"Then going back won't do her any good." Her head snapped up and she glared at him. "You shit!"
"That's better," he nodded approvingly. "Be angry. Be angry at me. Be angry at them. But don't give into despair."
She rubbed at her cheeks with the palm of her free hand and remembered the Due of Ohrid had made six attempts to get free during the long trip from Ohrid to Elbasan. Six attempts surrounded by a troop of guards and a bard who could find him wherever he ran. "If she's dead, I'm going to Sing His Majesty a song that will bring the palace down around his ears." Pjerin released her. "Witnessed," he said softly.
Pavel i'Gituska woke with the memory of music in his ears. Pleasant music, pretty music, music a man could sleep to. He stretched, scratched, and went out into the evening to check his rented corral. Business hadn't exactly been brisk and he still had five of the eight-mule string he'd come to Vidor with.
He frowned and counted again.
There were only four mules in the corral.
A shriek of outrage had begun to form when he caught sight of the purse hanging off an upright. It wasn't very full, but that didn't end up mattering as the coins it held were silver.
Pavel looked down at the two half-anchors and the double-hawser gleaming on his palm and quite sincerely hoped that his unknown customers would be happy with the mare they'd so drastically overpaid him for.
Annice came out from behind the bush designated as the privy and stared in astonishment. A couple of hours out of Vidor, they'd camped at a spot she remembered vaguely from a fledgling Walk; near where a small stream dropped off a series of stone shelves and rested for a moment in a deep hollow in the rock. Last night, the water had been cold enough to bite at the throat and it wasn't hard to believe that the reflected moonlight was a tracery of frost.
"Are you out of your mind?" she gasped.
Pjerin sucked air through his teeth as he turned and the water lapped higher on his body. "I hate being dirty."
"But you're fond of frostbite?"
His grimace didn't even pretend to be a smile. "You lowlanders don't know what cold water is," he growled and ducked under.
Annice almost screamed in sympathy then reluctantly raised a hand to her own limp tangle of hair. "All things being enclosed," she muttered the hand dropping to her belly, "it's a good thing I've got an excuse not to be in there with him."
She watched appreciatively as he surfaced, muscles rigid, the tendons in his neck standing out in sharp relief, hair flung up in an ebony/crystal arc spraying water across the pond. "Very nice," she said as he waded with dignified haste toward the shore, "but wasn't that bigger the last time I saw it?"
Pjerin glanced down. "Shut up," he snarled.
Lips curved but obediently closed, Annice pulled a cloak up off the pack and handed it to him with exaggerated solicitude.
"I thought I'd let the sun dry me off."
"It's barely up," she pointed out. "And so's…"
"Annice!"
"Sorry. I'll get some food ready and we can move on." With plenty of dry deadfall around, she had a small, very hot fire going in minutes, and water nearly boiling in their squat iron trailpot shortly after.
Pjerin was dressed and had the packs ready to load by the time the oatmeal was done. "You put raisins in it."
She nodded and carefully unwrapped her horn spoon.
"Stasya says that oatmeal without raisins is called a hot grain mash and you feed it to hor…" Her mouth worked, but the last syllable wouldn't come out. All at once, she wasn't hungry. She set the bowl aside.
Pjerin put it back into her hands, wrapping her fingers around the wooden curve and holding them there until they gripped on their own. "You have to eat."
"I don't want to."
"Tough. The baby hasn't made that choice."
"You don't understand. I forgot. I hadn't thought of it all morning."
"As you said, the sun's barely up."
"What about last night? We were alone. We could've tried to find out what was going on. All we did was sleep."
"Annice, you were barely in command of yourself last night, you couldn't have Commanded me, and you certainly didn't have the energy to begin to untangle the mess in my head."
"But…"
"No buts." He pushed wet hair off his face. "You can't think about injustice all the time."
Annice lifted her head, nearly choking on the lump in her throat, and met his eyes. "Can't you?" she asked pointedly.
They sat like that for a long moment.
"Eat your oatmeal," the Due of Ohrid told her at last.
"Ya said ya wouldn't want her fer days yet." The owner of the livery stable squinted up at Otik as he mounted. "Ya shouldn't oughta just take her out like that. Not without warnin' me."
Otik sighed, settled in the saddle, and threw the man a purse. "Look, she's my horse, I can take her when I want her. The full sum we agreed on is in there."
A quick weighing on the palm brought a gap-tooth smile. "But ya said ya wouldn't want her fer days and…"
"Never mind what I said!" Otik snapped. "I'm taking her now!" He yanked the mare around, put his legs to her, and trotted her out of the livery yard.
The stable owner shrugged and pocketed the purse. "Can't say as I didn't try to tell 'im."
Otik had grown up in Vidor. In order to head due east—and Ohrid was due east—there was only one way out of town. A few questions in the right places and a gull or two changing hands had elicited the information that a man and a woman and a mule had passed that way early the previous evening. The woman had been quite pregnant. The man, taller than average, broad shouldered, and dark haired.
"Good lookin' mule, too, yer honor."
A muscle jumped in Otik's cheek. "I don't care about the unenclosed mule!"
Given the woman's condition, they wouldn't be traveling very fast—or very far in the dark. He knew the road and had a good idea of where they must've spent the night. It was mid-morning when he turned his horse off the track, dismounted, and saw he'd guessed correctly.
"Probably pulled out just after sunrise," he muttered. "And likely heading for Turnu. The bard'll know of it, even if the due doesn't." A day's travel from Vidor in good weather, Turnu was the last village of any size heading east. If they needed any supplies, or even one last chance to sleep in a bed, they'd stop at Turnu.
Back on the track, Otik pushed his horse into a canter. Fields and trees rolled by on either side with gratifying speed; he'd be on them long before they could reach the village. His free hand slipped down to pat the crossbow hanging from his saddle.
The mare stumbled.
Otik catapulted headfirst over her shoulder, landed, and rolled dangerously close to still moving hooves. Impact jolted the reins from his hands and, through bones driven into dirt, he felt her jog away. He lay there for a moment, taking inventory, then slowly got to his feet blinking away multicolored flashes of light. All things being enclosed, he was lucky nothing had broken, although the arm he'd landed on would be black and blue and too stiff to use very shortly.
Swearing under his breath, a habit he'd gotten into when he'd made captain, he limped down the track to where his horse had stopped to pull at the new grass, weight resting off her left foreleg. The moment he saw her stance, he knew what he would find when he lifted the hoof.
The shoe had been loose when he'd left her at the stable upon arriving at Vidor and he had given explicit instructions that it was to be immediately taken care of. Running his fingers over the cracked horn, for the shoe had not cast cleanly, Otik added a snarled opinion of the stable owner's lineage to his stream of profanity.
He had no choice. He'd have to walk the horse back to Vidor and have a farrier repair the damage.
"A reprieve," he muttered, catching up the reins, "nothing more. Tomorrow, they are mine."