by Susan Dexter
After three tedious hours, Druyan’s turn finally came. Her tithe had eaten every blade of grass within a horselength of her by then. They were inspected by Siarl himself—the constable carefully did not look her in the eye—recorded in the tally book, which was signed with Travic’s signet ring and the duke’s seal. Then Druyan was free to return to her camp, which was a good long ride away—and no use could be made of Valadan’s speed unless she was enough a fool to do such a thing under strange eyes. She cantered back slowly.
Kellis had a meal cooked by the time she finally arrived, and she could see he was trying not to look anxious. “Done,” she announced, settling wearily on the tail of the wagon. “I’ve half a mind to go home this minute and forget about peddling the cloth. Only I’m too tired.”
“Too many people here,” Kellis agreed, warily sniffing the evening breeze.
“I just hate watching,” Druyan said, pulling off the glove she had worn on her right hand to forestall casual stares and comment. Her hand looked like a bird’s claw, and she did not want other eyes making her remember that. But the leather was hot, and the red scar itched. “It brings home what my uncle’s doing, which is not a whit less foolish than cooking seed com a month before planting time. Even if we build the ships Brioc’s so set on, most of our folk just aren’t sailors, not to match the Eral raiders. Fishing isn’t fighting?”
“No,” Kellis agreed. He offered her some stew.
“How does it happen that you’ve got most of that road dust off?” There was still a powdering on his clothing, but his hair was clean, shiny.
He grinned lopsidedly. “It doesn’t stay on through a shift,”
Druyan nearly choked on her stew. “You be careful about that!” She was appalled at the risk he’d taken. The fair was better populated than most towns, and not a single wall to hide behind unless one counted canvas pavilions.
Kellis let his expression sober. “I was. I was fetching firewood, and there was no one else in the wood.” He gestured with his chin, to the little smear of scrubby woodland half a league away. “There’s a thicket of wild rose, where the rock comes through and even the little trees can’t root. Safe enough, except for thorns.” He sucked at a scratch on the back of his wrist, like a dog licking a hurt paw.
Druyan blew on the stew, to cool it. There was rabbit meat in it, she realized. He must have caught it. They’d brought a small ham and a flitch of bacon, but no fresh meat was among their provisions. “It’s not like it’s just Enna to fool,” she warned him.
“Thank you.”
Druyan put her spoon into the bowl with a click. “Why? For pestering you about things you certainly know better than I do?”
Kellis tilted his head. “Not for that. For what you didn’t say, to Enna. For telling her the bird was only a magic trick, and never mentioning the wolf.”
I did that for her sake, Kellis. Can you imagine how she’d be if she knew the whole truth?”
“Oh, yes.” He grinned. “I counted all your knives, you know. More than once.”
“I’ll bet you did!” Druyan’s eyes sparkled.
“Lady?” One moment they were laughing together—then he had turned serious, like a cloud-shadow passing over a sunny meadow. “What are you going to do about your barley harvest?”
Certainly the man had not lost sight of his goal—he was trying delicately to remind her that he’d be free and gone when the grain was ready to cut, that his sentence was up the same moment Druyan’s goal was won. In fact, whether ’twas won or not, for his fulfillment depended only upon time spent.
“I’ll hire men,” Druyan said calmly, ignoring a disappointment she knew she ought not to feel. She had set the terms. She had always known he would go. “It will be safe to do that, once the freehold’s mine. I suppose there will be men to hire—unless my uncle takes them all to be sailors for his dream fleet.”
There were the usual races run and games played, save now less as challenges between proud horsemen than calculations to catch a buyer’s eye. Gone, the leagues-long chase after an old wineskin refilled with air, with upward of twenty horsemen to ride and few rules attached to the quest save possession of the quarry and nerves of iron. Gone, the displays of a stallion’s get in contests of every sort, demonsrating that he was well worth his breeding price. While some coursers were pitted against one another for a mile or two, mares and yearlings were being trotted mere paces before those who’d come to bid upon them—and sold, shown off no further. It made for a surpassingly dull fair.
