I.xx
It takes three tries to get back up into the saddle. My right leg is still bleeding, but still as winter too.
I finally do get up, and when I do I have no option but trying to scramble up the hill to a higher vantage point. If we’ve got a better view, maybe I’ll see some lights of cities flag up. Only, once me and Willow make it to the top of the stony slope, I can’t see any light but the stars and moons.
I dig into the saddle bags again to fetch the compass, try to get a sense with how north lines up with the position of the stars tonight. It’s not much use. There are plenty of small towns around here, but knowing the closest one won’t do me much good unless I know pretty well and specific where I am. I take out the map anyway, just to see if there’s a big city close enough, or the stream I’m near is tracked on the map in some visible form. The biggest town nearby seems to be the one I was headed toward, but the only way to get back in alignment fast is to go down the stream, and even then I’ve got no inclination to go along the edge of the water. It’s clear to me now that the gersh flock there, at least at this time of year. So I can get the general sense of how the stream runs just by how I estimate it by sound. Seems to run basically north and south. And given that, I can guess which of the streams it is. And given that, I can either take toward the nearest mapped town—which I may arrive at by morning, already having run Willow ragged—or I can camp, without gear—or I can pick a direction and ride, hoping to find some smaller settlement. An inn if I’m very lucky.
I look up to the stars, around the horizon, and then just pay close attention to that feeling in my gut, the one that says what feels right. I pick something vaguely westward, then Willow and I trot on into the night. When Willow starts flagging even at her trot, I realize that I’ve pushed her too fast, but a night in a stable is the best I can possibly offer her. I hop off, limping along at a slow trudge, even throwing a saddle pack over my shoulder just to give Willow a break. I keep having to weave through the night, just because I hear the especially distant sound of gershes buzzing, and I’m not willing to risk even the slightest extra encounter. After an extra hour like that, I see the light. Just a shimmer of candlelight, but well and enough.
Me and Willow trot up, torch still in my hand, and I see it’s the living-place of those tending a barn. It’s probably four hours past sunset—sure on, what any folk would call the middle of the night—but I figure I can either try to stow away in their barn or I can knock on their door. So I knock. They don’t answer the first time, so I knock again, and then a young girl answers, wearing a long nightgown, nearly as long as she is, that falls out around her feet. The girl is maybe seven or eight. She seems a touch surprised, but mostly tired. In an instant, I’m struck with how I must look. Pale. Sweat-drenched. Bloodstained. But without another word, she turns back and says, “Daddy! There’s a lady here.”
I’m dizzy and dizzy, and by the time her daddy has come up, I’m about ready to collapse. He sees me. At first his eyes narrow, all hostile, unhappy, to be sure, with being waked at this untimely hour. Then he sees the condition of me and his eyes widen.
“Clara!” he shouts back into the house. “Clara, get me the bandages!”
An hour later, he’s patched me up proper, putting a poultice of some herbal remedy on the gersh-sucker wounds. He finds one on the back of my leg I didn’t even note, though how I got punctured like that and didn’t even know it is beyond me. I try to apologize a few times while he patches at me, but he brushes off my words, doesn’t say much while he’s focused on keeping me from bleeding any further. His wife fetches him bandages and herbs, even stables Willow for the night, telling me after that she’s been brushed down and given a bag of oats. The woman keeps buzzing around, though, nervously flapping like a moth caught behind the fire grate. Once the man’s gotten me patched, he asks his wife to make sure the daughter has returned to bed. He’s been dabbing at my wounds with hot water, heated through a kettle and put on a cloth. After his wife departs and stops all her hasty walking, he puts what I guess to be spearmint leaves into the kettle.
“You’re out of your way to have reached this homestead of ours,” he says. It’s more a statement than a question, so I simply nod at him. “You’re not a Velran, are you?” I shake my head. “But you’re not from here.” I shake my head again.
He stands and picks up the kettle, grabs cups from the mantle and fills them each. He hands one to me, and I warm my hands against the side of the cups. “So, what’s your story?”
“I’m from just north of Marsh.”
“Up in the Wildes, then?”
“Yes sir, up in the Wildes. Born and raised.”
“And what brings you south of the wastes?”
I’m still feeling dizzy and the world’s got a white fuzz around it. He taps my knee with his knuckles, and I’m brought back to attention.
“Sorry.”
“No need for sorry. Just stay with us until I’m sure you’re safe to sleep. Mosk poison can creep through a person pretty hard, and you’ve been bitten more than once. Not everyone handles it well.” He eyes me with what seems like an attempt to uncover me, somehow. “So, story. What’s your story.”
“I’m here to … I mean, I’m on my way to Velrus.”
“Going by Worth?”
“That was the plan.”
“Well, it’s a fine plan. Although it seems you got more than a little off track.”
We bantered on like this for a while, though if it was minutes or hours I was pushing through is hard to say given the feeling of fog I’ve been pushing myself through. At the last of it it’s clear that he’s having a hard time staying upright in his chair, so I make like I’m needing sleep rapidly myself to see if I can’t get us both off to bed. He complies, gentle as he has been since I knocked on his door in such an untimely manner.
“You’ll sleep here,” he says. “Sorry for any smell.”
I nod sleepily, wanting to make a sharp comment about how ugly smells seem like a threat to pity after the sort of day I’ve had, but I can’t seem to find the right words for it or the will to say those words.
He looks at me slowly again, in my eyes but with a look like he’s searching me over anyhow. “If you feel yourself … losing touch or anything, you can wake us.”
I smile at him, grateful, but now that I’m faced with the prospect of actual sleep I’m realizing just how tired I actually am.
“And we’ll see you in the morning.”
I nod, but he doesn’t take it as a fully satisfactory reassurance, from what I can tell. “Thank you,” I say. And he hesitates a moment longer, so I add, “I’ll see you in the morning.”
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