The Wild Road

by Jennifer Roberson

  “No, Ilona. Darmuth doesn’t eat humans.”

  “Ever?”

  “Ever.”

  She eyed him in suspicion, brows tightly furrowed. “How can you be certain? When he rides ahead to scout alone or hunt, how do you know he’s not looking for human meat?”

  “Because before he joined the karavan I made him promise he wouldn’t eat any humans.”

  She was horrified. “Oh Mother, Rhuan . . . what if he ever breaks that promise?”

  He lifted his arms and gently pressed the heels of both hands against his brow. “Can we talk about something else? Something that may not involve speaking?”

  She was aggreived. “What else can we talk about, in view of Darmuth promising not to eat any humans? Don’t you believe it’s a topic that might be of some concern to all the humans here in the settlement?”

  “I think,” Rhuan began, “that we might discuss collecting canvas and wooden buckets tomorrow, and asking people to fill them with stones suitably sized to erecting cairn markers.” He lowered his hands. “Including you, if you would be so kind.”

  Ilona lay back down. “Of course. Children can help, too. It would be good for them. I think—” But she broke off abruptly as a shiver ran through the earth. Pots throughout the grove clanked against one another, dogs barked in alarm, voices rose in fright as people were awakened. Ilona grabbed a chest to steady herself as a long, rolling motion rode the tail of the first. At Janqeril’s picket-line, horses screamed.

  “That,” Rhuan muttered from behind gritted teeth, “is of no help whatsoever in making my headache go away.”

  “Blessed Mother, Rhuan! There are matters of greater concern than your headache.”

  “Not to me.” He reached out, caught one of her hands, threaded his fingers into hers. “It’s gone now, ‘Lona. The shaking. The rumbling. It won’t repeat tonight. Possibly tomorrow, but not tonight.”

  “It is tomorrow, Rhuan.”

  He tugged. “Lie back down. No, closer. Let us both simply lie here quietly and await the dawn.” He paused, yawning. “No matter how near it is.”

  Ilona lay down. Rhuan, clasping her hand with interlaced fingers, settled it against his chest. The quiet affection was pleasing. She warmed to it, moved closer yet. Felt the quiver deep inside. “Rhuan?”

  “What?”

  “Is your headache so bad that you would rather sleep?”

  His voice sounded blurry. “What is the other option?”

  “Something that has nothing to do with sleep.” She freed her hand from his, slipped it between leggings and his belt buckle. “You just stay as you are. I will do the work.” She smiled, feeling the upwelling of joy and wonder that this man was hers. Oh, indeed, I’ll do the work.

  “Ilona?”

  She very nearly purred it. “Yes?”

  “My head truly does ache.”

  “I would expect it to. But I’ll make you forget about it.”

  He sounded unconvinced. “Can you be gentle? Very, very gentle?”

  Her answer was to unbuckle his belt.

  Gently.

  Chapter 21

  AUDRUN, LIKE HER children, sat crosswise on the cot so she could lean against the chamber wall. In silence, she watched her children eat honey-drenched cakes and drink juice. Megritte barely ate or drank anything at all, and when Audrun tried to encourage her, Meggie turned her head away as if putting up a wall between them. She refused to meet Audrun’s eyes, refused to answer questions, refused to offer any indication that she would communicate. She was entirely passive, except when it came to Audrun’s speaking to her.

  Audrun was weak, exhausted, in pain; her breasts ached, and her daughter’s actions drove her to tears. She did not sob, but silent tears broke over the lower rim of her eyes and ran down her face. Part of her wished badly to tuck Meggie into her arms, to reestablish the bond between mother and daughter, particularly so young a daughter. But Meggie had made it clear she wanted neither physical contact with her mother nor to meet her mother’s eyes.

  Time. It will take time. That’s all. Just a little time. But what she told herself was not comforting. It was desperation.

