Mastiff (26 page)

Lady Sabine had unpacked a small basket onto a spread cloth. “The Deputy Provost gave us this in addition to the supplies already packed,” she explained. “There’s Galla pasties, parsnip fritters, lamb cakes, and nice, dark bread rolls. Ale for those who want it, raspberry twilsey for the rest. Chopped meat for Achoo and Pounce. Achoo has already eaten her share.” Lady Sabine pointed to a space behind Achoo where Pounce was eating a small pile of food. There were signs that another such pile had been next to his, but only a few bits of meat, small enough for Achoo to miss in the grass, were left. Achoo now busied herself with a bone.

I took out one of my many handkerchiefs and folded it over, then chose what I would eat. When I sat between Lady Sabine and Master Farmer, she passed a cup of the twilsey to me. Tunstall had yet to sit. He’d wandered over to the edge of the marsh to think.

“You made good time catching up, better than we expected,” I said to my lady.

She laughed. “Master Farmer here said the same thing. My family has been breeding ladyhorses for generations. They may not have liked my choice, but Father said he was cursed if a Macayhill,
any
Macayhill, would serve the Crown poorly mounted. Drummer and Steady are faster than any other knights’ horses I’ve known.”

“I still wouldn’t put any coin on them at the races,” Tunstall said, returning from his thinking spasm.

My lady smiled up at him with just her eyes. It was an interesting trick. I wondered if she was trying to be proper and not let the love between them creep into our Hunt. It still showed. It put a needle in my heart. Had I ever looked at Holborn that way, even in the beginning? I didn’t believe I had.

Pounce rammed himself under my right elbow. I ran my fingers into his thick, soft fur and let it warm my fingers.
Thank you
, I thought to him as hard as I could.

He butted my thigh with his head.
Stop hating yourself because of him
, he ordered me.
Holborn wasn’t good enough
.
You didn’t even like him, not at first, not by the end. You just loved him for a short while
.

“What are your orders, then?” Master Farmer asked Tunstall. “Since you’re in charge.”

Tunstall tugged his beard. “This road is traveled enough. There are always villages in marsh country—the living’s good. We’ll follow this road north and see if there is a village where we can get someone to take a message to the Deputy Provost about her missing Dog. We need a ferry across the marsh”—he looked at the horses—“or another bridge. What about it, Cooper? Are villages or bridges on one of your maps?”

“This bridge was on the map, but no others,” I said, recalling the district map from memory. “And no towns are marked hereabouts, either. Or villages, but they never mark villages.”

“From the path here, I’d say there’s a village,” Tunstall said. “Cattle tracks, sheep tracks. If we don’t have a village or ferry, we’re swived, and we’ll have to go all the way around the curst thing.”

I fetched my pack and found the waterproofed leather envelope with its precious documents. I gave it a more thorough search than I had on the ferry and discovered a second map of the area, labeled
The Tellerun Valley to the Great Road North
. It had more details than the district map. I spread it open and found the land between the Tellerun and the Halseander Rivers. There was an area colored blue. Written small over it was the name War Gorge Marsh. I used the first joint of my thumb, which was almost exactly an inch of length, and placed it along and across the area marked as the marsh. I checked it twice, to be sure, muttering “Pox” to myself when it came out the same both times.

“If I’ve worked the change from inches to miles right, this festering slice of mud is near forty miles long, with us right in the middle,” I told the others. “It’s eight miles wide at the widest part and six at the thinnest. There’s no road of any kind marked either on the far side of the marsh or on this side of the bridge going to the southern end of the marsh. The only village is in that direction on this side.” I looked up to see that Master Farmer was staring at me. “What?” I asked.

“I don’t think I’ve heard you say so many words in the entire time I’ve known you,” he replied. “Is it because you’re tired? Is there something in the lamb cakes, or the marsh air?”

Tunstall grinned, the mumper. “Cooper likes maps.”

“She talks enough, when you know her,” Lady Sabine added.

I scowled at the document before me. I was going to ignore Master Farmer. What could I say, after all? Just because I’m no jaw clacker doesn’t mean there should be a ruction put up whenever I have sommat to say. “There
is
a village, seven miles down this road,” I told them. “I don’t see marks for any other bridges but the one that got burned.”

