Jeka dropped flat in the weeds behind Kharl, and the cooper watched as the four-horse team rumbled past, shivering the ground. On the outer side of the road, Kharl could also see three men scything late wheat. Maybe Jeka was right, that they needed to get off the road and follow it from behind the hedgerows. They might run into holders and their families, but it was clear that the wizard had some men patrolling the roads.
Kharl looked down. “You didn’t answer me.”
“Was only a silver…had it in his belt. Goral gave me nine coppers for it.”
“When?”
“Two eightdays back.”
“So he wants you for two reasons. Because you made a fool of him, and also for his wizardry.” Kharl paused. “Why did you steal from a wizard?”
“Didn’t know he was. Just a dandy like all the others. How did you know?”
Kharl paused. How had he known? He’d known from the white flash, but…He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just knew.”
“Takes one to know one, maybe?”
“I’m a cooper. You know that.”
Jeka just shrugged.
“We need to get moving. Away from the road.”
“I told you so.”
“Yes, you did.”
Walking northward along the edge of the fields beside the hedgerow was slower, but since most of the fields had been harvested, they saw few holders there, save for the areas of meadow where youths and children watched small flocks of sheep. People watched them, closely, until they passed, but said nothing.
Once, Kharl would have watched people who looked the way he did. His beard was untrimmed and scraggly, his clothes ragged, and he was certain he smelled rank, if not worse, although he had mostly gotten used to that. He hadn’t gotten used to the itchy skin.
While they avoided any surveillance by not walking the road, going by the hedgerow paths meant it took even longer than Kharl had thought. They also had little to eat, just a few bitter quinces he had retrieved from deep in the thorny branches of an unkempt bush near the hedgerow, and there had been only one small stream that looked clear enough to drink. Both were walking slowly by late afternoon, when they neared the pike and the low ridges through which flowed Souangle Creek. Rather, Kharl corrected himself, the creek flowed into the pond that Vetrad’s grandsire had built and through the millrace that powered the sawmill.
Kharl thought they might be able to sneak into Vetrad’s lumber barn after dusk. It was dry, and a lot warmer than the hedgerow. There was also an orchard beyond it, and there might be a few apples left, discards, partly rotten, and the like. He hoped so. The mill and lumberyard were off the ring road, less than a kay out Angle Road from it on the creek. Kharl had never known why the same road was called the pike inside the ring road, and Angle Road outside, but it was.
He glanced back at the clouds, darkening and gathering out over the ocean, just beyond the harbor, then to Jeka. Her face was pale.
“The wizard?” he asked.
“Thing’s stronger. Stronger ’n it’s been.”
“Where?”
Jeka half shrugged. “I can’t tell.”
Kharl could feel that she was exhausted. He was tired, but he doubted that Jeka could have walked another ten rods without falling over. He wished he had the staff, rather than the stick.
“We’ll rest for a while.” Kharl pointed to a tumbled rock wall bordering the hedgerow.
Jeka slumped onto the rock. “Not much to eat here. There’s more in Brysta.”
“We’re headed back that way. I think I know a safer place to sleep tonight. It’s not too far, a little more than a kay.”
A low rumble rolled out of the west. Kharl looked over the empty fields and the trees beyond. While he could not see the dwellings and structures of Brysta, he knew they were there, and the harbor was beyond-and the growing thunderheads were rising over the harbor, blocking out the late-afternoon sun.
“I don’t think the wizard’s that far away,” Jeka said tiredly.
“Can you walk some more?” Kharl asked.
“I can try.” She stood slowly.
They walked along the narrow path. Kharl let her lead the way, afraid that he might set too fast a pace for her.
“We’re moving away from him,” Jeka said after they had walked another twenty rods toward the spot where Angle Road met the ring road. “Think so, anyway.”
“He’s probably stopped south of us, then.” Kharl could feel the dampness in the air, and the wind began to gust around them.
“Wind feels good,” Jeka said. “Long’s it doesn’t rain.”
A ways farther along, perhaps a quarter kay, Kharl found a break in the hedgerow and squeezed through, watching the road carefully as he did. From beside the hedgerow, he could see Angle Road just ahead, and the old stone bridge where the road crossed Souangle Creek. Two wagons had passed the crossroads, heading out away from Brysta, in the direction of Sagana and Alturan. The road looked clear, and he didn’t see any other easy way to cross the creek, except by the Angle Road bridge.
He turned and beckoned. “We need to hurry.”
“Wizard’s getting closer.” Jeka shivered.
Kharl looked to the south on the ring road. He thought he saw mounted figures. He grabbed Jeka’s arm and stepped up his pace, quickly crossing the ring road and hurrying along the right side of Angle Road, even though every step hurt his already sore feet. He could imagine that every step felt worse to Jeka.
By the time they reached the bridge over the creek, Kharl was almost dragging Jeka, and except for a wedge of blue-green to the east, the sky was filled with gray clouds that seemed to darken more with each moment.
He glanced ahead. There was almost a half a kay to go before they reached the low stone wall that encircled Vetrad’s mill and lumber barns. “We’ll cross and wait under the bridge.”
“Good…need to rest,” Jeka gasped.
Kharl had to half carry her down the weed-tangled slope and under the bridge. They huddled together on a pile of stones amid the mud and debris gathered against the stone buttress on the north side, the only really solid footing. There they waited.
A gust of wind whipped under the span of the bridge, so strong that Kharl had to gather the tattered beggar’s cloak around him to keep it from being blown off him-or so he felt. Then the wind died away. He looked upstream, in the direction of the millrace, but he could not see it. He could see that no rain was yet falling. In the comparative silence after another gust of wind from the oncoming storms, Kharl heard voices.
“…doesn’t know which way she went from the crossroads…”
“…doesn’t know? He always knows…”
“You want to tell him?”
The riders did not stop and look under the bridge, as Kharl would have done. He wondered why. Did they not think of it? Or did they want to cover as much ground as they could before the storm struck?
Kharl and Jeka continued to wait, amid more gusts of wind, and a pattering of rain that came, then went. In time, the pair of riders returned, the hoofs of their mounts echoing on the paving stones of the span above.
“…didn’t go this way…miller was out, and he would have seen them…”
“…tomorrow…maybe…”
So Vetrad was out? Kharl took a deep breath. That meant they’d have to take the way along the creek.
He waited for a time, then crawled up the steep slope and, crouching beside the stone restraining wall of the bridge, studied Angle Road. It was empty. “Come on,” he called down to Jeka.
He waited until she reached him.
“We’ll cross the road. Looks like a path along the creek there on the other side. Just about a half kay…”
“You said that a kay ago…” Jeka attempted a smile.
“Suppose I did.”
The path was overgrown and narrow, but it was also mostly shaded by weedy trees, interspersed with an occasional oak and, surprisingly, at one spot, an ancient black lorken. Another pattering of rain on the leaves overhead came and went, and a series of deeper thunderclaps rumbled overhead.