Firewalk

by Anne Logston

  “My father,” Kayli murmured numbly. “Kairi, Danine—”

  “I said I didn’t find them.” Randon shook her gently again.

  “Kayli, listen to me. My camp is gone, too. I can’t see any

  of the tents. But the bodies are hardly cool. It must’ve been

  raiders, and they can’t be long gone. Maybe they’re still

  searching for us. We’ve got to get out of here before they

  come back, but first I want to see if any of my people are

  alive.”

  Kayli moved as if in a dream, letting Randon lead her east to the Agrondish camp. There was little difference here, except the scorched remnants of the tents were gay-colored cloth instead of plain hide. Kayli was too numb and bemused even to react when Randon found Endra’s body, her own dagger still thrust into her heart, and Anida and Devra similarly dead beside her. She reached dreamily for the midwife’s hand, startled slightly from her fog when Randon pulled her abruptly to her feet.

  “I hear horses!” he said, dragging Kayli across the scorched earth to the place where the grass began again. “Get down and stay down. Don’t move.” She lay where he pushed her on the ground. Something heavy fell over her, and when she smelled the odor of burned flesh, she realized with a dull horror that Randon had flung one of the corpses over her. But somehow even that knowledge could not move her, and she lay quietly where she was, the tall grass closing around her like a warm and comforting womb, the ground wonderfully solid and firm beneath her. She did not know where Randon had gone, nor did she care.

  Hoofbeats now, louder and closer. A tiny, sharp thought of Kairi made Kayli raise her head slightly, peering through the grass and the fringe of her hair. She could see little from her vantage point, but the brief glimpse of the gray horse that flashed past her hiding place and its high-backed saddle identified it as a Bregondish steed in Bregondish tack.

  The recognition somehow shook Kayli slightly out of her fog of shock, and she would have risen, but before she could push the corpse off her, the sound of the shouting reached her ears. And the language was not Bregondish. Kayli froze where she was, stilling even her breath, until the sounds of hoofbeats and shouting faded away to the east. Then she waited even longer, her heart pounding, until she was certain she heard nothing more.

  Kayli’s stomach lurched as she heaved the bloody corpse off her, but she forced herself to stumble away from her hiding place before she bent to vomit. The mere act of purging her stomach helped, as if she purged herself at the same time of her fear and mind-numbing grief. More resolutely she stood and looked around for Randon, praying that the shouting she had heard did not mean that the raiders had found him. No—there he was, crawling out from under a pile of half-burned tent cloth. He ran to her, and for a moment they could do nothing but hold each other.

  “Are you all right?” Randon asked breathlessly. “When I saw Bregondish horses, I almost thought—”

  “We were meant to think that,” Kayli said with sudden realization. “I, too, thought they were Bregondish—until I heard them speaking Sarkondish. Oh, Randon, what has happened here?”

  “I don’t know.” He glanced around. “I didn’t find the bodies of several of my guards, or Seba, and all the horses are gone. Maybe some of them got away. The raiders rode east, maybe to follow them.”

  “Then we must go west.” Kayli took a deep breath. “But not until we have given the rites of death to our people.”

  “No.” When Kayli turned to him in shock, Randon shook his head again firmly.

  “Kayli, the only hope we have, our only advantage, is that the raiders likely think we’re dead. They must have lit the grass fire to be sure. If we bury or burn the corpses, they’ll suspect we survived, and they’ll hunt us down—and they’ve got the speed of horses, while we’re on foot. Our only chance is to leave this place as we found it and flee in the direction they’re not looking for us—into Bregond.”

  For a moment Kayli’s mind utterly rebelled, refusing even to consider the idea of leaving her mother and sisters’ bodies to rot under the sun without the rites of death. Then she breathed deeply, forcing her mind to silence.

  “Yes,” she said, forcing out the words. “You are right, of course.”

  “Just stay here and hide in the grass,” Randon told her. “I’m going to see if I can salvage anything, anything at all.”

