The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [119]
Meanwhile it got darker, and I peered through the blowing snow as the wind rose, looking for another hedgerow, another sheltered spot, at least one out of the wind.
Wheee…eeee…
“That goes for me, too.”
Night had not yet overtaken us, and we could have traveled longer, but a darkish shape not far off the road resolved itself into something—an abandoned hut, a waystop. Who could tell? I wasn’t sure I cared. I risked trying to feel whether the place was disordered, and immediately recovered the headache I had almost forgotten about. The hut was chaos-free, all four sides, and it had a roof of sorts, made of slate shingles though half were missing, as well as an open hearth beneath a hole in the roof.
With no door and two oblong holes where shuttered windows had been it was drafty indeed, but the remnants of the door and the shutters were enough for a small fire to warm the space occupied by one tired young man and a strong pony.
We ate, and we both slept, and the next morning was merely cold, with stray staffs of sunlight peering through the breaking clouds, and light gusts of chill air.
Best of all, my headache was gone, though my back was sore and my muscles ached. In the warm darkness, it looked as though the Easthorns had moved closer, as though I could reach out and touch the conifer-covered lower slopes of the foothills.
That wasn’t exactly right, but we did reach the road-marker noting the road to Fenard by mid-morning, and by then had reached the edge of where the recent snow had fallen. While there was snow under the trees, the occasional tracks on it, and the finger-width distance between its white and the brown of the tree trunks told that the storm that had attacked me had not reached the Easthorns.
I shivered again at that thought, looking back over my shoulder, but saw no one and nothing on the road behind. I did wish that I had possessed the ability to conceal Gairloch’s tracks, but surviving the storm and cold had been hard enough.
Not more than another kay past the road-marker we passed a narrow stream that disappeared underground right to the east of where we stood. Warmer than the air, a fog rose from the water, and I let Gairloch drink as he would while I rinsed the canteen and washed my face and hands in the pleasantly chill flow. Before I had finished washing, my friend and companion found some tufts of grass still partly green to nibble.
For the first time since scrambling out of Jellico, I could peer into the supply sack provided by Justen while there was light enough to see. Even so, I almost missed the off-white square tucked between two oatcakes wrapped in oiled paper.
Folded into a square the size of my hand, it bore one word—“Lerris.” My head was still swimming and I did not open it, but tucked it instead into my belt pouch and continued to search for another package of travel bread. I found it, and a small pouch of spiced dried apples.
While I ate travel bread and dried apples, Gairloch alternated slurps of water from the not-quite-underground river with bites from the narrow stretch of grass nurtured by the spray from the fast-moving water.
Glancing overhead, I realized that the clouds seemed to be darkening and thickening once again. So I finished as much as my stomach would hold without rebelling and climbed back into the saddle.
Then we started up the narrow road again, winding in and out of ever-steeper hills, and at each turn I looked for a sign of other travelers, or wayfarers’ huts, or some shelter, with one eye checking the sky visible in the space between the hills.
XXXVII
SURPRISINGLY, AFTER ANOTHER ten kays or so of trudging, when even the untiring Gairloch was flagging and I had dismounted to struggle alongside him on foot, the road began to descend, not much; or perhaps it only leveled out.
We rested and shuffled on, and rested and shuffled on, and I marveled, when I wasn’t puffing and panting, at the contradiction between the lack of