Tunstall sighed. “We’ll go around if we must, then, but if our luck’s in, the village will have a ferry. They can’t manage with only one bridge. Very well. It’s an hour, mayhap two, after midnight. We’ll take a four-hour rest now. I’ll have a one-hour watch. Sabine the second, Cooper the third, Master Farmer the last.”

I wondered if Master Farmer would know when to rouse us, then realized that he must. Good mages learn to track the sun and moon whether they can see them or not, so they work their spells properly. Kora can do it, and she never pretends to be any greater than a hedgewitch with bite.

Lady Sabine and Master Farmer did not wait for Tunstall to change his mind. They wrapped themselves in blankets and lay down. My lady used her saddle for a bolster. Leaning against it, she seemed to plan to sleep sitting up. When she saw me looking at her, she smiled. “If I sleep flat after a meal, it comes right up. Annoying, but better this than puking on the good bed linens.”

I had it in mind to write in this journal for an hour before I slept, but Tunstall would have none of that. “You can write in the saddle, I’ve seen you do it,” he told me sternly, taking my shoulder pack from my hands. “Bank the fire and sleep, Cooper.”

I did as ordered. Achoo and Pounce curled up with me, which was a comfort. I slept.

The valley of the vile, poxy, sarden marsh

The sun was not quite up when Master Farmer made us a hot herbal tea that definitely roused us. “It’s wake-up tea,” he said when Tunstall eyed him blurrily. “It’s herbs I’ve gathered from different places. Surely you can taste the ginger and cinnamon.”

“I don’t want anything that might addle me,” Tunstall told him as he slowly drank.

“I wouldn’t dare,” Master Farmer replied. “Cooper would crack my head with her baton. I shudder to think what your lady might do.”

“It’s fine stuff,” I said, drinking all of mine.

“Have a second cup of this, Mattes,” Lady Sabine told him, her voice gravelly. “It’s the smoothest such tea I’ve ever had. Ye gods, I think every mosquito and midge in the swamp found me last night.” She scratched the back of her neck.

Master Farmer looked from her to Tunstall. They were scratching necks, hands, foreheads—every bit of skin left uncovered for the appetites of the local bugs. I shrugged when he glanced at me. Since making friends with Kora, I’d not suffered so much as a fleabite. Her balm’s also been splendid for winter skin. Heavy though it was, I had a jar of it as big as both my fists in one of my packs. Had I not been so tired, I would have remembered to offer some to my companions.

Master Farmer looked sheepish. “I should have thought. I have a little rune. If you don’t mind, I’ll put it on the three of you. It’s good for four months. There isn’t an insect that will bite you while it lasts.”

Tunstall stuck out one of his ham-sized fists. “If you sold it, you’d be a rich man.”

Master Farmer etched a design on the back of Tunstall’s hand. It sparkled briefly and faded as Master Farmer murmured something to himself. Then he said, “I do sell it, in a few shops that sell creams and scents. I fix it to a honey balm a friend makes, and we give it a wicked price. The wealthy pay, and her children have decent lives.”

He did Lady Sabine’s hand next, then turned to me. I thought about refusing, then scolded myself silently for being a looby. I put my hand out and thanked him in advance. Master Farmer began, then stopped. He raised his eyebrows at me. “It’s very nice, that cream you have on. Clever. Not your magic, though.”

“My friend’s,” I explained.

“Will you introduce us?” he asked. “She’s got a wicked sense of humor tucked in there.”

I nodded, though how he guessed that from a charm in some cream I had no idea. I hoped he didn’t have notions about Kora. I would have to mention casually, somehow, that she was taken.

Once I’d had my tea, I was awake enough to realize I had slept in Master Farmer’s shawl. I shook it out and folded it, then returned it to him. “I’m sorry.”

He put it in one of his saddlebags. “It holds up well,” he said. “It’s gone through worse than sleeping on the ground. Did it keep you warm?”

I nodded. “Thank you for the loan of it.”

“Anytime you want it, ask. I have three packed away.” When I looked at him, he grinned. “I like to be prepared.”

“And I hate fellows like you who are cheerful before dawn,” Lady Sabine grumbled.

