The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5)

The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5) Page 318

“Will they follow our trail?” Gerwita whispered.

“It may be, but we must pray they detect nothing until morning.”

“I hope so.”

“Careful,” said Diocletia, ahead of her. “There’s a cut in the ground five steps ahead. When I touch you, stop, and I’ll help you over.”

Rosvita relayed the message back to the others. In four more steps she found herself passed from one strong hand to the next as Diocletia and Hilaria helped her over a ditch cut into the ground by a dry streambed. She and Gerwita waited on the other side while the pallet was laboriously handed across, and the rest followed, using the staffs for balance. After a brief rest, they moved on.

In this way, although she was so weary that she was shaking all over, they walked and walked and walked, pausing to rest only when they reached an obstacle of rock or earth or, once, a dense tangle of thorny burnet they had to detour around. Gaps appeared in the cloud cover, revealing, stars and, intermittently, the waxing gibbous moon. No one spoke except to pass warnings down the line; once, Petra bleated like a goat, and they heard a distant answering bleat from the night. Gerwita giggled nervously. Ruoda coughed.

Eventually, the ground began to slope noticeably upward and the noise of the sea receded as they climbed, pressing inland until they came to a forest of pine with a light layer of shrub whose spines and thorns caught in their clothing. When Jerome dropped the chest a second time after stumbling over a root, Rosvita insisted they stop and rest.

Every soul there dropped to the ground like a stone except Hilaria and Diocletia, who consulted with each other and then split up, Hilaria to scout forward and Diocletia to range back along their trail to make sure they weren’t yet being followed. Gerwita fussed over Rosvita.

“I pray you, child, I am too weary to move, but perhaps you could see if Brother Jerome is injured in any way.”

“Of course, Sister!”

Hanna groaned and moved over to sit beside Rosvita, blowing on her hands. “I’ll have blisters!”

“How do you fare, Eagle?”

“Well enough. Mother Obligatia weighs so little. It’s a miracle she still lives.”

“A miracle, perhaps, or stubbornness. Never underestimate the power of obstinance.”

Hanna chuckled, then sobered. “Is it true she is Liath’s grandmother?”

“Twice over.”

“Ai, God! I pray we find Liath again, and that Mother Obligatia survives long enough for them to meet.”

“I believe that it is that hope which keeps the good mother alive.”

They breathed in silence for a while, listening to the murmur of wind through the pines and underbrush, to the hacking coughs of the companions, to Petra’s mumbling conversation held with herself. The scent of myrtle and wild sage gave the night a bracing flavor. Their party sat so close together that it was easy to mark all of them as much by feel as by sight, although by now the wind had blown the clouds into scraps that left the sky in tatters with the moon’s face revealed.

“I can no longer hear the sea,” said Rosvita, “yet that was all I heard in my dreams.”

“There was light enough to see when we first walked out of the crown. The stone circle stands at the edge of a great cliff. I got dizzy looking down to the water. It was so far below. And all up and down the coast I saw neither dunes nor beaches, but only a line of sheer cliff. It seemed strange to me, so sharp. I’ve seen the shore of the northern sea, and it’s so very different, very flat. The waves creep in a long ways before they draw out again.”

“I’ve never seen the sea.”

“Not in all your travels with the king?”

Rosvita smiled. “Are you surprised, Eagle? I expect you are better traveled than I am.”

“Although you ride with the king’s progress? I wouldn’t have thought so. You’re from the North Mark, just as I am. The sea is not more than a day’s walk from my village and your father’s manor.”

“I was sent south as a child to enter the schola before I ever rode to the sea. Nay, I have never seen it, although I would like to.”

Hanna lifted her hands and blew on them to ease the raw skin. Rosvita shifted her weight from one buttock to the other; the litter of pine needles was a prickly cushion. Gerwita whispered to Jerome; Aurea brought round a skin of cider, almost turned to vinegar, which she offered first to Rosvita and then to Hanna, and it was only after she had gone on to Fortunatus where he sat beside Mother Obligatia that the Eagle replied.

“I have dreams, but they seem like true dreams, like visions of things that are happening, not dreams at all. I was told in a dream that I am the luck of a Kerayit shaman. Do you know what that means?”