by Jo Clayton
Four Temuengs rode guard far enough behind the diligence to escape the mud and gravel the broad iron-tired wheels kicked up. They rode swathed in heavy cloaks, lances couched, bows covered, but she had little doubt they’d be a nasty surprise to anyone thinking of attacking the diligence. The leader turned his head and stared at her as he rode past. She saw a flash of gilt, of paler silver. An empush, commanding four.
Then he was past. Then they were all past. She let out a breath. Her middle hurt as if she’d been stooping and straightening for hours. She wiped at her face, kneed Coier into a walk, guiding him back onto the road, the two hounds pacing silently one on each side of her.
A few breaths later she heard the sound of a horse coming rapidly up behind her, then the Temueng empush rode around her, turning his mount to block the road. She pulled up, a flutter in her stomach, a knot of fear and rage closing her throat. She couldn’t speak, sat staring at him grimly, silently. Her eyes blurred and after a moment she knew she was crying; she didn’t try to hide her tears, only hoped the rain beating on her face would camouflage them.
“Who are you?” he shouted at her, his voice harsh, impatient. “What are you doing on this road? Where are you going?”
She stared at him, managed, “A traveler, headed for the nearest port so I can get out of this soggy backwater.” She was surprised by the crisp bite of the words, no sign of what she was feeling in them, as if someone else were speaking for her. Her fear and anger lessened, the tears stopped, she sat silent waiting for his response.
“Your credeen.” He rode closer, held out his hand. “What?”
“Your permit to travel, athin.” The honorific was an insult. He drew his sword, holding it lightly in his right hand. “The sigiled tag.”
– “Ah.” She thought furiously. Seemed the Temuengs were trying to control travel and tighten their grip on Croaldhu; nothing of this had been in place three years ago at the last Fair; the Kumaliyn didn’t bother with such nonsense. She dredged up the worst words she could think of, cursing the Temueng’s officiousness, the need to poke his nose in other people’s business. All he had to do was ride on and let her be. But he was waiting for some sort of answer and from the look of him, wasn’t inclined to accept excuses or pleas of ignorance. She glanced quickly at Jaril and Yaril. The werehounds had moved quietly out from her until almost obliterated by the rain. She risked a look over her shoulder; the other soldiers and the diligence were out of sight and hearing. Lifting a hand slowly so he could see it was empty, she moved it in a broad arc from Yaril to Jaril. “They are all the permits I need, Temueng.”
And Yaril was a fireball rushing at his head, and Jaril was fire about his sword. With a scream of pain, he dropped the blade. Hastily Brann said, “Just chase this one off, I’ve had enough lives.”
The fires seemed to shrug, then nipped and sizzled about the flanks of the already nervous horse, driving it into a frantic, bucking run after the diligence, the shaken empush struggling to keep from being thrown into the mud. One of the fires flowed into a large hawk and came flying back. It swooped to the sword’s hilt, caught it up and vanished into the rain with it. A second later it was back, settling to the ground beside Coier, Yaril again as soon as the talons touched mud. Brann lifted her Onto the saddle in front of her. “I gave that fool his sword,” Yaril said. “Better if he doesn’t have to explain how he lost it.” She leaned back against Brann, smiled as the other fire returned and was a hound again standing beside the horse. “We got trouble enough once he connects up with those enforcers.”
Brann nudged Coier into an easy canter. “I’m still glad he’s alive. We got trouble anyway, what’s one more stinking Temueng?” She stroked Yaril’s moonpale hair. “Another hour,…” She sighed. “Stinking rain. Wasn’t for that, one of you could fly watch. I don’t know what to do… I don’t know…”
BRANN RODE ON into the rain, that dreary steady downpour that falls straight from clouds to earth and stays and stays until you forget what the sun feels like. Jaril laughed at the idea that anything so simple and natural as rain could keep him from flying and was following about an hour’s ride behind, a dark gray mistcrane dipping in and out of clouds. Yaril was a hound again, running easily beside the horse. Rested and well-fed, Coier had to be held to a steady lope; he wanted to run and Brann shared the urge, but she didn’t dare let him loose.
