Forest Mage

Next to him, Clove was a clod. He was big. Everywhere. His head was big, his neck was thick, and his haunches were wide and round. His hooves looked the size of di

My horse came over to me, to sniff my chest and then push his head against me. I finally voiced the decision that I had already made. “I can’t keep you, Sirlofty. If I do, I’ll ruin you. You’ll end up lamed in the middle of nowhere. You deserve better than that.”

With many regrets, I separated my pa

Evening was deepening into night. It seemed a fit time for my last hours with Sirlofty. I led him through the wandering streets of Fra

Outside the gates of the fortifications, I stopped for a moment. I dried my face of the tears that had run unashamedly as we walked together in the darkness. Then, like a boy, I leaned against my horse’s shoulder and tried to hug him good-bye. Sirlofty put up with it.

I held to my purpose. I led Sirlofty through the gates. Even this late in the evening, the so-called sentries allowed us to pass unchallenged. I went directly to the commander’s headquarters. I was fortunate to arrive before the commander had left. I passed myself off as a servant, and lied to his adjutant to see him. I told him that Nevare Burvelle’s horse had come up lame, and he’d had to find a fresh one to continue his travels. I said that both Nevare and his father, Lord Burvelle, would be indebted to the commander if he would have the regimental veterinarian look at the animal, and then arrange for him to be taken back to Widevale as soon as he could make the journey without further injury. As I had expected, the man was happy to oblige. “Anything for Lord Burvelle,” he assured me, and I bowed gravely and said that when I caught up with my master, I’d be sure to let Nevare know that his mount was in capable hands and would be awaiting him when he returned home.

On the way back to my rented room, I stopped at a tavern, got drunk, and paid a yellow-haired whore three times her usual rate to bed her. If I had thought to make myself feel better, I failed. I spent money I could ill afford to discover that intercourse had become a challenge. When the jut of a man’s belly exceeds the length of his member, coupling with a woman requires imaginative positioning and a cooperative partner. The whore was barely that, and only did what she must to earn her coins.

“You see,” she said righteously as I stepped away from the edge of the bed where I had knelt, “why I had to charge you more. That wasn’t easy for me. You fair disjointed my hips!” She lay as I had left her on the edge of the bed, skirts dragged up to her waist and her legs spraddled wide to accommodate me. I recall thinking that it was the least alluring posture that I could have imagined a woman assuming.

“I’m finished,” I told her abruptly.

“That’s obvious,” she drawled sarcastically.

I dressed and left.

My knees were sore as I walked back to my rented room. Pleasure was a word that didn’t apply to what I’d done. The physical release I had experienced was inextricably mixed with the humiliation she had dealt me. Rather than taking comfort in the woman, I had completely proven to myself how much my life had changed in a few short months.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE KING’S ROAD

T he good god never intended for people to live here.”

The woman’s words were to stay long in my mind. Her house was one of six inhabited structures in a ramshackle settlement near the second rise of the foothills before the mountains. There was little there save misery. Stumps dotted the sloping fields behind the town. The constant wind, heavy with wet chill, warned of winter. Dead Town was a “road town,” a temporary settlement thrown together to house the penal workers and their families as the King’s Road was pushed ever eastward.

Once I had believed in King Troven’s dream of a wide road that led across the plains, over the mountains, and to the sea beyond, a road that would restore Gernia’s power as a seagoing and trading nation. The farther east I went, the harder it was to sustain that vision.

Calling the structure she lived in a “house” was charity on my part. It was built of large stones and roughly ski

My food had run out and I’d stopped to see what I could buy. The inhabitants of two other houses had already turned me away. They had little enough for themselves and no use for my coins. The irony was that I’d discovered, too late, that I was not as poor as I’d thought. When I repacked my pa

In return, the road offered me next to nothing. Water was not a problem while my trail followed the river. Heat, flies, and boredom were my chief irritations by day, cold and mosquitoes by night. Clove ambled along.