"The watcher here," she corrected him. "Watcher."
"Of Krukczy Straz. And you can't bespell them, it only makes them angry."
None of that made sense to his ringing ears. He walked, stumbling on the stones and the roots, and asked finally, because nothing else of his situation made sense, "Why did you rescue me?"
She cast him a shadowed glance and never slowed a step. "I thought you might be glad to be out of there."
"I am." He had a stitch in his side that was only growing worse, never mind the bruises that hurt with every step. "I am grateful." They had started off badly, without names or courtesies; but, granting the complete justice of her displeasure, and the sting of her treating him as a servant, it still seemed foolish to volunteer too much to any stranger, who he was, who his father was, and hence that he might be valuable. He said only, when he had overtaken her again, "My name is Tamas."
"Ela," she said.
"Your name is Ela?" (Evidently it was. She said nothing else.) "I'm very glad to meet you." God, it was ridiculous, chasing the damned girl, trying to observe the courtesies when he could scarcely get a pain-free breath to talk at all. "What do you want me to do?"
"Walk," she said, and pushed a branch aside, that sprang back and caught him in the face.
Outrage only made him dizzier, and shorter of breath. He wiped the tears the grit from the branch had left, kept walking, and promised himself he could leave the surly girl whenever he liked, just let them somewhere find horses and a sense of direction—soon, please the god. The pain in his head had become blinding since the blow across his eyes, every bone end in his body was bruised from the slide down the hill, and he was weak-kneed from want of food.
But just when he thought he could go not a step farther, the space along the shore widened to a moonlit strand of grass, where grazed the promised horses, one dark, one light. Lwi, Nikolai's glass-eyed gray, and Jerzy's little bay mare: he recognized them the moment Lwi lifted his head, and he went and fell on Lwi's warm shoulder with his eyes stinging and a lump in his throat—an old friend in a bad place, Lwi was, his own horse's stablemate, who knew him despite the troll-smell and the dirt, and nosed him in sore ribs, in recollection, he was sure, of smuggled carrots.
"Nothing this time," he murmured shakily, patting Lwi's neck. "Good fellow. How are the legs? Better than mine, I hope. —Skory, good horse." Skory evaded his hand, skittish fool that she was; he remembered why he hated her; and he looked along her side to find the witch girl frowning.
"The saddles are over there," she said, pointing grandly to a brush heap, and he stared at it and at her, out of breath and out of strength, wondering if she even understood that he was doing well to keep his feet.
"I take you do know what to do with them," she said, as if she were far too exalted a lady to deal with horses . . . and he caught a breath and another and found himself moving-he had no idea whether it was anger at her that lent him strength or that he had suddenly found a last reserve somewhere at depth, but he went where she said and found the saddles and all the gear, including Nikolai's bow, lying under brush, on the ground, of course, in the dew and the damp-Fool girl, he thought in growing contempt, and then realized what he had seen when he came up to the horses, that they had not even a tether—no tether, goblins all about, trolls running up and down the riverbank, and they were still waiting where she had left them? That was more evidence of witchcraft than he had seen out of master Karoly in his lifetime. It gave him second and third thoughts about disrespect to the girl, while he flung the brush aside and, staggering, retrieved the tack. If a witch's mere servant could do this much, and expected such great respect for herself, then perhaps master Karoly's sister was someone of immense consequence in this land, the sort of help his father might soon need against what was preparing, so he might do well to keep a civil tongue, saddle the horses for the girl and meet this mistress of hers face to face before he claimed anything about his origins.
So he took Jerzy's mare, Skory, first, adjusted the blanket on her back, took deep breaths until he could bend and snatch the saddle up and fling it on—waited several more, leaning against her side, before he could attempt the girth, that was how scarcely he was managing. But through all of it, the mare at least stood still, better than she had ever done for Jerzy.
Lwi had better manners from the start. Lwi did not suck in wind the way Skory did, Lwi took his bit without fussi-ness: that was the kind of horse Lwi was, besides sure-footed and level-headed; and the witch taking Skory's reins and of course assuming the pretty mare was hers was entirely agreeable to him—he said not a word about Skory's character, only gave the girl a hand up, gave her the reins and showed her how to hold them. The elegant mare was beautiful and sly and fractious—like Jerzy; but she did not go into her accustomed dance, she did not pitch the witchling off her back. Somewhat to his disappointment she stood like a lady; and he went and, with failing strength, got his foot into Lwi's stirrup and flung himself into the saddle.
Through a haze of dark and moonlight, then, he saw Ela ride the mare past him and felt Lwi turn of his own accord, in a dreamlike slowness. Moonlight on the water beside them showed only vague shapes of stones and turbulence. The horses kept to a leisurely walk as if no goblins dared assail them.
"Are we going to your mistress?" he asked.
"As quickly as we can," she answered him.
"To do what?" he asked, but got only silence. "To do what?" he repeated, more loudly, and had no more answer than before.
Damnable rudeness. If he could get to this sister of Ka-roly's, and prove who he was, and tell her what had become of Karoly, she might care what befell her neighbors—but now that he had leisure and bream to think about it, the witch's own land had not fared outstandingly well, if Krukczy Straz was any evidence of her authority. One could suppose matters might be better lower down, that the goblins might be a plague that had turned up on the heights, or the borders, and that Ela's mistress could deal with if she put her mind to it—but would she not, knowing that her brother was due over the mountains, as she must have if she sent this girl to find him—have done something to defend him? —Unless, of course, she had relied on Karoly's own abilities.
For some reason the goblins had quitted the tower-perhaps the girl's mere arrival had confounded them and driven them in retreat, but Ela had been anxious to leave the tower itself, and she had certainly been no help to Karoly, if that had been her mission.
A great many things did not make thorough, sense. He began to take sober account that if he was wrong about following this girl, he could lose himself and leave no warning at all for his father—but if he left her without seeing her mistress, he lost all chance of the help Karoly had supposedly tried to find.
He could hear his brother saying, Brother slow-wits, can't you make up your mind about anything? —But, no, he could not be easy with what he decided, go on or go back. It was never his skill, to take a blind decision and wager others' welfare on it. Doing something required knowing where he was, or who he was dealing with—and his guide and her mistress and Karoly himself were ciphers. The girl might be a graceless shrew, but maybe she was the grand lady she claimed. Maybe she was unaccustomed to riding alone in the woods with strange young men who (he had to admit it) reeked like a troll den. Maybe she thought him some man-at-arms, accustomed to rude orders. Maybe—
In the starlight and the dizzy patterns which forest shadow made of his companion and Jerzy's mare and Lwi's pale neck, it was easy to become foggy-headed. He tried to reason clearly, he tried to maintain a recollection of the way they were going: descending straight along the river into the green land they had glimpsed in the sunlight, he thought, if it was the same stream as ran beside the tower.