When he made no answer through the dark, she licked her lips. Why was she disturbed? She had never intended, had she, that he should accompany her on the whole of her mission. Why was she waiting now, with an eagerness she did not understand, for his reply?
“I am oath-bound for twenty days.” His voice held its usual cool and steady note. “For twenty days I ride, whether it be through mountains, foothills, or Karsten.”
Tirtha could not understand her feeling of relief. What had she to do with this man? Their own lives were alien to one another. Yet had he chosen otherwise, she knew, it would have been a disappointment. This was so new and strange a thing for her who had built her life upon her own silence and aloneness that she pushed it from her foremind, telling herself that there might well be trouble in the foothills, and two fighters were better than one if that came. Also the falcon seemed to have taken up service with her companion, and the scouting ability of those birds was legendary.
“So be it,” she returned, and thought that her voice sounded overly sharp. Still, she had no intention of allowing him to believe that she had nursed a strange hope he would answer exactly as he had.
In the morning they climbed to the pass. The way upward was longer than it had looked from below, for the footing was rough, and they dismounted several times to lead their beasts. The falcon took to the sky early, returning periodically to perch on some higher portion of the trail and await them, always then exchanging sounds with the man.
It was past midday when they stood in the notch of the pass itself to look down upon the outward sweep of the over-mountain country, which was no longer one land but a number of quarreling fiefs in which war and pillage had ruled for years.
The foothills were tree-crowned—it would seem that the fury of the Power had not reached here to uproot and crush. Tirtha, looking upon them, was pleased, for it seemed to her that this was the type of country that would best serve those who needed cover. She turned a little to gaze eastward and saw that there were the dark lines of what could only be woodland in that direction.
In the old days, the plains of Karsten had been most fertile and open to the west. There had been the garths of the farmers and the landowners among those younger, newer people who had spread inward from the sea. The cities and the holds of some pretense of importance had all lain there.
The Old Race, her own people, had withdrawn gradually from those settlers who had come overseas in days now shadowed into legend. They had established their own holdings to the eastward. In some places the advancing newcomers had proved hostile, and there had been no intercourse at all between the old blood and the settlers. In other sections there was friendliness and sometimes a trading of skills, neighbor aiding neighbor. So it had come about that some of those neighbors had suffered death and worse in the day of Yvian’s Horning because of aiding the escape of her own kind.
It would be mainly in the plains, where the land was rich and there were cities, that any struggle centered now. Farther south lay other provinces (from one of which Pagar himself had come) where the new people were even more firmly established and occupied the whole of the area.
However, these foothills, just like those on the other side of the border, might give refuge to outlaws and masterless men who had become pillagers and raiders. It was the kind of country to attract such.
Tirtha mentioned this, and the Falconer nodded. He swung out with his claw. The sun glinted on metal as he pointed.
“It is true there are others here.”
She saw it now—a column of smoke rising from between two of those hills. It was far too thick a pillar to be born from a campfire. Something of greater consequence, perhaps even the buildings of a farm, burned there. Though what farmer would choose such a setting for his holding? Or did that mark an outlaw post raided by whoever stood for law and order here—even as the Marshal’s men strove to clean out such vultures’ nests to the north?
In any case that billowing smoke was warning enough that they must travel as secretly as they could. There was no reason to throw away all she had struggled for these past years by being too bold now.
An afternoon of descent brought them into wooded land. Then the lead pony snorted and quickened pace, the Torgian pushing up beside, the mare quick to follow. It was plain that the animals scented water. They found it in a stream that ran fast and clear at an angling path from the north, where it must have been born among the mountains, toward the west and south, perhaps to join the river on which Kars stood.
There was cover in plenty—a copse of trees growing closely—composed of that mountain pine which flourished in these upward lands. The falcon returned twice, each time with a young hare in its talons. Tirtha set about a craft she had learned on the trail long since, rolling up stones under one of the trees to form a wall about a fire pit, the branches of the tree to break up any trail of smoke that might arise. She grubbed under the trees while the Falconer hunted the stream side, each bringing the driest sticks they could find for a fire large enough to broil the meat, which they ate eagerly. Then they allowed the flames to die down.
Tirtha went to the stream and along to a thicket. It was still light enough to see as she stripped off her trail-worn clothing, waded resolutely into cold water, which brought a gasp from her, and bathed, putting on fresh shirt and under-pants from her small supply, washing out those she had taken off, wringing them as dry as she could and returning to hang them not far from the warm stones of the fire’s back wall. The Falconer watched her, then took up his own saddle bags, disappearing in turn to do likewise, she guessed.
It was good to feel clean of trail sweat and dust, and she had rubbed her body with the dried leaves of a scent herb—an affectation she seldom allowed herself, but which she had done now as a small celebration of triumph that they had actually done what she had been told so often could never be accomplished—come safely across the accursed mountains.
Wrapped in her cloak, she found herself once more listening. There were sounds here as there had not been in the twisted lands through which they had just passed. She could pick up life sparks of woods creatures about their night business. The falcon stirred on its perch, eyeing her with the same feral fires as appeared in the man’s eyes upon occasion. She made no effort to touch its mind in her own imperfect fashion.
The bird was surely wholly his, one of the things which Tirtha and he could never share. Eat the same food they could, feel discomfort (though they did not reveal that to each other), perhaps share some of the same fears and dislikes, if not for the same reasons. But a barrier existed and always would.
Tirtha leaned forward and on impulse dropped into the very small flame before her a pinch of one of her herb packets. There was a puff of whitish smoke and then scent. She inhaled as deeply as she could, striving to draw it into the full expansion of her lungs. Tonight she must dream!
But she must not allow herself to be pulled into the same old vision. Rather now, while she was still desired and needed—a guide to the road ahead.
This lore she had had as a child from a Wise Woman, though she had never dared to use it before, in spite of the promises she had been given concerning its effectiveness. Because she must remain always in command of herself, she feared such aids to farseeing, if farseeing could be so summoned. Then, too, she had been alone and she had not known how long the visionary state would last or whether it would affect her in some other way. Tonight she had to discover what she could while she was not solitary. She inhaled a second time, feeling an odd lightness rising within her. This was not power—no, she could only hope that what summoned the vision could be induced to work in another way.