Authors: Pamela Freeman
T
HE HORSES
surrounded Bramble in a great stampeding cloud. She kept her head as low as she could and urged them forward. They clattered through the cobbled streets of Sendat and were onto the road beyond in a matter of moments.
She felt the same exhilaration as when she chased: speed, horses, danger . . . She laughed aloud. The darkness made it more exciting. But more dangerous for the horses.
She slowed Cam after they left the town and whistled the other horses to slow, too. They did so reluctantly, and stopped when she stopped, milling around her in a loose herd. She called Trine and Mud and loosened their leading reins from where she had tied them, thanking the gods they hadn’t come loose and tripped them up. She turned them to the north, then patted the necks of the horses she could reach and whistled the code for “stay.”
They didn’t want to let her move off without them, but she was firm. “Go on with you, you big softies, back to your yard and your stables and your dinner.”
As they hesitated, she toyed for a moment with the idea of stealing the whole lot of them, depriving Thegan of the chance of going to war anytime soon. But there was no way she could hide such a thundering crowd anywhere in the settled farmlands around Sendat — and it was getting colder out here. She’d lose some of them for sure. So she whistled “stay” over and over until they stopped trailing her up the track, and turned to follow a big stallion called Sugar, which Bramble had trained herself. Sugar moved off, the others behind him, then turned his big head to look at her.
“Tell you what, Shoog,” she said. “See if you can break his neck for me.”
Sugar shook his mane and nickered at her.
Bramble nudged Cam. “Let’s go, my friends,” she said, “and let’s go fast.”
They were lucky. Half an hour after they left Sendat the clouds cleared and a half-moon shone enough light so that Bramble could see the road between its ditches. She pushed the horses hard, knowing that, while Thegan might assume she would head toward Carlion, he wasn’t foolish enough to neglect other possibilities. There would be men after her, and soon. They would be mounted on their best horses, and they’d travel much faster than she could, with three.
She had to put as much space as she could between her and Thegan before sunup. Her only hope lay in reaching the Lake Domain before Thegan’s men found her. Once she had crossed the border to another Domain, Thegan couldn’t touch her. There was supposed to be a process where a warlord could request that a fleeing criminal be arrested and handed back to justice, but in practice it rarely happened. Besides, the Lake Domain didn’t have a warlord, just the Lake and its people and Baluchston, its free town. In the Lake Domain, she knew she would be safe.
It was a wild ride. Clouds scudded across the moon and the wind was high. She was lucky it wasn’t the freezing wind of winter; but it was chill enough to cut at her face and make her lips bleed. They rode past farmhouses, past mills with their locked mill wheels groaning against their rain-filled millraces. Through increasing patches of woodland, darkly threatening, she slowed the horses, although they wanted to speed through the gloom, fearing ancestral wolves. Each time they broke through to the moonlit road, the horses picked up their pace.
Bramble began to fret that they needed rest, but she didn’t dare limit their pace. Once she stopped them for a few moments, and walked them around until they were cool enough to drink from the rainwater in the ditch by the road. She swapped Mud’s burden to Cam so she could mount him, and give Cam a spell.
They started off refreshed, but not long after, all the horses began to tire and they had to slow to a walk.
The tidy farms around Sendat were long past, and the fields on either side of the road were given over to pasture or trees. The patches of woodland were wilder, not tamed by charcoal burners and coppicers. The undergrowth was heavy by the side of the road, though Bramble thought she could force the horses through it if Thegan’s men caught up.
The wind dropped as she passed a lone farmhouse where a small light shone, the candle of a farmer getting ready to milk, and she knew it must be near dawn. She had no idea how far she had come. If she were a
real
Traveler, she would know the roads and the borders, but she didn’t even know how far it was from Sendat to the border of the Lake Domain. More than a night’s ride, that was certain.
At the next forest, she rode in a little way and then slowed the horses, looking for a track leading in deeper. The moon had set and the sky was not yet paling, so it was difficult to see. She tried three false trails before she found one the horses could manage in single file.
