Fool's Quest - Страница 110

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“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.

The sun passed overhead and the clouds began to darken as the afternoon passed. Shun spoke aloud. “I don’t think we want to be on these hills if it starts to snow. And we’ve been riding all day. We should look for a place to stop soon, rather than ride until dark.”

He gave a sigh. “I’ve been soldiering for two years now. Trust me. I’ll find a good place for us to overnight. Remember, I’m taking you back to your people. You’ll be safe with them.” He pointed ahead of us and said, “Just there, where the evergreens are? We’ll go down into that valley for the night.” I looked at a forested hillside where rough stones jutted out of the snow among the trees. I finally grasped what had bothered me earlier.

I tugged at Shun’s coat and hitched myself closer to speak by her ear. “That night, everyone was screaming and fighting and running away. Why does he have two horses and everything he needs?”

“Not everything,” Shun muttered back. “No food supplies, no pans for cooking. I think he was just lucky to catch these two horses.”

“Maybe,” I agreed reluctantly. It began to snow, big flakes that clung to our coats and flew into my face. I put my face against Shun’s back. My face grew warmer, and the steady rhythm of the plodding horse tried to lull me to sleep. I felt a change in that rhythm and lifted my head. We were riding downhill now, threading our way between the trunks of big spruce trees. Here and there, stones stood up. It came to me that they were worked stone, as if walls and even buildings had once stood here. Our path meandered between the tumbled stones and the down-sweeping limbs of the trees. The snow was shallower here, but sometimes we brushed against one of the drooping branches and triggered a slide of snow.

“Not much farther now,” Kerf called back to us, and I felt grateful. I was so tired and sleepy. The trees were blocking most of what remained of the day’s light.

Then Shun stiffened in the saddle. “Not much farther to what?” she demanded.

He glanced back at us. “Your people,” he said.

I had one glimpse of firelight through the trees and then Shun pulled the horse around hard. I clung to her coat, nearly sliding off, as she kicked the horse and shouted, “Go, go, go!”

But it was too late. Their white coats had been almost invisible against the snow in the dimming light, but there they were. Two abruptly blocked the trail behind us and when Shun tried to rein the horse aside, Reppin jumped and seized its bridle. Shun tried to ride her down but the brown snorted and half-reared and then I was torn free of my grip on Shun’s coat as another White seized me and pulled me from the horse. “I have him! I have the shaysim!” Alaria shouted.

“Don’t hurt him!” Dwalia commanded, coming toward us. Shun was screaming and kicking at the lurik who held the brown horse’s head, and Kerf was shouting at her, “Be calm! You’re safe now! I’ve brought you back to your people!”

“You bastard!” she shouted at him. “You treacherous wretch! I hate you! I hate all of you!” She tried once more to stir the horse, but Kerf had dismounted and was tugging at her, saying, “What is the matter? You’re back with your people, you’re safe now!”

I had ceased my struggling but Shun fought on, shouting and kicking. Vindeliar was there, smiling a warm welcome at me, and I knew then how Kerf had been used against us to do Dwalia’s will. Alaria held me captive, firmly gripping the back of my coat and my arm as she pulled me toward the small campfire. I had dreaded to see the soldiers still there, but there was just one horse, a blanket pegged from the ground to a tree as a sort of shelter, and a small fire burning. Dwalia’s face was bruised. She rushed at me and seized my other arm.

“Hurry!” she whisper-shouted at the others. “They are still hunting for us. Two of them passed at the bottom of the hill not long ago. We must get the shaysim away from here as quickly as we can.” She shook me roughly by the sleeve. “And don’t think to pass yourself off as a boy any longer! A girl. Not what we were sent after. But you’re the only coin we have to buy our way back into good graces at Clerres. Hurry! Get her under control! Don’t let her scream! She’ll bring them down on us if she hasn’t already!”

They had dragged Shun from her horse and Kerf had a firm grip on her wrist. “What’s wrong with you? You’re safe now!” he kept saying. She bared her teeth at him, still struggling.

“Hold her!” Dwalia ordered the two luriks and thrust me at them. Alaria seized my wrist and Reppin took my other arm. They gripped me between them, holding my arms so tightly that they almost lifted me off the ground. From a pouch at her hip, Dwalia had pulled out a scroll and a single strange glove. I could not tell what it was made from. The hand of it was pale and thin, almost translucent, but to three of the fingertips a shriveled silvery button had been attached.

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