Day Five
Chapter 12. Qhora
The ride out from Algora was quiet and grim. Qhora sat astride Wayra, for once taking no pleasure in the sensation of traveling the world as a proper lady, free and proud, striking fear and awe in the eyes of all who saw her. Now all she could think of was the poor boy back at the inn in Algora with his cheeks sown shut with only an innkeeper’s wife to care for him. And after she brushed away a few tears of rage over young Enrique, she twisted the reins in her fist at the thought of the stitches in her Enzo’s arm. She’d done them herself and knew he’d be fine in a few weeks, but a few weeks was a long time, especially as he was riding up into the north and not back to their home.
“Faleiro’s dead and you have your journal. The stone is safe. Can’t we go home now?” she asked. “We should be taking Enrique home where you both can rest.”
“I wish we could, but Magellan’s probably going to be looking for our Mazigh friends for quite a while and home may not be safe. Besides, we now have the illustrious Salvator Fabris who wants the stone for the Italians, so the sooner we have it locked away someplace safe, the better,” Lorenzo said.
“You should let me take care of it,” she said. “Let me take care of him.”
Lorenzo smiled atop his horse beside her. “As much as I would love to see you again in all your Incan finery, tearing across the snowfields with Atoq roaring at your side, I’d rather have you here with me. After all, I need a bodyguard now.” He touched his arm.
She gazed at him a moment. He was taller than her, but Wayra’s shoulder was higher than his saddle, which put her at eye level with him. She glanced back at the others, all riding and walking more than a few dozen yards behind, and she said, “Was he really better than you?”
“Sword to sword, I would probably have to say he’s the better man. He certainly has the better weapon. But he’s not terribly creative. I put my fist in his eye and my elbow in his jaw. He may be the greatest fencer who ever lived, but he’s only a fencer. Last night all it took were a few dirty tricks I learned in the army to bloody his face and shake his confidence.”
“He cut you.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. He didn’t mean to cut my arm, I’m sure. It was an accident.”
“Oh really?”
“Absolutely. I’m quite sure he was aiming for my throat.”
“Don’t joke, Enzo.”
“It wasn’t a joke, love. Just proof that he isn’t quite as good as he’d like me to believe.”
As they plodded down the muddy lane beneath a gray sky, Qhora continued to glance back from the top of every rise and hill to scan the miles behind them for a lone man on foot or a rider quietly pursuing them with a rapier on his hip. But she saw only a handful of mule-drawn carts and children running along the tops of the garden walls throwing fistfuls of snow at each other and laughing.
Fabris might not be behind us at all. He might have gone on ahead in the night. He might have allies somewhere. He might be planning an ambush.
“I’m going on ahead,” she announced. “Wayra needs to run and I think Atoq is ahead of us, rather than behind. What’s the name of the village we’ll be staying in tonight?”
“Ariza.”
“Then I’ll see you at the inn in Ariza this evening.” And before he could object, she nudged the great eagle into a sprint and let the morning chill tear at her exposed face for a few minutes. They ran and ran, dashing down the wide muddy road and drawing the occasional stare from the startled people working near the road’s edge. They ran until she came to be alone in the middle of a wide white plain with more than a mile between her and next nearest soul.
Come out, you coward. Try to cut me, I dare you.
A thin sound drew her gaze to the east, and Wayra swung her huge beak in the same direction. “You hear it too, girl?” Qhora stroked the bird’s neck. “What was it?”
It had been a low cry. It might have been anything. A person. An animal. The wind. She waited there in the middle of the road, listening.
There it is again. A man’s voice. But the words were lost on the wind.
Qhora shook the reins and nudged Wayra on down the road, but a moment later she heard the man’s cry a third time and managed to understand him: “Por favor!” Please.
She frowned across the snowy field at the dark tree line at the base of the eastern ridge. There were no lanes or walls or houses that she could see, but the word had been unmistakable. Please.
Just a quick look. Still frowning, she turned Wayra off the road and urged her into a sprint across the wide, even field. Here on the ancient farmland she didn’t have to worry that her mount would misstep in a ditch or hole. The earth would be tilled level and frozen solid. So they ran with the wind and enjoyed a strange respite from the elements as the temperature seemed to rise, if only for a moment. At the edge of the trees, she reined up and looked around for an easy path into the woods.
Seeing no breaks in the underbrush, she called out, “Hello!”
There was no answer. But as Wayra strutted along the edge of the clawing shrubs, the man’s voice rose above the shivering of the dead trees. “Please!”
“Sah!” Qhora wheeled her great eagle into the trees and Wayra leapt over the low brush and trotted into the woods. The old pine trees stood huge and silent all around them, their upper branches still thick with green needles and blanketed in snow, but their lower limbs jutted out from the trunks brown and naked, dry and frail. As the huge bird passed, she brushed against the dead branches and they snapped and crackled as they fell to the carpet of brown needles on the ground.
The earth rose and fell in gentle waves as they moved east toward the ridge, and in the low places they saw frozen puddles and pools in the hollows where the oldest trees had toppled over and torn their roots out of the ground. In the distance, she could hear the cries of birds and the fluttering of wings.
“Hello?” she called.
Qhora peered into the shadows shot through with the odd shafts of sunlight that pierced the heavy canopy above. Ahead and to the right she saw a glimmer of light and color, and she rode toward it. The trees parted suddenly at the edge of a long thin pond bordered by the wood on its west bank and a rough tumble of mossy stones on its east bank. The water was frozen solid and dusted with snow and brown needles, and at the water’s edge there stood a man.
Dressed as he was in a dirty leather coat and boots, she guessed him to be a farmer. He was short and balding, judging from the horseshoe of stubble on his exposed head. He was clutching his hat to his chest as he stumbled along the edge of the frozen pond, staring down at the ice, and every few moments a raven would swoop down across the clearing and he would raise his hat like a shield to ward off the bird.
Qhora watched him for a moment, trying to guess what he was doing or who he had been talking to, but there was no one else there, nor any footprints in the snow except for his own. “Hello, sir. Are you all right?”
The man spun around and stared up at her with wide, wild eyes. His gaze wasn’t fixed on her, but the towering bird she was sitting on. Qhora patted the eagle’s neck. “This is Wayra. Don’t be afraid. She won’t hurt you.” She slipped down to the ground and approached the man with Wayra’s reins in her hand. “Are you all right? I heard you all the way out on the road.”
He glanced at the wood in the direction of the road. “You shouldn’t be here. Please, you should go back to the road, miss.”
Overhead, the raven had been joined by two more. They croaked and cawed to each other.
“Who were you talking to?” Qhora asked. She paced along the edge of the frozen pond, looking for whatever the man had been looking at. She saw nothing but ice.
“No one. Please go. It isn’t safe here.”
Another pair of ravens fluttered down to the rocks across the water.
Isn’t safe? Is that a threat? She looked up at him, a middle-aged man only a few inches taller than her. Not a