  Audrun wiped tears away, uncaring that she likely smeared grime all over her face. But the same was present on her children’s faces. All of them were filthy, sunburned, scraped, scratched, and bruised. She would ask Omri where they might bathe. Gillan’s beard was coming in, but in the golden stubble she saw black marks, a dispersed array of small black holes. After a moment she realized what they were: small, roundish burns. As if sparks had alighted on his jaw and burrowed into his skin.

  As she looked at his face, thinned and taut with pain, she saw little resemblence to Davyn. Gillan’s growth had come upon him of a sudden, and his body was making its own provisions for what it would be in adulthood. But his face was so stark, so rigid, that he looked like a stranger.

  Audrun spoke quietly. “Perhaps Omri will bring us salve for your leg.”

  The desolation of Gillan’s eyes met her own. “I want nothing from him. I want nothing from anyone here.”

  She saw, then, that he had laid aside his leaf-wrapped bread. “Gillan, you must eat. It will hinder the healing if you don’t.”

  The sound that came from him rode a rush of breath, and in the undertone of his question she heard a trace of desperation. “Heal so that as time goes on my skin becomes hide?”

  She had seen his bared leg, had seen the mottled, scaly island of hide as opposed to flesh, the reddened margins and rough edges. No one would mistake it for anything other than what it was: hide surrendered by a demon to provide a measure of wholeness to the leg. Audrun had once seen a man with terrible burns. Though he escaped the conflagration that had taken his home, he did not escape injury. The skin had dripped from his body as if peeled away, the muscles and veins burned to bone. He had not lived but a number of hours.

  She could do nothing but assume that Gillan’s leg had been burned as badly. It was lacking the firm curves of a muscled calf, appeared somewhat shrunken, as if much of the original leg was missing. The leg, she knew, would never be normal. But it was a leg he could walk on, and he would live to do so because of what Darmuth had done. What a demon had done in the belly of Alisanos.

  Audrun said, “I need you, Gillan. We all of us must heal. We all must learn how to survive here until the road is built. If you starve yourself to death—”

  Gillan interrupted in a choked but angry voice. “I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t ask him to do this to me! I had no choice, no say . . . and he has made me a monster.” He bent, yanked a torn pant leg aside and bared his lower leg. “See that. See that! I’m not wholly human anymore, and he did it to me. On purpose!”

  There was no way, now, to ask Darmuth his intent when he had bandaged Gillan’s leg with some of his own flesh. Audrun believed it had been a choice between life or death, and Darmuth chose a course that would keep her eldest alive. That was a gift no one should look on with hatred.

  But then, her flesh bore no resemblence to Gillan’s leg. She could not truly put herself in his place. How would she feel if it were her leg patched together with the hide of a demon?

  There was no answer for her. But what Audrun did acknowledge was her dedication to getting her children through the nightmare that was the deepwood and its denizens. She would do and say exactly what was needful, things she had said to them many times as she and Davyn raised them. Whatever it took for her to make them see the need for what she asked of them, she would do. The Mother had gifted them with life. It was up to them to honor her for it by living worthy, upright lives.

  “Salve,” Audrun repeated firmly. “And if you mean to die, you had best plan on a long battle. Because I simply will not allow it.”

  RHUAN AWOKE IN pieces. All of his parts appeared to be disparate. Pain here was
worse than pain elsewhere—or rather, there than here. But by far what hurt the most was his nose and face. He explored each with care, pressing lightly in various places to see if the pain worsened. In all cases, yes. He had not believed a human, or even two, could bring him to such a precipice, but there was nothing for it other than to accept Darmuth’s statement that three humans had defeated him.

  Ilona was absent. And while she had been as gentle as was possible a number of hours before, lovemaking had nonetheless been painful. And he missed the deep kisses, denied because of the split lip and soreness in the socket where a tooth had formerly resided.

  Dawn had come, had gone. Rhuan could tell by the amount of sunlight working its way through the canvas canopy. Nothing was hidden by day; he could see perfectly well. And hear also . . . Ilona, outside, very likely brewing tea, baking panbread in the skillet. He could smell both. And eggs.

