“This way!” she shouted, heading the three horses in the least likely direction, straight into the ocean—or rather, straight into the swampy estuary that bordered the coast. What seemed a foolhardy maneuver proved instead to be a lifesaving ploy, because within moments high grasses hid them from view. And while the chest-high mud made progress difficult for the horses, a person on foot would find it impassable. The calls from the Oro Protectors faded and the Raiders knew they were safe from pursuit.
But if the danger of capture lessened, their peril from the swamp itself increased with each stride. At times the horses found solid footing for a few paces, but just as often they had to swim through a hidden eddy or yank their feet out of muck. Sukie—the strongest, biggest horse—led the way, crashing a path through reeds, then Dishwater followed in her wake, and little Cinders, carrying Tristo, kept up as best she could.
The mud sucked at the horses’ and the humans’ legs, letting go grudgingly. Soon the horses trembled and staggered with fatigue. Insects whined in their riders’ ears, feasting on their blood and the last drops of their strength. The sun climbed higher overhead, shining through a thick layer of black smoke, making the air around them even more thick and fetid. Thalen turned his water bag upside down several times, but no matter how he shook it, only a trickle dripped down his throat.
Thalen savored his physical miseries. They kept him from confronting a greater misery.
Finally, when they were nearly a league south of the burning city, Eli-anna angled the horses back in the direction of the shoreline. With a mighty heave Sukie climbed up onto the bank. Dish needed three attempts to yank his hindquarters out of the muck and onto solid ground, where he stood blowing, his sides shaking. Fearful the horse would not bear his weight another moment, Thalen dismounted. He turned to help Eli-anna pull Cinders onto the bank. As they did so, Tristo half fell from Cinders’s saddle into Thalen’s outstretched arms.
Thalen took stock of his companions. Like him, Eli-anna and Tristo wore coverings of mud up to their waists, with their torsos and even their heads splashed almost as dirty. The skin on their faces both swelled with a myriad of angry bites and stretched tight with exhaustion. Their eyes were bloodshot. Sweat and grime on their faces and necks had captured strands of their hair, plastering it to their necks. If he hadn’t known who they were, he might not have recognized his adjutant and scout.
Next, Thalen turned to Dishwater, rubbing his hands down the gelding’s body, roughly sloughing off the thickest, heaviest mud. Dish stamped and shook himself, sending more clinging muck flying. Eli-anna and Tristo followed his example with their own mounts.
“Water,” Tristo croaked. “We need water.”
Surveying the featureless landscape around them revealed nothing promising. North of their position, Femturan still burned bright orange and billowed smoke.
“Drop their leads,” Eli-anna said. “If there’s water to be had, the horses will smell it.”
Left to her own devices, Cinders just hung her head, broken and listless, but after a few more vigorous headshakes, skin twitches, and tail lashes, Sukie and Dishwater began to snuffle the air. Sukie took off at a slow trot, heading south by southwest. Dish followed.
Thalen grabbed Cinders’s reins and yanked her forward as they pursued the stronger horses on foot. For a long time they were able to trace the pair’s movement ahead, but eventually the horses pulled out of sight, and Eli-anna followed their hoofprints. The path showed clearly enough (and a refreshing breeze sprung up to dry their sweat), yet the Raiders found trailing their horses difficult. They had endured so much, and it had been so long since they’d slept that they could hardly walk. Every few minutes, one of them stumbled and the others had to pull their fellow up. And Cinders had to be coaxed and pulled; if they let go of her reins, she dropped her head and stood swaying.
After the third time he tripped headlong, Tristo asked, “When did we last eat?” while Eli-anna helped him onto his knees.
“Can’t remember,” Thalen mumbled.
Thalen patted Cinders’s filthy neck. His throat was so parched he found it difficult to speak. “Come on, girl. You can do it. Don’t let those knees buckle. Don’t you dare die on me.”
In the midafternoon they reached the crest of a small slope, and Eli-anna pointed. In the distance they saw Sukie and Dishwater drinking at a decent-sized pond that had formed in a hollow between two hillocks. Cinders sniffed and revived enough to trot off to join them. Thalen draped Tristo’s good arm around his neck and pushed their bodies across the wide expanse of sere grasses.