Beyond the heavy undergrowth near the road, she found the going easier. This wasn’t the kindly wood of her childhood — it was a conifer forest, dark as pitch and smelling sharply of pine. The tall, scraggly trees creaked menacingly as the dawn wind picked up, and high above she could hear the ominous cawing and squabbling of rooks. Below, there was silence, the horses’ steps muffled by the thick blanket of pine needles. Nothing else grew but the pines.
She dismounted to lead the horses, fearing they might walk into a branch in the gloom.
For the first time in her life, she was truly afraid. She feared nothing real — not Thegan’s men coming after her, nor sharp branches or wolves. Yet it was deep in the marrow, like the terror brought by the gods. But if this was the gods’ gift, they were darker and more terrible gods than any she had faced. She stood, trembling in the dark, and felt the urge to run, blindly, wildly, as fast as she could, to anywhere. Her legs twitched and her shoulders trembled with the strength of that desire. She fought it, but could feel herself losing . . . She felt a sharp pinch on her arm.
Trine had bitten her!
The pain brought her back to herself and she turned, from reflex, to clout the mare on the nose. Then she hugged her, tears on her cheeks, burrowing her face into the warm sweaty hide. Trine snorted astonishment and that made Bramble laugh.
“Yes, you’re right, then, aren’t you, I’m acting like a fool. Well, come on, then.” She led the horses farther on and felt the panic recede, though it left her with a bad taste in her mouth, a distaste for the person she might have become without the horses. Fear diminished further as the dawn light swelled in the gaps between the trees, until she could see a good length in front of her. She hesitated as the trail petered out in the middle of nowhere, between two trees just like any other two they had passed.
“All right, it’s up to you now,” she told the horses. “Find us some water.”
She mounted and relaxed the reins on Trine and sure enough, after snuffling the air for a moment, the mare headed off decisively, the other two following. They went straight, and soon Bramble could hear, under the sough of the wind, water chuckling.
It was only a small brown stream running over rocks, but it was life itself. Bramble didn’t let the horses drink too much at once because the water was cold. She put on the horses’ feed bags and then went through the packs to see what she had left for herself. Not much. Fly had packed her cheese and scones, but who knew how long they had to last her. She ate half of them, reasoning that she needed the energy. They would rest now, and then get going again in the late afternoon.
At last she had enough light to read the note Thegan’s woman had given her. The parchment had been folded twice. Inside, the writing was formal and delicate, the writing of a court scribe — or a lady.
To the leader of the Lake Dwellers, greetings from Sorn, Lady of Central Domain.
Against my wishes, Thegan, warlord of Central Domain, will move against you on the first full moon night of spring.
Be prepared and beware. He comes with fire.
Sorn.
Bramble let out a long breath.
Oh, dung and pissmire. So much for staying out of things. So much for keeping my head down and disappearing. Thanks a lot, Sorn.
She knew she had to deliver the message. The Lake. She had to cross it anyway, and at least there she’d be out of Thegan’s Domain. Well, if she was lucky, she thought, this forest might stretch all the way there. Perhaps she could avoid the road altogether. Then she looked around. The pines grew so thickly, there was barely any sun on the forest floor. There were no living branches within reach; the lower branches had all died as the higher ones blocked out the sun. In this deep shade it was impossible to tell direction. She would have to climb tree after tree to find north. And as for that old tale about moss growing on the north side of trees — bah! Moss grew on
every
side of the trees. Who knew how lost she was already?
Well, better lost than dead, or a prisoner of Thegan’s. She felt almost cheerful. She curled up in her bedroll on a soft patch of pine needles and went to sleep?
When she woke she peed behind a rock and laughed at herself for hiding from the horses as she did so. Then she climbed the nearest tree. It was a matter of nerve and hard hands rather than difficulty, as the branches were frequent but sometimes rotten and the harsh bark scraped her hands raw. Near the top, though, she could see the sun beginning to wester, and realized that her little stream ran west of north: the direction she needed to take to get to the Lake.
Hopefully it would take her the whole way.
