In all his battles, all his fields,

Sir Willard proved the best.

He loved the queen,

But then her maid,

And never more was blessed.

— From "Black Armor Becomes Him," Arkendian ballad

Chapter Twenty

Harric climbed aboard Rag as Brolli set to erasing the hoof prints in the camp.

Hunting horns sounded again. No closer, but Bannus's throaty basso was clearly coming to join the others.

"That's good enough, Brolli," said Willard.

"Good enough? It is the best. And I finish."

"Come help me to my saddle. No sense busting all your fancy bandages before we've gone a mile."

With the help of Brolli and Caris and the use of a strategically positioned stump, Willard managed to get on top of Molly. By the time he swung his leg across her rump and sat up in his saddle, his face was the color of bone.

"Just stiff," he said. "I'll limber up."

"You bleed," Brolli said. "The rags are already full." A line of bright blood scored the black skirt and dripped upon his spurs.

"It'll stop." Willard urged Molly up the stream, puffing hungrily on the ragleaf.

Brolli boarded Idgit, his face dark with frustration. As he bound himself to the saddle, Spook clambered onto the warm saddle pack in which he'd stowed the porridge pot, still full of steaming oatmeal, and settled in for the ride.

"Harric," Brolli said. He'd pushed his daylids up, revealing the worry in his golden owl eyes. "Watch Willard while I am sleeping. You wake me if he still bleed."

                  * * *

They hadn't gone far up the stream before a narrow mule track bisected its course, and Caris finally guided Rag out of the stream to follow the track east up the slopes at the head of the valley. Once they struck the trail, Rag seemed to recognize it; she snorted, her tail twitching eagerly, and picked up the pace as if for a particularly cozy stable at the end of the road.

The track climbed steadily through heavily wooded slopes to a ridge over which it dove into an ancient torchwood forest. Gazing over the stony spine of the ridge, they glimpsed through the trees a wooded valley untamed by farmstead or mill, and beyond it ridge after higher ridge, like rows of jagged teeth.

"Hold it," Willard said, before they descended the track into the valley. "Brolli? You awake?"

Brolli had already removed his blanket. "Hard to sleep with the horns." He grinned sleepily. "You wish I go back to cover any tracks on the trail?"

"You read my thoughts exactly. Also, I'm worried about our pursuers. Once we cross this ridge, we won't hear their calls, so we won't know if they're on our trail. While you're working our tracks over, we'll take a good listen and see if we can gauge whether they're following or not."

Brolli nodded. "I will listen too."

As the Kwendi loped his way back down the trail, Harric dismounted, and laid himself out on a rock shelf warmed by the sun. By the time Brolli returned, Harric had managed a ragleaf-induced — and thankfully dreamless — sleep. Willard had worked himself into a lather of profanity.

"Those horns are getting closer, Brolli. Saddle up. Nothing for it but to move out and hope they haven't found our trail." He peered back at snatches of sky he could see to the west, where a few dark clouds lurked. "Rain could help hide our tracks, or it could make things worse by softening the trail so we leave more of them." He scowled, moving a fresh rag roll to the side of his mouth. "Lead on, girl."

They descended the ridge into an ancient torchwood forest. All around them the trunks soared skyward like columns in a giant's palace, some as thick as windmills. High above, a canopy of coin-shaped leaves winked green and gold in the sunlight, while under foot a carpet of deep moss swallowed sound and beckoned Harric to lay and rest. As he breathed the scent of ancient life, something stirred within him. The immensity of the silence beneath the trees soothed him.

How long had it been since he visited the hollows of these ridges? In the last years of his mother's life, when her madness made her vicious, he'd escaped there often to camp alone in the blessed stillness.

Willard rode before Harric, smoking steadily. He'd closed the visor on his helm, to get the most from the herb, so the smoke poured from the eye slots. Harric chuckled inwardly. The Ragleaf Knight. Willard was surely as hardened a ragleaf addict as he'd ever seen. Had the pain of aging driven him to it? Perhaps the aches of five lifetimes of wounds had returned now that he was mortal. Or perhaps it was some other pain entirely.

By mid-morning the herb's effects on Harric faded, and his pain returned with interest. Eventually, even the peace of the ancient forest was lost upon him. Once again, his brain seemed to swell as his skull shrunk around it. His swollen lip began to throb worse than before, irritated by a newly chipped tooth. Each of Rag's steps sent a stab of fire through his bruised ribs.

