Fool's Quest (58 page)

And then one day she received a message and slipped out of the house in late evening. She met a woman with two horses at the bottom of the garden, and they had fled. She halted suddenly. She was breathing heavily. “Can you go first for a time?” she asked me.

And I did, and suddenly appreciated the work she had been doing since dawn. I led us by a more winding way, seeking shallower snow in the lee of trees and clumps of bushes. Even so, it was heavier work than I'd been doing and sweat began to run down my spine. I had no breath to speak and she seemed to have run out of words and stories. I pondered what I'd learned of Shun and rather wished she had shared such tales when first she had come to live with us. I might have been able to like her if I had known more about her. When we paused to rest the sweat cooled my body and I shivered until we trudged on.

I did not last as long as Shun had. I told myself it was because I was smaller and had to lift my feet higher at each step to push my way through the snow and work against the drag of my coat. Shun took the lead again, when I had slowed beyond her patience, and led us on along a widening vale. I hoped desperately for a shepherd's cottage or a farmstead. But I saw no chimney smoke rising and heard only birdcalls. Perhaps sheep or cattle pastured here in summer but had been herded home to their pens for the winter.

The shadows of the hills began to creep across us as the sun moved and I realized we'd been traveling east. I tried to decide if that meant we were closer to Withywoods but I was too tired and my hunger had begun to creep back, setting claws in my belly and up my throat. “We should look for some kind of shelter soon,” Shun announced.

I lifted my eyes. I'd been looking only at the backs of her legs. There were no evergreens here, but to the south of us I saw bare-limbed willows along a watercourse. They were gray and twiggy and the snow had penetrated to lie shallowly on the ground beneath them. “Perhaps under the willows?” I said, and “If we find nothing better,” Shun agreed, and we walked on.

It began to get darker, and the clear day that had seemed almost kind now seemed crueler as the cold seemed to descend from the sky. Ahead we could see the brushy line that indicated another watercourse would soon cut our path.

We had good fortune. Evidently that stream ran wild and raging in the spring, for it had cut a deep path through the meadow. Now it ran quietly under the ice, but along the undercut banks, roots of trees trailed down and there were hollows in the earth behind them. They dangled like ropy curtains. We beat the clinging snow off the lower parts of our coats before we pushed the roots aside and forced our way into the earthy darkness.

This is good. Settle here and be safe.
I felt Wolf-Father relax inside me.

“I'm still hungry,” I said quietly.

Shun was settling herself. She'd pulled her hood well up over her head and had sat down and pulled her feet up inside her coat. I copied her.

“Go to sleep. At least when you're asleep you don't think about food,” she told me.

It seemed good advice and I followed it, resting my forehead on my knees and closing my eyes. I was so tired. I longed to take my boots off. I fantasized about a hot bath and my deep feather bed. Then I slept. I dreamed of my father calling me. Then I dreamed I was home, and meat was roasting on the kitchen spit. I could smell it and I could hear the noises flames make when fat drips into them.

Wake, cub, but make no sound. Untangle yourself. Be ready to run or fight.

I opened my eyes. It was deep night. Through the droop of my hood and the screen of the roots, I saw flames. I blinked and it was a little campfire by the edge of the stream. A spitted bird carcass was propped over the flames. I had never smelled anything so delectable. Then the silhouette of a man passed between me and the flames. A Chalcedean soldier. They'd found us.

I could have slipped quietly from our den and very slowly crept away but instead I put my hand into Shun's hood and softly patted her lips, and then covered her mouth more fully as she came awake. She struggled for an instant and then abruptly stilled. I made no sound as she pushed her hood back from her face. The firelight reached to paint stripes of shadow on her face as she stared. She leaned over and put her mouth to my ear. “It's Kerf. The one that said he would help us.”

Caution,
Wolf-Father warned.

“I don't trust him,” I breathed back.

“Nor I. But he has food.”

She tried to be quiet as she pushed her feet out of her coat, but Kerf turned toward us. “I know you're there. Don't be scared. I've come to take you home. Back to your family. Come out and eat something.”