Besides charging the post riders to carry word, Brioc had sent forth messengers, paid men riding far and wide with tidings of the fair. There were horse traders come in from all the corners of Clandara—Radak, Lassair, Josten, and a near score of lesser places. Kinark was heavily represented, and there was one dealer Druyan thought had come even farther—from Fithian, or Asgeirr, far down the edge of the Great Sea. The fair was a very great event, ’twould be spoken of for years. And likely, in Esdragon, cursed.
The spectacle left Druyan heartsick, as she had suspected it would. She watched the racing for a time, but without joy—Valadan could have walked away from any of the winners, at any distance—and when she saw her cousin Dimas casting his appraising eye over the racers, she was too frightened to linger long thereabouts, even without entering the contests. Druyan did not doubt that a subject would be invited—for the good of the duke and the whole land—to part with any horse a buyer sought that day, whether that cherished horse was part of a tithe or not.
Sell me, Valadan suggested wickedly, rolling an eye back at her. I know my way home, and there is no bridle can restrain me.
She slapped his neck, astonished that Valadan proposed such a rank dishonesty. Then again, it exactly suited the occasion. Druyan sighed. Time she saw about spreading out her weavings, anyway. She could not be the only person at the fair weary of watching the decimation of the ducal herds. She’d lay out her wares, find buyers, empty the wagon, and then she’d go home.
The day was warm, and Druyan was thirsty. She didn’t doubt the stallion would also relish a drink, so she jogged Valadan to the river, then rode upstream a little distance, where the water would flow unsullied. As she made to dismount, she discovered Kellis at her stirrup. He had a wooden pail in one hand—he’d come for water, too, evidently. Well, at least he wasn’t following her about in wolfform. That was something.
Druyan slipped down and parted the soft green reeds with her left hand, while she gripped Valadan’s mane with the three fingers she had on her right. If the low bank proved boggy, she didn’t want to sink, or slip and go tumbling into the water. Her eyes would go first, well ahead of her feet, because glancing into a bog didn’t soak your boots. There was a little strip of yellow sand just past the reeds that might offer her a dry spot to stand, if ’twas solid.
“I want to move the wagon,” she said to Kellis as she tested the footing with a toe. “Somewhere a little nearer to the crowds. I’ll drape the cloth over it, get the weavings out of the dirt and up where they can be seen. The horses are going cheap, the traders will have coin to spare. That’s a good turn for us, anyway.”
Kellis didn’t answer. Druyan looked to see why.
He had just leaned to dip the pail, and she thought he simply hadn’t heard her over the noise of the water—when suddenly Kellis lurched and one foot went into the stream with a splash, betrayed by the soft edge of the streambank. Pitching forward off balance, he flailed out with one hand, which Druyan caught. She still had hold of Valadan, but three fingers’ grip wasn’t much to stop both of them falling. Druyan leaned back hard against the stallion, hoping Kellis could get his feet back under him before she lost her hold. The stallion’s shoulder felt like a wall at her back, but her feet were slipping . . .
The vision ran through the three of them—the man, the woman, the stallion—like a whip of fire.
There could be no doubt about what spot this vision showed—it was all about them, they could behold it with out
ward eyes as easily as inward sight, one overlaying the other like transparent enamels on glass. The green and tawny moor, the milling horses and the spectators, the winding silver river that had permitted the raiders’ arrival to be both quiet and secret. The duke had his own guards to protect his person, but there weren’t many above twenty of them, not enough to protect anyone else. The carnage began, and scarlet ovennastered the other colors. . .
Valadan reared back. Kellis lost his grip on Druyan’s left hand as she was dragged away from him and toppled headlong into the river. A burning pain shot up Druyan’s right arm, and she let go of Valadan. Springy reeds cushioned her landing. She sat up, looking for Kellis. Splashes met her ears, but she had to get to her feet to see over the reeds.
