As the Crow Flies: An Epic Fantasy Adventure

by Robin Lythgoe

  “So, what’s the story?” I asked when I could manage a casual tone.

  “I don’t know. All she’s done is cry.”

  It was rather satisfying to see Tanris look so helpless and uncomfortable. I left him that way to go check the other bodies. It was fairly easy to tell who was who; the owners of the wagon wore simple farmer’s homespun, and the bandits had various bits and pieces of armor and weaponry about them. Both of the farmers were dead, and when I looked in the back of the wagon I found a third body, but this one, an elderly woman, looked to have been dead for some time, and there wasn’t a mark on her. Some foodstuffs occupied the space along with a pair of shovels.

  “On the way to bury this one, I suppose,” I said to Tanris, and the girl clung to him even more tightly, her body shaking with great, hiccuping sobs.

  “Go tie him up,” he said, pointing to the fellow he’d knocked out.

  “Can’t I just—” Well, clouting him over the head had lost some of its appeal after witnessing what the girl had done to her attacker.

  “No.”

  So I tied him up. I’m not exactly sure how it came about, but shortly after that I found myself helping Tanris dig a grave some little way off the road. The rocky soil made for ridiculously back-breaking labor, and after I’d worked up a sweat discernible even beyond my already-drenched state I leaned on my shovel and looked pointedly at Tanris until he straightened. “This is a waste of time.”

  “It is not a waste of time to give folks a decent burial.”

  “Do you think they’re actually going to care?”

  “I wouldn’t expect you, of all people, to speak so blasphemously.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Tanris, they’re dead. I, on the other hand, am merely dying. I would like to avoid that outcome. And surely you don’t want our years-long story to end with me simply keeling over in the middle of nowhere. Where’s the satisfaction in that?”

  Jaw knotting, he looked at me, then over at the girl hunched underneath a boulder for shelter. “Will you help me cover them with rocks?”

  Rocks I could do. We ended up having to put the bodies in two separate piles when the girl had produced further tears over the idea of the attackers sharing the same ground as her erstwhile companions. Then Tanris volunteered me to say a few words over the graves of her kin. I briefly contemplated adding him to the stack. Then I held my much-abused hat in my hands and bowed my head. I had never been to an actual funeral before, and had no idea what the proper prayers were. That, and I was in a bit of a hurry to carry on with our journey.

  “Hail, oh gods of Life, of Death, of Passage, of Sorrow and Joy!” I named off several I thought might be appropriate. “Make known the path to the afterlife to these poor men whose lives have ended so unexpectedly. May they continue in peace.” I lifted my head to find Tanris glaring at me, but when didn’t he? I looked down at the ground. “May they enter on the shining way to their paradise and not become lost. Give comfort to their kin. And so may it be.”

  The girl choked pitifully and promptly burst into tears again.

  — 12 —

  Socializing in the Wilds

  She wouldn’t talk to us, this girl whose life we’d saved and whose relatives we’d buried. Not a single word could we pry from her lips. We couldn’t just leave her—well, I would have been willing, but Tanris would have none of it. With its broken axel the wagon was useless. Neither would he let us just leave the thing and be on our way. No, we had to cut the dead horse free and use our own to haul the corpse off the road, and I refused to give a horse a proper burial and got clouted upside the head for inquiring whether we might make use of some fresh meat. It seemed a hideous waste to leave it behind for wild dogs to feast on when we had been restricted to damp flatbread and leathery jerky for weeks.

  After we dealt with the horse, I had to help him chop the wagon into pieces and move it out of the way of the next traveler. There was no getting out of that, though I tried. Not only did we have our own hatchet, but the dead men left us a lovely, well-sharpened axe. At least Tanris had the good sense to lash some of the broken planks to the pack horses so we could later use them in a fire, providing we could get one lit. Of the bandit’s horses, we found only the muddied ground they left behind. Tanris suspected that whoever had been given the duty of watching them had run away, which left us wondering if he was long gone, or if he was following us with the intention of freeing his crony, then murdering and robbing us.

  Hours later, when the perpetually gray sky had dimmed nearly to charcoal, we were on our way again. And where did the girl ride? With me, of course. “You can take her or the cat,” Tanris said. Too hastily, I’d accepted the burden of the girl. It didn’t come to me until quite some time later that if I’d taken the cat, I could have figured out a way to accidentally-on-purpose lose it forever. I had forgotten the cursed thing until it had wandered up to me as we prepared to leave and wound itself around my ankles. Tanris had scooped it up and tucked it back into his coat, heedless of its soggy, stinky condition.

  And what, you may ask, became of the unconscious bandit? Why, we’d brought him along, too. We couldn’t kill him, and we couldn’t leave him tied up by the remains of the ruined wagon, though I couldn’t even begin to understand why. No, we had to take him with us to the next village to turn him over to the proper authorities. One rescued cat, one rescued girl, one rescued bandit. We were turning into a blasted circus.

  Revived from his stupor, the bandit got to walk. We were quite the merry little band slogging along through the wet and dark, and I had very little to say to Tanris, very little at all. The bandit, on the other hand, was a fairly chatty fellow. He was called Kem Bohadri and, having come across the wagon during their travels, he and his fellows had meant only to rob it and be on their way, so he knew nothing about the girl. Not her name, nor from where she’d come. And she still wasn’t talking.

