“Don’t be daft. We’re too far north. Puts on a pair of white trousers and suddenly everything’s got to be all mystical. You need to keep your head in the real world. Off you go and track it then.”
Jors raised a hand as the dyheli disappeared into the trees and turned to see both men watching him expectantly. “No,” he said.
Uncle Trey began a protest but stopped when Jors met his gaze.
His father suddenly directed all his attention to the packs.
“Well . . .” His uncle sounded as uncertain as Jors had ever heard him. “. . . we’d best be starting back then . . .”
Hands wrapped around his empty mug, Jors watched his brother and his sister-in-law carry the sleeping twins out of the large family room in the settlement’s first building, his brother more than willing to leave their conversation when Tara beckoned him home.
“Why are you sad?”
He made room for Annamarin on the bench. “I’m not sad.”
“You don’t look sad,” she said frowning up at him, “but under how you look, you’re sad.” Head cocked, she studied his face. “Is it a tragic love story?”
A dying bandit girl and the knowledge that he was hers and always would be. He started to say it was more complicated than that. Started to say their time had been too short for a story. Watched the door close behind his brother and his brother’s family and said only, “Yes.”
Annamarin nodded with all the wisdom of nearly twelve. “I thought so.” Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a honey candy, picked off a bit of lint and held it out to him. “My mama makes these. When I had my heart tragically broken by Ternin at the mill, they helped.”
“Thank you.”
She dropped it in his hand, although it stuck for a moment to her fingers, and ran to join the children being herded off to bed.
The candy melted on his tongue, so sweet it nearly made his eyes water. If it didn’t help, it didn’t hurt.
Although, he realized, other parts of him did. Jors grunted as he stood, stretched out his back, and tried to work the knots from his right arm. Hard to believe he’d only been walking and using a hatchet. He hadn’t hurt like this since he’d first learned to ride.
“Used muscles you haven’t for a while, lad!” Uncle Trey laughed. “Not so easy keeping up with an old man, is it?”
“Leave him be, Trey; there’s a trick to walking on uneven ground,” Jors’ father called out. “I expect he’s lost the knack of it.”
“He needs to come home more often,” one of his cousins called.
“A few more days of honest labor, and he’ll be his old self again,” laughed another.
:There’s someone coming.:
A moment later, the geese sounded the alarm.
“He went out yesterday looking for that damned ewe he’s so fond of. She’d slipped the dogs, late afternoon, and headed for the hills with her lambs.” One of Verain’s men sagged against the hands that held him as his horse, sides wet with sweat, stumbled and nearly went to her knees just inside the gate. “When the sun went down, he didn’t come in. Nearly had to tie Elane to the chair to keep her from heading out to find him. But he’s smart, Rodney is, and he’d have found a safe place for the night, yeah, and then he’d be back by day we told her, back with that damned ewe.”
“But he wasn’t.” Jors stepped aside as Annamarin’s father pushed past, heading for the horse.
“No. We looked, Herald, but we couldn’t find him, not even a body or sign of a struggle or the damned sheep, and Elane sent me to find you, and I damned near killed the mare but Elane . . .” He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, and when he opened them again, they shone with reflected pain, obvious even in the light of half a dozen flickering lamps. “She’s taking it terrible hard.”
Jors closed his hand around the man’s shoulder, felt the fine tremble of exhaustion through shirt and jacket, felt the tension relax as he squeezed. Pivotting on one heel, he headed for the Herald’s Corner, not needing a lamp to find the way to where Gervais waited.
“Jors!”
Habit stopped his feet at the sound of his grandmother’s voice.
“Where are you going, then?” She stood in the door they’d left open when they’d rushed outside, her hair, unplaited for the night spilling around her shoulders.
“I’m going where I’m needed: to find Rodney.”
Heads pivoted as the men and women in the courtyard turned their attention back to the old woman.
“I understand you want to help, Jors, but it’s forest trail all the way. Wait till day and go then if you must. There’re men already searching for young Rodney who know the ground. What can you bring to the search that they can’t?”
“Hope.” Bare feet sticking out from under her nightshirt, Annamarin moved to Jors’ side and swept a steady gaze over her family. “When a Herald of Valdemar rides, hope rides with him. Yes, they have men who know the ground, but with one of theirs lost in the forest for going on two nights now, what they need is hope.” She paused, then, just before the silence stretched to the breaking point, she spread her hands and added, “And they need the best tracker this family has ever had.”
A further heartbeat’s silence, then a cheer.
Jors bent and kissed the top of her head. :Heartbrother . . .:
:I am well rested. We can be there before dawn.:
“Oh, it’s so horribly tragic that one of the lambs died!”
Jors sighed. “I tell you a story of a gallant ride through the night, beset on all sides by terrible dangers, finishing, with the sun barely up, in the kind of tracking that one person in thousands could do in order to save a man’s life, and you’re upset about a lamb?”
“It died.” Annamarin released her grip on his sleeve to fold her arms. “And it was tragic.”
Rodney had been returned to Elane from the bottom of a crevasse with a broken leg, the ewe and her remaining lamb had been returned to the flock, and Jors had returned to Trey Hadden’s settlement.
Annamarin had met him on the track.
:It seems that you want your family to behave in ways you do not wish to behave yourself.:
:I don’t know what you . . . :
Gervais gave a little buck. :The girl has Talent. Speak to your grandmother on her behalf.
“A Bard?” Their grandmother swept a narrow–eyed gaze from Jors to Annamarin and back. “Are you certain?”
“A certain as I can be, not being a Bard myself.” Jors watched her expression change, her hand begin to rise, and knew she had just asked herself, What would Jors know about Bards? “Gervais,” he added quickly, “is certain.”
“Well . . .” She nodded slowly. “. . .that’s different then, isn’t it?” Reaching out, she took Annamarin’s hand and tugged her close. “Are you sure you want to be a Bard, child?”
Annamarin rolled her eyes. “It’s not something you do, Gran, it’s something you are.”
The old woman snorted. “It’s not something I am.”
“Well, no,” Annamarin admitted. “But it’s like what Jors is.”
“Please, child, he was Chosen. That has nothing to do with what he is and everything to do with his Companion.”
“With his Companion finding him worthy.”
“What?”
Sighing, Annamarin tugged her hand free so she could gesture expansively. “There isn’t a Jors before and a Jors after, Gran, there’s just Jors. And Jors is a Herald.”
:From the mouths of babes.:
“My point exactly.” Gran grinned triumphantly and whacked Jors on the shins with her cane.
When Annamarin frowned, Jors shook his head.
“Try again when you’re older.” he told her later when they were walking away from the settlement, down the track toward Greenhaven.