The river being more wide than deep at that point, Kellis floundered upright at once, coughing and spitting out water. The bucket tried to float way, then took on water and sank instead.
“Gray sky,” Kellis choked, trying to scramble to his feet and retrieve the bucket at the same time, with much splashing and little progress. On the bank, Valadan trotted in a tight circle, snorting.
Druyan stared up at the white-spotted blue overhead, rubbing at her strained hand. “Tomorrow?” she asked, stricken.
“It wasn’t yesterday.” Kellis climbed up the bank, swore, and groped back for the boot he’d lost to the bottom mud. “The sun showed his face all day, remember?”
“What are we going to do?” Druyan wailed.
She could warn her uncle, as she had alerted the vulnerable river towns, the seaside farms and villages, all that spring and half the summer. But if she could get to the duke, and if he believed her—still, what use? Brioc’s army was a month’s march away, felling useless ship timber. Keverne itself, on its lofty headland with its mighty stone walls, could offer shelter, but not for the horse herds, nor likely for most of the folk who had come to trade gold and silver for those horses. Keverne could shield its master, but few others were likely to reach the citadel or be permitted to share its protection.
“We could go home,” Kellis suggested. He raised that brow, up to his wet hair, and sighed resignedly. “No, I didn’t really think so. Well then, where are the Riders now?”
“Spread out all along their routes,” Druyan answered miserably. “I could get to them, warn most of them—” Valadan snorted, agreeing with her as to his speed. “But they won’t all of them have time enough to get here. They’ll be too far away, and by the time I get to them. . .
Kellis nodded, clenched his jaw, and swallowed very hard. “Then it will be best if we both carry word.”
lt was Druyan’s turn to stare. “How do you propose to do that? You said before the Riders wouldn’t listen to you—” So he had, and she had thought he was very likely right, angry as she had been with him. Most of the post riders weren’t pleased about having someone shifting shape right under their eyes—what else might such a person shift? How did you trust such a creature?
“Write the message to them and hang it around my neck,” Kellis suggested. “Saves time, if I don’t have to keep shifting back and forth to argue with them—I’m only good for three or four shifts anyway, before I’m too done up to move. Write it, and let them decide for themselves what they’ll do.”
Druyan steadfastly refused to allow her thoughts to dwell on what Kellis had risked, was risking—refused to let herself wonder what sort of success he might have had, if the Riders had heeded him or chased him away. She had ridden all night before turning Valadan’s head back to Keverne at dawn. She had personally intercepted ten pairs of Riders, rousing the final three teams from their billets. Most had been startled but delighted to see her, and they had sped toward Keverne even as she was forging onward to her next destination. None of them had shown her a moment’s dissension. Druyan thought she had never been so weary in all her life, though her own feet had not once touched the dark ground since she climbed up to Valadan’s saddle.
The Riders wouldn’t all be in time. For certain she’d overtake one or two along her own route back, and those would never be able to ride her pace, not mounted upon ordinary horses. Nor would Kellis have been able to run so far as Valadan, even shaped as a wolf, so if she managed to have eight teams of riders to the fair in time, he would likely have less. Druyan toted up the probabilities and winced. At best, there would be very, very few of them gathering.
There are always the horses, Valadan comforted her, under the insistent rush of the wind past his neck. They will answer to me.
As it had been at Splaine Garth. So long ago, when she hadn’t yet known what consequences were. . .
Valadan snorted, cautioning her against dwelling upon such dark matters. Was the sun not rising behind them? Did they not seem to bear the dawn with them, tangled in the hairs of the stallion’s tail? Did not the very wind cry their names?
Yet still Druyan’s lost fingers throbbed and tingled as if they remained a part of her, hurt and fearing to be worse hurt when she overreached herself again, forgot her station and cast aside all proprieties, when she dared to do again as she had done before. She was no Duchess Kessallia, witchbred and equipped to venture such things, to flout every convention. She was but a younger daughter of a younger son, a farmer’s widow, and her place was in her own farmyard, with her hens and her spindle and her butter churn. If she dared to step beyond her lawful sphere, what befell her was surely no less than she deserved. Any person in Esdragon could tell her that, would be glad to. Her halfempty right glove repeated the lesson.