  Since Tanris had the pack horses to tend to, it fell to me to deal with the girl and the prisoner, the latter of which had his hands tied behind his back and a rope around his neck and fastened to my saddle. I told him a little about what life was like in the city, and then got him talking about the area through which we traveled. The weather, he said, was quite warm, the consequence of which was considerable rain rather than the snow which usually fell at this time of year. The precipitation had flooded out the bridge at the village of Uzuun that we needed to cross if we were going north, he said, and the one further upriver as well, but he knew a way through the Snags.

  I did not know whether to laugh or cry.

  :-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:

  “What do you think?” I asked Tanris later, when we had set up camp in a stand of trees. A tarpaulin helped protect us from the weather. After leading us a considerable distance from the road, Tanris allowed a fire on the grounds that the trees hid the light, and the branches and rain dispersed the smoke well enough.

  “I do not trust him, do you?” he murmured, his voice for my ears only.

  I snorted.

  He took out the map and the two of us pored over it, but it was too simple to give us the information we needed. A straight path from here to there, it left no room for catastrophic contingencies.

  Kem sat across the fire and a little apart from us, barely under the edge of our makeshift roof and securely fastened to a tree lest he get ambitious ideas about escaping. I didn’t care if he escaped. I cared about whether he’d bash my head in as part of the plan. He lowered his eyes when I looked his way. Hunched over, firelight flickered on his face, making the shallows and creases deep and forbidding. With mouth down-turned, I watched the nameless girl as she crouched close to the flames next to Tanris, rocking back and forth. She was thin, her features too sharp, and her tear-swollen face spoiled by smudges and shadows. After a moment or two of their scintillating company, I worked the waxed leather tube out of my pack to remove Duzayan’s letters. Rolled as they were, the sides curled stubbornly. I’d perused them sever
al times before, and the curl only got worse.

  Tanris tucked the near-useless map away and took some of the missives from me, tipping them toward the light. “He knows the area. We can bring him with us and see if what he says is true,” he suggested. “If it is, perhaps he can guide us.”

  “Or perhaps murder us in our sleep. Maybe we could cross the river another way.”

  “With the horses?”

  “I don’t know, Tanris. I just see us losing more and more time.”

  He glanced up at me, his face hidden in shadows. “We will get through in time.”

  “How?”

  “There is a way,” Kem said.

  How had he heard us? It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I did not even realize that I’d reached for my knife until Tanris put his hand on my arm.

  “How?” he echoed.

  Kem licked his lips and looked from one of us to the other. “There’s a way, but I’ll only take you in exchange for my freedom.”

  “How do we know we can believe you?” Tanris asked.

  “How do I know you’ll keep your word?” he countered.

  Tanris let out a long, careful breath. “Tell us about this way of yours, then we’ll decide if it earns your release.”

  Kem was unlikely to get a better offer, and he knew it. “Here,” he said, looking at us both then turning to point with his chin into the darkness, “is where the Snags jut down out of the mountains—the Daryas, yes?—into the midlands. The river Le’ah comes through them, hard and fast. It cuts through the Snags in the Funnel, which runs miles to the south.” He bent his head back the way we’d come. “There’s a bridge to the north at the town of Uzuun, where the river is wide and runs fairly shallow through the valley, but the rains washed trees from the banks and took out the bridge.”

  “So you said earlier. Go on.”

  Kem nodded. “The Le’ah flows through the mountains in a steep, narrow gorge. A waterfall brings it into the valley at the north end, at Uzuun, and the only other bridge is further upriver through sharp, rocky country. The crossing is treacherous. The road is often flooded, and the bridge is small and shaky. Difficult to take horses across it. No wagons go there.”

  “I sense a but,” I put in, eyes narrowing. What was he getting at, and what was it going to cost us?

  “Above the falls there is another road. It goes west for a little, then down.”

  “Down where?”

  “To the Ghost Walk.”

  “Which is…?”

  “A passage under the river.” Kem watched us, waiting.

  “Under the river? Through a cave?” Sudden horrible memories of Duzayan’s dungeon, and rats, and every other dark, narrow place I’d ever been in overtook me.

  “Wide enough for the horses?” Tanris asked.

  “Yes, barely. You cannot ride, though, the roof is too low. Almost too low for the animals in some places.”

  “How long will it take to go through?”

  “Three days maybe, if all goes well.”

  Three days? In a skinny little cave? “Is there another bridge?” I interrupted.

  “No other.” Kem’s dark eyes were serious in the small light of the flames.

  “How far back to another crossing? South.”

  Kem pursed his lips, then shrugged. “About a week.”

  “Maybe we can build another bridge.” The looks the pair of them gave me made me doubt my own sanity. “Not a real one, just a temporary one. We have ropes. We can ferry our supplies across.”

  “And the horses?”

  “If we have a rope from one side to the other, we can ferry them, too.”

  “Over a gorge?” Tanris shook his head. “They’re too heavy, even if we had the proper equipment.”

