by Lee Ramsay
The barn door creaked open, framing a short, stout figure carrying a lantern. The light made his eyes water, but he saw a woman with plump features and graying hair.
The woman’s eyes flicked between them. “I thought as much. We don’t get many minstrels in these parts, and your friend was a little too eager to sing for a meal. I knew someone was out here doing the gods alone know what to our animals when the cows lowed.”
“We’ll be on our way. We don’t want to cause any trouble,” Tristan said as he pushed himself to his feet.
The woman made a tutting noise in the back of her throat. “Nonsense. Your friend has explained the situation.”
“He has?”
“What sort of people would we be if we didn’t help runaway apprentices? Any one of the people out here would love a chance to stick a thumb in the eye of Feinthresh’s tradesmen. Always luring away our young ones with the promise of a better life – and never delivering.” She lifted the lamp, glancing up at the loft. “Come down from there, all of you, and up to the house. Let’s get you a meal and some decent clothes, and then you can get some sleep.”
IT WAS PLEASANTLY UNCOMFORTABLE being full.
Masha and her husband, Ferhan, provided hearty and simple fare to the weary refugees that left Tristan’s stomach aching. Taste buds dulled by shaddash and hardtack exploded with the greasy richness of elk, hare, and goose. Creamed potatoes spiced with pepper and salt and drowned in thick gravy melted on the tongue. A dense stew steamed in pottery bowls beside loaves of black bread. All this was washed down with spicy tea sweetened with cream and honey.
Cutlery scraped plates as Masha and Ferhan moved between the counters and cookstove. They said little, dismissing words of gratitude with quiet shushing as they ladled more food onto empty plates. A fire crackled in the hearth and stole away the chill lodged in the escapees’ bones.
Content with one heaping plate, Rathus watched with amusement as Tristan consumed two servings and Groush three. Even Brenna was silent, worry forgotten as she tucked into her meal with a ravenous appetite. Rashek, Deshan, Nisha, and Esra ate as heartily, while Sahra sat by the fire with a plate in her lap and her torn feet wrapped in herb-soaked bandages.
“We can’t pay you for what you have provided,” Tristan said when he could eat no more, propping his elbows on either side of his empty plate and cradling his tea.
“Did anyone mention anything about payment?” Ferhan asked, settling into a chair at the opposite end of the table with Masha to his left. They each had their dinners before them, having made certain their guests had eaten their fill before taking their meal.
Masha speared a steaming cut of elk with a two-tonged fork and cut it with a sharp knife. She slipped a mouthful between her teeth, talking as she chewed. “We see runaways, fleeing masters who treat apprentices little better than bondservants. If they’re making for Reesenat, they come through here.”
Brenna set her mug on the table. “We’re not apprentices. We should not have come here—"
“Nonsense,” Ferhan said, laying his hand over the young woman’s. He gave her a slight smile before turning his watery blue-gray eyes toward Tristan. “We know what you are, or at least we suspect. We may live in the woods, but we have heard tales of people vanishing from their beds and the rumors of what became of them. Feinthresh and its castle are not so far away that we cannot put the evidence together. Foreigners are not all that common – and here we have two, with a Hillffolk.”
“Prisoners or fleeing apprentices doesn’t matter,” Tristan said, sipping his tea. “Brenna’s right – we’ve put you in danger by coming here. We meant to sleep in your barn and leave before dawn.”
“Ankara wouldn’t let you escape so easily.” Ferhan gave a tired smile as Tristan started. Brenna smirked at the young man’s surprise. “What, you think we are unaware of the truth of our beloved grand duchess?”
Fork hitting his plate, Rathus slanted an incredulous look at their hosts. “You don’t mean to tell me you believe the nonsense of her being some thousand-year-old creature?”
“You have a lovely singing voice, but you’re a foreigner,” Masha said with a dry chuckle. “We don’t expect you to have heard our stories, much less believe them. Ankara has gone to great lengths to make tales about her into fireside fantasies told when children ought to be in bed.”
