A roan mare on his left blinked sleepily at him and blew gently into his hand when he offered it. She pricked her ears at him, as though hoping that he might have brought her an early breakfast. She was a pretty, dainty thing, though, and he decided she was too fine-boned for what he needed.
The black horse three doors down from her stood two hands taller and half again as broadly as the mare, but Nolan had no interest in trying to master even a well-trained stallion on the road.
The lanky chestnut mare greeted Nolan by trying to bite him.
The next two geldings were limp-eyed, overworked and grayed around their muzzles.
Nolan began to pass the stalls more quickly, nerves running higher. He’d been so sure he would find a horse…too small, too skittish, too heavy…finally he came to the corner stall. A blood-bay mare stared back at him. The two of them looked each other up and down measuringly. She looked fully mature, but by no means old. Nolan had never learned how to properly study a horse’s teeth for their age but he guessed this mare was seven or eight. She was broad-backed and sturdily built, with thick legs ending in feet that looked slightly too big for her. A blurry five-pointed star and a small white snip on her muzzle added character to the face, but her head was shaped along short, thick lines that forbade her being any kind of beauty. Still, she seemed healthy. Nolan let himself into the stall to run his hands down her legs, as his father had shown him to do with the guests’ horses. He thought she’d be fit for a long ride. Her legs were straight, at least, with no heat or swelling.
The mare craned her head to look back at him doubtfully.
“I know what I’m doing,” Nolan whispered to her. He stepped back out of the stall and reached for her tack. A snort from the hayloft stopped him short. Cold with dread, Nolan looked up. There lay Toln, asleep on his stomach with his face half-buried in the hay and his mouth open stupidly. The knot of nerves in Nolan’s stomach relaxed. He wondered just how many drinks Toln had downed in order to sleep through the disturbance Nolan had already caused.
With any luck Toln would lose his job tomorrow morning, Nolan thought smugly. Then he quickly sobered. He hadn’t gotten away yet.
Scarcely breathing, he placed the mare’s saddle pad and saddle on her back. The girth jingled ever so slightly as he picked it up. Again Nolan waited. Still he heard nothing but Toln’s heavy breathing. Nolan buckled the girth and gently slid the mare’s bridle off of her hook.
He could bring the horse back, once Kris was safe. He wasn’t really stealing the mare if he paid for her and brought her back. It was more like he’d be renting her. The mare took the bit without any argument. Nolan buckled the throatlatch with trembling fingers and nervously smoothed the hairs of the mare’s forelock that had been caught up in the straps of the bridle. He ran his fingers over the star on her forehead. Star, he thought distantly. That’s what I should call her.
The name seemed fitting, if not very imaginative.
He’d named her. He was really taking this horse. He’d be one step away from a horse thief until he brought her back. Nolan pulled out three gold coins, more money than he’d ever spent in his life, and laid it gently on Star’s stall wall. He hoped they made it to the right hands. He was renting her, but he was also something of a thief. He didn’t really know if he’d have time to bring her back. No denying that now.
He swung the stall door open. Star dubiously followed him, placing each foot down as though it were a separate thought.
Nolan slipped them both through the stable door, wincing slightly as questioning whickers arose behind them. He tucked the star-jar back in his bag to douse the light. By feel and by guesswork he led the mare across the inn’s yard. Nobody stirred in the inn, and Star followed quietly behind him. Nolan nearly breathed a sigh of his relief at his accomplished theft when he led Star onto the street.
The first strike of Star’s hoof against cobblestone split the air like an ill-tuned bell. Nolan jerked her to a stop, swearing with a word he’d learned on the Seaglass. Though Nolan couldn’t see Star when he looked back, he could picture perfectly her large hooves. He could imagine even better the kind of racket that she would make crossing cobblestones from here until the edge of Lichensveld.
Nolan ran over the items he had in his bag that might dull the mare’s steps. He didn’t have enough shirts for her four feet, and he couldn’t imagine his spare pair of trousers would do much good. He certainly had no intention of taking off his coat to let a horse step all over it, or trashing his blanket in the same way.
