The track veers sharply to the left and then a small, filthy-looking cottage, not dissimilar to the ones in Almwyk, looms out of the darkness ahead of us. I freeze, holding my breath and watching it, listening, scouring the ground for footprints.
I tie the horse to a tree and pull out my knife, creeping forward. There’s no candle or firelight visible through the glassless windows. The shutters stand open to the elements, despite the temperature, and I straighten as I approach.
I circle around, listening, looking in through the corners of the windows, my heart thumping, ready to run. When I reach the front door I see it’s ajar. Carefully, half-expecting something to fly at me, I push it open, wincing at the creak. I wait for my eyes to adjust and then I step inside.
The small windows and twilight make it difficult to see anything at first. I move in further and begin to explore. It’s somewhat like our cottage: tiny fireplace, dirt floor. But this place has a single large, empty room and, unusually, a narrow wooden staircase leading up to a second floor. One hand still clutching my knife, the other wrapped around the bannister, I climb it slowly, expecting to hear the splitting of wood beneath my feet with every step.
At the top of the stairs is another open space, though this has a lumpy-looking bed near the window, a wooden crate upended to become a table beside it. The layer of dust on the mattress and the tabletop is thick, and the only footprints on the grimy floor are mine. It’s creepy, and isolated, but it’s indoors, and no one has been here for a very long time…
Making up my mind, I edge down the stairs and start a small fire in the hearth, pulling the shutters over to hide the glow. I pray the chimney isn’t blocked. Then I head back outside, leading the horse behind the cottage, where I tie her up, murmuring an apology for leaving her outside. For her part she doesn’t seem to mind, nuzzling at me until I give her an apple and some of the water from my skin. I hate leaving the tack on her, but there’s nowhere to hang it, and I didn’t think to take a comb or brush to groom her either. I loosen what I can and apologize again, and she watches me with liquid brown eyes, snorting warmly into my shoulder.
Then I return to my temporary home, bolting the door behind me.
I toast some of the bread and cheese, washing it down with the milk, enjoying it more because of where it came from; then I unpeel my towel bandage and examine my hand. I use a little of the water to clean it, then tie it back up. It still hurts, but I’ll bet it’s not half as painful as Unwin’s face. I play the moment again in my mind. I hope his nose heals crooked, and every time he looks in the mirror he remembers me.
When my eyelids start to droop I toy with the idea of sleeping upstairs, but decide I don’t want to cut off my exit. Instead I wrap myself in my cloak, leaving my boots and clothes on, using the satchel as a pillow. I watch the fire as it smoulders, red and black, and I close my eyes. Please let my luck hold. I’ve had precious little of it lately. I don’t know who, or what, I’m praying to, but I hope they’re listening. Let me get to Scarron and find the girl. I’m not asking for a miracle. That’s all I need. Just please, please let me find her before Silas does.
I dream of the man, but it’s fragmented: he’s there, but he isn’t. He’s always one room away, in a place with more rooms than seems possible. I run down endless halls, longing for and dreading him being around the corner. I hear him call out for me and the skin on the back of my neck tightens and prickles. I don’t know if I’m running to him, or from him.
When I wake sometime later, I’m shaking so hard my teeth are chattering. The fire has gone out, and my cloak is hanging off me, exposing me to the cold night. I reach to pull it back over but stop.
Beginning at my ankles, and rising up and along my calves, I feel gooseflesh erupt, my skin prickling. The crawling feeling spreads as every hair on my body stands on end. My eyes dart around the small room, taking in the shadows, looking for the reason why my instincts are telling me something is wrong.
I strain to hear beyond the cottage, listening for the snores of the horse or the rustling of an animal. There. To the left of the house I can hear leaves being crunched underfoot.
As quietly as I can, I walk to the window and peep out through a thin gap between the shutters, gazing in the direction I think is east, squinting to see if the sky is any lighter.
A shadow crosses in front of the window.
I jerk back, my mouth dry with terror. Then another shadow falls.
