Blood Ties (4 page)

She didn’t even consider turning the roan in for a reward.

That morning, before dawn, she had gone to the black rock altar in the forest. She approached silently, hiding in the thick growth of alders along the stream. She didn’t want any of the villagers to see her and start asking questions about what she might be praying for.

There was no one there; she had come early enough. She stepped toward the rock, quietly, as she had always felt the local gods preferred. The villagers often laughed and joked as soon as they’d backed away from their prayers here, but she’d never understood that. Couldn’t they feel the presence of the gods, that hair-raising, spine-chilling stroke along the skin,
beneath
the skin? Perhaps they couldn’t. Perhaps that was part of the Traveler blood she’d inherited from her granda, just as she’d inherited his black eyes and black hair.

She sat down carefully, cross-legged in front of the rock, and bowed her head. Today she had a favor to ask, and there were time-honored ways of doing that.

“Gods of field and stream, hear your daughter. Gods of sky and wind, hear your daughter. Gods of earth and stone, hear your daughter.”

Perhaps she should have brought a sacrifice; one of her goats had dropped a kid the night before. They liked young sacrifices, it was said. But the blood would have been noticed. The village snoops wouldn’t have stopped until they’d found out who had made the sacrifice, and why. She forced her thoughts back to her petition.

“Gods of fire and storm, hear your daughter. Of your kindness, keep my family safe. Keep the warlord’s men from them, keep them whole and happy.”

She took out her knife and cut off a lock of her hair at the roots near her nape and laid it on the rock.

“Take this offering as a symbol of my reverence. Use it to bind safety around my family. Use it to bind me more surely to your service.”

The hair stirred in a breath of air that Bramble couldn’t feel. The gods were testing her sacrifice. The eddy of air turned and ruffled the hair on her head. In her mind she felt the tickle that meant the touch of the gods and, as always, the world spun around her as they tasted her thoughts. She rocked between joy and a holy terror that was completely different — cleaner — than the fear she had refused to the warlord’s man. When her sight was clear again she saw that the hair on the rock had disappeared. The gods had accepted her sacrifice.

She let out a long breath of relief. There was nothing more she could do. Slowly, she got up and backed away. It was probably just superstition that said it was bad luck to turn your back on the gods, but she wasn’t willing to risk bad luck just now.

She realized the gods had listened when at home she found her mam and da reading a letter from Maryrose and her husband, Merrick, inviting them all to come and live in Carlion. Mam had learned to read from her mother, who had been a waiting woman to the old warlord’s wife, and she had taught her husband and both the girls.

They had talked about moving before, in a casual way, during the preparations for Maryrose’s wedding, but now it was time to decide.

“They say they’re building the new house big enough to fit all of us,” her da said. “Merrick must be doing well.”

“You should go,” Bramble said. The memory of the warlord’s man came up to confront her — his threats and the menace she’d read in his eyes — and it had made her voice harsh. She thumped some rabbit carcasses down on the table. “Get yourselves into a free town, where you’re safe from the warlord’s men.”

They were startled.

“They’ve never bothered us,” her father said.

“But they could. Anytime they want to. In Carlion you only have to worry about the town council.” She tried to smile, to turn it into a joke. “Who knows, maybe you’ll end up a councillor yourself!”

“It’s a big shift, to leave everyone we know. All our friends,” her father said, but he sounded excited by the idea of change. Mam sniffed.

“There’s a few I’ll not miss,” she said, then paused. “And a few I will. But Maryrose is there . . . and any grandchildren we’re likely to have will be Carlion born and bred.”

From that moment, Bramble knew it was decided, although her mother wondered aloud how Bramble would cope with town life.

“For you’re always in the forest,” her mam said.

Bramble felt herself start to shrug, always her answer to that old complaint, but stopped. It was probably the last time she would ever hear it. “Don’t worry about me,” she said, eyes passing from her mam to her da.

