The fat woman was as pale now as she’d been red before. Paks shot her a hard glance before opening the sack Saben had dropped. Three soggy loaves, dipped in boiling water to make them steam, a cheese that stank when she opened the sack, a string of onions. Paks held up the onions. “Fine drumsticks your fowl have,” she said. The woman did not answer. Paks turned the bag inside out, filled it with the food she’d taken, and looped the string closure. “I’m thinking you should be quiet at home this day,” she said. “All that yelling might have given someone the wrong idea.” Paks flipped the woman’s headscarf off her head and folded it. She looked at Saben. “That bit of cord?”
“Good idea,” he said. “My pouch.” Paks held the woman at sword point while Saben extracted the roll of cord and bound her hands behind her. Then they pushed her over to the shanty wall, forced her down, and tied her ankles as well. Paks gagged her with the headscarf.
“Her babies will free her soon enough,” Paks murmured, “but we’ll have a short lead.”
“Time to head for home, I think,” said Saben, with a last look around. They re-entered the trees and worked their way to the river. There they found a convenient rock and waited for Canna. Saben had taken a cut on the knuckles of his dagger hand, and sucked at the wound. When Canna came up beside them, she was carrying the big bow.
“Nice friendly folks, uncle’s family,” said Saben. “I’m keeping this blade, in case we meet more cousins.”
Canna nodded. “At least we got food. But now we go straight in; it’s our only chance.”
“I’m sorry, Canna,” said Paks. She remembered that she should have waited for a command before rushing out.
Canna shrugged. “It worked—worked well, but for leaving such a trail. What was in the house besides food?”
“Two,” said Paks. “Boy with a club, and a man with two daggers. He threw one.”
Canna looked at the cut. “We ought to wrap that; it’s still bleeding.” Paks had not noticed the blood still dripping off her elbow. “We’ll take off mine; we don’t want to leave a blood trail.”
“We forgot to change yours yesterday,” said Saben. “How is it?”
“Fine. It’s healing fast. Hurry; we need to cross this river and be gone.” When they got the bandage off Canna’s shoulder, her wound was dry and pink. Canna wound a linen strip around Paks’s arm and helped her up.
They had crossed this river before on an arched stone bridge, but that bridge was on the road. Now they looked at the cold gray water and shivered. Canna sighed. “No help for it. At least it’s not wide.” She led the way to the bank and they took another look. Upstream, to the left, it seemed it might be shallower. An overgrown but rutted opening into the trees on either side revealed a disused ford. They took off boots and socks, and waded out into the water. It was icy; Paks’s feet began to ache almost at once. The water tugged at their ankles, then their knees. They were halfway across—two thirds—and at last they were climbing the far bank, shivering. They replaced their footgear, and Canna led them away from the river into the trees before she let them stop to eat.
They started by finishing the stale bread and meat Saben had found the first day, then ate a loaf from uncle’s. Paks felt strength flowing back into her; she noticed that Canna and Saben looked less pinched.
“Now,” said Canna, as they finished, washing down the last crumbs, “straight south as fast as we can. If that woman sets the Honeycat on us, he’ll send horses. We stay away from everyone, fill the flasks at every stream, and move.”
For the rest of that day they walked steadily southward, taking care not to cross open fields where they could be seen from a distance. They drank as they marched, and stopped only once before nightfall to eat generous wedges of ham and bread. Although they crossed several narrow lanes, they saw no one but distant farmers. They could not tell if they had been seen.
By nightfall they were far south of the slower moving column, Canna was sure. They had not seen anything of a mounted pursuit, and she told them she thought they might be clear. They sheltered in a thicket for a hearty meal.
“I think we may make it,” said Canna, looking truly cheerful for the first time. “But we must go on. We can see to walk in the starlight, and the more ground between us and them, the better. We might make Rotengre by the day after tomorrow, if we’re lucky.” Paks was stiff and sore, but able to manage another hour or so of travel. The next day they were up at first light. Again Canna served out a husky portion of food, and they set off at a brisk walk. Paks kept a nervous eye over her shoulder for the first hour or so, but saw nothing.
In early afternoon, they saw ahead of them a large forested rise, and remembered the forest near Rotengre. They pushed on as fast as they could, hoping to be well into the trees by nightfall; these last few hours the land behind them had been open, with scanty hedges. Again and again they had to cross open ground, all too visible if the wrong eyes were looking.
Thicker than the little woodlots they’d been in for the past few days, here the trees were tall, with leaves just falling from elm and oak and hornbeam. Scattered clumps of evergreens made gloomy shadows within the forest shade. The ground was more broken, with outcrops of pitted gray rock as they climbed away from the farmland. Canna took a long look at the angle of the sun before they lost sight of it. It would be hard to keep a straight course in the forest.
It was also, they found, impossible to keep going as late. Trees dimmed the starlight; they stumbled into rocks and hollows. Finally they stopped in a clump of cedar. They ate another loaf of bread, and thick slices of ham. If they reached the Duke the next day, or even the one after, they need not worry about food. Paks took first watch, a silent space of darkness in which nothing happened, and went to sleep feeling sure that the next night would see them safely warm around the campfire of the Company.
She woke to a thin cold rain falling out of thick clouds. Canna looked gloomier than the weather. “We can’t find our way in this,” she said. “We need the sun for directions. Unless you have another trick, Paks—”
Paks shook her head. “No. All I know about this forest is that it’s big, and the farmers near Rotengre said it was full of brigands.”
“That’s all we need,” said Saben. “Brigands. Brrr, it’s cold. And wet. We can’t sit here and do nothing, Canna. We’ll have to find our directions somehow.”
Canna spread her hands. “And if we get lost? We could get farther from Rotengre than we are now, if we wander around.”
They ate an ample but damp breakfast, huddling under their cloaks. Paks looked back the way they’d come, seeing nothing but rain-wet trees. Any brigands, she thought, would be holed up in a dry cave or fort. She shifted restlessly and a trickle of icy water ran down her back. She looked at the others. Saben, for the first time, looked sulky. Canna was staring glumly at the ground.
“Could we—” she began slowly. Canna looked up. “Could we try to find the road again and follow that? We must be far ahead of the column, and the wagons will slow in this wet. Or if you think we can’t find the road by cutting through the forest, we could backtrack to the edge and go that way.”
Saben smiled at her. “Good idea. Canna, we can do that, can’t we?”
“I suppose. I still worry about getting lost, and if we backtrack, we’ll be closer to Siniava.”
“If we stay here, he’s coming closer to us. At least that gives us a chance—and they can’t see far in the rain.”
“True. I’d be glad to be moving, myself—the Duke needs to know.” Canna looked around. “Let me think. The road was off to our right, and we were headed that way—I remember that holly tree. I think we should go this way—” she pointed. “Do you agree, Paks?”