By the third day, Sevryn was impressed with his company. Both Rivergrace and Nutmeg rode well and tirelessly, which he hadn’t expected. Bumblebee, the stout Dweller pony, had a lot of bottom to him, keeping up well although he whuffed and grumbled in the late afternoon when staked out to graze and rest. Older yet determined to keep up, Bumblebee had a good, smooth gait and Nutmeg never let him stumble. The two riders bathed and rubbed and anointed his legs with a smelly salve that they swore kept the stiffness away, and by added advantage, kept almost any flying bug away from the camp as well. What insect wasn’t deterred by the odor of the salve undoubtedly was cut down by the pungent toback that Tolby put in his pipe and puffed away at each evening.
The girls seemed immune to the smoke as well, although Nutmeg wrinkled her nose the first night, noting, “Mom doesna let you smoke that at home.”
“A man has to take his little pleasures when he can.” Tolby winked at her. As the pipe seemed well broken in and used, Sevryn figured it was the toback and not the pipe that seldom got smoked at home.
Third night, he took the early watch, sitting on a hillock before the sun set, a small freshet bubbling away by the camp, Tolby telling a story of some kind to his daughters, his voice barely drifting up to Sevryn. Sevryn pulled Daravan’s note from his pocket, the note that had remained so hot, he wondered it hadn’t set him on fire.
~
You’ll be followed.
~
That was it. Nothing more, not a jot of explanation, yet it had raised the hair on the back of his neck like a hound on a scent trail both hot and feared, and he hadn’t calmed down yet. He did not think he could let this fall into Tolby’s “whatnot” category.
Not, I’ll be following. Not, Be wary of pursuers. Just . . . this.
Sevryn refolded the note and returned it to his pocket, musing. He didn’t think that Daravan stooped to manipulating him in an attempt to keep him on his toes. If Kobrir or Vaelinar, Daravan would have told him, so it struck him that Daravan knew as little of the being on their trail as he did, only that they were likely to have one. He mulled that over. Neither friend nor foe. He would have to watch and wait and see if it revealed itself. He hadn’t seen it coming out of Calcort or the low farmlands surrounding the city, when a tail would have been most visible, so it had guile enough to not be seen.
He put his back to a stump, set his heels in, and surveyed his watch. Tolby’s voice fell off and silence came from below, until a basso snoring drifted up, and Sevryn grinned in spite of himself. The snoring would keep him awake until his watch ended, when Tolby would stroll up and relieve him. He could hear the whicker and stamp of one of the horses as it moved about on the tie-line.
Something splashed downstream in the small brook, a night fisher perhaps. He listened to the deepening dusk.
Another splash. If a night fisher, it seemed a trifle big to be making enough noise for Sevryn to hear it so clearly upstream. He tensed but heard no other untoward sound, even as he thought he would go investigate if he did. The noise never sounded again, as if knowing his thoughts.
As the moon’s quarter face hung high in the sky, the snoring stopped and Tolby eventually made his way up to the hillock. He had a cup in his hand, which he offered to Sevryn, a Dweller brew of leaves with a faint hint of peppermint and a tart-sweet kick to it.
“The lasses sleep well.” Tolby hunkered down next to him as he drank.
“Good. Do you expect any trouble at the old place?”
“I’ve heard no one has been able to settle out there yet. ’Tis good land no one wants to leave fallow, so, aye, I expect trouble.”
“Bolgers don’t usually ride with Ravers.”
“But they have been, aye? I expect that one of us with the knowing of which clans are which could make sense of it, but there are few of us who take note of Bolger doings.”
“Rivergrace calls them Stinkers.”
Tolby nodded. “She has a fear of them. That and closed-in places. The first she can handle, the second, it’s tough on her.”
“This cellar we’re headed to . . .”
“Cracked open like an egg. No worry there. We may have a bit of digging to do, to find my wife’s cubbyhole, but that’s about it. She told me where it is; it’s the debris that’ll slow us down getting to it.”
“Good.” Sevryn got to his feet and stretched his legs, handing the cup of brew back to Tolby. “I’m going downstream for a look-see. If I find any trouble, I’ll whistle, sharply.”
Tolby peered up at him, one thick eyebrow crooked. “Expect any?”
“Don’t know. Seems wise to check around a bit.”