Star nudged him impatiently with her nose. Uttering a word even more deliciously foul than the first, Nolan reluctantly backed her up into the stable yard. He slowly released the reins, straining to hear if she moved or not. “Stay,” he whispered.
Seriously doubting that the mare would obey but not daring to lead her across the yard twice, Nolan jogged blindly back to the stable. He ran into the door, opened it, and took the star-jar out again to find some rags. A stable was bound to have some for cleaning tack or wiping away mess.
Toln snorted, stirred, and snored on. Heart drumming, certain that he was taking far too long about this operation, Nolan grabbed the first cloths handy and carefully trotted back to Star, who was just starting to make her way back to the stable. Nolan caught the baffled horse and clumsily tied the rags to each of her feet. He’d heard before that this was common practice among true horse thieves. There was no reason it shouldn’t work for someone who was…creatively renting a horse.
The rags didn’t deaden all of the sound, but they helped. Nolan could see faint lights here and there to the more southerly end of town, but he did not cross a single passerby. The town lay eerily still as he picked his way through the streets with Star. The loudest sound he heard was the drumming of his own heart.
Once they were safely tied on Nolan headed blindly west through the darkness until they reached the road. A quick glance at the road’s marker with the help of the star-jar confirmed that he’d found the way to Vorolitz. Nolan finally breathed a sigh of relief and sent silent thanks to whatever deity might have looked out for his interest that night. He secured his bound bedding to the back of Star’s saddle, emptied his pack into her saddlebags, and finally, at long last, mounted up. Even after months away from a saddle, sitting on a horse’s back felt comfortingly familiar. After brief consideration he cradled the star-jar carefully in front of him rather than stash it away and leave them blindly picking their way. He guessed he had four hours at most before someone noticed Star was missing. He wanted to make the most of those hours.
“All right. Let’s go.” Nolan squeezed his legs against Star’s sides. They were off.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Nolan alternated brisk walking with the moderate trot the dim light of the star-jar permitted them. He fought hard against his blooming impatience. He knew well enough that no horse, anywhere, could simply gallop the hundred miles from Lichensveld to the magni’s meeting place. But it crossed his brain at about dawn that if he’d thought to rent (or steal) two horses he could have relieved Star when she tired by riding the other for a time. Star, for her part, eventually got impatient with his changes of pace and settled into a gentle jog of a trot from which she refused to budge until mid-morning.
Certain that his own pursuers might well come thundering down the road at any moment, Nolan spent a tense day in the saddle, not daring to stop for more than a few necessary minutes at a time to let Star have a drink. At each set of approaching footsteps Nolan could feel his back begin to sweat. He exchanged very stiff greetings with the peddlers, merchants and farmers that he passed, keeping his face away from them as much as he could.
At dusk Nolan guiltily dismounted and untacked Star to let her rest for a few hours. They couldn’t go any farther without the help of the star-jar, and it was not so late that Nolan dared bring it out of the pack he’d stashed it in before dawn. Star needed the rest anyway. Nolan could clearly imagine what his father would say to him if he kept a horse w
orking all day and through the night. Nolan tied her loosely to a tree, reminding himself to buy both a picket line and a lamp the next chance he got. Star immediately buried her nose in the last of the autumn’s grass, entirely ignoring his efforts to rub her down.
Feeling no inclination to start a fire or to eat, Nolan forced a hunk of bread down his throat and settled uneasily in his bedding to rest until the deeper hours of the night. His stomach clenched and knotted at the thought of how much time he’d now lost in simply waiting for time to pass. All the while the magni were getting farther and farther away with Kris. Nolan turned Toln and Lenit’s conversation over again in his mind. They’d said the magni were meeting to ‘gentle’ Kris. He had no idea what ‘gentling’ might mean, but the word gave him the shivers. Despite his troubled thoughts though, eventually Nolan slept.
