“You just do that,” she said with a wink. “And I’ll just be for setting out what you’ve already brought.”
She doubtless knew, of course. His mother said a blind man could see the way he looked at her. His friends had long since given up on teasing him about it. She knew, and that made it all the harder. In his mind, she loved him, too, and had imagined a thousand ways he might finally speak his heart, imagined words that soared like an eagle to its mountain eyrie or sparkled like the morning dew. There was simply no way he could ever match the words she had imagined, and thus whatever he said would surely be a disappointment.
That daunting prospect held him back, knotted his tongue and kept the dream of holding her at bay, forever just one act of courage away.
Archer had heard that a mother can identify her own baby’s cry in a room full of crying babies. He was sure he could tell his horse from Ratha’s or Giri’s simply by the roll of its gait and the way its flanks felt between his legs. All of that seemed very ordinary and believable. And none of it explained what he felt as he held the woman against him.
They’d spent the day riding higher into the hills and deeper into the forest, farther from the butchered remains of the caravan they’d come upon that morning. He’d chosen this course not because he sought to avoid the band that had ambushed the traders, but simply because he didn’t want to confront them while saddled with this strange woman and the dead child she refused to relinquish. She needed shelter. And he would need all his limbs and attention free when that confrontation happened. The nearest shelter was the town of Whitewater, another few hours’ ride upstream. So there they would go, and there he would leave her, before coming back to deal with the bandits.
The woman had slept for most of the day. Whatever had happened last night, however she had escaped unharmed from the carnage, she was exhausted. Somehow, even in sleep, she kept her arms around the girl. What she could not do while sleeping was keep herself in the saddle.
So he kept an arm around her, steadying her, as he and his companions rode along in a silence broken only rarely and briefly. The occasional whispered warning was all that passed between them. And that left Archer alone with his thoughts, which was becoming a distinctly uncomfortable state of affairs.
If he were not so certain they were being followed and likely overheard, and if he were not concerned about keeping their purpose from their followers, they might have engaged in the kind of traveling banter that usually passed among them. Ratha in particular had a biting sense of humor that, coupled with his Anari gift of observation, might have had them alternately groaning and guffawing all day. But today there was no such relief. Today there was only the sound of their horses’ hooves, the occasional rustle of underbrush despite their pursuers’ stealth, and the woman’s slow, even breathing.
And the feel of her in his arms.
There was no reason this woman should feel familiar. Her language was certainly not one he’d ever heard before, though at least they’d been able to work out a minimal shared vocabulary by which to exchange the most basic information: stop, hungry, thirsty, cold and the like. She was attractive enough that he was sure he would have remembered meeting her. And he was sure he hadn’t.
Still, from the moment he’d looped an arm around her and pulled her against him in the saddle, he’d felt it. And that feeling grew stronger when he saw the mark of a white rose on her ankle, etched into the skin. As if his body remembered something his mind would not. It was not the sort of thought he enjoyed. He’d spent year upon year layering on a sense of who and what he was, as an Esegi hunter might use sticks and dried leaves to cover the void of a tiger pit. In fact, there was a sleeping tiger in his mental pit, and he had no desire to rouse it. His sense of self was probably no more authentic than the cover of that trap, but at least it had grown to be a bit more stable. He could walk on it. He could live on it. As long as none of the connecting tendrils was disturbed.
The mere act of holding this woman against him was disturbing those tendrils, and the specter of the tiger beneath hovered in the back of his mind like the sound of his pursuers, not yet ready to expose itself, waiting for the most opportune moment to spring free of the trap. He had no desire to face that again. For that reason, if for no other, he had to get this woman to shelter, to be rid of her and the disturbing, half-formed memories her presence evoked.
In truth, there wasn’t much that frightened him. He had stared down an angry bear protecting her cubs and walked away without so much as a scratch. He had hunted sawtooth boar in the dense underbrush of the Aktakna hills, where a moment’s inattention could leave a flowing gash in an arm or leg or belly. He had faced down petty thieves in the alleys of Sedestano, young men with more courage than sense who thought quick reflexes and a sharp dagger were an adequate substitute for actual fighting experience. He had slain the slaver who had intended to auction off Ratha and Giri, and parted a swath through the mob of angry men who saw no evil in buying and selling human beings.
He’d faced whatever dangers the world had thrown his way with an almost eerie calm that unsettled friend and foe alike. But this woman—and that tiger—scared him.
The sun was sinking behind the distant mountains as they finally emerged from the forest into the now barren fields that surrounded Whitewater. As they crested a knoll, he could see a faint glow over the wall, in the heart of the town, and the sound of clapping and singing made its way on the wind.
“Their harvest festival,” Giri said, his voice barely audible. “I’d forgotten.”
“Not much to celebrate,” Ratha answered, looking at the freeze-blackened fields.
Archer pondered that for a moment. “We celebrate what we can. That’s all life offers us.”
And we try to forget the rest, he thought.
He debated whether to rouse the woman and decided against it. There would be plenty of time to rouse her after they passed through the gate, when he could offer her a hot meal at Bandylegs’ inn. In the meantime, he would let her sleep.
And try not to think of the fog-shrouded memories.
3
The gatekeeper, Jem Downey, was not at the harvest festival. Oh, no. Not for him the revelry, food and storytelling, not that there would be much to miss this year. But as the gatekeeper, one whose son was stapled to the innkeeper’s daughter’s petticoats, Jem had no choice but to stay at his post.
At least until the sun had been set a while longer. With these cold days and nights, there might be other trappers and travelers seeking shelter, and Jem wasn’t one to let them freeze outside the city walls, much as he might grumble about missing all the fun.
Nor could he leave the gate open, as had been the custom during festivals in years past, to welcome any who might care to join the carousing. Not this year. Not with the rumors of fell things in the woods, of terrible events in the cities to the south.
This year a man couldn’t feel safe except behind the sealed stone walls of the town.
Not that Jem was unduly worried. He’d seen too many years not to have learned that rumors were usually far worse than fact.
So he sat in the kitchen with his wife, Bridey, sipping the lentil soup she had flavored with a piece of hamhock from a neighbor’s smokehouse. Everyone in town gave something to the gatekeeper from time to time. It was his pay. And this winter it might make him either the most fortunate man in town or the least. There was no way to predict how people’s hearts would face a rugged winter that boded to be the worst in memory.
But even that Jem didn’t truly fear, because he knew that come the worst, there would always be a meal for him at the Whitewater Inn. Bandylegs always managed to pull something out of his hat and was always ready to feed the Downeys.
The lentil soup was good and filling, though Bridey had made little enough of it, trying to save both hamhock and lentils for another supper.
Satisfied, Jem took out his pipe and indulged the pleasure of filling it just so with what little leaf he