The Gypsy caravan was on the move. It was time to escape the mountains of Pravik.
* * *
Chapter 7: Attack
Nicolas Fisher rode at the head of the caravan, standing on the seat of a brilliant red and gold wagon. His son, whom he called Little Bear, played with a leather train beside him. The child’s hands and eyes were enraptured by the worn object, and Nicolas smiled as he watched him play. But he could not watch long. He turned his fire-coloured eyes back to the road before them, looked down the sloping mountain path as it rolled beneath their wheels, and listened carefully.
A drab mare carrying a brown-haired Gypsy with a pipe in his mouth trotted to the side of the wagon. The Gypsy nodded up at Nicolas.
“Keep a sharp eye out, Peter,” Nicolas said. The pipe-smoker kicked his mare’s heels and cantered up the road ahead of the wagons. Other Gypsies were walking and riding on all sides of the caravan, eyes and ears alert for trouble. They had not been so guarded since the days before the battle in Athrom, when the High Police had hunted Gypsies. Nicolas and Marja had turned the tables then, hunting High Police and rescuing their people until they were captured and taken to Athrom, where they would have died had it not been for the soldiers sent by Virginia, the releasing of the River-Daughter, and the intervention of the King himself.
Only Nicolas knew what he had seen and heard in the desolate land beyond the Veil. The Fire-Song encountered there had changed him forever.
He looked at his son again. Yes, things had changed.
He turned to survey the caravan of Gypsies under his command. The Major had led them for years, but they had put themselves under Nicolas’s control when it became evident that he was touched by the supernatural. They believed his fire-eyes and unusual Gift of hearing protected them from evil. Perhaps they did.
“You are blessed of the King,” Marja had said stubbornly when Nicolas protested that he didn’t want leadership. “Who else should lead us?”
The caravan was fifteen wagons strong, a traveling home to several families with small children, a few elders, and many young and strong Gypsies who were proud to travel with the Fisher and his fiery, beautiful wife. In Nicolas and Marja they had found something legendary, something that made them feel as though the ancient days had taken flesh. Even Nicolas could see that. Even he could feel his blood quickening at the thought of reentering the battle to bring the Seventh World into the truth—into the realities that he could hear, that Virginia could see, and that Marja remembered in story.
The young and strong now rode in front of the wagons. A few jogged alongside. A black bear, Nicolas’s old companion, shuffled alongside the horses, who ignored it.
Nicolas grinned. Bear had terrorized horses in the days of the persecution, but the Gypsy horses didn’t seem to know or care.
A disturbance up the path drew Nicolas’s attention, and he pulled the long leather reins and signaled for the caravan to slow. From around a tree-thick bend in the road, Peter’s riderless mare came galloping.
Nicolas jumped down, his sword drawn. He held up his hand again, stopping the caravan.
He listened.
Marja appeared wordlessly from within the wagon and drew Little Bear up in her arms. She paused to watch Nicolas, but he was motionless. After a moment, she ducked back inside to safety.
Peter’s mare reached Nicolas, who stopped her with a hand on her bridle. He was still listening. Suddenly, he turned.
“Break up the wagons!” he shouted. “Scatter the people! They’re coming for us!”
Hooves on the stone road punctuated his words even as Nicolas’s people sprang into action, cutting loose their horses as Gypsies poured from the wagons and began to flee into the woods. Around the bend soldiers on horseback came, rank upon rank, weapons drawn and banners flying.
Black and green. The High Police were attacking.
Nicolas looked wildly around. Young men were gathering at his side, their swords drawn. The Major was suddenly beside him with an axe in hand.
“Up, lad!” the Major said.
Nicolas looked up and saw the low-hanging branch. He jumped onto the mare’s back, stood on her backbone, and caught the branch, swinging himself up. All around him, the other young men followed him into the tree branches. He had no time to look for Marja or their children, but as the soldiers came closer, he prayed for their safety and that Marja would have the sense to run. For once in her life.
