The Phoenix Endangered (17 page)

“What do you mean by that?” Kareta demanded, rounding on him.

“Well, I mean, there are all kinds of people, you know,” Tiercel said. “Some that are …”

“Yes?” Kareta said dangerously. She was swishing her tail back and forth, and Harrier could tell that she had no intention of letting Tiercel get out of the conversation gracefully. So be it. Tiercel might worry about hurting her feelings, but
he
didn’t.

“He means some that are mature and reasonable—like him—and others that steal people’s lunches when their backs are turned,” Harrier said bluntly. Kareta rounded on him, her blue eyes wide. The effect would have been a lot more dramatic if her nose weren’t purple. Harrier snickered.

“You’re mean!” she cried. “You’re mean and hateful and I don’t like you anymore! All I’ve ever done is help you! I brought you your Books and, and—everything!”

“And you stole our pie,” Harrier said mercilessly. He’d grown up on the Armethalieh Docks, and spent a good portion of that time with people trying to wheedle him into one thing or another. It would be different if he thought her feelings were actually hurt. But he didn’t think they were. “It’s not as if you asked. Or
waited
to be asked,” he added.

“That’s not
fair!”
she burst out.

“Actually, it probably is,” Tiercel said meditatively, as if the idea had just occurred to him. “I know you and Harrier argue all the time. But he’s always shared his food with you. And so would I.”

“All right,” Kareta said, stamping her foot. “I said I was hungry. Give me some of the bread. You’ve got a lot.”

“No,” Harrier said around a mouthful of chicken.

“And that’s fair too,” Tiercel said, as calmly as if he were the High Magistrate herself.

There was probably a long explanation that would have followed that, but Kareta didn’t stick around to hear it. Tiercel had barely gotten half his next sentence out before she wheeled away and galloped off, and in only a few seconds she was only a bright spark in the distance.

“She
is
fast,” Harrier said calmly, reaching for the teapot.

A
FTER THEY FINISHED
their meal and packed the food away again, Harrier led the horses carefully down to the stream edge. He could wash the cups and plates while they had their drink, and then pack the last of the gear away. Then he’d be on the road until dusk. Ancaladar would have mentioned if he was likely to run out of road today, so he knew he wouldn’t, but he knew the road would end in a few days more at best. Then he’d be steering by the sun and the stars and whatever landmarks Tiercel and Ancaladar could provide on their overflights.

He was kneeling on the streambank, setting the last clean dish on the grassy verge, when he felt a sudden sharp blow between his shoulder blades and went sprawling into the water. Fortunately the stream wasn’t that deep, but he inhaled enough water that he came up coughing and choking, blinded by a faceful of mud. He scrubbed it hastily out of his eyes—smearing it everywhere—and spun around. He didn’t know what had hit him, and he’d never forgotten that Tiercel had enemies even if he didn’t.

Kareta was standing on the bank laughing her fool head off.

For a moment Harrier was so furious he couldn’t breathe. Then he took a deep breath. “
Always pick your fights,”
his Da had told him. Of course, his Da had also whaled the living daylights out of him on the few occasions he’d ever picked them with anyone smaller or weaker than he was. Or a girl. And while Harrier doubted very much that Kareta was weaker than he was, she was definitely a girl. And if he chased her, he couldn’t catch her anyway, so he guessed
keeping his head right now would fall under the heading of picking his fights.

He stood in the middle of the stream, thinking all this through—because he didn’t quite trust himself to remember all of it if he got within reach of her. And he thought about being cold and wet and how his back hurt—
she must have kicked me
, he realized. “You’re a bully,” he said slowly, and the last of his hot anger faded. “That’s all you are.”

Whatever reaction she’d been expecting from him, it wasn’t that one. “You look funny,” she said hopefully.

“Yeah, right.” He walked carefully out of the stream and up to the bank. Kareta backed away as he approached, but he ignored her. He picked up the dishes and dropped them back into the basket. The horses regarded him curiously. He was lucky they were placid, well-trained beasts, because if they’d spooked and tried to bolt when he’d gone flying, they could have hurt themselves and smashed up the wagon as well.

