CHAPTER XIX

From the Chronicle of Nikeh Gen’Emras

Most of the Nearer Grass had fallen before that bloody summer’s end, though a band of warriors drawn from the folk of many gods and goddesses of that land had harried the army, a small dog nipping at their heels, until the fall of the Sayanbarkash, whereupon they retreated after the folk of that land, who had fled, many of them, north over the river Bakan into lands of folk who were kin both to them and to the Northrons, and had their own customs and ways. They were not entirely unwelcoming, but neither was there any easy way for the folk and beasts to fit themselves into a land already peopled. Some found place there, others went up the Kinsai to At-Landi, the town where the caravans of the road gave up their trade to the ships of the Northrons.

The All-Holy’s advance stopped at the Kinsai’s western shore. His knight, Prince Dimas of Emrastepse, elevated to the seventh circle of his favour, a lord of the faith and in command of the Army of the South, on his orders established a winter camp opposite the Lower Castle, a hundred miles down river, below the Fifth Cataract. The All-Holy himself, commanding the Army of the North, did the same above the First. All across the Nearer Grass, in lands where the gods and goddesses had been destroyed, those folk who had not been able to flee and who had saved themselves from the slaughter by surrendering to the priests, swearing oaths of submission to the All-Holy, learning to recite their catechism, offering their wrists to the tattooers’ needles and undergoing initiation to the first circle of the faith, laboured to bring in the sparse harvest and to supply the armies. All across the Nearer Grass, mission-houses were established that were more like the princes’ towers of Tiypur, ditched and walled and garrisoned with not only teachers of the third circle, who had charge of educating the folk in their wide-scattered family holdings as well as the children brought in to be students—truer to say hostages— in each tower’s school, but a garrison of fifth-circle knights and ordinary soldiers.

There were rumours among the folk of the Nearer Grass and even among the Westrons. They called it a lie of the heathens, the raiders, that somehow spread, though whispering it might have the one who did so hanged. The All-Holy was not any messenger of the Old Great Gods. The All-Holy was no oracle. There was no nameless god and never had been.

The All-Holy was a devil, one of the seven, and his name, when he was a man, had been Sien-Shava. He was the devil Jochiz.

The red priests killed for the hint of it. Blasphemy. But like fire in a coal-seam, it never quite would die.

Too many afoot, exhausted, hungry. They couldn’t simply keep running and leave pursuit behind. Caro’s signaller bleated the order they all anticipated. Not too much confusion when the ram’s horn blared. Holla knew something of such manoeuvres and there were Grasslanders among them, and one caravaneer, Hani Kahren, who said he had been Nabbani cavalry far in the east of the world. They managed it, turning back through themselves, first time that wasn’t a drill. Jolanan kneed Lark about, holding her place in the line. Caro came through them, moving to the fore again, with the signaller and the man carrying the pennant ahead. A gap formed to Jolanan’s left in which they would find place. Holla was riding up there with them, as if by right—which he had, now, since after three days of him at her shoulder Caro had gone to Reyka and told her to give him the damned lancers, since he had so many opinions. No, he’d said, and ended up her second anyhow. One of the few, along with the Nabbani man, who understood not only that they should hold to greater order than some kind of raiding party, but how to achieve it, beyond what Reyka and Lazlan had managed.

Jolanan wondered if Holla himself had served in the guard of Marakand or some company farther afield. Didn’t ask. He didn’t talk much of where he had been, before he loomed up out of the grass on a fresh-stolen horse. No tales of life on the road, of other lands. Didn’t talk much at all, except of each day just past. She didn’t want to look back either. Or ahead. Grass and stars and a shared blanket. That was all they had.

Trotting, a threat. Fear before them. Already the Westron soldiers began to bunch together as though they would be safer so, crowding one another. If they had the sense to ground their spears, those that had them, to make a bristling wall—but they were far from their most feared captains—conscripts, probably, with little training and no armour but leather. Scouts riding far out to the east had reported the band, a hundred or so, tracking Westgrassland refugees afoot, a mass escape from one of the enslaved settlements. The fugitives seemed to be heading for the Kinsai’av.

