by AC Cobble
“That doesn’t make any—“
“He’s right,” said Cinda, interrupting her brother. “If Duke Eeron is sending an army, we can’t fight them. The best we can do is not to give them a reason to attack. Commander Broyce knows why we left, but he’s as straight an arrow as they come. He won’t instigate a conflict with Duke Eeron. Falvar is safer without us.”
“I disagree,” muttered Raif, though he offered no solution of his own.
Rew stepped from the forest, looking down the road. “That army is coming this way. We have minutes at best before we’re in view. Come on. We need to get to Umdrac.”
“We haven’t agreed on the plan!” complained Cinda.
“No, we haven’t,” said Rew. Then, he started walking across the grass toward the village.
Anne shushed the mumblings of the younglings and led them after Rew. They might not like it, but the forest was full of enemies, and the road had an army marching down it. The river led to Yarrow, and while that wasn’t their destination, it was the only place they could go.
“Rew,” said Anne as they approached the village, “if we walk through there, won’t the soldiers know exactly where we went?”
Rew, not answering, led them to the edge of the village to an abandoned hovel he’d run by the night before. He put his hand on the ancient thatch and whispered a hushed incantation. Beneath his fingers, the thatch began to blacken, and slender tendrils of smoke drifted up.
“How are you doing that?” exclaimed Cinda. “Is that high magic?”
“It’s not. Quiet, don’t draw attention,” said Rew, taking his hand from the smoldering thatch and watching as tiny flickers of light grew into dancing flames. “Come, walk down the street, and let’s be away from here before anyone notices the fire. With a little luck, this will distract them, and no one will realize we’ve passed through. Duke Eeron’s men will likely assume we fled toward Falvar. If they don’t know where we are headed and why, that’s the only logical place you would go.”
He led the party into Umdrac, encouraging the others to pull the hoods of their cloaks up and for Raif to hunch down, so it wasn’t so obvious they were the ones the soldiers had been searching for. They walked slow, taking their time, heading toward the inns as any freshly arrived travelers would do. In the distance, the rumble of marching feet grew closer, and Rew glanced over his shoulder, wondering when someone would notice the growing flames atop the empty home.
“What’s that, eh?” asked a man beside them. He had a stack of linens thrown over his shoulder and was speaking to a potter who was sitting in the open door of his shop.
“What’s what?” asked the potter.
“Sounds like thunder,” murmured the other man, glancing up at the clear blue, afternoon sky.
The potter stood from his stool, wiping his hands on his apron to clear them of sticky clay. He stepped into the street. “That ain’t no thunder, that—Fire! At Garl’s old place. Fire! Fire!”
All around them, villagers began rushing into the street, gathering buckets and filling them with water. There was little organization at first, but like any small community, they were all aware of the risk fire posed to the village, and they were all rushing into place to stop it. Rew, their party, and the other strangers in the village moved out of the way as a bucket line was formed from a well beside the blacksmith’s shop.
Rew gestured to his companions and led them farther into the village, passing the inns and the long warehouses that braced the docks, then out to where a ketch was tied to the wharf. It was a small craft, but it had a short mast with a rolled sail and a pair of oars. It’d be a little tight with the five of them, but they’d all fit, and it’d be a damned bit faster than the pair of barges that were the only other vessels tied to the dock. Besides, if they had to steal from someone, Rew felt a lot better stealing from the two lechers who’d harassed the girls. Drawing his hunting knife, Rew crouched and slashed through the ropes that kept the ketch tied to the dock. Everyone boarded. With his boot, Rew shoved them clear.
“Raif, man the oars,” he instructed, glancing up at the sail above them. “I don’t suppose anyone knows how to work this?”
“You don’t?” asked Cinda.
“I can’t believe you stole a boat,” remarked Zaine in an appreciative tone, “though you probably should have taken one you knew how to sail.”
“Anne, you grew up near the sea,” said Rew.
