The Barrow (44 page)

The coach and its escorts first headed due west from Vesslos, as though they were headed toward Araswell. They waited until they had passed beyond the sight of anyone watching from the walls and towers of the city and they were fast approaching the lands of the Lord of Kielwell before they turned southwest along dirt roads that wound through the farming lands on the west bank of the Vessbrae. Stjepan led them around the river village of Mallis, held by a vassal of Baron Conor of Vesslos, and then west-southwest along the southern edge of the lands held by Arduin's father from his baronial seat at Araswell and his vassals. They skirted the lands of his father's tenants, Lord Bjorne Urwed of Riverguard, father to Sirs Lars and Colin, and Lord Swen Clowain of Araslawn. If the knights in Arduin's service occasionally let their gaze wander off their path, to seek a familiar silhouette against the darkening sky, he did not blame them; but as for Arduin, he kept his eyes focused on their scouts, Stjepan and Erim, riding in the fore and tracking the way ahead. These side roads made for a good initial test of the coach, as Arduin and his knights were reasonably well familiar with them, and Arduin checked several times with his squires and with Malia about how well the coach was handling the road until he was satisfied that the choice of carriage had been well made.

Eventually it became too dangerous to continue on in the dark, even with torches and lanterns, and they pulled in for the night at a small stone-walled, thatch-roofed hunting lodge that the men of Araswell used on occasion. It took a short while to make it presentable as it hadn't been used since the previous fall, but at least they were able to spend the first night of their journey with some small amount of comfort, and in familiar surroundings for many of them. They set a fire in the hearth, and hung some sheets and blankets as curtains for Annwyn and Malia. They ate some of the food that Erim and Gilgwyr had secured in Vesslos: several varieties of bread with olive oil, dried figs and dates and plums, the last of the winter pears and apples in the market brought up from cold storage, sliced pork liver pâté from a terrine, and eggs that they cooked in a skillet with some strong cheese and slices of dried pork sausage.

“Do you think they've reached Araswell by now?” asked Sir Clodin as they sat about the hearth.

“They won't be moving as fast as us, but yes, I would expect that they've reached the castle,” Sir Helgi said with a gruff smile. “Don't worry, your lady Frallas is ensconced behind stout walls by now, and under Lord Albrecht's protection. He'll be summoning up the levy of sergeants overnight, and by morning the castle will be sealed up pretty tight.”

Until the Grand Duke arrives
, thought Erim; that part was left unsaid, but still Sir Helgi's words seemed to satisfy the knights and squires, and soon they were busy setting the watch rotation for the night.

Before the two women retired behind their makeshift screens, Stjepan caught Arduin's attention and spoke to the three of them.

“I do not want to impose myself more than is necessary, but obviously we need to know when new parts of the map might choose to reveal themselves,” he said in a low voice. “Lady Annwyn, Mistress Malia, do you think you could familiarize yourself with the images that are currently appearing? If you could perhaps inspect the images each evening, as you prepare for sleep, and see if there is anything appearing that seems new and different, then you can alert Lord Arduin and myself that the map is changing and we can arrange another . . . viewing.”

Annwyn and Malia exchanged a glance, and Malia nodded to Stjepan. “We will let you know the moment that anything new appears, Master Stjepan,” the handmaiden said. The two women curtsied to the two men, and then drew their curtains closed.

When the Dawn Maiden arose the morning of the 19th of Emperium, they gathered themselves and set off at as fast a pace as the coach could manage west-southwest along old, seldom-used paths at the very limits of the domain of the Barony of Araswell, paralleling the Vessbrae as it rose into the foothills of the Manon Mole. By the time the sun had fully risen, they had already covered several miles, which Erim thought was a pretty good pace all things considered. Erim had been curious to note that only a handful of the knights—the Urwed brothers, and Sir Clodin—and the two squires, Brayden and Wilhem, joined together to say some quick quiet prayers to the Dawn Maiden in the morning dark, and then again to greet Islik the Divine King when the sun arose. The other men were all business and no piety, at least until Arduin called for a mid-day prayer for young Herefort on the Path of the Dead. “The household will hold the vigil for him at Araswell for his Seven Days, but we should offer our prayers to guide him on his way,” Arduin said. “We are the ones that knew him best.” And that prayer they all joined in on.

The local lord, Sir Percy Perwain of Ferham, distantly related to the main Orwain lineage and father to Sir Clodin in Arduin's entourage, was in charge of making sure the paths were tended and cleared, and Arduin was thankful to note that they appeared to have been well kept during the winter. They would occasionally see well-built stone farmhouses scattered on nearby rises or in the river valley, but the land here was not terribly hospitable and people were generally scarce. Lord Percy's hold was a stone tower on a crest to their north at the end of a better road that ran twenty miles back to Araswell, but they passed far enough to the south that they never even saw his keep. “Surely we can stop there,” said Sir Clodin.

“Your father has likely ridden out to answer the levy call from Araswell,” noted Stjepan. “And the fewer people that know where we went, the better.” Arduin had nodded at that, and so on they had went, though Sir Clodin favored Stjepan with dark looks from then on.

Across the Vessbrae they could occasionally glimpse the start of the Hada Wold, and the low peaks of the Manon Mole were becoming visible in the distance to the south, and scattered around their path they were beginning to see the peculiar, trademarks stones that gave the Plain of Stones its name.

