by Lee Ramsay
A sense of urgency plagued him, as though he could feel the sun climbing closer to the horizon. He dismissed his curiosity and hurried toward the stairs, and stopped in his room long enough to grab the knitted brown muffin cap Jayna had made for him.
He dropped the rucksack on the table as he entered the kitchen and ransacked what remained in the larder and pantry. Karilen had not lied when she said the departing host all but cleaned out what food was available. He took a burlap sack from a peg and stuffed it with a hock of salted ham, a round of sharp cheese, several apples, two jars of preserves, and a loaf of brown bread with a hard crust. The bag spun as he tied its mouth closed with a rough cord. Two empty water bags joined his purloined goods as he stepped out of the pantry and kicked the door shut.
There was no room for anything else with the sack of food stuffed into the rucksack, and thus no reason to delay. He slipped his arms through the leather straps adjusted the lumpy bag’s position to something reasonably comfortable. Donning his cloak, he fastened its antler toggles and ensured the drape fell over the bag to provide additional protection from the elements.
The kitchen door creaked on its hinges as he undid the latch. Breath held, he peered into the commons and swept his eyes from house to house to see if candles lit any of the windows. The homes clustered around the commons were black against the eye-aching blue of early morning, and the overcast sky to the east was adopting a reddish cast from the approaching dawn. Karilen’s house was dark, as were the others.
Tristan drew his hood, closed the door behind him, and scuttled around to the back of the house. His head to one side, he listened for any sound other than the fading chirps of crickets and the sleepy stirring of animals in the barn or stable. Hearing nothing other than his heartbeat drumming in his ears, he took a deep breath and sprinted across the open space between the back of the manor and the nearest outbuilding, then crept through the shadows along the back of the sheep barn toward the orchards.
A plan formed as he strode through the shadows beneath the trees. Escaping over the eastern wall was the best direction to get away before anyone realized what he had done. Karilen would turn people out to find him when she grew tired of his sulking. Dorishad’s grounds were vast enough, and filled with enough places to hide, for it to take the better part of a day for her to realize he had gone over the wall.
Traveling the road along Dorishad’s western wall was unwise. The woman would dispatch people to Dresden Township, suspecting it would be his objective, but she would also send people south. Heading either direction, at least in the short term, was inadvisable. Though he did not know where the neighboring homesteads scattered throughout the District of Corarma were, he knew he should avoid them. Word would spread that Anthoun’s ward son had run off; being seen would end his adventure quickly.
Tristan called to mind the sage’s regional maps – an easy enough thing to do after staring at them for months, planning where he would go once he reached his majority. The best course would be to follow the stream watering Dorishad to the north before leaving it behind. In theory, it would be the fastest way to put distance between himself and the homestead. Once he reached the River Ossifor, which formed the border between Shreth and Troppenheim, he could follow it west toward the sea or east toward the mountains of Anahar’s border. It would be hard walking, however. According to the maps, there were rugged hills between Dorishad and where he wanted to go. The hamlet’s stream had its headwaters somewhere in those hills.
Once Karilen learned he was not on the road, she would send hunters and trappers into the woods to find him. If he moved fast enough to avoid being caught, he could cross the River Ossifor and turn north toward Akemaar – an independent city-state on the riverbank. Due to Anthoun’s lessons, he knew the Akemaari dominated river trade; he could use some of Dougan’s coins to book passage down to Caer Ravvos in the west. He needed to avoid Caer Rochiel, which lay between Akemaar and the Hegemony’s capital city. A riverport city, Shreth’s capital would no doubt be a stop for any boat he took passage on; he would have to remain aboard. Encountering Anthoun and Dougan in the city was unlikely, but he would walk right into them with his luck.
Once past Shreth’s capital, though, the world would lay before him.
He shook aside that thought as the wall’s uneven shape rose before him and stared out into the thick forest of pine and oak. They had never appeared quite so dauntingly wild as they did now.