  Rhuan eased himself into a seated position. It hurt to do so, but he could not lie about in Ilona’s wagon while others worked. He had tasks, and Jorda expected him to fulfill those tasks. Rhuan fully intended to continue marking the boundary between Alisanos and the human world. There were persons to gather, karavaners and tent-folk with canvas and wooden buckets meant now for carrying rocks. It was not only a prudent task, but something that should take their minds off the circumstances. Chores were understood. Chores were what everyone executed. The familar, he believed, would calm fears and erase a measure of worry.

  He tongued the hole where his tooth had been. It was sore, as one might expect, but the more extravagant pain one would feel, were one human, was absent. His teeth had always grown back after someone separated root from gum.

  He had been divested of clothing in the midst of night. Now he tugged on leggings and pulled them up over his hips. Thong drawstring was tied, his tunic pulled carefully over his head and pulled as carefully into place so he could avoid pain. Then the belt was buckled on, and with it his knife. The baldric of throwing knives. Now he gathered his boots, tugged one on and then the other, and essayed the difficult distance between a seated position and a body in the process of rising. The headache was much improved, but he was not free of it. He likely wouldn’t be for a day or two.

  Perhaps he could begin to build cairns very gently, clacking no rocks together. Perhaps he could inveigle the children into singing their songs, arguing their arguments, more quietly. But—not likely.

  THERE WAS NEITHER wall nor fence, nor markers of any sort to tell her where safety left off and threat began. But Ellica, nonetheless, stayed reasonably close to the cliffs of the Kiba and did not go too far into the tangle of vegetation that was precursor to hostile forest. When she stopped, she was concealed from the Kiba and its people, left to tend her tree as she desired.

  Carefully she set the pot down, then stood quietly and listened. No more than that. She heard a variety of noises, grunts, rattling, shrill cries, the swish of bodies through brush—so many she could not count. She recognized none, but was not led to believe that she or her tree was in imminent danger, be it from above or below.

  Ellica lifted the sapling from the pot and put it gently aside, then began, on hands and knees, to scrape away leaf mold, creepers, any number of nameless plants until she reached actual soil. That, she began gathering up in both hands, along with scraps of aged leaves. Handful after handful she dropped into the pot and eventually felt it was ready for the sapling. Carefully she lifted it, keeping the rootball as whole as possible and, as carefully, set it into the hollow she had made in the pot’s mounded dirt. She scooped earth around the rootball and pressed the soil around it. She began again to scrape up soil, and finished filling the pot.

  Dirt was crusted beneath her fingernails. Thready lines and creases in her flesh were filled with soil. Her hands were cold from digging beneath the canopy of the close-grown trees. Skirt and tunic were snagged, laddered, torn, full of rents. She remembered watching her mother weaving the fabric, working the loom’s treadle, passing the shuttle back and forth. Once, the cloth Audrun wove for this dress had been a pale, creamy yellow. But walking miles along a dusty road had imbued the fabric with a shroud of dirt, and kneeling on damp ground at streamlets to drink had formed two large stain blotches in the folds of the skirt. Snarls ruined the careful weave of her braids. Ellica knew she was filthy, but the acknowledgment did nothing to suggest she ask Omri where she might safely bathe. What mattered now was that the sapling came first. Before her, before her brothers and sister, before her mother. The tree took precedence.

  Ellica closed a gentle hand around the central stem that would, when properly groomed and fed, form a trunk. She felt the life in it, the pulse of its blood. The tree contemplated whether to trust or not. Ellica cupped palms very carefully around each small leaf and kissed it.

  “Be well,” she told it. “Be well and grow strong.”

  The tree did not answer. Ellica rose, set the pot against one hip, and began the walk back to the Kiba. She would keep the tree beside her cot when she slept at night, and at the first light of dawn she would place it outside in the suns.

  Ellica smiled. Watered, fed, groomed, the tree would thrive. And one day she would lift it from the pot, and she would set the roots deeply into soil, then cover and pat down the dirt. And then the sapling would grow up and up, would sprout its own canopy. But for now, it was an infant, requiring a mother’s care.

  Ellica began to sing a lullaby to the tree.