“I’ll be listening, then.”
Sevryn moved as quietly off the hillock as he could, pausing by the banked campfire, letting the horses and goat smell him and know he was moving about, before making his way into the brush and following the stream. Each step came slowly and deliberately, moving with or around the underbrush rather than against it, to lessen the noise. He came upon a small clearing and found flattened stones on the ground, with the bone and skin remains of fish on them. He touched the stone and found them with a little warmth still to them, heated by the sun and then used if not to cook the fish thoroughly, at least somewhat. The diner, however, had since moved on. Sevryn cast about the clearing and found fresh horse sign as well although darkness muddled the hoofprints. He had missed horse and rider go by as he talked with Tolby, he guessed.
Either he’d been heard coming downstream or the diner believed in not staying in one place any longer than necessary.
Sevryn stared downstream, listening, and heard nothing other than the occasional skitter of a rodent through the tangled grasses by the brook.
Horses needed to rest and graze a considerable part of each day. If the diner did indeed follow them, moving from spot to spot to keep from discovery, his mount would not recover easily.
Sevryn quietly returned to camp, determined to push a little harder, hoping to gain a day or so advantage. He rolled into his blanket and dropped into a dreamless sleep. Gray dawn woke him, that and the nudge of a boot toe from Tolby as he returned to get another candlemark of sleep or so before breaking camp. On one knee, he could see the amber tousled head of Nutmeg still burrowed in sleep, but the blanket Rivergrace used was neatly folded, tied, and ready to be stowed. He went to the edge of the brook and found her there, lying on her side on the bank, one hand trailing idly through summer-slowed water, her eyes narrowed in thought and half sleep. He watched her for long moments. A frog croaked as the sun began to warm and he hopped away from the grasses and marshes near her. Her booted foot twitched slightly, enchantment broken.
“M’lady Rivergrace,” he said, so as not to startle her further.
She sat up and dried her fingers on her farmers’ pants. “Sleep well?”
He offered his hand to help her up. “It’s fortunate,” he said, “to be on watch when Tolby snores, and to sleep when he is awake.”
She giggled at that, a sound of unforced and unexpected pleasure. “He can be loud, but I miss it when he doesn’t. It’s rather like knowing something fiercely protective is in the room next to you.” She rose easily to her feet, barely tugging on his hand. “I’ll start a breakfast.”
“Not much of one today. Just rolls and fruit, no fire. I want to be away.”
“I’ll get Nutmeg up, then. She can sleep till the sun is high, if you let her.”
“Not the lazy type?”
“Oh, no! Not at all. But sometimes she spins about so much, she winds down for a while.”
“All that chattering.”
She showed a dimple when she grinned, and he hadn’t seen that before; it enchanted him. He would like to see her flash a true and genuine smile often. She slipped past him, a whisper of wind through the reeds and grasses, toward the camp.
Nutmeg stood yawning when they arrived, running a brush over Bumblebee’s thick coat and shaking horsehair into the wind. “I swear I could build another pony out of all this.”
“I take it he hasn’t lost his winter coat yet.”
Nutmeg crooked an eyebrow at Sevryn. “His winter coat would hang to the ground if we let it. He looks like a furry boulder rolling over the snow and frost.”
He said to Rivergrace, “I think she’s pulling my leg.”
She slapped the pony on his rump, a cloud of dust and hair flying up. “No. Da says he’s not all pony, he’s a cross with one of those great cows of the north whose hair you can weave.”
Bumblebee snorted as if knowing an insult when he heard one and flicked his tail at Grace as she dodged away.
Sevryn got his horse ready, rubbing the gelding’s soft nose, calling it by its tashya name, Aymaran. The dark-gray horse, so dark that he would be called black save for his powdery-gray nose, snuffled back at him. As the horse aged, his coat would lighten to a charcoal or even snowy gray, but he was young yet. Part of Lariel’s herd, he could not lay a claim to the beast, but he held a clear affection for him. He saddled up Black Ribbon and Aymaran, and Tolby rose with a creak of his knees, and took to readying Neatfoot.
They ate their rolls and fruit quickly, clearing the grounds as they did, munching with one hand and kicking apart the last of the fire to cool it. Then, before the sun began to truly rise in the sky and the dawn burned away, they were off. Tolby took the head of the trail, and Sevryn the rear. He let Aymaran drop his head and graze a bit, watching behind them and seeing nothing. If they were still being followed, he could not detect it.