His resolve wavered as he glanced over his shoulder. By summer’s end, he would be of age; Anthoun would have to honor the agreement Tristan had pried from him. The Harvest Festival would soon be here, with the Midwinter Festival not long after. Jayna had already suggested they could travel to Dresden Township together. Perhaps once they were there, and if he swallowed enough drink to bolster his courage, he could work up the nerve to kiss her as he so often longed to do.
“Courage,” he said cynically, recalling the way she had looked at the knights. Those were men of courage, and she had responded to their flirtation. She would prefer a bold man over one who sought the ease of the familiar. Jealous queasiness twisted his guts as a disturbing thought struck him. What if she had succumbed to one of the young knights’ charms after I left last night?
A line from one of Anthoun’s useless philosophy texts rose in his thoughts. “History remembers the daring – and fortune favors the foolish.”
Before his resolve deserted him, Tristan vaulted the wall and stepped into the woods.
Chapter 15
Dawn’s golden sunlight shafted through the pines as Tristan jogged along the meandering stream’s bank. His gait lacked the smoothness with which he had grown accustomed, as the terrain he crossed was far more rugged than Dorishad’s tame landscape, and he often stumbled on fragmented soil littered with rocks and jutting roots. Sweat trickled down his spine as the air warmed, but he chose to keep the cloak on to obscure his silhouette against the trees.
In time he could run no longer, his breath coming in panting gasps as a cramp jabbed his side. He paused by the stream to remove his cloak and rucksack, and excitement swelled as he took in his surroundings. His nose, accustomed to wood smoke and fresh-turned earth, stung from the evergreens’ sharpness. The familiar sounds of lowing cattle and the bleating of sheep were absent; his ears rang with a silence broken by the stream’s gurgling and a woodpecker’s distant rat-tat-tat-tat. The sky was a more vibrant shade of blue and the air seemed cleaner, though how either was possible defied explanation.
Folding the cloak into a makeshift pad between his back and the rucksack’s lumpiness, Tristan angled away from the exposed bank and into the shadier forest. Any pursuit by Dorishad’s woodsmen, hunters, and trappers would take time to organize. They would search for signs around the hamlet’s walls to give them a clue to his direction, which would take them the better part of a day. Enough of Dorishad’s residents worked in the orchards during the summer to obscure his bootprints and make it difficult to track him.
He angled his path to take him north and east through the woods and put a good foot under him to open some distance between himself and possible pursuit. According to the maps, Akemaar was no more than two hundred miles away. He estimated crossing thirty miles in a day, which would bring him to the riverport in six or seven days – eight, if he misjudged his angle and met the River Ossifor further upstream or downstream. His food should be sufficient to last if he ate sparingly, and he had coin enough to buy more and still afford riverboat passage.
It would be difficult for anyone to catch him once he was on the water – provided, of course, nobody guessed where he was going and knew a faster way to reach Akemaar.
MAPS, TRISTAN DISCOVERED, were sometimes deceiving – and it was only partly their fault. What appeared to be a straight path through the Forest of Corarma proved to be otherwise. He had stared at Anthoun’s maps for months without hearing much of what the sage told him about them; consumed by fantasies of being anywhere else, he had listened with no
more than half an ear. All maps showed different things for various purposes, and fine details about the landscape disappeared at greater scales. Most importantly, maps varied in their quality and accuracy depending on who made them.
Those lessons returned as he realized why a straight path to his destination was not possible. Long before mankind first walked its soil, Celerus had been two separate continents; they had smashed together to become a single landmass somewhere in history. According to theory among scholars, Western Celerus was smaller and made of lighter rock, and mountains formed as the crust buckled and folded under pressure. Anthoun illustrated the concept by pushing a sheet and a quilt laid out on his desk together.
A mildly interesting and forgettable lesson proved a nightmarish reality to walk through. The landscape grew rougher the farther he traveled from Dorishad, filled with steep ascents and descents choked by impenetrable forest stands and crossed by countless stream-cut ravines. Combined with wind and water erosion, the unchecked forest growth forced him to take a meandering course to circle impassible terrain. He followed creeks which appeared to be quick paths northward, only to find they veered east or west to feed small lakes in gorges without exit.
