Tale of Birle (28 page)

And a knife, she must have a good sharp knife in her boot—

Orien must have boots—

And a tinderbox—

AS THEY MOVED OVER THE
top of a low hill the last farm dropped out of sight. They had passed the fork where a road led off to the north and now only double tracks led away, to the mines and westward. A fine rain fell over them. Birle pulled the horse to a stop.

Joaquim had not spoken a word to her since the morning before, but his wasn't the silence of anger. Joaquim was afraid, his whole body curled over the book he held at his chest. His face was hidden by the hood of his cloak. When he turned to look at her, Birle pitied him. “The horse is old and easily guided,” she reassured him. “You'll have a whole day's head start. Corbel won't know until nightfall that you've fled the city.”

The Philosopher shook his head. “Sometimes, he suspects. And if he does, and if he sends a soldier to look in the house—”

“The soldier this morning was glad to be returned to his company,” Birle reminded her master. “The lady Celinde's father must be nearer than Corbel has let the city know. He won't have a thought for you today.”

“He'll know where to find me,” the Philosopher confessed. “My brother has never forgotten an injury done to him. I could almost wish him fallen in battle, if I dared. And he my only brother.”

Birle couldn't help him with that. She put the reins into his gloved hands and climbed down from the high seat. She motioned Yul to help her lift off the layers of sacks they had covered Orien with, before she called Joaquim out of the house. One of the sacks was fat and heavy; that one she put at her feet.

“I should never have done this,” Joaquim was saying. “I should have known better, I should have stayed where he put me, because he'd protect me—my own brother. I'm not a soldier, so why should soldiers wish to harm me? What was I thinking of?” Joaquim asked.

Orien, wrapped round with a blanket, lay on the floor of the cart. How much he understood of what was happening to him, Birle didn't know. Even in the early morning, his body had been hot with fever, and his eyes hadn't opened. He had swallowed a few spoonfuls of cool water, and tried to squirm back from her hands as she spread ointment on his swollen, oozing face, but he wasn't aware of anything. Birle spoke soothingly, but she had no hope that he recognized either the words or her voice.

Yul took up the inert form that was Orien. He held Orien cradled in his arms, as a weaver carries a bolt of fine cloth. Birle lifted the heavy sack and hung it over her shoulder by its wide leather strap.

Joaquim stared down at them, his face white. “What have you done, Birle? What is it, who? It's the one from the mines, isn't it? Do you know the danger he puts us in? No man escapes the mines.”

“Aye, this man did.” Birle said it proudly.

Joaquim didn't hear her. He was lifting the reins to urge the horse along the track, to put as much distance between himself and them as he could, as fast as he could. The cart creaked and rattled away.

Birle looked about her, accustoming herself to the weight on her back and to the lie of the land before her. At waking, she had been sorry for the rain. As they drove out of the city she was glad of it, because it kept most people indoors and made the soldiers at the gate hasty to get back into the guardhouse. Now she was sorry for it again, because rain concealed the sun, which made it hard to know direction, and if it held it would conceal the stars, which would make it impossible to travel by night.

The track along which the cart hurried curved off to the left. To the right, a meadow fell down the hillside, and there the forest made its sparse beginnings. North and east, those were her directions. Yul waited and she tried to smile for him. “We'd better be going on,” she said.

“To the Kingdom?” Yul asked.

“To the Kingdom, if we can,” Birle answered. They set off, side by side, the gentle rain in their faces.

Once under the trees, and far enough within their shelter, Birle stopped. “Set him down, Yul,” she said, adding—even though it wasn't necessary—“gently now, gently.” The medicines had been the last thing she packed, so she had only to reach into her sack to find the flask of barley water. Yul held Orien's head up, so she could open his slack mouth to pour in what she thought was the right dose. Orien coughed, swallowed, and didn't awaken. This was not, Birle knew, a true sleep. This was the sleep of fever, as Joaquim had explained it to her. The spirit hid deep within the body while the fever burned. Like a fire, the fever fed on the flesh; it would burn itself out and if, in its passing, it had consumed too much of the flesh then the sick man would die. Thus, you treated fever with waters, as you might pour water on flames to extinguish them.

After the first taste of barley water, Orien's mouth opened for more, and she hoped it might have eased him. “Now we'll go on,” she said to Yul. Birle was grateful that the giant didn't have the wits to ask where they were going that day, because she had no answer. He was contented to know that they would travel to the Kingdom, if they could.

Birle was not contented, and not easy. She wasn't sure of her direction, except that it should be away from the city of their slavery, away from the armies about to join in battle. She wasn't even certain which way the north lay, or the east. Unless the skies cleared she wouldn't be able to guess at that. And she did know that the sick man would heal best if he lay quiet and sheltered and undisturbed; but that ease she could only give him at even greater risk to his life.

All that day they followed a path through the forest, stopping only to give Orien medicine. At evening, they came to a little brook. Birle led Yul away from the path, to a thick-trunked oak that spread its branches over the brook. “Men made that path,” she explained. “We don't want to be caught there, unaware, if there should be anyone traveling along it.”

Birle studied their situation, as Yul placed Orien on the ground. Orien lay where he had been put, like a dead man wrapped in his shroud. “If anyone does come, Yul, if there's danger, climb up into the tree.”

Yul looked up from where he had seated himself beside the sick man. “Yes, Yul can climb that. Yul can lift Birle up.” She hadn't thought of that. “Not with Orien,” Yul said, sad.

“We'll hope no danger comes,” Birle said, which was the only answer she could give.

