The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [26]
“Take it without arguing, lad. I didn’t save your life only to have you starve on the road.”
“My thanks. I wish I could repay you for everything you’ve done for me.”
“I’ll wager you will. Your Wyrd brought you to me once, and I suspect it’ll do so again, but in some strange way that neither of us can understand.”
Although Maddyn wanted to head straight west and put Cantrae behind him as soon as he could, he was forced to turn south, because the hills between Cantrae and Gwaentaer province were still snowy this time of year. He went cautiously, avoiding the main road that ran beside the Canaver down to Dun Cantrae, sticking to winding farm lanes and what wild country there was. The only people he allowed to see him were farmers, who, like Belyan, cared less for the honor of war than they did for the coppers he spent for food. After four days of this careful riding, he was at the Gwaentaer border at a place roughly parallel with Dun Cantrae, Here the hills were low and rolling, dotted with small farms and the winter steadings of the horse breeders who roamed with their herds all summer in the pasturelands. This time of year, every house bustled with activity. Mares were foaling; hooves needed shoeing; gear needed repairing; food had to be packed against the first long spring ride. No one had time to notice or to care about a solitary rider with a warrior’s saddle but a farmer’s shirt.
Just at dusk one warm day Maddyn came to the pillar stone that marked the boundary between the two gwerbretrhynau. As he rode past, he let go a long sigh of relief. Although he was still an outlaw, his neck was a good bit safer now. Once, back in that peaceful and now near-mythical past, every gwerbret in the kingdom would have honored Tibryn’s decree of outlawry, but now in the midst of the long-bleeding wars, fighting men were too valuable for lords to go driving them away with awkward questions. For the first time in weeks he felt relaxed enough to sing. Two Wildfolk came for the song, the blue sprite perching on his saddle peak and showing him her pointed teeth, a gnarled brown gnome who was new to him dancing in the road beside his horse. Maddyn was so glad to see them that he almost wept. At least one small part of his magical winter would travel with him.
As it turned out, he soon had human company, and in a way that he never would have expected. The morning after he passed the boundary stone, he came to the last of the hills and paused his horse for a moment to look down and over the vast green plain of Gwaentaer, the wind’s own country indeed, where the trees that the farmers laboriously planted soon grew leaning, as if they shrank in continuous fear away from the constant whistling of the wind. Since the day was sparkling clear, he could see for miles over the land, softly furred with the first green of grass and winter wheat, dimpled here and there with tiny ponds or the round steadings of the widely separated farms. He could also see a well-marked road running dead west, and on it, not more than a mile ahead of him, a solitary rider.
Something was wrong with the man. Even from his distance Maddyn could see it, because the fellow was riding doubled over in the saddle, and his horse was picking his own way, ambling slowly, pausing every now and then to snatch a tuft of grass from the side of the road before its rider would come to himself and get it back under control, only to slump again a few moments later. Maddyn’s first impulse was to ride on by a somewhat different route and not burden himself with anyone else’s troubles, but then he thought of Nevyn, risking his own life to heal and shelter an outlawed man. With a chirrup to his horse, he started off at a brisk trot. The rider ahead never heard him coming, or else he cared not a whit if he were followed, because he never turned nor even looked back the entire