Arguments. They were too few to split, almost to the Bakanav, which like the Kinsai at least felt as if it should be a border, a barrier. Most of the folk who had fled had gone that way, into the hills north of At-Landi at the rivers’ meeting. In the end, they had divided, some to go with Reyka north, hoping to gather more folk over the river, form some plan of defence to hold that as a line if the Westrons turned that way, but a company of mixed lancers and skirmishers under Lazlan and Caro to overtake and protect the folk fleeing east. So few, they were, once they split. Nothing but raiders, brigands, the delusion that they were a warband, an army, revealed as nothing but a bard’s dream, ten riders for every one when the ride came to be song. But who would sing it, when all who survived were slaves and their children raised to worship a devil?

Didn’t matter. Now. Here.

The Westrons nerved themselves, a jogging charge, shouting the praise of their false god. The lancers surged into a canter, and the troop of archers flashed past, shooting, whooping, wheeling away. Noticeable gaps in the Westron formation, if you could call it a formation when it was breaking apart, each man abruptly a rabbit running in terror of his own life. Hunting exhausted folk armed with a few scrounged tools—that was one thing. Facing a cavalry charge, apparently, another, and Jolanan found she was laughing. Lance lowered on the captain’s sign, the bright pennon ahead dipping, and they were up and around Caro, making her one of the line. They struck the Westrons with a roar. The shock was still strange, for all her weary evening drilling; this was only her second fight as a lancer, if you could call the patrol they ran down two days ago even a fight. Her force and Lark’s made one, and the dead man dragged her lance down; couldn’t free it so she let it go, drew her sabre as their own line spread, and the butchery began.

Behind them, men and women, some few mounted, others afoot, were running, running now for their lives, a company of Lazlan’s skirmishers making a shield of bows and steel about them. Half a mile more, that was all—they were nearly to the Kinsai’av, the farthest east Jolanan had ever been. Nearly the whole of the camp. No children. The adults had given their promises to the red priests and were marked for the false god—because, the woman who spoke as their chief had said, it was better to live and find their children again and keep memory of the true gods in their hearts. They served by tending the ill-managed fields, vast ploughings of virgin grassland on hills that had been grazing since first ever this land was settled, stony and dry. Their children were gone. To other settlements, it was alleged, where they might attend school under the red priests and learn to be good and true servants of the All-Holy.

The Westrons weren’t people, behind the faces. Jolanan didn’t let them be. Just eyes and mouths, just intent and movement. Slashed and shoved and Lark struck, hoof and tooth, savage. For every lost father, lost mother, stolen child. Every man and woman and child torn from home, from god or goddess, or dead in their purging fires. A man kneeling, no weapon but a long knife which he dropped before him, hands over his head, defensive, and she leaned and slashed at his throat as Lark plunged on by. No mercy, no quarter. If the Westgrasslanders escaped from the camp were retaken, they would be killed as apostates, and not swiftly. Back when she first joined, when she was riding a patrol with Lazlan himself, so young, in the spring, they had found the aftermath of one such execution. No wood for burning, the usual punishment, so the prisoners had been pegged to the earth through their wrists and ankles and gutted alive, left to die.

They had buried them in the clean earth, and then she had been sick.

In the back of the mind, always, in those first days—would they find her father, Tibor’s mother and elder sister, the folk of that farmstead, among the prisoners, among the dead…

Never did. Never any word. She and Tibor and every other West-grasslander among them, every time, searching, afterwards—asking among the survivors, hoping, fearing…most of them didn’t even look any more. Didn’t let hope take root.

Their own line had lost its shape, broken into solitary fury or smaller bands, scattering. Holla was standing in his stirrups at Caro’s side, roaring at them to close up. The signaller’s horn echoed him and Caro’s pennon whirled.

