“Tolls, rider,” said one man in front of her. His face was pale and his hair stringy and nearly white. His eyes were pink. “Harrowman land here. You must pay us to pass.” He spoke the common tongue with a scratchily sibilant accent, like a saw sliding on silk.
Clovermead fumbled in her purse, drew out two silver shillings, and tossed them to the pale man. He caught them expertly in his hand and pocketed them. “There’s your toll,” she said. “Let us pass.”
The pale man smiled. “Tolls are higher than that this year, rider.”
“Not too high, I trust,” said Fetterlock. He rode up to Clovermead’s side, and his hand was also resting on his sword. Sergeant Algere and Corporal Naquaire followed close behind him. “Make the tolls too extortionate, and travelers will not return. Is it not better to have many silver pieces over the years than a few now?”
The pale man shrugged. “Perhaps I will not be here to collect the silver pieces when you return, Tansyard. Fortune spins her wheel and who knows what the future will bring? I would rather take advantage of the present.” He grinned. “The toll is your horse, lady rider. Your pack and your purse, too. Get down, lady, give them to us, and your party can pass. We don’t want to hurt you.”
“It would be a pity to have to burn your village,” said Fetterlock calmly. He pointed back toward the tumbledown huts they had passed earlier. “Surely you want a soft bed to come home to at night?”
The pale man’s short and bandy-legged companion guffawed. “Not our village,” he giggled. “We don’t care.”
Clovermead lifted her right arm high, so every Harrowman could see it, and let it grow. Soon it was a bear’s paw—thick and long, with long claws. She smiled at the pale man. “I believe you are mistaken, sir. I have paid the proper toll.”
Mullein moaned in fear, and pulled away from Clovermead so fast that Clovermead had to grab her to keep her from falling off the horse. Fetterlock rapped out quick words to her in Tansyard, so that Mullein stayed on Auroche, but she turned to stare at Clovermead with eyes made enormous by sudden terror. Sergeant Algere trembled a little, and Corporal Naquaire made the sign of the crescent, but Fetterlock shivered and was hard-pressed to keep himself by Clovermead’s side. The pale man murmured something to his fellows, and their canoes began to back away from Clovermead. He bowed, sheathed his knife, and stepped off the path. His companion scuttled by his side.
“I beg your pardon, mistress. We mean no harm to emissaries of the Bear.” The Harrowman fumbled in his shirt and took out a piece of obsidian carved in the shape of a bear’s tooth. “We honor your lord, mistress. Pass on, pass on.”
Clovermead opened her mouth to say she wasn’t one of Lord Ursus’ followers, but Fetterlock hissed at her in warning. Clovermead nodded, and rode past the bowing Harrowmen. The Yellowjackets rode slowly after her, their swords bared. She went on for another minute, then looked back. The Harrowmen had disappeared from sight.
“Are they allied with Lord Ursus too?” she asked.
“They fear him,” said Fetterlock. “They won’t get in his way if he sends an army through the Moors. But I do not think they will impede our armies either.” He looked at Clovermead’s arm, grown human again, and he could not help but shudder. “I find it hard to believe . . .” He trailed off.
“That I’m not a servant of Lord Ursus?” Clovermead felt very much like growling at Fetterlock, but Mullein was still staring at her with terrified eyes, still sitting as far away from Clovermead as she could get on Auroche’s back. Clovermead swallowed her anger so as not to frighten the girl any more. “Believe what you like. I don’t care.” Coldly she set Auroche riding onward into the Moors.
Mullein’s terror faded, and she nestled back against Clovermead. But Clovermead could feel her heart still racing, pit-pat, pit-pat, pit-pat, and it beat even faster when Clovermead tried to speak comforting words to her. After a while Clovermead gave up, and they rode on in silence.
That night Clovermead and the Tansyards set up one campfire, while the Yellowjackets sat around another. Sergeant Algere came to consult with Clovermead and Fetterlock for a few minutes about their route the next day, then went back to rejoin his troopers. Tonight old Golion and young Habick were sword-dancing for their comrades: The blades whirled around their legs as Golion jumped precisely and Habick enthusiastically capered. Quinch and Sark whistled their approval, Lewth and Dunnock clapped for an encore, and even scowling Corporal Naquaire allowed himself to smile.
