Watersmeet (11 page)

Abisina looked away, hiding the relief on her face.

“I should have known, human,” he said as he crawled into the cave. “After all I’ve done for you.”

“All
you’ve
done?” Anger wiped away her relief.

“If not for me, you would have died bleeding and frozen at the bottom of the ravine. Or any number of times on this journey.” He turned his back on her.

“You’ve kept me alive because I’m worth something to you! It was Hoysta who saved me, not you! And the stolen necklace you wear is proof.”

“Stolen!” He reeled around.

“It belonged to my mother! And my father before her!”

“This is dwarf work! Dwarf metal! Consider it a very small payment for all your people have stolen from us.”

“They’re not my people!”

“You’re human, aren’t you? All the same.”

“I’m not the same! I
hate
the Vranians.”

Haret snorted.

“And I wasn’t leaving,” Abisina added. “I thought
you
had left
me
.”

Haret fixed her with a glare. “And left my food and sleeping pelts?”

Abisina said nothing.
Why had it made so much sense before?

“You’re either very stupid or lying. Probably both. I gave my grandmother my word that I would keep you safe. But what would a human understand of honor?” Haret threw his rabbits on the floor and brushed past Abisina to get his bag.

She stood still as her anger ebbed away.

Haret fished out the pot. “It’s almost dawn. The snow is deep, but a warm wind is blowing from the south. We’ll stay here tonight and tomorrow while the snow melts. Leave tomorrow night. If you still insist on coming.” He picked up a rabbit and began to skin it with sharp strokes.

“I wasn’t leaving,” Abisina said again.

Haret gutted the rabbit in silence.

That night, Abisina was startled awake again. She didn’t know why until she heard—

“The Obrium! The Obrium!”

In the dim glow of the fire’s coals, Abisina could just make out Haret writhing under his pelts. “Eee-aaah!” he screamed, an eerie, panicked cry.

“Haret!” she said, but the writhing continued.

“No, I’ll get it! I’m almost there! Just a little farther!”

“Haret!” Abisina yelled as she crawled out of bed. “Wake up!” She tried to pull the pelts off him, but he hung on.

“No! Just a little bit more! I can
feel
it! On the other side of this wall!”

“Haret! It’s Abisina!” She yanked at the pelts again and heard leather ripping.

He flipped the pelts off his head. His hand was caught between his neck and Sina’s chain. He hastily pulled it out and hunched his shoulders to keep her from the necklace. “Get away!” His voice was high, his eyes blank.

Abisina reached forward to shake him out of the dream that still possessed him, but he shrieked as her hand neared him.

“You can’t have it!”

“You’re sleeping, Haret! It’s a dream!”

Her words finally seemed to reach him and he shivered, focusing on her for the first time. “Wh—what is it?” He sounded like a frightened child.

“You were dreaming,” Abisina said gently. “About the Mines.”

“Oh,” he said, his fearful eyes hardening against her. Without another word, he wrapped himself in his pelts, lay down, and turned his back to her.

Abisina crawled into her sleeping roll, and her flying heartbeat slowed. Across the room, Haret’s breathing continued quick and shallow as if he, too, couldn’t settle back into sleep. Once, Abisina sat up to speak to him, groping for words of comfort. But what could she say to Haret? He must have sensed her movement, because he pulled the skins more tightly around him and rolled farther away from her. She lay down and forced herself to sleep.

As Haret had predicted, the next morning the sun’s bright rays, coupled with the warm wind, had melted most of the snow. Abisina spent part of the morning sitting in the mouth of the cave, the sun on her face, while Haret sewed up the rent in his pelts, studiously avoiding her gaze. After lunch, Abisina took a nap and by the time Haret woke her, there were only patches of wet snow left on the ground.

“It’s time,” he said. He had already packed his bag and was waiting.

As Abisina rolled her pelts, she surprised herself as much as him by saying, “I can take my bag again.”

