David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

“I can change my mind,” Averan said too loudly.

“True,” Baron Poll said, “but you won’t change mine.”

He grabbed Averan roughly by the arm and dragged her to his charger. Averan yelped, and Baron Poll slapped her across the backside.

“Damn you, girl, if you call Raj Ahten’s troops with all of your noise, I swear I’ll cut your throat before they get me, even if it’s the last thing I do.”

Baron Poll leapt up onto his charger, his great strength belying his size, and tried to pull Averan on with him.

“Wait!” Roland said. “Let her ride with me. And I’ll not have you slapping the child, or threatening to slit her throat.”

“What do you care?” Baron Poll asked. Both the Baron and the child stared at him in surprise. Roland was no knight, no warrior who could hope to best Baron Poll in a fight, yet he had spoken harshly.

“I care,” Roland said, gazing at the child. “I was thinking last night, I could petition Paladane to become her guardian, her...father.”

There was a clumsy silence as the child recognized that he spoke not just a statement, but a question. Then she lurched toward him. “Yes!” she cried.

Roland mounted up, taking Averan in the saddle before him. In moments they were thundering down the mountainside, the green woman loping behind, and as they neared the plain, Baron Poll suddenly veered his charger sideways and raced it through the trees, cutting across a spur of the mountain on a game trail. The green woman ran at their back, struggling to keep up. Roland felt amazed that she could do so at all. No human could run with such grace and ease.

The Baron no longer seemed to trust the road, and perhaps his own fear finally touched the girl, for Averan fell silent. He raced the horses down the mountainside, and Roland leaned back in his saddle, gripping Averan before him, afraid that the girth strap on his saddle might slip or break so that he’d go rolling downhill. But Baron Poll never slowed.

After several heart-stopping minutes, they found an old woodcutter’s road and raced along it for, a while, then they rode the horses hard across a creek and let them leap a farmer’s fence and gallop across a pasture.

For several miles they rode this way, never trusting a road, often peering off to either side. The green woman ran just behind.

They reached a large village and raced through it, let the horses stop for rest just outside. A number of walnut trees lined the lane, the nuts just beginning to split open from their green pouches, and Averan, still huddled in her robes, looked up at them longingly. “Are we going to eat today?”

“When we reach the castle, you might get some dinner,” Baron Poll said.

“You gave me nothing more than hope for dinner last night, and now I shan’t even have that to chew on for breakfast. They’ve done with breakfast at the castle and won’t eat again until tonight. I didn’t get any food yesterday at all.”

“Well,” Baron Poll said, “all the better to help you maintain a dainty figure.”

“You should try it yourself sometime,” Averan groused. “Your horse would like you better if you did.”

The Baron shot Averan a warning glare. The child had an endowment of brawn, but Baron Poll had more than one, and he knew he could beat her soundly.

Roland thought him a hard man, to starve a child that way. “I’ll get you some walnuts,” Roland offered, and he leapt from his horse.

The green woman had been lagging behind for several moments, and now she stood, sweat pouring off her, as she gasped for air.

Baron Poll seemed to fear that the child would ride off, so he nudged his horse toward Averan, grabbed her and hefted her onto his own saddle.

Sweat drenched Roland’s horse and it breathed like a bellows. Several cottages clustered together here at the north end of the village, and there was little forage for the mounts. Sheep had eaten down the grass near the road. Roland could see no sign of the sheep now. They had probably been driven off to the castle. With little else to eat, the mount went over to a window box outside a cottage and began to chew voraciously on some white geraniums, eating as quickly as only a horse with endowments of metabolism can.

Meanwhile, Roland looked in vain for walnuts on the ground, but pigs rooted there, and they’d taken the nuts. He ended up climbing the tree to pick a few.

“I have to relieve myself,” Averan said, squirming in the saddle where Baron Poll held her firm.

“Hold it for another hour,” Baron Poll commanded her. “A girl with an endowment of brawn can hold her bladder all day.”

“I’ve been holding it since last night,” Averan apologized

Baron Poll rolled his eyes. “Go then. There should be a privy behind the cottage.”

Averan dropped from the horse and scurried away. The green woman followed at her heels like a faithful dog.

Roland climbed into the crook of a walnut tree and began filling his pockets. He’d been at it only a minute when he glanced back down the road to the south.

Dust rose from the road in the direction they’d just come. The dust clouds were back a couple of miles, so trees and houses obscured it. Still, at the speed a force horse could race, those riders would be on them quickly.

“Riders, coming fast,” Roland warned Baron Poll. His heart hammered. If he’d not been standing in the tree, he’d not have seen them.

“What colors?”

He saw a flash of yellow. “Raj Ahten’s, they’re close on our tails.”

He leapt from the tree, landed hard enough to jar his ankles.

“Averan,” Baron Poll shouted. “Stop peeing and get over here now!”

He spun his charger and raced around the corner of the cottage, shouting and cursing. Roland leapt onto his own mount, circled the cottage, just in time to see Baron Poll kick over a weathered privy in the backyard. No one was inside.

“The damned girl ran off!” the Baron shouted.

Roland bit his lip, struggled against panic. He did not want to lose the child or see her harmed. He wanted to help her, yet he understood her fears, and applauded her desire to do what she knew was right.

Stone fences divided the land behind this cottage from the yards and gardens behind. Roland searched nervously. He saw no sign of Averan or the green woman.

“They couldn’t have gotten far,” Roland said. But he knew that it didn’t matter. Even if the girl hid nearby, he couldn’t take the time to search for her.

“Leave her!” Baron Poll said. “The girl wanted to stay, let her stay!”

The Baron wheeled his mount, but Roland was slow to follow. He feared to leave the green woman and Averan there alone. He cared about them more than he’d dare admit.

He rose up in his saddle, searching for the child, vainly hoping to spot the green woman, as Baron Poll raced away. Moments later, he began to hear the thunder of hooves on the far side of town.

“Luck to you!” Roland called to Averan. “I’ll come back for you, daughter!” he promised. He turned and sped for Carris.

Four cottages away from Baron Poll, Averan huddled behind a lilac bush by a stone fence and watched Roland and the Baron gallop north. She had taken off the green woman’s bearskin cloak, so that now her skin blended in with the lilac bush, concealing her.

Averan clutched the green woman tight and cooed softly, to keep her from moving.

She could not explain to Roland and Baron Poll why she needed to leave. The men would never understand. But Averan had had a strange feeling growing in her since yesterday.

It had made her nervous to look at the campfire last night, and the morning sun hurt her eyes, made them burn. And this morning, when she’d knelt over the corpse of Raj Ahten’s assassin, pretending to eat, Averan had craved the taste of the man’s blood.