An hour passed, then another. The children could communicate over any distance bounded by the horizon, why this limitation they either couldn’t or wouldn’t explain, and Jaril would give them an hour’s warning of pursuit, a chance to discover a hide that would fool the followers.
Another hour. Brann rode on between half-seen hedgerows beaten into a semblance of neatness by the downpour, washed to a dark shiny green that glowed through the grays of rain and mud.
Some fifteen minutes into the fourth hour the hound was suddenly Yaril trotting by her knee, screaming up at her over the hiss and splat of the rain, “Riders coming up. Fast. Temuengs. Three from the diligence, one of the enforcers. Half dozen besides. New faces. Most likely occupation troops.” She dashed ahead of the horse, was a hawk running, then powering into the rain, gone to look for a break in the hedges.
Brann was frantic. Ten men, men warned about her. Half a score of men who could stand at a distance putting arrows in her, pincushion Brann, not something pleasant to contemplate. Adept as her body was at healing itself, she had a strong suspicion there had to be a limit-at which point she would be very dead. The hedges on both sides of the road were high, wild and flourishing, taller than she was atop Coier and likely as thick as they were tall. Even if she could somehow push through, those murderous hounds on her trail would spot the signs she’d have to leave and be through after her and she’d have gained nothing, would have lost if some of them had been living long enough hereabouts to know something of the land. Even a year’s patrolling would have taught them how they could drive her into a corner.
Yaril came winging back, touched down, changed to childshape. Brann pulled her up before her once again, so they could talk without having to shout. “Nothing,” the changechild said, “No turn-offs far as I dared fly. But there’s a weak spot in the hedge about twenty minutes on, a place where one of the bushes died.”
Brann started to protest, but Yaril shook her head. “It’s all there is, Bramble. Well contrive something. Now move.” She slid of changing in midair and went soaring away on hawk wings. Brann urged Coier into a gallop and followed her, feeling a surging exhilaration at the power under her. The hedge on the left grew wilder and even the meager signs of tending evident before vanished completely, straggly canes encroaching on the paving.
Yaril stood in the road, waving at a thin spot where the canes had withered away and the few leaves clinging to branchstubs were wrinkled and yellow. Without hesitation, Brann turned Coier off the road and drove him toward the brittle barrier with voice, heels and slapping hands. Head twisted back, snorting protest, he barreled through into a long-neglected field that was grown to a fine thick crop of weeds in the center of which stood a shapeless structure with much of its thatching gone, its stone walls tumbled down, the stones charred black in spite of the rain and the many that had gone before. She rode Coier into the meager shelter through a door where half the frame still stood, the other half lay in splinters among the charred stones and twisted weeds. The roof that remained was sodden and leaking but it kept out the worst of the wet. She dismounted with a sigh of relief and trembling legs, glad to be out of that depressing incessant beat-beat on her body and head. She closed her eyes and leaned against the endwall, dripping onto the bird dung, weeds, old feathers, bits of thatching that lay in a thick layer over the beaten-earth floor. But she couldn’t stay there. She looped the reins about the remnant of the door frame, then ran back to Yaril.
The changechild was dabbling in the mud, resetting the clods that Coier’s hooves had thrown up, helping the rain wash away the deep indentations his iron shoes had cut into the
mud. The hole in the hedge looked wide as a barn door; Brann tried to drag a few canes from the live bushes across the gap but that didn’t seem to do anything but make the opening more obvious. Yaril straightened, the mud sloughing off her, leaving her dry and clean. She saw what Brann was doing, giggled. “Don’t be silly, Bramble.” The pet name seemed to amuse her more and she laughed until she seemed about to cry, then pulled herself together. “Go on,” she said, “get into shelter. Jaril’s coming, be here soon to keep watch when I can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“Watch, then scoot.” Yaril giggled again then stepped next to the twisty trunk of the bush and changed. With startling suddenness she was a part of the hedge, as green and vigorous, wild and thorny as the bushes on either side of her.
Shaking her head at her lack of thought, Brann trudged to the burned-out structure, barn or house or storage crib, whatever it was.
