Spellbreakers (21 page)

Finally, with a noticeable effort, he recovered his
aplomb and smiled uncertainly. He had beautiful full lips, another thing that
made his face strangely magnetic.

He carefully put his arrow back in the quiver, and
bowed.

“I am Ljung Leuksen Sinkka’a-Reissu, of the Elverlaen
guard. When you passed the fords of the Venta’a you entered the Eastern
Elverlaen, and by law I should shoot you both on sight. Only bandits ever try
to ride in here, when they dare. When they meet one of us, they do not ride out
again. But come. No need to look so alarmed. I knew you were coming. You are
expected. There have been scouts out for you this past whole week. But I
suspected you’d end up coming this way.”

“You are an elver,” said Leal riding past Daria.

“Well, of course. Goblins are shorter, and giants are
bigger, and neither of them is half as pretty as me. There’s no way you could
mix us up, girl.”

Leal felt strangely naked without her male disguise,
but she dismounted from her horse and bowed to the elver.

“How did you know that we’d come this way? It is not
the main road through the forest to Dalarna is it? We sort of lost that along
the way.”

Ljung Leuksen Sinkka’a-Reissu smiled again.
 
“The main road is so overgrown with weeds and
brambles that losing it is easier than finding it. I strongly suspect that
somebody is
planting
brambles on it these days. And if you lose the road
you are pretty likely to end up, not at all by chance, I think, at Paavi’s
cottage.”

“Oh, yes, we did!
Quaint people, but
so kind.
They fed us and gave us a bath and a bed for the night. We’d
never felt so welcome on the road.”

“Oh, I am sure of it. And you may bet that before you
were out of your bath Paavi was running as fast as his crooked knees could
carry him to give word to his friends here. I am sure they gave you very clear
directions of how to get onto the fords. It is a favorite place for ambushing
what few travelers there are around here. This band of boys will attack
anything and anyone on the road, although they usually don’t dare to cross the
river.”

“Are you saying,” said Daria, first disbelieving and
then livid, “that those two, those two, those two ...
clowns
work for the
outlaws?”

“Oh no, not at all.
It’s rather hard to understand who’s working for
whom, and how willingly. And I don’t blame Paavi. The love-story of Paavi
Pellervo and Senija Hilleevi is fit for a high tragic ballad. They didn’t have
it easy, and they make a living as well as they can in a harsh lonely place. He
is a splendid craftsman. Many homes in Elverhjem own some of his spoons. But
that’s not enough to survive in the wild.”

Leal observed Ljung curiously. He obviously knew a lot
about their strange hosts. She suspected that he was even somewhat fond of
them.

“And come on,” said Ljung, “at least they sent you off
with a thundering good meal under your belt, I am sure. Senija loves to feed
people. And how can you blame them for being tempted? These horses would fetch
a pretty price around here, and two smooth girls, oops, boys like you almost
twice as much.”

“What? They would sell
us
, you mean?”

“Why, sell is a big word. Kaleva owns no slaves. But
they would gladly
employ
you for a while, perhaps. There are houses of
pleasure for all tastes in Nevraan, and even in the forest woodcutters and
trappers get lonely, you know? The winters are grim up here. People have to
keep warm somehow.”

He watched them digesting this. Leal was not sure if
he was wholly serious or not. He didn’t quite smile, but there was more than a
glint of amusement in his deep, dark green eyes. He spoke the lingua franca of
Nevraan with a strangely musical, lilting inflection and curious stops and
pauses within long words. It was a pleasant accent, but it was hard to judge
the mood of his sentences.

“Well,” said Daria, frowning, “well, I’ll say. Thank
you very much, sir. That’s all I can say. Mighty fine shooting, that was.
And mighty timely.”

Ljung Leuksen Sinkka’a-Reissu nodded again.

Daria slowly deflated at that. Now that the crisis was
over, she seemed to shrink.

Leal gently squeezed her shoulder.

“That was an awful tumble you took. I thought you had
broken your neck. Are you all right?”

“I am just a bit shaken, is
all.
But...”

She gasped, startled, as if a horrible thought had
just made its way through the shock of the fall and their narrow escape. She
walked slowly back to the ford, limping heavily. Leal followed her, and Ljung
also, a few steps behind.

Daria’s horse lay on his side in the shallow water
where he had fallen, with his saddle and harness hanging about him at odd
angles.
 
He breathed quickly, and
noisily, struggling to keep his head out of the river somehow. He looked up at
Daria with imploring eyes, a look of confusion on his long dark face, but when
she climbed down to him, he relaxed, and his liquid black eyes took on an
expression of complete trust.

Daria wept louder then. Both the horse’s front legs
were broken, disastrously broken. The cannon bones stuck out sharply through
torn skin. The water of the river ran pink all about him. Daria gave a deep
howling sob, with a hand on her mouth, and then shakily unsheathed her dagger
once more.

Leal watched in shock. She had been around horses all
her life. She knew what was to be done. But neither she nor Daria had ever
needed to do it.

“I am sorry, my friend, oh, I am so, so sorry,” sobbed
Daria, knee deep in water and blood.

She put the blade to the horse’s throat.

She shook too much to do it. It took a firm hand to do
such a thing cleanly.

Ljung scrambled down the slope and quietly unsheathed
a long dagger from his belt.

“Shall I?” he asked gently.

Daria nodded, crying, and he did it.

****

As the sun sank low in the west, Leal and Ljung
recovered what provisions could be salvaged from the waterlogged saddle bags,
and Daria’s blanket and clothes. Daria had been ordered to sit on deep soft
patch of leaf mound and rest, and for once she had obeyed.

When all that could be saved was saved and packed in
Leal’s bags, they hid the gelding’s fine saddle under more leaves, and joined
Daria where she sat.