But of course they did. They kept discussing it endlessly over breakfast. Bramble wished her grandmother was still alive. She would have forced them to admit they all wanted to go. No patience for dithering, her grandam. Bramble sighed. It was clear to her that the only thing holding them back was the thought that she would be unhappy in Carlion. She knew that as soon as she left they’d be packing up to make the move. She didn’t try to explain that she probably wouldn’t be with them. That would just lead to more questions, which she knew she couldn’t answer.

After breakfast she went to her room and rolled her bag of silver, the wolf skin and some clothes in a blanket, to make a bedroll. It seemed to her that the gods’ “soon” might mean very soon, and she had better be ready. She kissed her parents goodbye before she went to the forest. They were surprised; kisses were for bedtime.

She grinned at them reassuringly. “Just felt like it.”

They were so surprised they didn’t think to ask where she was going with her blanket. She crossed the stream at the bottom of their garden and headed for the forest. The roan was waiting for her, or at least waiting at the end of his tether, with his head high and his ears pricked. She stashed the bedroll and silver inside the cave then greeted him gently, stroking her hand down his neck, feeling very fragile next to his warm strength.

“Gods,” she said, looking at his broad back and powerful rump. “Let’s hope you’re a good-natured fellow, because you’ll have to be patient with me.”

She contemplated the saddle. Not only did it look complicated, but it was branded with the warlord’s mark. If she was found on the roan, she could claim that she had found it wandering in the forest, but if it had the warlord’s saddle on it, she would be branded herself, as a thief. Or worse. Horse stealing was a garoting crime. So she left it aside with a feeling of relief. She didn’t like the idea of having straps and buckles and harness on the roan. It felt wrong to tie up a fellow creature that way, like putting him in prison.

The blanket from under his saddle wasn’t marked, so she slid that over him and then looked at the bit and bridle. It had a nasty look, all steel and sharp edges. The roan’s mouth had calluses at the edges, marks of old wounds. She remembered the arrow in the wolf’s side and threw the bridle away. The horse startled back a little when it hit the ground with a jingle.

“Shh, shh, now,” she said, using the same tone she used with the sick lambs and kids she nursed back to health. “It’s all right, everything’s all right . . .”

She ran her hands over him, noting the marks beneath the hair and hating the warlord’s man even more when she realized they were scars from whip and spur.

“Nothing to fear here, sweetheart,” she crooned. She undid the tether and gathered it up. It was tied loosely around his neck and she used it to pull him over to a large rock.

“Now I know you could get rid of me with just a shake of your rump,” she said, climbing on top of the rock, “but how about you don’t? Let’s see what we can do together, you and I.”

She mounted carefully and adjusted herself on the blanket, pulling up the skirt she had worn over her breeches so that she sat comfortably. Then she leaned forward and undid the tether, stuffed it in a pocket and took a deep breath. How high she was! How far it seemed to the ground. The roan’s hide was warm, even through the blanket. He seemed as solid as the rock she had climbed from.

And here I sit
, she thought, smiling,
looking like a frog on a stone, with no idea what I’m supposed to do.

“Up to you, horse,” she said. “Let’s go.”

She clicked her tongue as she had before. The roan’s ears flicked back in response. She did it again and squeezed his sides, very gently, with her legs. It felt like trying to squeeze a tree trunk, but the roan walked forward, then stopped. She squeezed again, a little harder, and he began to walk with more confidence, down the hill.

Excitement spiraled up from her stomach. She squeezed again. The roan broke into a trot. Bramble could feel her balance going and windmilled her arms, but she slid off sideways, anyway, right into a patch of nettles. She wanted to shout and curse, but she bit it back in case she frightened the horse, the completely untethered horse, into running.

She dragged herself up, thanking the gods for her breeches. The roan was standing, looking at her with amused, knowing eyes. He whickered to her softly.

“Yes, very funny,” she said. “Perhaps we’ll just stick to walking today, eh?”

He waited calmly while Bramble walked up to him. She took him by the forelock and led him uphill to the mounting rock. He nuzzled her shoulder. Up until that moment, she had seen him as a creature from the warlord’s world that she could use, a living thing, yes, but like the goats and the chickens that she cared for at home. A domestic animal.

