“Came by boat – we went where the wind took us,” Mitt explained. “I think we missed Kinghaven in the night somehow. How come you knew I was a Southerner? My accent that bad still?”
Rith laughed again and pushed at the fair, frizzy hair that stuck out all round his steel cap. “That and your looks. The straight hair. But it’s the name that’s the clincher. Dropwater’s full of Southern fugitives, and they all answer to Mitt, or Al, or Hammitt. I’m surprised the South’s not empty by now, the way you all come to the North. Been here long?”
“Ten months,” said Mitt.
“Then you’ve had one of our winters. I bet you froze!”
“Froze! I nearly died!” said Mitt. “I never saw icicles before, let alone snow. And when they first brought the coal in to make a fire, I thought they were going to build something. I didn’t know stones could burn.”
“Don’t they have coal in the South?” Rith asked wonderingly.
“Charcoal – for those that could afford it,” Mitt said. “At least that’s what they used in Holand, where I come from.”
Rith whistled. “You did come a long way, didn’t you?”
By this time Mitt had forgotten he had wanted to be alone. They rode with the sea sparkling on one side and the hills climbing on the other, under the douce Northern sun, talking and laughing, while the Countess-horse followed Rith’s travel-stained little mount as smoothly as its jerky gait would allow. Rith was good company. He seemed genuinely interested to know what Mitt thought of the North now he was here. Mitt was a bit wary at first. He had found that most Northerners did not like criticism. “It’s this porridge they all eat I can’t stand,” he said jokingly. “And the superstition.”
“What superstition?” Rith said innocently. “You mean, like the Holanders throw their Undying in the sea every year?”
“And you lot put bowls of milk out for yours,” said Mitt. “Believe anything, these Northerners! Think the One’s a pussycat!”
Rith bowed on to his horse’s neck with laughter. “What else do we do wrong?” he said when he could speak. “I bet you think we’re inefficient, don’t you?”
“Well, you are,” said Mitt. “All runabout and talk and do nothing when a crisis happens.”
“Not when it matters, though,” said Rith. “And?”
And he went on coaxing Mitt until Mitt at last came out with the real cause of his disappointment with the North. “They told me it was free here,” he said. “They told me it was good. I was badly enough off in the South, but beside some here I was rich – and idle. People are no more free here than – than—” He was trying to find a proper description when they came round a bend to find the road blocked house-high with earth and boulders. A stream sprayed from the top in a raw new waterfall and ran round their horses’ hooves. “This just about sums it up!” Mitt said disgustedly. “And your roads are all terrible!”
“The Southern roads are, of course, all perfect,” Rith said.
“I never said—” said Mitt.
Rith laughed and dismounted. “Come on. This is hopeless. We’ll have to lead the horses uphill and come back to the road where it’s clear.”
Mitt slid down from the Countess-horse and discovered he was more than a little saddle-sore. Ow! he thought. I wonder my pants aren’t smoking! But he did not like to confess this to Rith, who had ridden all the way from Dropwater and was obviously a seasoned hearthman. A small, tough boy, Rith. When they were both on their feet, Rith only came up to Mitt’s shoulders. Makes me look a big booby if I moan, Mitt thought, and he set off dragging the Countess-horse up the hill after Rith. Both horses were huge, heavy and reluctant. Their hooves slid in the slippery grass. Mitt’s horse put its ears back and tried to bite him.
“Stop that!” Mitt slapped its nose aside. “You Countess, you!”
Rith broke into a panting laugh. “What a name! It’s a gelding. O-oh! Piper’s pants!”
Mitt dragged his horse up beside Rith’s. The hill, in the mysterious manner of hills, was twice as high as he had thought. Beyond and above them, it was a huge triangle of earthy boulders and trickling water, which had slid down across the road, blocking it for as far as they could see. At the lower edge of it, the sea twinkled, flat and impassable.
“We’d better go up over the hill,” Rith said. “I know the way. It’ll mean fording the Aden after we cross the green road, but it won’t be deep this high.”
So they struggled on upwards, about twice as high as they had already come, until they left the landslip behind and reached a squishy yellow-green shoulder, where Rith said they could ride again. Mitt nearly yelled as he kicked his way into the saddle. He was raw. But he did not like to mention it. He simply bore it, all the way through a long, marshy valley and then up an endless firm green slope, where they came to one of the things the Northerners called waystones. It was round, like a roughly shaped millstone set up on one edge, with a hole in the middle. Rith leant over and slapped the thing.
“For luck,” he said, grinning. “I’m a superstitious Northerner. I may ask the Wanderer’s blessing too, just to annoy you. There’s the Aden down there. What do you say we stop for some lunch?”
Mitt was only too glad to get down. He helped himself off by hanging on to the waystone, which was a way of touching it without seeming to. He knew he could do with some luck. And once he was down, he was so sore that he had to concentrate on small things, like stripping off his gloves and tucking them into the proper place on his belt, and hitching his horse to the waystone, where someone had tied a piece of red twine through the middle for the purpose. Then, moving in a careful, stiff-legged way, he unbuckled his baggage roll and got out the food they had given him. By then the agony had gone off enough for him to sit down beside Rith, bat the Countess-horse’s nose aside as it tried to eat his bread, and look at the view.
There were hills all around, yellow and green, with sunlight scudding over them in patches. The green way stretched from the waystone, very level and firm and dry, leading south into the mountainous heart of Dalemark, and the Aden rolled parallel with it about a hundred yards downhill from where they sat. It was a fine big river, wider than any Mitt had seen, and the way it rolled quietly along among all those reeds and willow trees suggested that it might be pretty deep. Mitt hoped Rith knew what he was talking about when he said they could ford it. He leant back and sniffed the smell of the river and willows mingling with the damp wild smell of heather and rock, the smell of the North, which Mitt still thought of as the smell of freedom in spite of his disillusionment with the North. Perhaps, he thought, not very hopefully, he would be stuck this side of the river and never get to Adenmouth at all. But that would be the worse for Hildy and Ynen.
“You look pretty gloomy!” Rith said, laughing.
“Just thinking,” Mitt said hurriedly. “What are these green roads? Who made them – really?”
“Kern Adon,” said Rith. “King Hern. They’re the roads of his old kingdom. That’s why they don’t go to places where people live any more. They say that Kern Adon set up the waystones and told the Wanderer to guard the roads, and if you follow them right, they say you arrive at King Hern’s city of gold.”
“I heard them called the paths of the Undying,” said Mitt.
“Oh yes. They’re called that too,” said Rith. “My old nurse used to tell me that the Undying sit in the hole in the waystones. What do you think of that?”
“They couldn’t!” Mitt said unguardedly. “Not unless they shrank.”
Rith got very interested in this idea. “Then