From Across the Clouded Range (38 page)

“
Well, if I leave, that
will make it much harder for you to bring me the soap, won’t it?”
She laughed.

“
You know what I
mean.”

“
Do I? A couple of days
ago you were planning to show me everything you have in the back of
your coach. So now you don’t feel so confident . . . ?”

Dasen looked back at her, incredulous.
How could she bring that up again? He was preparing to defend
himself, when she started laughing. “You are too easy. Just throw
me the soap, and I’ll spare your innocence.”

Dasen could not help but smile. He had
to stop underestimating his wife. She was right, he was too easy.
He tossed the soap over his shoulder, but it slipped out of his
hand and landed in the trees well away from its intended
target.

Tethina snuffed but went into the
trees to retrieve the errant bar. “Okay. You’re safe now,” she
called. “Though you really never know. I could be hiding anywhere
out here. Maybe I’ll wait and see what you have to offer.” Dasen
rolled his eyes but refused to rise to the bait. When the comment
did not earn the desired reaction, Tethina laughed. “Must not be
much then. I guess I’ll just have to wait until you find another
coach.”

With that, she disappeared into the
trees. As she said, there was no chance that Dasen could find her
if she didn’t want him to, so he retreated slowly from the water,
trying to keep his back facing upstream. Finally, he emerged from
the water and realized how ridiculous he was being. They were
joined after all. If she wanted to see him naked, let
her.

He wiped away as much of the water as
he could, allowing the sun to warm his shivering body, then pulled
on his clothes. While he dressed, he felt his resolve build. He
would show her, he decided, so he picked up the grouse, water bag,
bow, and quiver. It took a moment to find a way to carry all those
things, but when he finally had everything settled, he jogged back
to the shelter determined to show Tethina what he could
do.

#

Teth crept silently through the trees
away from Dasen. She knew this stretch of forest and the water that
bordered it better than the streets of the village where she had
been raised. She leapt across the overgrown roots of one mammoth
cedar to the fallen trunk of another then walked up its expanse to
avoid the brush that was slowly consuming it. That left her on top
of a lichen-covered rock ten feet above the forest floor. The sun
streamed through a crack in the canopy above onto that very spot,
and she paused for a minute to enjoy its warmth. She watched the
stream running by through the bare trunks of the pines, heard the
rush of a falls, drew in the rich smells of the forest, and
relished being home.

She considered how the Order had
conspired to deliver her here. All the events of the past few days
could only be the Order at work. It was giving her a chance to show
Dasen what she could do, to prove to him that she was more than
some girl, to give him some sense of her life prior to his arrival
and why it was important. After a life spent feeling battered,
abused, and forgotten by that divine power, she closed her eyes and
said the first sincere prayer she had managed since the one outside
the burning smithy had gone unanswered.

The serenity was broken by
the thump of feet, breaking of sticks, swish of branches, and
increased animal chatter that could only be Dasen walking back to
the camp. Teth laughed quietly to herself. He was so hopeless that
he didn’t even know what he was doing wrong. She was confident that
they were safe for now, but he would have to learn to walk quietly
soon enough. On the other side of the river, those heavy footfalls,
a single broken stick, the warning call of squirrels could be the
difference between escape and capture. Teth had played this game
with the villagers, with the blasted forest masters, so many times
it was simply part of her nature now. She hid without thinking,
rolled her feet reflexively, planned her path strides ahead, used
her every sense to
know
her surroundings. But now she had to teach all
that to Dasen in just a few days. She decided to start as soon as
she got back to camp. Perhaps he could learn something before they
started their trip that evening.

With that thought, she walked
carefully onto a branch that stretched from the rock out toward the
stream. From there she climbed down to another, following it to its
trunk where more stretched out like streets from a roundabout. She
ducked and wove between branches moving from one to another until
she was standing a few feet above a pool of still water. The stream
was wider here, slower moving and deeper. At the upstream end, the
water fell five feet off a ledge of rock, drowning out the sounds
of the forest. On the other, a series of boulders blocked half the
stream, creating the pool below and forcing the water to rush
through the narrow opening they allowed.

Teth turned her eyes and ears to the
forest around her. She was certain that Dasen had walked back to
the shelter and even more so that he could not sneak up on her, but
she was serious about cutting his eyes out if he tried. The thought
made her think about how he had looked standing naked in the
stream. She had honestly not been able to see anything but had
enjoyed seeing him so flustered. He was certainly not much of a
specimen, especially compared to the hearty men she had known her
entire life. He was thin, underdeveloped, soft. His skin looked
like it had never seen the sun. He barely even had hair on his
chest. Still, he had been there for her. He had cared for her,
saved her from the river, comforted her, carried her to the
shelter, given her water and food. He had been kind, compassionate,
and brave in the face of the worst the Order could deal out. In
that moment, she could not think of a single person she would
rather have with her in this mess, despite and because of all those
failings. Besides, she told herself, it was so easy to get him
riled, to keep him off-balance. And she laughed at the thought of
his bewildered expressions, his indignation, and failed
reprisals.

Finally, she looked up at the sun. It
was already a few hours past its apex. Her stomach was rumbling,
and she couldn’t expect Dasen to clean and cook those birds – she’d
be surprised if he managed another fire. With a sigh, she stripped
off her clothes and dropped them behind a rock at the edge of the
pool. When she was naked, she took a deep breath and leapt into the
water. It wrapped around her in a sudden freezing embrace that
nearly stole her breath. Her feet hit the bottom of the pool, and
she shot up gasping. The water in the deepest part of the pool only
came to the middle of her chest and here it was just above her
stomach. Still it was freezing cold. She dunked herself a few times
to acclimate herself then walked carefully across the smooth rocks
to a shallow area where she could use the soap.

