He stared up at the ceiling beams of the cottage, listening to the soft roll of distant thunder through the shuttered windows, the patter of rain on the woodshingled roof. He hoped it was ordinary precipitation. Ten days earlier a stinking black rain had fallen, and whatever it had borne in its drops had fouled the soil. Soon after, the barley crop had begun to wither and the autumn vegetables- especially the pumpkins-had browned on the vine. They’d done what they could to minimize the loss, but the whole village keenly felt the absence of a greenpriest of Chauntea. The villagers’ own prayers to the Earth Mother, whispered in small, secret gatherings, as if in fear the Shadovar in their distant cities and floating citadel would somehow overhear, went unanswered. Winter would bring hardship for them all. Another black rain would ruin the harvest altogether.
He and Elle would have to put up as much food as they could before first snow.
And that meant he would have to risk a hunt.
The thought of it sped his heart, although he wasn’t sure if that was out of fear of what he might encounter on the plains or out of fear of Elle’s reaction.
She lay beside him, her form covered in the tattered quilts, her breathing the deep, regular intake of sleep.
Moving slowly, so as not to awaken her, he swung his legs off of the strawstuffed mattress and sat on the side of the bed. He tried to squelch a cough but only half managed. Elle did not stir.
He sat there for a time, his bare feet flat on the cold wood floor, and waited for wakefulness. The damp air summoned the aches that lurked in his joints and muscles, and he massaged first one shoulder, then another. Age was turning him brittle.
He tried to swallow away the foul taste of morning but could not summon the spit. He grabbed the tin cup on the bedside table, swished the leftover tea, and drank it down. Cold and bitter, like the morning.
He rubbed the back of his neck and considered the one-room cottage, lit faintly in the glow of the hearth’s embers: furniture he’d made from the straight, dark limbs of broadleaf trees, bowls and cups and pans that had served three generations. He tried to imagine their baby crawling on the floor, but could not quite do it. He tried to imagine how they would provide for the baby and could not quite do that, either.
Elle’s pregnancy had been a surprise to them both.
Gerak had resigned himself to childlessness long before. Ten seasons of marriage had produced not a single pregnancy, so they had assumed one or both of them was sterile. At the time, Gerak had thought it just as well. The world seemed too dark for children.
And then Elle had told him, her voice quaking.
“I think I’m with child, Gerak.”
The joy he’d felt had surprised him, as if the child were a key to a locked room inside him that held happiness, that held possibility. In a moment, the stakes of his life had been raised-a child would rely on him.
The realization terrified him.
He wondered if they should leave Fairelm. Many of their friends and neighbors had already abandoned the village-the Milsons and Rabbs the most recent. They had braved the darkness, the Shadovar, and the Shadovar’s creatures, and made for the sun. He didn’t know if they’d gone west for Daerlun or north for the Dales. He wasn’t sure it mattered. War or the threat of war seemed everywhere in Sembia. The big cities were the sites of musters, the borders were the sites of battles, and the villages and towns in between were left to fend for themselves. He didn’t know what to do.
Elle was still able to travel, and they owned a wagon, a pack horse. They could sell their remaining chickens, gather up their goods, and head northeast. Gerak knew how to handle a blade and was matchless with his bow. Maybe they could avoid the soldiers, and Gerak could protect them from the creatures that prowled the plains.
He tried to coax another drop of tea from the cup. Nothing. He tried to coax from himself the will to leave. Nothing.
Leaving seemed too dangerous, and felt too much like surrender, like a betrayal, and neither was in him. He had been raised in the cottage, as had his father and grandfather before him. And despite the perpetual shadow that covered Sembia, despite the dire creatures that prowled the countryside, despite the sometimes harsh rule of the Shadovar, his father and grandfather had managed to eke out a living from the land. They had taken pride in it.
And so did he.
He hadn’t always. He’d thought a farmer’s life contemptible in his youth, and had run off to serve in one of the Shadovar’s many wars. He’d killed more than a dozen men with his bow, but only one, the last, with his blade. Killing felt different up close. Gerak had seen his reflection in the dying man’s eyes and that had been all he wanted of war ever again.
He ran a hand through his hair-it was getting long-and scratched at the three-day beard that covered his cheeks. He exhaled, ready at last to start another sunless day. As he started to rise, Elle’s voice broke the quiet and stopped him.
“I’m awake,” she said.
He sat back down. He knew her tone well enough to understand that her thoughts had probably veered close to his own. She, too, was worried about the future. He put his hand on the rise of her hip.
“You’ve been awake this whole time?”
She rolled over and looked up at him. Her skin looked less pale in the light of the embers. Her long, dark hair formed a cloud on the bolster. Under the quilt, she had one hand on her belly, which was just beginning to swell with their child.
“The rain awakened me hours ago. I started worrying for the crop and then my mind whirled and I couldn’t fall back asleep.”
“Try not to worry. We’ll manage. Are you cold?”
Without waiting for an answer, he rose, walked across the cool floor, and threw two logs onto the embers. The logs caught flame almost immediately and he returned to the bed and sat. She had not moved.
“Are you worried?” she asked.
He knew better than to offer her a falsehood. “Of course I am. I worry about how we’ll feed ourselves and the baby, mostly. But then I remind myself that my parents endured difficult years, too, especially after I left to fight, and yet here this cottage stands. The crops will recover and we’ll endure.”
“Yes, but. . do you worry about. . the world?”
He took her meaning and offered her a falsehood after all. “The world is too big for my worry. I’m trying to focus on our bellies.”
“And if the Shadovar come for a quota of the crop to supply the troops? They say there’s war in the Dales.”
The fire caused shadows to dance on the walls, and Gerak flashed on memories of his military service, when he’d served the Shadovar in battle against Cormyreans.
“They say lots of things, and the Shadovar haven’t come for a quota in years. The farms near the cities must produce enough. Or perhaps they eat magic in the cities these days.”
She did not smile at his poor joke but at least it smoothed the worried furrows from her brow. She inhaled deeply, as if to purge the concerns that plagued her, and when she exhaled a playful look came into her eye, the same look he’d first seen on her ten years ago, the look that had caused him to want her as a wife.
“You snore loudly.”
“I know. You should nudge me.”
“No,” she said, and snuggled more deeply into the quilts. “I like the sound sometimes.”
“You like strange things, Sweets.”
“Taking you for a husband seals that ward, I’d say.”
“I’d say,” he agreed with a smile. He bent and kissed her on the crooked nose she’d broken years before when she’d stepped on a rake. He placed his hand over hers, on her belly, so that both of them had their unborn child in their palms.
“We’ll be all right,” he said and wanted her to believe it.