All four children had gone out a few steps into the yard, and Oti stepped out among them in time to see a gaily attired rider swerve narrowly around the edge of his fresh-churned field with long black hair bouncing behind her, beaming a wide smile. The young woman wore outlandish dress; black cloth breeks for she did not ride sidesaddle, with an emerald green half-cloak buttoned from waist to throat. Her mass of raven hair was only as much as escaped from beneath a bushka, the traditional turban-like headdress of Orstaf. This lady’s was of a light blue cloth more suitable for a festival than for a windy day on the steppe.
As she neared, waving a gloved hand, Oti saw that she was quite pretty although heavily done-up with her face powdered pale and ruby-red lips that seemed glaring against her white teeth. She rode right into the yard through the open gate of the mud-brick wall and pulled up her prancing, speckled horse just before Oti felt a need to pull his children back toward the house. Still beaming, the woman swung easily out of the saddle but landed with a not quite ladylike grunt. She performed an adequate curtsey, and Oti hurried has cap back off of his head to return a bow.
“Good day, Goodman,” she bubbled, all flashing teeth and batting brown eyes. “Lovely day for riding, is it not?”
She spoke the plain and serviceable Codian tongue with the chirpy cadence of the wellborn, and as it was Oti’s second language after Orstavian he squinted as he tried to keep up with the rapid stream rippling with fluttery hand gestures.
“I am the Lady Haversmythe of Lothdowne, en route to visit relations out past the Ortel Spur, although presently guesting with your most gracious Lord Baron who this morn was good enough to arrange for horse-borne tour of his demesnes for my traveling party. Well, at the conclusion of said tour and after a delightful mid-day sup, we sought further amusement via a most spirited game of chase, during the course of which – would you believe it? – I proved perhaps only too proficient at the contest and so find myself not only having lost my pseudo pursuers, but myself as well, rather altogether!”
She beamed even wider, eyes twinkling. She seemed to be expecting something in return, though Oti was at a loss as to what it could be.
“You need to know the way back to the baron’s village, Milady?” Oti’s wife spoke from the doorway after realizing her husband was stuck.
“Quite.”
Oti cleared his throat and explained. Past two ridges to the west, the wide dug-out road leading due north, only an hour or so on horseback. The lady bobbed her head.
“Oh, many thanks. That sounds simple enough, even for silly old me!”
She bent from the waist so her face was nearly level with that of Oti’s young daughter, still staring wide-eyed at the stranger. The woman held up a coin, a shiny silver swan, and offered it to the girl.
“My lady, there is no need!” Oti began, but the woman shushed him.
“No, no, I quite insist. There is no telling how much consternation you have spared me, not to say embarrassment should the baron’s men have to ride all over hill and dale searching for their wayward guest! Can you imagine? Here you are, my pretty little Miss. Would you be so good as to take this for your father?”
Oti’s daughter had no trouble doing so. In fact, the coin immediately disappeared into her own pocket.
The woman blinked and grinned at the girl before straightening to leave, but paused and gave a wistful sigh as she looked at the fur cap in Oti’s hands. She made a clucking sound.
“My lady?”
“Oh, I do so wish I had brought a bit more coin, for I should so love to have a bit of your rustic garb to take back with me to the Beoshore!”
*
Tilda knelt on the damp bank of a stream, not the same one where she had done wash yesterday but for all other purposes identical. She scrubbed her face free of the powder and rouge more typical of the distant Tullish side of Lake Beo, spat into the water, then sat back on her haunches and went about the deft and automatic motions of returning her hair to its long, intricate braid. The Captain was just up the stream, mounted and idly holding the reins of both horses as they drank. Soon enough the man Dugan emerged from behind an elderberry bush. He was outfitted now in baggy woolen trousers with his sandals and knee-high leggings poking out from underneath frayed cuffs, and a long Orstavian jerkin of strong brown cloth with cord laces from mid chest to throat. Finally, a threadbare and almost shapeless hat of unidentifiable gray-and-white fur, with flaps hanging over the ears, perched on his head. He had his old clothes and the blanket he’d been wearing bundled in his hands, and as Tilda could not see his sword she assumed he had shifted it to his back, The blade was now concealed beneath the thigh-length jerkin.
“What do you think?” he asked. “Do I pass for an Orstavian herdsman?”
“About as much as Matilda does for a noblewoman,” Block grumbled. “Now let us away. We have burned enough daylight doing your shopping.”
We? Tilda thought, but of course did not say out loud. She patted her face dry and hurriedly went about replacing the mare’s baggage which she had removed for their sprightly ride. Expecting no help, much less thanks, she was surprised as Dugan knelt to take up and tie the hanging laces across the horse’s belly, while Tilda arranged the bags behind the saddle. As Block began to canter back toward the west, Dugan stood up across the mare from Tilda and gave her a nod.
“My thanks for your trouble, Miss.”
Tilda blinked at him. His face was set seriously, no jibing at the moment, and even with the homely fur cap on his head it was the first time in a while that he had looked quite so handsome.
“No trouble…and my name is Tilda.”
Dugan’s eyes narrowed. “Your Cap’n called you Matilda.”
“Yes, but…”
A small smirk had begun to play at one side of Dugan’s mouth and Tilda sighed inwardly, marking her misstep.
“…but my friends call me Tilda.”
He nodded, still with his half a grin, and offered Tilda a hand for a pull up into her saddle. She did not accept it but swung up herself despite the fact that it still made her ribs hurt.
*
Over the next few days Dugan took paths veering more southerly than west. As the Girding Mountains drew nearer on the horizon the land rose and the grass of the steppe grew shorter, hardly reaching the man’s knees as he set a brisk pace afoot that the horses followed comfortably. After six days of traveling with the renegade, a full week after the battle from which he had escaped, Tilda realized that this was now the Fifteenth and middle day of Eight Month, and it gave her a start. When she had left the Islands three months ago, “next year” had seemed an awful long time away. But now there were only three and a half months remaining in 1395, and the Miilarkians were still very far from home. If they did not return to the Islands before the New Year’s Assembly of House Lords, the Captain’s mission would have failed. That suddenly did not seem like so long a time distant.
The Fifteenth was also the day that the three travelers reached the river, or rather it was the day that the river came out onto the steppe to reach them. Though it is several hundred miles from where the Winding rises in the marshes around La Trabon until its waters join those of the Runne to the west and south, the course of the river is easily thrice its length. It snakes wildly among the foothills of the Girdings, and in some places stretches great bowing bends out for many miles onto the steppe. The travelers met one such curve at its elbow, for there the Winding flowed almost like a moat enclosing a rocky spur of high ground. A long series of ridges, hills, and plateaus together pointed like a finger due north onto the steppe, perpendicular to the main line of the mountains.