In his dreams, Nolan heard voices—a boy laughing, a woman singing, a baby crying, two children arguing. He heard murmurs, shouts, greetings, chuckles, whispers…uncountable sounds from what he knew to be an uncountable number of worlds—continuing on and on, pounding in his ears. Then each and every voice screamed, and was just as suddenly silenced. Through it all, Nolan saw only darkness.
He woke with a jolt, panting for breath. Fighting shivers that had little to do with the cold, Nolan struggled out of his blankets and reached for his boots. The night had only advanced a few hours, but with luck Star had made the most of her brief rest. With clumsy fingers, Nolan untied her picket and led her on.
Through the rest of the night, Nolan let his disgruntled mare merely walk, alternating between riding her and walking alongside her in an effort to spare both his leg muscles and soften her mood. He felt better to simply be moving so long as he knew the magni were surely sleeping. Or almost surely sleeping.
Everything he’d heard of them pointed to people who profited off of the work of others, while doing little themselves. They let the mages do the magic while they—what? Told them when to use it? Or directed it, like Kris said, but the work of it would still rest on the mages. Nolan had a gut feeling the magni wouldn’t shake their rhythm of regular sleep.
But of course, Nolan had no way to be sure. They had a mage with them—maybe they had a spell that let them go on without sleep. Nolan squeezed Star’s sides to urge her to a faster pace. She answered by flattening her ears. The night passed. The autumn sun streamed gradually but valiantly through the limbs and needles of the trees that surrounded Nolan, though it did little to ease the chill in the air, or his mood. He spent another tense day and night on the move with Star, always watching over his shoulder.
The next day was even cooler. Nolan’s nose and cheeks felt cold to the touch even as the sun climbed towards midday. The rest of him, oddly, felt warm enough. Nolan realized for the first time that he’d taken to constantly wearing his winter coat from home. The coat his mother had insisted he bring with him for a summer on his uncle’s ship. He didn’t think his mother had ever been much of a fortune teller, but now he had to wonder what she’d known before he left. He wondered if he’d ever be able to ask her. But whatever the reason, Nolan was glad he had the thick woolen coat now.
Nolan followed the winding, twisting road up the mountain until at last he and Star crested a rise that marked the abrupt end of the forest. The view was beautiful even to Nolan’s exhausted eyes. The western side of the mountain fell away more gently than its eastern counterpart. Brown and golden fields spread out from Nolan’s feet to surround the wood-built village nestled at the base of the mountain. Despite the evidence of a recent harvest, Nolan could see that the real focus of the village lay in a mine to the north. Farther west, the road wound away from the village and out of sight around yet another hill.
Nolan wound his way through the village on foot, keeping an eye out for a craftsman that might sell him a scarf or gloves to ease the day’s chill. There was little to be seen in the way of shops—he guessed most of the villagers worked in the mine, but he did spot a woman with hats displayed on her cottage window. He knocked and succeeded, with a great deal of painfully cheerful smiles and unintelligible exchanges, in buying himself a simple, undyed woolen hat. His ears at least would be warmer. As Nolan led Star away from the weathered craftswoman Nolan a small group farther down the lane turned a corner.
Nolan stopped dead, his pulsing drumming in his ears. He couldn’t be sure without seeing their faces, but something in him said plainly that the magni were less than two hundred yards away. The shorter man, though his skin and hair were well-protected from the elements, walked with Cylas’s self-important swagger. Nolan almost called out. But what was there to say? ‘Stop!’? ‘Kidnappers!’? He couldn’t ask for help from the villagers—he didn’t know how.
Scarcely breathing, Nolan followed the group around a corner, staying close to the buildings. Very slowly, he peered around the edge of a shabby cottage. Now he could see them all— three men leading three horses. And yes, their faces were the same pale cream color as the other Rusamites. Yes, there were Cylas and Belen walking in the lead, leading three horses between them.
The third man carried Kris in his arms. Her head slumped limply against his shoulder.
If Nolan were a mage, he might have scorched the whole village without before he even had the chance to process the thought. But Nolan was no mage. He couldn’t fight the magni and their mage with magic.
