Chapter 29
Once beyond sight of Long Knife’s villa, I stepped up my pace and Ursa loped along easily at my side. Anxious, almost sick with dread, and ruing the coming daylight, I ran. By then, a gray dawn had lightened the track making it easier to find my way. I soon came to the old Deva crossroads where the traders had turned aside to the villa; there I paused to catch my breath and risk yet another backward glance along the trail. In my worst fears, I imagined warriors spilling from the villa in fevered pursuit, but all was dark and quiet. Then again, what made me think that the disappearance of a low scullion—bought cheaply for a broken band of gold—would merit raising the warband to give chase?
Without another backward glance I hurried on. All too soon, the first rays of morning touched the eastern hills, already beginning to burn through the night mist; it was light enough to see both ways along the road: there was not a single soul to be seen in any direction.
As I moved along, my thoughts turned to the new and troublesome prospect of what I would do when meeting someone on the road. My last encounter with traders taught me the folly of trusting too much to strangers. Naturally, I was in no wise eager to repeat my recent mischance with the rat-faced kidnapper Gnaeus and his rat-faced rogue friends, much less with that lecherous lout Cuno. The misadventure at the villa might easily have ended far worse for me, as I am only too happy to concede. But even misfortune can sometimes carry a benefit for, all things considered, I had at least gained a little something during my sojourn in King Ederyn’s villa. I left with a modicum of confidence—what my father called pluck—and I had learned a few new kitchen skills. Compensation, of a sort, for the fear, dread, humiliation, and degradation I had felt as an unwilling bondmaid and potential harlot.
With that in mind, I decided the best course would be not to take chances with any more strangers. At first glimpse of another traveler, I would quit the road and find a hiding place, hunker down, and wait until the they had moved on. I also considered that it might be best to travel only at night. I did not relish the latter prospect. Nights out in the wild hills would be cold and if the weather was foul, it would go bad with me. Even so, the thought of being captured again by Cunomor or anyone else, filled me with such dismay that facing a dark night on the road seemed the more reasonable choice. In any event, I had Ursa with me now, and with her beside me I could endure most anything, could I not?
The first test of my new-minted resolve came a little before midday when I saw two mounted figures on the road ahead. They were still far off, so I abandoned the trail and dived into a spread of heavy bracken at the base of a nearby hill. I wriggled into the stiff foliage with Ursa following willingly at my heels, and the two of us settled down in our hidden nook. I whispered to my furry companion that we must keep quiet and let the riders pass. Thus, we waited, not sorry for a chance to rest. . . .
When I awoke some time later, the clouds had come in and the sun was well down and sinking below the western hills. I shook myself from my nest in the bracken, rose, and looked out to the road: no one to be seen in either direction. So, we set forth again and I was beginning to wish I had been able to squirrel away a little more food for the journey. I was thirsty, too, but this was soon remedied at the next fresh-water trickle we came across; the hills were seamed with silver threads—each one a small freshet of clear, running water. We each drank our fill and moved on.
The miles went by and, save for the wind, we had the road to ourselves. Eventually, what little was left of the day subsided into a dull, misty twilight and we walked—my self-appointed escort and me—in an increasingly easy companionship. To pass the time and keep my mind off the hunger beginning to gnaw more fiercely at me, I told Ursa about my former home in Venta and the people I knew there. I told her about the marketplace, and about my father the magistrate. “Never heard of a magistrate?” I queried. “Well, let me tell you . . .” I told her about my friend Augustus, the priest Tomos, and others I had known; and I told her about how I had come to be travelling to Deva and what I hoped to find there.
“You’ll like Helena,” I told her. “She is very kind and also very beautiful—not that this is the most important thing, mind, but many people seem to set great store by this. I don’t know why. Beauty is only skin deep, but God judges a person’s true worth by what is in the heart. At least that’s what my father says.” I looked down at Ursa and she looked up at me. “What does your father say?” I wondered. “The same thing? Well, there you are, you see, it must be true.”
