The Camelot Spell - Laura Anne Gilman [55]
He hated thinking like that. He wasn’t a war-leader, or a manor-lord. But the thought, once landed, wouldn’t go away.
Gerard reached forward and stroked the neck of his horse, trying to calm himself by the act. His skin was prickling; he knew they were being watched. And the longer they rode up this path, the more certain he was of it. The hills rose to their left, scattered with boulders that could hide half a dozen watchers, all of them ready to fall upon three travelers. Especially when two of the travelers seemed to think that they were on a pleasure ride of the sort the queen organized every spring, to rid her court of their winter quarrels. Except, from what Gerard had seen, more fights broke out then than during the winter, when they were bored, yes, but under Arthur’s eye.
Something prickled his hands and Gerard looked down. The map, now sadly creased, though remarkably—magically—unstained, was glowing more intently now. A faint blue light was pulsing against his palm.
He really didn’t want to stop here, not now, when there was so much opportunity for an ambush, but he knew he couldn’t afford to ignore the map, especially with so little time left. So he compromised, letting the horse have its head just a little bit, trusting that it would keep to the narrow path and not spook at anything unwarranted. Gerard used both hands to unroll the map enough to see what the glow wanted to tell them.
“Damnation.” Gerard felt like using stronger words, but his training held. Instead he merely picked up the reins again and waited for the others to catch up with him, still keeping his attention at least halfway on the hillside. “We have to change direction.”
“Which way?” For the first time, Newt didn’t ask why or how he knew. The maplight had faded back to its usual narrow blue line, but Gerard still remembered its rather insistent directions.
“Up there.” He didn’t point, but there was only one “up there” it could be. The hills they had been riding in were children to the taller peak casting its shadow over them—not a mountain such as Gerard had heard of, farther west in the wilds of Cymry, but higher than those around Camelot. Higher than any Gerard had been on before, since Sir Rheynold’s lands were bounded by fertile soil, not rock; not so easy to defend but rich enough to feed and house the fighters he needed.
Gerard didn’t like heights. It was that simple.
“I don’t suppose the road turns and leads us…” Newt stopped when Gerard shook his head. “Right. I’ll wager there’s at least one broken leg before this is all through.”
“So long as it’s not one of the horses’,” Gerard returned. It sounded better when he thought it than when he said it somehow. But Newt nodded, understanding. People could be carried. Horses would have to be abandoned or killed if they were unable to travel.
Ailis, who had pulled her horse alongside Gerard’s, finally finished her scrutiny of the map and placing the figures on the parchment in relation to where they were. “We’re going to have to climb that?” The two boys nodded. “All the way to the top?” Newt looked at Gerard, who shrugged.
“As far as we have to go and no farther,” Gerard said. “And stay together. Remember what happened at the bridge.”
“I’m not likely to forget,” Newt said, wincing.
In the end they led the horses more than they rode, stepping carefully and moving single file through bushes with sharp-edged, gray-green leaves that none of them could recognize, and stepping on carpets of ugly yellow flowers that let off puffs of pale yellow smoke when crushed. The smoke smelled surprisingly good, but none of them had the