The Raiders threw themselves down on their bellies and drank as greedily as their horses, not caring whether this pond, like so many in Oromondo, was poisoned with mining effluence or not. Thalen had just enough strength to pull his head out of the water and rest it on the bristly grass before he passed out.
* * *
When Thalen opened his eyes it was almost nightfall—nightfall of the same cursed day that had started with the birds and their fire arrows outside Femturan.
In the dim light he made out Tristo close by, curled in a ball. Eli-anna was moving about: she had stripped off her muddy over-clothes and boots and unsaddled the horses, who, freed from their burdens, rolled on the ground to scratch their maddening bug bites.
Thalen crawled to the pond and drank again, slowly now, savoring each wet, life-giving mouthful. He dunked his head into the water several times, trying to rinse the sweat and muck from his hair and face. Then he got up to help Eli-anna with the horses. Though most of the mud had flaked off, they desperately needed grooming if their coats—sweat-caked, chafed, and bug-gnawed—were to stay healthy. Thalen rummaged through all the saddlebags and felt a rush of relief when his fingers touched a brush. He swept it down the horses’ matted coats in long strokes. When he got to Cinders, the filly leaned her head into his chest, and he patted her nose for several moments.
Eli-anna motioned to Thalen that he should give her his filthy clothes. The cool wind on his bare skin soothed his own bites. Eli-anna beat the caked mud off his trousers and shirt and off the horses’ blankets, then doused the garments in the pond. Tristo slept on, unconscious; Thalen knew it was a wonder he had made it through the fire and escape.
The horses folded their legs and lay down in the moonlit field when Thalen finished brushing them. Eli-anna tossed herself on a damp horse blanket, staring up at the stars through the haze. Thalen thought about keeping watch, but he could not keep his eyes open, and in truth, he would almost count it a blessing if he were stabbed in his sleep. He took another wet horse blanket and copied Eli-anna in using it as a bed.
His thoughts kept incessantly reliving the last moments of their escape from Femturan, when the fireball had knocked Skylark off her horse into the moat. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw the searing bright fire at her back; the startled look on her face below the ragged knit cap; Cinders’s eyes rolled white in terror; and the black surface below.
Finding her body would have provided a modicum of solace. He could have gotten her out of that filthy moat; he could have held her in his arms—mayhap she would have even been conscious enough to know he was there in her last moments. He could have seen her actual wounds, instead of imagining the worst.
Trying to concentrate on a less painful thought, Thalen wondered what had happened to his wolfhound, Maki, who had often been a comforting presence at night. He couldn’t even recall when the dog had last been by his side. Before he could figure out what had befallen the animal, he fell asleep again.
* * *
Morning came to the three survivors clustered around the pond. The pond stretched about three paces wide and ten paces in length, its edges crisscrossed with tracks of other animals that used it as a water source. To the west the land grew hillier but still unwooded; Thalen dared to hope that this pond merely collected fresh rain runoff.
“Ohhh-ohh,” Tristo groaned, as he woke to pain and stiffness. “Commander, what—” but Thalen foresta
lled any questions or conversation with a hand gesturing, “Stop.” Once he had emptied the dirt and debris out of his boots, he abruptly stood up.
“I’m going to curry the horses in the daylight, now that I can see what I’m doing,” he said as he stomped away. The horses were clumped together, grazing amongst the dry winter landscape, but they turned to him eagerly when he approached.
While Thalen kept his solitude among the horses he was dimly aware that Eli-anna had set snares near the pond while Tristo alternated between digging in the dirt and collecting handfuls of burnable material.
Eventually, Tristo called, “Commander, come eat!”
Eli-anna had captured a rabbit and Tristo had roasted the creature over a tiny fire of dead grasses and twigs. The meat, along with the greens and roasted roots they’d harvested, was the first real food the three had eaten since … since before.
Each mouthful made Thalen hungrier. He felt the bites of undercooked meat giving his traitorous body strength.