“They’ll try to make you scatter,” he had said. “They’ll want to break your line. You’re a wall. Remember that. Each rider, each horse, a stone in that wall, interlinked. Weakened, the whole line of you, if there are gaps. You’re not children. You’re not puppies, to go chasing what catches your eye. If they run, let them run. Wait your signal, watch your five-leader, watch your captain. Don’t lose yourself in the fury. Don’t lose yourself in the fear. Strength in the line, remember that.”

Man on her right, woman on her left. This was no longer any charge, no pushing front. They were circling, turning, closing around their enemies.

Fewer and fewer. One of their own unhorsed and down before her, his eye-framing tattoos of coots saying he was of the Darya-Kinsai. Occupied by the Westron Army of the South now, she had heard. The man was wounded past saving or already dead, his lower jaw slashed away. She tightened her legs, jumped Lark over him. The last Westrons were on their knees, not even begging, just crying out for death, crying the name of their lying god, arms reaching out, as if to embrace him and the miraculous translation they expected in their dying.

“Devil-worshippers!” she shouted at one as she struck him down. “Die damned and godless—your road will be lifetimes long!” They didn’t understand her. Didn’t matter. She smashed a man’s face with her shield when he tried to scramble up Lark as if she and the horse were some tree to be scaled, hand groping to seize and pull her down. Someone who still had their lance speared him as he struck the ground.

Some had dismounted, were methodically beheading the kneeling men. They made no resistance, these last, and she reined Lark back. Chest heaving. Face wet. Sweat. Tears. Spat, wiped her mouth on her glove. Mouth bleeding. Nothing worse than a split lip.

How had she even ended up here? She was a cowherd.

The river-crossing was a slow affair. Some miracle—a settlement of a few families who lived by fishing and fowling. A handful of boats, and the families, their faces tattooed with fish, calling themselves Kinsai’s folk, but not any connection to the strange clan of the ferrymen. They had boats, far too few, and had already been packing up their meagre possessions, rounding up their geese and driving and dragging their cattle, ropes about their horns, to swim the river, in fear of the Westrons. Whether they were entirely pleased to find themselves folded into a West-grasslander flight was doubtful, but Lazlan gave them little chance to object to their boats being taken over.

Jolanan grew cold, muscles stiff, sweat drying, as they kept their watch over the ferrying. The current buffeted them, unfriendly. Fear seemed to have infected the horses. Some, when it came time for them to swim, did not want to enter the water.

Holla hung back, watching to the south, downriver. He always seemed the first to notice anything amiss in the landscape, Westron scout or bad weather or a passing fox. Jolanan walked over to him, leading Lark. He gave her a look like a sleeper waking, cold, almost not recognizing her as anyone who mattered, she could think.

Something in his hand, held against his chest. His amulet pouch. Blinked, warmth returning, seeing her properly. Tucked the token of lost Sayan away inside his shirt again.

He looked worse than that first time she had seen him. A greyness to his face, and lines—eyes, mouth—that she had never noticed before, ageing him. She remembered that brown-haired woman who had worked the harvest with them that bad year, coming to her where she struggled with an overloaded basket of wet linens she’d been spreading on the hazels to dry. Your papa’s hurt, Jo. You’d better come… The woman’s face had been like that, with the news she carried.

Had he taken some hurt…? Before she could ask, Holla said, “Kinsai’s dead.”

Jolanan felt…not nothing. Weight, pressing down. More. And more. She had thought, had hoped—Kinsai was so vast a power, compared to the gods and goddesses of the Western Grass with their small lands. Dark tales even said she had long ago devoured the lesser gods and goddesses of her shore to make herself greater, perhaps in wars against the devils. And her folk, though so few, only the two communities of the Upper and Lower Castles, numbered so many wizards among them, and scholars and seers…

The horses knew, reluctant to enter the water. The river was turned godless.

And Holla…

Gods, was he one of those Kinsai had taken as a lover, or was it only that he felt, like the horses, some pain she could not? Not the first time she had wondered if he were secretly a wizard himself. He twitched and muttered in his dreams in a language she couldn’t even name.