But he would find another way. And though he hated to admit it, his way would have to wait until the magni were alone.
Nolan followed a street behind the Rusamites until they finished resupplying and made their way out of the village. They drew furtive, suspicious looks on every street. Looking so clearly foreign probably would have been odd in a village as remote as this, but carrying an unconscious girl seemed to leave the locals downright unnerved. Shopkeepers, children, and passerby watched the group, their eyes lingering on Kris as the Rusamites came and went. Nolan noticed contemptuously that not one passerby made any effort to stop the Rusamites.
He watched the magni and the mage sling Kris over the pommel of the fourth horse’s saddle. Then they clumsily mounted up and walked slowly out of the village on the western road. All three riders swayed uncomfortably in their saddles. If the situation hadn’t been so grave, Nolan might have smiled. It was little wonder that he had managed to catch up with the magni so easily, even with a full day’s head start on their side. The Rusamites could barely keep their seats at a walk.
Nolan lingered a bit in town to let the magni think they’d left the town unwatched. His entire body felt oddly twitchy as each inactive second dragged on, but he managed to make himself give them an hour’s head start.
He stalked the Rusamite party up the valley’s western rise and around the swell of another mountain. Nolan first saw them again within a half hour of leaving the mining town, then lost sight of them time and again as the road curved or dropped away from his line of sight. But now Nolan didn’t worry about losing them. Each time he saw the riders ahead he was closer to them. He paced himself to time his meeting with them just before nightfall, when they’d likely be setting up their camp and at their least guarded. Nolan was so set on this plan and this timing that he very nearly rode over Belen as he turned a corner in the road.
Star, most luckily, was paying more attention to her surroundings. She halted abruptly at the sight of the Rusamites arranged in front of her. Belen’s lips stretched into a cold smile. He said nothing, and continued to the left side of the road to tie his horse to a picket there.
On Nolan’s right the mage, a freckled young man a few years older than Nolan was arranging firewood into a campfire. He glanced up disinterestedly at Nolan, rubbed his nose, and returned his attention to the wood in front of him. The campfire burst into flame.
Cylas reclined against a tree a few feet beyond the freckled mage. Kris’s head rested on his lap. He stroked his fingers idly through her hair, smiling at Nolan. Kris’s eyes were closed, and to Nolan it looked as though she were barely breathing.<
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Nolan’s own breath caught in his chest at the sight of Kris lying so helpless. He scanned her face and hands but found no sign of bruising or scratches. Except for her clothing, Kris wasn’t even dirty. The skin on her face looked as soft and smooth as Nolan could ever remember seeing it. Her hair flowed like silk through Cylas’s fingers. In another circumstance, this scene might have struck Nolan as affectionate, even romantic. But there was no mistaking that mood with what Nolan saw before him. Kris looked as delicate and cold and limp as a doll.
With all of the willpower he could muster, Nolan tore his gaze away from her and met Cylas’s eyes. He felt cold with rage in a way he never had before in his life. He slung his smaller pack, the one now containing only his change of clothes, the star-jar, a knife, and his flute, off of Star and onto his shoulder. His muscles tensed, preparing to spring. Yet even if Nolan could get Cylas to break his word as he’d planned, he wouldn’t get very far with the other Rusamites so spread apart.
Cylas raised his free hand and beckoned to Nolan, speaking in Ostmontian. Nolan shook his head.
“I don’t know why you’re bothering with this,” Belen grumbled, giving Nolan a very dark look. “He’s a mundane, and he’s the one who put that knife in me. On our world, he’d be dead now.”
“We can’t hurt him, and he needs to leave us and be about his business,” Cylas explained with careful patience.
“Is he just going to stand there?”
Cylas repeated his Ostmontian sentence.
“He’s a simpleton,” Belen said. “Look at him, like he doesn’t understand a word you’re saying.”
Cylas ignored Belen and repeated himself again with more insistence. No one had moved. Silence was getting Nolan nowhere.
“I don’t speak Ostmontian,” he said. “But I understand Rusamite.”
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