The soldiers reached them. Nicolas dropped from the tree and knocked one of the first off his horse. His boys dropped into the ranks, howling their war cries. He grabbed the reins of the warhorse and wheeled it around to face the onslaught, ducking as a sword swept over his head. He snatched up a spear from the saddle and rammed the butt end into his attacker’s middle, knocking the wind out of him. As the man gasped for breath, Nicolas locked swords with him, disarming him in a flash of steel.
The High Police were well trained, but the Gypsies were fast and unconventional. Bear ran into the horses, spooking and scattering them as their riders shouted and struggled to gain control. Nicolas stood on the back of his horse and threw himself at another soldier from behind, taking him down to the ground. He finished the soldier off and looked up just in time to see the Major go down.
“Major!” he shouted, lurching forward to help his old friend. Sudden tears blinded his eyes. Music seemed to be playing through the fight, a wild lament, and the sound clouded Nicolas’s other senses. Someone grabbed his arm and twisted it until he dropped his sword. A mail-clad fist delivered a blow to his temple, and he fell into the dirt.
“Major…” he called again.
Choking as the dust of the road filled his lungs and eyes, Nicolas reached his hand toward the place where the Major lay dead on the ground.
The fight was over. High Police were searching the wagons.
If only Marja and the children had escaped.
If only Virginia and Rehtse had gotten away.
Nicolas was pulled to his knees, but victory sustained him as he realized that both wagons had been searched and found empty. All around him, the High Police had forced his fighting boys to their knees. A commander walked through them, yanking each one’s head back.
He reached Nicolas, grabbed his hair, and pulled his head back. He looked into his eyes.
“This is him,” he said.
A soldier approached. “There’s no sign of the Seer, my lord,” he said.
The commander grimaced. “Search the woods. We’ll find her yet. And if not, she’ll go back to Pravik and take shelter there—so we’ll have her soon enough either way. Cratus will just have to wait a few more days.” He peered down at Nicolas with narrowed eyes. “At least we caught one.”
* * *
At a run, Rehtse pulled Virginia over a thick carpet of pine needles where she hoped their footprints would be less likely to show. Pine branches snagged in their cloaks, and they pulled free and pressed on, ignoring even those branches that scratched at their faces. Rehtse kept her eyes fixed on the forest ahead and led Virginia without slowing.
Behind them, Rehtse could hear steel crashing and young voices crying. Keep them, Great King, in the palm of your hand. Virginia ran with one hand shielding her face, the other hand holding to Rehtse’s sleeve. Horses neighing; a child screaming. A flash of fire-coloured eyes. Be their shield and protector, Lord Avenger, great and merciful one.
A thousand times Rehtse had prayed the prayer: it was liturgy, tradition. But now it meant something terrifying and real. The sounds died away, replaced by the whipping of branches through air and the thudding of their own feet on the ground. A stream turned white and tumbled beside them, and when the road grew steep it cascaded into a waterfall and wet their faces, their hair, and their clothes.
They slowed now out of necessity, Rehtse helping Virginia down, step by step, trying not to slip in the wet dirt or lose footing on the mossy stones. The path evened out in a shadowy glen where the waterfall poured into a deep pool.
“Are we alone?” Virginia asked.
Rehtse nodded, then caught herself. She struggled to catch her breath. The air was rich and pungent. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I believe we are.”
High, grey-lichened rocks surrounded the pool. Rehtse helped Virginia to the top of one, then, with a profound sigh of relief, sat and immersed her aching legs in the cool water. They sat in silence and listened to the sound of falling water and the underlying calm of the glen. A single yellow bird flitted through the trees and from rock to rock, closer and closer until it lighted on Virginia’s outstretched hand. It was beautiful, bright and trusting like a Gypsy child.
Rehtse blinked back tears at the thought of the Gypsies, and she said another prayer for them even as she watched, fascinated, as Virginia let the bird twitch and jump from finger to finger, then settle down in the palm of her hand as though it would sleep there. It closed its eyes.
