"The weather-glass," Karoly was calling over his shoulder as grooms at the foot of the steps were boosting his armored weight into the saddle. "Don't forget the weather-glass, I showed Yuri how to read it—"
Their father called back, "Be off or you'll be here for harvest. —And mind, listen to advice, master Karoly!"
"—have to keep the water up to level!" Karoly shouted back, while Tamas tucked his be-ribboned prize into his saddle pack before mounting. "Be careful!" Yuri wished him, with worry on his face.
"Use your heads!" their father bellowed across the yard.
Bogdan, ahorse, laughed and waved, already turning away; "Good-bye!" Yuri was shouting, and with his foot in the stirrup, Tamas had an overwhelming impulse to glance back toward his parents and his home as if—as if, it seemed, he had only this last moment to fix everything in memory, everything about this place ...
But Bogdan was riding for the gate with Karoly and Nikolai, leaving no time for moon-gazing, and he hit the saddle as his horse joined the milling spill outward, overtaking Bogdan and the horse his own was most used to following. Hooves rumbled on the bridge, thumped onto the solid earth of the road, and the voices and the cheering grew faint. When he looked back a third time, home was gray, forbidding walls and a last pale glimpse of festive well-wishers within the gates, but no sight of Yuri, who was probably sulking. The day seemed perilous, full of omens; yet there was nothing he could put a thought around, as master Karoly would say. As if—
As if he were on the brink of his own forever after—or maybe only of growing up. It was a slice of his whole year this journey might take, bound where there might be bandits, or trolls. And he had given everything away.
He asked himself why now. Yuri would only lose the things—Yuri was fourteen, still careless, and could Yuri know the value of a broken toy horse and a bird's nest? Yuri would toss the keepsakes into the midden and use the painted box to hold his fishing weights.
But fields surrounded them now. The horses ran out then-first wind and settled to a steady pace as friends sorted out their riding groups. In a little more there was no sign or sight of the keep at all, only orchards on either side, and a dark straggle of wild woods in front of them. The day had settled to a steady creaking of leather and jingling of harness and armor—as life would be for days and days, and probably more of that than of meeting bandits.
And they were not strangers he was riding with, they were mostly Bogdan's friends; and a few of his father's men. Bogdan might be in command for appearance's sake, but master Nikolai was in charge where it came to trolls—not to mention master Karoly, who could tilt any odds to Nikolai.
As the day passed, it felt like any ordinary hunting-party, forgetting the armor and the swords and master Karoly's presence with them: the jokes and gibes were the same, older men testing the younger ones—in which, being youngest and a fair target, he made no jokes, only defended himself. He could trade gibes with his lord brother, if he chose, which the others only rarely dared—
But he would not do that in public. Not in front of Bogdan's friends. Bogdan was anxious about having him along: Bogdan was always anxious about his wit in front of witnesses, and generally left him alone: by Bogdan's example, he supposed, so did Bogdan's friends, although he was a fair target on certain points, like girls and hunting, and doubtless had a reputation for glum, dull silence.
'Keep a leash on Bogdan,' indeed. Only because he was a weight on his brother, and knew court proprieties and not to set his elbows on the table.
And maintaining Bogdan's good humor in this company meant calling down no untoward attention on himself, making no mistakes and not becoming the butt of jokes. Of Bogdan's friends, Filip was amiable enough. Of the grown men, master Karoly was safe, even master Nikolai. But Jerzy— lord Sun, who could deal with Jerzy, elegant master Barb-in-everything? Or Michal, who was still smarting about his horse and the apple baskets?
Apples, Jerzy recalled at every opportunity. Michal was frowning, dark as the thunderclouds that shaded their road, and making shorter and shorter retorts.
In that way they passed from fields to occasional thicket. It rained, a sudden downpour, and they rode under rain-dripping branches of the deeper woods — ("Where's weather-witching?" the grumble was heard then in the ranks. "Our own wizard along, and we're soaked the first day out. Wake up, master Karoly!")
But the air held a clean fresh scent the rest of the day; Jerzy wearied of apples; and they camped in a charcoaler's clearance as the trail grew too dim for safety, with a fire of wood and leftover lumps of charcoal.
Then everyone broke out the drink and the packets of honeyed sweetmeats, fresh baked bread and cheese and sausages, all the rich food that was bound to go bad in a few days, and shared it around—"Oh, ho!" Bogdan said, as Tamas offered the cake, "that's not cook's work, is it?"
"I think she meant it for you," Tamas said, trying to hand it to him. But Bogdan waved it off— "I'm sure it's yours," Bogdan said. "Keeping secrets, are we, brother?"
"Many," he retorted shortly, and glanced down, for fear of the cake becoming as notorious as apples.
But in fact, the plump maid's spice cake was delightful, and, sharing it around, and with the men not too wickedly asking who the mysterious sweetheart was, he found himself thinking she had been somewhat pretty: the gatewarden's second daughter, if he had his girls sorted out.
And not even an impossible match for lord Stani's second son, although his mother would hold out for (he shuddered) Jerzy's hot-tempered younger sister, or lazy third-cousin Kataryzna, lord Sun save him. A wife was another prospect that came with growing up and riding with the men. All too soon, someone else's decision was going to arrive in his life with a clutter of baggage, disarranging his quarters, his habits, his days, his holidays, and his time to himself. And while spice cake was a benefit, the loss of privacy was not.
"Don't mind if I do," master Nikolai said, taking a chunk. "Mmm."
Master Karoly meanwhile had strayed off about the fringes of the clearing, among the trees. Nikolai's eyes were on him. So then were Bogdan's.
"Master Karoly," Bogdan called out as Karoly wandered further into shadow, but the old man showed no disposition to come back.
"It's going to be that way," Bogdan muttered, and elbowed Filip on his other side. "Filip, —god, —go watch him. Don't trouble him, but don't let him find a bear out there."
Filip swore wearily, got up and took his sword and his piece of cake with him, while master Nikolai washed his mouthful down with a long drink from his flask.
"Trolls aren't much for fires," Nikolai said, and finding every eye on him, went on with satisfaction: "They're not much for wizards either. The one I killed, now, that was the year a whole band of them came in on one of our farmers, killed the family, him, his wife, her brother, all the livestock. We found just the bones left of most of them. Dreadful winter. When we tracked them up into the mountains they charged right into the firelight and tried to make off with our horses. Either they thought we'd be easy as the farmers or they were that hungry. Trolls have a prodigious appetite."
"What did you do?" Jozef wanted to know. Jozef was new in the hold, an exchange from maternal uncle Ludwik's hold at Jazny-brook. Tamas and Bogdan and every youngster in me household had begged the tale every winter, how Nikolai had grabbed the chief troll's tail and cut it off, but Jozef was a new audience.
"... bear-sized, these were. Big as a bear at least. You could take them for bears, except the faces, except the tail. It's long and naked as a rat's; and if you can grab that, you've got him. Except then you have to decide what to do with him."