changed. It was weathered stone at last, pitted with cracks and ledges.
“Now!” cried Sir Oswyn.
The muted thump.
Her boot caught a ledge at once, and her fingers found grips. Drest sprang to the side, off the rope entirely, and clung to the rough rock face.
The bolt crashed against the stone beside her—into the rope itself, cutting it. Both bolt and rope fell, one after the other.
Drest reached for the crack above her head.
Five seconds.
Drest, you climb like a spider. Nutkin’s voice.
Four seconds.
Come on, you rabbit-headed—climb! Uwen’s voice.
Three seconds.
Never falter before yourself or the enemy. Wulfric’s voice.
Two.
Drest, come back to me. Emerick’s voice.
One.
She was at the top, her fingers pressing into the dirt and dead leaves mounded on the rocky edge. She hauled herself up and rolled toward the trees.
Thump.
The bolt thudded against the cliff at the brink, spraying dirt—and fell back.
Drest sprang to her feet and did not give the bowman a chance for another shot. She plunged into the woods.
13
THE USE OF A CASTLE
Drest ran wildly, without direction at first, swamped with the relief of her escape—but also with the despair of her failure. No place would be safe for her again. She would always have to run.
And yet—she was tired. Desperately so.
She slowed her pace and continued toward Phearsham Ridge at a walk.
Wolf’s head, hummed her steps. Nearly caught, wolf’s head.
Her brothers’ voices were silent.
Drest plodded on, pausing only to kneel at a brook and take deep gulps of the cold, clean water, and to soak her hands to numb the rawness.
There was still light when the fallen log came into view. Tig and Emerick sat with their legs stretched out beside one another, as if they’d done nothing but talk all that day. Yet as she neared, she saw how weary their faces were, and pale. Though both faces brightened at the sight of her.
“It’s not safe on the headland, just as Emerick thought,” Drest said, her voice breaking. “I’ll tell you more, but let me fetch us something to eat first.”
“Wait.” Tig sprang up and strode to her side. “Mordag and I can do that. I’m just as good in the woods as you, remember? And you look as if you could use a rest.”
Drest ran her hand through her hair. The ragged clumps were damp with sweat to their tips. “What are you going to hunt with? If I lend you my dagger, do you promise not to lose it?”
“I don’t need your dagger. If you stay here with Emerick, I’ll creep back to Phearsham Ridge and fetch us a proper sack of food.”
Drest shook her head. “Nay, it’s not safe. Nothing’s safe. What if you went, lad, and that knight was still there?”
“I can creep in the woods unseen. I’m as good at that as your brothers, you know. And you—you need to sit and close your eyes. You walked there and back, didn’t you, without a break.” He reached forward as if to grasp her shoulder, but his fingers only grazed it. “Let me help. Please?”
She drew him into a rough hug, like the kind Uwen had given her. “Be careful,” she whispered into the tickle of his black hair.
“I will.” His breath warmed her neck before he pulled away. “Now go and rest. I command it.”
She staggered to the log and collapsed in Tig’s place beside Emerick. “Bring back some of that hearth bread your sister makes, will you? And cheese.”
“And ale and a roast of some kind,” Emerick said.
Tig bowed to them. “I’ll be back before dark with more than you can eat.”
With a click of his tongue, he set off into the woods, Mordag swooping above him.
Drest and Emerick sat in silence together. After Tig had disappeared completely behind the trees, she closed her eyes.
“Was it bad at the headland?”
“Aye.”
“Were you seen by—by our enemies?”
“Aye.”
“But you escaped.” Emerick lifted one of her hands and laced his fingers with hers. “If I’m not mistaken, the stickiness on your hand is blood.”
“Aye. It always bleeds when I climb rope.”
“There’s a rope on the headland?”
“On the cliff no man can climb.”
He was quiet. “A cliff that you climbed, though.”
“Aye.”
He lifted her hand to his heart, and held it there. “I’m sorry, Drest.”
A wild despair rose in her, increasing like a spring pond, until a bubble of a sob came to her lips.
“I saw your uncle,” she managed to get out.
“
My God,” Emerick whispered.
“He asked where you were. He pretended you were dead for his man, but I knew what he meant. And he had his man shoot a crossbow at me.”
“Oh, Drest, I can’t even imagine—this is no life, this is—if you had died—” He reached around her and held her tight, pressing his face against her hair.
