Megan Lindholm - The Windsingers

The call died away slowly. Ki hoped it had been some long-winded river bird. She still saw no movement of living creature. Even the horses were frozen, heads up and ears pricked. Indeed, the only motion seemed to be that of the wind, come up suddenly. She shivered and hastened to the shore.

The wind grew in intensity, whipping her wet hair across her face. Ki found herself fighting for balance as she sought the riverbank. Out of the water, the chill bit her more fiercely. She began to dry herself on her dirty skirt, but the rising wind and a nervous whinny from Sigurd prompted her to pull the clean tunic hastily over her wet body.

She paused to wring her mop of hair. The wind hit her harder, pelting her with leaves ripped from the trees. She was buckling her leather belt with numbed fingers when a gust of blasting force knocked her to the ground. Ki crouched beneath its onslaught, struggling to hold her hair out of her eyes with one hand. She scrabbled across to her soiled clothes and vial of Vanilly and boots. Clutching them to her, she lurched to her feet, battling the strange air currents. She ran heavily toward her wagon. It was rocking on its tall yellow wheels. Even as Ki staggered toward it, she heard the twang of a snapping rope. One of the boxes of cargo bounced free. The rough wood slats split as it struck the earth.

A sudden stench struck Ki with the force of a physical blow. She gagged, and held her wadded clothes to her nose and mouth. Wildly she stared about, seeking a source for the odor. There was none. The reek grew stronger, foul as old blood. But it came, like the wind, from nowhere. A strange prickling of foreboding raised the hair on Ki’s chilled skin even higher. The stench was like a curtain across Ki’s nose and mouth; she felt she would strangle on it. Sigmund screamed. Sigurd reared and pawed as if to strike the reek from the sky. Lather showed on his grey hide. As he came down, he wheeled and fled. She heard the thunder of his hooves through the forest as he vanished into the waving trees. The odor went with him. Ki cursed him savagely.

She tossed her bundled clothes in the hatch of the wagon, stooped to draw on her boots, then turned her attention to her freight. The crate that had fallen was a small one. She picked it up. Black enamel inlaid with small stones showed through the broken wood. Ki was gentle with it as she mounted her still rocking wagon and set it inside the cuddy. Firmly she slid the door shut.

The other ropes seemed to be holding. The rest of the crates were larger, unlikely to be tumbled about by the wind. The persistent wind stirred and eddied about her, buffeting her as she moved around her wagon. Yet the sky remained clear and blue.

No time to ponder strange weather. Ki whistled to Sigmund. Twice he pranced flirtatiously away from her before she could grasp a handful of mane and scrabble up the tall shoulder and onto his back. Vab, how she hated to ride these beasts! There was no comfortable way to straddle him. He was simply too wide. She set her heels to him and grasped a double handful of mane. Sigmund shook his head, not liking her on his back any more than she liked to be there, but he was resigned to it, and moved off with Ki clinging like a monkey. Sigurd’s trail was plain. Great chunks of forest floor had been thrown up by his flying hooves, and his body had parted the brush as he passed. Following him was no problem. Catching up was the task. She urged Sigmund to go faster, and clung low to avoid the scratching limbs of the trees.

It was past full dark when a weary and bedraggled Ki, still following Sigurd’s trail, rode back into her own camp. Sigurd had changed direction numerous times, and forded the river twice. She could only believe that he had been harried about by something, yet there had been no tracks in the earth but Sigurd’s own. She could not account for it. It was all a mystery. A damnable, unpleasant, inconvenient mystery.

Right now she did not care to consider it. She was scratched from overhanging branches, and filthy where she had been swept from Sigmund’s back into a swampy area. Sigmund was as scratched and muddied as Ki. She returned now to a camp unlit by fire. The day that had started off as a holiday had become a dreary day of pointless and fruitless effort. She slid from Sigmund’s back.

Sigurd stood, head adroop, near the tongue of the wagon, as if taking comfort from its familiar presence. His coat showed traces of dried lather. As she approached him, he put his muzzle down and rubbed the side of his face slowly against his foreleg. If a horse could look abashed, he did. Ki ran a hand over his rough damp coat. They both needed another grooming tonight. All three of us, she amended, as she ran a hand through her own tangled mane.

At least the wind had died. It was now a quiet autumn night, with a sliver of moon that served more to confuse than to light. Her camp chest was a lumpy shadow on the ground. Bone weary, Ki stumbled toward it. First, she planned, the fire, then wash, then groom beasts, then eat, and lastly, consider that one of the seals on her freight was broken.

The familiar catch on the chest sprang open at her touch. From it she took the pouch that contained her tinder materials. A twist of dry river grass ignited readily. She heaped on the blaze the small dry branches she had gathered earlier; the welcome light of the little fire pushed back the dark, and made it easier to pretend that tomorrow would be better. Ki stretched her abused body as she rose from her fire-making and turned to her wagon.

She cursed. Sigurd put his ears back at the long low stream of invective she unleashed. When she ran out of breath, she folded her lips tightly shut and advanced to where her entire cargo lay tumbled and split open behind her wagon. She returned to the fire for a brand, and made her inspection. The light did not make it any better. Of the seven crates, four remained. All four had been split open, to reveal a strange trove of common earth and stones. There was enough wood to account for two more crates, but nothing to show what they had contained. The clean slice marks on the coarse wood showed that no wind had cracked these crates open. Ki glared at the wreckage impotently. There was nothing she could do to salvage this haul.

Household goods! Ki snorted, and wished she could have felt surprised. Four crates of dirt and rocks. Why? And wind sorcery undertaken to divest her of her cargo. Expensive sorcery, that. Ki moved carefully away from the scattered crates, setting her feet lightly. In the morning sun, she should be able to read something from the ground. Methodically she turned to grooming her horses. Much to their disgust, she then improvised picket lines from the snapped cargo ropes, lest winds and odors return.

When she climbed the tall wheel of her wagon and slid open the door of the cuddy, a powerful blast of Vanilly hit her. The glass vial of concentrated oil; of course, it, too, would have to break when she had tossed it in with her clothes. No sense in having bad luck by halves. Holding her breath, she moved inside the cuddy to lift her last tunic off its hook.

For the second time that day, Ki bathed and washed her hair in the now dark and freezing river. She mumbled curses as she knelt shivering in the shallows to scrub out her soiled clothes. She doubted that the blue blouse and skirt would ever be free of the scent of Vanilly. As she worked, she thought of alternatives. She had none. She would go on to Bitters. She did not have enough coin to pay back the six dru of the advance. It would make a lively scene with the owners. But there was no advantage to putting it off.

Her feet were cold and stone bruised. Aches twined through every muscle of her body as she came back into the circle of her firelight. In the wagon, the Vanilly was still overwhelming. Ki took a short breath and ducked in to gather up hard traveler’s bread, a sausage, a kettle, dry tea. She backed hastily out of the cuddy. On the seat of her wagon, she paused to bite off the end of the sausage. She stood chewing and considering. Then she reached into the cuddy and brought out the last box of her freight as well.