“It’s true,” Sahra said from where she sat. “We all know the stories. We only half believe them, but you hear things...”
“Terrible things,” Rashek agreed. “I am from the east of Anahar, where the desert’s white-gold stain can be seen from the Thuringans’ eastern slopes. Despite the embellishments the desert tribes paint their stories with, their wild tales seem more believable. The nomads, though, believe our stories because they never waver.” He gave the bard an apologetic shrug. “We didn’t say anything because we didn’t know how much you would believe, and we needed your help to escape.”
The bard ignored Brenna’s smug look. Until now, none of the others had tried to help her convince him of the truth, yet he remained skeptical. “How is such a thing possible?”
Ferhan chewed a mouthful of butter-dipped goose and wiped the grease dribbling into his beard away with a cloth. “Anahar is an ancient land, filled with terrible magics.”
“There is no such thing,” Rathus said with a shake of his head. He glared at Tristan when the young man snorted. “What’s so funny about that?”
“I thought the same thing, once. Sleight-of-hand, misdirection, and trickery.”
“Best listen to the stories, young man,” Masha said to Rathus. “Know you a song called ‘The Maiden Dark?’”
“Dhe jungal fraun wiente, ihren daz herez liebhabas in den hans,” Ferhan sang, his voice cracked and flat. “Irhen verluust gehn verlon, ihren daz herez liebhabas in den hans.”
Rathus’s lips moved, repeating the phrase to himself before speaking the translation. “The maiden dark wept, her lover's heart in hand; her loss is lost to her need, her lover's heart in hand?”
Eyebrows raised, Masha favored him with a slight smile. “So, you speak Anahari, eh? It’s not a common language outside our borders these days. Maybe you were telling the truth about being a bard.”
“Not the best poetry,” Ferhan admitted, “but that wasn’t why the man who wrote it was supposedly drawn and quartered in Feinthresh’s central square, oh, some seven hundred years ago.”
“I don’t understand,” Rathus said, confused as he turned his eyes from Masha to Ferhan. “I read the verse of the poem years ago in a folio of Anahari songs, but if I remember right, it had no music. A notation said the verse should be sung as a dirge but did not explain what the verse meant. I remember it because it was an oddity.” His eyebrows knit over his long nose. “Though if I were to tell you truly, I found many Anahari stories and songs rather grim.”
“Can you not figure the meaning? The dark maiden is Ankara, holding her heart in one hand and the heart of her lover in the other. She accepts the loss of his love for her need.”
“She sacrificed the love of a man for politics. A common theme. Why make a dirge of it?”
The Anahari stared at the bard as though they were dealing with a particularly dense individual. Tristan felt momentary pity for Rathus and remembered Gwistain’s frustration when he tried explaining the reality of Ankara. “It isn’t a metaphor.”
“Do you mean to tell me she cut her lover’s heart from his chest?”
“Carved it out and ate it raw,” Brenna said with a slow nod.
Rathus looked as though he was about to vomit. “Sweet Siranon’s tits, why?”
“It is, at least in part, how she keeps herself alive,” Tristan said.
The bard turned his eyes from one person to the next, his face a mask of disbelief. The only person to not meet his eyes was Groush; the Hillffolk was busy stuffing a fourth plate of food into his mouth. After a moment, he smirked and wagged a finger. “You’re all having a go at me. Hillffolk I’ll bel
ieve, obviously, and I’ll accept the idea of Dushken. But you’re asking me to accept that Anahar’s grand duchess – who Tristan says he killed with an axe to the chest, mind you – was some centuries-old cannibal sorceress? I sling hyperbole and embellish the truth to buy my bread, but I am not gullible.”
