“Elayeen!” Gawain gasped in mock astonishment, emphasising the three syllables of her name, “By the Teeth, girl, have you no shame?”
She giggled happily. “None. Besides, there are none close enough to hear us.”
Gawain’s pulse quickened and he stared up at her standing on the boardwalk while he tightened the straps holding her cloak to the back of her saddle. “Is your sight clearer this morning then?”
Elayeen nodded. “I can see with greater detail now. Hands have fingers and are no longer simple blobs. Heads have their proper shape too now. Gingerbread men are becoming people of light and shade.”
Gawain held up his right hand, as if in greeting, and waggled his fingers. To his delight, Elayeen laughed. “Stop it, G’wain, people will think you are mad! Or worse, they will think you are taking advantage of your poor blind wife, with her poor broken fingers.”
At once, he snapped his hand down to his side and hurriedly glanced around. Then he chuckled, and after a final check of Elayeen’s packs and saddle, he sighed and climbed the step to stand beside her again, watching the bustle around them.
“If I ask you a question, do you promise not to laugh at me?” he asked quietly.
“No.”
He chuckled again. “You’re impossible.”
“I prefer breathtaking, given a choice.” Elayeen smiled happily. “But what is the question G’wain? I’ll try not to laugh.”
“Well, I suppose that’ll have to do. I was just wondering, with you being able to see as you do, the light inside people?”
“Yes?”
“Can you see in the dark? I mean, could you see me, last night?”
Elayeen burst out laughing and then hastily covered her mouth, blushing furiously and turning her back to the throng.
“What? I mean it, why, what’s so funny?” Gawain protested dumbfounded.
“And you speak to me of shame!” she choked, desperately trying to stifle her laughter and keep hold of her bow at the same time. “G’wain you’re priceless!”
Gawain frowned, utterly confused, and then the penny dropped. “Not like that! I didn’t mean like that! I meant could you see someone in the dark, that’s what I meant! Shush! People are starting to look!”
Alas that only made Elayeen’s giggling worse, her slender shoulders heaving. Gawain’s horror turned to humour, his frown to a smile and then a grin, and then he too chuckled and moved around to stand before his laughing love. He wrapped his arms around her as best he could with Elayeen still holding her bow, and gazed down into those beautiful, unsettling eyes.
Gawain sighed, and for a moment he thought his heart would burst from his breast such was his feeling of pride in her. “I wish…” he began, then stopped, and simply smiled at her.
Her laughter eased, and she beamed happily, and tilted her head slightly. “What, G’wain?”
“Nothing,” he said softly.
“Tell me. Who knows what awaits us on the road?”
“I wish…” he began again, and hesitated, and then said softly, fervently, “I wish we could have but one more moment of throth between us, so you would know, here and now, how much I love you, and how your courage in the face of all that’s dread fills me with such pride.”
She smiled again, and blinked, and cocked her head to the other side. “Silly boy,” she whispered. “I can see it in you now. I think I always have.”
“Ready to proceed when you are, my lord.” Tyrane called down the road from horseback at his position in the vanguard.
Gawain tore his eyes from Elayeen’s, glanced up the road to the captain and then across at Allazar, who nodded. “Very well,” he called back, waving, and with the clattering of hooves and boots on the cobbles of the Jarn road, the group began moving off.
“Come then, my lady, let’s away into the world once more.”
Elayeen, still smiling, allowed Gawain to guide her boot into the stirrup and then nimbly swung herself up into the saddle, settling herself on her horse while Gawain mounted Gwyn.
Gawain kept Elayeen to his right side until they’d cleared the wagons and the Gorians walking alongside them, and then eased ahead so she could draw up on his left, his right arm and the longsword giving her protection on the road. A few moments later, Allazar drew alongside Elayeen’s left, and the three rode side by side behind the head of the column, Tyrane and his two burliest and capable men riding vanguard, the sergeant taking charge of the rearguard.
A pair of riders had been sent ahead by two hours, and Tyrane had deployed his mounted troopers according to Gawain’s instructions. With so many people on foot, it would be a slow journey, quite unlike the hasty sprint across the plains from Ferdan.
Four hours later they paused at a passing-place on the road, a cobbled area each side of the main thoroughfare where larger wagons would have been able to pass around each other, the ruts in the road here frequently filled from heaps of gravel kept for that purpose at the woodland’s edge. Or so they would have been in the past. The ruts worn into the road from countless years of commerce needed no filling now. The troopers broke open crates and barrels, and doled out the meagre supplies to all except Gawain, who was of course content to eat frak once more.
During the group’s slow progress, spirits had been high. The cobbled road had given way to a broad and stony track barely a mile from the outpost, wagon-wheels had settled into the ruts, and horses and men settled into a steady trudging march.
The Callodon troops under Tyrane’s command looked happier to be away from the mountain and Raheen and heading back towards such civilisation as Jarn represented. The Gorians, though they had travelled far on foot already, were so much better fed than they had been, and free, and this seemed to them to make the miles so much lighter and easier to bear.
Allazar had been content to hum a quiet tune to himself along the way, and for a while Gawain was seriously concerned that the wizard had suffered a relapse into the half-world of the circle again, but a few quick glances past his lady eased his mind; Allazar was smiling to himself, happy to be on the road, and apparently content with the world.
Elayeen, though, had been restless with excitement, eyeing the woodland world around them as if for the first time. Her head had flicked this way and that, high and low, and occasionally she’d gasped with pure delight at the birds which flapped twittering and calling in alarm across the road ahead of them. Once, she exclaimed in wonder: “Oh! G’wain is that a fox? There in the bushes!”
Gawain had looked to the side of the track where she pointed, but saw only bushes, and said so, but before he had time to finish the sentence, he caught sight of a familiar red and bushy tail disappearing hastily into the undergrowth. “It was a fox, or so it seemed, behind the bushes,” he confirmed, astonished. Elayeen beamed, and carried on gazing all about her.
Gawain could only wonder what it was she was seeing, and where only recently he had felt ineffable sorrow at the blindness inflicted upon her by the circle, now he was beginning to suspect that the gift was much less of a curse than any of them had first imagined, especially given the look of joy on Elayeen’s face.
Now though, they stood quietly together, the three of them, ahead of the group and slightly north of the passing-place, Gawain with his frak, and his companions with the remains of sandwiches fresh-made that morning.
“Nyummff,” Allazar waved his towards the wagons and then swallowed before continuing, “Look, it seems the ladies in the Jaxon’s party have decided to walk.”
Elayeen stared hard towards the wagons, and then sighed. “Which are the ladies?” she finally asked, softly.
“They stand together in a small group beside the two horses drawing the lead wagon.” Gawain said. “Jaxon stands between them and us, and there are two guardsmen of Callodon standing quietly at the head of the horses to their left, our right.”