Full Circle (15 page)

The river began to sing in tune with them.

T
HE WARLORD’S
men came beating a gong that set every horse in Baluchston whinnying.

Flax ran out to calm the horses and went to the gate instead, to watch them going by on the main road — a party of messengers,
just three of them.

Rowan and Swallow appeared at his shoulder.

“I’ll start packing,” Swallow said.

Rowan nodded. “Saddle up, boy,” he said. A few moments was all it took and then they were ready, leaving the cottage tidy.

“When will my cousin be back?” Swallow asked.

“He was on foot,” Rowan answered absently, head cocked, still listening to the now distant gong. “It will take him a few more
days.”

“Then we’ll take all the bread,” she said, darting back to collect it and stow it in her pack.

They led the horses by back paths, paths that Rowan knew well, it seemed; and they paused in a coppice of beech trees just
outside town. There was no need to discuss why they were running. When warlords’ men came beating gongs, Travellers made themselves
scarce.

“Those were Thegan’s men,” Rowan said. “We should avoid Sendat.”

Swallow nodded. “We could cut across the plains. It’s a long way on foot…”

“Down river to Carlion and then to Turvite by boat?” Rowan mused.

In the end, they decided to cut across the Domain, avoiding towns, until they reached South Domain.

Swallow wasn’t a rider and didn’t intend to become one, so Flax tied their packs onto Mud and they all walked.

“It’s a change, not carrying anything,” Swallow said. “It makes me feel light. Now, Flax, tell me what you know about melody.”

It was an inquisition. Swallow questioned him about every aspect of music, made him demonstrate breathing, projection, scales
… He was woefully ignorant of the theory, but he could see that she liked his actual singing.

“Your breathing is shoddy,” she said. “You could get much more power with proper control.”

She waited to see his response, but he knew that look; his mam had used it on him often enough. He knew how to be humble when
it counted.

“Will you teach me?” he asked, which was, after all, all he wanted to know.

She sniffed a little and settled back into walking. “We’ll see,” she said. But the look she exchanged with Rowan was amused
and pleased, and he knew the answer was “yes.”

This was plains country, a mixture of pasture and cropping, wheat, sheep and goats, some orchards. The dairies which leant
against every barn were for ewes and nannies; cheesemaking was a major occupation. In this kind of country Travellers were
regarded with great suspicion, and there were few officers’ manors where musicians could find work.

“I’ve got silver,” Swallow said. “We can buy what we need, if they’ll sell it to us.” They had stopped outside a small town
to discuss food.

“Lucky at dice again?” Rowan said quizzically, and Swallow blushed a little.

“Aren’t I always?”

“Better if I buy,” Flax said. He got out a comb and slicked his hair back into a small ponytail. It was just long enough —
Zel would have been at him this last week to get it cut, he thought. He groomed Cam until she shone and her tail was free
of burrs and straw, then pulled out his good blue jacket and buffed his boots to a shine.

“That’ll have to do,” he said. “Do I look the part?”

He mounted and put on a haughty air, as an officer’s son might, or the child of a wealthy merchant.

Swallow looked amused, but disapproving. “You could mimic an ape from the Wind Cities, I’m thinking,” she said. He grinned
and made ape noises at her, and she flapped her hands at him, then tossed him a purse. “Travelling food,” she said. “But don’t
make it too obvious.”

“I’ll meet you on the other side of the village,” he said.

The township was larger than a village. It had three shops: one for chandlery and farm goods, a butcher’s and a store that
sold everything else.

He tossed Cam’s reins to a boy along with a copper. “Give her some water,” he ordered, then walked in without looking to see
if he’d been obeyed. Assume they’ll obey and they will, he told himself, his heart thumping irregularly and his palms wet.

The shopkeeper hastened to serve him, and he bought all they needed without trouble. He even made a joke about young men with
big appetites, and winked at the man’s daughter, although she was squint-eyed and on the wrong side of thirty.

Cam was waiting at the horse trough, well-watered, and he tossed the boy another copper as he mounted and rode off south,
feeling as though an arrow would hit him in the small of the back at any moment, or another axe would come singing out of
thin air to take him down. But he made it away without incident and he went on down the hedge-lined track feeling very pleased
with himself.

A half-mile went past before he began to get worried. There was no sign of Swallow or Rowan. There were hoof prints, and he
recognised the worn shoe on Mud’s off fore, where he pecked at the ground when he got bored; so they had come this way. But
then he came to a widening of the road, a place where Mud’s prints were scuffed over by other horses’, several of them, it
looked like, and riding horses, not the big half-moons that would have meant draught animals. There were droppings to the
side as though the other horses had waited there for a while. But Cam wasn’t reacting, which meant they were gone now, not
hiding in the bushes and lying in wait, as his imagination feared.

Horses probably meant warlord’s men.

Run
, came Zel’s voice in his head, but he couldn’t do that. Ash wouldn’t do that.

