dismounted and begun to free the team from the wagon. Vandien watched her, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. The colors of the gaily painted wagon were dim under these skies, and it looked only awkward, uncomfortable, out of place. But this awkward uncomfortable thing had somehow become his home; too many things had happened inside its tiny cuddy for him to leave the wagon here. But he had to leave it, and the knowledge wrenched and clawed at him. Then he set his teeth, took a breath, and let it go. Silently he turned and went into the cuddy, and as he looked around its crowded homeliness, the pain tried to grip him again, but he ignored it. His rapier. There was that to take, and food for them both, and the waterskin, and a set of clothes for Ki. He resolutely ignored the trinkets and gewgaws of their life together. Practicality made light luggage. To what he had he added one sack filled with grain from the back of the wagon, and loaded it all onto the suspicious Sigurd. Hollyika had fashioned a lead rope for Sigurd and shortened the long driving reins on Sigmund's bridle. As he scrambled up onto Sigmund's back, Hollyika nodded grudgingly. 'At least you learn fast.'
The figures of the approaching farmers were no longer veiled by dusk. Vandien counted eight of them, men and women, as they strode resolutely on. Their faces were tranquil, their eyes fixed before them. They didn't call to Hollyika and Vandien, or speak to each other. They came on silently as dreams.
'They don't look too formidable,' Vandien grumbled softly. Anger began to heat in him; had the Brurjan tricked him into abandoning Ki's wagon?
'Follow me,' she growled. She leaned forward in her saddle and the black leaped suddenly to a gallop. Straight toward them she rode. Much heel-thudding nagged Sigmund into a ponderous canter, the disgruntled Sigurd trailing behind. The warrior pulled steadily away from them.
And the farmers came steadily on down the road. Vandien fixed his eyes on them as he clung to his mount. They had raised their staves. But they did not scatter, nor even take up a defensive stance. No light of battle changed their eyes or faces. There were no cries of fury or challenge. Bunched in a group, they strode down the road to meet the charging horse.
'Make way!' Hollyika roared, but they only waved their staves. Then she was among them and Vandien was sickened. The horse crashed through, silent bodies flung to either side, though he heard a few whacks as blows of the staff struck the rider. Two figures sprawled in the road, but no outcry arose. Those standing milled for a moment and began to close ranks. Vandien was too far behind Hollyika; now they were ready to meet him, eyes cold. Sigmund threw up his head and tried to wheel aside from this Human barricade. A staff came down solidly on Vandien's shoulder; he clung to Sigmund's mane, realizing he was the only target, not the horse. Another blow smote his hip, numbing his leg to the knee. The farmers surged around him. Then Black and Hollyika crashed suddenly through the press. 'Ride on, stupid!' she screamed at him. He had a fleeting impression of flying scarlet hooves felling farmers. Then Sigmund took charge, leaping into the gap she had cleared and surging forward under Vandien; Sigurd crowded behind. He and the greys were clear and fleeing down the sodden black road.
He heard the splattering hoofbeats of Black as Hollyika caught up with him. Vandien glanced over at her, but kept a tight grip on the flying grey mane before him. The ponderous gallop of the beast below him was thunder in his ears. He did not know much of Brurjan facial expressions, but he thought she looked grim and ill. When they crested the first long rise, she pulled in the black. The greys dropped their pace to match with no signal from Vandien. Hollyika kept them all at a striding walk. Just as Vandienopened his mouth to speak, she turned to him. 'They won't be following,' she said bleakly. He shut his mouth.
The road ran on. At first they rode on the margins of the road, until the already soggy mosses and grasses turned to morass. The lands on either side of them as they struggled up the hillsides were wild places; the road and its banks were swamps now right up to the edge of brush that prickled and stabbed the horses when they tried to ride through it. ' Ki could never have come this way,' Vandien asserted, to which Hollyika replied, 'She must have.' So on they went, and on, until finally, incredibly, they reached the top of the final hill and looked down into a grey valley full of shadows. Vandien's body told him they were deep into night.
