Uprooted (47 page)

“No,” I managed, through my tight throat. “He’s only letting the Wood drive him.”

I wasn’t sure Stashek believed me. He’d been quiet, ever since. He was patient with Marisha, who clung to him, too, and helped with the work whenever he could. But he said almost nothing.

“Agnieszka,” he said, while I finished plastering up the second oxen’s hind leg, and stood up to go wash the dirt off my hands. I turned to follow his gaze. We could see a long way back behind us, miles and miles. In the west, a thick hazy cloud of dust covered the road. It seemed to move, coming onward as we stood watching. Kasia picked Marisha up. I shaded my eyes and squinted against the sun.

It was a crowd of men marching: thousands of them. A stand of tall spears glittered at the front, among riders on horses and a great banner flying white and red. I saw a bay horse leading, a silver-armored figure on its back; next to it a grey horse with a white-cloaked rider—

The world tilted askew, narrowed, rushed in on me. Solya’s face leapt vividly out: he was looking right at me. I jerked my head away so hard that I fell down. “Nieshka?” Kasia said.

“Quick,” I panted, scrambling up, pushing Stashek towards the back of the cart. “He saw me.”

We drove into the mountains. I tried to guess how far behind us the army was. I would have whipped the oxen if that would have done any good, but they were going as fast as they could. The road was tumbled with rocks, narrow and twisting, and their legs began to crack and crumble quickly. There wasn’t any mud to patch them with anymore, even if I could have brought myself to stop. I didn’t dare use the quickening spell: I couldn’t see beyond the next turn. What if there were men up ahead, and I whisked us straight into their arms; or worse yet I threw us into midair over a canyon?

The left ox abruptly tumbled forward, its leg crumbling away, and smashed into clods of dirt against the rocks. The second one pulled us on a little farther, and then between one step and the next just fell apart. The cart tipped forward, unbalanced, and we all came down hard on our seats in a pile of twigs and dry grass.

We were deep in the mountains by then, the trees wizened and scrubby, and high peaks on either side of the twisting road. We couldn’t see far enough behind us to tell how close the army was. Usually it was a day’s walk across the pass. Kasia picked up Marisha, and Stashek got to his feet. He walked beside me doggedly, uncomplaining while we hurried, feet sore and the sharp thin air painful in our throats.

We stopped to catch our breath by a jutting outcrop with a tiny summer stream trickling; just enough to cup a handful for our mouths, and as I straightened up a raucous cawing near my head made me jump. A black crow with glossy feathers stared at me from the branch of a wizened tree clinging between rocks. It cawed again, loudly.

The crow paced us as we fled, hopping from branch to rock to rock. I threw a pebble at it, trying to make it go away; it only jumped away and cawed again, a sour triumphant note. Two more joined it a little farther on. The path snaked along the crest of the ridge, green grass rolling gently away to either side down to steep slopes.

We kept running. The path dived as one mountain pulled away from it, leaving a sickening drop to the right. Maybe we were past the peak by now. I couldn’t stop running long enough to think about it properly. I nearly dragged Stashek along by his arm. Somewhere behind us, I heard a horse shriek: as if it had slipped, running too fast on the narrow mountain pass. The crows lifted into the air, circling, and went to go and see; all except for our one steady companion, hopping along, its bright eyes fixed on us.

The air was thin; we struggled and gasped for air as we ran. The sun was sinking.

“Stop!” someone far behind us shouted, and an arrow sailed down, clattering against the rocks over our heads. Kasia stopped, pushed Marisha into my arms when I caught up to her, and took the place at the rear. Stashek threw a frightened look back at me.

“Keep going!” I said. “Keep going until you see the tower!” Stashek pelted on and vanished with the trail around a wall of rock. I heaved Marisha up close against me, her arms wrapping tight around my neck and her legs around my waist, clinging, and ran after him. The horses were so close we could hear pebbles crunching under their hooves.

“I can see it!” Stashek was calling from up ahead.