What could mortal folk say to comfort one another, when a goddess of the earth ceased to be? And what could she? Kinsai was only a name, a story. The wild spirit of the river, mother of many mortal children, lover, seducer of travellers male and female alike.

“Come on, then,” Jolanan said. “I—there’s nothing we can do, and we’re on the wrong side of the river. Rearguard’s one thing. Having to swim myself because they’ve made the last crossing without me isn’t what I intended.”

“Yes,” he said, as if it didn’t matter very much. “All right.”

The river seemed no different than before to Jolanan. She dipped a hand in the water, mid-stream. Only water, which was all it had ever been to her.

But it had been in all of their minds that to the All-Holy it must be a barrier, a live and active enemy his folk would not dare to engage. Great Kinsai, their salvation, a force to resist the evil that destroyed the gods of the hills and the goddesses of the grassland waters.

No respite, no sanctuary now on the eastern shore, or in the hills about At-Landi. No sure safety beyond the Bakanav, where Reyka intended to build a fortified camp, with or without leave of the scattered folk of that land and the guild-council of At-Landi.

They camped that night on the eastern shore of the Kinsai’av. No jubilation in their victory, or for the Westgrasslanders who had escaped enslavement, in their freedom. Too much lost, too much unknown.

At least there was fire. Warmth. Jolanan sat close against Holla’s side, not caring who saw. Tibor, who knew, frowned at her nonetheless. Holla wasn’t quite old enough to be her father but he didn’t approve. Kinless, even if not entirely friendless.

“Will he cross?” Lazlan asked, meaning the All-Holy. “Will he turn north, do we think, or go south down the caravan road? Or is the Western Grass enough to content him?”

Throwing out questions to lie between them all, this fire where the commanders, informal though they were, gathered. Smoky tea, rich with milk from the fisher-folk’s cattle. Holla sat withdrawn, staring into the fire.

“He’ll cross,” he said to the flames. “It’s Marakand he wants.”

“The wizards of the library will put an end to him,” Kahren said.

“It’s not rumour. The All-Holy is the devil Sien-Shava Jochiz.” Holla looked up, the firelight gleaming in his eyes, a flare of almost green. “Nothing will stop him, whatever it is he wants, wherever it is he’s going, except—” He shrugged, didn’t finish his thought.

“There was a mountain demon killed two devils,” Lazlan said. “But they say the Blackdog died at Marakand, defeating the false Lady.”

“My god fought the servant of a devil,” Kahren said. “When first he came into the land, there was an empress possessed by a devil, and Nabban and the Rihswera defeated her.”

“The what?” Jolanan asked.

“The priest of the god. An immortal warrior from—I don’t know where. I think maybe he was Northron, or maybe Taren? A king, who gave up his kingdom and was killed and came back from the dead to follow Nabban, for love of him. He fought the false empress and drove the devil out of her, and left his body to fight the devil soul to soul. There are songs. I could—”

“Nobody here speaks Imperial, Kari,” said Caro. “No, don’t translate. If Reyka guesses right, and if we stay beyond the Bakanav—if the All-Holy, whether, he’s truly inspired by a devil or not, is intending to march on Marakand—we’ll be safe for a while.”

“Till the folk of the north hills drive us out of their pastures,” Jolanan said. She had no place at this fire, only that she trailed after Holla and they all accepted that.

“He’ll cross the Kinsai’av and head for Marakand,” Holla said. “I thought she might hold a time, but—he’ll cross before winter. And once he controls the desert road, he can deal with the folk between the rivers— At-Landi and Varrgash and all the hills between—whenever he has a mind to. And all their gods as well.” He got to his feet, fastening his coat. Something in his face. Grim. A stranger. He’d never been anything but. Yet she caught at his coat-hem.

“Where are you going?”