We all had two cups each of that excellent tea, then cleaned the camp and resupplied the woodpile. Only when the campsite was as clean as we’d found it did we fit out the packhorses and saddle our mounts. I fed my riding horse an apple from the supply I’d put in my packs, and checked the pommel of his saddle. There was a name etched there. I squinted to see it. This dark brown fellow was called Saucebox.

Remembering his smelly remarks to Pounce last night, I told him, “You’re well named.” The gelding looked back at me and snorted.

“Let’s mount up,” Tunstall called. “It’s going to be a long day.”

Pounce chose to ride seated in front of me, as if he wished to remind Saucebox who was a person and who was a horse. Achoo trailed with the pack animals on my string, whining and halting to look back at the remains of the bridge. Her scent was there. We were riding away from it. She also knew she could not walk across empty air or marsh water.

“You could comfort her, Master Pounce,” Lady Sabine said as she dropped back to ride beside me. “We cannot explain things to her, but you can.”

I have explained to her
, Pounce replied.
Otherwise you might have been forced to bind her feet and tie her to a horse. She is a simple creature, my lady. She only understands so much
.

I sympathized with Achoo. It bit to ride away from the enemy’s trail. I did not look forward to going around this entire marsh, either. These villagers must have a ferry, I reasoned. They wouldn’t put up with dependence upon a bridge seven miles away.

Yet I remembered other marsh dwellers I have met since pairing up with Achoo. They tend to keep to themselves, marsh people, distrusting anyone who doesn’t share their lives between land and water. They like to live well away from the world, and they like to keep their secrets. The ones I had known were not very helpful at all.

Our road turned and twisted along the edge of the marsh. We found other small bridges over streams that cut the road on their way to the shadowed masses of green and open water on our right. Unseen birds were beginning to sing as the sky grew pale. As the sunrise lit the eastern mountains, we halted on one of the longer bridges to stare out over a broad expanse of water, edged all around by islands of reeds. A heron, blue and immense, took flight, trailing his heavy legs. He startled several egrets, who flapped into the air in his wake. I held my breath at a sight so beautiful. The rest of the water, the part they had not disturbed, was as smooth as glass.

Tunstall clucked to his horse and rode off the bridge. The rest of us followed, still in silence. Pounce sat up—he’d been sleeping curled between my legs—and looked out over the water.

You should have seen this three thousand years ago
, he said. The others looked at us as he stretched against the edge of the saddle.
This place was not quiet or beautiful. The Searflame dragon family came here to their final battle with the Ianto clan. They belonged to the immortal race called the Ysandir. The Ianto were smiths—makers of fearful weapons. Dragons and Ysandir, they cut deep trenches in this land and tore huge boulders from it to throw at one another. The trenches later filled with water from underground springs. It’s called War Gorge Marsh, and the humans don’t even remember why it has that name
.

“You tell it as if you were there,
hestaka,
” Tunstall said.

I was
, Pounce replied.
They wrecked so much of this country that the Great Gods came to put a stop to it. I kept the Goddess company. The Ysandir would not listen. Their offensiveness
began the war with the Great Gods that ended in their defeat. It was the first time that humans fought on behalf of the Great Gods
.

“I’ve read about the Ysandir,” Master Farmer said. “Nothing good, but I’ve read about them.” He yawned.

Pounce leaped to the ground.
They had good music. I do miss that
. He trotted off into the reeds.

We rode on quietly. The others talked from time to time. I drifted to the rear and took out my journal. I had to grab every chance that came to me to write in it, or despite the memory exercises I’d learned in training, I would start to forget small details. Even using my own code of symbols I had barely covered the events of the 12th when I heard a rough cove’s voice say, “And who might you folk be?”

I hurried to jam my writing gear and my journal into their waterproofed case, taking a glance to see what was up. We had reached the center of the fields around the village the map had promised. A cove with a fishing pole and basket blocked our path forward, as if he alone could stop us. Beyond him I saw lamps burning through open windows. I could smell baking bread and frying bacon. My belly growled.

“You can see our uniforms, Master Fisherman,” Tunstall replied. “We are a commission of the Provost’s Guard, under orders from the Lord Provost himself. We need to speak with your headman immediately, and we need a messenger to go to Arenaver.”