Mullein began to speak, and Clovermead turned away from the dancing Yellowjackets. The little girl asked Fetterlock a series of questions in Tansyard. He answered her in a low voice touched with sadness and sometimes with laughter. Then Mullein looked again at Clovermead. She was still suspicious, but she slowly reached out her hand toward Clovermead’s and pulled it toward her. “Gora le ea,” she said to Fetterlock. “Mi’ita le seboyara coa vi goru.”
“She would like you to turn into a bear again,” said Fetterlock. “But please do it gently, Demoiselle. She is very frightened of bears.”
Clovermead let the fur sprout from the back of her hand. Mullein gasped as the hairs poked against her palm, then she hesitantly ran her fingers along Clovermead’s long golden fur. Clovermead let her hand grow into a paw once more, and made her claws lengthen. She kept still while Mullein touched every inch of her paw from wrist to claw-tips. Mullein looked up at Clovermead and Clovermead let a wave of fur flow up her arm, across her body, and down her other arm. Then the fur faded back into flesh.
“Tell her I’m a friend of her brother,” Clovermead said to Fetterlock, never moving her eyes from Mullein. “Tell her that I would never hurt her, and that I will fight to keep her safe from her enemies.” Fetterlock nodded and spoke in Tansyard. Mullein stared at Clovermead a while more, then smiled tremulously and spoke to Fetterlock.
“She says she will trust you,” said Fetterlock. He smiled. “She says she knows now that your hair isn’t straw, but fur.”
Clovermead laughed. “So it is,” she said. She ruffled Mullein’s hair fondly, and Mullein smiled, her fear gone.
Mullein ate ravenously, and while she bolted down her food, Clovermead tried to learn some Tansyard words from Fetterlock. She had picked up a number of Tansyard phrases from Sorrel over the years, but not enough to do more than make Mullein giggle at her confused attempts to talk in the Steppe tongue. The lesson wasn’t terribly successful, and after dinner Mullein set herself to learning common tongue instead.
“Tebeyu,” she said, pointing at the fire.
“Fire,” said Clovermead. Then, following Mullein’s finger, she said, “Tinder. Kindling. Cheese. Beef stew. Buttons. Those are buttons too!”
“Tinda, kindeleen, chis, bif estu, bottenes, thowis ara bottenestu!” said Mullein, laughing. Now she pointed at Clovermead’s hand.
“Hand,” said Clovermead. She wiggled her fingers. “Fingers.” Then, cautiously, she turned her hand back into a paw. “Paw. Claws.”
“Gora,” said Mullein. “Kamu po ta seboyara vi goru? Gorai perenjiu heva Ursus.” She stared intently at Clovermead.
“What was that?” Clovermead asked Fetterlock. “Something about Ursus?”
“Gora is ‘bear,’” said Fetterlock. “She said, ‘How can you turn into a bear? Bears are the servants of Ursus.’”
“Tell her I’m not a servant of Lord Ursus,” said Clovermead. She looked Mullein full in the face as she spoke. “Tell her that Our Lady gave my father the ability to turn into a bear as a gift, and gave the same power to all his descendants. Tell her we were given that gift so we could free every bear from Ursus’ slavery.”
Fetterlock spoke, and then Mullein spoke back to him. “She says, ‘We are slaves too, in the mines. Will you come and free us as well?’”
The spiked whip lashed into Boulderbash. Clovermead felt tears glitter in her eyes. “Tell her I’ve made too many promises already.” She hastily wiped her eyes. “No, don’t say that. Tell her we’re fighting Ursus, and that
if Our Lady blesses us, sooner or later everyone will be free from him.” Fetterlock spoke, and Mullein sighed. She looked exactly the way Sorrel did whenever he was feeling cast down, and Clovermead’s heart wrenched in her again. “Tell her she looks very much like her brother.”
Mullein became more animated. “She says her mother had told her of Sorrel, in the mines. She said he was very sweet, and that he was dead, like all the other men of the Cyan Cross Horde. Is her father alive too? Are her other brothers?”
Clovermead shook her head. “Just Sorrel.” Mullein nodded, awfully solemn, with an expression too old for her years. Clovermead hesitated. “Does she know how she and her mother escaped from Barleymill?” Fetterlock relayed the question.
