'How long have bandits been wandering up here? How can they feed themselves? How do you know they're come from Walshow? How far is it to Walshow from here?'
He snapped his fingers. Two more dogs appeared out of the grass. They were bigger than Nip and had massive muzzles and powerful chests. They loped over to sniff at her, then slipped away to resume their patrol. 'You're a reeve, aren't you?' he asked. 'We see them now and again, hunting around here.'
'Do you? Where do they hail from?'
He shrugged. It was obvious he was telling the truth and never thought once of lying to her. He didn't even feel he needed to lie, he was that confident. 'I don't know. They keep to themselves, although it's true that a time or two we've had a bit of help from them when packs of men came drifting down out of Walshow.'
'They're not patrolling out of Gold Hall? Clan Hall hasn't the resources. I suppose Argent Hall or Horn Hall might fly these parts. Don't they oversee your assizes?'
He looked at the ground, dense with the green growing breath of plants feeding on the early rains and the promise of a fresh year. It
almost seemed that he darkened in aspect, pulled shadows over himself as he changed his mind about trusting her. He was hiding from her, flashes that pricked at her vision
what if she knows?
a snake winds through underbrush, tongue flicking
keep a vessel as of clay about your thoughts,-it is the only protection against the third eye
She blinked back tears and realized he was not speaking.
Fear makes you cold. Shivering, she clambered to her feet. Nip barked as the other dogs circled in. There were five dogs that she could now see, but three wagged their tails tentatively. None threatened her; they simply remained vigilant.
'You're one of them, seeing into me,' he said in a hoarse voice. 'You're death. Have you come to kill me?'
The speed of his transformation from pleasant companion to frightened lad shocked her. She took a step away from the ugly emotion she had roused in him. 'What do you mean?'
He scrambled to his feet and backed away, holding the lute as if it might shield him from attack. 'She hides us, it's all she can do against the others, for they have all become corrupt and soon their shadow will darken every heart. It's just that the dogs didn't bark at you. Why is that? What power do you have that can charm the clogs? Is it all for nothing, all that she has done for us to spare us?' Tears ran down his cheeks. He wept for what his folk had lost. And lie continued backing away, angling so she had to turn to keep lacing him.
Desperately, she said, 'I don't know what you're talking about. I'm seeking answers. I'm lost.'
'That's what they all say. That's what she warns us they will say, trying to get inside us, to get past the defenses she taught us to build. Nothing is safe. Nothing.'
For so many years the protection had held. Now, in an instant, all had fallen, fallen. The shadow will grow, and in the end it will consume even those trying to hide from it.
Marit swayed, struck by the hammer blow of his fear and grief. The sun cleared a cloud; its light forced her to raise a hand to spare her eyes. He had turned her, so the sun's glamour blinded her.
I le whistled. The dogs bolted into action, rounding up the
bleating sheep. He grabbed a pack that had lain concealed in the grass. Silver ribbons to mark the new year fluttered from the buckle of the pack where he had tied them. The Year of the Silver Deer followed the Year of the Black Eagle, only in that case why weren't there only two ribbons tied to his pack, appropriate to the Deer? Why were there eight ribbons, the number of the Fox? He loped away from her with his lute in one hand and the pack bumping up and down on his back.
The Year of the Silver Fox would fall nineteen years after the Year of the Black Eagle. So why was he celebrating it now?
She didn't call after him. She recognized futility when she saw it. Anyway, she was still trembling with a fear that penetrated her entire body. She hadn't 'seen' into him. It was a trick, him speaking and her too tired or anxious to notice, or maybe a kind of magic she'd never heard of except in the tales: the magic of misdirection common to clever thieves and cunning jaryas. But he had recognized the change. He'd known she was doing it. That's when he had run.
The lad and his dogs drove the sheep out of the meadow while she watched. The dogs yipped excitedly, eager to be on the move. Behind her, a creature stamped through the grass on her trail. She spun, grabbing at her knife. The mare trotted up beside her, wings furled.
'You warned me,' she said. 'I just didn't know what you meant.'
The horse nosed in the grass. A surface glinted, and she crouched to investigate as the mare chopped at the earth. An ornament had fallen among the grass, frayed strands of silver ribbon caught in a tiny leather loop that had once fastened the ornament to another object. It was a cheap replica of a fox, no longer than her thumb and rendered out of tin: a poor man's year medallion, the kind of thing, like the eight ribbons, given out by the temples at the feasts dedicated to the year's beginning. The Year of the Silver Fox.
Maybe she was still dreaming.
The mare lifted her head, left ear flicking back. Her stance changed. She stared toward the tree line off to the north in the opposite direction to which the youth had fled. Clutching the fox medallion, Marit rose.
A spit of movement made the mare shy, and Marit jumped sideways. An arrow quivered in the earth.
The hells!'
A punch jabbed her body. Gasping, she looked down to find an arrow protruding from her belly, low by her right hip. The mare spread her wings. Gagging at the sheer utter knife of red-hot pain, Marit snapped off the haft and tossed the fletched end aside. With a shout, to pour out a breath's worth of pain, she hauled herself into the saddle. The mare sprang into the air. Marit gripped the saddle horn, sweat breaking over her as she resisted screaming, as the point jabbed and ground inside her gut. Armed men ran into the meadow, bows raised and arrows rising in high arcs after her. These were the same sullen bandits who had first chased her, their ruthless captain identifiable by the lime-whitened horsetail ornaments dangling from his shoulders.
Then they were clear. Her vision blurred. Hills rose and fell on every side like an ocean spilling and sighing beneath her: highlands pine, vistas of grass and heath and bitter-thorn and later moss and lichen with no sign of the youth and his dogs and sheep. She concentrated on clinging to the saddle. Hold on. Hold on. Let the horse take its head and run the straightest course away from danger.
They will never stop bunting me.
'You're death,' the lad had said.
Blood leaked down her belly and spilled over her thighs onto the mare's gray flanks, to drip-drop into the air like rain. Her hands went numb as feeling left them. The cloak wrapped her so tightly she could not even see the landscape passing beyond, shrouding her in the same way the white shroud of death drapes the dead. But she was still breathing, each breath like flame sucked into her body. The pain of burning kept her alive for a thousand years with each lift and fall of wings, and she hung on forever wishing that oblivion would claim her, but it never did.
With a jolt that made Marit cry out, the mare clattered to earth. She spread her wings, and Marit tumbled out of the saddle and fell hard on her back. Pain blinded her, or she was already blind with night suffocating her. She choked on air. Better dead than this. Desperate, wild, she fixed hands around the broken shaft and yanked.
A stink of blood and effluvia gushed free, warming her hands. The gods heard her pleas. A roaring like a storm wind battered through her. Rising out of that gale, the white cloak of death smothered her in its wings.
3
After a certain point death is a peaceful condition, but a bit uncomfortable if your one leg is twisted beneath you, and if your shoulder, pressed into rock, is beginning to feel the pinch, and if your hip aches. She shifted, because it irritated her that minor twinges must plague her when she had earned the right to rest. Once shifted, she realized she was awake and her mind was full with questions.