As I pulled the saddlebag from the log, Floy landed on my shoulder. “I can stay with you only a little while longer. I need time to find that tower. I’ve never been there.” I refused to look at her. “Reyna, when will you give this up? You’re driving the human boy crazy, and––Reyna, will you ever listen to me?”
I shook my head.
“I’m leaving to find your brothers as soon as you reach the river,” she said. I looked about but she had hidden herself. “And don’t dawdle. We only have a season left.”
I shuddered, feeling as though winter were already blowing past.
We acted quickly, Andrei and I, and we’d already come to Sharesdury, in the middle hills, when a press gang marched into the town. In the space of a morning they’d combed it clean of young men with the aid of a formal notice proclaiming the incarceration of the Lauriad princess.
Hal must not have convinced anyone otherwise, I thought. Soon enough I was thinking about other things.
As it had got steadily colder Andrei and I had just bought parkas, which made us look oddly similar. Andrei looked older than he was and I looked positively boyish; but as Herist had lowered the age of conscription from sixteen to fourteen, we were mistaken, right outside the furrier’s, for a young man and an exceptionally young man. Not exceptional enough for the commanding officer, I was pried away from Liskara after Andrei (and Floy) told me I oughtn’t bring attention our way by biting and kicking. So Sandal did all the biting and kicking, but they took the horses, too.
I remembered too late that my Marione shirts were tucked in Liskara’s baggage.
***
We were two of about forty conscripts––just one camp in a line moving north. Only officers and soldiers rode mounts, and Andrei, his hood drawn always around his face, cursed nonstop under his breath as we marched through the first day. Soldiers wielded their spear butts liberally, and most of us collected welts to tally how many times we’d slowed or tripped. We hardly ever stopped, and only to relieve ourselves (me in ditches and behind bushes), and though I thought myself tough as cat gut, the pace was grueling.
Around midday an officer rode past us on Andrei’s horse. Sandal was skittish, shaking his head. They’d got rid of Andrei’s bags.
My stomach dropped to my feet, and I started stumbling. The conscripts on either side pushed me forward, and a soldier knocked his pole against my shoulders, yelling. I didn’t hear a word.
Andrei half-carried, half-dragged me back into line. I shoved angrily at him. “I saw Liskara,” he said, and tightened his arm around me until I was almost riding on his hip. “And she’s so old and beat-up and useless they’re using her as a packhorse. They haven’t touched your bags.”
I didn’t believe him until I saw her myself, loaded with burlap sacks. My own precious bags were flattened, forgotten, at the bottom.
***
By the third day the autumn rains were pelting down, making our misery three times what it had been. Andrei’s constant cursing had changed to calls for mutiny muttered into the ears of those around us. But for a few restless boys who stewed with anger, the men slogged on, giving us a wide berth. I doubted anything would come of it.
But on the fourth day word about the malcontent conscript had got round. A tall man with a hood drawn over his face stepped in line beside us.
“Who are you,” said the man to Andrei, “that you fear to walk about with your cowl off? I know it’s raining, and you might ask the same of me. But it wasn’t raining yesterday, so answer me truthfully and I may take your caterwauling seriously. If I take it seriously many others will.”
The wind pulled a blond curl from his hood, and I knew the voice. Bequen’s husband. Had he been pressed into service? I caught Andrei’s eye and nodded.
“A human noble,” Andrei said sullenly.
“I see,” said Ackerly, glancing at his eyes. “And this tale you’re spreading? That Herist has captured no Lauriad, and we trip on like kine to the slaughterhouse? Give me sweeter cud to chew, boy, and my teeth’ll fall out.”
“Obviously you don’t believe me,” Andrei said. I suspected he was too tired to sneer. “But I scoured the prisons looking for this girl”––he pointed at me––“and unless the princess was hiding in her shit bucket, we could both swear to you there isn’t one.”
“That’s your proof?” Ackerly sounded skeptical.
“It’s not less proof than Herist has.”
“His ring.” Ackerly nodded. “Which is scant evidence, yes, but we’ll get to that later. The thing is, you’re human. It’s likely you’re a plant come to sound us out. Or just a nasty little fry with an overblown ego.“
A noise rose in Andrei’s throat. For a nasty little fry he was quite a bit taller than Ackerly, and I rolled up my sleeve and thrust my arm between them.
Herist’s mark of treason shone in the rain. Andrei sucked in his breath, and his hood fell to his shoulders.
The men walked on. Ackerly pulled the hood back over the Andrei’s head.
“I recognize you, boy,” he said. “What in the high hells are you doing here?” He turned to me. “You’re convicted of treason?” He shook with silent laughter. “If the man had got hold of me!”