“Decades ago,” she muttered, reaching up to fiddle with the sails. “I was a girl, then.”
“You were old enough to—“ began Rew, but he stopped when the empath shot him an icy glare.
“I’ll do what I can,” said Anne.
Grunting, Rew took a seat on a bench beside Raif and nodded for the boy to take an oar. Raif, watching Rew, leaned forward and dipped his oar into the river. Leaning back together, they propelled the narrow craft away from the dock and into the current.
Back in Umdrac, shouts were filling the street, and villagers were rushing to extinguish the fire that had spread all along the roof of the abandoned hovel. The villagers that weren’t engaged in fighting the fire were watching as the first wave of ochre-liveried soldiers marched down the road from Spinesend. At the head of the column, in front of a company of cavalry, Rew saw a trio of men and women bedecked in plush robes. One in black—the attire of an invoker—led the army. It appeared, like the common soldiers, that the three spellcasters’ attention was fixed squarely on the burning hovel and the villagers’ attempts to fight the fire. None of the three high magicians moved to help.
“Put your back into it,” muttered Rew, digging his oar into the water again, watching as the soldiers slowed their march, staring curiously at the scrambling villagers and the fire.
The highway hugged the river for another league before it curled away and the river plunged into the foothills of the Spine. A league where they’d be completely exposed to the marching soldiers.
“Keep your hoods up,” instructed Rew, hauling on his oar in time with Raif. “Anne…”
Between frantic whispers to the girls as they tried to unfurl the sail, the empath shushed him.
Rew, pointedly not looking at the long line of soldiers that snaked from the village down the road, hoped Anne would figure out how to work the sail, and he hoped that no one thought to question why a ketch was speeding furiously away from the village moments before the soldiers arrived.
7
The river that flowed from Falvar to Yarrow and then far beyond to the sea, was a broad, slow-moving current north of the Spine. The water, brown near the village, gradually cleared as they moved away from the settlement. The sediment in the water that was stirred up by the activity near Umdrac fell to the bottom, and looking through the water was like peering through a thick piece of glass. Fat fish swam below, and pale rocks and rotting tree trunks marked the bottom.
Beside the water, the highway hugged the riverbank for a league before it peeled away, leaving only tall grass and willow trees dotting the bank. Beyond those, they could see the treetops of the forest, but eventually, those disappeared from view as well. On the other side of the river, they passed a narrow tributary, and then, the chalk-white walls of the Spine began to rise around them, the water curling through the foothills, taking an easy path into the rising stone.
At first, they were glad of the cover, leaving the bristling line of soldiers behind. Those men had paid little attention to a small boat on the water when there was the excitement of the fire in Umdrac ahead of them, but just the same, it gave Rew some comfort that they’d vanished from view without an alarm being raised.
Had they been noticed, they weren’t the only craft on the river, but there weren’t many others. Barges trawled the route between Falvar and Umdrac, and south of the village, they’d seen flat-bottomed boats where one or two fishermen would sit, casting nets for bait and lines for supper. They did not see any pleasure craft, and it seemed there were few sailing vessels akin to the ketch they’d sto
len. So far from Falvar and Yarrow, that was to be expected. The villagers in Umdrac could not afford to keep a vessel that served no purpose but leisure, and they had little need of the speed the ketch offered.
It seemed the previous masters of the vessel had taken everything with them when they spent the night in the village. Rew guessed the two had been employed ferrying messages or high-value goods. He wondered if some merchant in Falvar had hired the pair to quickly share news of the battle against the Dark Kind, hoping to gain a trading advantage by using the quick-moving ketch to beat competitors to Spinesend’s markets.
Whatever the reason the ketch had sailed to Umdrac, it had been a good choice for the party. Once they passed the last of the soldiers, it felt like they were on a pleasure cruise. Anne had managed to drop the sail, and it had filled with the gentle wind that blew along the river. They glided across the water with no need of rowing. With adjustments to the sail and the tiller that knifed into the water behind them, they had an easy time keeping to the center of the channel and coasting as fast as a trotting horse. It was cool on the water, but the sun shone bright, and with his cloak pushed back, Rew found it quite pleasant.