Well, here I am: alive after she is gone. To be dragging this sorry body around while she lies at the bottom of that filthy moat feels like a betrayal.
When they had eaten every scrap, Tristo, scratching bites on his throat and chest, broke the silence. “I’m sorry about your brother, Eli-anna, I really am. And Skylark—she was something special.” He cleared his throat. “Yet we burned Femturan to the ground, killed the Magi, and took out hundreds of Oros. And we survived! We should be proud. We should feel victorious.”
Thalen shook his head. “I take no joy in all the death and destruction.”
“But Oromondo will no longer be able to threaten its neighbors or occupy other countries,” Tristo said, as if he could argue Thalen into feeling triumphant. “This is what we came for—this is what we wanted.”
“Someday I may recognize the accomplishment. But today I feel only pain,” Thalen replied. “Besides, we don’t know what’s happened to the other troop of Raiders. Wareth and Kambey and Eldie and the rest could be in danger or dead. Don’t ask me to rejoice.”
Eli-anna wiped her knife clean. Then, she grabbed her plait of hair, dark plum intermixed with light brown. While the men watched her, she sawed through the plait at shoulder length.
“We Mellies believe,” she explained to Tristo and Thalen, “that when someone dies, her soul goes to join the stars. But it is a long journey, from the steppes to the Lattice of Stars, and the departed fly more swiftly if we give something of ourselves to aid their passage. I gave my sister Eli-dena a year of my words. I gave my uncle, Tel-bein, a cup of my blood.” She yanked her tunic to the side of her neck to show the scar of a knife wound near her collarbone. “To speed Eldo’s ascent, I give my hair.” She threw the cut-off hank of hair into the dregs of their struggling fire and muttered a prayer in an unfamiliar language.
Tristo had watched her with wide eyes; then he grabbed his own brown hair on the top of his head and hacked off a big handful. He separated the chunk into smaller strands.
“Ooma,” he quavered and threw a pinch into the fire; “Cook” accompanied the next gesture. He continued going through the names of all their lost Raiders while tears tracked down his face.
Eli-anna and Tristo looked at Thalen. He would have cut off all of his hair if it would have eased the pain in his chest, but he didn’t put credence in the ritual—he cooperated for his companions’ sake. He clutched a handful of his hair near his left ear with his left hand and tried to saw through it with his knife, only to discover that his blade had dulled. Eli-anna offered hers. Thalen sliced through a hank of his hair and stared at his handful numbly.
He stood up over the fire, his hand clenched. “The friends we lost were noble and brave. We must cherish their memory. We didn’t treasure their companionship enough; our lonely tomorrows will teach us the depth of our folly.”
He opened his hand and let the hair tumble all at once into the small flames. Then he stalked off toward the horse blankets, threw himself down on the ground, and prayed for sleep to carry him into oblivion.
* * *
The next morning, after scarfing down another meager meal, Tristo badgered him, “What’s the plan, Commander? We can’t just stay here!”
Thalen knew the boy was right. He looked around them in every direction. To the north, Femturan still sent up an orange glow. To the west they saw the peaks of the Obsidian Mountains, and to the east the sea pounded against a treacherous shoreline. Thalen pointed south, not only because it was the only practical route but because an outline of a plan had begun to take shape in his mind.
The three riders filled their water bags and rode their somewhat recovered horses along a desolate coastline that started to climb in elevation above the sheer rock cliffs. They stuck to the bluff, hearing the waves and the gulls’ screeches, veering inland only when they had to skirt a fissure. They rode slowly and in silence, Thalen deliberately bringing up the rear. Thalen tried just to make his mind blank, and when he wasn’t successful, he tried to use Dish’s smooth gait to lull himself into happy memories, lingering on his aunt Norling teaching him to play the flute or on ice-skating with his brothers. Anxiety intruded on these reveries; Thalen kept imagining catastrophes befalling Eldie’s squad, such as their wounds going sour or their being captured. And no matter what he tried to think about, the memory of the moat came rushing back, making him flinch.