“To the castle,” he said. “To see the Warden of the ferry-folk. Lazlan, Caro—listen. Believe me. There’s no ‘if.’ The All-Holy is a devil. I don’t know what he wants, but he’s killing, devouring gods, enslaving the folk—he’s not going to rest content with the pastures of the Western Grass even if he does make a winter camp, and I don’t think he will. I wouldn’t. Not if Marakand were my aim. Better to keep moving, keep my momentum, keep the harvest being carried with me, after me, than to leave it sitting garnered for the conquered folk to raid and spoil and burn. You should get these folk moving, come the dawn. Head up to At-Landi, beg the mercy of the folk there for them, join Reyka. Build your camp and your walls if you think you can, but don’t consider there’s any lasting safety in it.”

“You’ve got a place here,” Lazlan said. “You can’t just ride off.”

“Desertion,” said Kahren, and his tone was only half joking.

“Never said I was staying long,” Holla said. “Just across the rivers. Rode with you longer than I intended.”

“You’re not serious, Holla.”

“Sorry, Caro. Admit I’m leaving you in better state than I found you, anyway.”

“You bastard.”

Lazlan rocked to his feet. “You’re going nowhere. We’re—”

“Talk to you alone,” Holla said.

“What?”

“I need to talk to you alone.”

“I want not to have some damned traitor riding south into Westron reach knowing where we are.”

“Come on.” Holla detached Jolanan’s hand from his coat, gently— but he always was gentle, in his words, in his manner, as if he felt the world to be fragile as an egg. “Just you, Lazlan.”

“Great Gods damn…” But Lazlan followed him off into the dark. Kahren poured them all more tea. Silence. They listened, of course they did. Only the camp. Talk. Singing. Someone playing a fiddle. A dog barked, once, not an alarm, just bored. One of the fisherfolk children was crying.

No exclamation, no outcry. Well, they weren’t expecting for the two of them to come to drawn blades. Were they?

Lazlan came back alone.

“Well?” asked Caro.

“He’s going down to the ferry-castle. We can do without him. Kahren, you’ll take his place as Caro’s lieutenant.”

“But—”

“Just leave it, Caro.”

“Mistress Varnouri always called him a fey bastard,” Caro said. “He’d up and leave without a word and be back a week later, out of the desert, no warning.”

“You could have mentioned that,” said Lazlan. He sounded angry. Found his cup and wrapped both hands around it.

“I liked him,” Caro said. “Stupid bastard. What’s at the ferry castle? Nothing to help us. The Westrons’ll take it before long. What’s he going to do then?”

“His son’s there,” Lazlan said. Laughed, still with anger in it. “Gods, I—” Shook his head, dumped the dregs of his tea hissing on the fire. “Are the watches set?”

“Yes, marshal,” Kahren said, sudden formality.

“Good. I’m going to sleep.” And abruptly, looking down. “Jolanan. Jo. Oh Sayan, Jo, I forgot. He said to tell you—he was sorry. That’s all.”

Jolanan hunched up, pulled her coat close. Cold. Nothing to say. She wasn’t going to shout or weep. Just another blow, another piece of what was hers ripped away. Of course it was. Nothing endured. A breath, no more. Each day its own thing, nothing to follow, each gift, every shaft of sunlight, broken, swallowed in grey cloud. She couldn’t even complain, rail of seduction, abandonment. If anyone had been doing any seducing—

Son. Well, why not? A man might have a child and still take a lover. Lazlan didn’t say wife, partner. Just a child. Of course he would ride to take the boy out of harm’s way. Wherever that might be.

He could have asked her to come.

No place was safe.

Lazlan’s hand on her shoulder. He stood there. Squeezed it, then, and walked away without speaking.

Pity she didn’t need. Nothing endured. They were all just leaves, battered in the wind, tearing free one by one to fall and rot and go back to earth.

“Jolanan…” Caro began.

“I’m going to see Tibor,” she said, cutting her off. Angry at the shake in her voice. Furious. Stupid, traitor, childish voice. Walked off into the dark. Tripped on a saddle left where it should not have been.

Holla’d be at the horselines, saddling the black stallion he had named Fury. His idea of a joke. She wouldn’t follow. What would she do? Shout? Cry? Curse him? Beg?

Maybe he was hoping she would follow.

Then he should have asked.