  I rubbed my cheeks and eyes with both hands, then pressed them in fists over my mouth. I could not go into a cave. Not one as narrow as Kem described. I trembled just thinking about it.

  “How long to go up around the second bridge to this other way you know?” Tanris asked Kem.

  “All the way?” He shrugged again and hitched closer to the fire. It wasn’t very big or very warm. “Two weeks, if the weather is good. Maybe twice that in this rain, and you still need to come down the other side.”

  “A month?” I protested incredulously.

  “Easily.”

  I stared at him for a long time. Abruptly, I pushed myself to my feet and walked away from the camp and into the rain again.

  “Crow.” I hadn’t gotten far before Tanris caught my shoulder and pulled me to a stop. “Don’t go walking out here in the dark. You could fall and break a leg, or get lost.”

  “What difference does it make?” I asked bitterly. A misting rain fell, and of course I’d forgotten my hat. I licked moisture from my mouth and did not look at him.

  “It is the difference between Tarsha and Aehana living and dying.”

  The accusation that Tanris only lived to betray us hovered on my lips, but I did not speak it, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say that would cut him deep enough.

  “Look at it this way—at least you’ll be out of the rain for a few days.”

  I grunted. I had no words at all. None.

  “You won’t be alone.”

  No, I would be stuck with one man who would probably rob me given the slightest chance—not that I could blame him—and another who wanted to kill me, but not yet. No, he would do his utmost to keep me alive until I had the jewel, or egg, or whatever it was. I sucked in a breath and let it out in a harsh exhalation, then nodded.

  Tanris nodded, too. “We’re going to have to stand guard. We don’t want our guide escaping, or his friend coming back to surprise us.”

  “May he look up at the sky for too long and drown,” I muttered, and Tanris surprised me with a laugh.

  :-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:

  Kem’s friend did not come until the second night. The rain had stopped the evening before, but the woods dripped and dripped. Even without leaves to hold the water, the trees leaked like over-saturated sponges. I had grown accustomed to the abstract melody during the long hours while the others slept, and the wet, shuffling sound that crept into my awareness was not the same.

  The shelter Tanris had chosen for us was a good one, thank the gods of outdoor skills. The sparse and sometimes sudden little hills that dotted the moors had disappeared behind us about the same time we’d come across the attack. The road had become steep and ragged, with frequent signs that it had been widened to accommodate wagons. As usual, Tanris had led us off the road and out of sight of other travelers. Rounding a towering outcropping we discovered a wide, grassy area backed by leaning rock on one side and a sheer gorge on the other. A pile of rubble tucked against the larger rock protected us from the wind and allowed us to have a fire again, which was pure luxury. Trees came right down to the flat area on one side and covered the hill across the gorge, which gave the intruder the cover he’d needed to creep up on us. He did not, however, expect me to be perched above the camp on a small ledge.

  I’d been toying with the Beisyth Web, and I slipped it into my pocket to creep down from my hiding place, footsteps silent on the stone. I kept my gaze on him, feeling with my hands the way I’d previously marked. The pattern of crevices and protrusions on the face of the rock was not as regular as those found on buildings in the city, but I had spent my entire life climbing, and I knew exactly where to go and what I would do. I could not kill him outright. I am a thief, not a murderer, even if I do entertain wild fantasies of spectacular executions now and then. I could not just capture him, either, for Tanris would simply tie him up and tote him along to hand over to the nearest authorities, and he would eat our food, slow us down, and annoy the spit out of me. Hands icy, I eyed the space between him and the gorge at his back.

  And then the cat, which had apparently been out hunting or whatever it is that stray cats do in the middle of the night, strolled into camp. It hopped delicately int
o view and picked its way across a little ridge of stone.

  I froze.

  All unsuspecting, the intruder straightened and eased forward toward where Kem lay bound and sleeping. The cat—a ridiculously friendly thing—strolled right up to him and between his legs. It was a wonder to watch the abrupt jerk upright, the funny little dance of shock that took him backward several steps, and then the pinwheeling of arms as he strove to keep his balance. The cat leaped nimbly out of the way. The intruder, unable to recover, let out a strangled croak and then disappeared over the edge of the gorge.

  Tanris, who probably slept with one eye open, came abruptly upright, sword in hand. Then he relaxed. “Come here, you,” he murmured, and of course the cat went right to him, purring like an avalanche. Murderous creature.

  I walked over to the edge of the cliff to look down, but the body was lost in its dark depth.

  “Crow, what are you doing?”

  “Relieving myself before I go to sleep. It’s your turn to take the watch.” The gods really did love me.

  :-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:

  It took another day and a half to come to the little mountain village of Uzuun, and the higher we climbed, the colder it became. We spent the night on the fringes of the snow line, and all the next day the stuff grew steadily deeper, though the road and a few patches of ground here and there remained mostly clear. The frozen ground made easier going for the horses, but made little difference to me: I rode and walked and ate terrible bread and jerky, then rode and walked some more.

  I admit the area possessed a certain rough and terrible beauty, and I had never seen so many evergreen trees in one place, but the air grew progressively thinner and I was not much enamored of spending day after day toiling ever upwards into less air and more snow.