Forest Mage (29 page)

I was not surprised to find Yaril waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. I managed a smile for her. She had packed food for me, a generous packet. I thanked her and hugged her one last time. She leaned against my belly to reach me for a kiss on my cheek. I felt my body as a wall around me that held my loved ones at a distance. Fort Nevare.

“Don’t you forget your promise!” she hissed fiercely in my ear. “Don’t abandon me here, thinking that I’ll be safe. Send for me as soon as you are settled anywhere, no matter how rough. I’ll come.”

I bade her farewell at the door, and turned away from the house where I had grown up.

In the stables, I saddled Sirlofty and loaded my possessions into my saddle panniers. When I led him out of the stables, Sergeant Duril was waiting to say good-bye. The old soldier looked grim and tired. He already knew that I’d been disowned. Very little of what happened in any noble family remained private for long. I shook his hand.

He wished me well. “Write to me,” he said, his voice going husky. “I know, I can’t read, but if you write to me, I’ll find someone who can read it to me. Let me know what happens to you, lad. Don’t leave me wondering.”

I promised him I would. I mounted, levering my weight up onto my saddle with difficulty. Sirlofty shifted under me as if startled by the load. My buttocks settled onto my saddle in a new and disconcerting way. I took a breath. I hadn’t ridden in quite a while, but I’d soon be back in condition. The next few days would be uncomfortable, but I’d survive. As I rode away, I glanced back at the windows of my former home. Yaril was framed in hers, watching me ride away. She lifted her hand in farewell. I waved in response.

There was a twitch of the curtains in my father’s room. That was all. When I reached the end of the drive and looked back a final time, I saw a croaker bird lift from the chimney pot. He circled my old home once, and then flew off ahead of me. He seemed an ill omen to follow, but follow I did.

I
t was midmorning before I felt I had truly left my home behind. I knew the lands around my father’s holding so well and he made such extensive use of them for running cattle and sheep that they felt as if they, too, belonged to him. I rode in a daze, my mind occupied with my own inner turmoil.

My father had disowned me. I was free. Those two thoughts seesawed in my mind. Free to wander, to give a different name when people asked me. No one would rebuke me if I abandoned the destiny the good god had set upon me and became something other than a soldier. I was also free to starve, to fall victim to robbers, to suffer the misfortunes that befell those who challenged the good god’s will. Free to struggle to find a place for myself in a world that largely disdained or ignored me because of my size.

The day was warm, but I already saw the early signs of the season’s change. The tall grasses were turning gold and nodded, their heads heavy with seed. The cooler nights meant that more moisture condensed on the ground, and I could see the green fronds unfurling at the base of the winter-growing prairie fern. The tiny purplish flowers of the ground-hugging birdbrush on the gentle hills were giving way to the little black berries that birds and rabbits so loved. The land would give forth one final burst of generosity to all the life that teemed over it before it subsided into the cold hostility of winter.

I had not ridden Sirlofty for any great distance since I’d returned from my useless visit to Dewara. He was restive and willful, and I soon felt all the aches of a man who has been out of a saddle for too long. I gritted my teeth, knowing it would pass in the next few days. Until then, it simply had to be endured. My greater weight amplified every twinge and ache, and by midafternoon my lower back throbbed with every step my mount took. Sirlofty had become lazy as well. His pace was not what it should have been. Toward noon, I noticed a slight hitch in his stride.

I began to watch anxiously for the silhouette of the Franner’s Bend stockade wall against the horizon. I had not made good time, I realized. I kicked Sirlofty up into a trot, but he soon lapsed back into a walk, and I let him. When he trotted, my body shook all around me as if I were encased in a pudding. It was a horrid feeling.

My world had changed. I remembered the long ride to Franner’s Bend as a journey through wild lands, with nowhere to stop for refreshment, and no scenery other than the natural vegetation on the rolling plains. That was no longer so. The Midlands were becoming settled. There was sporadic traffic on the King’s Road that paralleled the river, wagons and people on horseback and families traveling on foot or with donkeys heaped high with possessions. There was habitation, too. I passed several cotton fields, fringed with cottages for the workers. Just beyond them, I came to a long, low building immediately alongside the road. The outside of it was freshly plastered and painted a pale blue that was a shocking contrast to the sere land around it. The new signboard that
swung from its post proclaimed it was The Last Bale, and it offered beer, food, and rooms for travelers. I marvelled at the thought of a real inn along this road. Farther along my way, a Plainsman herder in a conical hat and his two dogs shepherded a flock of flat-tailed sheep past me. I passed a little landing on the river with a cluster of buildings around it, the seed of an as-yet-nameless town. Just past it, a boy on a donkey watched over a grazing flock of goats. He watched me pass as if I were the intruder.