A moment of peace passed, two, and then the bird opened its eyes and flew away. Virginia turned her head slightly, her hand still outstretched, and said, “Did you hear that?”
Rehtse looked up the path along the waterfall and caught a glimpse of sunlight on chain mail. Four soldiers emerged from the shadows and began to climb down. She pulled her feet out of the water and drew them up under her, reaching for Virginia’s hand with her eyes fixed on the slowly descending soldiers.
“They are coming for us,” she said quietly. “We must run.”
“Not that,” Virginia said. She was rigid. Rehtse tore her eyes from the soldiers and looked at her companion. The look on Virginia’s face shook her.
“That.”
This time they both heard it.
A moan that rose almost to a whine and then died away again.
“Some beast?” Rehtse asked in a whisper.
“No beast I have ever heard,” Virginia answered. Slowly, they rose together, hand in hand, balancing precariously on the rocks. Above them, one of the soldiers gave a shout, and the men came crashing down the path. Virginia turned her head toward them, and her eyes seemed to flare to life. They widened at the sight of the enemy, and she turned again to the pool and pointed to a shadowy place near the base of one of the rocks. “There!”
Rehtse paused just long enough to look. Even as she did, she became aware of a terrible smell—rot hanging in the air, too strong for the mist to wash away.
A long, serpentine body with a huge, wolfish head was moving slowly through the water along the rocks. Where the light dappled the water, it did not dapple the creature: its body seemed to suck the light into itself. It was a continuous line of black, and its eyes, enormous for the size of its head, were pupiless, blue, and unseeing.
“Be still,” Virginia said. “A moment longer. It does not yet see us.”
Rehtse stood with all her muscles straining, obeying Virginia’s command while everything in her screamed at her to run. The soldiers had nearly reached the base of the waterfall.
And the wolfish head turned to face the men.
“Now go,” Virginia said.
Virginia and Rehtse leaped from the rocks and ran for the woods. Their pursuers shouted once again, and an arrow whistled through the air and embedded itself in a tree inches from Rehtse’s waist. The serpent’s moan lifted in the air.
And now the men were shouting again, but with very different words.
The tangle cleared suddenly, and they plunged through ferns, weaving around the dark trunks of taller trees, slipping in moss. Behind them the whine sounded, a hungry, lonely whine, over the shouts of men that turned suddenly to screams.
Virginia passed Rehtse and angled away. As they ran, the wind began to blow, whipping the tops of the trees high above them, urging them on. On through ferns and trees and hollows, until suddenly Rehtse realized she was running down the mountainside, and it was steep and sloping before her. The ground was rock, pebbles tumbling all around from the impact of their feet, and they were slipping and sliding toward sunlight, the air silent and the wind suddenly calmed, nothing driving them now but their own momentum. They could not stop.
Virginia grabbed a slender white tree and held on while she lost her footing and slid around its base. She reached out just in time to grab Rehtse, who was sliding after her in a crouch. Rehtse let Virginia pull her toward the tree and caught hold of its trunk as soon as she was close enough. They sat panting and clinging in the sun. Rehtse looked down the slope to the cliff edge, green forests stretching out beyond it, and laughed with relief.
After her heart had ceased pounding, Rehtse tested her feet and found she could stand, if she leaned forward, and climb back up the slope—at least far enough to reach another little tree and pull herself farther up. It looked as though they could make it back to level ground.
She began to tell Virginia that, and stopped. “But you can see,” she said. “You saw the tree—you grabbed me. You saw the creature in the glen, and the soldiers. You’re not really blind.”
Virginia, still holding the white trunk, looked up with unfocused green eyes, and Rehtse knew as certainly as she knew anything that Virginia could not see her. Not now. “Or you are,” Rehtse finished. “But then how—”
“I cannot control my sight,” Virginia said. She smiled. “And I didn’t see you, I heard you. Tumbling down the slope.”