Over the days that followed, they wound into rougher country, sometimes dismounting and walking the horses to take the weight off them and stretch their own legs. Bumblebee lost some of his coat and weight, and chuffed when they pulled up his tie-line in the mornings, grass hanging from his lips as he was interrupted in his morning graze. The others kept their flesh and looked fit, Black Ribbon gleaming like a ripened cherry under Rivergrace’s grooming.
He found himself watching Rivergrace whenever he could. Despite her broadbrim hat, her freckles blossomed, and her dimple deepened. The sun lit a gold fire in her deep chestnut hair, and brought out light yellow streaks in Nutmeg’s thick curls. Tolby’s tales never repeated themselves about the fire at night, his repertoire a bottomless well, and Nutmeg never ran out of things to say about everything else. He grew used to the smell of the horse ointment and even Tolby’s stinky toback, although the snoring still rattled his teeth at night. Sevryn found himself growing fond of all of them, and could not imagine a day when he could not look upon Rivergrace.
They crossed the Nylara without incident, although Rivergrace seemed leery of the huge Ferryman as if expecting something more than merely a hand stuck out for the few bits of coin he demanded of them.
He was leaning back in his saddle, half drowsing in the hot sun, watching the graceful sway of Rivergrace on Ribbon walking ahead of him, when he heard the loud crack of a limb snapping behind them. He bolted upright, and pivoted Aymaran, the horse throwing his ears up alertly. Tolby reined his horse about immediately, waving the girls on ahead of him. Sevryn gestured at him to stay and dismounted, running back through the trees and high grass, as light afoot as he could manage, bringing his dagger to his hand as he did. He found a trail breast-high pushed through the undergrowth, angling along theirs, but the horse that had made it, and the rider, were unseen. He bent by the tracks. Crudely shod. Mountain pony perhaps.
Sevryn straightened up and circled the sign, finding nothing clear. The rider had taken his mount back the way he had come, leaving no new trail. He would have to run a good long way to catch up, and he had no wish to leave the others alone that long, in case the rider circled around.
It convinced him of two things. They were being followed, and the follower seemed to have no wish to catch them, merely to trail them. It meant the danger lay at journey’s end. He went back to Tolby, saying, “He follows only. For now.”
Tolby considered that. “When we near, we can pick up a lad or two, if we need numbers.”
“Good.” He caught Aymaran’s reins and swung up into the saddle.
For a handful of days and more, he’d forgotten himself and the task at hand, but whatever trailed them obviously had not.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
LARIEL ENTERED THE ROOM where Azel lay, his body taut from convulsions from the venom still being flushed from his body, a healer on either side, one working with his face etched in painful concentration while the woman on the other side bathed sweat away from one face, then another. She’d seen this scene at least once a day for weeks now, but the purging took less and less time, and Azel’s agony lessened. She could not begin to guess if he were getting better or if his big frame was simply giving up, bit by bit. Sevryn’s recovery had never been this grueling. She wondered if it was because Azel was full-blooded and Sevryn not, although they were usually much quicker to heal and harder to kill. Perhaps the venom the Kobrir used was now being brewed exclusively for use against Vaelinars. All these questions and more she would ask, later, after the crisis passed.
She sat carefully on the corner of the bed, trying not to disturb anyone, and put her hand on Azel’s ankle, covered by a lightweight spread. “
Avana
, old friend. You look better to me. I pray that I’m right. I would never ask you to stay, in such pain, just for me. Yet, there is work here for you to finish, and if your soul wills it, you should stay. Don’t Return, Azel. Stay if you can, and grow strong.” Then she lapsed into silence. After long moments, the contracted muscles under her touch relaxed a bit, and both healers breathed a little easier. Neither of them said anything to her, even when she stood to leave. They had nothing they could say.
She wove through the small hallways and courtyards hiding the place where they’d taken Azel. Veils and a light, hooded cloak disguised her steps a lane or two away from the inn, where she dropped the hood back, tearing the veils off to breathe. Heat stifled the day and streets, the sun at its zenith, and Calcort shimmered in mirage waves under it, baking. Even here, behind thick walls and where windows were mere slits for light, the oppression crept in.