They progressed easily enough at first, while the light lasted, following the stream down a gradual slope. Then it joined a larger stream, still heading roughly west by north. There was just enough space between the trees for the light to reach the banks and give life to the undergrowth; they were choked with the thorny stems of blackberry, the long canes of raspberry, and roots and remnants of other plants. In high summer, Bramble thought, she’d have been able to pick a nice salad along here: young dandelion greens, rocket, fennel, nasturtium, flat-lobed parsley, maybe even some tender young strawberries. As it got darker she dismounted and led the horses to keep warm.
The stream grew wider, fed by another stream of equal size, and the undergrowth grew bushier, with evergreen shrubs crowding the banks. Thickets of holly were interlaced with the long horizontal branches of firethorn, their crop of vivid red berries just beginning to ripen. Riding near them could scratch your eyes out. Bramble was forced to walk parallel to the stream about ten yards back.
Moving away from the stream meant moving away from the faint moonlight. Bramble waited until her eyes could adjust. Trine raised her head suddenly, reacting to something Bramble couldn’t hear, and widened her nostrils, ready to whinny. Bramble reached up and nipped her nostrils closed just in time. Trine snorted softly, annoyed, and tried to bite her. Mud and Cam had ceded to Trine as herd leader, and waited for her to greet any strangers. As she stayed silent, so did they, their ears pricked forward. Bramble listened with them.
At the very edge of her hearing, she could make out
something.
Whispers? She tied the horses to a tree and went on. If Trine made too much noise and someone came to investigate, at least she wouldn’t be there. It was a risk, but she had to know what had made the noise.
Moving silently through a forest at night is not a skill to be acquired in a hurry. Bramble had roamed the forests of her childhood, and those near Gorham’s farm, night after night, watching badgers, finding the nests of owls, following bats to find the best fruit, high in the wild fig trees. This forest, with its needle-quiet floor, was child’s play. But to follow the sound, she had to move closer to the stream for cover, and moving silently through holly and firethorn was difficult and painful.
She slipped through, never breaking a branch, going low under the firethorn branches and sliding around the dense pyramids of holly. The sounds grew louder, and then she could see the flicker of a small fire on the opposite bank of the stream. That would have been what Trine had smelled — that, and the other horses. There were two of them, dark in the shadows beyond the fire. There were two people sitting in front of it, their backs to her.
Bramble found a place where she could see their faces. They wore Thegan’s uniform. She looked closely. Their horses’ heads drooped from hard riding, and they themselves seemed very tired. Had they ridden after her from Sendat? She realized that they were camping at a ford; a road ran through the stream right here.
They seemed settled for the night. She could get back to the horses and lead them in a wide circle around the ford, and find somewhere else to cross the stream. Then she heard the sound of horses coming from the north, three or four of them, walking in the dark. The men at the fire stood up and took out their swords. One of them slipped back into the trees behind the fire, near the horses.
Four horsemen came into the clearing, splashing easily across the ford.
“Be at ease, Hodge,” the leader called to the man at the fire. “Sully, come out of there.”
It was Leof’s voice. As he swung down from his mount she noted that he wasn’t riding his mare; this was a bay gelding from Thegan’s yard. So they’d got their horses back all right. The fire lit his pale hair and caught the metal around him — sword belt, hilt, dagger, boot buckles, earring — so that he walked, for a moment, in a constellation of stars.
Then he moved forward to the fire and she saw his face. He seemed tired, very tired, and something underneath that, something hard that hadn’t been there before.
Thegan has tainted him,
Bramble thought with grief.
He has turned him into a killer.
The other men were busy unsaddling the horses and letting them drink and eat. Sully came out of the trees to help them.
Hodge moved forward to take Leof’s horse as he swung down. “Is it war, sir? Are we recalled?” he asked.
“Not yet, no. Your orders stand. You have the letter for Arvid?”
Hodge patted his breast. “Safe.”
Leof nodded. “Well, you have extra duty now. You’re to keep a lookout for a woman named Bramble. You may remember her — she was the Kill Reborn.”