Ljung pointed with his bow up the path and then
further north.

“You are travelling to Dalarna, I hear,” he said.
“If so, that direction will bring you back to the road.
You
should cross it before nightfall, making for the setting sun and a bit to the
left.
Twenty miles on to the north-west the road forks.
Straight on for Elverhjem, and right and north for Dalarna.
But all scouts sent out for you were instructed to bring you back to Elverhjem,
if you would consent. That will add a few miles days to your trip, but I
believe you’d better come with me. Dalarna is an evil place, and I believe
you’d better talk to the Elders before venturing north. If you would come, I’ll
lead you there by the safest way. But you are free to go as you please.”

Leal thanked him profusely for his trouble and his
kindness. She tried to think quickly. They had made good time in Hassia, thanks
to the good smooth rides along the canals. They could spare a few days
certainly, couldn’t they?

“It will not be too late to travel to the Ice Waste,
if we come to the elvers’ town?”

“The Ice Waste?
Is that
where you are going?” asked Ljung with a penetrating glance. There was a
mixture of feeling there.
Surprise, suspicion, worry,
perhaps.

Leal nodded gravely.

He regarded her with a slight frown, and Leal thought
he would make a skeptical remark. But he didn’t.

“I am not sure that there is ever a good time of the
year to go to the Ice Waste,” he said instead. “But if that is where you are
going, the more reason to stop in Elverhjem first. You will need warmer clothes
than those, and other things, and your southern horse will never make it on the
moors, let alone the glaciers. You will have to leave it somewhere safe.”

Leal and Daria exchanged a worried look.

“We will come to Elverhjem,” said Leal. “We will
gladly take counsel with your people. It is essential that we travel to the Ice
Waste as soon as possible. My kingdom’s future depends on it. And mine, too.”

Ljung regarded her thoughtfully for a moment. Then he
nodded.

“Let’s go, then. We still have some hours of light,
and this is not a safe place for camping. Can you walk?”

Daria got to her feet and limped bravely up the path.

“I’ll even run if I have to, sir.”

****

That night they camped in the forest less than ten
miles away from the ford. They had been walking slowly. Despite her assurances,
Daria was in pain from several strained joints and at least a dozen bruises.
She was also heartbroken, and ashamed to have failed in her duty to relieve the
horse’s hopeless agony. She had become enormously attached to the plucky,
good-tempered bay gelding in the weeks they had traveled together. Leal had
firmly insisted that she mount on her mare as she walked beside Ljung. Ljung
was on foot anyway, and Daria thought that he would probably have walked twice
as fast without them and the horse.

Either he knew every tree and every boulder in the
Elverlaen or he had a knack for following almost invisible tracks in the
tangled forest. His falcon flew high over the trees, often crying out in
greeting if they came to a clearing. Ljung carried a medium sized pack, with a
fur-lined coat and a blanket strapped on top. He had a subtly ornate, much worn
quiver of grey-feathered arrows and a recurve bow with an elaborately carved
riser of a shape that neither Leal nor Daria had ever seen. It was not the kind
of long bow they were used to, but it was obviously a powerful and well-built
weapon. He carried it in hand, because anything that long strapped on his pack
would tangle in the branches overhead all the time. He had also his long dagger
at his side and a pouch hanging from his belt. By his coolness and poise, one
might think that was all he owned in the world, and all he needed.

****

At camp Leal and Daria put their provisions out to be
shared, out of a feeling that it was the least they could do for their savior
and guide, but Ljung took things in hand right away. He had no trouble at all
starting a small fire in a deep hollow of the ground. He boiled water from a
brook in a small pot. He made a good strong tea out of the blue-eyed ground-ivy
which crept around the roots of the trees; he grilled their cold meats quickly,
and made them in a thick stew with water, some mushrooms he picked nearby, salt
from his pack, a handful of barley, and snipped ramsons leaves on top of it.
They toasted their old bread by the fire, and suddenly their stale supplies
tasted fresh and interesting again.

“Do you do much camp cooking, Ljung?” asked Daria,
licking the last smear of tasty grease from her fingers.

“I am a hunter. I live in the forest all summer, and
often enough in winter, too. This is how I cook. You hardly need a big pantry,
when the forest is all around you. Tomorrow we’ll have fresh meat, I hope.
Won’t we, Tuulikki? ”

He petted his splendid falcon, which perched on his
pack nearby, eating scraps of meat that Ljung had pulled from his pouch. Leal
had never seen such a tame bird. She loved hawks, but had never had any
illusions about what sort of bond held them to their owners. It was a mere
partnership of convenience, not the loyalty and affection one could share with
a dog or even a horse. Ljung’s bird was different. She wore a little silver
bell on an anklet of green leather, but she followed him and kept close without
jesses and without hood, as if she was genuinely attached to the elver.

“Tuulikki?”
Daria
asked, carefully reaching out to the hawk.

The big bird flapped her huge wings twice and screamed
at her.

Ljung smiled. “Her name is Tuula. She won’t be touched
by a stranger, however well-meaning. She’s bound to me.”

“Bound?
How?”

Ljung shrugged. “Like a good horse or hound would be
bound to you.
By love and respect, and a likeness of spirit,
perhaps.
A hawk is no different, though I am told that humans cannot
bond with a falcon as we can. It is a strange thing for me. All beasts and
plants are part of a whole, and so are the talking peoples. But some races are
more sensitive to this wholeness than others, they say.”

Leal thought of something that Coralyn, the tall
Faded
woman, had said, a long time ago.
Those races that
have a better sense of the
whole,
have a clearer
perception of us.

All right, time to ask questions.

“Ljung, you said we were expected. How did you know
that we were coming?”