Somehow, it helped, that crushing, tremulous embrace. For the first time since she had heard Sir Fergal’s horrible words, Drest felt truly safe.
And when Emerick loosened his grip, she told him everything. He never let her hand go even once as she spoke.
“I don’t know what we can do now,” Drest finished, a lump in her throat. “Da’s on the run, Phearsham Ridge isn’t safe, and your uncle—I don’t know what he’ll do next, but he’s not giving up. He’s going to hunt us both until we’re dead.”
“May I tell you something?” Emerick asked. “All while you were gone, Tig and I were plotting how to keep you safe. And here’s what we came up with: You need a castle.”
“You haven’t got a castle.”
“No, I haven’t. But—” He hesitated. “Oriana Harkniss—Lady de Moys—does. She also has an army.”
Silence.
“But you’re not—what’s that word?”
“Betrothed? No, I’m not, but she was Celestria’s greatest friend when they were young. And after her husband died, she was my father’s ally. I haven’t thought about her for years. It was Tig who asked if she was my ally, and of course she is, and he—he wondered if she might help me.”
Drest sat up. “Regain your castle, you mean?”
“Yes. She’s the only way I could regain my castle, I fear. And if I’m lord again, I can end your sentence and stop this curse upon you.”
“Will she help you?” Drest thought for a moment. “Will her army slay your uncle?”
Emerick bit his lip. “She might order her men to. And she has two armies. One’s at her husband’s castle—that’s Mont-de-Roche, across the sea—and the other’s at her father’s castle, Harkniss, where she is now. She’s master of both castles, and both armies. Her holdings are at least twice the size of my own.” His face grew thoughtful. “I’d never have asked her help in a million years, but I’ll do it for you.”
“Why do you say that? Do you not like her?”
“No, it’s not that, it’s just—Drest, she’s hardly my friend. If I beg her in Celestria’s name, she might help. But I’ll have to be on my knees, my face in the dirt, admitting that I am a worm compared to—no, let’s not think of that. Let’s think only of reaching her—for when we do, if she agrees, we’ll have the most powerful person in the lowlands at our side.”
A tiny hope grew inside Drest, like a breath of air. “Is Harkniss Castle in the lowlands?”
“Yes, it’s north of here, not far. Two days’ walk, I expect.”
“Are its defenses as impressive as your own?”
Emerick bit back a smirk. “Not quite, but they’re good enough. And there’s a secret passageway inside the walls, leading all over and to the postern gate. Oriana once locked me in there when we were children.”
Drest was on her knees. “Can you walk for two days?”
“I should hope so. I’ve had a full day of rest here with Tig. I may open all my wounds again, but surely Oriana has a healer. And as that witch from Soggyweald told me, I’m young and have a strong frame and ought to be able to live. Remember that?”
Drest grinned. “Aye. Merewen. I was angry with her for not healing you.”
“Yes, you were glowering all that way back to the road. I remember thinking, God’s bones, she doesn’t hate me as much as I thought she did.”
“Nay, I never hated you. I was only doing what I had to do.”
Emerick’s smile faded. “And being who you had to be. As was I. God’s breath, we’ve really been through a lot together, haven’t we.”
And they settled back, shoulder by shoulder, to wait for Tig.
And waited.
And waited still more.
Before it was dark, Drest and Emerick staggered off to find a stream. It was an hour before they did, but then they each drank deeply. On their way back to the log, Drest found a patch of sour brambleberries and picked the lot of them.
Tig was not waiting at the fallen moss-covered tree.
Emerick settled down and took a stem from the herbs in his tunic. “Drest, we should start for Harkniss. I don’t think Tig is coming back.” He hesitated. “He’s met trouble. And Oswyn saw you. We have no time to lose.”
Drest curled up against the log, pulling her knees into her arms. “I should have gone with Tig. He’s done something foolish, trying to be brave.”
“Or he’s doing something brave right now,” said Emerick. “If Sir Fergal is still there, Tig might be staying so that he doesn’t lead him straight to you.”
14
THE ONLY WAY
Drest and Emerick headed north through the woods. For hours they trudged onward. The air grew cold. Emerick began leaning on Drest, and she draped her cloak over both of them to keep them warm. When the moon was high, they slept beside a cliff strewn with ragged trees.