I had always thought of my family as living on the edge of the wild lands. Clearly, that was no longer so. Civilization had crept up and flowed around to encompass us. The land was becoming settled. I didn’t like it. I had taken pride in growing up on the far reaches of the civilized world, tough and schooled in survival in a land that offered no refuge to the weak. All that was changing now.

I reached the outskirts of Franner’s Bend as the sun was venturing toward the horizon. The Bend had changed even more than the countryside. When I’d visited it as a boy, the old fort had crouched in the bend of the river amid a hodgepodge of huts and a rudimentary market. Now ranks of baked-brick houses clustered on either side of the road as I approached the fort. The mud swallows that yearly invaded our barns and plastered their homes into the eaves were more competent builders. The roofs were roughly thatched with broom from the surrounding prairie.

Handcarts and foot traffic meandered along the road and down the alleys. Busy people still stopped and stared at me. One small boy shouted into the open door of a house, “Come see the fat man on a horse!” and a gaggle of children rushed to the threshold to watch me pass. The boy trotted along behind me for some way, gawking at me in amazement. I tried to ignore him. I’d have skirted this warren if I could, but the King’s Road went right through the mongrel settlement.

The road passed a roughly paved square centered on a well and bustling with commerce. The buildings that fronted it were painted ochre and white and yellow-brown, with roofs of baked tile. In an open-fronted building, workers were lifting long swathes of fabric from dyeing vats. Men were unloading sacks of grain
from a heavy wagon and carrying them into the warehouse like a trail of ants. I dismounted to allow Sirlofty to water at the animal trough by the well. Almost immediately, I drew attention. Two women who had been filling their water jugs homes giggled and stared at me, whispering like girls. One gangly old man from the grain warehouse was even ruder.

“How many?” he shouted at me as he approached. I suspected he shouted because he himself was deaf.

“How many what?” I asked him as Sirlofty lifted his muzzle from the water.

“How many stone, my man? How many stone do you weigh?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” I replied stiffly. I tugged at Sirlofty’s bridle, intending to lead him away. But the old man seized my sleeve.

“Come to my warehouse. I’ve a grain scale there. Come on. This way. This way.”

I tugged my arm free of him. “Leave me alone.”

He laughed loudly, pleased at my reaction. Workers gawked at us. “Look at him!” he invited them loudly. “Don’t you think he ought to come to my grain scales for a weigh?” One woman grinned and nodded widely. Another looked away, embarrassed for me, while two young men laughed heartlessly. I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. As I set my foot in Sirlofty’s stirrup, it felt higher than it had that morning, and every aching muscle in my body screamed at the prospect of remounting.

One of the young men guffawed. “Look! His horse doesn’t even want to stand for being mounted by him.”

And it was true. The ever-mannered and deeply trained Sirlofty shifted away from me. He was clearly favoring one leg now.

“Ye’re goina lame him!” the other young man warned me in a sneering, city accent I recognized from Old Thares. “Pity the poor beast. You should carry
him
for a ways, gutbag.”

His warning was a true one. The only reason that Sirlofty would behave in such a way was if he were in pain. I stubbornly mounted him anyway. I rode away from the well and the square, ignoring the catcalls that followed me. As soon as I was out of
sight, I dismounted and led my horse. He was not limping yet, but he was moving gingerly. My horse, my fine cavalla steed, could no longer bear my weight for a full day’s ride. If I rode him again tomorrow, he’d be lame before the day was out. And then what would I do? What was I going to do now? I was scarcely a day’s ride from my father’s estate and already into problems. The hopelessness of my situation suddenly crashed in on me. I was pretending that all would be well, that I could provide for myself away from my father’s largesse. Yet in reality, I’d never done that.

What were my options? Enlist in the military? I no longer had a horse that could bear me, one of the requirements to join the cavalla as an enlisted man. No foot regiment would consider me. I’d always thought that, if need be, I could live as the Plainsmen once had, taking what they needed from the land. In the last day, I’d discovered what the Plainsmen already knew: the open wild lands were vanishing. I doubted a cotton farmer would appreciate me camping in his field, and I knew that wild game retreated from areas where people kept cattle and sheep. It suddenly seemed that there was no place left in the world for me. I recalled Yaril’s wailed words from the night before: “What are we going to do?” The answer seemed more elusive now than it had then.