She wandered the scattered fires. A few greeted her. Most were already rolled in their blankets. Tibor…she found the patrol group he usually rode with, nearly all asleep. He and another lying close, sleeping, but the woman’s arm was over his chest. Did she really want to be crying on his shoulder, anyway?

Wanted something to kick, to scream at. Wanted to be home. Wanted to make a fool of herself. Back to the lancers’ horselines, and of course Holla was already gone.

“Who—? Oh, it’s Jolanan,” the young man on watch there said. “Looking for the lieutenant? You just missed him. I don’t know what the marshal’s thinking, sending him south in the dark, and after the day the horses have had.”

“I know,” Jolanan said. “I wasn’t supposed to go, but second thoughts…” Lazlan’s, hers, she didn’t need to say. “He’ll have to stop to rest the horse, at least, in an hour or two. I’ll catch up then. Can you give me a hand with Lark?”

She had nothing but her sabre and buckler, which no one set aside even at the campfire. The heavy brigandine and the bulky sheepskin vest over it. Not even a blanket, a water-gourd.

At least Lark was easy to find by the white splashes on him. The moon, just about full, was climbing in the east.

“You know where you’re going?” the boy asked. She couldn’t remember his name. “I guess if you head down the river, you’ll pick up the road where it swings over around this hill. It’s more a lot of cow-paths, not a wagon-road, from what the caravaneers say.”

“Camelpaths,” Jolanan said.

“Yeah. Well, take care you don’t break anyone’s leg, yours or the horse’s. Don’t fall in the river.”

“No.”

“Shouldn’t be any Westrons over this side of the water, anyway.”

“No.”

Lark was reluctant to be saddled up again. She couldn’t blame him. Thanked the youth and rode away, around the camp, aiming for the deepest darkness. Any watch should challenge—

Movement.

“Jolanan?” Woman’s voice in the night.

They were so few, and Lark so recognizable a horse. Even by moonlight.

“Did you see which way the lieutenant went?” Jolanan asked. “We’ve missed one another in the dark.”

“Right down the track along the river. Was he going to wait?”

She made her voice rueful. “He’s expecting me to overtake. Thanks.”

Urged Lark on before she had to explain anything. Was anyone going to miss her, come after her? If they thought she’d gone off to her friends among the skirmishers, maybe not, till it was too late.

Deserter.

She didn’t have a son to worry about. Or a partner. He wasn’t hers. He and she were just—something that had happened. Obviously. Nothing more. He could have mentioned he had a child. Could have said. Could have asked her, could have at least said, I don’t want you, or, stay here where it’s safer. Just to leave, without a word—

Might as well die following him as die following Reyka and Lazlan. The Westrons would come, either way. This month, next season, next year…

There was a hollow, ripped, hurting place in her chest, that was what it felt like. Like someone had died. Again. And she didn’t want it there.

She wanted to know why it was there, for a man she’d just wanted— the way sometimes you just wanted to be drunk. She had thought.

Now she wanted…

She wanted she and Lark not to fall in the damned and goddess-less river, for starters.

The road a rutted, lumpy darkness between the paler grass of the rolling land, the water distant to her right a different darkness, moon-flecked, whispering.

No glimpse of Holla, no sound of a horse’s hoof. No point, either, to dismounting to scour the rutted paths that crossed and recrossed, braiding themselves into confusion, for hoofprints. No scent of recent horse’s passage, but Lark was less contrary that she would have expected, so perhaps he smelt what she could not.

Put her faith in that, and let him walk on, slouched and swaying. Don’t sleep. Not quite.

She had to stop after a few hours. Tired, hungry-sick, afraid. Her journey east from the Jayala’arad all over again. Numb. Like a lost dog, heading mindless for where home should be. Except it wasn’t, and he wasn’t. If she thought he was…she only imagined it.

But she could shut her eyes and feel him by her. The way he smiled, and his eyes, as if she mattered, when he looked at her. Which she didn’t. Not to anyone. Her goddess was dead. To Tibor, a little? Not to matter as if her absence would change the world.

