The mare waited beside the burbling crevice, watching her with interest or, perhaps, disdain. Beside the horse, a bridle hung from an iron post hammered into the rock.
With some difficulty, she slid the harness over the mare's head and, after a few problems with the ears, got it correctly settled and buckled. She had grown up in a village, and while her own family
hadn't been wealthy enough to own horses or even a donkey or mule, as a girl she had been hired out on occasion to the stable master at the local inn and learned the rudiments of harness care and use. Those skills had aided her when she had first come to the reeve hall, after Flirt had chosen her.
Flirt was dead.
The wind stung her eyes. A weight crushed her chest, a haze of grief rising to fill her vision and weaken her body. But she could not succumb now. She could let Flirt's death overwhelm her, or she could use it to make her strong enough to do what must be done. First, evade Lord Radas. Second, observe, and decide what to do next. This simple plan must sustain her as she walked into an unknown landscape: her life after the death of her eagle, or her death after her own death.
She led the mare to the edge of the cliff. The sheer drop did not dizzy her. Reeves learned quickly not to fear heights. Or maybe the great eagles never chose as reeves any person likely to fall prey to that particular fear.
The mare balked, wanting to stay.
'We're getting as far from here as possible, do you understand me? That man killed me, or tried to kill me, even if he wasn't the one who wielded the knife. I'll never trust him, and neither should you.'
After a pause, as if considering her words or deciding whether it was worth a confrontation, the mare opened her wings. Marit mounted. They flew.
The mare did not want to take her in the direction Marit wanted to go, but Marit held the reins, and forced the issue. Beyond the eastern hill in the direction of the thread of smoke lay a box canyon utterly without life or interest beyond dusty green thickets of spiny hedge-heath and bitter-thorn. The smoke came from a pile of brush smoldering at the very end where the walls fenced you in, an excellent spot for an ambush. They came to earth, the mare tossing her head and snorting. Whispers hissed from thickets along the slopes, but no one appeared. The sound might only have been the way the wind clawed through the buds and leaves, but she had a cursed strong feeling that whoever was there had seen her.
It might have been the passage of a drizzling rain, quickly laid down and quickly vanished as soon its hooves touched earth. It might have been the way the mare turned, once on the ground, and headed straight out of the trap with a determined gait despite branches of bitter-thorn raking her flanks and tearing a pale gray feather from her wings. Those wings, folded tight, protected Marit's legs.
'That's the second warning you've given me, or maybe the third,' said Marit, bending low in case some cursed fool decided to loose an arrow or fling a spear.
As they cleared the canyon and found themselves in a rugged intersection of hills and ridges with the suggestion of a valley opening away to the southeast and the sharp spine of the high mountains to the west, Marit wondered if she had imagined the ambush.
'You choose,' she said to the mare. 'Anywhere but north.'
The mare took flight, bearing due south according to the sun. Steep hills were easily cleared. Almost before Marit realized they had come upon human life, they sailed over a high meadow where a flock of sheep grazed. The youth watching over the flock plucked strings, head bent over a two-stringed lute.
The mare trotted to earth out of sight of the meadow, and Marit left her with reins loose, hoping the horse wouldn't stray. She cut through a stand of pine, thick with scent, and brushed through knee-high grass at the meadow's edge. The lad played intently, biting a lip. His concentration gave him charm. A handsome dog emerged from behind him and ran toward her with ears raised, interested but not particularly suspicious. The dog raced around her as she advanced, and a startled blat from one of the grazing sheep caught the boy's attention. He looked up as Marit paused a stone's toss from him.
His eyes opened wide. Equally startled, she took a step back.
He grinned and set down the lute. 'The hells!' He whistled, and the dog pattered over to him. 'Usually he barks,' the boy added. He was old enough to be sent to the high pastures with the sheep but not quite old enough to be called a man. 'Where did you come from?'
'Just over the ridge.' The box canyon wasn't all that far from here, truly, although she wasn't entirely sure how to reach it traveling on
the ground. Reeves sometimes lost that skill, seeing everything from on high.
'You're not from around here. Are you hungry, or thirsty? I've got plenty.'
'I would appreciate a bit.' Reeve habit died hard: you ate and drank whenever opportunity offered, as you didn't always know in the course of a patrol when you might have leisure to eat and drink again.
He shared a cursed sharp cider and a ball of rice neatly wrapped in nai leaves, poor man's food but filling nonetheless.
'I'm surprised to see anyone up here,' he said with nice manners which, together with his pleasant features, would make him a favorite among women when he got a bit older. He was water-born, judging by the pattern of tattoos ringing his wrists. An attractive youth, but forbidden to her because she was also water-born. 'We're about as far west as folk live. You can see how the mountains rise.' He indicated a barrier of grim peaks to the west. 'Nothing beyond that but the flat salt desert.'
'You've seen it?'
He laughed. 'Not myself. My uncle claims to have climbed the Wall, to see onto the deadlands. He said they stretched for a thousand mey, farther than he could see even from the mountains' edge, nothing but pale gold to the flat horizon. Maybe it's true, or maybe he just said so to impress the woman he wanted to marry. He did bring back a shard of an eagle's egg. From a nest, so he said. Said he climbed to it, and fetched it out. But he did talk blather. I bet he just lound it on the trail, fallen from a high place.'
He carefully asked no questions, plying her with highlands hospitality, offering a second flask of cider. He was an open lad, sure she wasn't a bad person because the dog – whose name was Nip -tolerated her. She was just utterly stunned to be having a commonplace conversation.
'I see you've a lute there. Have you always played?'
'Surely I have, since I could pick one up. Would you like me to play for you?' He was sure she would like to hear him; everyone always enjoyed his playing.
She nodded, settling more comfortably cross-legged beside him. I le plucked a pair of tunes and hummed a melancholy melody that
made her eyes water. Thin clouds chased across the high landscape. As the sun passed into shadow, she shivered at the unexpected draft of cool air seeping down from above and pulled her cloak more tightly around her torso.
'Listen, ver. I'm called Marit. I'm lost, truth to tell, and I got lost by running from a nasty pack of bandits who aren't too far from here by my reckoning. I'm not sure it's safe for you. You might be safer walking back to your village, wherever you came from, and warning them that dangerous men are wandering out here looking to make trouble.'
He shrugged with a peculiar lack of concern. 'We've had trouble for years with that crew, most of them out of Walshow and other places north of here. But we've made our own defenses.' With a sly grin, he indicated Nip. 'You'd be surprised what that dog can do when he's roused. We've learned to defend ourselves. It wasn't so bad before, when I was a nipster – a toddler, like. The elders say it was peaceful then. Still, the troubles are all I've ever known. But your bandits won't be finding this pasture. I'm surprised you did.'