Tristan pushed himself to his feet and dragged his shirt over his head. Firelight gleamed from long-healed silvery scars as he dropped the garment to the floor. In some places the sutures had been removed, while in others, the broken threads stood from healed skin. Old blisters and welts left by Ankara’s magic and the application of a torch speckled the skin across his side and over his shoulders, and bite marks formed angry red crescents where both sorceresses had sunk their teeth into his flesh. The worst of the injuries was the knot of twisted scar tissue where his nipple had been, much larger than the original wound after several infections necessitated cutting away more flesh.
Rashek and Deshan stood as well, removing their shirts to reveal similar scars. Though she did not stand, Nisha immodestly removed her shirt to reveal the deep wounds on her left breast where a huntsman had bitten her. Scars ran from the hollow of Esra’s elbows to the wrists; the skin had been sewn together and cauterized.
Face pallid, Rathus swallowed heavily as his eyes moved from one person to the next. Even Sahra, the youngest of them, displayed sutured incisions and infected bite marks as she pulled the legs of her britches up. Masha did not react to the sight beyond a wince.
Unfazed by the injuries on the half-starved bodies around him, Ferhan set his cutlery aside and chewed his food. He waited until everyone had retaken their seats before speaking. “I suspected something was amiss when the bard started singing louder than necessary. Then I heard Madechi lowing; she makes that call when she is being milked. You’re not the first to steal a night in our barn and a few eggs from our coop. I knew the truth of the matter when you came through the door. I will hear no more about payment for the food or what clothes we can spare.”
“We’re more than happy to give a thumb to the new grand duchess’ eye,” Masha added. She looked across the table at Tristan and smiled, the stretching of her lips wolfish on her plump face. “I do want to hear about you killing Ankara, though.”
“If I may ask, why risk helping us?” Tristan asked as he tucked his shirt back through his belt.
The woman stirred her tea and remained silent for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was a strained whisper. “A simple question, with a simple answer. I know how desperate your situation is, as I escaped Ankara’s dungeons seventeen years ago.”
Chapter 49
“Would you look at that?” Rathus said, shading his eyes against the sunlight filtering through the trees towering around them. His breath clouded the air, hanging for a few heartbeats before dispersing. “That branch is as thick around as most pines!”
“Eh. These are small,” Groush said with a shrug.
Nisha shaded her eyes as she peered upward. “Small? We wouldn’t be able to ring the tree If there were a dozen of us joining hands!”
“Small,” Groush repeated, propping his heel against the reddish-brown bark of another of the massive trees. His one concession to the chill air was the heavier cloak given to him by Masha and Ferhan. He remained bare-chested beneath the cloak’s open front, his burns still pink against his brown skin but healing clean. “Further north, near the lands of my people, they are taller and thicker.”
“It’s a pity Sahra stayed with Masha and Ferhan,” Esra said from Rathus side. “She’d have liked this.”
“She’s better where she is. Her feet were too cut up to keep pace,” Deshan said. “You heard Masha; she looks enough like them to be their daughter. Nobody is going to question it much, I think.”
Half-listening to the conversation, Tristan sat a fallen pine trunk as Brenna tended his healing injuries. He was naked, save for a cloak draped over his legs to ward off the chill. None of the escapees had much modesty left, and the need to have her tend their injuries prevented them from hiding in their clothes. He closed his eyes to savor the sunlight warming his flesh.
Sitting behind him, Brenna traced a long cut running from his shoulder blade down to his hip before moving to another on his bicep. “You’re healing well, at least. These two will bear some watching lest they fester. Tell me if they start itching, and we can make an infusion to draw out the infection. We do not lack for pine needles, but we’ll have a harder time finding resin as it gets colder.”
The young man donned the gray wool shirt lying beside him with a nod and pulled up the heavier britches Ferhan had given him. “How are the others?”
“About the same. If there is anything that could be considered good about being kept in Ankara’s dungeons, it’s that she intended to keep you somewhat healthy.” She stared into the distance as she rubbed her thighs. “Near starvation is the worst of our hurts, but some of that we can fix with the food Masha gave us.”
