She kept her eyes on the road, snowflakes dusting her flushed countenance. “Indeed, sir, the portion of your face that I can see resembles that of a man I once knew—a monk of marginal piety and excessive interest in matters he had forsworn. I would not be surprised to see his habit uninhabited.”
“Thank all gods that men grow wiser as days pass.” I could smell her even in the cold…fennel and lavender and leather. But for the snow, one might have imagined us on a pleasure outing in happier times.
Impelled by dreary wisdom, I left Elene and dropped back to ride in the fourth rank for a while, sharing curses of weather and Harrowers with a new-bearded youth who rode as if soul bonded to his mount. The weather worsened by the hour, blowing snow and increasingly cold. We passed several villages burnt to ash. Other cots gaped open to the weather, perhaps one in five showing signs of habitation. In the distance, dark shapes—wolves or wild dogs—loped across the snow-covered fields, which did naught to soothe our unhappy horses.
Gram rode several ranks behind me, his cloak and hood bundled about him. At every stop I tried to draw him aside, hoping he might hint at what use the cabal would make of my grandfather’s story, but we were able to exchange only a few empty words. The warlords demanded his attendance. His bottomless well of facts about Navronne’s history fueled the lords’ never-ending arguments of politics and war. By evening, the rigors of the journey had sapped all conversation.
We sheltered that night in a burnt-out inn, its broken walls blocking the wind. I maneuvered a seat next to Elene as the company shared out hard bread and bean soup. “The boy and the Scholar,” I mumbled into my bread. “Safe?”
She bobbed her head over her soup.
“And the book?”
Elene turned to the iron-gray Thanea Zurina, who sat on her right. “No matter how difficult the journey, I’m happy my father chose to leave Palinur,” she confided. “When one sees both Temple priestesses and Karish practors deserting the place, one must think the gods themselves have given up on it. With so many clerics, the roads south should be safe enough for children and valuables!”
I smiled and drained my bowl. Thalassa had book, boy, and Scholar and was taking them south.
On the next morning, once we persuaded the horses to move out of their huddle, four of the seven lords split off and headed west on the Ardran high road, taking all the wagons and two-thirds of the soldiers. I had caught nary a glimpse of Brother Victor, but assumed he traveled with them. The rest of us, perhaps twenty in all, continued on the less-traveled way that led south past Gillarine toward Caedmon’s Bridge. We kept a slow, steady pace, stopping only to water the horses or pick ice from their hooves. Just after midday, one of our scouts reported a disciplined cadre of orange-blazed Harrowers bearing down on us, he said, like Magrog’s chariots of doom. We spurred our mounts and fled.
For a day and a night of driving snow and merciless cold, we forced our way southward across rolling, frost-clad barrens of dead fields and vineyards. Every time we believed we had shaken the pursuit and slowed to ease the strain on our mounts, scouts raced from the rear with the news that they had come up on us again. Fifty Harrowers, the men said, led by a squat, ugly man with a face very like a dog. Voushanti forbade me to go back with the scouts to confirm that he was Sila Diaglou’s henchman—one of Boreas’s executioners. The warlords were spoiling for a fight, but the lord in the steel cap agreed with Voushanti that Prince Osriel would wish neither his neutrality compromised nor his noble supporters slaughtered in a useless confrontation with lunatics.
The relentless pace and ferocious weather took a toll on all of us, but most especially Gram. The cold flayed him. Skin gray, his features like drawn wire, he rode with back bent and head dropped low to deflect the wind. At noontide on the third day of our flight, when we stopped in a snow-drowned glen and scattered grain for the beasts, he clutched his mount’s mane and whispered hoarsely that he’d best remain where he was unless Prince Osriel’s pureblood could magically transport him from the saddle and back into it again. Stearc pressed him to drink some medicament from an amber flask, but he waved it away. “I’d rather have my wits,” he croaked. “I can hold until we find shelter. All the way home if need be.”
We had little prospect of shelter. The towns of Cressius and Braden had refused to open their gates to us. No village had defenses enough to withstand a Harrower assault while we slept. Everyone was exhausted—save perhaps Thanea Zurina—and we’d had three horses pull up lame that morning. I feared for Gram’s life if we didn’t ease up. And if the Harrowers took Stearc, Elene, and Gram—saints forbid—what would become of the lighthouse cabal or their hopes of appeal to the Danae? Not an hour later, a solution presented itself on the horizon.
“We divide our forces,” I said, sketching a map in the snow. “While a few of us lure our pursuers into Mellune Forest, most will remain out of sight at the forest boundary. There’s good cover and Lord Voushanti is very skilled at…hiding…people for short periods of time. Once we’ve got the Harrowers into the wood, the rest of you can continue on the road south at a more reasonable pace…stay alive…”
Even Aurellia’s imperial road builders had declared Mellune Forest impassable. A snarled swath of beeches, pines, and scrub, inhospitable Mellune traversed a jagged ridge that split Ardra into the wine-growing plateaus of the west and the dry, rock-strewn grazing lands to the east. Its unstable landforms, altered by frequent avalanches and raging floods, provided no reliable markers for guides. Except, perhaps, for a Cartamandua.
Using my bent to devise a route, I could divert and delay our pursuers, keep them on a short leash while getting them thoroughly lost in the wood. After a suitable time, I would abandon them to find their own way out of trackless Mellune, and lead my companions off to rejoin our company for the remainder of our journey to Evanore.
I thought Voushanti would split his hauberk. “You’ve no leave to go off on your own,” he snapped, when I stopped to take a breath. “Prince Osriel—”
“—would not wish Thanea Zurina, Thane Stearc, or Thane Gar’Enov’s only son and heir to fall captive to Harrowers,” said Gram hoarsely. “Will you tell us that a single pureblood has more value to the Duc of Evanore than three of his warlords? If so, then offer us a better plan. Even if you leave me to rot at the roadside as you ought”—scarlet spots stained the poor fellow’s pale cheeks—“you’ll be but fourteen men and two women against fifty. And the scouts say these are no rabble, but Sila Diaglou’s disciplined fighters.”
The mardane had no answer. The snow kicked up by the onrushing Harrowers swirled on the stormy horizon. Unwilling to allow me off on my own, Voushanti insisted on accompanying me.
Faster than a frog could take a fly, I was kneeling in the snow, pressing my hands to the frozen earth, and releasing magic through my fingers to seek out the beginnings of our route. When the guide thread took clear shape in my head, I sat back on my heels and looked up at Gram and Voushanti standing over me.
“I don’t like this, pureblood,” said Voushanti. His wide hands flexed and fisted. The red core of his mutilated eye pulsed like coals. A red crease at the corner of his mouth looked like blood. “Only fools split their forces.”
“Complain to Prince Osriel,” I said. “I won’t see these people—his people—run to ground.”
The mardane stomped away toward the gully where Stearc, Elene, and the rest had taken cover. His three warriors awaited Voushanti and me at the forest boundary. Only the secretary lagged behind.