  When he returned, seemingly hours later, he carried a cloth-wrapped bundle.

  “I found a little meat in the ashes of the firepit,” he said, “and some dried fruit in the wreckage of one of the tents. There’s a dagger, too, that someone must’ve dropped, and another blanket that isn’t in too terrible a shape. But there’s not much water. And we’d best leave soon, before the raiders might take it into their minds to check the place one last time.”

  Kayli’s heart wrenched at the thought of leaving the dead as they lay, where scavengers would tear at their flesh and wind and dust scour their bones, but she said nothing. There was not one among her people who would not have bid her, if they could, to escape and survive at any cost. Calming herself, she chose two stout poles and a few tent stakes that could be used, with the blanket, to make a lean-to, and found a shorter section which had broken off sharply, useful as a digging stick, and followed Randon from the camp.

  They walked west, back to the place where they had left the blanket, the cloaks, and what was left of the skin of wine. It was nearly dawn now, and the clouds were clearing, too.

  “Well, what now?” Randon asked slowly. “We could circle south, I suppose, try to cross the border, but I don’t want to risk crossing the path of those raiders, and they rode east.”

  Kayli shook her head.

  “If the raiders have any suspicion that we are alive, they will stay where they are, and search the border lands,” she said. “There is no one to stop them. Better we go west, instead, toward Olhavar. At least we will likely find a village soon, for the horse-clan trails run near the border.”

  “West, then,” Randon agreed. He was silent for a long time, staring out across the plains. At last he said, “You know, that wasn’t any simple border raid. Those raiders had to either fight their way past our northern outposts or go a long way around them. And they were dressed like Bregonds.”

  Kayli was silent, too, considering the implications of what she had seen. The raiders had indeed been dressed as Bregondish warriors, riding Bregondish horses—but they had spoken Sarkondish. No raiders, to the best of her knowledge, had ever tried to disguise themselves before. And some of Randon’s guards, and possibly Seba, too, had escaped—been allowed to escape, most likely. They would return to Tarkesh and tell Terralt that the High Lord and Lady of Bregond, and Randon and Kayli, too, were dead, struck down by Bregondish warriors. Terralt would assume the throne of Agrond, permanently this time, and the treaty between Bregond and Agrond would be a quickly forgotten dream. That thought, more than any other, convinced Kayli that they should not try to return to Agrond immediately, not without troops to assure that Terralt would not prefer to finish what the raiders had started rather than surrender the throne he had wanted so long.

  And who would benefit by such a series of events? Dissidents in Agrond and Bregond, of course. Sarkond, to a greater extent; the treaty was the greatest threat Sarkond had ever faced.

  And Terralt, who would at one stroke gain the throne of Agrond, freedom from the treaty, the death of the half-brother he disliked, and the sympathy and support of the Agrondish people, even those who had formerly favored Randon. Why, in the face of so bold and tragic an attack as to slaughter their High Lord and Lady, what citizen would not shift his loyalty to Randon’s bereaved brother?

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Randon said suddenly. “You’re wrong. Terralt’s simply not capable of this kind of treachery.”

  Kayli said nothing. Terralt was capable of a good deal more than Randon believed, and she knew it.

  When she made no response, Randon settled h
is burdens a little more comfortably and shrugged.

  “Which way?” he said. “Where’s the nearest village?”

  Kayli sighed.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I spent the last years of my life in the Order. I don’t know when I last saw a map of Bregond, and it is a changing place. Folk rarely settle as permanently here as in Agrond.”

  Randon stopped, turning to face her in astonishment.

  “Well, then, where by the Bright Ones are we going?” he demanded.

  Kayli crouched down, brushed a small patch of earth clear, and drew in it with her finger.

  “The herds circle Bregond, from water hole to water hole,” she said, drawing the trails in the dirt. “Our merchants follow the same roads. The clans will be in the north now, taking the herds to the cooler summer pastures, but we might be fortunate enough to meet a merchant caravan on the road. And the villages, such as they are, are spaced along the herd circuits as well. So our best chance to find people, shelter, and water is to follow those trails.”