Though his boots were well-made, their soles were thin. By sunset, his feet were bruised, and his knees and ankles were sore from slipping on scree, water-smoothed rocks, and rough-edged stones.
Tristan dropped his bag to the ground beneath a copse of oaks growing in the sea of pine. Daylight was fading under the forest’s dense canopy despite the vibrant blue of the sky overhead. He locked gazes with a squirrel perched on a low branch and stretched his spine.
“Mind if I stay the night here?” he asked the rodent. He chuckled when the startled animal burst into a frenzy of chattering before bolting away. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
After clearing an area of leaves and acorns, he set a crude camp – his cloak folded in half lengthwise to create a soft surface to sleep on, with the rucksack as his pillow. A few feet away, he built a circle of rocks taken from the streambed and collected some firewood. He was seated on his makeshift bed beside a small fire, his sack of food beside him, by the time the light failed.
Chewing salted meat softened in boiling water, he listened to the empty rumblings of his stomach. He dared not eat much, certain he had not covered as much ground as planned. Banking the fire so that it would create enough smoke to keep away some of the nighttime insects and animals, he lay back on his cloak.
“Fourteen days,” he said with a sigh. “Fourteen days rather than seven or eight, if the land is all this rough. I can manage that.”
IT RAINED IN THE MIDDLE of the night.
Already exhausted from the strenuous hike, the soft patter helped Tristan fall into a deeper sleep. Layers of oak leaves kept most of the light rain from falling on him, though a chilly drop sometimes splattered against his cheek or hissed on the fire’s smoking embers. He draped the muffin cap across his face with a grunt and rolled on his side.
By dawn, the rain became a downpour and drowned his fire. He huddled beneath an old oak, wrapped in his cloak as water pooled around his feet and soaked through his boots. Forced to wedge his rucksack into a crotch of oak branches to keep it from sitting in a puddle, he waited for the storm to subside.
It was cold for a summer rainstorm, which told Tristan autumn would arrive earlier than anticipated. A mere day’s walk from the hamlet, he was surprised how much cooler the air had become. In Dorishad, there would still be weeks of warm weather; throughout the harvest, sunbaked fields radiated heat trapped over the day. He reasoned that the lack of warmth resulted from the trees preventing the sun’s rays from hitting the ground, since the groves and orchards were always cooler than the rest of the hamlet.
He donned his rucksack and set off once it became apparent the rain was not going to blow out. Rushing water swept through the streambed, forcing him to take a winding path through the trees growing along the bank. His sodden clothes weighed down on him, dragging his steps as the wet wool chafed his skin.
Though the rain cowl sank cold, wet fingers through the cloak’s wool shell and fleece lining, it was pretty. The woods transformed into a shadowy green wonderland that appealed to his daydreams of adventure. A more practical, adult part of his mind rationalized the rain as a good thing, as the storm would obliterate his tracks and provide fresh water to fill his water skins. Any woodsmen Karilen dispatched to track him would use hounds to follow his scent, and the rain would remove that trace of his passage as well.
Despite its loveliness and usefulness, the rain grew to be an irritant. Running through Dorishad’s rainy orchards and fields to fight off hordes of imaginary soldiers with a stick was easy. When he finished shirking his chores, he could return to the manor house for a warm meal, a hot soak in the bathhouse, and a soft bed. Out here, though, there was no escape from sodden clothes, mud, and no Karilen to feed him a hearty stew. He had had the foresight to bring changes in clothing, kept dry by the leather rucksack, but realized there was a complication – he had no way to dry what he wore unless the rain eased and gave him a chance to lay everything out in the sun.
The possibility of seeing the sun was remote if this was, as he suspected, the first sign of the changing season. Autumn rains often stalled and soaked the land; he might not see the sun for at least three days.