The riders were fortunate that this coastline of Oromondo was desolate. There were no seams of metal to mine here; no volcanoes to worship; and the soil underfoot was sandy and poor. They passed no settlements and they saw no citizens. Thalen was relieved that the isolation saved him from more killing.
In the midafternoon, they dismounted to drink from their water bags and walk the horses. The chill wind blew through the rents in their clothing, making the cloth billow.
“But where are we going?” Tristo suddenly broke out as if in the middle of some argument. His awkwardly hacked hair made him look even younger and more vulnerable than before.
Thalen cleared his throat and found his “commander” voice waiting for him. “If we keep traveling down this coastline, eventually we’ll reach a seacoast town in Alpetar called Tar’s Basin.”
“How do you know that?” asked Tristo.
“I see the map in my mind. Tar’s Basin has a harbor, the first harbor south of Femturan. From there, we’ll probably be able to get a ship.”
“Really?” said Tristo, a brightness returning to his eyes.
“Really, Tristo,” Thalen answered. “I promised I’d get you home.”
They walked on a ways, Eli-anna often stopping to choose stones from the options available underfoot.
“Plenty of gulls,” she commented without inflection, gesturing to the fluttering specks of white that shrieked from the edge of the drop-off.
“What about them?” asked Tristo.
“Two apiece for dinner,” she promised. “One to feed our bodies, and one to feed our grief. You keep an eye out for firewood.”
“Do gulls taste good?” Tristo asked.
“Everything tastes good if you’re this hungry,” Eli-anna answered.
As the day slowly unrolled, Thalen felt as if the three of them were the only people left alive in the world. Sometimes he cast a glance over his shoulder, half expecting to see the ghosts of the hundreds of people he’d sent to their deaths, trailing along behind them.
4
Wyndton
By late afternoon Stahlia’s back, neck, and shoulders ached and the tapestry workroom grew close and confining. When she left the workshop and crossed the small stretch of yard to return inside the cottage, however, its emptiness crept into her bones. Percia regularly departed after midmeal to prepare for the dancing classes she taught in the village center. Wren wasn’t puttering around or curled up with a book; Tilim wasn’t playing on the floor with his tin soldiers as he had as a little boy.
Worst of all, Wilim wasn’t on his way home from his circuits, soon to arrive full of praise
for her cookery and brimming with stories of his day’s encounters for them to chew over. It had been nearly a year since his death, and though Stahlia could struggle on when she kept busy, at times his absence smote her with renewed force.
Stahlia rubbed a palmful of liniment on her neck. Then she walked idly through the house, discontented with everything she saw. The floor wanted sweeping, the table sanding, the hearth ash clearing, and the windows washing. Baki lay in a circle near the fireplace nibbling on his thigh. That damn dog shed with every breath. And how was she supposed to make supper out of the scant foodstuffs left in the larder?
Overcome by discontent, she threw her cloak over her shoulders and went outside, Baki following by habit. The days clipped shorter, and the vegetable garden sat in a frozen, unsightly jumble of dead stalks and eddies of leaves. Idly, she checked on Syrup in the barn. His stall smelled, and he acted put out she hadn’t brought him a treat. He kept lipping at her clothing. “Quit it,” she told him, and then felt bad at taking out her peevishness on Wilim’s faithful old friend. She really should think about selling him—the expenses for two horses were heavy—but she couldn’t face the prospect. She let him out into his paddock for a change of scenery and fresh air, and his breath condensed in clouds around him. The sun fought its way through the late-afternoon clouds, piercing them in scattered places with streams of thick light.
Movement from the road caught her eye. Stahlia watched until she could make out Lemle, wearing a large rucksack. A hoof stuck out of it. Baki ran to him, wagging his stub tail.
“Afternoon, missus,” he called out when close enough. “I brought down a deer, and me and my uncle thought your family might like a hindquarter.”
“That’s so thoughtful of you, Lemle! It’s true, no one goes hunting for us these days. Come in the house for a cup of tisane to warm up and keep a grumpy old lady company.”
A Broken Queen Page 3