Haret raised an eyebrow but dug it out. He handed it to Abisina, his eyes on hers. She returned his stare without flinching. Stowing away her pelts, she placed the bag on her shoulder as nonchalantly as possible. She worried that she would cry out in pain when it came to rest on her sore, but it had healed enough.

“Ready,” she said and followed Haret out of the cave.

Each evening after that, Abisina asked Haret for more to carry—first her mug, then her spoon and bowl, then a portion of moles and cheese. By switching her bag from shoulder to shoulder, she managed to keep both from being rubbed raw. Over the next week, she asked Haret for a rest less and less often, and to slow down, almost never. She usually woke before he had to shake her.

And there was one other difference: Haret stopped asking if she were going to give up.

When the light afforded a view, Abisina was awed by the beauty of the country they traveled through: hillsides carpeted in every shade of green; deep, icy lakes reflecting the rising moon; streams leaping over rocks into mossy pools; meadows dotted with white and yellow wildflowers; and rocky slabs covered with gray lichen. She had no idea the land could offer such variety. One clear morning, just before they found their cave, Abisina climbed a rise and stared back at the sweep of the land below her feet. Somewhere down there, far in the hazy distance, Hoysta tended her rabbits and badgers. And beyond that stood Vranille, Vranhurst, and the other Vranian villages. What was happening there now? Had Charach convinced the people to form an army? Or had they seen his true nature? She thought of her mother’s final words to her: Tell him about Charach. Tell your father what happened here.

Abisina turned away. Without realizing it, she had made a decision during the months with Hoysta and on this journey with Haret.
That world doesn’t concern me now
. She faced north. Toward Watersmeet. And life free from Charach and Vran.

One night Abisina noticed that Haret had relaxed his vigilance in covering their tracks. “We’re in dwarf territory,” he explained. Abisina waited to be taken to another cave like Hoysta’s—she even looked forward to it, eating anything besides smoked mole and badger cheese, sleeping in a bed—but Haret never brought her near the other dwarves. One evening she woke to find him drinking from a new water skin, and she knew he had visited the local dwarves while she slept. She tried to ignore the sting of being excluded—reminding herself that she would hate being stuck in a cave with a bunch of strange, dirty dwarves.

Before they set out, Haret had a warning for Abisina: “A rough band of centaurs has started raiding these parts, according to my cousins. Between here and a place called Giant’s Cairn. They particularly like
humans
.”

Now their pace really slowed as Haret took great care to keep their trek hidden. They built no fires, walked through streams when they could, and crisscrossed their own tracks to confuse any pursuers. Sometimes Haret paused to study tracks that were invisible to Abisina. Some, she couldn’t miss. A few times they came upon clearings trampled flat around the remains of huge fires, the bones of large animals strewn about. “Cannibals!” Haret cried once, staring at the bones. At Abisina’s questioning look, he explained, “Centaurs can communicate with hoofed animals: deer, moose—even wild pig. But these centaurs are
eating
deer.” He spat in disgust, before moving on.

Haret would often yank Abisina behind a cluster of trees when his acute hearing told him something was coming. Most often it was a bear, a wolf, or a stag, but once, when there was little ground cover to hide in, Haret insisted that a large group of centaurs was heading their way before Abisina could hear anything.

“We have to hide!” He scanned the brush for anything big enough to cover even one of them. Abisina’s instincts took over, and instead of looking down, she began studying the trees. Branches, knots, even slight swellings in the trunk were all she needed to climb into the canopy above the sightline of the centaurs.

There!
Straight ahead was a pine with enough bulges to get her to the first branch. Just in time. Now even she could hear the rustling of branches and the thud of hooves.

“Human!” Haret was at her elbow. “I think there’s cover enough for you there!” He pointed to some brush.

“You take it! I’ll go up!” And she scrambled up the trunk before Haret could react. As she reached the first row of branches, she saw Haret slip into the brush just as a centaur came into sight. She risked one more swing upward to give her a little more shelter. She wasn’t as high as she’d like to be, but any more movement would catch the centaurs’ attention. From her perch she watched the herd canter past, only a pace from Haret’s hiding spot. She stared at their powerful haunches and broad shoulders thick with muscle, their tangled tails, matted winter coats, the women’s bare breasts, and the men’s snarled beards. Their foreheads were heavy, their eyes deep-set. They didn’t speak but there was a menace about them, their heads swinging from side to side, searching for signs of prey.

