She walked all morning in a haze of growing discomfort as the cold grew worse and her cut hand throbbed. Twice she stopped at berry thickets and ate as much as she could hold and took more of the fruit with her pouched in the tail of her shirt. A little after the sun reached zenith she came to a small stream; with the expenditure of will and much patience combined with quick hands, she scooped out two unwary trout, then stripped and used the sand collected around the stones in the streambed to scrub herself clean, she even let down her hair and used the sand on that though she wasn’t too sure of the result and never managed to get all the grit washed out of the tangled mass. After she pounded some of the dirt out of her clothing and spread it to dry over a small bushy conifer, she cooked the trout on a sliver of shale and finished off the berries. The sun was warm and soothing, the stream sang the knots out of her soul and even the cold seemed to loose its hold on head and chest. Her shirt and trousers were still wet when she finished eating, so she stretched out on her stomach on a long slant of granite that jutted into the stream and lay with her head on her crossed arms, her aching eyes shut.
The sun had vanished behind the trees when she woke. She yawned, went still. Something resilient and rather warm was pressed against her side. Warily she eased her head up until she could look over her shoulder. A large snake, she couldn’t read the kind in the inadequate view she had, lay in irregular loops on the warm stone, taking heat from it and her. Its head was lifting, she could feel it stirring as it sensed the change in her. She summoned concentration, licked her lips and began whistling a two-note sleepsong, the sound of it hardly louder than the less constant music of the stream, on and on, until the snake lowered its head and the loops of its body stretched and loosened. She threw herself away from it and curled onto her feet, her heart fluttering, her breath coming quick and shallow. The snake reared its black head, seemed to stare at her, split red tongue tasting the air. For a moment snake and woman held that tense pose, then the snake dropped its head and flowed from the stone into the water and went swimming off, a ripple of black, black head lifted. She dropped her shoulders and sighed, weariness and sickness flooding over her again. She pulled her trousers and shirt off the baby fir and shook them out more carefully than she would have before the snake: Shivering with a sudden chill she strapped on her knives, pulled on her shirt and trousers, swung the long double belt about her and buckled it tight. She checked about the rock, collected odds and ends she’d emptied from her pockets when she washed her clothes, went on her knees and drank sparingly from the stream, then started on. There was at least an hour left before sundown and she might as well use it.
For seven days she moved inland, gathering food as she went, enough to fend off hunger cramps and keep her feet moving up around down as she patiently negotiated ravines and circled impossible bramble patches or brush too thick to push through, up around down. It was summer so the rains when they came were quick to pass on and the nights were never freezing though the air could get nippy around dawn. By the end of those seven days she was on the lower slopes of mountains that, were beginning to shift away from the inlet, moving ever deeper into the great oak forest, walking through a brooding twilight with unseen eyes following her. The ground was clear and easy going except for an occasional tricky root that broke through the thick padding of old leaves. There were a few glades where one of the ancient oaks had blown over and left enough room for vines and brush to grow, but not many; getting food for herself was hard and getting wood to cook it would have been harder if she hadn’t decided to dispense with fire altogether. As soon as she stepped into that green gloom, she got the strong impression that the trees wouldn’t take to fire and (though she laughed at her fancies, as much as she could laugh with the persistent and disgusting cold draining her strength) would deal harshly with anyone burning wood of any kind here, even down deadwood. She spent an hour or so that night scooping wary trout from a stony stream, then gutted them and ate them raw. And was careful to dig a hole and bury the skins, bones and offal near the roots on one of the trees. The next morning she went half an hour upstream, got herself another fish and ate that raw too and buried what she didn’t eat. Urged on by the trees who weren’t hostile exactly, just unwelcoming, she hurried through that constant verdant twilight, walking as long as her legs held out before she stopped to eat and sleep.
Late afternoon on the seventh day she stopped walking and listened, finding it difficult to believe her ears. Threading through the soughing of the leaves and the guttural creaks from the huge limbs she heard a steady plink plink plink. It got gradually louder, turned into the familiar dance of a smith’s hammer. The ground underfoot got rockier, the trees were smaller, aspen and birch and myrtle mixed with the oak and the sunlight made lacy patterns on the earth and in the air around her. Even her cold seemed to relent.
She came out of the trees and stood looking down into a broad ravine with a small stream wandering along the bottom. It was an old cut, the sides had a gentle slope with thick short grass like green fur. The sound of the hammering came from farther uphill, around a slight bend and behind some young trees.
She walked around the trees, moving silently more from habit than because she felt it necessary. He had his back to her, working over something on an anvil set on an oak base. It was an openair forge, small and convenient in everything but location. Why was he out here alone? His folk might be around the next curve of the mountain, but she didn’t think so, there’d be some sign of them, dogs barking, cattle noises, she knew the Finger Vale folk had cattle, shouts of children, a thousand other sounds. None of that. He wore a brief leather loincloth, a thong about his head to keep thick, dark blond hair out of his eyes, and a heavy leather apron, nothing more. She watched the play of muscles in his back and buttocks, smiled ruefully and touched her hair. You must look like one of the Furies halfway long a vengeance trail. She touched her arms, the knives were in place, loose enough to come away quickly but not loose enough to fall out; she unbuttoned her cuffs and turned them back, a smith was generally an honest man not overly given to rape, but she’d lost her trusting nature a long way back and the circumstances were odd. A last breath, then she walked around where he could see her.
He let the hammer fall a last time on the object he was shaping (it seemed to be a large intricate link for the heavy chain that coiled at his feet) and stood staring at her, gray green eyes widening with surprise. “Tissu, anash? Opop’erkrisi? Ti’bouleshi?” He had a deep musical voice, even though she didn’t understand a word, the sound of it gave her a pleasurable shiver.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Do you speak the kevrynyel?”
“Ah.” He made a swift secret warding sign and brushed the link off the anvil to get it away from her prying eyes. “Trade gabble,” he said. “Some. I say this, who you, where you come from, what you wish?”
“A traveler,” she said. “Off a ship heading past your coast. Its captain saw a way of squeezing more coin out of me; after a bit of rape he was going to sell me the next port he hit. I had a guard, but the lout got drunk and let them cut his throat. Not being overenchanted by either of the captain’s intentions, I went overside and swam ashore. Aaahmmm, what I want… A meal of something more than raw fish, a hot bath, no, several baths, clean clothing, a bed to sleep in, alone if you don’t mind my saying it, and a chance to earn my keep a while. I do some small magics, my father was a scholar of the Rukha Nagg. Mostly I make music. I had a daroud, the captain has that now, but I can make do with most anything that has strings. I know the Rukha dance tunes and the songs of many peoples. If there’s the desire, I can teach these to your singers and music makers. I cannot sew or embroider, spin or weave, my mother died before she could teach me such things and my father forgot he should. And, to be honest, I never reminded him. There anything more you want to know?”