The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [158]
“Huh, and them with their gall!” But he was smiling at her. “The plaid will do well enough for a cloak if it rains.”
“You’re sure you don’t mind walking?”
“You’re not much of a rider, lass. I can keep an eye on this mule this way. They’re crafty, mules, a fair bit smarter than horses, and he won’t be obeying someone who doesn’t know how to handle him.”
The mule snorted as if agreeing. When it tried to toss its head, Dougie’s broad hand on its halter kept it still.
Mic wandered away to speak with Kov, who was nervously considering his own mule nearby. They were a contrasting pair, Mic stout and clean-shaven, with hair as black as soot, and Kov lean, a handsome man for one of the Mountain Folk, with his chiseled features and neatly trimmed brown beard. They were, however, also arguing about something—what a surprise! Berwynna thought. The Mountain Folk side of her clan had some traits that she could have done without, though she certainly had benefited from their generosity to inhabitants of Haen Marn.
Among other things, Vron had given Berwynna a pair of saddlebags for the journey. Before she mounted up, she opened them as surreptitiously as she could to make sure that the precious dweomer book was safe, tucked into its oiled wrappings. Dougie, however, noticed it immediately.
“What’s that?” Dougie said. “Not that blasted book I dug up, is it?”
“Um, well, it is.” Berwynna began lacing the bag back up before Mic noticed as well. “When I was going down to the pier, back home, you know? I saw it just lying on a bench, so I took it. I know I shouldn’t have. Please don’t berate me!”
“Well, it’s here now, sure enough.” Dougie rubbed his chin with one hand while he considered the problem. “We’ll take it when we go back for the winter. There’s naught we can do about it now.”
Thinking that she could return the book relieved some of Berwynna’s guilty feelings about having taken it in the first place. Whenever she thought about it, she was surprised all over again that she’d found it left out in the open. It was so unlike Mara to be careless with the few things she owned.
At last the caravan got itself assembled in the correct riding order, and all the farewells had been said. With a whoop and a yell, Aethel led his men and mules out of the massive stone gates of Lin Serr.
For the first few days, they followed a well-worn road through the hills east of the mountain city. It wound through forests, mostly pine mixed with aspens and maples, though now and then they did pass a farm worked by men of the Mountain Folk. Judging from the sun’s position at its setting, Berwynna realized that despite the road’s many turnings, they were heading northwest rather than straight west.
“This road does go away from Deverry, bain’t?” she asked Richt.
“It does,” he said. “The farther from them we do stay the better. There be bandits along the border. That be why we carry staves.” He glanced at Dougie. “I hope you be good with that sword of yours, lad.”
By then Dougie had learned enough of the Mountain dialect to answer on his own. “There be some who did tell me I am,” Dougie said. “We should be hoping you get not the chance to judge for yourself.”
Richt laughed and nodded his agreement. They were sitting together that evening on one side of a small campfire. On the other, Mic and Aethel were discussing opals while Kov merely listened. Richt picked up a thin stick of firewood and drew a rough map in the dirt between him and Berwynna.
“This curve here,” Richt pointed to a half circle, “be the mountains. Down below here this line be the border twixt Dwarveholt and Deverry. Another reason to travel the northern route be the river.” He drew a vertical line westward of the half circle. “It’s so cursed broad that never would we get across on our own, but some folk who live there did build a bridge. For a toll, they do let us cross. Then we head south again, but not too far south, not on your life, nowhere near the Slavers’ Country.”
“This land north,” Dougie said, “be it hilly or