His voice was deep and gentle, despite his accent. Oh, how I wanted to believe him. But Shun gave me a small push to show that she could go first. She pushed past our root curtain and then stood straight. “I've a knife,” she lied. “If you even try to touch me, I'll kill you.”

“I'm not like that,” he assured her. “I don't rape women.”

She gave a short, ugly laugh. “You're saying you're not a Chalcedean? Or that you're not a man?” Her words were edged. Oh, I didn't want her to make him angry. Couldn't we pretend we trusted him until after we'd eaten that bird?

“I am both,” he admitted. His laugh was uglier, bitter, and old. “Though my father might agree with you. He says I stayed too long with my mother, that I should have been removed from her care when I was seven, like his other sons. But he was away at the wars, and so she kept me until I was fourteen. Neither she nor I was happy to see him come home.” He was quiet for a time. He went down on one knee by the spit and turned it a bit. “For five years, I have shamed and disappointed him. He sent me off with my brother, on this raid, to make a man of me.” Kerf shook his head.

He was not looking at us, and Shun made a small motion, bidding me come out of the den. I did, moving softly, and stood well back in the shadows. “I'm going to fetch more wood and build up the fire,” he told us, and walked away into the night. We heard a horse snort and stomp. He spoke to it and walked on. Shun made a brief run and leapt the stream. I followed her immediately.

She knelt by the fire. “I don't think it's cooked yet.”

“I don't care,” I replied.

She took the spit off the fire and waved the bird about to cool it a bit. It flew off the spit and into the snow. I sprang on it, picked it up, and tore it in half. Some parts were too hot, some were cold from the snow, and some were raw. We ate it standing, making small huffing noises as we hit the hot places. I could hear Shun swallow, and the cartilage crackling in her teeth as she ate the ends off the bones. It was not a large bird and was too soon gone but I found myself panting with relief at the easing of my hunger. “The horse,” Shun said. I didn't want to leave the fire but I knew she was right. I felt not a morsel of shame for eating his food and stealing his horse. I followed Shun to where we had heard the animals. After the firelight, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. Two horses. A brown one and a white one, both hobbled. Their saddles were stacked nearby. I looked at Shun. I'd never saddled a horse before. Nor removed hobbles.

“Be careful,” I whispered as she crouched down by the white horse's front legs. I saw her groping for the straps.

“I can't feel how they come off.”

“Take off your mittens.” I was struggling with one of the saddles. I could barely lift it to drag it. How would I get it up on the horse's back?

“Do they tie?”

“No. They buckle.” Kerf spoke from just behind us. “Let me put the wood by the fire and I'll unhobble them. If you truly want to go riding off into the dark.”

We froze as we were. I felt only a little ashamed. Shun straightened up. “I won't be in your debt. You were in league with those who stole us. So we owe you nothing for your righting the wrong done to us.”

“I know that.” He walked to the fire and dropped the wood. He crouched and carefully added a stick. He appeared not to notice that we'd eaten the bird he'd been cooking. “I'm here for one reason. To take you back to your people.”

“And you expect no favors from me for your ‘kindness'?” Shun asked sarcastically.

“None.” He looked at her guilelessly. “I won't deny that I find you beautiful. I think you must already know that from how I look at you. But I understand you owe me nothing. I won't try to take advantage of you.”

It was as if he had stolen all our weapons from us. Slowly we walked back to his fire. I held my dirty hands out to the flames and felt the warmth on my face. He was well supplied. He unrolled a piece of canvas so that Shun and I might sleep on it near the fire. We had to crowd to fit, but it was warmer that way. He had another piece for himself, and bedded down on the other side of the fire.

“I still don't trust him,” I breathed to Shun as I hovered at the edge of sleep. She said nothing.

He knew how to get food. The next morning when we woke, he had already built up the fire and had a lean winter hare cooking over it. I lay still, curled in the weight of my too-large coat, and watched him as he did things to his bow and to the arrow that had slain the hare. I wondered if he was the one who had shot at Perseverance and me as we fled. The one who had shot my friend. It was still hard for me to recall parts of that day. The moments when the fog man had focused on me were all gone. But I knew they had not gone back to look for the boy they had shot. I had only that one passing glimpse of him. I hoped he had returned to Withywoods and not been too badly hurt. I suddenly recalled Steward Revel, dead in the corridor, and a deep sob ambushed me. It woke Shun.

