Dallandra stared at his dirty face. On his left cheek was a brand, bitten in deep to his flesh, the mark of some Round-eared lord. A bondsman – fleeing for freedom and his life.
‘Of course we’ll help you,’ Dallandra said. ‘Come with me. Let’s get you fed first.’ She turned to the spearman. ‘You have my sincere thanks. Do you want to eat with us, too?’
For an answer he rose and ran, slipping back into the forest like a deer. Weeping a low animal mutter under his breath, the Round-ear staggered to his feet. When they reached the alar, the People clustered round with shouts and oaths. Wylenteriel pressed a chunk of bread into the man’s filthy hands and got him a bowl of ewe’s milk to drink – the roast lamb and spiced food would have only made him vomit.
‘One of the Forest Folk brought him in,’ Dallandra said. ‘They must have been waiting for the merchants to leave.’
‘I heard your people help such as us,’ the bondsman stammered. ‘Oh, please, I can’t bear it any more. My lord’s a harsh man. His overseer flogs us half to death whenever it suits him.’
‘This lord is probably coming after him, too,’ Dallandra said to the crowd in Elvish. ‘I wish Halaberiel were here, but we’ll have to work something out without him.’
‘My alar’s riding west.’ Gannobrennon stepped forward. ‘We’ll take him with us, and we’ll leave tonight.’
‘Good, but what if the Round-ears ride in looking for him?’ Elbaladar said. ‘We’d better break up the alardan.’
At this a round of arguments, suggestions, a babble of good advice and drawbacks, broke out. Slowly Nananna came out from the tent and walked over. At the sight of her, everyone fell silent.
‘Elbaladar is right,’ Nananna said. ‘We’d better break camp tonight. I can contact Halaberiel through my stones and tell him the news.’ She paused, looking around at the assembled people. ‘I need four or five young men to join my alar. We can’t ride fast, and so the Round-ears might catch up with us.’
Quickly the news spread through the alardan: they were rescuing a Round-ear slave, and the Wise One had given her orders. The People gobbled down the feast, then packed up gear and struck tents by firelight and the rising moon. A few at a time, the alarli cut their stock out of the common herds and disappeared, moving on fast into the silent dark grasslands, until the vast meadow stood empty with only the crushed grass and various leavings to show where the alardan stood. Just after midnight four young men brought their stock and their possessions over to join the Wise One’s group, the last two tents left of hundreds.
‘I can ride for a few hours tonight,’ Nananna said. ‘I want to turn back east. If the Round-eared lords find anyone, it had best be me.’
They made a hasty sparse camp two hours later on the banks of the river that flows out of the Lake of the Leaping Trout. In the morning they forded the river and turned dead-south through the grasslands. Enabrilia and Dallandra led the travois horses while Wylenteriel, Talbrennon and one of their new recruits herded the stock in the rear. The other three rode in front, hands on sword-hilts, eyes constantly sweeping the horizon, ready to ride between any Round-ear and Nananna. Towards noon, the trouble came. Dallandra saw a puff of dust heading towards them that soon resolved itself into six horsemen, trotting fast over the grasslands.
‘Good,’ Nananna said. ‘Let’s pull up and let them catch us. Dalla, you do the talking.’
Dallandra handed her the rope of the travois horse and rode up to the head of the line. The horsemen shouted and turned their horses, galloping the last half mile up to the alar. At their head was a heavy-set blond man in the plaid brigga that marked him as an Eldidd lord; behind him were five of his warband, all armed and ready. The lord checked his men some twenty feet away from the alar and rode on alone to face Dallandra. He looked sourly over the small party; she could see him noting well the armed men – six of them counting young Talbrennon.
‘My lord! Shall we charge?’
‘Hold your tongue!’ the lord yelled. ‘Can’t you see the women with them? And one of them’s old at that.’
Dallandra relaxed slightly; so he had a bit of his kind of honour. The lord edged his horse up close to hers.
‘Now, can any of you speak my language?’
Dallandra gave him a wide-eyed stupid stare.
‘Eldidd.’ He sighed and pointed to himself. ‘I’m a lord. I lost a bondsman. Have you seen him?’
‘Bondsman?’ Dallandra said slowly. ‘What is bondsman? Oh – farmer.’
‘That’s right.’ The lord raised his voice, as if she would understand if only he shouted. ‘A kind of farmer. He has a brand here.’ He pointed to his cheek. ‘A mark. He’s my property, and he ran away.’
Dallandra nodded slowly, as if considering all of this.
‘He’s a young man, wearing brown clothes,’ the lord bellowed at the top of his lungs. ‘Have you seen him?’
‘That I not. No see farmers.’
The lord sighed and looked doubtfully at the alar’s gear, as if a bondsman wrapped in blankets might be hidden on a travois.
‘Which way have your people ridden? North? South?’ He pointed out the various directions. ‘Do you understand? Where have you come from?’
‘North. No see farmers. No farmers in north grass.’
‘Well, you would have seen him out in those dismal plains.’
‘The dis-what?’
‘Oh, never mind.’ The lord made a vague bow in her direction, then turned and yelled at his warband. ‘All right, men, we’re riding east. The bastard must have doubled back.’
As soon as the warband was out of sight, the alar burst into howls and cackles. Dallandra leaned into her saddle-peak and laughed till her sides ached.
‘Oh, a splendid jest,’ Wylenteriel gasped with his perfect Eldidd accent. ‘No see farmer! By those hells of theirs, Dalla!’
‘No speak good. Me simple elf. Hard of hearing, too.’
On a wave of laughter the alar rearranged their riding order and continued their slow trip south.
About four days’ ride west of Elyrdd, Aderyn came to a tiny lake fringed with willow trees. In a nearby farming village were a woman ill with shaking fever and a man with a jaw abscessed from bad teeth. Aderyn made a camp on the lakeshore, with a proper fire-circle of stones, a canvas lean-to to cover his gear, and a neat stack of firewood donated by the grateful villagers, and rode daily into the village to care for his new patients. Once they were out of danger, he lingered to gather and dry wild herbs. On his tenth night there, as he was eating bread and cheese by his fire, he heard his horse whinny a nicker of greeting to some other horse, but one he couldn’t see or hear. When the mule joined in, Aderyn felt profoundly uneasy. He was a good two miles from the village, far away from help if he should need it.
Off among the willows a twig snapped; then silence. Aderyn spun around and stared into the darkness. He thought he saw something moving –