As they began to cross into the Plain of Stones itself, Arduin urged his horse forward until he was riding side-by-side with Stjepan. “We have reached the limits of my personal experience,” he said, taking a swig of weak wine from a skin. “I have crossed the Plain of Stones many times, but always on the West King's Road, and have traveled my father's lands extensively. But I have never taken the high paths that skirt the Manon Mole.”

“And normally I would never suggest that we take this route,” said Stjepan. “It'll be hard on the coach, and there's some risk from the bandit knights of the hills. But those risks can be managed more easily than the risks we would have had on the West King's Road.”

“I've fought the bandit knights before, but never on their own ground,” admitted Arduin. “We chased a band of their raiders off several years ago, but called off the pursuit right back there,” he said, indicating a spot they had passed several hundred yards back. “We'd already killed a dozen of them in some tough fighting, and it had seemed folly to chase them further.”

“A wise choice, my Lord,” said Stjepan with a nod of his head. “You should never enter the Manon Mole unless you absolutely have to.”

“I . . . I had been offered a commission to ride with Duke Pergwyn this coming summer in the campaign against the Rebel Earl,” Arduin said, brooding. “I suppose that is unlikely to happen now, unless we return with
Gladringer
in hand.”

Stjepan looked at him carefully. “That would have been a great honor for you, my Lord Arduin,” he said. “Perhaps it may still happen. If it does, then we may well be riding together again, as I am expecting to be summoned again to the campaign when the Grand Duke commences it in earnest this summer. Assuming I am not exiled or in jail, of course.” He paused and pointed up the trail they were following. “The old roads and paths ahead were deemed insufficient for large bodies of troops, but we used them all the time last year to run messages down toward Truse or Therapoli.”

“Yes, I remember our Lords of Ferham and Riverguard reporting that men bearing the seal of the High King and the Grand Duke were passing through their lands,” said Arduin. “And then we received an order from the Court to provide fast boats at a small riverside dock where the Hada Wold ends, so that men could head downstream with ease. Do you mean to say you were one of those men?”

“Yes, my Lord, I have traveled your father's lands before, and enjoyed his hospitality, though I never had reason to personally meet him, or you for that matter,” said Stjepan with a nod.

Arduin shook his head and snorted under his breath at the weave of the Fates in the world. “I don't remember the Grand Duke's main companies coming through our lands, though,” he said.

“No, my Lord, they marched the West King's Road to the Danias,” Stjepan said. “The launch point for most of the army was Reinvale or Stonham, coming from the western side of the Mole, but then most of the lords summoned by the Grand Duke to last year's campaign were Danian or from the Watchtowers anyway, and most of the fighting was in the western half of the Mole and down into the Neris Wold. But I know the roads ahead of us sufficiently well.”

“Shall the bandit knights cause us trouble, then?” Arduin asked.

“I do not know, my Lord,” Stjepan said with a frown. “I would hope we do not see another living soul until we reach the outskirts of the Earldom of Erid More. But if we see the knights of the hills, there may be alternatives to bloodshed.”

“Oh?” said Arduin skeptically.

“Like most men, they can be bought,” said Stjepan with a simple shrug.

They ate on the move, stopping only to rest and water the horses along a stream that fed down to the Vessbrae behind them, or to find some favorable spot to squat and undo their breeches and codpieces; Erim was always careful to find a spot well away from the others if she had to piss or shit. The landscape had shifted to a bleak semi-wasteland. Very little seemed to grow in the earth here besides short small shrubs and fuzzy lichens; the primary feature of the Plain of Stones as it overlapped the rolling foothills of the Manon Mole were the stones themselves, thousands of wide flat roughhewn slabs like paving stones scattered over the earth as far as the eye could see, at least until up in the hills where the ground was free of them. Their shape and placement seemed too regular to have been mere accident, and they bore some hint of the touch of man. Erim felt a vaguely creepy feeling beginning to tug at her spine and the hairs on the back of her head, and she noticed the Aurian knights starting to shoot nervous looks about them as they went.
Cursed by your own birthrights wherever you go
, she thought to herself, with very little sympathy.

With so little high growth around them, the paths through the stones were relatively flat and clear, and the coach was able to pass through at a relatively good pace. Several times they had to slow to be careful about one obstacle or another, but by the end of the day Erim guessed they'd made close to thirty-five miles. As the sun began to set behind clouds in the west, they made camp, setting a picket line for the horses; the women stayed in their coach, and the men set up several tents being carried on the carriage. Erim had noted earlier that the horses seemed content with munching on the short shrubs that grew around the flat stone slabs, and that was a bit of luck, as they could save their supply of feed grain for spots where there was nothing for the horses to eat.

They set two campfires that night, one where the knights and squires clustered, and then one where Stjepan, Erim, Gilgwyr, and Leigh gathered. It was as though once out in the open air, with the space to spread out a bit, that the natural social division of the group automatically reasserted itself by unspoken agreement. No one seemed to have an issue with that. As the others set tents and fires, Leigh began marking a perimeter around them, a wide circle of small stones and chalk dust that he poured from a leather bag. He found and marked a rock at one of the cardinal points of the circle with a rune. “
Ward this place against magic! Ward this place against ghosts and spirits! Ward this place against the Wild Hunt and the Black Hunter! They are not welcome here, where we make our mark upon the World!
” he whispered, and moved on to repeat himself at each of the cardinal points around the circle that he had inscribed around them.