They had no fire and only their clothes for warmth. She thought that her fears would keep her awake, as they had the night before while she sat at Orien's side, unable to heal his sickness but unwilling to let him lie unguarded, unaccompanied. But that first night, the bread and cheese sat warm in her stomach, and the air of late spring was warm around her, and Birle slept most of the darkness away. Beside her on the ground, Orien too must have lain quiet, for he didn't waken her.

At dawn, the rain had ceased although low clouds still covered the sky. Birle noted where the sky turned rose and they headed off with that over her right shoulder, following the path, which ran in their direction. There was a stillness in the woods that Birle didn't like. There should have been birds, and small scurrying creatures, but no sound came to her ears. She didn't know what might cause such stillness, but even the wind seemed to have frozen into immobility, listening. All Birle could hear was their own heavy footsteps and the sound of her own breathing as she carried the weight of the sack along the rough path, stumbling on roots and stones as the path rose steeply up and fell steeply down, crossing the forested hills.

Yul carried his burden easily. He held Orien's head close against his shoulder, to protect it from branches. The feet, filthy and full of deep cuts, hung out at the end of the blanket.

By afternoon, Birle's own feet felt hot and swollen, and she knew there were places where she would find the skin rubbed raw if she took her boots off. She had no time to think of that. The path ran northward, she thought, but no sun broke through the clouds to confirm her hope. How many days they must travel before they could stop—that she could only guess at. Where this path led—that too she didn't know. It was dangerous to stay on the path, because it had been made to lead to some destination, for those traveling to or from Corbel's city. It was just as dangerous to go as slowly as they would have to, if they stepped off the path and journeyed through unmarked forest. In the forest, you could go in a circle and arrive exhausted at the very place you had left.

But she didn't know how long it would be before traveling so weakened the sick man that the fever would consume him. She didn't even know if she should wrap him more warmly, to sweat the fever out of his body, or uncover him so that the air might cool him, she didn't even know—

“Birle.”

Yul, who hadn't spoken, for most of the day, spoke her name. His voice was low, a whisper that was almost a growl.

“What's the—”

His face was a mute snarl. It silenced her. She had never thought to fear Yul and she looked quickly, to see that Orien's head was still gently held. Still and silent, she heard what Yul's whisper had warned her of. A heavy sound, as if an iron wind dragged itself slowly toward them.

Birle drew back from the path, back into the shelter of the trees and undergrowth. She took no care to move quietly, because the approaching noise covered any sound they might make.

The noise overtook them so rapidly that she could only sink to the ground behind a tree and motion Yul down beside her. Closer came the noise, until she could hear that it was a jumble of differing sounds—feet, hundreds of feet, and hooves, voices in conversation and the clink of weapons. It sounded like an army, but she couldn't see any army. She could see down to the path they had abandoned, and the army was not on that—unless it were an invisible army, an army of dead men and horses, going off to fight some long-ago war.

Laughter, a snatch of song—this was no army of the dead, if there could be such a thing. Birle scolded herself. There was danger enough to be dealt with, without creating imaginary fears. This was an army of living men, moving to present battle. It seemed to be moving beyond the path, although in the path's direction back along the way they had come. Toward Corbel's city. It didn't matter whose army it was, friend or enemy to Corbel—the whole world was enemy to escaping slaves. But at least, Birle thought, she needn't worry that they were being hunted here. Even Corbel in a fit of anger wouldn't waste an army chasing down three slaves. Yul sat bent over his burden, his eyes like a dog's in terror. “We're safe enough, or so I think. We are safe for now, Yul. Safe,” she said.

Orien moved restlessly, stirring in his blanket like a moth in its cocoon. Birle put her hand on his forehead, his neck: The skin burned dry under her fingers. She could have wept for helplessness but she made herself speak softly. “Hush now, quiet now, sleep now. Hush, easy, be easy, my Lord. Good, yes, quiet now.” As with Yul, it took a while for her words to penetrate.

All the long afternoon they crouched in their fear while the army passed, filling the air with heavy dragging sounds. Birle dared not move back onto the path, although she thought they might pass unnoticed. She dared not risk making the wrong choice. If the choice proved wrong, that was the end of their chance. Darkness was settling over the forest before Birle felt it was safe to move again. It might also have been safe to stay where they were, for the night, but she didn't think she could sleep so close to danger. Yul gathered up Orien, with a muted clanking of his wrist chains, and Birle once again lifted the sack onto her back. The muscles of her shoulders and back ached; it hurt to move legs stiffened by the hours of motionlessness. Birle moved her feet cautiously in the dim light, making her way back to the path.

She forced herself to keep walking, and distracted herself by thinking about the path. It must run hidden beside a broader roadway, a roadway so broad an army could march along it. Why should there be two such ways through the same forest? Unless the path had been made by those who didn't wish to be known to be traveling from the one city to the other. The bare earth under her feet gave evidence that there were many such travelers, moving into and out of Corbel's city.

Soon they walked in darkness, with no star to guide them and no moon to light the way. Birle led, slow, careful, cautious, her ears straining to catch even the smallest noise. Somewhere, off at a distance, an owl called, and that eased her. She listened for the sound of water. When they came to water they would stop. They must stop soon, in any case; she could hear Yul stumbling.

But the thought of the army behind her, moving toward battle, the thought of the way the devastation of battle might overtake them, moving swift as a forest fire—Birle made herself go on, even though she doubted the wisdom of following this path too far. This dark path must have a destination. Whatever that destination was, it was not Birle's.