Mullein looked around at the darkness, and Clovermead followed her gaze. Old Golion had grown tired, and now brawny Bergander had taken his place in the sword dance. He was as oddly dainty in his dancing as he was delicate in his lute-playing. Beyond their two campfires was an immense night. Mullein hunched close to the fire and spoke in a low voice. “She was in the tunnels digging ore with the rest of the women and children when the Shaman-Mother started to sing,” said Fetterlock. “A dark cloud covered the torches, and she couldn’t see. Then she heard the Shaman-Mother singing inside her head, and she could see in a strange light. Mullein’s shackles came loose, and so did her mother’s. They started to walk, and the Shaman-Mother sang directions to them until they came out of the mines. The guards couldn’t see them. The cloud hid them until they were past the walls of Barleymill, and then it thinned and went away, and so did the Shaman-Mother’s voice. Then Mullein saw things she had never seen before, and her mother said they were grass and streams and trees and birds—” Fetterlock could not help but sob deep in his chest. “But her mother made her start to walk at once. They fled through the night and they slept when the sun came out. Sometimes they walked side by side, and sometimes her mother carried her in her arms. They dug for roots, and her mother caught fish in the streams with her bare hands. After a while her mother started to look behind her, and said she was sure there were bear-priests coming to catch them and bring them back to the mines. They left the grasslands and went into the Moors. Then the bear-priests caught up with them, but her mother tossed her away, and said to trust her brother Sorrel and never to come back to the mines, to kill herself before she let the bear-priests capture her. And then Sorrel left her to go after their mother, and he said to trust the straw-haired girl, she would keep her safe.” Mullein fell quiet, and tears were rolling down Fetterlock’s cheeks. “Oh, Lady, she had never seen grass.”
“I won’t let the bear-priests catch you,” said Clovermead. And she knew she’d given her word too often before, but she said, “I promise you that.” Somewhere Boulderbash was laughing bitterly at Clovermead, but Clovermead couldn’t help it. “In Our Lady’s name. Tell her that, Fetterlock.” Fetterlock spoke in Tansyard, and Mullein smiled. Then she yawned and lay down by the fire. In moments she was asleep.
The next day Clovermead and Mullein rode together again in a morning far warmer than the day before. Blustery gusts still blew against Clovermead, but she was no longer chilled to the bone. The grass beneath Auroche’s feet was still damp, but he was able to make far better time. Mullein looked around her with interest and enjoyment, gasped at every bird that rose from the reeds, and laughed when she saw a muskrat waddle into a pond. She pointed at everything she saw, and Clovermead told her the words in common tongue. In a few hours Mullein had memorized the words for bird, tree, pond, ride, swim, fly, and everything else Clovermead could show her in the Moors.
Mullein saw a sparrow hop from a thorn tree branch to the ground and she cried out in delight. “Sparoa!” she cried. “Sparoa fly. Sparrow fly,” she said more carefully. She laughed. “Mullein ride horoos.”
“Mullein rides horse,” Clovermead agreed. “Clovermead rides horse. Horse gets tired, wants grass. Fortunately, we’ll be in the Steppes soon, where there’s all the grass Auroche could ever dream of.” Mullein stared at her in puzzlement. “Let’s go back to language lessons. I wonder how long it will take you to learn adjectives and adverbs.”
That afternoon they rode uphill through land that grew lusher and dryer by the mile. The ponds grew smaller, the earth grew deeper and darker, and the grass turned from dun to bright, pale green. All along the track lavender and yellow crocuses joined snowdrops in bloom, and green leaves exuberantly burst forth from poplar trees. A herd of red deer bolted away from the Yellowjackets. The wind blew steadily from the south in a cloudless day. The scent of grass was strong around them.
“It is lovely,” said Clovermead to herself. “Sorrel wasn’t exaggerating. Mullein, do you suppose it’s like this all over the Steppes?”
“Steppes?” said Mullein, pointing at the green grass. Clovermead nodded. “Steppes piretty!”
“Steppes very pretty,” said Clovermead. “Father would love how green they are. Mother would say Chandlefort is prettier, but she’d still be impressed at how far the grass stretches. I wish Sorrel were here to show them to us.” Her heart ached again.
Toward evening they emerged onto the true Steppes. They had come high enough that the air was thinner and chillier than it had been in the Moors or the Whetstone Valley. Now they ran on fertile soil. Clovermead judged it with a shepherd’s eye: It would make good grazing land for sheep. The Steppes ran on and on, rolling slightly, but flat as far as she could see. The eye got swallowed up in their immensity.
“You could plunk down a dozen Chandleforts here, Demoiselle, and lose track of them all,” said Habick, awed. He was riding to Clovermead’s left. “I thought the Salt Heath was big, but it’s just a patch of sand next to this. Do you know how far this grass goes on?”