The sun dropped below the horizon. The moon shone bright on the cloudless night, and the stars twinkled above them, mirrored by the sparkling reflections on the surface of the river. Gaining confidence in her long-unused sailing skills, Anne had the younglings help her raise the sail back up, and they let the current carry them. Rew leaned against the tiller as they floated downstream, the water lapping peacefully against the wooden hull of the vessel.
From their packs, they produced a simple meal, and Rew remarked, “An ale wouldn’t be amiss.”
Anne snorted. He grinned at her.
“Boating on an evening such as this, we’d have flagons of pinkwine if it was a real pleasure cruise,” said Cinda, “though, I never drank much of it myself.”
“You were too young,” declared her brother.
She reached over and punched his arm. “At least I didn’t make a fool of myself like you did on Worgon’s spring cruise. You were leaning over the gunwale and it sounded like you were coughing up the entire river.”
“I think a river’s worth is about how much of Worgon’s wine I drank,” admitted Raif sheepishly.
“There’s no shame in that,” mumbled Zaine, and they all laughed, recalling how sluggish she’d been moving after the night they’d spent in the miner’s tower.
“In truth,” said Cinda, “Raif is right. I was a child of fifteen winters this spring. Old enough to sneak a bit of wine with my friends but not old enough to drink it in front of Baron Worgon. Not old enough to inherit or to protest my father’s instructions to stay in Yarrow. He said it was so I could find a suitable match, but everyone knew there was no one of my age and station in Yarrow. I should have questioned why he kept us there. I should have wondered why my father put us in that place at all. If he hadn’t, if we’d been by his side in Falvar, maybe we would have been ready to help…”
“You didn’t know. No one suspected your father…” said Anne. She looked as if she meant to say more, but she stopped herself, and glanced at Rew.
“What?” asked Raif, his eyes darting between the ranger and the empath. “Suspected our father of what?”
“Nothing,” muttered Anne.
“What?” demanded Raif, turning to face Rew.
“Why do you think your father sent you to Yarrow? You’re meant to rule Falvar one day, right? Wouldn’t it have made sense for you to be raised there where you could learn the land, the government, and the people?” asked Rew. He turned to Cinda. “Why would Fedgley not keep you close and ensure you were getting proper training in high magic? As you say, there were no suitable matches for you in Yarrow, and no one with your father’s skill in high magic. What good was fostering you there?”
The two nobles frowned at him.
“Well,” said Cinda slowly, “at the time—”
“At the time, you were both children,” said Rew. “You never had reason to question why, never had reason to suspect something was amiss, but now, you are no longer children.”
Raif cracked his knuckles. “What, exactly, are you accusing our father of?”
“Nothing,” said Rew, “I’m merely asking questions.”
“It sounds like you believe he’s guilty of something,” growled Raif. “Out with it, Ranger.”
Rew shook his head. “I’m just asking questions. It is up to you if you want to answer them. No opinion I have on the matter is any more valid than your own. All I suggest, do yourself the service and think it over.”
Raif drummed his fingers on the gunwale of the ketch, looking as if he meant to offer a retort, but he couldn’t think of one.
“Why do you believe we were fostered in Yarrow?” Cinda asked Rew, shushing her brother as he objected.
“I think your father meant to shield you from what is happening now,” replied the ranger, propping a leg on the bench in front of him and leaning back against the rear of their boat. “I think he was misguided, but perhaps he thought by keeping you ignorant of your potential, he could free you from the pull of the Investiture.”
“That’s not all,” said Raif. “Tell us what you suspect.”
Rew’s lips twisted. He waited a moment, but finally, he added, “If you were fostered with Worgon, no one would suspect that Fedgley was plotting against him.”
