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The hob sat in the shadows and watched them leave. Loneliness and fear ate at him, a loner by choice who had prided himself on his daring and courage.
The last, he thought. I am the last one left. The thought left ashes of sorrow in his mouth, and he lowered his head and wept for his people, who had only a mountain to remember them.
When we finally got back to where the horses waited, Kith had them ready to go. He led the Lass to Wandel.
"Mount and ride," he said, biting off the words.
It was hard to tell if he was still twitchy from the same unease that had gripped him earlier, or if there was something else worrying him. I hurried to Duck and, after a quick check to see if Kith had tightened the cinch (he had), I mounted, falling back into my usual place behind Wandel.
The area was relatively level, one of the shoulders of the mountain, almost a hanging valley except that the far side fell rather than rising in a peak. Kith led us into the grassy land at a brisk trot. Despite the rest, the horses were too tired to move quickly for long. As soon as we were on open ground, he slowed his horse and waved us forward.
I could see a slight tic by his eye. Torch was collected and ready to sprint, though Kith was holding the reins loosely.
"Sorry," he said. "I thought I saw something up above us. Might have been an animal… but it didn't smell right."
"Didn't smell right," I said neutrally.
"If you're on the trail for very long, you learn to use your nose as well as your ears and eyes," replied Kith a shade too easily.
I happened to glance at Wandel at just that moment. He looked sad.
"Better to be safe than sorry," the harper said after a moment. "With the magic free, things could change, no knowing how quickly. Old Merewich and our lass here" — I assumed from the context that he was talking about me and not his horse—"sound pretty certain that it will be sooner rather than later."
Kith met the harper's eyes and said, "Yes, well, I've learned to trust… my instincts."
I saw something pass between the two men that left Kith cold-eyed and stone-faced while the sorrow on the harper's face remained unchanged. I wondered what it was that I had missed. There would be time to extract it from them after we set up camp.
Kith fussed around for a while before he let us dismount at the place he'd originally pla
He'd reluctantly decided it was better to keep an eye out than to try to find cover where we'd not be seen. Muttering something about being so leery that his mother's womb wouldn't feel safe to him for a day or so, he stomped into the trees to find wood for a fire.
We hadn't brought tents, but Wandel and I laid down oiled cloth before we put out the bedrolls, and each of us had another piece to lay on top of ourselves if the rain held by the gathering afternoon clouds fell.
Having laid out my own bedroll, I took Kith's off Torch's back. War-trained he might be, but he knew me well enough not to object to my fiddling—I'd helped train him. I patted his hip as I left.
Now, I thought, try it first while you have Wandel alone. If Kith decided not to talk about something, it was almost impossible to get it out of him. The harper, on the other hand, liked to talk. "Why does Kith's woodsmanship cause you to exchange sorrowful glances?"
He looked up from digging the fire pit and waggled his eyebrows at me. "Ask Kith. It's his story, not mine. I'd not last long as a bard if I were to tell other people's secrets to anyone who thought to ask, now would I?"
"Ha," I said. "You'd tell the world what your best friend wore to sleep if you thought it made a good enough story."
"Tell her," said Kith flatly.
I started, not having heard him come back. He dropped a large pile of wood an arm's length from the fire pit and unfolded one of the smaller oilskins with a snap. He tucked it carefully around the pile.
He was all I had left of my brother… of my family, really, though we were not blood kin (at least not close kin). I wouldn't have hurt him for the world. This had all started as mere curiosity. As I looked at Kith, I realized that this was not a little secret, and Kith was already hurt by it.
I turned back to Wandel. "Tell me."
"After we finish camp," he said.
I took the dirt Wandel removed from the fire pit and mounded it in a circle around the pit, a further barrier against the flames spreading to the surrounding grass.
Wandel stacked the grass-sod he'd cut and set it near the pile of wood. When we left in the morning, we'd shovel the dirt back in the hole and cover it with the sod—after a season the place would look as if we'd never been there. Kith unsaddled the horses, hobbled them, and let them free to graze.
I washed the dirt from my hands at the stream. By the time I returned, the men were seated at the edge of the fire pit. Wandel struck flint to steel a few times, setting the small pile of tinder alight. Then he fa
He fingered the strings lightly, then set the harp aside, politely waiting for his audience to settle itself. I sat rather gingerly at the end of my bedroll. Duck was too wide in the barrel to be an easy mount. Once Kith, too, was sitting on his bed for the night, the harper began.
"Lord Moresh inherited his bloodmage from his uncle, his mother's brother. Moresh's uncle was the king's high marshal before the king had him beheaded for u
"Never too many, you understand, because the king limited the number he allowed Moresh, not wanting Moresh to gain too much power. The berserkers are scouts and Moresh's personal guard. One of the old marshal's men told me they can track like a hound and hear a bee sneeze in the next room. They fight as the old legends say berserkers did, not bleeding from their wounds until after the battle is over. Those who are maimed or sorely wounded are killed." He looked at Kith. "Since Moresh can have only a few of them, he wants them whole."
Kith laughed without amusement. "Moresh owed my father a life." He looked at me. "Remember, it was my father who found our lord's heir when the boy got lost in the fog. So he sent me home last fall. Before the war turned so bloody, Moresh pla
He turned his gaze to the darkening sky. "It's not as if I can run: Nahag has his mark on me. One of us ran once. Silly fool fell in love."
Nahag wasn't Moresh's bloodmage's real name, though I couldn't recall what it was offhand. A nahag was a night demon who consumed children while they slept. It said a lot about the mage that he'd been given such a nickname.
Kith turned to me with eyes lit with self-mockery and a message. "Nahag got to play with him, brought him out for our enlightenment every evening for two weeks. The bloodmage is as old as my father, and he's been a mage since his parents abandoned him to the mage guild when he was a child—whoever he was once, the madness has taken him now. The ru