because he seemed so sure of his own mind and so dangerous to challenge. Not that he was violent or overtly threatening, you understand. He was just grim and powerful. Yes, that’s the word:
Now, though my brain said that the idea that these birds were keeping an eye on our progress and discussing it over a sandwich and a couple of pints was preposterous, the fact that it was Mithos who had said so gave it a kind of weird credibility. Renthrette watched him for a moment as if expecting further explanation, but he did not give any, and when she turned away, her face was blank, expressionless. Orgos nodded thoughtfully to himself and advanced along the cinder track, eyes skinned for an opening in the rock that would get us out of the freezing night winds.
I watched as they set off again and wondered, as I have often wondered in their company, what the hell I was doing with these people.
The cave which Mithos’s keen eyes picked out of the mountainside was almost obscured by a great slab of granite. Behind it a fissure in the rock admitted us into a short corridor which we passed through two abreast, and thence into an L-shaped chamber, a long entrance stretching back into the cliff and then curving left through a narrow fissure. Its walls were irregular, in parts jutting out sharply, and it was, if anything, colder than it had been outside.
I crossed the uneven floor with a sour look on my face: There was a musty, almost rancid scent to the place and the air was moist as well as cold. Droplets of water pearled on my face. I brushed them off, wandering to the back of the cavern and the hollow, which cut to the left. This was dry, though much of the larger cavern (the two parts of the L were virtually separate “rooms”), was mossy, and a thin slime covered the floor by the entrance, where a trickle of water ran down the wall. No hand had carved the cave: only the wind, the rain, and the awesome splitting power of freezing winter and spring thaw, if spring ever came to this frigid wind-trap.
“Excellent,” said Orgos in a voice apparently without sarcasm.
“Just like home,” I added.
“We’ll soon warm it up once we’ve got a fire going,” said Mithos. “Renthrette, see if you can hang the blankets across the doorway. Keep the wind out.”
The horse was led inside, much to my distaste, and offered what little greenery Renthrette had found.
“Must we sleep with the animal?” I whined.
Renthrette gave me an angry stare and said, “We’ve had to ever since you joined us.”
“Funny,” I observed. “I mean that great stinking manure factory.”
Renthrette glanced at the horse to make sure it hadn’t been offended.
“Can’t leave it outside,” said Mithos. “There may be wolves about.”
“Oh, great,” I said. “Knowing our luck we’ve probably holed up in their den. The horse would be safer as far from here as possible.”
“No animals have lived here lately,” said Orgos, our resident naturalist. “There’s no dung, bones, or anything.”
“Pity,” I said. “There might have been something edible. Do we have anything for dinner at all?”
“One loaf of bread and a block of goat cheese,” said Orgos, fishing through a saddlebag.
“I suppose we could always eat the horse,” I mused. “Better than sleeping with it.”
“I’d rather sleep with the horse than with you,” Renthrette snapped.
“I’ll bet,” I said. “I’d suggest you invite it over for dinner first, but since we’ve sod-all to eat. .”
“Give it a rest, Will,” she muttered, balefully. Orgos grinned at me briefly and then joined Mithos in the center of the chamber.
They squatted down and began striking the steel and flint into the few dry leaves we had managed to find. When a flame appeared they cupped hands around it, whispering nurturing words as they fed it twigs and blew softly at its base. Renthrette joined them and the three of them crouched together, urging the fire to life as if tending a newborn calf, willing it to breathe or to take its first step. I watched from the back of the chamber, oddly distant from their seemingly familiar ritual. When the flames were strong enough to set their teeth to some of the larger branches we had gathered, the group shared a collective smile of comradeship and achievement. I shivered, as much at the exclusion as at the cold.
The cave did warm up, and within an hour or so, after a meager supper and the smallest gulp from Orgos’s water flask, I was as comfortable and ready to sleep as I was likely to get. The four of us were seated quietly around the fire, watching it as we had done months before, only days after I met them. Bearing that in mind, I was half expecting the request for a tale of some sort when it came. It was, after all, pretty much all I could do. What I wasn’t expecting was that it should come from Renthrette.
“Got a suitable tale, Will?” she asked.
I gave her a searching glance, but her eyes were lost in the fire. Briefly they flicked up to me, expressionless, then returned to the hearth without comment.
I considered for a moment, then spoke. “Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived a girl with hair like spun gold and eyes of blue clear as a spring sky. She was fourteen and lived with her brother and her parents in a town that sat in a range of tall, imposing mountains. The parents doted on the girl and gave her everything she could wish for and, since they lived in a fine, spacious house with a maid and a butler and a nurse for the children, she did as she pleased and was as happy as a girl has ever been in life or story.
“But one day, her father came home from the market and his face was anxious. He was distant, preoccupied, and barely looked at the girl when she asked him what he had brought for her today. She was upset and sought out her brother. Together they watched as her father’s worry spread to their mother and among the servants, but they did not know why until there was a loud rapping at the door.
“A man was outside, dressed in armor and a white cloak. His face was stern, and twenty other soldiers stood in ranks behind him, all with spears and shortswords. The children watched as the soldiers marched into the house and began helping themselves to food, drink, and whatever valuables they came upon. Plates were smashed; ancient crystal, passed on through the family, was brushed aside to shatter in pieces on the floor; and priceless furniture was overturned and chopped up for firewood. The servants, beaten by the soldiers, fled. The mother wept loudly over the ruins of her possessions and the father sought out the soldiers’ commander, pleading with him to spare the rest of their belongings.
“But the soldiers just laughed and went on stealing and destroying everything in the house. Then one of them caught sight of the girl, and, catching her by the hair, he thrust her against the wall. As others gathered around them, the father burst in upon them with a hatchet and felled one of the men with a single blow. The others turned on him with their swords. The mother ran to tear them from her husband, but it was too late, and she too received her death wound. The children saw all this, but were too afraid to weep. Instead they fled, from the house, from the town, from the mountains.
“They fled for several years, living from hand to mouth, hiding in the streets, lurking in shadows, learning the ways of the downtrodden and the poor. Learning to hate the soldiers in their armor and white cloaks. . ”
“Is this your idea of humor, Will?”
I looked up from the fire to find Renthrette staring at me. Her face was drawn tight and her already pale skin had a strange bleached quality. Her eyes were cold but full of rage.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
She gave me a long, hard look, and the anger in her eyes froze hard. Then, quite suddenly, and with a studied casualness which did not register in her face, she rose to her feet. “Forget it,” she said, then added, “I’m going to get some sleep.” She walked toward the back of the cave, gathering up one of the blankets in a single, irritable gesture.
“Don’t you want to hear the end of the story?” I asked. She turned and her glance chilled me to the bone. I was used to her distaste and loathing, but this was different. This was close to hatred.
Her voice, when she spoke, however, was casual, almost jocular. “The part where she and her brother meet up with a group of rebels and become adventurers, but they get separated by the stupidity of this idiot actor they found in the street? I don’t think so, thanks.”
She turned and walked away, leaving the three of us in silence by the fire. I shrugged.