When Willard called for a halt in a rocky grotto at the base of a giant torchwood, Harric wanted only to eat in silence on a cushion of moss. Careful not to wake Brolli, Harric doled out bread and cheese from one of Idgit's saddle packs, then picked a spot to eat that was close enough to the others that his isolation wouldn't look intentional, but far enough away that he wouldn't have to talk. As he lowered himself onto a hummock of springy red cork-moss, Spook scampered to him and pestered him for food by mewing pathetically. Harric chewed stale bread slowly, his jaw aching, and fed Spook hunks of cheese.

Caris staked Rag far from the Phyros, and joined Harric. Without the burden of concentrating on Rag, she seemed worried, distracted, and itching to talk. He knew that she would sense his mood, and that his sullenness would confuse or anger her, but he found it very hard to feign any cheer.

He acknowledged her with a grunt.

To fill the heavy silence and take his mind off his pains, he laid his mother's saddle knife upon the back of his left hand and made it walk from knuckle to knuckle, back and forth across the hand. After a few revolutions he flipped it to stand on its pommel on the back of the hand — almost dropped it — then let it fall sideways to the back of his other hand, where he walked it across the knuckles the same way. It was a hand-limbering exercise his mother taught him, and it helped clear his head when he needed. It was also a form of showing off that might take the place of talking for a while. With it went an Oliitian mantra his mother had chanted until he giggled.

All he catches, Mad Moon strangles

All she hatches, Mother keeps

All unknown the Black Moon tangles

All in dreams of death and sleep

Ever one and other warring

Ever Darkness wedding War

Ever mated, never pairing

Every mother Nature's whore.

Caris and Spook both watched as if hypnotized for two or three revolutions, then Caris swatted the knife to the ground, and Spook startled and sped away into the ferns.

"What in the Black Moon are you doing?" Harric snapped.

"Don't be a fool," Caris snapped. She cast a furtive glance at Willard, and her cheeks flushed with anger, or shame.

"What do I care if he sees it?" Harric said.

"Think what you're doing, Harric! He's made you his valet. You've got a chance to become something honorable. If you had any sense you'd never do another jack trick as long as you live."

Harric's face burned. With an effort he restrained his fury. Anger is master, never slave, his mother whispered in his mind. Very deliberately he bent and retrieved the knife. "Then go somewhere else," he said. "I'm not lifting anything. I'm meditating."

"Meditating. It's a jack's trick, and any fool can see it. You'll throw this chance away if Willard learns you're a trickster. He isn't bound to train a jack."

A jack? Was that what she thought of him? He was an artist, to borrow his mother's words, and though he hated his mother for his mad childhood, he had a kind of pride in what he'd made of it. He clenched his jaw and cradled his head in his hands. "I can't talk about this right now. All right?"

Caris seemed at a loss. She wrapped her arms around her middle, hugging herself, something he'd seen her do when she was upset enough to curl in a ball with her hands on her ears. She rocked forward and back a little, but her hands did not rise to her head.

Her words came with effort. "Can you listen?" she asked.

He nodded. He could see it took everything she had to resist balling up and retreating from whatever it was she had to say. Her voice quaked, and she spoke quickly, without meeting his eyes. "I talked to Brolli last night about the wedding ring. He agreed it hasn't taken my wits. He said I'll be the same person. And I have my will, too." She looked up to meet his eyes, something she rarely did in tense conversations, and he knew it required immense effort of her. "I could leave you if I had to, Harric. Did you know that?"

"No."

"Well, I could. If you did something I couldn't accept, like — like..." She halted, her nostrils flaring as they did when she was angry. "Like the squire's purse."

Harric chuckled. "The purse. You found it."

"Harric, I swear if you ever — "

" — You know that Iberg witched us, Caris. You can't hold that against me."

She clamped her jaw, eyes hard. "Just the fact that you could do it. And that you planted it in my belt without my knowing, like — "

" — Caris, we were witched — "

" — Let me say it, Harric. I have to say it. There is nothing more important to me than being a knight. This wedding ring doesn't change that. And I swear if you play another purse, or deception, or any other jack trick, I will leave you. I don't care how much it hurts me, I will."

Tears welled in her eyes, but her face was hard as flint.

Harric's heart ached, even as it burned with anger. "It was my 'tricks' that won your mentorship in the first place," he said, quietly. "Have you forgotten that? I know I seem a kind of useless fop to you, and probably to Willard. Manservant material. But my training is as deep as yours, and I plan to serve the queen as well as you or any knight, in my way."