I need a bow!
Abisina reminded herself to badger Haret for the sinew she knew he had in his bag.

After the centaurs passed, Abisina let out her breath. But neither she nor Haret moved for a long time. When she climbed back down, Haret was waiting for her, an amazed expression on his face. “Going up! I never would have thought of it! And it’s a good thing you did, human, because you would have stuck out like a gem in coals down here. None of this cover was enough for someone as poor at blending in as you are!”

Abisina decided to take the compliment and ignore the insult.

Haret refused to give Abisina the sinew to make a bow, however. “I swore I would protect you, human!” seemed to be his only real argument. And it was true that whenever they were on the move, Haret stayed within several feet of her. But one evening, as they broke camp, a rabbit dashed past the entrance to the cave and Haret went after it. “Stay where you are,” he shouted over his shoulder as he drew an arrow from his quiver. “I’ll have this one in the shake of a mole’s tail!”

Abisina sighed and sank to the ground.
I could have it in less than “the shake of a mole’s tail,”
she thought.

She sat watching the full moon rise over the darkening trees, but then something thrashed in the underbrush opposite where Haret had disappeared. She scrambled to her feet.
Centaurs?
Grabbing their bags, Abisina darted back into the mouth of the cave. She needed a weapon! A dead branch lay nearby. It wouldn’t do much, but it was all she had. She grabbed it and crouched in the cave’s shadows, ready to use her club on anything that moved.

She had never seen anything like the three figures that lumbered into the small clearing before the cave. Horns longer than her arm protruded from heavy, bony brows over wide-set eyes. Their faces were all nose, ending in fat, wet nostrils that belched steam in the cold air. The moonlight gleamed off hulking shoulders, massive legs, and thick arms. They had the heads of bulls and the bodies of men, their limbs and chests covered with thick hair. Abisina could hear their teeth grinding as their malicious eyes raked their surroundings.

“Why have you stopped?” a thin, grating voice said from the darkness behind the creatures. A smaller figure stepped into the moonlight—a human woman, stooped with age, carrying a gnarled staff. She looked tiny, frail, with strings of tangled hair, but she spoke to the bull-headed men as if they were her inferiors.

“Smell,” one of them grunted.

“Ignore it. Keep moving.” She prodded the back of one of the beasts with her staff, and it snorted and ran a few steps. The other two followed, herded by the threat of the staff, and crashed into the forest.

When Haret returned, he found Abisina studying the tracks, trying to make sense of what she had seen. He dropped the rabbit that he’d been holding up in triumph. “What is it? What did you see?”

“I don’t know.” Abisina shook her head to dislodge the image. “They had heads like bulls—horns and wide noses. Tiny eyes.”

“Men with bulls’ heads? Minotaurs?” Haret whispered the last word. “My grandmother told me stories, but I thought—they were just stories.” He stared at the tracks, noticing the prints of the hag. “And the human?”

“An old woman. She controlled them somehow, driving them before her with a staff, off to the south. Haret,” she added, “I
need
a bow.”

For once, he seemed to think about it. Then he picked up a handful of dirt and muttered, “Minotaurs!” Then louder: “Well, our way lies to the north, and I’ll thank the Earth if we see no more of those beasts!” He rubbed the dirt over his hands before letting it filter through his fingers.

For days after seeing the minotaurs, they slogged through a steady rain. Remembering Vranille’s searing drought, Abisina relished the water running down her face, into her ears, and down her neck. But as the rain continued day after day, she thought she would go mad from the wet. Her feet and hands were wrinkled and pale; at night, her sleeping pelts were sodden; her under-shirt and leggings clung to her uncomfortably; the dried moles became stringy and glistened with a white sheen.