He tucked the basket into the back of the wagon, and then backed and turned the team carefully until he could lead them back up to the road.

“You aren’t mad, are you?” Kareta asked, trailing after him.

Harrier stopped. “You know what?” he said. “I was wondering why you were here—well, mostly, why you kept hanging around. And I think it’s because you really don’t have any place else to go. Because if you act this way with everybody, it’s hard to imagine that you’ve got any friends.”

By the time he’d led the team back up to the side of the road, Kareta had vanished again. Tiercel and Ancaladar were already gone—off up into the sky, Harrier guessed. It took him the better part of an hour to unpack the wagon enough to find fresh clothes and a towel, towel himself dry, and pack things up again. His boots were soaked through, so he left them inside the wagon where they’d dry slowly, and put on his camp boots. The rest of his clothes he spread
out over the tops of the hampers on the sides of the wagon to dry as he drove.

H
E DIDN’T SEE
Kareta for the rest of the day. When the shadows started to lengthen, he picked what looked like a good place and pulled the wagon off to the side of the road—he hadn’t seen any other travelers, but that wasn’t any reason to block the road if someone came along—and unhitched the team, and got out their feed buckets, scooped grain into them, and set them out for the horses. A few minutes later, Tiercel and Ancaladar landed.

“You’ve got mud in your hair,” Tiercel said, walking over with Ancaladar’s saddle in his arms. “And you changed your clothes.” He glanced around curiously, obviously looking for Kareta.

“I haven’t seen her,” Harrier said. He ran a hand through his hair, dislodging more flecks of dried river bottom. “She kicked me into the stream after you left, so I kind of had to. Change my clothes, I mean.”

“She did what?” Tiercel said. He sounded shocked.

“Kicked me into the stream,” Harrier repeated, sighing. “I guess she wanted to pay me back for saying she stole the pie. And for refusing to hand over the rest of our lunch.”

“She could have hurt you!” Tiercel said.

“Tyr, I don’t think that even occurred to her,” Harrier said fair-mindedly. “She just wanted to pay me back.”

“What did you do?” Tiercel asked cautiously.

Harrier shrugged—and winced, because it certainly felt as if there was a bruise back there. “Called her a bully. Unicorn or not, people who sneak up on other people and knock them into streams because they don’t get their own way are bullies.”

“And she ran off?” Tiercel asked, looking around again.

“I guess so. If she’s going to pull stunts like that, it’s not like she’d be the best company anyway,” Harrier pointed out. And it wasn’t entirely fair, to his way of thinking, for
Kareta to expect them to feed her when—as far as Harrier knew—she was perfectly capable of finding her own food. And they hadn’t asked for her company in the first place.

With the wagon as fully loaded as it was, they needed to move a number of things before Tiercel could get at the items he needed for the evening’s practice session. Harrier took the opportunity to get out the big brazier, the bedrolls, and a number of the other items they’d need for evening camp, doing his best not to wince and swear, because he’d been sitting for long enough to stiffen up nicely, and moving hurt. At least he didn’t need to bring out the ground tarp—they’d be needing it to sleep on in another sennight or so, but right now they only had to deal with a heavy morning frost, and the ground was still dry. Still, they were heading into winter, and sooner or later the ground would be wet when they stopped to camp and he had no intention of sleeping on wet ground.

When all that was done, he led the horses down to the stream for their drink, taking the bucket he’d need to bring back their own water. He’d hobble the horses when he got back and let them graze, then go and gather wood for the fire while it was still light (only felltimber, since Elunyerin and Rilphanifel had been very insistent that he must never cut down a tree anywhere in the Elven Lands) and get the evening fire going. It was cool enough, now that the sun was setting, that a fire would be welcome, even though Tiercel could provide all the light they needed. When those chores were done, he’d clean the tack. All of those things (along with getting the meal ready, most evenings) usually occupied him until Tiercel was done with his evening’s practice, and by then it was dark, and when Tiercel came back from practicing he was too worn out to do much besides eat and fall into his blankets, and there wasn’t much else to do around the camp at night, really, after he’d cleaned up after the evening meal. If Harrier wanted he could sit up and talk to Ancaladar; Ancaladar said that dragons
did
sleep, but not as often as humans, and when they did sleep, it was usually for a lot longer.
Ancaladar had said, in a sort of offhand fashion, that he was probably going to be awake for the rest of Tiercel’s life, which gave Harrier the creeps, just a little, although it was nice to know that no matter where they were, there’d be somebody awake and on watch.