“Four thousand miles, Sorrel once said. You travel for two years, and it gets drier and colder as you head east, and after a while it turns into a desert with just a few scraggly villages around the odd oasis. Beyond that there are mountains, and beyond that is the Sublime Royaume, where the farmers train insects to make their clothes and magicians bring clay soldiers to life to guard their cities.” Clovermead’s eyes gleamed. “I’d love to see what it looks like.”
Habick went very pale underneath his freckles. “You aren’t going to take us that way, Demoiselle? I’m already too far from Chandlefort.”
“Don’t you worry!” said Clovermead. “This isn’t a pleasure jaunt. I’m afraid I’m not getting to the Royaume anytime soon.” She laughed, a little sadly, and then lapsed into silence.
Mullein ate another huge dinner that night, then promptly fell asleep. Fetterlock looked at her sadly, and he muttered in Tansyard.
“What’s worrying you?” asked Clovermead.
“Regret,” said Fetterlock. “I suddenly worry that I made a wrong decision once.”
“I know I have,” said Clovermead. “After I make a mistake, I tell myself I’ll make better decisions the next time, but somehow I keep on blundering. Sometimes I just make a fool of myself. Sometimes I hurt other people, and when I say ‘Sorry’ afterward, it doesn’t make up for what I’ve done. If you have only one decision to regret, you’re doing well.”
“It was a very important one,” said Fetterlock. “People died.”
Once Lord Ursus had possessed Clovermead. With one voice they had ordered bears and bear-priests to attack the soldiers of Low Branding and the Yellowjackets. Clovermead had urged them on to more slaughter, and there had been blood everywhere, spattering the snow. The scar on Clovermead’s arm and her missing tooth both ached. They were mementos of the time she had let Lord Ursus possess her; mementos of the evil she had done with him.
“I’ve made mistakes like that too,” said Clovermead in a low voice. She glanced up at huge Fetterlock. “Do you want to tell me what you did? I won’t be nosy if you’d rather be quiet, but if you want to talk, I’d be glad to listen.”
“Perhaps I would,” said Fetterlock. He looked again at Mullein, and a tear rolled down his
cheek. “Oh, Lady, she has never seen the grass. And I am to blame.”
“You?” asked Clovermead, startled.
“In part,” said Fetterlock. “Enough.” He began to speak.
Chapter Six
The Silent Warrior
We had fought the Cyan Cross Horde the summer before. They challenged us for the use of the meadows along the Sundew Creek, which has the best pasturage for horses in the northern Steppes. White Star Horde had won the use of the Sundew lands from the Tawn Cross Horde when I was a boy, and it had been the pride of our Horde ever since. We fought with desperate love, for our fathers had paid for that grassland with their blood. We also fought with anger, for Cyan Cross already had fine pasturage for their herds by Charlock Lake: They waged war in the arrogance of their power, to take what they did not need. We delivered a repulse to their presumption. At the end of the day the Cyan Cross retreated and left the meadow dappled with the bodies of their fallen. It was a glorious victory, and we shall sing of it for generations.
It was a costly victory too. As many of our warriors as theirs lay on the ground, and White Star was a far smaller Horde than Cyan Cross. One of them was my daughter’s husband, Stringhalt. I had not wanted her to marry him, for he was small and clubfooted, but my wife had said, “He can ride a horse as well as you, clubfoot or no, and all warriors in the Horde are short to you. It does not matter: He is a brave warrior and he will make Arman a good husband.” He had indeed been a good husband, for he made Arman smile day and night the three months they were married, and he had been a good warrior, for three men of the Cyan Cross lay around his body. I carried his small body back to the Horde in my arms. Arman’s face went cold when she saw him dead, and she never smiled again. I think she would have ceased to eat if she had not had Stringhalt’s baby growing inside her. Even when my little granddaughter Calkin was born, Arman was barely alive.
So you will understand that I had little reason to love the Cyan Cross Horde as we came north on the Steppes the next summer. They had not behaved dishonorably. I had killed a warrior or two of theirs myself in that latest battle, and I knew that because of me a wife in Cyan Cross wept for her husband as much as Arman wept for hers. Yet I could not help but be bitter. Indeed, I had spent all winter down in the southern Steppes planning a raid on the Cyan Cross when next we saw them. I would bring a string of Cyan Cross horses back to Arman and say to her, “I have brought these back from Stringhalt’s enemies for Stringhalt’s wife and Stringhalt’s daughter. Please, Daughter, let these assuage your grief. Let Calkin know that her mother can smile.” I feared they would be no comfort to her, but I could think of nothing else.
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