  Randon glanced back longingly toward Agrond (Kayli wondered if her eyes had looked like that when she had ridden into Agrond, looking back at her home one last time), but nodded reluctantly. She wondered if he, too, doubted the welcome he would receive in Tarkesh if he returned now.

  They walked westward, saying little, while the sun rose slowly overhead. As they walked away from Agrond, the shorter water-loving shrubs and grass tapered off, becoming the spiny brush, bramble thickets, and tall grass that Kayli remembered so well. Randon bravely pushed along beside her, but as the sharp grasses slashed at his tunic and then his skin, he cursed under his breath.

  Kayli stopped, glancing up at the sun.

  “We should stop,” she said, “rest until dusk and then continue. When it is cooler, we can wear our cloaks, and they will protect us from the grass.”

  Randon nodded brief agreement, and they trampled down an area of the plains grass, laying their cloaks down there. The blanket and the stakes and poles they had brought formed a neat lean-to to provide some relief from the now hot sun, and they both crawled into the makeshift shelter.

  “Bright Ones,” Randon muttered, trying to settle himself on the hard ground. “I’m grateful to your father for these fur cloaks, but they’re too damned hot to lie on in this weather and too damned thin for lying on hard ground.”

  “Take off your clothes and lie on them as well,” Kayli suggested. She herself was not too uncomfortable; it had been months since she’d left the dry heat of Bregond, but she had already adjusted. Even with the baby growing in her belly, she would need little water.

  Randon was another matter. Raised in the wetlands, without the benefits of Kayli’s temple training, he would need a great deal of water and protection from the heat and the sunlight, and regular food and sleep as well. If only they had managed to find even one horse!

  Randon fell into an uneasy doze, and Kayli slid silently out from under the shelter, staring out at the plains as she thought. It was a familiar pose; she’d stood this way hundreds of times before. As always, the sight of the sun on the gently waving grass cleared her mind, if not lightening her heart.

  She fairly ached to sing to the spirits of her family to speed them on the spirit journey, to make her apologies for her shameful failure to accord their bodies proper respect. But for that Kayli would require a forge and hours of meditation. As much as her heart hung heavily in her for her neglect of her duty to her family’s spirits, there was nothing she could do now but turn her thoughts to her own and Randon’s survival.

  The blanket and cloaks would make adequate shelter and protection from the plains grasses. There was little food, but they could find more; Kayli was not overly concerned on that account. But they had only one partly filled skin of water and a cup or two of wine. That liquid would last them two days, possibly three, but no more. And although Kayli had little knowledge of the geography of Bregond, she knew there were no usable water holes near the Agrondish border; the few that existed had long since been fouled or outright poisoned by the Sarkondish.

  Kayli glanced back at Randon, glad to see that he now slept deeply. With luck and perseverance, they could walk most of the night They would simply have to move as quickly as they could, and hope that they would meet someone on the road. In the meantime—

  Once, sullen and resentful, Kayli had crouched on the plains outside the Order and compared the number of ribs in a blade of sedge grass with that of curing mousegrass. Now she crouched down again and focused her attention closely on the vegetation before her. As she almost unconsciously cataloged the plants she knew, she recited to herself the useful properties of each one—bee sedge, for curdling cheese; sourgrass, for tea; ikada`s vetch, valued for the salt that could be rendered from its ashes; barrelroot—

  Barrelroot! Kayli hurriedly fetched the digging stick she had brought and used it to pry up chunks of the hard-packed soil. At last she unearthed the long, fleshy taproot and carefully worked it loose. By the time she heard Randon stirring in the shelter near sunset, she had located and dug up a dozen such roots.

  “What are you doing?” he asked sleepily, crawling out of the shelter. “I thought you said we should sleep until dark.”

  “Water was more important” Kayli handed him one of the roots. “This can be peeled and eaten. It has some use as food, but its primary value is the quantity of water it stores. With these, we can make our free water last much longer.”