Andrei’s steps grew progressively stiffer, and my breath came out in short gasps. “Don’t worry,” said Ackerly. “I won’t tell. I have no idea what you’re playing at, but I’ve suspected for a while, you see. Herist can’t have stolen the ring as well as the writer, seeing as Hal got a letter, sealed and all, after Herist spread the news. And the letter was about my business, or so some of the fellows from the city tell me. And Simargh, or no Simargh,” he continued, growling more to himself now. “We’ll oust the fool. We’ll drag ourselves out of this mess, starting tomorrow.” He stopped for a split second, jerking Andrei back to face him. “And if you’re double crossing me, I’ll find you and I’ll kill you. That’s a promise.” Andrei nodded.
***
The soldiers were short of horses and Captain Lauderay, the commanding officer, was expecting a consignment of these in three days’ time. Because the conscripts needed the horses more than the soldiers did, Ackerly decided to hold off the desertion until the night following their arrival.
He didn’t want a full-scale revolt. There’d be a lot less bloodshed, he told us, if we silenced the soldiers on watch and took off on horseback before the alarm sounded.
We were camped near the country’s northern border when the horses came: twenty-five rough-bred rounseys. And what we had plotted beforehand was rendered very flimsy when Herist came with them.
He’d journeyed north with trackers to drive a band of outlaws from the woods above Feladol and Cwdro––they’d been stealing food and rustling horses from the northern camps.
Herist took his time about the business, though, and he wandered around inquiring after the work of his subordinates. Andrei and I kept to the middle of the recruits, noses to the ground. We heard his temper all the way across camp. He was considerably more frazzled than when we’d last seen him.
***
During the evening meal the recruits ate an unusually small amount of their gruel and boiled tubers.
Ackerly calmed us some, going about his business like a stalking cat. A group of us surrounded him, looking as though we were trading and passing around bits of carrot and turnip. When we split apart he’d already bedded down for the night, a big crock full of leftover slop hidden under his thin blanket.
He’d chosen a bit of ground close to the watch fire. The human soldier eyed him uneasily from where he ate an apple, wrote a letter on his knee, and shielded the parchment from the drizzle with his elbow.
Back against a tree and heart pounding, I thought how we might’ve waited a few days for Herist to leave. But it was too late. I feigned sleep, watching through my lashes as Ackerly, motionless beneath his blanket, began chanting a popular ditty:
“Captain Lauderay squeaks like a rope
On account of his nose and his love for soap,
For he lathers his nose, then rarin to lead,
Plays upon his nostrils for lack of a reed.”
The munching of the apple ceased, and the soldier’s quill stopped moving. “Shaddup, you grimy little feck,” he said. Undaunted, Ackerly sang the second verse:
“We fall into march at his squeaking snout,
As his musical skills cause us to doubt
Our talent for song and our freedom of will,
So we’ll jump like puppets o’er field and hill.”
The soldier walked over to Ackerly and bent down. He paused to finger the dirk at his belt.
Ackerly popped the crock from the blanket and slammed it over the man’s head. The mess inside muffled his cries, and Ackerly wrestled him to the ground.
Three other conscripts leapt up to help, and one of them pulled the dirk from the soldier’s hand. He sheathed the dirk in the soldier’s back and twisted. The soldier shuddered under the crock and became still, and stuff dripped onto the ground. My stomach turned, and I pulled my tunic over my nose.
While other soldiers on watch were being gagged or dispatched, Ackerly walked around whispering, “Two to a horse.”
We got silently up, a few at a time, and crept down the hill to where the horses were hobbled.
Stupidly, no one touched the horses belonging to Herist and his entourage, but the others were calmed and made ready, all except for Liskara. I frantically looked around the hill for her, nearer and nearer the tents.
I finally found her, lashed, as a testament to her tranquil disposition, to one of Captain Lauderay’s tent poles. She had a few bags slung over her back, as though Lauderay’s man hadn’t got round to unloading her. It made me nervous.
She blew into my hair, and I eyed her ropes. To the side of her was a bucket, and I stepped gingerly onto it so I might reach the knot at Liskara’s neck. I took a tiny step forward.
The bucket tipped. I fell over it, and a habergeon jangled loudly beneath me.
“Cavid,” said a voice from inside the tent, “are you finally greasing my mail? Or are you greasing the silver out of my luggage?”
Another voice, slurred, came right behind me: “Right you are, Captain.” It grew exponentially louder: “Halloo! Look what they done to Gamberlan. They gone and done him––Hey! They’re making off!”
“Go, go, go.” I heard Ackerly yelling faintly. “Separately!”
Too panicked to feel properly guilty, I rummaged through Liskara’s baggage and came across my own saddlebag. I leaned against the horse’s flank, weak-kneed.
Andrei chose that moment to lurch around the corner of the tent, dragging Sandal behind. His hood had fallen, and his hair stuck every which way. But not across his eyes, and two Elde boys, my age or younger, stopped at the sight of him. They had no horse.