We chatted like this for a long time and it was a comfort as the night closed around us. Fortunately, the old road through the hills was high and reasonably straight; we encountered no streams to ford, no bogs to slog through, no mud wallows. These roads are well-built and I have no doubt they will last forever. Though the dark was deep around us, the sky was light enough to allow me to make out the path without too much difficulty. From time to time, Ursa would stop; she would bark and some creature we had disturbed would bolt into the night.
In this way, we passed our first night on the road.
Yawning, weary, staggering in my steps, I must have been half-asleep when I noticed that I could see more of the hills and further over the vales. Raising my eyes, I looked up to see the dawn lightening the sky in the east. Inexplicably, the sight warmed me and I suddenly felt a small portion of vigor return. “Look at that, Ursa,” I said. “Sunrise! I think we’d best start looking for a place to sleep.”
Ursa agreed with me, and I began searching for a suitable roost—and this I found when, cresting the next hill, I spied a sheltered dell at the bottom of the valley not far from the road. Closer, I saw a little rill and bank of brambles lay to the far side of the bowl, and the whole rimmed with rocks and, in one corner, a sort of wide crevice protected by an overhanging ledge. Not the most comfortable place, but at least it would somewhat protected from the wind and, more importantly, out of sight from the road. Even though the sun had not fully risen, I thought I would not find a better place any time soon and decided to put up there until nightfall.
“Come, Ursa, we’ll take our rest here,” I told my silent friend as we abandoned the road and picked our way down the slope into the dell.
As expected, the brambles were well supplied with big, ripe bulging berries, and I picked and ate them by the handful until my fingers were stained deep blue and dripping with juice. Ursa watched me with intense canine interest. “Would you like some of these?”
I offered her a handful of the shiny, black berries. She sniffed them and licked one, ate it, and then turned away. “Sorry,” I told her, “I don’t have anything else to give you.” She seemed to understand. Lifting her head, she scented the air, and then trotted off into the brush along the rill. I marked where she went, but did not follow—intent as I was on gorging as much fruit as I could cram into my belly.
When at last I could guzzle no more, I wiped my sticky hands on some dry grass and washed them in the trickle of water in the rill before slurping up water from my cupped palms. Then, drying my hands on the hem of my mantle, I went to see about making a nest in the rocky hollow and found the space beneath the overhang shallow and lumpy—not the most comfortable place, but it was dry and would shield me from view of the road. I removed my cloak and spread it over a bed of dry leaves and bracken, then sat down. Fatigue seemed to come oozing out of the rocks around me; heavy-headed, I leaned back; my eyes were just closing when I heard a single, sharp bark.
Ursa!
I sat up and looked around. The bark did not come again. In a moment, I saw her big, dark form emerge from the brush along the rill. As she came trotting closer, I saw she had the body of a rabbit in her jaws. She came to where I sat and dropped the blood-spattered carcass at my feet and then stood proudly over it as if waiting for me to praise her prowess. This I was only too happy to do.
“What a mighty huntress you are, Ursa. You are a canny thing, are you not? Yes, you are.”
She regarded me with placid brown eyes and nudged her kill closer to me. “Thank you, girl,” I told her, “but I’ve eaten. You can have it. You can have it all.”
As if that was all the approval she needed, the big dog snatched up her kill and carried it into the brush and proceeded to tear it apart. I could not watch her poor victim being turned into a messy meal, so I lay back and closed my eyes once more—secure in the knowledge that I need not fret about finding food for my furry friend; she could fend for herself.
Somehow, during our night on the road, the dog had grown more understanding of me, more attached. Perhaps it was that without her pack to look after, I was all she had. Or, maybe, I fancied, she had felt herself a captive, too, and yearned for freedom from the confines of the kennel and its masters. However it was, whatever loyalty or affection or duty she felt in her canine soul, she now conferred on me.
As I was thinking these things, sleep overtook me and I let myself drift off. Sometime later, I felt Ursa curl up beside me; I was aware of this, but did not wake. Indeed, I did not come fully awake until sometime later—much later, it must have been, for when I finally shook off my grogginess, the sky was cast over with low gray clouds and the sun, the little left of it, was lost behind the western hills. I rose, stretched, and went to the brooklet to splash water on my face and attend my necessities; Ursa joined me and we both took a last drink before starting off on our long-night’s ramble.