The growing town had all but obscured the stockade of the old fort. The cannons were still outside the gate but could not have been fired. Flimsy market stalls selling warm grain beer and pepperpot soups and bread were set up all around them. I had to look twice to see the sentries. Two stood to each side of the open gates. The rubbish heaped up around the gates proved that they had been closed for months. Two of the sentries were talking and laughing together as a stream of people wandered past them into the fort. The other two were bartering with a half-breed woman over a tray of sweet-blossom pastries. I stood watching them for a time, wondering why I had even come to the gates of the fort. Habit, I supposed. My father and I had always stopped to pay our respects to the commander of the keep whenever we passed this way.

I led Sirlofty away from the gates, down a side street, ignoring the stares we attracted.

“You stole him, right? Want to sell him? I can get you the best price, I know all the horse dealers.” A ragamuffin girl hurried up to trot alongside me. Her hair hung in two tattered braids down her back, and her dress was made from dyed sacking. Her feet were bare. It took me a moment to understand she’d insulted me.

“I didn’t steal him. I am not a horse thief. This is my horse. Go away.”

“No, he’s not. Don’t take
me
for a fool. That’s a cavalla horse. Anybody could tell that. And you aren’t a soldier, that’s plain. That tack, that’s cavalla tack. Good panniers. I know a man who will buy it all from you, and give you the best price. Come on. I’ll help you sell him. Keep him too long, someone will track you down, and you know what happens to horse thieves in this town!” She rolled her brown eyes expressively as she hoisted tight an imaginary noose around her neck.

“Go away. No. Wait.” She’d spun aside from me, but halted at my call. “You know so much, missy. Where’s a cheap inn?”

“Cheap? You want cheap? I can show you cheap, but first it will cost you. Not much, not much at all, and what you pay me will be far less than what you’ll save by letting me show you the cheapest inn I know.” She instantly shifted her tactic, grinning up at me. One of her front teeth was missing. She was younger than I had thought.

I did not have much money. My father had not given me any since I reached home, and though tempted, I had not taken any cash when I departed. So my funds were limited to what I’d had left from the money he’d sent me to travel from Old Thares to home. I had seven hectors, fifteen talleys, and six pewters. I took two pewt from my pocket and rattled them in my hand. She looked interested.

“It can’t be some dump with moldy hay for my horse and a fleabag for me to sleep in. It has to be decent.”

She feigned astonishment. “I thought you said cheap.”

“Cheap but decent.”

She rolled her eyes as if I were asking for the moon, and then held out her hand. I put one coin into her palm. She cocked her head at me and frowned.

“The other if I like the place you show me.”

She sighed theatrically. “Follow me,” she said in an exasperated voice. She led me around a corner and down a side street toward the river. As we passed through a narrow alley, she asked without malice, “How did you get to be so fat?”

“It’s a curse,” I said.

“Oh.” She nodded sagely. “My mother gets that, too. But when she gets fat, she has a baby.”

“I’m not going to have a baby.” I discovered it was possible to feel offended and amused at the same time.

“I
know
that. I’m not stupid. Here. This is the place.” She’d stopped outside a large house that fronted onto the river. The fenced yard and several outbuildings within its enclosure looked maintained but not well tended.

“This isn’t an inn.”

“I
know
that, too. That’s why it will be cheaper and not have fleas. Guff! I’ve brought you a paying guest!”

She sang it out before I could say anything. In response, an old man stuck his head out the window. “Who’s there?”

“Farvi. And I’ve brought you a man who needs a bed for himself and a stall for his horse tonight. He wants cheap with no fleas. I thought of you immediately.”

“Did you? Well, aren’t I lucky?” He looked at me skeptically for a moment, and then his glance fell on Sirlofty. “I’ll be right out.”

He popped out the door seconds later. He reached eagerly for Sirlofty’s reins. “I’ll put him in back where he won’t be seen. Isn’t he a fine one!”

“Leave off, sir! He’s battle-trained.” Sirlofty had instantly reacted to a stranger trying to seize his headstall. I put a hand on my horse to calm him, and then said coldly, “I’ve no need to hide what is mine. All I’m need is a place to sleep for the night, and a stall for my horse.”

The man looked at me, glanced back at the child, and then looked at me again.

“Very well. But the only place I can put him is around the back. I’ve a paddock there. Shall I take him there?”

“I’ll bring him.” I was already feeling dubious about the man. But he led and I followed to a shed and small paddock behind his home. Two milk goats were the only occupants; there was plenty of room for Sirlofty. It was relatively clean, and the hay looked decent. I nodded my approval and put my horse up. The man fetched a bucket of clean water for him and I gave him a good feed of hay. While he was eating, I went down on one knee to check his hooves and legs. His left foreleg was warmer than the others but not badly swollen. I grunted my dismay, and hauled myself to my feet.

“Are you going to stay here?” the girl asked pointedly, holding out her palm.

I flipped her other pewter into the air. She snatched it and was gone.

“Precocious little wench,” I observed to the man.