Andrei picked up the first boy, and earned himself a kick in the groin. Roaring, he threw the boy across Sandal’s back. He lifted the other with less trouble, told them to lie flat, and pushed the gelding on his way.
Knot undone or no, I was lifted next, and Andrei sat behind me, fishing through the baggage for a knife. Before he could find one, Liskara shied.
She jerked forward, ripping the stakes from the ground, and pulled the canvas down. I turned to look at the wreckage, and Captain Lauderay, bright in his nightshirt, jumped from his cot.
Andrei twisted sideways with a knife and cut Liskara loose. The horse darted south, bags heaving. Bracing ourselves, we caught up with the others, who, despite Ackerly’s advice, hadn’t separated.
“Oh,” Andrei breathed down my neck. I turned my head to see where he was looking. Herist and his ten men were in pursuit, tearing over the rocky ground, and I saw with dread the longbows rise from the backs of the horses.
And perhaps because he felt obligated as initiator of the desertion, Andrei leaned over me, wrested my hands away from the horse’s neck, and steered Liskara towards Herist and the north.
”What is he doing?” cried Floy, who was flying behind us. I lowered my head and sucked in my breath, fighting against a holler.
Andrei didn’t bother. “Come and get us, Commander,” he yelled. We ran parallel to them now, at a full gallop. “Come and thieve my carcass.”
At once Herist recognized him. He wheeled his horse toward us, and his men followed. The bowmen loosed their arrows. Liskara tacked round them as best she could, though she was old and tired and any minute I expected to be hit in the back. But she pushed on as though blown by a heavenly wind, through shale outcrops and long grasses, and into a fir wood.
The air was suddenly close, the wind less sharp. We were clear of the arrows. But we had to slow our pace to navigate the trees, and a shadow came at us through the shaggy trunks. More shadows sprang forward, snapping at Liskara’s tail. The horse screamed and bolted every which way.
I feared we were being chased by a pack of djain, until I heard the yapping and snarling. My whole body ached, my molars ground together, and the wolves followed us through a brook. The water splashed all the way to my hands. It rushed over a stair of shale and into a canyon, and Liskara trundled wildly at the edge, knocking loose stones over. Fight, fight, fight, she rang out. They are winter-hungry.
But I thought differently. In a second of stillness I swung my legs over the horse and landed on my knees in a bush.
Andrei shouted, and I stood up, saw the yellow eyes of a wolf.
Hackles bristled around his washboard frame. When the others moved closer, he snapped them away. I felt his hot breath on my face. I thought of how dogs never could abide ghosts. And filled with fear and rage and twenty other emotions I’d never felt before in my life, I emptied my soul between us.
Icy fire licked from her wound, and she opened her frozen, dark mouth and howled. The wolf shuddered and backed away.
I commanded that they beat off the other pack, the people who hid from themselves and acted like wolves.
He and his comrades melted through the trees to assault Herist. I couldn’t move; it felt as a though an ice storm had roared through my body.
Andrei was off the horse, telling me what a headache, and a fool, and a brave, stupid girl I was. His pinched face whitened with the sunrise, and I got my numb feet to moving.
Water from the brook pooled in a gully at the bottom of the canyon. We led Liskara down a stair of scree to the pool, and knelt at the edge. The early sun turned the pool to diamonds. It looked as though the canyon had flowed with water once: the slate was smooth, warn into waves and hollows.
As I rubbed down the shining horse with a rag, Floy hopped to my shoulder. “I’ll be leaving now,” she said. Liskara gave a start beneath my touch. We’d come to the Cheldony. I sat on the water-worn bedrock and wept.
Floy nestled into my neck until I was done. She promised that she and the others would be waiting in that exact spot for me to come back with the ice asters. She left with the scurrying leaves.
***
These fell in drifts, and Andrei and I followed what was left of the Cheldony northeast. We filled our stomachs with nuts, roots, rowan fruit and rose hips, and though we occasionally caught and ate small game, I left the wild birds alone.
Accustomed to rising early, I worked on my Marione shirt in the dawn, and stuffed it back in the bag when Andrei made signs of waking. He saw it once or twice. I suspected him of spying. But I soon finished and laid the work aside, relieved.
One day there was a fork and a great dark shelf in the bed where the river should have poured into the Grennan, another border water. Without wetting our feet we forded it at an abandoned ferry landing. Then we walked into a stony flatland separating Avila from Pemrenia, and left Norembry behind us, shimmering and green in the rain.
The days dragged by, and the riverbed pushed through a backbone of shale. The wild edibles grew scarce and we ate frugal portions of Liskara’s packed food. She had been burdened by the officer for a long winter in the north of the country, and Andrei and I would be tolerably well off for a while, at least.
