The injured man did not wake up to eat. So Yaret sat back against the rock face and shovelled porridge straight from the pan into her mouth. It contained shreds of dried apple, and a handful of furzeberries which she had gathered earlier in the day and which turned the porridge purple. It didn’t taste too bad, apart from the watercress. Tomorrow she could shoot a rabbit, although that would take longer cooking.
The small fire was still smouldering underneath the raincover. As the space began to fill with smoke, she threw handfuls of earth over the embers. There was no point trying to keep it going overnight; and she felt that it was safer to have no smoke to give away her presence.
On her way to Deloran yesterday she had smelt the smoke a mile before she got there. As she approached the long, low, sprawling farmhouse, it had appeared intact despite the thin grey pall that hung above it.
Not until she was close up did she see why the stone walls looked so dark: they were black with soot. The place was now a shell, for several roof beams had collapsed in the fire. The outbuildings had been burnt down too. When she touched a blackened wall it felt warm and faintly greasy.
There was no-one there to tell her what had happened. All the carts had gone, along with the animals: the roof had fallen in on an empty stable. So Bruilde and her people had escaped. But they hadn’t taken much else with them. Most of the goods and furniture were still inside the house, charred and useless, stinking of acrid smoke. There must have been no time to rescue more.
Yaret stepped over the remains of the door and stood in the stone corpse of the kitchen. Dishes still on the table held the ashes of some ruined meal. The wind blew through.
Maybe the fire had started here. A fallen lamp, a too-hot pan, even an unswept chimney… so many things could happen.
But seldom did in an establishment like Deloran. Bruilde’s household was well organised; a strong-minded woman in her seventies, Bruilde kept everyone in line.
The farm had been one of the stops on Yaret’s route where she had liked to linger for a day or two: safe in her female-hood, she would exchange gossip and collect tales to take home to her grandparents. Bruilde had been a friend of her grandfather, who always gave Yaret a long letter to carry to her. The sealed letter was still in her pack with nobody to give it to. No-one to give her back a letter in exchange. Where was Bruilde now?
Despite all the gossiping, Yaret knew little about Bruilde’s connections. She had no idea where the household – farmhands, their families, and animals – might have gone. But gone they were.
Thoughtfully chewing her porridge, she cast her memory back another week, to the market at Moreva. She liked the small town, which was friendlier than Havvich, and usually had a carefree, almost festive feel. But this time she’d found people edgy and preoccupied.
“No time to think about clothes now,” said one passer-by as she set up her samples in the corner of the market.
“Why not?”
“More important things are going on.” He was a workman with a sack of flour on his shoulder and a worried crease between his brows. “Kelvha is on the march, haven’t you heard?”
“They’re always on the march,” said Yaret, who was in male mode. “Always fighting some border skirmish or other.”
“This is different.”
“Why? Who are they at loggerheads with this time?”
The man shook his head. “Not sure. There’s some trouble going on down south, I think. This isn’t the usual small-time raiders or clan brawls. It could be serious. Kelvha are buying up supplies: food, armour, everything.”
“An army needs good woollen cloaks,” suggested Yaret.
“And you can’t supply them till next spring. Forget it. I’m laying up stores of food before they can buy the lot.” He adjusted the sack upon his shoulder and walked on.
Yaret took only one order there, for a disappointing four yards of russet serge. She could learn little more about the trouble on Kelvha’s borderlands. In spite of what the man had said, she suspected raiders, or else the usual clan posturing. The Kelvhans did a lot of that, although she wouldn’t have dared to use the word “posturing” to any Kelvhan. Their squabbles were generally about land and rank: who owed tribute and respect to who. Hierarchy meant everything in that kingdom.
Not that she’d ever been properly inside Kelvha. Round the edges was close enough; she traded with the Outer Kelvhan towns like Moreva, who then traded on to the interior. She’d seen a few Kelvhan nobles in her travels, and had admired their fine horses from a safe distance. The Kelvhans were courteous in a lordly way but made no attempt to hide their weapons, be they jewelled dagger, ornate sword or decorative bow: and they dressed well. Lots of embroidery in gold and silver thread. What they would do with her grandfather’s homespun wool, Yaret could not imagine.