As she lathered her body, scrubbing
away the blood from her arms and hands with sand from the stream
bottom, she watched the falls a few feet away. It was not much of a
waterfall, no more than a sheet of water cascading off of a rock
overhang, but it provided the perfect complement to the scene. With
a backdrop of fifty foot pines and snow topped purple crags, it was
more beautiful than anything made by man could ever hope to be. It
made her think of the perfection of nature, how the Order could
craft such magnificent art with its slow, relentless cycles. Man
could only debase that beauty, could never hope to match it. The
day they had come out of these forests and built their houses and
towers and walls was the day they had turned their backs on the
Order.

Teth threw the bar of soap toward her
clothes then dipped her head into the water. She emerged feeling
renewed, clean, and fresh. She began walking toward the edge of the
pool then froze. She lowered herself down into the water and
listened, trying to hear through the rush from the falls. She heard
it again, a branch snapping, sticks breaking, loud enough to hear
over the water’s roar.

She cursed.
Dasen better have a hell of a good reason to be
out there
. She searched the near bank but
there was no sign of movement. Still the clamor continued.
From the other side,
she
realized in shock. Someone or something was hacking its way through
the forest on the other side of the stream, and it was certainly
not Dasen. Besides being on the wrong side of the steam, there were
too many sounds for one person to be making. Whatever was making
that clamor, there were several of them, and they were almost upon
her.

Teth did the only thing she had time
to do. Keeping herself low, she bounded through the water to a
space between two rocks. The water there was still over her waist,
and she had to pull herself out with one hand on either stone. When
she was high enough, she planted a foot on one rock and launched
herself behind the other. She landed with a crackling thump on her
clothes and rolled once before she arrested her momentum. Panting,
trembling, dripping wet, and naked, she eased herself around the
rock to peer out at the stream. An infant pine growing in the gap
between the boulders hid her from the stream. Her body was at a
slight downward angle. The stones obscured her from either side. It
wasn’t the best hiding place. She knew that she should stay behind
the stone, but she had to know what was happening. Her eyes focused
just in time to see the first shadowy figures moving through the
trees.

Ever so slowly, Teth dropped onto her
belly, feeling the pine needles that had gathered between the
boulders stabbing her in a thousand places along the length of her
body. She quickly threw her shirt over her head. It was brown and
should provide enough camouflage to complete the blind. Holding the
collar up over her eyes, she watched a dozen men emerge from the
forest at the opposite end of the pool where the water flowed out.
They hacked their way through the trees with broad swords then
almost threw themselves at the water and drank deeply.

Teth tried to disappear. The men were
on the other side of the stream but only twenty paces from where
she hid. Her white body lying naked on the brown earth felt
horribly exposed. She could only imagine it standing out like a
beacon. Thoughts of what these men might do if they found her raced
through her mind and made her stomach churn. As if sensing her
thoughts, one of the men looked up from the stream. He stared at
the falls then scanned the opposite bank with sharp, dark eyes.
Those eyes paused. Teth’s heart nearly stopped. He was looking
right at her. She held her breath and waited for him to call to his
fellows, waited for him to point in recognition.

Seconds passed. For an
eternity he stared, but he made no call, did not point in
recognition. He looked back toward the falls then turned to his
fellows. Teth let out her breath and thanked the Holy Order for yet
another mercy. The prayer was quickly replaced by a curse.
So they are searching for us
, she thought.
A dozen men on an
organized search. How many of these bandits can there be? And how
can I warn Dasen?
It was only a matter of
time before they found the path, saw Dasen’s obvious trail leading
to the shelter. Then he was as good as captured, and she was
trapped naked behind a rock, completely worthless. She cursed
herself for her miscalculation.

Yet as Teth continued to watch the
men, her speculation changed. To start, these men did not look
anything like the ones from the village. They were, if anything,
small. None of them looked taller than her. They appeared to be
well built, strong, and sure, but their frames were small. Further,
they wore what looked like uniforms. Every one of them was dressed
the same, dark-red shirts and loose black pants that were caught up
and tied at the ankle. Their jet-black hair was tightly wound into
a single long braid that ran well down their backs, and their skin
was dark as if they had deep tans. Teth had never seen men like
these, but she could only imagine that such uniformity suggested
that they were part of a military unit. She had never seen soldiers
beyond the district forest masters, so she could not make any
judgment about their origins, but these men felt foreign, even more
so than the men in the village.

Adding finally to her
doubts, these men did not seem to be hunting. They did not search
the ground for tracks, did not strain to hear their quarry, did not
have dogs to sniff out a trail. As Teth watched, they spread out
along the stream in both directions – causing her no end of stress
as several of them disappeared from her view – then came back
together and had a heated discussion. But that discussion seemed
focused on the stream.
They are deciding
where to cross
, Teth realized. But why
such effort? The stream’s not deep. They could wade across it at
almost any point.
Maybe they don’t like
getting wet.
In any case, they finally
seemed to decide on an area just upstream from the falls where the
water was wide and shallow. They gathered there for a final
discussion then split into two groups. Ten of them waded across the
stream, where Teth lost sight of them. The others ran back into the
forest on the other side.

Having ten men searching
on her side of the stream increased Teth’s discomfort immeasurably.
When she was sure all them were out of sight, she silently slipped
into her clothes. With at least that protection, she felt
better.
You’re a boy
, she told herself.
If they believe
that, the greatest danger is past, but you have to believe
it
. She drew a deep breath and peeked
around the side of the rock that hid her from view. She saw
nothing. Straining with her ears, she heard the sound of swords
striking branches.
What kind of hunters
use swords to clear branches? How do they hope to catch anyone
while making all that noise? Even Dasen would hear them coming and
have time to hide.