Sleeping in cold, wet clothing lacked a certain appeal, but his sense of humor reminded him that adventure came with discomfort. It was a fair exchange for escaping overprotective rules that prevented him from going anywhere or doing anything. Even if Dorishad’s woodsmen dragged him home, the thrill of this adventure already made up for the fact that Dougan’s belt would tan his hide so thoroughly he would be unable to sit for days.
Sunset, or what passed for it, found him on the shore of a small lake. Unlike the previous night, there was no convenient oak grove where he could shelter. For that matter, there were no broadleaf trees of any size worth noting. Aside from pines interspersed with birch and aspen, the only trees were willows growing along the lake’s bank. The trees’ long branches trailed like a maiden’s hair in the leaden water.
A chill ran up his spine as he recalled an old crone’s tale about willows beside lakes.
In the early days of the world, legend claimed a young man fled his home in a quest for fame and fortune. Finding himself in an ancient forest, he encountered a forest spirit called a dryad; overcome with desire, he chased the creature in hopes of wooing her. Not wanting one of their young sullied by mortal hand, ancient forest spirits attempted to dissuade the young man through tricks, tests, and challenges meant to drive him off – which inadvertently caused the boy’s death. A capricious water spirit called a rusalk seduced the young man, dragging him to her watery abode. His body died, while his spirit remained forever enslaved to the rusalk’s will.
The dryad had hoped the young man would win through the tests and was heartbroken to learn of her people’s treachery. She traveled to the shore where his body had sunk beneath the surface and begged the rusalk to free his soul to no avail. Taunted by the water spirit, she wept inconsolably and remained rooted in place until her body grew stiff and transformed into a tree. In the end, the dryad had her vengeance against the capricious spirit; she starved the creature by protecting all travelers camping beside the water and foiling the rusalk’s magic with her own.
Legend said all willows weeping by rivers, streams, and lakes were dryads whose loves perished under similar circumstances. The tales also said that any young man on a quest would find safety and shelter under one of these trees' branches. It was all hogwash, of course, but seeing the trees and the rain falling like endless tears on the lake set the hairs on Tristan’s neck on end.
With no other promising shelter available, he ducked under the tree’s tangled branches and found himself reasonably sheltered. The tree’s canopy deflected the worst of the rain, though some still managed to find its way through the leaves.
He shrugg
ed the rucksack from beneath his cloak’s limited protection, and removed some food before stuffing the bag in a crotch between two branches. Further up the trunk, five diverging branches created a cradle of sorts. Holding a wedge of salted ham between his teeth, he scrambled up to the joint and rested his spine against an upright branch. The tree creaked as he shifted his weight but remained stable enough, and the major limbs grew close enough together that he had little concern about falling out overnight.
“Excellent,” he said around the mouthful of salted meat and wrapped his cloak around himself to find a measure of protection against the rain that made its way through the tree’s canopy. Feet dangling, he pulled his hood low as he chewed his small meal and tried to ignore the chafing of his leather pants, the sting of burst blisters, and his throbbing feet. His progress was not what he hoped, but he was satisfied he was beyond easy capture. With luck, the rain would ease the next day and allow him to cover some distance.
Lulled by the rain pattering against the leaves, his thoughts drifted. The legend of the willow trees whispered in the haze of half-sleep, and he belatedly recalled what young travelers were supposed to do when camping near one of the trees. Feeling foolish, he slipped his hand from his cloak and patted the tree. “For thy loss, I grieve with thee,” he murmured, his voice sleepy. “There is a maiden fair awaiting my return. Prithee watch o’er mine sleep that she dost not weep as thee.”
He yawned as he tucked his hand back into his cloak. The fleece lining remained warm despite its dampness, which helped drag him toward unconsciousness.
How long he slept, he was unsure. His eyes opened to damp, cool darkness when the rain stopped. The moon’s light slipped through the clouds to bathe the land; the lake’s still surface glowed like molten silver through the willow’s branches. Neither creature nor wind stirred in the night shadowed forest, and silence pressed against his ears.
