Kerowyn's Ride

Why can’t I do the same? Why can’t I just go? She sat up straighter, feeling her cheeks warming with excitement. I have to return Grandmother’s sword anyway—so why don’t I follow after them? Maybe they’ll be willing to teach me things. Didn’t Tarma say they used to have a school?

The more she thought about it, the better the idea sounded. And the more intolerable and confining the idea of remaining here became. Finally she excused herself from the table—her seatmate didn’t even notice—and slipped out of the Great Hall and into the corridor beyond.

Once there, she hiked her encumbering skirts above her knees, and ran for her room. There were no servants in the hall to see her, and although she split one sleeve of the gown, she no longer cared. Let Dierna give it to one of her maids.

I certainly won’t wear it again.

She slipped out of it as soon as she reached her room, tossed it in a heap in the corner, and dragged her saddlebags out from under the bed. She rummaged through chests and wardrobe in a frenzy, discarding most of what she encountered without a second thought, casting what she’d decided to keep on the bed.

It was amazing how little she owned that she wanted to keep. Her armor, Lordan’s outgrown castoffs, a few personal treasures and the jewelry and books Lenore had left her ... it all fit into two saddlebags with room to spare. She started to take a last look around her room—and realized that it held nothing of her or for her anymore.

So she turned her back on it, and strode out, chain mail jingling with a cheer she began to feel herself.

Out in the stable, even the grooms were absent, enjoying their own version of the wedding feast. All the better; that made it possible for her to saddle up Verenna and ride out without anyone noticing.

The mare came to her whistle and stood quietly while she saddled and bridled her. She felt Verenna’s tense eagerness as she mounted, as if the mare was as ready to be free of the place as Kero was. She touched her heel lightly to the mare’s flank; Verenna leapt forward. They trotted across the courtyard, cantered to the gates. She was at a full gallop as they passed the gates in the outer wall. Kero laughed as they burst out into the sunshine, wind whipping her hair, Verenna striding effortlessly under her. Nothing was going to stand in her way now!

But she pulled Verenna up abruptly at the sight of the two mounted figures waiting for her at the crossroads.

Suddenly sick with dread, she approached them at a walk. What if they tell me to go back? What if they don’t want me? What if—

“What kept you?” asked Tarma.

Six

This was not precisely what Kerowyn had pictured when she’d asked for teaching.

“Chopping wood I can understand,” Kero said slowly, hefting the unfamiliar weight of the ax in her right hand. She eyed her appointed target, an odd setup of two logs braced against the tree, and shifted her hand a bit farther down on the haft. It wasn’t a very big ax, and she had the sinking feeling that it was going to take a long time to chop her way through the pile of log sections stacked up at the edge of the clearing. She’d already put a dent in the pile over the past few days, using a larger ax in a conventional manner, but this tool baffled her. It wasn’t much heavier than the hand axes some of Rathgar’s men had fought with. “I’ve been cutting wood for you since I got here, and I can see that you still need firewood. But why brace the logs so that I’m cutting at that angle?”

Warrl—Tarma’s enormous wolf-creature—snorted, flopped himself down in a patch of sun, and laid his ears back in patent disgust. His kind were called kyree, so Tarma had told her—and she needed no testimony as to his intelligence; she’d seen that herself with her own eyes. She’d gotten used to his presence over the past weeks, and now she could read his expressions with more ease than she could read Tarma’s. It would appear that she was being particularly dense, though for the life of her she couldn’t figure out what she was missing.

Tarma chuckled evilly, and leaned against the woodpile. If Kero had tried that, she’d probably have knocked half the logs down. The pile didn’t shift a thumb’s length. “But what if you’ve got it wrong?” the Shin’a’in asked conversationally. “What if we don’t need you to chop firewood?”

“What?” Kero replied cleverly. She blinked, and did a fast revision of her assumptions. “You mean you heat that great stone hulk with magic? But I thought you said—”

“That it takes more effort to do something magically than it does to just do it, yes,” Tarma replied, a maddening little smile on her face. “No, we don’t heat it with magic, yes, we use wood, and we still don’t need you to chop it. We hire it done. A couple of nice farmer lads with muscles like oxen. So why would I be having you chop wood, and why would I be giving you different sizes of axes to do it with? And now why would I start asking you to work at odd angles?”

Kero blinked again, and the answer came to her in a burst of memory—recollections of Lordan working out against the pells. “Because you want me to strengthen my arms and shoulders,” she said immediately. “All over, and not just a particular set of muscles.”

“And because while you’re doing so, you might as well be useful. Besides, if I make you really chop up wood,