She stripped off her sodden clothing, rubbed herself down with one of her blankets, stripped the saddle and bridle off Coier and rubbed him down until she was sweating with the effort, doled out a double handful of cracked corn onto his saddle pad. She tied on his tether and left him to his treat, then got out her old filthy shirt and trousers, slipped into them. At least they were dry. She wrinkled her nose at the smells coming from the dark heavy cloth, but soon grew used to them again. She folded the damp blanket into a cushion, sat down with her back against the rough wall and was beginning to feel almost comfortable when Jaril walked in.-They’re almost here,” he said. “You’ll hear them soon.” He squatted beside her. “Far as I could see, they didn’t investigate any of the turn-offs, they’re coming straight ahead, pushing their horses hard, on the chance they can overtake you.”
“What happens when they wear out their mounts and still haven’t come on us?”
“Raise the countryside I expect. Listen.”
Through rain that at last was beginning to slacken she heard the pounding of hooves on the worn stone paving of the highroad. Coier lifted his head and moved restlessly. She got to her feet and stood beside him, a hand on his nose to silence him if he decided to challenge the beasts on the far side of the hedge. She listened with her whole body as they went clattering pounding splashing past without slackening pace, the noises fading swiftly into the south.
She let out the breath she was holding. Jaril squeezed her fingers gently.-I’m off, Bramble. Better I keep an eye on them awhile more.” He looked around.-I think you could chance a fire, Yaril’ll get you the makings, dry them off. You might as well eat something now, it could get harder later.” Then he was a mistcrane stalking out the door. Brann followed him, stood watching his stilting run and soar, beautifully awkward on the ground, beauty itself in the air. She stood wiping the damp off her face, suddenly and simply happy to be alive, delighted with the water running from her hair, the breath in her lungs lifting and dropping her ribs. She stood there long enough to see Yaril dissolve out of the hedge and come walking through the wet weeds, a slight lovely sprite, a part of her now, her family. She smiled and waited for Yaril to reach her.
BRANN WOKE FROM a long nap to find the afternoon turned bright as the clouds broke and moved off. Yaril was sitting in silence, staring into the heart of a little fire, her face enigmatic, her narrow shoulders rounded, the crystal eyes drinking in and reflecting the flames. Brann felt an immense sadness, a yearning that made her want to cry; it wasn’t her own grief but waves of feeling pouring out of Yaril. For the first time she saw that they’d lost as much as she had, drawn from their homeland and people as she was driven from hers. And there was very little chance they’d ever return to either homes or people; they were changed as she was changed, exiled into a world where there was no one to share their deepest joys and sorrows. Brann licked her lips, wanted to say something, wanted to say she understood, but before she could find the words, Yaril turned, grinned, jumped to her feet, tacitly rejecting any intrusion into her feelings. “Jaril’s on his way back.
Rain’s over, we’ll ride tonight and if we can, lay up tomorrow.”
Brann yawned. “What’s he say?”
“Temuengs went on till the rain stopped, but they finally had to admit they’d missed you. There was a bit of frothing at the mouth and toing and fming-” Yaril giggled-“then the enforcer rode on for Tavisteen, your favorite empush started back, he’s sending the Temuengs one at a time down side roads to stir up the local occupation forces and looking careful at the hedges as he goes past. Time I got back to being a plant. It’s boring but not quite so bad as being a rock.” With another giggle she got to her feet and ran out.
Brann followed her to the opening, watched her dart through the weeds to the hedgerow, merge with the green. Shaking her head, she turned away to fix herself a bit of supper while she waited for Jaril to arrive.
THE MISTCRANE FLEW ahead of them, searching out clear ways, leading them along twisty back roads that were little more than cowpaths. Moving mostly at night, ducking and dodging, watching Temuengs and their minions spilled like disturbed lice across the land, nosing down the smallest ways, Missing her sometimes by a hair, a breath, Brann wormed slowly south and west, heading for Travisteen though that grew more and more difficult as the hunt thickened about her. The children stole food for her, corn for Coier to keep his strength up because there was never enough rest and graze for him. She grew lean and lined, fatigue and hunger twin companions that never left her, sleep continually interrupted, meals snatched on the-run. Five days, seven, ten, sometimes forced into evasions so tortuous she came close to running in circles. Yet always she managed to win a little farther south. Twice Temuengs blundered across her, but with the children’s help she killed them and drank their lives, passing some of that energy on to Coier, restoring the strength that the hard running was leaching from him.
