I.xxiii
There’s some anger from a couple of the other guards when they see a woman’s joining their company, but Rethi quiets them quick enough and gets us on our way. A broad-bodied man named Hull keeps giving me an angered look as we go along, so I start riding a bit further from the rest of them.
Right out of Worth, the trail follows the green waters of a river as big as any I’ve seen. My father once said that you know a river from a stream because you can jump over a stream. Were I to jump five times as far as I can—and I’m not shy jumper—this would still be a stream to me. We’ve been following it for just past a turn when I see the river ahead of us gaining some froth and rumble.
When we arrive there, my breath catches in my lungs. In my head, the river we’d been following was the Serpent—the one I’d seen on all the maps. But it comes clear that I was plenty far off in that thought. The froth comes from where the river by Worth feeds into the Serpent, and the Serpent—well, hells, if it weren’t flowing I’m sure I would have thought it a lake or even sea. It stretches just as far as I can see out, and maybe further. Hard to tell with the way distance and mist makes it hard to know whether the shadow you spy is land or just another bit of river.
No man could ever call it a stream. I would have to jump a hundred times as well as I can, maybe even more, to not call this a river.
I spend most of my first day just staring off at the giant ripples of the Serpent. Pure as emerald, and greener than most grass I’ve seen—though the grass it sprouts about it is greener still. Even at the strides off I ride, I can feel the river’s spray. You can smell life on the air, too. The smell of grass and water, like by this river it’s spring, even though it’s coming autumn everywhere else.
It’s a ways before sundown that the wagons start to pull away from the path and up north of the river. It makes me curious, and by the time we settle to camp, that curios has been nagging at me a while. I help Rethi build the fire so I can speak to him a bit more.
“You are a true charm of the wilds,” he says when I get the blaze going. I’m not sure if it’s the fire near my face or me blushing that’s added heat to my skin.
“Er,” I say. “Well,” I add.
By now, a man named Samuel, all clad in well-used scale-mail, comes to where the fire’s been started. He’s gotten the wagons circled round—set like a circled wall around us, no true gap twixt any of the wagons except at the north side, and even that gap is too narrow for a horse to ride through. Still, our horses are kept tethered to one of the wagons.
I rustle the fire a bit more, just to make sure it can breathe right. Even those who know that fires have a life their own will sometimes smother them with too much feed. “So, I had a question I wanted to ask,” I say.
“Then I warrant I have an answer for you,” says Rethi. “Please, Lidahlia, ask away.”
“We came a ways off of the path.”
“This is true. But this is also not a question.”
I nod, looking into the fire. “Just seems strange to go this far off. Are we going back to path tomorrow?”
“Indeed. We follow the Pilgrim’s Road all the way to Kolmas. But you are right that we’ve made plenty of distance between ourselves and our path.”
The suns have set fully now, and the way the fire casts its light across everything makes all outside its glow seem like pure shadow. The silhouettes of what seems to be Shim (him with the rusty hair) and Hull and another of the fellows I don’t know, they come wandering toward the fire, having fixed their tents I figure. “There a reason for that?” I ask.
“I fear so,” says Rethi. “The ones who stalk the path rely on keeping hidden and unheard.” By now Shim, Hull, and whats-it have taken place round the fire. Hull thrusts the end of a torch into my campfire with unnecessary fierce, mixing up the order I’d set to the wood. “The way the river flows along its course,” continues Rethi, “it masks the noise of any who would approach us. We must move far enough away to escape its roar.”
“Makes sense.” I nod.
“Makes too much sense,” says Shim. His rust hair plays strange in the firelight—a fact made more clear by the torchlight dancing beside him, Hull having lit his … you know, torch.
“Indeed that is so,” says Rethi. “Yet if death comes for us, I would prefer to hear her treading. Perhaps we can even frighten death away. For truly, they say she is a coward.”
“Death’s a girl, is she?” says Shim, that same stupid smirk on his face. Next to him, Hull is dribbling his wineskin onto his tongue.
Rethi nods, looking into the flame. “So it is said.”
Hull’s got a look like stone on his face as he hovers uncomfortable close to his torch-flame. Then he clenches his lips together and spits fierce through the torch’s blaze. Instead of boiling, his spit goes through the blaze and exits the other side having turned into a blaze itself. The ignited spit burns on the ground a moment before it fizzles to nothing. My heart jumps and my eyes widen, but I try not to show my fear. In my head, my grandpa’s voice whispers, “Never trust a man who spits fire.”
When it gets time to true dark, we set out a watch. Rethi has me spy along as the third with two other guards on the same shift. Samuel—the one in scale—offers to take the double shift. Not sure why I couldn’t just get out myself the first night, since all we’re really doing is watching and listening, and I do that as well or better than most of these folk from the tame land. Then the second night we’re at a sort of waypoint inn, near out in the middle of nowhere, so there’s no cause for holding watch. It’s the third night I really get my first chance to be one of the guard.
It’s me and one in ratted leather, name of Tius. I ain’t rightly sure if there’s a rule against sitting still while on watch, but since we’re a ways from the fire here, it’s better to walk about a bit to keep awake and warmed.
Tius just nods at me at first. I read a sort of grimace to him when he grasps that he’s partnered with me for our two turns of the glass, but maybe I’m just imagining it. I can’t rightly recall if he was one of them who complained of my presence when Rethi brought me on. Anyway, Tius and I each go about our circuits around the wagons, each on our lonesome, so there’s little chance for contention.
Half through my watch, I hear a sort of rustle. I imagine just breeze, but where I’m from you have to learn to imagine unkindlier than that. I pause and listen a bit more, but there’s no other sound that seems apart from the night itself, so I continue my walk.
Another few circuits around the wagon circle and I jump back from a shadow cast at my feet. Takes me a bit to realize that we’ve two moons in the sky—Eledia, silver-green and bright, and pale purple Diaphna tinting the scene. Them being close to each other, and both near full moons, they’ve managed enough bright to cast a bit of a wagon’s frame to shadow. I shake my head at myself and make another few circuits, wondering how close I am to my shift’s end.
The grass ahead of me rustles. I get intent on it right quick. Then there’s a night-lark off to my left, and I pivot to spy the thing out. I don’t see movement. Only grasslands turned gray on gray on black. I’m focused enough I near miss the second sound, the third—from far off behind me and from in front of me to my left. The sound of a rich twang. My eyes turn in on the bowman just long enough to realize that’s what he is.
By then, the arrow’s nearly at my chest, and all I’ve time to do is let out a scream.
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