Before I’ve had time to think I’ve darted back to the satchel and slung it around my neck, abandoning the food and my cloak. Then I climb the stairs, praying that none will creak, moving as fast as I can without making a sound. As I reach the top, the door latch rattles.
I tiptoe across the room, standing on the bed and peering out of the window, unable to see who the visitors are. What if they’re soldiers? What if they’ve found me? I stand still, listening, hoping they’ll leave. Please leave. Leave.
There is a loud bang downstairs, then another: the sound of the door hitting the dirt floor.
I look out again, trying to gauge the distance to the ground. Too far, I decide. If they heard me, or if I hurt myself, I’d be done for.
Then I look up. The eaves hang low over the window and I wonder… I hear someone poking the fire, footsteps sounding closer to the stairs, and the time for wondering is over. I climb out on to the windowsill, my back to the night, and reach up, feeling beneath the eaves for a beam. An experimental tug reassures me as much as anything could, and I lift myself up, standing on the small frame and leaning my elbows on the roof. Cold air whips behind me and I’m paralysed by fear.
Then I hear a man’s voice. “There’s an upstairs,” he says, the accent Lormerian. Not soldiers, then.
But there’s no time for relief. The muscles in my arms are screaming as I haul myself upwards, biting my lip as I feel the skin on the knuckles of my right hand splitting again. My upper body lurches on to the roof, the sound muted by the thatch. For a wild, terrible moment my feet can find no purchase; I wheel my legs frantically before my fists grip at more thatch, and I swing them up, one foot then the second reaching the beam. Thank the Oak I’m wearing breeches, I would never have made it in skirts.
Beneath me I hear the sound of footsteps, two sets, thundering up the stairs, and it frightens me so much that I nearly let go.
I lie on my belly, the satchel wedged beneath me, holding my breath.
“She went out the window,” another voice says, and to my surprise it’s female, though as gruff as the man’s, and as Lormerian too. “Look, there’s footprints in the dust on the bed. She jumped.”
“Without breaking her legs? No chance. She could be on the roof,” her companion replies.
“You’d better take a look, then.”
My stomach drops when a pair of large hands with hairy knuckles appears inches from my face; I can see the chewed edges of his filthy nails in the moonlight. I’m readying myself to kick out at him when the thatch pulls loose and I hear him swear.
“She’s not up there. Thatch is rotten; she’d be on the ground with more than a broken leg if she’d tried. You’re right, she jumped. Must have heard us and took off.”
“She probably heard you coming a mile off, you were making such a racket.”
“She can’t have gone far; her cloak was still warm. And she left her food. Might be she’ll come back for them when she thinks it’s safe. We should wait it out.”
“She had two bags, remember. The other one’s gone. And there’s no sign of the horse. I wouldn’t come back, in her shoes. I’d put as much distance as I could in.” The woman’s words are laced with certainty, and her male counterpart grunts his response.
I hear their boots moving away, on the stairs, and I take a single breath before realizing that if they come around the rear of the house and look up, they’ll see me, clinging to the roof like a spider. I shuffle to the edge, but
the man has pulled away the thatch I’d need to use to get back into the house.
I have no choice but to stay where I am for now.
I hear them leave and wait, braced for the moment they’ll come around and see me, or look for tracks, find my horse and know I’m still here.
Then I hear a muffled thud from inside the house and my limbs lock. They didn’t leave after all. They waited. They know I’m here; they tried to trick me. I hear the stairs creaking, feel someone below me, waiting in the window. They stand there for a long time and I can feel my heart beating frantically, in my chest, even in my fingertips. Then, mercifully, I hear stairs creak again, and then silence.
Long minutes pass with me gripping the roof for all I’m worth, my breath shallow, my limbs trembling. The wait becomes unbearable, and I lean closer to the edge, listening. Have they truly left? When I alter my grip on the thatch it pulls free.
I have to jump, or I’m going to fall.
Lief and I used to jump from the hayloft into the barn below after harvest, throwing ourselves down fifteen feet to bounce in the sweet-smelling hay. As he got older Lief would do somersaults, flinging himself backwards into the piles of grass, but I wasn’t quite brave, or stupid, enough.