Which obviously it wouldn’t, not for Holla. He hadn’t even come back to the fire to say farewell.

After midnight, the moon past its height. Lark had halted, sleeping on his feet, and she hadn’t noticed, sleeping herself in the saddle. Way to ruin a good horse and break her own neck. Caravaneers might drowse in the saddle, it was said. She certainly didn’t feel safe doing so. Let Lark drink, leading him down to the river, feeling her way. It was very still— water, air. An owl called somewhere, another answered from across the river. Faintest whisper of water against the stones. Then Lark’s splashing, slurping. She shouldn’t drink straight from the river but though she had flint and firesteel, she had no kettle. Cupped water in her hand, upstream of the horse. Tasted mud. No food. Lark was peevish. Not even a handful of grain to appease him. A rope in the gear she did have, at least. Tied him to a twisty little bush and let him sleep or graze as he chose. She curled up, cold in her brigandine and over-large vest inherited from Nessa, arm pillowing her head. Woke stiff and with her hip aching, damp through with dew and the sun rising, the river breathing out fog.

Warmer than it had been.

Smell of smoke.

Warmer because there was a blanket over her.

Fire. Battered iron kettle.

“Porridge,” Holla said.

He hadn’t crossed the river again, running to the Westrons. She hadn’t thought it. Not more than once or twice in the night. Not really.

She couldn’t tell if he was angry, or pleased, or just resigned. Nothing at all. They might have set off together. Except he didn’t say anything more, while they shared the porridge, which was oats and lentils with a lump of salt butter thrown in at the last. She couldn’t find words to speak herself. Blame or apology—she didn’t want to offer either.

“I’m not a good person to be standing next to, Jo,” he said, as if they had been having that conversation anyway. “I like you.” He shrugged. “Care about you. So I didn’t want you there. I’ve been having bad dreams and—something’s looking for me. I’m not even sure what. Nothing good. I shouldn’t have let you—”

“You didn’t even come back to the fire to tell me.” That burst out in anger, deciding her. No apology. “I know we weren’t—I never expected— I wasn’t looking for you to marry me or anything, but Jayala damn it, you just rode off!”

“ I know.”

“Of course you need to go to your son,” she said. “I’d have understood that. Great Gods, of course you have to go to him. No matter how well-fostered he is, he’s your child, with an army moving on where he’s housed. But you could have—”

“My—is that what Lazlan said? That I was going to the castle for my son?”

“Aren’t you?” She was a fool and it had been a lie for her comfort…

He shook his head, a hand over his face. Laughing. He was laughing. “I suppose I am, at that…Oh, Jo. Things I didn’t want to have to tell you. I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“Well, all the scowls I got from Tibor—he’s quite right. I’m too old for you.”

“I’m the one gets to decide that. You’re not that old.”

“Reyka and Lazlan are my kin. My brother…he and his wife were the first to take the pastures at Dyers’ Hill, where the alkanet grows.”

“What do you mean?” Was he some late-sired child of Reyka’s grandfather? Old men did get up to such things, and a bastard born long after a man had adult grandchildren, heirs, yes, such a child might end up adrift, rejected, estranged, taking the caravan road.

“Wait till you meet my son.” Something was amusing him. But then he sobered. Shook his head. “Go back to the warband, Jolanan. Really. You’ll be safer.”

“No.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know—you.”

“You don’t.”

“All that matters, I do.” Kind. Gentle. Passionate.

Patient in teaching. Wise in war.

All secrets. Maybe lies.

She didn’t care, just wanted…him. Touching her. To feel his warmth to her fingers, skin, muscle, the strength of him.

The way she felt she was real, when he looked at her. That he saw her, though she was half a ghost to everyone else. To herself.

“I’ll come with you. What does one lance more or less matter? One less mouth to feed through the winter, that’s all, and they’ll have a hard enough time of it as it is.” She added, which sounded childish the moment the words left her mouth, “You can’t make me go back.”

“No.” He looked old, then. But when she took his hand, his fingers coiled around hers. Didn’t look at her, though. “Better pack up and ride, then.”

