Glimpses (7 page)

“That’s good, child. Now ease it back.”

Alec was only six, and hardly looked that,
but that was old enough to start learning. Who knew when he would
have to fend for himself? Skinny and sun-browned in his tunic and
leggings, Alec had Amasa’s thick golden hair and blue eyes, but the
older he got, the more he resembled his mother. At times it broke
the man’s heart to look at his own son.

The clearing was loud with the sawing of
summer cicadas. They were singing sooner than usual this year,
thanks to the early spring. This was the danger season. They’d kept
a cold campsite at night for several weeks already, drinking stream
water and eating smoke-cured meat and what roots they could
find.

Amasa had Alec pull the bow several more
times, then handed him one of the short arrows he’d made for him.
Alec nocked it to the string without being shown; he was smart and
quick and had seen his father do this thousands of times. From the
time he was an infant bundled on his father’s back, the song of the
bowstring had been his only lullaby.

“Watch me, Papa!” Alec pulled the string back
again, the arrow a little wobbly, and let fly. The shaft came off
badly and skittered along the ground into a patch of tall
grass.

Amasa handed him another arrow. “Try again.
Keep your arm up.”

They practiced until Alec’s arms were shaking
too badly to shoot any more, then went to check their snares by the
river bank. It was a lucky day; they had six muskrat pelts by
afternoon, and meat to dry. Amasa nailed the skins fur side down to
trees around the clearing, then scraped and buffed them clean with
his knife and a smooth piece of horn. Alec followed him, rubbing
each hide down with the animals’ oily, cooked-down brains.

Amasa cooked some of the muskrat meat over
the remains of the fire, then buried the embers and tamped the dirt
down smooth.

“Time to move, child.”

He helped Alec shoulder his little pack and
led the way down a game trail through the thick pine forest to
another clearing half a mile off. They never slept where they spent
the day. With any luck, the pelts would still be there in a day or
two when it was safe to go back. Amasa missed the silence of
winter. The Hâzadriëlfaie man hunters didn’t come looking for them
then.

He and Alec were thirty miles south of
Ravensfel Pass this year, but no matter how far they went, the
hunters always seemed to find them. So far Amasa had managed to
elude them, though he’d caught sight of them a few times from
hiding places. Their leader was a slender man with grey streaks in
his hair. The other riders, usually ten in all, were a mix of men
and women of varying ages. They carried fine bows and long swords,
too. Amasa had only his knife and bow. If it ever came to a fight
at close quarters, he knew what his chances were.

He didn’t recognize any of them as kin of
Ireya’s but it didn’t matter. They hunted his son and Amasa had no
illusions as to what would happen to the child if they ever found
him.

***

Until seven years ago, Amasa had never put
any stock in the legends about the Elder Folk, or the stories of
travelers disappearing if they got too close to the Ravensfel. The
pass was high and difficult to reach, and no doubt treacherous
enough to claim the lives of those unwise enough to chance it.
There was plenty of game in the forested foothills; no need to go
risking his neck.

It had been a litter of white lynx that took
him into the heights that fateful winter. Just one spotted pelt
would bring enough gold to live on for half a year, with some left
over for new gear and maybe a woman now and then. He’d seen the
spoor of half a dozen cats, probably a mother and her half-grown
kits. He tracked them on snowshoes for days, going higher and
higher into the mountains and closer to the pass. The foothills
became mountains, and the mountains turned to wooded peaks stark
against the clear winter sky.

In a steep, snow-choked cut flanked on either
side by thick forest, and strewn with ice-covered boulders he
spotted the lynx in the distance, sunning themselves on a rocky
outcropping.

It took two hours of careful stalking to get
within bowshot of them and he was losing daylight. He was taking
aim at the mother cat when he heard someone yell and something cold
and hard struck him in the back of the head, and then another. As
he turned to see who’d struck him he got a snowball square in the
face that nearly broke his nose. It hurt like fire and he tasted
blood on his lips. Staggering backwards, he caught one showshoe and
went tumbling ass over teakettle down the steep slope he’d worked
so hard to climb. The cats were long gone. So were his bow and fur
hat.

Spitting blood, he untangled his snowshoes
and looked for his bow. His quiver was full of snow and most of the
arrows had broken fletching.

Snowballs weren’t much of a weapon. Furious,
he trudged back up the slope to find whoever had cost him a small
fortune. As he toiled on, the thought that it might be a lost
traveler leavened his anger a little, though not much. If they
needed help, why annoy him first?

He found his hat and was almost back to where
he’d dropped his bow when something moved behind one of the
boulders up the slope near where he’d stood to shoot. Unarmed
except for his knife, he crouched, watching to see if his attacker
would show himself. After a moment the hint of movement came again
and another snowball narrowly missed his head.

“Stop that!” he shouted angrily. “Show
yourself like a man! I don’t mean you any harm.”

Silence followed, then his invisible
adversary called out from behind the boulder, “Leave this
place!”

It was a woman’s voice with a strange accent.
Amasa was a stubborn young man and no bitch throwing snowballs was
going to drive him off. He’d worked too long following those cats
and he’d find them again even if it meant going through the pass,
danger be damned.

