Mercedes Lackey - Oathbreaker

But the trek west was quiet.

The storm gradually slackened to drizzle as the sky grew lighter; the landscape was dreary, even without the devastations of warfare all about them. The hills were dead and brown, and lifeless; the herds of sheep and gercattle that usually grazed them had gone to feed one or both armies. The scrub trees displayed black, leafless branches against the gray sky, and the silence around them intensified the impression that this area was utterly deserted. Wet, rotting leaves left their own signature on the breeze, a melancholy, bitter aroma more tasted than smelled, that lingered in the back of the throat. The track they followed was part rock, part yellow mud, a thick, claylike stuff that clung to hooves and squelched when it let go.

All five of them rode in that peculiar half-trance of the scout on his way to something; not looking for anything, not yet -- not paying outward attention to surroundings -- but should anything, how-ever small, move --

A crow, flapping up to their right, got exactly the appropriate reaction; Tarma, ready-armed, had already sighted on him before he'd risen a foot. Jodi and Beaker had their hands on their bowcases and their eyes to left and right, wary for possible ambush. Garth had his sword out and was ready to back Tarma, and Kyra was checking the road ahead for more trouble.

They all laughed, shakily, when they realized what their "enemy" was.

"Don't think even Kelcrag's taken up with the corbies," Tarma said. shaking her head, and tucking her bow back under the oiled silk. "Still -- probably he hasn't got anyone dedicated enough to go mucking around in this weather, but we can't count on it. Stay alert, children. At least until we get out of the war zone."

By midday they had done just that -- there were herds on the distant hills, although the shepherds and herders quickly moved them out of sight when they saw the little band approaching. Tarma saw Garth nodding in sympathy, lips moving soundlessly in what she rather thought was a blessing. His people had been all but wiped out when some war had trampled them into their earth, somewhere down south.

Tarma knew everything there was to know about her "children"; she had made a point of getting drunk at least once with each of her scouts. It was damned useful to know what made them twitch. One of the reasons Garth was with Idra -- he was so good a tracker he could have served with any company, or even as a pampered huntsman to royalty -- was because she allowed no looting of the peasantry (nobles were another matter) and insisted on the Hawks paying in trade -- silver and pure copper ingots for what they needed. Like Garth, all the Hawks tended to serve their lady-Captain for more than just coin.

By now they were all fairly well sodden except for Tarma, brown and black and gray cloaks all becoming a similar dark, indeterminant shade. Even Tarma was rather damp. Rain that was one scant point from being sleet still managed to get past her high collar to trickle down her neck, and muddy water from every puddle they splashed through had soaked through her breeches long ago. She was going numb with cold; the rest of them must be in worse case.

"Kyra," she called forward, "You in territory you know yet?"

The girl turned in her saddle, rain trickling down her nose. "Hmm-eh, I'd say so. Think this's Domery lands, they're kin of my kin -- "

"I don't want to stretch anybody's hospitably or honesty, but we need to dry off a bit. There any herders' huts or caves or something around here? Something likely to be deserted this time of year?"

"I'll think on't."

A few soggy furlongs later -- as Kyra scanned her memory and the land around them --

"Scoutmaster," she called back, " 'Bout three hills over there be a cave; used for lambin' and shearin' and never else. That do?"

"Room for all of us? I mean horses, too. No sense in shouting our presence by tethering them out, and plain cruel to make them endure more of this than we do."

Kyra's brow creased with thought. "If I don't misremember, aye. Be a squeeze, but aye."

Kyra had misremembered -- but by underestimating the size of the cave. There was enough room at the back for all five horses to stand shoulder to shoulder, with enough space left over for one rider at a time to rub his beast down without getting trampled on. An overhanging shelf of limestone made it possible to build a fire at the front of the cave without all of them eating smoke. And there was wood stocked at the side, dry enough that there wasn't much of that smoke in the first place.

More to the point, where concealment was concerned, the rain dissipated what trickled past the blackened overhang.

"How much farther?" Tarma asked, chewing on a tasteless mouthful of trail-biscuit.

"Not much," Kyra replied. "We better be cuttin' overland from here if m' mem'ry be still good. Look you -- "

She dipped a twig in muddy, black water and drew on a flat rock near the cave's entrance.

Tarma got down on her knees beside her and studied her crude map carefully. "One, maybe two candlemarks, depending, hmm?"

"Aye, depending." Kyra chewed on the other end of the twig for a moment. "We got to stick t'ridges -- "

"What?" Beaker exclaimed. "For every gossip in the hills to see us?"

"Oh, bad to be seen, but worse to be bogged. Valleys, they go boggy this time of year, like. Stuff livin' in the bogs is bad for a beast's feet. Y' want yer laddy's hooves t' rot off "fore we reach trail's end, y' ride the valleys."

"No middle way?" Tarma asked.

"Well.... We won't be goin' where there's hkely many, an' most of those'd be my kin. They see me, they know what I was abaht, and they keep their tongues from clackin'."

"That'll have to do." Tarma got up from her knees, and dusted the gravel off the knees of her breeches -- which were, she was happy to find, rela-tively dry. "All right, children, let's ride."

"I dunno -- " Garth said dubiously, peering up through the drizzle at what was little better than a worn track along the shale cliffside.

Tarma studied the trail and chewed at the corner of her lip. "Kyra," she said, finally, "your beast's the weakest of the lot. Give it a try. If she can make it, we all can."

"Aye," Kyra saluted, and turned her mare's head to the trail. She let the mare take her time and pick her own places to set her feet along the track. It seemed to take forever --

But eventually they could see that she was waving from the top.

"Send the first bird, Beaker," Tarma said, heading Ironheart after the way Kyra had followed. "We're going to see if this trail is a dead end or the answer to our prayers."

Twice before sunset they lost the track on broad expanses of bare rock, and spent precious time trying to pick it up again, all of them combing the ground thumblength by thumblength.

Sunset was fast approaching the second time they lost, then found the trail again. Tarma scanned the sky warily, trying to judge, with the handicap of lowering clouds, how much time they had before darkness fell. They obviously weren't going to make trail's end by sunset -- so the choice was whether to camp here on this windswept slant of scoured stone, or to press on in the hope of coming up with something better and maybe instead find themselves spending the night on a ledge two handspans wide.

She finally decided to press on, allowing just enough time in reserve that they could double back if they had to.

The track led on through lichen and rubble: treacherous stuff, except where the wild ponies had pounded a thin line of solidity. Jodi was mapping as they went along, and marking their backtrail with carefully inconspicuous "cairns" composed of no more than three or four pebbles. The drizzle had stopped, at least, and the exertion that was warming them had driven most of the damp out of their clothing. The pony-track led down into a barren gulley -- Tarma disliked that, and kept watching for water marks on the rocks they passed. If there was a cloudburst and this happened to be one of the local runoff sites, they could be hock-deep in tumbling rock and fast water in the time it took to blink.