  Randon took the root, peeled it thoughtfully with his belt knife, and bit into it. He grimaced, but chewed and swallowed nevertheless.

  “Tastes like soap,” he complained. “Never mind, I’ve eaten worse. Congratulations, by the way. I didn’t know that foraging was among your skills.”

  Kayli had to smile a little at the compliment.

  “A knowledge of useful plants for food and the simplest medicine is one of the thirty-nine arts required of an accomplished Bregondish woman,” she said, touching her braids. ”Although medicinal plants are not my area of greatest knowledge, still I can find enough roots and young plants to at least supplement whatever game we can catch.”

  Randon smiled and shrugged eloquently, gesturing at the plains stretching all around them.

  “What now?”

  “Now we strike camp and walk while it is cool,” Kayli said with a sigh.

  Kayli would have taken part of the load, but Randon simply tied their belongings into two bundles and suspended them from the ends of the tent poles.

  “I’ve had more sleep, and you’re pregnant,” he said firmly. “I’m relying on you to get me through this. I’m going to be in bad shape if you collapse and leave me to find the way. There isn’t all that much to carry, anyway.”

  They chewed the barrelroot as they walked, and when that was finished, Kayli insisted that they might as well eat the roasted boar from the pack.

  “It will soon spoil in the heat,” she told Randon. “And especially here, where there is so little settlement, game is plentiful enough.”

  The half-moon rose obligingly to light their way, and despite the anxiety of their situation, Kayli could not keep from wondering once more at the beauty of her homeland. Moonlight silvered the waving grasses, and the wind made them whisper softly. The air cooled swiftly, and she and Randon were doubly grateful for the stout, warm fur cloaks.

  “It looks like the sea,” Randon said as they walked. “The grass makes waves. Even the sound is something like the waves coming in over the sandy beaches.”

  Kayli found that thought ironic, that arid Bregond should seem similar to the mythical sea which had so awed Kairi (Kairi! Did she dare hope Kairi was alive? Perhaps, for there was no other explanation for the rainstorm which had saved her life and Randon’s. But best not think of that now—). But she supposed that to Randon, born and raised in the wetlands, Bregond must be as strange and incomprehensible to him as the sea was to her.

  Near midnight they reached their first water hole, and although
Kayli herself could not stifle a hopeful pang at the first sight of the small water-filled depression breaking the smooth rippling of the grass, Randon did not need her to tell him that they would not be filling their wine bottle with water here. The water was rank and scummed, and a few contorted animal skeletons on the banks announced plainly that this pool carried a death that might be certain, but not necessarily swift.

  More encouraging was the trail that ran past the water hole. Although this pool was not used, and the herds would be detoured around the area to keep them from drinking the deadly waters, this trail would surely join the main road.

  “How far is it to the next water hole?” Randon asked softly as they stood on the banks of the blighted pool. “Can we make it, with those roots you found?”

  Kayli hesitated before answering.

  “I do not know how far the next water hole is,” she admitted. “But I do know that we have a decision to make. We could follow the trail north or south, and surely it will join the main road. Traveling on the trail will be easier than pushing our way through the grasses. North would be the best choice, as it would lead most directly to Olhavar, and we would be most likely to encounter folk on the road.

  “But this trail may parallel the main road for some time,” Kayli continued. “And by the time we rejoin it, we may have already passed the nearest water hole. Barrelroot will be more scarce along the road, because travelers use it.”

  Randon sighed resignedly.

  “I suppose our best hope is west again, then, across country,” he said. “Are you certain you won’t get lost this way? It’s not like there are many landmarks to go by.”

  Kayli stared at him blankly.

  “The moon and the stars are the moon and the stars, in Bregond or Agrond,” she said simply. “And here there are no clouds to obscure my view.”

  “I suppose navigation by the moon and stars is another of your thirty-nine arts.” Randon chuckled. “I’d like to hear the whole list—”

  “Hunting, trapping, riding, foraging, leathercraft—” Kayli began.