But assuming he actually intended to read the Books of the Wild Magic, Harrier wondered when he was supposed to do it. And if there was any practicing involved. Not of the Knight-Mage fighting and stuff. He assumed there had to be practicing there. But of the magic and casting spells part. All the wondertales just said that the Wildmages got their Three Books and then they “had” their magic—but of course, none of those stories had been written by Wildmages. And Harrier didn’t feel one bit more magical than he had a sennight ago.

No son of Antarans Gillain was a stranger to hard work, and he’d had plenty of time by now to settle into the routine of setting up camp for the night. Once Harrier got Nethiel and Dulion settled, the longest part of things was always finding wood for the fire, since he could never count on finding some without a long hunt. Some days—if he didn’t have to spend too much time at it—he gathered up some during the midday stop. Of course, today he’d been more than a little distracted….

Thinking about Kareta made Harrier growl with irritation, though it wasn’t her he was irritated with just now. He’d been careless not to at least consider the possibility she might come sneaking up on him. It was true she hadn’t pushed him into the stream the first time, but she’d been happy enough to see him fall in. It was also true that unicorns were Otherfolk, and he certainly couldn’t even begin to imagine how a unicorn would think. But he’d been around Kareta for long enough by the time she’d kicked him into the stream to know, if not what she was really like, then what she wanted him to think she was like. And that person (if it was only an act, and not who Kareta really was) was just the sort of person who’d come sneaking around to pay him back for making her look stupid. Light
knew Harrier’d faced down two-legged bullies who thought exactly that way often enough. He should have expected it.

But you didn’t. Just because she’s a unicorn.
He snorted rudely.
Harrier Gillain, just listen to yourself! True, though. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Prettier than a three-master full-rigged heading out for Deep Ocean. And oh, Light Defend Us, you
can’t
let things like that matter
—
not if you’re going to keep your head on your shoulders, and Tyr’s head on his! Because he says that Fire Woman he keeps dreaming about is beautiful, too, and I’m scared to death she isn’t just a what-you-call-it, a
symbol.
I
think she’s real, and it stands to reason that means we’re going to see her before this is all done. If we live to get that far….

He’d learned his lesson, though—or he hoped he had—and he certainly had an aching back to set the lesson firmly into his mind. He didn’t go too far from the wagon as he looked for kindling, and he kept an eye and an ear open for trouble the whole time he was gathering wood. He was lucky enough to find a whole tree, too—a sapling, really—that had been uprooted in a storm and had fallen against two live trees. It had died—and dried out—in place, and would make fine firewood now. He dragged it, along with the rest of his gatherings, back to the campsite, and used the small axe to help him break the longer branches he’d gathered into short chunks suitable for burning. Of course it would have been easier to start the fire if Tiercel had been there just to point at it, but Harrier had been starting fires with flint and steel most of his life, and it only took him a couple of minutes to strike sparks into tinder and then ignite the smaller twigs. Once the fire was burning, he lit the lanterns—though he didn’t quite need them yet—then quickly chunked the sapling into logs. It was enough wood so that he probably wouldn’t need to go looking for more tomorrow.

All that was left to do was wash his hands and light the tea-brazier, then wrestle the hamper out of the wagon,
since he knew perfectly well that Tiercel would be too tired to help with it when he got back. It was heavy, but he managed. He added a jug of the fruit cordial from Blackrowan Farm to the evening’s provisions—Lanya had said that if you mixed it with hot water, it made a soothing evening drink, and he thought it might be a good thing to try.

In the distance, across the road, he could see the intermittent flashes of light as Tiercel practiced. He was a little more curious about what Tiercel did now than he had been. Tiercel said he was mostly practicing “spells of protection,” and Harrier had no idea of what he meant by that. Whatever it was, apparently it took a lot of practicing.