The rain stopped with the new year, and snow whipped through the air, hard and thin. We kept our fires burning long and spread blankets over our cloaks when the sun went down.
An oppressive silence filled the night. As we traveled farther into the wild, it leaked into the day: stones shot from beneath our feet of their own accord, and the mellow pines and birches were replaced with bent thorns and junipers, grown fractious with wind.
But something ahead of us kept the mischief at bay. At a spot where the river bottom dropped between walls of slate, she stopped to have a word.
I’d found a chipping sparrow in the snow that evening, half frozen, and as Andrei kindled the fire and stirred nuts into it, I put the bird near the flames.
I heard a creak, like snapping ice. A saebel, a river-daughter foggy with ice, walked over to the fire and smothered the flames with a hand. Andrei sat down on a stone and watched in disbelief.
Her eyes were green as the Swisa. I recognized her stringy hair and fishbone teeth: I’d rescued her from torment in the city.
We’ve cleared your path of unkind things, she said. Walk it longer and you’ll burn your toes. Your choice. She took a chestnut and ate it, hull and all. That was our choice.
She scraped up some earth, squashed a grub, and ate it. Our choice.
She shoved her hand down a hole and yanked up a mouse. Our choice, she said, and ate it. The creature slid, still wiggling, down her throat. I could see it through her skin.
She reached for the sparrow huddled near the fire, Our choice– But I scooped the bird into my hands and backed away.
Her neck bubbled and cracked. She bared her teeth. You stole our choice, Gralde. You smashed it, mangled, crushed it like an egg.
She made a multitude of horrible faces and pulled shards of ice from her eyes, and moved so close to me I thought she meant to stab me with one. We’ll take our choice back, Gralde. Her breath reeked of rotting fish. She turned toward Liskara. The horse picked up her feet and flattened her ears.
A snake in the horse’s stomach, the saebel said, and pointed at the horse; her arm cracked and grew stiff.
Something long and sinuous pushed out from Liskara’s belly. The horse dropped with a scream.
The ground jumped. She writhed on her back, biting at the worm in her stomach, foam flying from her mouth. She rolled and rolled, shaking the stones from their beds, and edged close to the drop, the escarpment that fell in steep pleats to the river bottom.
Andrei, fool that he was, went and stood between the horse and the edge of the cliff, and yelled at Liskara as though she were a person.
I felt the sparrow’s heart humming in my hands. The saebel stared at it hungrily. Crush him, warm heart. Make the little bones snap and crack, or the boy will tumble.
Liskara’s hind legs kicked out. Andrei looked over his shoulder and crouched, hands scrambling forward, boots pushing shale over the edge. The stones shattered far below. My fist tightened, and the sparrow’s bones squeezed together and broke.
Liskara lay on her side, flank heaving. The sparrow’s head flopped in my fist, and trying not to think of Floy, I knelt to scrape for the poor creature a hole in the ground.
The saebel stroked her arms, and water dripped off her long fingers and froze there.
“Nasty girl.” She spoke Gralde, smashing through the vowels. “Those ugly hands took the poor birdie and squeezed her life out––”
“You did it,” said Andrei, who’d made it past the horse. “And you put out our fire as well, you wicked block of ice.”
She smiled with her fishbone teeth. “Ass breath, human. You make ass breath.” She spoke to me in saebeline, which Andrei couldn’t understand: You drop blame like a burning stone, because you are broken. You can’t use our help, you are broken.
She spat at Andrei again. But not so broken as ass breath. He’s Enelden. He throws blame so hard it makes cataclysm.
She cracked her knuckles. You don’t know them. Back when the world was ripped asunder they only wanted to help sew the world back together. So they jumped the black crack with needle and thread, jumped too far, and broke their spirit bonds, broke from us. They dropped the needle and thread real quick, we can tell you.
Their spirits bonds are broken, and they’re alone and proud and can’t carry anything. So they throw blame as far from their broken spirits as they can and make cataclysm.
She spat at Andrei one last time, and dug in the ground for the sparrow. She ate the dead thing and picked the feathers from her teeth.
We were disappointed you chose ass breath. Human flesh is delicious.
I reached out to grab her, to ring her neck. She dissolved, leaving my fist lacy with frost. I squatted and pressed my hands between my knees.
Andrei had already forgotten, as humans will. He brushed ice from his face and watched as it melted on his fingers. His breath sailed into the air. “Has winter been here in person?” he said. “We’d better sleep under the same blanket.”
I looked up, but he hadn’t meant anything by it, and was already scraping flint with steel.
***
When the fire had burned low, I lay awake, teeth rattling in my head, feet vibrating in my boots. My whole body shook beneath the blanket and I began to cry.
The hurt ran on daggers up my arms and legs, and not able to stand it anymore, I sat up. I walked over to where Andrei slept, and crawled under the blanket next to him.