“Hold on tight,” I told Marisha, and ran as fast as I could, her body bumping against me; she tucked her cheek down against my shoulder and didn’t speak. Stashek turned anxiously as I came panting around the curve: he was standing on a ledge jutting out from the mountainside, almost wide enough to be a meadow. My legs were spent: I spilled to the ground, just barely keeping my knees long enough to put Marisha down without falling on top of her. We’d come out onto the southern slopes. Below us the path continued to snake back and forth across the mountain all the way down to Olshanka.

And on the other side of the town, in front of the western mountains, the Dragon’s tower stood gleaming white in the sun, still small and far away. It was ringed around with soldiers, a small army of men in yellow surcoats. I stared at it desperately. Had they gotten inside? The great doors were still closed; there was no smoke coming from the windows. I didn’t want to believe the tower had fallen. I wanted to shout Sarkan’s name, I wanted to fling myself across the yawning air. I got back up on my feet.

Kasia had stopped in the narrow road behind us. She drew out the sword I’d given her even as the horses came around the curve. Marek was with them, leading; his spurs were wet with blood and he had his sword drawn, his teeth bared in a snarl. His bay came charging, and Kasia didn’t move. Her hair was flying loose, streaming in the wind. She planted her feet wide in the trail and held the sword out straight, and Marek had to yank aside the horse’s head or ride directly onto the blade.

He pulled up, but smashed his own sword down at her as he twisted the horse on the narrow path. Kasia caught the blow and whacked it aside with pure brute strength. She knocked the sword straight out of Marek’s hand. It struck the edge of the path and fell over, disappearing down the mountainside with a wash of pebbles and dust.

“A pike!” Marek shouted, and a soldier threw him one; he caught it easily even as he wheeled his horse around on the path. He brought the pike around in a long, low sweep that nearly caught Kasia at the waist. She had to jump back: if he could knock her off the path, it wouldn’t matter that she was stronger than he was. She tried to grab for the end of the pike, but Marek jerked it back too quickly; then he immediately nudged his horse forward and pulled it up into a crow-stepping rear, iron-shod hooves lashing towards her head. He was herding her back: as soon as he reached the place where the road widened, he and the other soldiers would spill out and surround her. They could come past her at us, at the children.

I groped for the Dragon’s spell, the transport spell.
Valisu,
and
zokinezh
—but even while I tried to fit the words together, I knew somehow that it wasn’t going to work. We weren’t in the valley yet; that path wasn’t open to us.

My head was light with thin air and desperation. Stashek had picked up Marisha and was holding her tight. I shut my eyes and spoke the illusion spell: I called up Sarkan’s library, shelves rising up out of bare rock around us, golden-lettered spines and the smell of leather; the clockwork bird in its cage, the window looking out on the whole green length of the valley and the winding river. I even saw us in the illusion: tiny ant-figures on the mountainside, moving. There was a line of twenty men strung out on the trail behind Marek: if he could only shove his way into the wider ground, they would be on us.

I knew the Dragon wasn’t there; he was in the east, in Zatochek, where the thin column of smoke rose from the edge of the Wood. But I put him in the library anyway, at the table, the hard angles of his face lit by the candles that never melted; looking at me with that annoyed, baffled expression:
Now what are you doing?

“Help me!” I said to him, and gave Stashek a push. The Dragon put his hands out automatically and the children tumbled into them together; Stashek cried out, and I saw him stare up at the Dragon with wide eyes. Sarkan stared down at him.

I turned back, half in the library, half on the mountain. “Kasia!” I cried.

“Go!” she shouted at me. One of the soldiers behind Marek had a clear view of me and the library behind me; he slung a bow down and stretched an arrow, taking aim.

Kasia ducked under the pike and ran at Marek’s horse and shoved the animal bodily back, both hands on its chest. It squealed and reared up, hopping back on its rear legs and lashing at her. Marek kicked her, snapping back her chin, and shoved the shaft of the pike down between them, just behind her ankle. He had both hands on the pike now, he’d dropped his reins, but somehow he made the horse do what he wanted anyway. The animal turned, he twisted his body as it did, gripping the pike, and he tripped Kasia up. The horse’s hindquarters struck her and swept her stumbling to the edge of the path, and Marek gave a quick, massive heave. She fell over: she didn’t even have time to scream, just gave a startled “Oh!” and was gone, dragging a clump of grass loose as she grabbed at it.