“Our father is a good man,” retorted Raif.
“I’m not saying he’s a bad man,” responded Rew. “Tell me, based on your three years with him, is Worgon a good man?”
Raif frowned.
“He’s as good as anyone,” murmured Cinda.
“I don’t like the way this conversation is going,” warned Raif.
Rew held up his hands. “I am simply asking questions. If the questions are offensive, it’s because you don’t like the answers.”
Raif snorted.
Cinda turned to her brother. “It’s a valid question, why did Father foster us in Yarrow? We’ve much to think about, and much to talk about, but not here.”
The nobleman eyed Rew, then Anne, and then Zaine. “Yes, not here, not now.”
Rew reached back and trailed his fingers through the cold, black water. Overhead, the stars twinkled. The riverbank alongside them was a mass of shadow. “When we get to Yarrow, we all agree we should avoid Baron Worgon and his minions? We pass through the city and attract as little attention as possible?”
Raif nodded curtly. “Yes, we’re agreed on that, at least.”
“How long until we reach the city?” wondered Zaine.
Cinda shook her head. “Should we reach the city? I mean to say, would it not be better to disembark north of there and travel cross country to Spinesend?”
Rew grinned, thinking that finally, the girl was recalling the maps she’d seen. He told her, “The hills of the Spine encroach on Yarrow. If we were to abandon this skiff there, it might be commented upon, and moving cross country will be rough travel. Most importantly, though, we didn’t get a chance to resupply in Umdrac. We’ve little food for a journey all of the way to Spinesend. I won’t go as far to say docking in Yarrow will be safer than abandoning the vessel north of there, but I do think it will be a more comfortable journey.”
Cinda pursed her lips.
Rew continued, “Besides, we want to move quickly, right? The roads will be twice as fast as traipsing through the mountains, and it’s possible we may find our way into a carriage which will shave days off the trip.”
“Worgon could have guards looking for us,” warned Raif.
“You escaped the place over a month ago,” reminded Rew. “I think it unlikely that any of the city guard will still be looking for you, and while those in the palace know your faces, we’ll stay far away from there. Remember, Worgon has no reason to think you’d be passing back through his gates.”
“Do you know of any secretive thieves’ roads through the city?” Cinda asked Za
ine.
The thief shook her head. “None that I suggest. Like the keep itself, I think it best we avoid the thieves.”
Raif shrugged angrily. “If it’s fastest, we dock in Yarrow. We’ve lost too much time as it is, and we can’t afford more days climbing and hiking in the mountains. I’ve hunted there, and it’s as the ranger claims—rough travel.”
Rew eyed the boy, suddenly realizing that even after they had to rescue him, Raif considered this his party, and that he was the leader of it. Typical nobility.
Anne, evidently guessing Rew’s thoughts, quickly declared, “It’s settled, then. We dock in Yarrow and we take the road to Spinesend.” She clapped her hands and added, “I suggest we rest while we’re on the water. There’s little danger to us here, and we may have slipped our pursuers back in Umdrac. With smooth water, we can—“
Rew coughed into his hand.
“What?” asked Anne and Cinda at the same time.
“You know this river goes through the Spine, right?” asked Rew, gesturing at the shadow-shrouded stone they were passing through. “The Spine is a mountain range. It’s rocky, the river narrows, and we’ll drop significantly in elevation in a very short time. I’ve never taken this way, but I know it’s no easy passage. That’s why we don’t see many other craft out on this water. If it was easy, the river would be the main route between the two cities. As it is, vessels only rarely travel south and never north. It’s impossible to make your way upriver through the passage in the Spine.”
“That sounds familiar,” complained Cinda.
Rew shrugged. “You were the one who wanted to cross the Spine last time, and this certainly wasn’t my plan when we first left Falvar. What would you have us do? Go back where Vyar Grund can find us? Mistress Clae? Duke Eeron’s army? Taking the river was no one’s first choice. It was the only way we had.”