Rehtse drew herself up a little. “That was not tumbling,” she said. “Tumbling involves head and heels. I was sliding, with considerably more grace.” Virginia laughed even as Rehtse realized that her feet were on fire from sliding down the rocks. Pebbles were embedded in her calloused heels. She lifted a foot and grimaced, pulling a thorn out as she did. She glanced back up the slope.
“We can make it back up,” she said. “If you just hold my hand, I can guide you. But is it safe to go back up there?”
Virginia was clinging to the tree, staring out toward the cliff edge and the expanse of blue sky as a breeze blew her dark hair. “The men will not come after us now,” she said. “They will not have survived.” After a moment more she stood and reached for Rehtse’s hand, and they began the awkward process of scrambling back up, using small trees and getting their footing wherever they could.
Back in the shadow of the trees, Rehtse looked all around, searching for movement or sign of danger. There was nothing. Even the air felt different—clean, peaceful, almost sleepy. A few bird calls, high up and far away, were the only sounds.
“What was it?” Rehtse asked.
“Nothing of earth,” Virginia said. “Blackness abroad in the world—that should not surprise me, not now.” She was quiet a moment. “It is a foretaste. Morning Star will come soon, and show pity to none.”
Rehtse nodded, and suddenly trembling, she said, “And yet, it was not Morning Star who aided us in escaping. The King has used even the Blackness to his own purposes.” Slowly, she knelt and lifted her hands. “The Great King has saved us, blessed be he,” she intoned. “He is our shield and protector, our way in dark places.”
“Amen,” Virginia finished.
Rehtse turned her head to look at her companion. Virginia was standing in a patch of ferns, light dappling through the trees and spotting her skirt with sun and shadow. She tilted her head up, listening, taking in her surroundings. Rehtse waited.
“Rehtse,” Virginia said, “do you still believe the King will direct our paths?”
Rehtse stood and brushed twigs and leaves away from her clothes and out of her hair. She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she looked around again, searching for any sign of a path. The trees on three sides were thick, casting deep shadows. To one side was the open sky beyond the cliff, a blue expanse over forests that to Rehtse had no name. She closed her eyes and lifted her hands once more.
Virginia cleared her throat. “Rehtse? Are we lost?�
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“Shh,” Rehtse said. “I am waiting.”
A moment later, Rehtse lowered her hands, gathered her skirt in one hand, and tucked her other hand into Virginia’s elbow. “Come,” she said.
“Do you know where we are?” Virginia asked.
“No,” Rehtse answered.
“Did the King answer you?” Virginia asked.
Rehtse hesitated. “Not—that I could hear.”
“Then where are we going?” Virginia asked.
Rehtse smiled. “All paths in this world belong to the King. If he can use the Blackness to deliver us from wicked men, then he can turn even wrong steps into right ones. We are seeking him, so we will trust the road to lead us to him. But he cannot guide us if we don’t move.”
“Rehtse—” Virginia paused. “My dream last night. I saw the King overwhelmed by darkness.”
“Perhaps you only saw him using it,” Rehtse said. “As he has done today.”
Virginia smiled.
* * *
Libuse was hoeing in the streets, her long brown hair twisted at her neck and covered with a kerchief, her skirts hitched up above her calves, dirt under her fingernails and sweat pouring down her brow. Mrs. Cook was hacking up remaining chunks of cobblestone from the earth beside her. Other women were doing the same while men hauled the cobblestones away. In one place, they had started ploughing deep furrows in the street. Shadows from tall townhouses and the city walls fell over the makeshift fields. Nothing about this place was ideal. Yet they dared not go out from the walls and begin to plant in fields until the Ploughman had returned to assure them that they were free to do so.
She swallowed as she swung the hoe forward and yanked at a stubborn piece of rock. She knew better than to expect word from him so soon. She had thought, when he came to Pravik to join her in ruling the city, that the days of hiding and waiting and wishing she could be with him were over.
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