But the way he looked at her with amusement, she was sure, the way he greeted her with affection, the realization that he was here because he had chosen to wait for her, made her feel that he was more than that, that he was something she had never really had before. A companion.

It felt just as wrong to give him a name as to use a bit and bridle. Owners gave names. She wasn’t the owner, not in any sense. It wasn’t like she had any real control over him: they were just fellow creatures, spending time together. If he thought of her at all, it was probably as “the human,” and so she would think of him as “the horse,” or maybe, “the roan.”

She practiced walking him around all day and by the time she went home, she could hardly walk, her thighs were rubbed raw and her hips ached. But nothing could have kept her away the next day.

When she groomed him — she had watched ostlers at the inn attend to horses — she found more scars from the spurs and whip, and thought with satisfaction of the warlord’s man going down under her foot. The next moment she made a sign of warding, because of the nightmares. She had forced herself to shake them off as soon as she woke. She wondered if she’d have the nightmares as long as she kept the horse, the spoils of her murder, but even if that were true, the roan was worth it.

She had laughed at the other girls when they breathlessly waited for one of the lads to glance their way, or dreamed over him through their chores, planning what to say when they next met. But she was just as bad with riding. That night, in between the nightmares, she dreamed about riding, about the surge as the horse set off, the muscles sliding beneath her. All the next morning she daydreamed about the wind in her hair, forgot to water the beans because she was planning their next excursion, and was abstracted when her parents spoke to her. They lifted eyebrows at each other and nodded wisely when she blushed. She thought they were relieved to have her acting like an ordinary girl for once, but couldn’t tell them the truth. If the warlord’s men ever found out what had happened, everyone who knew the truth would be killed.

She distracted them with talk about the move to Carlion, pretending enthusiasm so well that they actually started planning the move. Her father went out, then and there, to book the carrier’s cart, and they even started packing. The house was dismantled slowly around them and every blanket and piece of cloth was commandeered to wrap around breakables.

“We’ll have to leave the loom until last,” her mother said, and started to make lists of all the things they would have to do before they left.

Bramble took the chance to escape and went to the roan. His breath snuffled in her face in greeting as he came to meet her at the end of his tether. She watered him and then rode him again, despite the pain in her thighs. She guided him with touches on the neck or a tug on his mane, but didn’t take him far for fear the warlord’s men would recognize him. So she rode as much as she dared around the confines of the deep forest. They rode that day as far as the chasm.

Wooding was in a valley around a small river that fed the much larger Fallen River, which flowed all the way to Carlion and the sea. Just outside Wooding, the Fallen curved around and dropped suddenly into a deep chasm, an abyss so far down it took a day to climb down and another to climb back up. There was one wooden bridge slung precariously across the drop, on the main road that a little farther on led through the village. The bridge was one of the reasons Wooding was more prosperous than most villages: there was no other way to get to Carlion. Unlike the bridge site, here in the forest the chasm was much narrower and the rock on both edges was soft and crumbling.

Bramble didn’t take the roan too close to the edge, but they stood there for a while in the mist and moisture that rose from the wild turbulence of the river below, where the water leaped and spouted over huge boulders which had fallen from the cliffs. The noise of the falls, just out of sight around the bend upstream, shook the ground and made the roan uneasy. Bramble slid down from his back to soothe him.

“Nothing to frighten you here, sweetheart,” she said.

She loved this place. She loved the sudden drop that seemed to entice her to fly out and fall, loved the raging of the river below, the clouds of foam that boiled over the edge of the falls and along the rocks. In the clouds and mists of the chasm, there were swarms of swifts that lived their whole lives on the wing, landing only to build nests and lay their eggs in the crevices of the cliff face. Peering over, it was as if the birds were emerging from the water, their curves and turns in the air like the splashes of white foam. Stunted trees clung to the ledges and crevices and there were ferns in every tiny niche: the cliff wall was itself a waterfall of green and golden stone.