By my guess the edge of the roof is perhaps thirteen feet from the ground. And there’s no hay beneath me.
I shift until I’m parallel to the ledge. There is a thick beam that’s part of the frame, and I brace myself against it, holding on tight. I need to roll as soon as I hit the ground and then I need to run. Roll, then run. When I lower myself over and my feet touch nothing I panic, even though I knew it would happen, and I grasp a new patch of thatch.
It comes away in my hand and I fall. Before I’ve even had time to understand what’s happened I’m on the ground and I can’t breathe, searing pain across my ribs, my lungs unable to expand…
Then it recedes and sweet, sweet air rushes into my lungs. It hurts, but I gasp anyway, sucking the air in. Winded. I winded myself. That’s all. I thought I’d broken my back.
I roll on to my side, pushing the satchel out from under me and twisting my head to stare up at the lightening sky. Then I take an inventory of my body. I’m jarred and jolted, but nothing is broken, or even sprained. It’s shock that keeps me pinned to the ground, even as part of my mind insists I get up and run. That part gets louder, and I sit, stiffly, amazed by the miracle of being all right. I look at the cottage, trying to summon the courage to go to it. Surely, if someone were still there they would have come out when they heard me fall.
I pull the knife from the satchel and approach.
The door is gone, knocked from its hinges. I edge in, staying near the doorway while my eyes get used to the gloom. Then I forget to be stealthy as I cry out and rush to my makeshift bed.
My cloak, all of my food, even my firelighter is gone. The mattress lies bare in front of the fireplace. All I have is the satchel and the maps, spare knife and a mostly empty water skin. Damn them. As I stand up I smell something so unexpected that I stop dead.
Mint, and old incense. Faint, lingering on the air like dust motes.
Silas was here.
I race into the copse and untie the horse, rushing to tighten the saddle and the stirrups. She snuffles my pocket for food and I push her away in irritation. “It’s all gone,” I say. “So it’s no good looking.” She whinnies softly and I feel bad – it’s not her fault. And it could have been worse; imagine if I’d lost her too, imagine if Silas or the others had found her. I stroke her nose and murmur a swift apology.
Silas was here. Was he with those people? But no, I heard two voices, two sets of footsteps. If he came, he came after, while I was on the roof.
If it was him. Can I be sure I smelt incense? It was a pretty big fall; I could be mistaken. I leave the horse and walk along the track towards the road, listening all the while and scanning the ground, squinting in the dim light. Four sets of footprints coming down, three heading away. One set of hoof prints. He still doesn’t have a horse, then. Unless he left it on the road. No, he wouldn’t be that foolish. I turn back to my own mount.
When I climb into the saddle I feel as though I’m made of iron; everything is too heavy. I’m about to nudge the horse away when I pause. Whoever the first two were, they knew I had two bags. They knew I was female. Which means they must have seen me earlier, followed me. Refugees, I decide. Lormerian refugees either avoiding or escaped from the camp. I bet they were holed up near Tyrwhitt and saw me pass, following me on foot. I suppose I should be grateful they weren’t soldiers. Still… It means I’m conspicuous. And obviously vulnerable.
I unpin the braid from my head and allow it to fall down my back. Then I pull out my knife and begin to saw at it, at the base of my neck. It doesn’t take more than a moment until I’m holding the braid in one hand, my head feeling impossibly light, the morning breeze ruffling my newly short locks. I look at it, dirty and matted, and then fling it into the forest.
From a distance, I might pass for a young man, which will hopefully be enough to fool anyone watching out for a likely victim, and perhaps even any soldiers I come across. As long as they don’t get too close. I look down at my breasts and grimace, pulling the shirt a little looser to try to disguise them. I wish I still had my cloak. As cold air chills my neck, and I guide the horse back towards the road, I wonder if I look like my brother did.