Caris's hands went to her ears. She stood, then staggered away to Rag, where she buried her face in her mane.

The old knight eyed her with distaste. "What in the Black Moon's she doing?"

Harric laid his head on his knees, unsure he'd accomplished anything; unable, in his pain, to care if he had. 

                 * * *

Harric volunteered to lead Idgit while Brolli slept, thereby escaping an awkward ride with Caris. If it bothered her that he'd abandoned her company in that way, she never showed it; as he trudged behind in a haze of absorbing pain, she never once looked back to see if her pace was too fast for him. At about the point at which he became vaguely aware of the low angle of the sunlight slanting gold beneath the canopy, Rag stopped and Harric nearly plodded into her hindquarters. He had to raise a hand to Idgit's bridle and stumble sideways to keep her from pinning him under Rag's swishing tail.

The Phyros drew up behind Idgit. "What is it?" Willard asked.

"I don't know." Caris's voice was distant, horse-tied.

Willard rode around for a look, and Harric followed.

They'd halted at the edge of a wide clearing where two giant torchwoods had toppled in a storm, which left a giant hole in the canopy. The clearing glowed with golden sunlight, and buzzed with a ruckus of sparrows and jays feeding like flocks in the fields at threshing time. But the strangest thing — and that which had attracted the birds — was the bareness of the forest floor. Where the canopy had been torn away to let the sunlight in, there should have been an explosion of fresh young undergrowth; instead, there were no plants at all. The space between trees was a tumult of rich black soil where moss and fallen trees and stones had been churned and trampled and piled in heaps as if by the work of a madman's plow.

"What is it?" said Caris, scanning the new scene.

"A yoab site," said Willard. He  glanced around the riven landscape, brow furrowed. "Don't see a yoab, though." He raised a water skin to his lips and drank greedily. Once he'd sucked it dry, he tossed it to Harric. "Give me your skin, boy. I'm burning up." The old knight's cheeks were rosy and fever bright, though no new blood scored his armor, so Harric let the Kwendi sleep. Harric swapped skins with Willard, who guzzled more, and dribbled some down his back, under the quilting.

"I've heard about yoab up here," said Caris, "but I've never seen one."

Willard grunted. "Imagine a garl bear, only bigger — the size of a twenty-man field tent, say — with a head like a bull toad. Now take away the fur and give it a blanket of moss and grass and such. And instead of clawing up grubs from rotten logs, imagine it chewing down the whole log and the dirt and everything else like a sea whale drinks the sea."

Caris wrinkled her nose. "It eats the soil?"

"You have it." Willard nodded. "Giant pests, to farmers. A big one'll eat an acre of wheat and all the topsoil with it in a day. One that's got whiff of a horse will let out a roar to be heard miles away and then trample horse and rider or swallow them whole. They love horses."

"Farmers use resin charges to scare them off," said Harric. "You don't have any, do you?"

"Aren't you listening, boy? We can't have that thing waking and bellowing out a challenge Bannus could hear miles away. He'd know where we are the moment he heard it. Who else would have horses in this wood? No, if we see it we give it a wide berth and hope it's sleeping when we do. It's not here, so we can cross this patch. Lead away, girl, only keep a sharp eye."

Rag picked her way across the turned soil and after some exploring located the mule track on the other side. She'd gone no more than a bowshot when fresh bird noise erupted ahead in the forest. Soon, brown and white birds with bills like woodpeckers darted between the trees around them, scolding at their intrusion. Caris plodded by, peering with curiosity at their behavior. The birds were in greatest profusion around a mound of moss and lichens that lay no more than a stone's throw to one side of the trail. When Willard drew near, the scolding increased, as if it were a nesting colony and Willard had come for eggs. They flew at Molly, and at Holly who was tethered behind her, then reeled about their mound. Some flew into holes on the mound as if to guard nests.

Molly snorted and snapped ineffectually at the agile birds. Rag danced sideways. Idgit suddenly backed, eyes rolling, until Harric grabbed her bridle.

A muffled curse from Brolli. The Kwendi threw off his blanket, shouting "Yoab!" before he'd even taken in the scene. "Back away!"

The mound of moss and lichens lurched, scattering birds. Legs like muddy tree trunks levered the hillock to its feet. The beast would not have fit into a fifty-man tent. Before Caris could turn Rag or ride past, a fissure at the near end of the mound became a cave, and released an air-riving roar of fury.

*************************************

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