It didn’t jump, but it did evade him again, almost as if it were playing with him. Longingly, he looked back toward the farmhouse. Merkela would have a big pot of stew bubbling over the fire. He didn’t care if it was only barley and peas and beans and cabbage. It would fill him up and warm him from the inside out. As things were, he’d be lucky if he didn’t come down with chest fever by the time he finally chased down this pestilential sheep.
“You’d make good mutton,” he growled. “You’d make bloody wonderful mutton, do you know that?”
He wondered what Merkela would say if he cut the sheep’s throat when he finally caught it, gutted the carcass, and dragged it back to the farmhouse. He sighed. No, he didn’t really wonder what Merkela would say. He knew. The sheep would live, no matter how much he wished it dead.
In the driving rain and deepening gloom, he didn’t see the horsemen coming up the road till they were quite close. They didn’t see him, either-and then, all at once, they did. One of them called out in accented Valmieran: “You are being the peasant calling self Skarnu?”
Skarnu didn’t wait to admit or deny he was himself. He stood only a couple of strides from the rail fence. He scrambled up over it, dashed across the road, and ran off into the woods.
“Halting!” yelled the Algarvian who spoke his language. But Skarnu had no intention of halting. He could think of only one reason the redheads would want him, the same one that had made him hide in the woods before. He cursed his sister again for betraying him to her Algarvian lover.
Mezentio’s men didn’t just shout at Skarnu. They started blazing at him, too. Beams sizzled past, boiling raindrops as they went. But in weather like this, the beams weakened rapidly. When one struck him, it had enough force left to burn through his cloak, enough to burn through his trousers, but not enough to do much more than scorch his backside. On a rainless day, it might have brought him down.
As things were, he howled and yelped and sprang in the air and clapped a hand to the singed part, almost as if he were a comic actor up on the stage. He ran on for a couple of steps, wondering how bad the wound was. Then he decided he couldn’t be too badly hurt if he could keep on running so fast. He dodged in and out among the trees, trying to put as many trunks as he could between himself and the Algarvians.
They pounded after him on foot, calling to one another in their own language. There were four or five of them; he hadn’t bothered to count before fleeing. They all had sticks, and his throbbing right buttock proclaimed they weren’t shy about using them. But it was getting dark, and he knew the woods, and they didn’t. Once he stopped running in blind panic and started using his head, he had little trouble shaking them off.
Hood drawn down over his face, he sheltered in a thick clump of bushes while they ran past. One came within fifteen or twenty feet, but had no idea he was anywhere close by. Once they were all out of earshot, he got up and moved off to the side, away from the track they would have to take going back to their horses.
He was tempted to go back to the horses himself, to ride off on one and lead the others away after it. But he didn’t know whether the redheads had left a man to watch the animals. He would have, in their boots. And so, however alluring the prospect of giving them a good tweak was, he decided to content himself with escape.
He spent a long, cold night in the woods. Without the cloak, he might have frozen. With it, he was merely miserable. He slept very little, no matter how tired he was. However much he wanted to, he couldn’t go back to the farm. He hoped the Algarvians had only been after him, not after Merkela and Raunu and the two Kaunians from Forthweg who’d joined them. He didn’t dare find out, though, not now.
When at last he could see his outstretched hand in front of his face, he got moving. He struck the northbound road about where he thought he would. A slow smile stretched itself across his face. After a couple of years here, he was starting to know his way around as well as the locals did. No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than he chuckled. Any local to whom he was rash enough to say that would laugh himself silly.
The redheads had men posted about where he thought they would: at the main crossroads. Had he been panicked, they would have nabbed him with ease. But he saw them before they spied him, and slipped in among the trees to slide around them.
Before long, he left the road for one of the many little paths that meandered from one farm to another. He stayed on the verge wherever he could; the path was almost as full of water as a creek. It was lower than the surrounding countryside, which made it the drainage channel. He wondered how long people and animals and wheels had been wearing it down. Since the days of the Kaunian Empire? He wouldn’t have been surprised.
After half a mile or so of hard, wet, slippery going, he walked up to another farmhouse. Rain rivered down the wood shakes of the roof and off the eaves, making a small lake around the house. Skarnu splashed through it, went up the stairs, and knocked on the front door.
For a few minutes, nothing happened. He knocked again, and called: “It’s me. I’m by myself.” Then he had to wait some more.
At last, though the door, did swing open. The farmer who stood in the doorway had a Valmieran military stick in his hands. Behind him, his hulking son held another. “It’s all right,” the farmer said, and they both lowered their weapons. The farmer stood aside. “Come in, Skarnu, before you catch your death.”
“My thanks, Maironiu,” Skarnu answered. “I won’t stay long. The redheads were on my trail, but I lost ‘em. Some food, maybe a chance to rest a little-and whom do you know that lives east of here?”
“Shed your cloak. Shed your boots. Eat some bread,” Maironiu said. “You’re sure you lost the redheaded buggers?” At Skarnu’s nod, he relaxed a little, but not much. His wife brought out the bread, and a mug of ale to go with it. Skarnu tore into the food like a starving wolf. Maironiu asked, “Did they scoop up everybody at old Gedominu’s place, the way they do sometimes?”
It would be Gedominu’s place till the last man who’d known Merkela’s husband died of old age. Skarnu had long since resigned himself to that. He shook his head now. “I don’t think so. I think they were after me in particular.”
Maironiu scowled. “That’s not good. That’s not even close to good. How could they know about you? Somebody blab?”
Skarnu nodded again.
“They’d better not,” Maironiu’s son burst out. “Life’s hard enough around here as is.”
Seeing how Skarnu ate, Maironiu’s wife brought him another big chunk of bread. He bowed to her as he might have bowed to a duchess. He didn’t usually show off his court manners. For one thing, he seldom had the need. For another, he was so tired now, he hardly knew what he was doing. Maironiu and his wife exchanged glances; they knew what that bow was likely to mean. Maironiu asked the question with surprising subtlety: “You have enemies in the big city?”
“Huh?” Skarnu needed a moment to figure out what that meant. He’d almost forgotten about his noble blood; a couple of years of farm work made him think it nothing very special after all. “It could be,” he said at last.
“Well, go on out to the barn and curl up for a few hours, whoever you were once upon a time,” Maironiu told him. “Then I’ll take you east. I do know somebody who’s not part of our regular group, but he’ll know somebody else. They’ll pass you along, get you away from here.”
“Thanks,” Skarnu repeated, though leaving Merkela, leaving the child she was carrying, was the last thing he wanted to do.
“Get you away if we can,” Maironiu answered. “If we can’t…” He shrugged broad shoulders. “We’ll pretend we didn’t know you were there, that’s all.”
“Fair enough.” Skarnu didn’t think he could have come up with a better response, not when he was endangering Maironiu and his family by being here. He picked up his sodden cloak and put it back on. Maironiu’s wife exclaimed at the puddle it left on the floor.
Skarnu hadn’t slept on straw for a while, not since he’d started sharing Merkela’s bed. Exhausted as he was, he could have slept on nails and broken glass. He felt deep underwater when Maironiu shook him awake. The farmer had on a cloak much like his. “Hate to do it to you, pal,” Maironiu said, “but some things just won’t wait.”