But that was the nobles. There must be plenty of homespun underlings in Inner Kelvha. Yaret had sometimes thought of venturing there to find out. Caution, and her grandmother’s frequently expressed dislike of Kelvhans, had prevented her.
So: there was trouble in Kelvha. There was unease in Moreva. There was a burnt-out farmhouse at Deloran.
And further north, the week before, there had been some story of a burning, overheard at the Gostard inn… some remote village wiped out by fire, though nobody had seen it, and if there were no survivors, as reported, then who had spread the tale?
Yaret had asked the company, “What happened? Was it a lightning strike?”
“Naaah,” said the tale-teller in a long note of contempt. “You’re soft in the head, boy. Lightning burn a whole village down? It were sorcery, that’s what.”
“Whose sorcery?”
He put his face down level to hers. His teeth were bad. He took her for a gormless teenager, so she acted one, wide-eyed and ignorant.
“Liol’s,” he said. “You heard of Liol? The old Sorcerer? Nobody told you that bedtime story?”
Yaret shook her head.
“Lives on the mountain-tops,” said the man with a happy snarl. “Eats babies. And small boys. Doesn’t bother to cook ’em first.”
“Leave the lad alone,” said the inn-keeper peaceably, polishing a tankard. He knew who Yaret was; she’d been stopping at his inn for fourteen years – half her life – first with and then without her grandfather.
“That wizard Liol is so old he’s just a bag of bones,” said the customer with a leer. “That’s why he crunches up those babies. Always hungry. Yum, yum.”
The inn-keeper laughed. “Like you, Abrel,” he said, and pushed the dish of fried bar snacks across the counter to him. Once Abrel was busy impressing the rest of the company, the inn-keeper turned to Yaret.
“Best eat in your room,” he said. “And lock the door.” He handed her a slice of cold egg pie.
“Thanks, Rud.” But she lingered to ask him, under the hubbub of the bar, “What really happened in that village?”
“Who knows?” Rud was a big, slow-moving, unruffled man. But now he was troubled. “Just rumours. There are always rumours.”
“Who’s that Liol that he talked about?”
“Leori. Can’t even get his name right. Abrel knows nothing about him.”
“But you do?”
“Leori’s stayed here a few times,” said Rud. “He’s old, I’ll grant. But burning villages or eating babies – that’s just nonsense.”
“He’s harmless, then?”
Rud hesitated. “I wouldn’t say exactly that.”
“Is he really a wizard?”
“Take your pie and go,” Rud told her. So she did.
Now, sitting underneath the raincover, she put down the porridge pan and thought about egg pie. It had been very good, with soft, crumbly pastry and herbs. And Rud: that easy-going, watchful man. She wished she’d had the chance to ask him more, but after a night kept awake by the noisy carousing downstairs – and the odd rattle at her door handle – she had left early, before anyone was up.
Leori. That was interesting. The old stories back home mentioned the wizard Lioru… But those had been set down by Madeo the Bard four hundred years ago, so it couldn’t be the same one. Perhaps it was just a name for wizards.
Twilight was coming: the misting rain was darkening to grey. She checked the sleeping man. There was no change, even when she shook his shoulder and tickled his cheek. His breathing was long and slow as if he were sunk deep in hibernation.
The donkeys ambled over to the rocky cleft, wanting their usual bedtime handful of oats. She rubbed their damp backs and shoulders and stroked their rough foreheads. Nuolo nuzzled back, while Dolm regally accepted her caresses as the homage that was his due.
After giving them their oats she put the remains of the porridge in a bowl for the morning. Then she set dried peas to soak in the pan. They needed a full day’s soaking, but she wouldn’t be going anywhere soon, not unless the fallen rider woke. Not even if he woke.
She checked him again – no change – before she lay down on her bedroll next to him. She placed her bow and three arrows ready on a low rock on her other side. Her knife was by her hand, as always. The donkeys stood sentinel outside the cleft: grey shadows stoic in the dusk. They would warn her if anything came.
Even so, it was a long time before she could allow herself to drop down into sleep.