At dawn, Drest left Emerick and went off to hunt and came back with a hare.
“The last time we traveled together, your bandit ate our hare,” Emerick said as they watched the skinned carcass cook on its stick of a spit over the fire that Drest had built.
She edged closer to her friend. “I hope he’s not in these woods. If he knows the price on my head—”
“I doubt he’d take it.” But Emerick shifted closer to her until their shoulders touched. “Being in these woods at dawn makes me think of two things: you and our journey to my castle, and going on a hunt when I was younger. I don’t know if my mind is conjuring this, but I could swear I know these woods.”
“You and I didn’t travel here before; it’s too far north.”
“Yes, I know. So if I truly remember it, it’s woods I’ve seen before.”
A dollop of fat dripped from the hare and sizzled in the fire.
“If I’m right,” Emerick went on, “the cliff behind us isn’t very deep, with a stream at the bottom. Then past those trees, there’s a bog.”
“Shall I see about the cliff?”
He nodded, and Drest rose and peered over the cliff’s edge.
Water glimmered below.
“Emerick, there’s a wee beck down there! Can you climb a cliff? I’ll help you down—”
“Not in this state; I’d never be able to make it up again. Drest, you go. You must drink.”
She hesitated for only a few seconds, then scampered over the edge of the cliff and down.
It was a crumbling face of rock. She remembered all that Nutkin had taught her about climbing with unsteady holds. And though her palms were still raw from the rope at the headland, her fingertips—what she needed for cliffs—barely stung.
The stream was deeper than it had seemed from the top of the cliff, and the water was smooth, clean, and icy against her teeth and palms.
The last time I traveled, I drank from old tree trunks and muddy puddles.
Aye, but you found them when you needed them and you met your thirst, said Thorkill. Your poor friend, though. He’ll not do well on the walk tomorrow if he doesn’t drink.
Drest sat up and wiped the water from her face. What shall I do? I cannot hold water in my hands as I climb.
You could dip your cloak in this beck and squeeze it out in his mouth.
She lifted the corner of the cloak. It was spattered with mud. Nay, I can’t do that to him.
Perhaps you could find something in the beck. Something that could carry water.
Drest walked a few steps farther down the stream and stuck her hand into a place where the pebbles had mounded by the force of the water. On
e by one, she took out the largest stones, but none had an indentation deep enough to carry water. She was about to give up and dip the least muddy part of her cloak into the stream when her fingers grazed a thin stone that curved.
A thin stone that extended out, and rounded.
Carefully, Drest removed all the pebbles around that one, and soon the stream had washed away enough mud to reveal her find:
A clay jug.
It was broken at the lip and filled with silt and pebbles, but the base showed no cracks. Drest filled it, wedged it into her sword-belt, then slowly climbed back up the cliff.
For a moment, she didn’t see Emerick, or the fire. A swift, sour fear seized her: that the bandit Jupp had returned and had stolen their hare again, and this time slain her friend.
But then she saw him, lying on the ground, his figure blocking the glow from the flames.
“I’ve water for you,” Drest said.
Emerick sat up. “How?”
“I found a jug. Someone who was hunting here must have gone down to fill it and forgotten it.” She drew it from her belt and pressed it into his hands.
“It’s amazing how a simple jug can make life seem so much brighter,” Emerick said when he was finished drinking. “Is it too much to ask for you to fill this again?”
“Nay, and I shall fill it before we leave so we’ll have something to drink as we walk.”
“God’s bones, that’s a vast improvement over our past journeys together. One day, Drest, we shall have to plan like your father and pack supplies.”
Da. “I wonder where he is.”
“Running. Hiding. I’m sorry, Drest; I shouldn’t have asked for you to stay in the village. You should be with your family.”
If you’d come with us, lass, we’d be protecting you, said Wulfric.
Aye, but then I’d be always running.
And what are you doing now? sneered Uwen’s voice. Sitting by a fire in a nice cozy hut telling stories? You’re not a wolf’s head but a boar’s head for putting yourself on the run like this, wearing yourself out taking care of your soggy lord—
I’m not running, you hairy fish’s bladder! I’m on my way to a castle to get an army to get back Emerick’s castle. Aye, and when I see you next, it’ll be from the battlements—and I’ll make you kneel to me, you pockmarked, lumpy slug!