“I need to apologize. I haven’t been very gracious,” Tristan said as he pulled on his stockings and boots.
Brenna snorted as he tightened the laces and wrapped the extra cordage around the back of his leg to knot it. “You’ve been a suspicious, insulting ass. I can’t blame you for it, though.”
Heel dropping to the ground, the young man nodded with a wry smirk. “I didn’t understand what you were doing, gathering plants while we were trying to run – especially with you being the one to push us so hard.”
“How do you get medicines where you live?”
“From the gardens. Karilen oversees much of the women’s work, including the tending of the herbs and plants from which she makes her simples.”
A line formed between Brenna’s eyebrows. “Women’s work? In Anahar, we do not divide the work in such a manner. If you’re capable, you do what must be done.”
“It isn’t what it sounds like.” Tristan pulled on his other boot and wrapped himself in his cloak before continuing. “My ward father helps when she has a situation she can’t tend alone. He’s a learned man, and handles some of the more delicate treatments. We send to Dresden Township for medicines made by the apothecary when necessary. My ward father has been trying to get the man to move to Dorishad for years.”
Some of the tension left his shoulders as he sought some sign of recognition as he mentioned his home and the nearby town and found none. “I saw how things are between men in women in Feinthresh. I don’t want you thinking we Ravvosi are backward enough to consider women worth less than men. They have an equal voice. What we traditionally call ‘women’s work’ is what women do, but they aren’t limited to it.”
“I understand the concept. As I said, my father was a man with many books. So, you’re from a farm?”
“A hamlet. We have several crops, but Dorishad is best known for the wool and leather we produce.” He wrapped the belt around his waist and cinched the buckle, then adjusted the battered pouch at his hip. “How do you know so much about natural remedies?”
Brenna climbed to her feet and strode toward the others. “I like to read, and I have a good memory. We should get moving.”
Lips thinning, Tristan’s shoved aside the suspicions whispering in his mind as she deflected the question. After eight years of imprisonment, he could not blame her for being wary of sharing information about herself. Other signs of her nervousness had become evident since their escape, and went far in easing his distrust. Her lower lip was chewed raw, and she worried it whenever something bothered her. When she sat still for any length of time, her foot would shake, or her fingers would drum against her thigh. She slept lightly, curled in a tight ball with her arms wrapped around her knees.
He slung his battered rucksack, heavy with extra clothing and food, over his shoulders and scooped up the simple hatchet Ferhan had given him. He had left the woodsman the sword he had been carrying as payment for everything the couple had done. The blade would bring them some coin – it was plain, with nothing linking it to a slain guar
dsman, but should fetch an Arch or two.
As the group of eight wove northward around the towering trees and smaller pines, Tristan fell to the back of the line. While no less awed by the immense redwoods, he found himself staring less at the wondrous forest and more at Brenna’s back. He no longer feared the young woman would betray them, but he was certain she was hiding something.
“WE CAN’T STOP HERE,” Brenna said as she pulled her battered coat tighter around herself. Night was fast approaching; the cold gained teeth as the sunlight faded. The lights of the town below looked inviting, a yellow glow in the windows and wood smoke rising from the chimneys in the sloped roofs.
“It’s been almost three weeks, and no sign of pursuit,” Rashek said with an irritated sigh.
“We’re on foot,” Deshan said, backing Rashek’s argument. “They would have caught us by now. This is as good a place as any to rest. We’re cold and tired, and we could trade something for some hot soup before Esra gets any sicker.”
Eyes bruised, Esra huddled into her cloak and wiped her dripping nose on the back of her hand. “I’m not sick. Don’t pull me into this.”
“Fine,” Deshan said. “I’m cold, I’m tired, and I want some hot soup. I don’t want to spend another night shivering when I could have a bed under a roof.”
“I’m not stupid enough to think Sathra would just let us escape,” Brenna said, annoyance sharpening her voice. “You will be caught if you go down there. Do the rest of us a favor, and wait an hour so we can get away from here.”