Bladesinger - Keith Francis Strohm [12]
By late afternoon, the group reined in their horses and dismounted for a brief rest. Pulling out cold strips of roast venison, slabs of thick-rinded cheese, and servings of a pickled root the Rashemi called ordsk from their saddlebags, they ate a brief meal beneath the fading light of the day.
Amazingly, Borovazk continued to spin tales. Between great tearing bites of meat and long swigs of firewine, the ranger spoke of his wife and how, after he had stumbled home drunk late one night from a gathering of warriors, she had felled him with a single blow from an oak cudgel and dragged him out to a snowdrift where he had spent the night. When he had awakened bleary eyed and groggy late the next morning, the wounded man returned to an empty home only to discover that the cudgel had split beneath the force of his wife's blow.
"That's horrible," exclaimed Marissa.
The rest of the group, having finished their meal, sat comfortably on thick wool blankets. Roberc puffed indolently on his pipe, one hand stroking Cavan's fur.
"Is indeed horrible, little witch," the ranger agreed, with more than a hint of sadness in his voice. "That cudgel was one of Borovazk's favorites!"
Taen watched as the concern in Marissa's eyes changed to disbelief then merriment. The druid began to laugh, followed soon after by Borovazk's deep-chested chuckle. Taen found himself smiling at the outrageous ranger. Even Roberc's normally taciturn face held a wry grin.
After a few more moments, their Rashemi guide stood up.
"Come," he said, wiping venison grease from his beard with a swipe of a thick arm. "Is still a while before dark. We have many more leagues to travel, and I," he jabbed a meaty finger at his own chest, "have many more stories to tell."
Taen laughed, still caught up in the lighthearted moment.
"I bet you do," Taen said as they broke their makeshift camp. "You seem to talk more than any human I have ever met."
That brought another chuckle from the Rashemi ranger.
"Tell me, Borovazk," Taen continued, emboldened by his companion's reaction, "does your wife enjoy your stories as much as you seem to?"
The ranger stopped what he was doing and cast a puzzled look at him. "I not know," he said after a moment. "My Sasha is as deaf as the stones of the Icerim Mountains." He laughed then, a full-throated guffaw, and slapped the half-elf hard on the back before mounting his horse.
Taen pitched forward, stumbling from the force of the blow. It wasn't until he sat in the saddle of his own mount and the group started forward once again that he realized he couldn't tell whether Borovazk had been kidding or not.
* * * * *
By luck or some unasked-for blessing of the gods, the weather held over the next three days-crisp and clear, with only an occasional dusting of snow swirling and circling to the ground. In the face of such a gift, the group traversed a good deal of terrain. Taen found himself marveling at the steady, economical pace of their horses, crunching through drifts and ice with such surefooted grace. Lulled by the rolling rhythm of his mount and the now-gentle speech of the wind, he began to relax and look at the white-coated world around him, not as a thing to be endured, but as an experience to be savored. There was a beauty-a wisdom-in the broad sweep of plain and rock-strewn valleys of this wild land. Each step of his horse brought him deeper into that wildness, carried him to the heart of a mystery for which he had no name-only a sense of rock, ice, and unforgiving wind. In those moments, he thought that he could understand the pride and strength of the rough-tongued and insular Rashemi people. They were born from the very soil of wilderness, lived in harmony with its harsh rhythms, hewn and formed by