  Chapter 22

  DAVYN HAD SLEPT, but the rest he craved escaped him. Twice he had scrambled hastily out of the wagon in order to be very sick. After the two trips, he brought a bucket in with him.

  He woke at dawn as always, turned over onto his back and stared up at the Mother Rib, at the charms dangling from it. Each morning he and Audrun, wakening on the floorboards, asked the Mother’s blessing. He did so now, but was aware of a painful emptiness. He was a husband and father lacking wife and children, and each morning he rediscovered that truth, felt again the helplessness of being able to do nothing. The road, Rhuan said, would lead him to his family, but how long before the road existed? Months? Years?

  With a growl of annoyance that he should once again give himself over to doubts, worries, and fears, Davyn sat up. He paused, afraid to move, as the canopy slowly revolved. But his belly settled itself this time, perhaps because nothing was left in it.

  Moving more slowly now, Davyn took down fresh clothes where he had laid them out on one of the sleeping platforms and put them on. Before going to Mikal’s tent to drink himself senseless, he had readied himself for the journey to Cardatha, packing a change of clothing, smallclothes, the comb and tin mirror he and Audrun shared, a straight razor, lump of tallow-colored soap, blankets for bedding. He had rolled all into lengths of oilcloth and tied the thongs. Rain clothing was to hand as well as a packet of dried fruit, dried and salted meat, a chunk of hard cheese, panbread he’d cooked the evening before, and a small cloth bag of tea leaves. Lastly, he tucked inside one stocking the modest number of coin rings remaining to the family, saving two for a deep pocket in his tunic. Though Jorda said the supplies brought back would be shared out equally, Davyn thought it was possible he might find something more, something for Audrun. The coin rings had been intended to see them to Atalanda, but why should he save them now? Atalanda lay farther away than ever.

  Davyn rose, slightly bent so as not to bump his head on the canopy ribs, pulled on his boots, gathered up his bedroll, packet, and rain clothes, and climbed out of the wagon into morning. Others, too, were awake. Wives prepared firstmeal; he could smell bacon and panbread, a hint of garlic and wild onions.

  All smelled terrible to a man who had imbibed far too many servings of spirits the night before. All threatened the fragile stability of his belly.

  Mother, what a fool he had been to drink so much! And powerful spirits at that; when he did drink, though rarely, he had been a man for a
le. But it had been so easy to buy a little peace, find relief from the pain of emptiness. The spirits had numbed him.

  He wished he was numb now but without a chancy belly, the weight of his aching head, the grittiness of his eyes. Oh, he longed for a mug of Audrun’s willow bark tea, for all that it was bitter.

  Davyn put up the steps with one agile foot, managing with the ease of long practice; he could not bear thinking about the consequences of bending over to fold them up by hand. Bundling everything under one arm, he squinted briefly across the grove, making note of where wagons were parked and children played. Then he walked a distance away and relieved himself. The pungent odor of spirits rising from urine nearly made him gag. But then his ears were assaulted by a reverberating clangor that rang throughout the grove.

  Jorda’s Summoner? It must be. What else could make such noise?

  So, they were wanted. He knew it would be men who answered the call, those selected by Jorda and Mikal to carry messages to the rest, while women continued to work at the cookfires. Davyn tugged his clothing into something approaching presentability and began the journey out of the grove to Mikal’s ale-tent. It took longer than expected, but he supposed that had something to do with the condition of his head and how it affected his balance. He was required to concentrate on where he stepped. Or even that he stepped, planting each boot with care. Thank the Mother, the Summoner finally stilled. It allowed him to think of something other than an aching head and delicate belly.

  Cardatha-bound, he was. To a city. He had heard of but never seen a city. Had never seen stone dwellings. He knew wood planks, mud chinking mixed with grass and straw, split logs, and sod. He could not imagine how people lived within stone squares.

  Caught up in his own thoughts, Davyn did not notice another man was approaching him. Nor did the other man notice Davyn. They very nearly ran into one another but stopped abruptly just short of collision. Each opened his mouth to excuse himself, and each lost track of that when he saw the other’s face.