I didn’t reckon we had much to worry about; any cover for would-be footpads was hacked down for a plow length either side of the highway. “There aren’t the lordless or landless men in these reaches of Ensaimin that make places like Dalasor or Gidesta so chancy.” Let Zenela chew on the fact I’d traveled five times the leagues she had.
“The Forest Folk take care of bandits using the wildwood as cover to prey on the road,” Frue added. “And we have common blood. Any Folk out to settle scores with the cattlemen won’t trouble us.”
“But what if—” Zenela tried to break in.
“Who takes it up if there’s a fight or a killing?” I rode over her words. “Lord Whatsisname at Brakeswell or the Solurans?”
“Things settle themselves.” Frue shrugged. “Cattlemen don’t welcome officialdom this side of the wildwood and the Solurans’ only concern is keeping the road open. Castle Pastamar sends out men once a season or so; they cut back the growth and mend the worst holes.”
Losing interest in the not very challenging game of ruffling Zenela’s feathers, I looked ahead as the road wound slowly toward the dense green line thickening the horizon of the undulating plain. Through an uneventful morning of steady walking, waving at the occasional farm cart or standing aside to let some urgent carriage rattle past, I gradually realized why the Great Forest is called simply that in Soluran, in Tormalin, in the tongue of the Folk and probably every other language. There are no other words for it. I’ve been in other wildernesses; they’ve had gullies, hills and rivers. If trees hem you in, you know they will give way soon enough. This forest hid any such hope beneath an impenetrable cloak of leaves. Ahead it blocked the view, an unsmiling barrier. Unbroken green marched away to the south, fading to a distant blur that promised unbroken verdant leagues beyond. North and west it ran up to distant mountains still capped with snows. Shading my eyes with my hand, I saw the brighter green of broad-leafed woods darken to somber shades of fir and pine, broad swathes of drab rock and ice stark contrast beyond.
“That’s the mountains,” Sorgrad stood at my side, face somber.
“They’re very big.” I couldn’t think what else to say. “How far do they go?”
“All the way from the eastern ocean to the wildlands west beyond Solura.” Sorgrad smiled but his eyes were unreadable. “And these are the low ranges. A few hundred leagues farther north there are the high peaks.”
“These look high enough and cold enough for me.” I shivered. “You’re right. It’s still winter up there.”
“Maewelin made the land and Misaen made us fit for it, that’s what they say,” Sorgrad murmured thoughtfully.
“All the world is made up of the same elements: air, earth, fire and water,” said Usara, his voice startling me. “It’s just that the arrangement differs.”
I imagine he was trying to be reassuring. Unfortunately he just sounded dismissive and Sorgrad scowled with unexpected affront.
’Gren came up behind us. “Are we stopping for lunch?”
We ate looking at the tiny trees holding the grasslands at bay. The road wound inexorably on through the afternoon, the one highway that cut through the secrets of the wild-wood.
I told myself not to be fanciful. My Forest blood was mere accident of birth. I knew my father’s name, that he was a minstrel and if Drianon had been paying attention the goddess would never have let Halcarion’s fancy tie such an unsuited couple together. I had left concerns over birth or parentage behind me in Vanam. A chill blew down from the hills toward evening as we entered the Forest proper. Tender leaves showed Maewelin’s black touch and the shadows under the trees were damp and chill with the memory of the Winter Hag’s slow step.
“Will it freeze tonight?” I asked Sorgrad, who had spent the day unusually silent. He’s always had the best weather sense I know.
He looked up at the sky. “Probably not but it’ll be cursed cold all the same. Do you reckon her ladyship is much used to sleeping outside an inn?” He coaxed his donkey through an uneven stretch where frost had broken up the surface to catch at wheels and hooves. “The Solurans had better send out a few wagonloads of gravel before midsummer if they want to send their wool clip east,” he commented.
“How come your boots aren’t thick with mud?” demanded ’Gren suddenly, staring at Usara’s feet.
The wizard looked slightly taken aback. “I’ve been using a cantrip.”
The rest of us just stared at him, each several fingers taller than usual by virtue of gluey clods stuck to our feet and sapping our strength with every step.
“I can dry out a path a little, if you all walk in my footsteps,” he offered hastily.
“We’ll manage, thanks all the same,” Sorgrad said curtly. I wondered how to go about reminding the wizard that we were singing a round song here, not out for solo admiration like Zenela.
Even with the trees hacked back to let in wind and sun, the ground was still sodden with the winter rain. We picked past heavy vehicles, mud clinging ever thicker to their wheel rims. None were stuck, which was a relief. I know we all owe Trimon a duty to help out and you never know when you’ll be the one being hauled out of a ditch, but wherever possible I find it best to keep myself to myself on the road. People had been spreading out onto the cleared land on either side of the highway in an effort to find a dry path, cutting a tangle of new tracks. Zenela and the donkey picked their way daintily through the morass with identical expressions of distaste. My scowl equaled theirs when we reached the first bridge.
To be precise, we reached the bridgekeeper’s hut and the little shrine to Trimon beside it where a tattered flag with the waterwheel device of Brakeswell fluttered above a wooden shield bearing a boar’s head emblem. The river swirled dark and turbid around a wreckage of wood and twisted iron, wedging a storm-felled poplar tree against the doughty stone pillars. The tree must have hit the bridge with the force of a battering ram and done just as much damage. The bridgekeeper was sitting outside his thick walled hut, sulking under the mossy thatch while a group of Solurans stared helplessly into the roiling water or berated their hapless leader. With angry gestures he turned to the bridgekeeper, who responded with spirit.
“You go tell Lord Pastiss. You risk the ford and may the Master of the Road help you! Whine to his lordship all you want, and while you’re at it ask him how he spent all these tolls he’s so keen to claim. If he’d sent timber and nails along with his tally-reeve back end of last year, you’d be getting over dry shod!” A short man with reddish hair, he reached for a handy-looking quarterstaff lying beneath his bench. The Soluran prudently backed off.
“We’d better not try any ford till this river drops a little, not tonight, not tomorrow,” Sorgrad said firmly.
Usara joined us and peered up at the sky skeptically. “I don’t think there’ll be rain tonight.”
“If only we had horses,” I sighed.
Sorgrad shook his head. “I wouldn’t risk a horse in that.”
“I’ll gauge the force of the water in the morning,” offered Usara. “If it keeps dry we should be able to cross without too much trouble.”
“I doubt it very much. Rain’s not the issue at this time of year,” Sorgrad told the wizard firmly. “It’s snowmelt.”
Usara looked at him and then around at the dark, leaf-strewn ground. “Any snow hereabouts is long gone.” I stifled a sigh at his unconscious arrogance. One thing wizards never seem to learn in Hadrumal is tact.
“And what about the snow in the mountains?” Sorgrad said, combative. Whatever had been galling him during the day, he’d found a vent for his resentment now. “This warm spell is just right for a thaw.”
“A thaw will be a gradual process in this weather.” Usara shook his head. “I can feel it in the air.”