Fire - Kristin Cashore [52]
Brigan humphed. ‘I don’t disagree. Your guard is more than competent. As long as you can stomach the danger of it.’
‘I suppose I should be more used to the feeling of danger by now,’ she said. ‘But it is unnerving sometimes.’
‘I understand you crossed paths with Mydogg and Murgda as you left my mother’s fortress in the spring,’ he said. ‘Did they feel dangerous to you?’
Fire remembered that unsettling double gaze. ‘Obscurely. I couldn’t quantify it if you asked me to, but yes, they felt dangerous.’
He paused. ‘There’s going to be a war,’ he said quietly, ‘and at the end of it I don’t know who’ll be king. Mydogg’s a cold and greedy man and a tyrant. Gentian’s worse than a tyrant, because he’s also a fool. Nash is the best of the three, no contest. He can be thoughtless; he’s impulsive. But he’s fair and he’s not motivated by self-interest, and he has a mind for peace, and flashes of wisdom sometimes—’ He broke off, and when he spoke again, he sounded rather hopeless. ‘There’s going to be a war, Lady, and the waste of life will be terrible.’
Fire sat in silence. She hadn’t expected the conversation to take such a serious turn, but it didn’t surprise her. In this kingdom no one was many steps removed from grave thoughts, and this man fewer than most. This boy, she thought, as Brigan yawned and rumpled his own hair. ‘We should try to get some sleep,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow I hope to take us as far as Grey Lake.’
‘Good,’ Fire said, ‘because I want a bath.’
Brigan threw his head back and smiled at the sky. ‘Well said, Lady. The world may be falling to pieces, but at least the lot of us can have a bath.’
BATHING IN A cold lake posed some unforeseen challenges - like the little monster fish, for example, that swarmed around her when she dunked her hair, and the monster bugs that tried to eat her alive, and the need for a special guard of archers just in case of predators. But despite the production of it all, it was good to be clean. Fire wrapped cloths around her wet hair and sat as close to the fire as she could without setting herself aflame. She called Mila to her and rebandaged the shallow cut that ran along the girl’s elbow, from a man Mila had subdued three days ago, a man with a talent for knife-fighting.
Fire was coming to know her guard now, and she understood better than she had before the women who chose to ride with this army. Mila was from the southern mountains, where every child, boy or girl, learned to fight and every girl had ample opportunity to practise what she’d learned. She was all of fifteen, but as a guard she was bold and quick. She had an older sister with two babies and no husband, and her wages provided for them. The King’s Army was well-paid.
The First Branch continued its journey southeast to King’s City. Almost two weeks in and with about one week left to ride, they reached Fort Middle, a rough stone fortress rising out of rock with high walls and iron bars in narrow, glassless windows: the home of some five hundred auxiliary soldiers. A mean-looking, stark place, but everyone, including Fire, was happy to reach it. For one night she had a bed to sleep in and a stone roof above her head, which meant that so did her guard.
The next day the landscape changed. Very suddenly, the ground was made of rounded rock instead of jagged: smooth rock rolling almost like hills. Sometimes the rock was bright green with moss, or with veritable stretches