Not that she had anything to pack. She took the kettle down to the river to scrub it clean.

The day grew almost summer-hot as the sun rose, and they didn’t push hard, sparing the horses, who had had too hard use and too little rest these several days. Their noon rest in the shade of a solitary spreading poplar, its leaves flashing silver in the sun as a light breeze stirred them, turned into half the afternoon gone, slow and sweet and…an apology, maybe, on both parts. Water and stale flatbread, with blackberries that were growing along the riverbank, unravished by birds. By evening they had not yet come to the castle, though it was near enough. The hills here were dry, stony, the thin grass between the barren bones grazed short, though there were no sheep or cattle to be seen. A jackal was yipping, somewhere farther east, a lonely sound.

“We could push on,” Holla said, reining in. “But…if you don’t mind porridge again. One last night?”

“Before what?”

“You might look at me differently tomorrow.”

“No.”

“Don’t promise what you don’t know you can keep, Jo.”

“You’re being annoying.”

“I know.” He drew a deep breath.

“Don’t,” she said. “Nothing changes. Don’t say anything. I want you. I don’t know why. I like the sound of your voice. I like the way you smile when you look at me. I like the way you make me feel.”

That smile, then.

“I didn’t mean—” Well, actually, she did. “Not just that. If you really don’t want me, tell me, and I’ll ride back. Say it and I’ll leave you alone. If not—you’re stuck with me till the Westrons kill us.”

“We might just get fed up with one another,” he suggested.

“At this rate it won’t take long.”

He grabbed her. Hugged her, hard, mashing her face into his neck and she didn’t mind. “I am sorry I didn’t come back to tell you I was going,” he said into her hair. “I am a fool, and I hurt, you have no idea. People keep dying. I didn’t want to be hurt, seeing you hurt by my leaving. I’m a coward, and how could we hurt each other so much when we hardly know one another, a few nights between us? And I am going to hurt you more, things I need to tell you, and I want you, too, I do.”

“Don’t tell me.”

“Cold hells, Jo, you need to know—”

“No. Tomorrow. Whatever it is, tell me tomorrow, deal with it tomorrow, at the castle. One last night in the grass like you said, alright? Like it’s the harvest festival or the midsummer races, and we’ve gotten clear away from our fathers and mothers and aunties for the first time ever among the tents and the corrals—”

“—and brothers,” he said drily.

“And brothers, with a flask of ale—”

“—and a blanket.”

“You’ve done this before.”

“It’s been a long time.”

“Was she much like me?”

“Mm. Shorter. Plumper. Not so—” He held her off, far more sombre than his words. “I don’t even remember her name. Shall we make a fire, eat?”

“Not hungry. Later.”

She was ravenous, but it could wait.

“Fire,” he said. “There’s only the last rounds of bread. I wasn’t expecting to take quite so long on the way. But a fire. There’ll be frost tonight. Find good dry wood, though. We don’t want smoke. The Westron army’s not so far distant, over there.”

“How do you know?” She stared west, west and south, shading her eyes against the low sun. Nothing to see but the rolling land. It might hide much. A haze in the sky. Smoke. The cookfires of a great camp, somewhere folded into the grass.

“What if they’re patrolling on this shore?” A night in the grass wasn’t quite so appealing with that to consider.

“They aren’t, yet.” He answered as though he could know. Stood with his head raised, like a horse listening, smelling, testing the air. “We’re safe enough, another night.”

An eagle circled overhead. He watched it, squinting into the sky. “Long way from the mountains.” Shrugged. “Seriously, Jo. All your wicked temptations aside—no, I’m not going to argue you should go back. But camp or push on? Up to you. Food and fire and a bed with a feather mattress, at the castle.”

“Camp,” she said, because she would believe him if he said there were no Westrons this side of the Kinsai’av yet. One last night in the grass. She wasn’t suddenly afraid of what the morning would bring. She was not.

But as darkness spread over them, they only lay holding one another close, nothing more.