It was over almost before it started.
I climbed the slope back up to the road, turned north and had taken only a few dozen paces when Ursa stopped. I glanced around and saw her staring straight ahead: two riders were coming towards us, close enough to see us clearly, too close for me to hide. Because of the bend in the road, I had not seen them—and, of course, I had not heard them, either—and now it was too late. Like it or not, I would have to brazen it out and hope beyond hope that they left me in peace.
I waited until the two were within hailing distance and raised a hand. One of the riders—thick-necked fellows, both, with dark beards and long dark braids at the side of their heads; one in brown tunic and breecs, one in green—raised their hands in greeting. They reined up and waited for me to come closer. For one awful moment I thought they might be Irish, but then the one on the left spoke and it was the lilting tongue of the Gwynedd hill country. “God with you, girl,” he said. “You shouldn’t be out here all on your own.”
“I’m not alone,” I lied. “My brothers are coming along behind.”
Both men glanced over me down the road, then at back one another. A sign of some sort passed between them. “I don’t see anyone,” the second one said. “Are you sure?”
“They stopped to water the horses.” I glanced back, too, as if expecting to see them riding into sight. “They’ll be here soon enough.”
“It isn’t right—them letting you go off on your own.” He looked around at the darkening land around us and then back at me. “These hills aren’t safe at night. What say you, Cletus? Maybe we’d best keep her company until those brothers of hers appear.”
“No need to concern yourselves,” I said. “My brothers will be here any moment.”
“Will they now?” said the first one. He glanced once more down the road behind me and then made to dismount. I suddenly wished I had thought to bring a better weapon than a kitchen knife. “Maybe we’ll just wait and see.”
He threw a leg over the neck of his horse and slid to the ground. A greasy smile played over his face, but his eyes narrowed. “What shall we do while we wait, eh?”
He took a step towards me and Ursa growled, low in her throat. The rider seemed to notice her for the first time and halted. He pointed at her. “That dog safe?”
“Mild as milk,” I said. “To me, that is.”
He took another step nearer and Ursa growled again, louder this time. The horses, uneasy now, nickered nervously and jigged in place.
“Call off your dog, girl.” The burly fellow jabbed a finger at her.
Ursa’s gave a fulsome bark that caused all three of us to start. She took a sidestep and pressed herself against me.
“I said to call her off!” His hand went to the sword at his side.
Ursa, ears flattened and teeth bared, snarled. She lowered her head and stared at the man with baleful, unblinking eyes.
Speaking very slowly, and in a calm, even tone, I looked the rogue in the eye and said, “Draw that blade and she’ll have your throat out before you can take another step.”
“There’s two of us, girl.” He glanced back at his friend who sat looking on, a worried expression on his face. “You can’t take us both.”
“I only see one standing here,” I replied. Pointing to the rogue before me, I said, “You can be first.”
“Leave her, Jago,” said the second rider from his safe perch on the back of the horse. “Look at her—scrag of a thing. She’s not worth the trouble.”
Ursa chose that moment to loose a ferocious, guttural growl that ended in a another savage bark. She took a slow step closer to the man, hackles raised like knives along her back, eyes narrowed and fixed.
This settled the fellow’s mind. His hand came away from the sword hilt, and he moved back a step with hands raised in surrender. “Call her off.”
“I will,” I told him. “As soon as you’re back on your horse and on your way.”
“We’re going,” said the second rider. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“Then you should not have stopped,” I told him, speaking much more forcefully than I felt. Where had this mettle come from? Was it Ursa’s presence that somehow lent me the mettle, the audacity?
The rider remounted his horse “Stupid cow! We could have made it worth your while.”
“Oh, has been worthwhile,” I assured him. Lord help me, I could not resist. “I think we’ve all learned something this day.”
With a flick of the reins, the two started away. The one called Jago hurled one final pathetic insult. “Slut!” he sneered as he passed.
Ursa, calmer now, started barking and took a few steps as if she would follow. The horses picked up their speed.
“Oh, you brave, gorgeous girl,” I told her and ruffled her ears and stroked her head. “Let them go, and we’ll be on our way.”