Page 46 of Silverbow
As soon as the string snapped for the third time, Enya threw herself back from the window and was scrambling for the door. She leapt down the stairs three and four at a time, darted through the backdoor, and slid to a stop where Arawelo waited in the yard.
She did not have to see to know that Innesh was lost to the mob. The sound of breaking glass chased her as she turned south to follow the little track along the riverbank. A flicker of satisfaction drifted through her and was immediately swallowed up by the inferno that was her rage.
Ryerson House is gone.
The farms skirting Innesh lay abandoned, their people rioting now on the village green, and Enya let her cloak stream behind her as she galloped south. Refreshed from a night under a roof, Arawelo’s hooves thundered over the half-tamed track, drumming a steady rhythm as they raced the current south. When Enya reined in, she looked over her shoulder to see a plume of black smoke curling against the clouds. She wondered faintly if it was the villagers or the soldiers doing the burning, but she didn’t much care. The people in Innesh were all the same to her.
Farmer’s wives and shepherds pointed toward the plume in the distance, calling out to their neighbors for news as she wound through the outlying farms and fisheries.A lantern with a spare cask of oil, flint and steel.
Every child in the Westerlands, perhaps all of Elaria, knew that Trowbridge was the only place to cross the mighty Trydent. She need only follow the river, but the bounty that undoubtedly papered every town posed a problem. She could not rely on every innkeeper or serving woman being as blind or willfully ignorant as Master Finn or Hatti. She still hadn’t puzzled out why they hadn’t handed her over to the crimson coats.
Any gold at all was likely to improve the eyesight of every washerwoman and gate guard from Valbelle to Analuz. Ten thousand gold marks was enough to turn even a beggar to a lord, and still half that would buy an estate with a staff to run it. To cross at Trowbridge would be a risk. She weighed it against the risk of swimming the Trydent.A spare bowstring, a waterskin, a tin cup and a bowl.
As Enya sat on her blanket roll under the open sky, turning Liam’s horse head carving over in her hand, she lamented the loss of the bed at the Queen’s Dragon. It was easier to lament that than what she had really lost in Innesh.A blanket roll, three changes of clothes.At least she was dry, and not hungry, but she lay awake listening to the night long after the wolves stopped howling. When she finally drifted, the woman on the pyre and faceless men coming to claim the bounty joined her nightmares.
thirteen
Enya
Enya followed the Trydent south, swatting at buzzing, blood-sucking bite-mes and growing more irritated as she added the blasted little bugs and the incessant itching to the list of things she hated, right next to Peytar Ralenet and Pallas Davolier.
Where are they? What’s happened to my father?
Beneath her hood, drawn to hide her hair and thwart the insects, she scowled at the drivers of the wagons and carts she passed as she veered Arawelo off the narrow track to step around them. With a price on her head, she’d considered breaking away from the river, but after Greenridge, she had no desire to lose her way again. When a mass of crimson came marching north, undoubtedly sent to quiet Innesh, Enya darted to the west to skirt wide of them, just for a while.
Most of the time, she followed the cart path. Folk mostly ignored her as she wound through little fishing villages. She watched the boats bob out in the river with their poles and nets. One trading vessel battled the current with its sweeps, crawling upriver, but the boats that moved south slid by with a speed that suggested fording was out of the question.
As she rode, she pondered her heading. She could turn back to the west and try to find what had become of her family, scattered on the wind like the feathers ofa dandelion. But every eye between Trowbridge and Westforks was likely searching for any whisper of the former inhabitants of Ryerson House.
She could still go to Windcross Wells and try to put things right; throw herself at the feet of Pallas Davolier’s wielders, beg the king’s mercy for her family, explain she’d already been on her way. Perhaps they would giveherten thousand gold marks. That made her laugh so abruptly, Arawelo startled.
“Easy,” Enya murmured, leaning down to pat the mare’s neck.
She was absorbed in thoughts of her father’s map as she sat beside her cookfire. The whole world lay east of Westforks. In the days since Innesh, she’d repacked her emotions into neat boxes, but the anger she’d felt at the sight of the bounty still threatened to catch like a brush fire, one she considered taking all the way to Haarstrond Keep. Occupied as she was, she didn’t hear the creak of the wheels or the jingle of harness that approached until Arawelo raised her head and whickered. Enya leapt to her feet, hand going to her belt knife.
“Ho there!” A man called from his seat perched behind a matched team. “Sorry to surprise you, lass. We wasn’t sneaking.”
Enya still gripped the hilt of her belt knife, wishing she hadn’t scrambled a step back from her bow. It was true they hadn’t been sneaking; it was hard to sneak with a draft team and a wagon, but Enya backed toward Arawelo all the same. Two curious faces peered around from behind the man, young men of an age with her wearing grins like Liam’s.
Light, Liam.
Enya laid a hand over the heart that twisted, even as it tried to beat out of her chest.
“No, no, don’t be frightened.” He held his hands up to show he had no weapon. “We saw your fire. Thought we might ask to join you.”
The blasted fire.She quieted the urge to bolt and peered up at the man, undoubtedly a farmer with wool piled high in the cart behind him. There was more gray in his hair than brown, and he wore a coat with patches at the elbows, but the patches were carefully sewn by a goodwife, not a brigand and there was much of him in the faces of the boys who studied her and Arawelo with curious looks.
“Berral Kenara,” he said, laying a hand over his chest. “My boys, Peras and Kenon.”
Enya blinked at him and scrambled for a name. “Ansel.”
“Pleased to meet you, Ansel,” the farmer said as the boys hurried to unhitch the team. “You travel alone?”
She really hated that question, but she could hardly hide it with the scant camp, so she nodded slowly.
“Mind if we join your fire for the evening?”
Enya eyed him suspiciously. If word of the bounty had reached Innesh, it had certainly traveled well, but there was no telling if it had spread to all the outlying farms. She supposed they would have more reason to question her if she asked them to make their camp elsewhere so she gave a casual shrug. “Sure.”