“Kasia!” I screamed. Marek turned towards me. The bowman let the arrow loose; the string twanged.

Hands seized my shoulders, gripping with familiar, unexpected strength; they dragged me backwards. The walls of the library rushed forward around me and closed up just before the arrow would have passed through them. The whistle of the wind, the cold crisp air, faded from my skin. I whirled, staring: Sarkan was there; he was standing right behind me. He’d pulled me through.

His hands were still on my shoulders; I was braced on his chest. I was full of alarm and a thousand questions, but he dropped his hands and stepped back, and I realized we weren’t alone. A map of the valley lay unrolled on the table, and an enormous, broad-shouldered man with a beard longer than his head and a shirt of mail under a yellow surcoat stood at the far end of it, gawking at us, with four armored men behind him gripping the hilts of their swords.

“Kasia!” Marisha was crying in Stashek’s arms and struggling against his grip. “I want Kasia!”

I wanted Kasia, too; I was still shaking with the memory of watching her tumble over the edge. How far could she fall, without being hurt? I ran to the window. We were far away, but I could see the thin plume of dust where she’d fallen, like a line drawn down the side of the mountain. She was a tiny dark heap of brown cloak and golden hair on the trail, a hundred feet down where it sloped back on itself down the mountain. I tried to gather my wits and my magic. My legs still shook with exhaustion.

“No,” Sarkan said, coming to my side. “Stop. I don’t know how you’ve done any of this, and I imagine I’ll be appalled when I learn, but you’ve been too profligate with your magic for one hour.” He pointed his finger out the window at the tiny huddled heap of Kasia’s body, his eyes narrowing.
“Tualidetal,”
he said, and clenched his hand into a fist, jerked it quickly back, and pointed his finger to an open place on the floor.

Kasia tumbled out of the air where he pointed and spilled to the floor trailing brown dust. She rolled and got up quickly, staggering only a little; there were some bloody scrapes on her arms, but she’d kept hold of her sword. She took one look at the armed men on the other side of the table and caught Stashek by the shoulder; she pulled him behind her and held the sword out like a bar. “Hush, Marishu,” she said, a quick touch of her hand to Marisha’s cheek, to quiet her; the little girl was trying to reach for her.

The big man had only been staring all this while. He said suddenly, “God in Heaven; Sarkan, that’s the young prince.”

“Yes, I imagine so,” Sarkan said. He sounded resigned. I stared at him, still half-disbelieving he was really there. He was thinner than when I’d seen him last, and almost as disheveled as I was. Soot streaked his cheek and neck, and had left a fine thin layer of grey over all his skin, enough that a line showed at the loose collar of his shirt where it gaped open, to divide clean skin from dirty. He wore a rough long coat of leather hanging open. The edges of the sleeves and the bottom hem were singed black, and the whole length of it patterned with scorch marks. He looked as though he’d come straight from burning the Wood: I wondered wildly if I’d somehow summoned him here, with my spell.

Peering from behind Kasia, Stashek said, “Baron Vladimir?” He hitched Marisha up a little in his arms, protectively, and looked at Sarkan. “Are you the Dragon?” he asked, his high young voice wavering and doubtful, as if thinking he didn’t quite look the part. “Agnieszka brought us here to keep us safe,” he added, even more doubtfully.

“Of course she did,” Sarkan said. He looked out the window. Marek and his men were already riding down the sloping trail, and not alone. The long marching line of the army was coming out of the mountain pass, their feet raising a sunset-golden cloud of dust that rolled down towards Olshanka like a fog.

The Dragon turned back to me. “Well,” he said, caustic, “you’ve certainly brought more men.”

Chapter 26

H
e must have scraped together every soldier in the south of Polnya,” the Baron of the Yellow Marshes said, studying Marek’s army. He was a big, comfortably barrel-bellied man who wore his armor as easily as cloth. He wouldn’t have seemed out of place in our village tavern.