The broad fertile plain at Croaldhu’s heart dipped lower and lower until sedges and waterweeds began to replace the cultivated fields and the grassy pastures, until pools of water gathered in the hollows and stood in still decay, scummy and green with mud and algae. The fringes of the Marish, a large spread of swampland and grassy fens like a scraggly beard on Croaldhu’s chin, a bar on her path, a trap for her if she wasn’t careful; should the Temuengs get close enough they could pin her against impassible water or bottomless muck. The mistcrane flew back and forth along the edge of the Marish, trying to work out a way through it, a straggling line from one dot-sized mud island to the next, wading through the pools and streams to test depth and bottom, keeping as close to the Highroad as he could so he wouldn’t get them lost in the tangle of the wetlands, even after the road turned to a causeway built on broad low stone arches a man’s height above the water, an additional danger because Temuengs riding along the causeway could see uncomfortably far into that tangle. He led Brann and Coier along his chosen route, one that managed to keep a thin screen of cypress, flerpine and root-rotted finnshon between her and that road. The Wounded Moon was fattening toward full and the children’s crystal eyes saw as well by night as by, day, so they moved all night, slowly, with much difficulty, struggling with impossible footing, slipping and sliding, half the time with Brann dismounted and walking beside Coier, stroking him, comforting him, bleeding energy into him, helping him endure, stumbling on until they reached a mud island high enough to get them out of the water and away from the leeches and chiggers that made life a torment to the two fleshborn though they avoided the changechildren.
Gray. Even during daylight everything was gray. Gray skies, gray water, gray mud dried on sedges and trees, on low hanging branches, gray fungus, gray insects, gray everything. The stench of damp closed around her, of rotting everything, flesh, fish, vegetation. Three gray nights she rode, three gray days she rested on mounds of mud and rotting reeds, where she fed Coier from the too rapidly diminishing supply of corn, rubbed him down, touching to death the leeches on his legs, draining their small bits of life, feeding it back into him; once the leeches were drained they were easy enough t
o brush off, falling like withered lengths of gutta-percha. By accident she discovered another attribute of her changed body as she fed that life into the weary trembling beast; her hand was close to one of the oozing leech-bites and she saw the bite seal over and heal with the feed.
By the end of the fourth night, she was ready to chance the causeway rather than continue this draining slog. As dawn spread a pale uncertain light over the water, Jaril led her deeper into the Marish to an eye-shaped island considerably larger than the others with a small clump of vigorous, sharp-scented flerpines at one end, a dry graveled mound at the center with some straggly clumps of grass, a bit of stream running by it with water that looked clear and dean and tempting. She resisted temptation and began going over Coier, her probing deadly touch killing gnats and borers, chiggers and bloodworms and the ever-present leeches, feeding the weary beast those bits of life. It was a handy thing, that deadly touch of hers, and she was learning from far too much practice how to use it. By now she could kill a mite on a mosquito’s back and leave the mosquito unharmed. After spreading a double handful of corn on his saddlepad, she plunged into a stream and used a twist of grass to scrub the sweat and muck off her body and hair. While she washed, Yaril thrust a hand into the pile of wood Jaril collected and flew back to the island, got a fire going and set a pot on to heat water for tea, then took Brann’s clothing to the stream and began scrubbing the shirts and trousers with sand from the mound. When Brann was clean inside and out, when the water was boiled and the tea made, when Yaril had hung the sopping shirts and trousers on ragged branches of the pines, Brann sat naked on a bit of grass, cool and comfortable for the first time in days, watching Coier standing in the water drinking, sipping at her own drinking bowl, the tea made from the scrapings of her supply but the more appreciated for that. She set the bowl on her knee, sighed. “I don’t care how many Temuengs are shuttling along the causeway, come the night, I’m getting Coier and me out of this.”