In silent accord they halted, looking down at the valley full of dusk before them. The road was straight from here, still flowing with mud, true, but implacably straight. It cut through woods and pasture, field and meadow, now clear, now veiled, until it finally emerged to intersect with the far black ribbon of another road. And gracing that stretch of road was a bridge. No , the bridge, the one he had so admired the first time he had seen it. No road had intersected with that road then; he was sure of it. 'But it does now,' Hollyika observed aloud. 'Limbreths.'
She urged her black and they began their descent, the horse's haunches braced under him, half walking and half sliding as he went. Vandien let a space develop between them, and then took the greys down. It was steep for only a short way, then it gave onto the gentler slope of a hillside pasture, grazed by some tiny hooved beasts that thundered off into the trees at their approach. The far road and the bridge were hidden from them again in the more immediate barrier of brush and trees, the brambly trees edging ever closer to the road. Water flowed over the top of the muddy path and the horses' hooves slid and squelched in it. A short distance more, and the trees began to arch over the stream that the horses now followed. If Hollyika noticed the change or found it alarming, she said nothing. Vandien did not deign to speak either. She was right. Sometimes it was simpler just doing, without worrying about what came next.
The trees thinned and then gave way. With a tingle of uneasiness, Vandien realized that the stream led them now through cultivated fields. The gleaming red fruit hung in shining globules on the vines. Sigurd snatched at the foliage hungrily, snorting with weary displeasure when Vandien jerked him on. The greys were dispirited, heads adroop, moving with slogging steps. Even Hollyika slouched in her ridiculous saddle. Vandien found it more and more difficult to keep his eyes open. Sigmund's trudging stride rocked him gently and he swayed with it. With a jerk he pulled his head up again. He rubbed his eyes and looked around, trying to wake himself up. A dark hummock far off across the rows of crops was a farmer's cottage. He started at it and the milling of folk around it. 'Hollyika!' he called softly.
She reined in her black and dropped back to be even with him. 'Pay no attention to them,' she commanded in a harsh whisper.
'They're staring at us.'
'They look both more and less than angry, don't they? Pay them no mind. Five dark trespassers must be an unusual sight. Don't borrow trouble ahead of time. Keep riding.'
Her black pulled ahead of him again, and Vandien, alert now, stepped up Sigmund's weary pace. He tried to look at the cottage and the shining folk gathered there without turning his head. There was quite a group of them, their hair lambent in the soft twilight, and in every hand stood a tall stick. His stomach turned over. He could not blot from his mind the silent sprawled figures they had left in the road; he wanted no more of that. Black hesitated, and then stepped awkwardly down into a gully. Vandien brought Sigmund to the brink of it and waited. Hollyika sat lightly on her horse's back, moving like a part of him, swaying with him as he placed his hooves and clambered up to the other side. They had regained the original road and it was sound under his hooves.
Vandien nudged Sigmund on, and the draft horse went down like a landslide. He had barely lurched and staggered into the ditch before Sigurd came down behind them; then with another lurch they had all regained the road. Vandien glanced back the way they had come: the passage they had made through the crops was plain behind them. He sneaked a glance at the farmer's hut. The crowd was gone. Vandien twisted around, trying to see them.
'They went back inside,' Hollyika informed him. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face sagging with weariness. For a Brurjan she was grotesquely gaunt; it gave her face a Human cast. She needs food and rest, Vandien thought. She's running on a thin edge of endurance. The amount she had eaten when they had the wagon might carry her a day or so, but not well. He reached for the food bag without speaking. He parceled out dry fish for her, which she took silently, and a handful of dried fruit for himself. He would have liked the fish, but this would sustain him, whereas it would do nothing for Hollyika. He felt her eyes on him as he rolled and tied the bag shut again.
'We've got enough to make it,' he told her with more confidence than he felt. She nodded slowly and put a whole stick of fish into her mouth. Her jaws moved four times and she swallowed. Her dark eyes flashed suddenly to his like a battering ram. 'Stop looking at me like you want to take care of me,' she snarled. 'It makes me more nauseous than this fish. You should never eat anything after the blood clots.'
'I'll remember that,' Vandien told her meekly, and was rewarded with a savage grin.
'On to the bridge,' she told him, and kneed her black gently.