“Leave!” she shouted again.

Ignoring the order, he made a run for where
she was hiding. He was within twenty feet when the woman stepped
out from behind it with a bow drawn, a nasty looking steel
broadhead leveled at his chest. A long knife hung at her side.
Amasa put his hands up to show that he wasn’t going to attack
her.

She was young, and dressed in an odd fashion
in a long white tunic that was split from hem to belt on either
side, and worn over breeches under her white cloak. A
blue-and-white striped cloth was wrapped around her head in a sort
of cap with long tails. The long hair under it was dark, almost
black, but her eyes were light grey. And even as he read death in
those eyes, he decided that she was the most beautiful woman he’d
ever seen.

Her bow arm was as steady as she held her
stance. “Leave this place. Not your place, tear man!”

Tear man? What was that supposed to mean. He
wasn’t crying, and wasn’t about to.

“Who are you?” he asked, still holding his
hands out. She hadn’t shot him yet, and her arm must be getting
tired.

She shouted something else at him, but he
didn’t understand a word of it, except that she seemed angry, and
perhaps a little frightened for all her bravado. Only then did it
occur to him that maybe the stories of the Elder Folk were more
than pipe talk. But they were supposed to have magic. This woman
hadn’t worked any on him yet.

Slowly, he knelt in the snow and reached
inside his thick coat for a bag of rabbit jerky. He took out a
piece and ate it, then tossed the bag to her. She regarded it
suspiciously for a moment, then kicked it back in his direction.
“Leave, tear man! My fay tast.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying, except for
the leave part,” he told her. “What’s your name?”

Her bow was beginning to shake a little. She
released the string slowly, but kept the arrow ready on the string.
“Nham?”

He touched his chest. “Amasa.” Then he
pointed to her. “You?”

She regarded him a moment longer.
“Ireya.”

It sounded like a name. “Ireya, I mean you no
harm.” He picked up the jerky bag, took another piece, and tossed
it back to her, smiling. “Eat. It’s good.” Sharing food was a sign
of goodwill where he came from. He hoped it meant the same to
her.

Still clearly suspicious, she nonetheless set
the bow aside and drew her knife. Squatting down, she fished out a
piece of jerky and nibbled at it, then popped the whole piece in
her mouth. “Tank you.”

“So you know a little of my language. That’s
good.” He pointed at the quickly setting sun. “Night’s coming. I
think we’re stuck with each other ‘til morning.”

She glanced at the sun, then cocked her head,
as if trying to puzzle out his meaning.

“Fire?” He rubbed his hands together and held
them out as if over a campfire.

She hesitated again, then motioned him
closer, though she kept out of arm’s reach. He could see beyond the
boulder now; a single line of snowshoe prints disappeared into the
nearby forest. She motioned with her knife for him to go that way
and to take the lead. The skin between his shoulder blades prickled
as he heard her fall in behind him.

The footprints led to a camp just inside the
line of trees. There was a bedroll of furs and blankets spread on
packed snow beside a fire pit and a pile of scavenged firewood.
Clearly she’d planned to stay the night.

She skirted the fire pit and regarded him
sharply. At closer range he saw that silver earrings shaped like
crescent moons hung from her earlobes. What was a rich woman doing
out here by herself?

She made no objection when he dropped his
pack near hers and untied his bedroll. She built a fire and
produced a loaf of bread and some dried fish from a leather bag.
Tearing off pieces, she offered them to him.

The bread was a little stale, but made with
honey and fine flour. The fish was rubbed with some sort of herb
and salt.

“Good!” he said, chewing. “Thank you, Ireya.”
She’d accepted his hospitable gestures, and now offered her
own.

She pushed the long tails of her head cloth
back over her shoulder and gave him the hint of a smile. By the
Maker, but she was beautiful!

“Are you Elder Folk?” he asked, holding his
hands out to the fire.

She seemed to consider the question, but did
not answer. Given that she knew only a few words of his language
and he knew none of hers, conversation was beyond reach for
now.

The sun went down behind the peaks and the
stars came out, sparkling sharply through the trees. It was going
to be a cold night.

Ireya sat across the fire from him, feeding
the small blaze from the woodpile, but never letting go of her
knife. It didn’t look like she trusted him yet, but he felt no
threat from her. He tried to stay awake, but it had been a long day
and sleep overtook him. When he woke at dawn the next morning,
Ireya was gone, but the fire was burning and there was more bread
and fish set out for him.

***

Amasa and Alec were stringing the muskrat
pelts together a few days later when the man heard a familiar
whistle in the distance. If the breeze had been blowing the other
way, he probably would have missed it. The riders were no more than
a mile away.

“Get your pack, Alec.”

The boy was used to the terse order and asked
no questions as they took up their gear and hurried down to the
riverbank. Amasa picked Alec up and waded out into the current,
pelts and all.

“Is the bear coming again, Papa?” Alec
whispered, arms tight around his father’s neck as the man stumbled
downstream over the slippery stones.

“Yes, child.”

Alec looked back over his father’s shoulder,
no doubt hoping for a sight of the bear Amasa had invented to
explain these sudden departures.