There is always a price, Valadan said, pulling against the bit to get her attention. That a thing costs does not make it wrong to have, but only more precious.
“What if the cost is too high?” Druyan moaned into the wind.
That you must reckon, Valadan answered. You know how to strike a fair bargain. I have never seen you deceived.
“This isn’t buying a new ram to improve the flock!”
Druyan snapped. “This is lives, not length of fleece staple and how many crimps to the measure!”
Not all costs are the same. Some prices only a here can pay. His neck arched like a black rainbow against the dark land. She could see his left eye rolled back to her, full of sparkling lights. Druyan’s mind’s eye was given a brief sharp glimpse of flame and smoke, the intolerable brightness of a chimera’s mane.
“But I’m no hero,” she whispered, as Esdragon’s cool wind replaced the burning vision.
No hero ever thinks so, Valadan said inscrutably, and galloped onward, never missing a snide.
Six Riders awaited her, dismounted to let their winded beasts recover, gently walking those most recently arrived and still needing cooling to prevent founder. Only six, and the sky overhead was thin gray now, as clouds had drifted in over the sun almost the moment it cleared the horizon. Druyan shuddered, seeing the stage set for the deadly play.
Six Riders. There would be others, and perhaps those would yet arrive in time—no way to tell about that. The vision had scarcely been precise. It had offered no glimpse of the sun’s angle to guide them, since the sun could not be seen.
Two of the waiting men were not among those she and Valadan had alerted, which was a comfort to Druyan—Kellis had gotten at least that far, his message had been accepted by at least one team.
She remembered hanging the message pouch about his silver-furred neck. It seemed a month ago already. He had not allowed her to watch his transformation, but had gone discreetly behind some trees and then come trotting back to her in his wolf-shape, his yellow eyes troubled, as if he feared even she would refuse him, mistrust him. She had secured the message and he had bolted away at once, not waiting for her to speak to him. But what more could she have said?
She wished she had thought to tell him to go back to Darlith when his round was finished. He’d surely be in reach of the fami, however weary he was. And if he tried to come back to her at Keverne he would burst his heart, and still likely be too late. . .
One of the Ri
ders called her name joyfully. Druyan lifted a hand to acknowledge the greeting and rode to join her little company.
No use to try to take up a defensive position. They were too few to find it useful, and attempting it might only bring them to the duke’s troublesome attention. Two more pairs reached them, the four horses sweat-soaked but sound. They lurked at the fringes of the fair, on high ground that offered them a slight vantage and the marginal concealment of a stand of scrubby trees. Druyan considered what they might do in such and such a case, if the raiders did thus and so. She discussed tactics with the captains—what they had found to work during other raids, in other places. Mostly they spoke because simply waiting for the disaster to overtake them was intolerable. They all knew there was no plan, however cunning, likely to grant them victory. They were straws thrown into a flooding tide—helpless, and knowing it. Some of them might never ride again.
Two more Riders pounded up, men who had been bedded down just the near side of Porlark when a wolf ’s howls had roused them from sleep. And the day was advancing, though the veiled sun did not mark it.
Druyan reckoned the progress of the tide, which was strong enough to counteract the sluggish flow of Keverne’s river, at least along these lower reaches. She should have thought of that before, as a way of knowing what to expect! The raiders demonstrably preferred to row up rivers, so as not to show sails, which might be seen from far off. They might also prefer to have the tide’s help, to make their rowing easier, she thought. And with the moon nearing full, those tides were high and puissant. They would not reach quite so far upriver as the horse fair, but one aware of the tide could judge when the raiders would find it possible to begin their voyage. Druyan strained her eyes against the gleam of the water, alternated that with glances at the horizon, watching for the dust hard-ridden horses would raise.