“What's the matter?” she asked, and sat up quickly, staring at Kerf.

“They killed Steward Revel,” I choked out.

Her eyes flicked to me and then back to Kerf. “Did they?” she asked flatly, but it wasn't really a question. Shun and I had spoken very little of what we had experienced and witnessed that day. We had been too drugged with the brown soup and too focused on getting from one moment to the next. There had been no privacy for comparing what we'd seen. Neither of us had wanted to bare our wounds in front of our captors. “Stop crying,” she said to me, and by that sharp rebuke, I knew she still considered Kerf our enemy. Show no weakness before him.

She's right.

I rolled my face, rubbing my tears off on my hood, and sat up slowly. It wasn't pleasant to move. My muscles ached, and moving opened gaps that let in cold air. I wanted to cry. I wanted to throw myself down and wail and weep and scream.

“I only have one cup,” Kerf apologized. “We will have to take turns with it.”

“You have something to drink from it?” Shun asked.

“Warm broth. Snow-water and the bird bones you dropped yesterday. But we can only make one cup at a time.”

Shun said nothing to that, did not offer thanks or rebuke. Instead we stood, shook our coats back into place. Together we shook and then rolled up the piece of canvas. She handed it to me to carry, a reminder to him that it was ours now. If he was aware of that subtle declaration, he ignored it.

There was little more talk. Shun and I had little to do to prepare to travel, other than eat the hare and drink what he offered us. He melted snow in a tin cup and added the bird bones and warmed it over the fire. Shun drank first, then he made more for me. It tasted wonderful and warmed my belly. I savored the last of it as he saddled the horses and packed his gear. I watched him load it onto the horses and a vague discomfort stirred in me, but I could not place why it seemed wrong.

“You take the white. I'll put the girl behind me on the brown. He's sturdier and better trained.”

I felt sick. I did not want to be on any horse with that man.

“That's why Bee and I will be taking the brown,” Shun said firmly. She did not wait for a response from him, but went to the horse and mounted it with an ease I envied. She leaned down and reached out her hand to me. I took it, determined that somehow I would get up onto the animal's back if I had to shinny up his leg. But before I could try, the man seized me from behind and lifted me up onto the horse. I had to sit behind the saddle with nothing to hold on to but two handfuls of Shun's coat. I settled myself silently, seething that he had touched me.

“You're welcome,” he said tartly, and turned away to mount the white. He tugged at her reins and rode away following the stream. After a moment Shun stirred the brown and we followed him. “Why are we going this way?” I asked Shun.

“It's easier for the horses to get up the bank down here.” Kerf was the one who answered me. And he was right. The cut banks eased down to a gentler slope, and we rode behind him in the tracks he'd probably made the night before. Once we were on level ground again, he began following his own tracks back.

“You're taking us back the way we came!” Shun accused him.

“You were going in the wrong direction,” he responded calmly.

“How do I know that you're not just taking us back to your camp, back to the other soldiers?”

“Because I'm not. I'm taking you back to your own people.”

For a time, we rode behind him in silence. It was discouraging to see how easily the horses moved through the snow that had so hampered us yesterday. A light wind had begun to blow, pushing a bank of gray clouds across the blue sky toward us. Midmorning, he cast a glance at the sky and turned the horses away from the trodden path. “Is this right?” I whispered to Shun. My heart sank when she replied, “I'm not sure. I'm turned around.”

Kerf glanced back at us. “I promise I'm taking you back to your people. I know it must be hard for you to trust me. But I am.”

The horses moved more slowly through the unbroken snow. We crossed the face of a hill to gain the top of it, and when we did, we looked down on a lightly forested meadow. In the distance, I saw a road, and beyond it, a small farmstead. Pale smoke was rising from the chimney and dispersing in the wind. I longed to go there, to beg to come inside and be warm and still for a time. As if he had heard my thought, Kerf said, “We have to avoid the roads and we cannot go through towns or stop at houses. Chalcedeans are not welcome in your land.” Again he turned his horse's head, and we now followed him along the spine of the gently rolling range of hills.