I keep the sun over my right shoulder until we reach the main road, still called the King’s Road after all this time, stretching between Tyrwhitt and Tremayne, forking off to Tressalyn. Once on it I try to make myself look as menacing as I can, staying alert for anyone travelling on foot, both on the road and in the woodlands and meadows to the sides. We stop infrequently, and never near villages and hamlets, and I keep the pace easy, but constant. It soon becomes evident that the horse I took is built for stamina and long distances, but the progress we’re making feels too slow.
I pass other travellers headed the same way on the road, lone, or in pairs, always hooded like Silas, which makes my breath catch until I pass them and see they’re too wide or too short to be him; they don’t walk the way he does. Most keep their heads lowered, though one or two look up, and their hollow eyes, the terror in them, draws me up straight. They always look away first, cowering from me, and I know they’re refugees from Lormere. I urge the horse to the other side of the road as we pass, to reassure them I have no intention of harming them. But I can’t get their faces out of my mind. How empty they look. What have they seen, to do that to them?
As the day lengthens it becomes obvious that I’ve seriously underestimated how fast I’ll be able to travel. By lunchtime, after five of hours riding, we’ve barely passed Newtown, and still have thirty miles to go. I dismount and walk for a few miles, letting the horse slow and stop to drink from puddles when she needs to. When I empty the last drops of water from the water skin, I consider refilling it from those same puddles, changing my mind when I see how messily she drinks. I’m not that thirsty, not yet. I think of the people I’ve passed and wonder how they’re drinking. When they last ate.
I don’t see anyone else on horseback until later in the afternoon, when the roads begin to widen, the ground beaten down by the passage of many. My stomach is churning from the lack of food and my mouth is dry, my head aching from thirst. As we come up behind another band of refugees I steer the horse past them, bundles on their backs, fear hovering around them like midges over a pond. Then, in the distance, I see a group travelling towards us on horseback, approaching at speed. Immediately the refugees drop their bundles and run into the scrub, and some of the riders peel off and drive their horses into the fields after them. I keep going, but my heartbeats are coming faster, my hands suddenly slippery on the reins, the knuckles on my right hand throbbing.
As the riders get closer I can see the green tunics of the Tregellian army and my fear increases. I start to sweat, despit
e my lack of cloak. The rest of the refugees scatter, leaving me alone on the road as the soldiers draw near.
“Get after them,” one of them bellows, his blue sash marking him as a lieutenant, as his comrades ride after the escapees in the fields. “Round them all up. You.” He looks at me. “Dismount. Nice and slow.”
Shaking, I do as he says, staying close by the horse.
The lieutenant swings out of his saddle and draws his sword, his eyes lit with anger.
“You stinking thief. Where’d you get that horse? On your knees, Lormerian scum.”
“I’m not a refugee.”
“Shut it.” He looms over me, sneering, a hand reaching for me.
I move back, knocking into the horse, and she whinnies in fright. “I’m Tregellian. I’m from Tremayne. I’m Tregellian.”
“Course you are.” He grabs my hair, forcing me to my knees, and I gasp, scrabbling for my knife.
There’s a shriek from the meadow. “Man down!” a male voice screams.
The lieutenant’s grip on my hair tightens momentarily and I whimper.
“He’s killed him!” the voice cries again. “The bastard’s killed him!”
“Stay there,” the lieutenant barks at me, forcing me down so my face is inches from the mud. “Stay,” he says again, and then my scalp tingles as he lets go, cold air rushing over it.
I don’t even pretend to obey. I’m back in the saddle in seconds, right foot not fully in the stirrup when the horse begins to run. Once I have my seat I look back over my shoulder to see no one is even looking at me; instead they’re crowding around something in the grass, something unmoving. Soldiers from all around run towards them, some dragging captives with them, terror on the faces of the refugees and, to my horror, something like elation on the soldiers’, their eyes wild, their lips pulled back in rictus grins. I look ahead to make sure the road is clear, then back again. In time to see the lieutenant drag his sword across the throat of one of the refugees.
Sin Eater's Daughter 2 - The Sleeping Prince Page 16