Little Bow shrugged. ‘You know there’s an old road along the east bank of the lake,’ he said.
Turkos scratched his head where it itched. ‘The old Wall road. I am a soldier of the Empire, huntsman. I know the road.’
Little Bow nodded. ‘We’ll beat them to Osawa,’ he promised.
Turkos waved at the mile-wide Great River. ‘And are we going to swim our horses across?’ he asked.
Little Bow smiled his gap-toothed smile. ‘I sure hope you’ve got more o’ they pretty gold coins,’ he said.
Turkos had commanded a post on the wall for two years before becoming a riding officer, and he thought he knew the border as well as any Morean. He’d passed up and down the Great River dozens of times, and always found it an endless adventure – the life he loved.
But he was more than a little surprised to find a hidden Outwaller town just east of the entrance to the lake and so well hidden that he didn’t see it until they were all but in its streets.
He shook his head. ‘How’ve I missed this?’ he asked.
‘Abenacki rebuilt it twenty years ago.’ Little Bow showed the burned pilings out in the Great River. ‘You never looked past them, I reckon.’
‘I won’t be lynched for seeing the secret?’ Turkos asked.
Little Bow laughed. ‘No one’s afraid of the Empire,’ he said. ‘If you was one of Earl Muriens’ men, that would be different. But an Imperial? No worries.’
Turkos digested that slowly.
The owner of a serviceable boat charged two gold byzants for ferrying them and their horses across the river. He coaxed the riding horses aboard, made them unload all their furs, and then dragged their pack horses into the icy water.
Turkos swore. ‘No horse can survive that swim,’ he spat.
Little Bow put a hand on his arm. ‘Ye of little faith,’ he said. ‘She’s a witch,’ he said, pointing at the ferryman’s wife.
She was small and pretty and she sat in the stern and fed the horses gouts of power. She laughed and called them strange names and they showed no signs of lagging. Halfway across she lit a pipe and joined the men amidships. She patted Athena, blew into her nostrils, and raised her eyebrows at Turkos. ‘What do you call her?’ she asked.
‘Athena,’ he said. ‘She was a goddess of wisdom.’
The witch smiled. ‘She is a fine god,’ she said. ‘So is Tar. Your Athena was one of the dresses Tar wore for man.’ She patted the horse. ‘Tar is in this one. Your name is good. Your horse says you are a good man, so go well, good man.’
Turkos watched her wriggle through the bales of furs to the stern. ‘Tar is an old name,’ he said. The witch woman frightened him a little – made him uncomfortable, even though he could all but feel her goodness. Or her lack of evil. Having tasted Thorn, he had new standards.
Little Bow grinned. ‘Not here, Empire Man. Here, Tar is our aid and our support, as the Church says in the south about Christ.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘Not that I have anything against Christ,’ he added piously, and chuckled.
They had to take enormous care getting around the Gallish fleet. Whoever was in charge was a professional – there were scout parties on both banks of the lake, and while the fleet made camp on the western shore every night, there were parties ahead, behind, and on the opposite shore.
The second night after the ferry boat, they led their horses – in the dark – across a moonlit frozen swamp, climbed a tall bank, making far too much noise, and got onto the road – two wagons wide, interlocking flagstones laid over a deep roadbed of rock and crushed gravel. It must have been fifteen hundred years old. There were trees down on the road, and potholes deep enough to swallow a horse and rider, but there was sufficient road left to allow a man to ride in the dark at a reasonable speed.
They camped in the ruins of a watch tower. In the morning, Turkos saw signs of irks – a small party, moving fast.
He pointed them out to Little Bow.
‘Far from home,’ the small man said. He shrugged. ‘Nothing to do with us.’
Turkos wrote a note on his tablets and then they were away, trying to ride off the cold. Athena didn’t seem herself – too many nights without a fire and not enough grain, or so Turkos suspected. But he couldn’t pause to investigate, and he rode south.
It was late afternoon, and they had sacrificed caution to move quickly. They were moving at a fast trot down the road, less than twenty leagues from Osawa, when the road ahead of them sprouted warriors with cocked crossbows and bright red paint.
Nita Qwan – The Shore of the Inner Sea
It took Nita Qwan and Gas-a-ho many days to make a canoe that Ta-se-ho would accept. He rejected their first bark skin and made them harvest another. He was a poor patient, endlessly demanding, and yet a pleasant companion, smoking, offering them tea and a pipe when they were tired of cutting big trees with small axes.
Nita Qwan’s ribs bothered him more and more, until, after a sleepless night, he got the boy to use his fledgling powers on him, and then used most of their available animal hide to wrap his midsection.
They moved camp on the third day, choosing a sand bluff like a small fort with a deep old fire pit and three comfortable benches built by other hands.
‘Irks,’ Ta-se-ho said. He sat comfortably, with his back in a backrest grown from a gnarled tree. ‘This is their land. N’gara is only a few days paddle away, south and west.’
The younger man had rebuilt the older shelter, piling brush atop it until it was nearly weatherproof. The skin of the hastenoch had made it windproof, at least.
In the evening of the fifth day, he looked at their third try and nodded. ‘Tomorrow we lace on the gunwales,’ he announced. ‘You two have done well.’
By noon, their boat was complete, and their camp was packed. Ta-se-ho made them tidy away their scraps of deer meat and the litter of days of occupation.
‘Leave it the way you’d like to find it,’ the old hunter said. ‘Many men hate irks, but I’m not one of them. There’s enough woods for all of us.’
That afternoon they paddled west, and made camp in another lean-to left by irks.
‘Tapio’s kingdom,’ he said. ‘Mogon lives in the lands north of here. We’re in the border country. Be alert. Both sides keep soldiers here.’ He smiled an evil smile and rubbed his collarbone. ‘They call them soldiers, anyway,’ he added.
Their progress was painfully slow – broken bones and knitting ribs made paddling into the steady western wind a dull nightmare, despite the beauty of the sun on the water and the flocks of geese and ducks heading south, the crisp white clouds of late autumn racing overhead, the glorious profusion of red-gold leaves on the shore. Ta-se-ho took to smoking constantly. Their food ran low, and then the tobacco was gone and, finally, near the place where the Upper River flowed into the Inner Sea, they had to land and hunt and dry meat to be able to continue.
They landed late in the day, on a beach of good sand, heavily scuffed by other boats and other feet. After a fruitless evening hunt, the three of them sat, eating pemmican around a very small fire. Gas-a-ho spat out some gristle. ‘Not much wood,’ he said. ‘I scrounged what I could, but it is all women’s wood.’
Ta-se-ho nodded. ‘Wardens were here,’ he said. He pointed to the tracks that they’d all seen, and shrugged. ‘I can smell them.’ he said. ‘Fifty warriors. They stayed a day – maybe two. Killed all the deer, and burned all the wood.’
Nita Qwan looked west at the setting sun. ‘A war party?’ he asked.
Ta-se-ho shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. In the morning, we’ll find their campsite, and have a look.’
They went to bed almost as soon as darkness fell, and woke, very cold, before first light, to a steady snowfall. They had little wood to burn, and that was spruce. Nita Qwan ran down the long beach almost a mile, found some cedar driftwood, and carried it back. His ribs hurt but the exercise felt good, and he felt warm for the first time in hours. The cedar driftwood burned beautifully – the scent was almost magical, and the three of them ate their pemmican and drank sassafras tea.