He sat down in the saddle carefully so that Cam stepped out gently, slowly, at a pace where Flax could listen for other horses
up ahead. Then he thought that Cam would hear them long before he would, so he quickened her a little and watched her ears,
ready for when they pricked forward, hoping he could stop her whinnying a greeting in the moment afterwards.

He puzzled out the tracks as he went. There were four horses, he thought, and perhaps a dozen people on foot. Some of the
footprints looked like children’s. They wouldn’t be moving very fast, so he slowed down, then dismounted. They couldn’t possibly
be far ahead of him, not on foot. He hadn’t been that long in the village.

As he neared a bend in the track, at a place where the road dipped into a hollow, he saw Cam’s ears prick and her nostrils
flare as she took in air to neigh. He lunged forward and pinched her nostrils closed, almost falling over her hooves.

“Shh, shh, sweetheart,” he said, and although she rolled her eyes at him as though he’d gone mad, she snuffled out the air
she’d taken in and let him lead her back the track a ways, until he could tether her between a hedge bright with unripe blackberries
and a hayrick. She pulled contentedly at the loose strands of hay sticking out of the rick, as Flax ran back along the grass
by the track, trying to be as silent as possible. He crept up to the bend and peered around, keeping low to the ground.

Warlord’s men. Four, on horseback. Thegan’s, again, like the ones in Baluchston. This was still Central Domain, and they held
sway here. And with them — a group of Travellers, he thought, although one family had red-haired children and looked too prosperous,
too fat, to be on the Road. They had stopped and were drinking from the stream which crossed the path in this hollow. He spotted
Swallow and Rowan, who was still leading Mud. The warlord’s men were lounging around, trading jokes with each other, and weren’t
threatening anyone. The sergeant was a big hairy man with red-gold stubble beginning to show on his face — the kind of man
who had to shave twice a day to look smart. He was the only one who bothered to watch the Travellers, and even he did it lazily,
as though he were sure they wouldn’t run off.

Flax had no idea what was going on. He wished Zel were here — the burden of making decisions was heavier than he’d expected.

Rowan looked around at intervals, seeming casual, but Flax realised he was looking for him. He didn’t want to make any movement
so he stared directly at Rowan, concentrating on him. If you looked long enough, somehow people sensed you. Sure enough, after
a moment Rowan looked in his direction, rubbing the back of his neck as though it prickled.

His gaze met Flax’s and immediately he flicked a quick glance at the warlord’s men. That told Flax what he wanted to know
— this was not some nice picnic by the stream. They were prisoners, no matter what it looked like. Rowan tilted his head fractionally
to signal, “Get away.” Flax nodded, and wriggled backwards from his vantage point until he could stand up and run back to
Cam.

Not that he was running away. His blood fizzed with excitement. Those warlord’s men were sloppy, not expecting any trouble
from mere Travellers. It wouldn’t be hard to spirit Rowan and Swallow away from them. Mud would be harder. He considered that.
He wondered how many of Thegan’s horses his father had trained, and grinned. It only needed a few. Horses were herd animals.
Where some of the herd went, the others would follow.

But he would have to wait until dark.

As the afternoon drew on, Flax became certain the warlord’s men were taking Rowan and Swallow and the other Travellers to
Sendat.

Why were they going with the warlord’s men so willingly? Flax had grown up on stories of Travellers escaping from persecution
by the skin of their teeth and their willingness to do anything to save their children: hide in cesspits, share caves with
sleeping bears, even crouch in streams despite fear of water wraiths. But these people were just following along.

He had no idea why, and it disturbed him.

He trailed behind them just far enough so that Cam wouldn’t try to join the other horses. He could follow their tracks, and
when he came to a fork in the road it was easy to see which way they had gone. After that he relaxed a little.

By evening, they had turned on to the main road from Baluchston to Sendat. Flax blessed the lengthening shadows, and the fact
that fear of the ghosts was keeping everyone close to home. There was no other traffic, which meant he was safe, as long as
he kept well back from the warlord’s party.

The sergeant called a halt at a broad meadow leading down to a small spring-fed mere. Flax tied Cam up on the other side of
the coppice that edged the camp site, and made his way silently through the trees to spy. He watched the warlord’s men organise
the camp, giving a couple of the men shovels to dig privies in the coppice, getting the children to gather kindling for the
fire, telling the women to get on with the shared task of cooking.

It was better not to make contact with anyone but Rowan or Swallow. That was his mother in him, he thought; she had never
trusted anyone, and it had annoyed him. But this was the time for mistrust, and secrecy, and pretence, and all those other
things she had practised in order to be accepted in Pless. Shame she never lived to see his father a town councillor. She’d
wanted it so badly. Part of him knew it was that desire which had pushed her to attack him, but the thing was, he didn’t remember
it. She had drugged his cha, Zel said, and tried to smother him, but he was asleep and so it all seemed more like a story
than reality. He believed Zel — believed she had no choice, or thought she had none. But he couldn’t really imagine his mother
killing him, and so he struggled to think of her with any anger or resentment. He wondered if that made him weak. What would
Ash think?

The image of Ash in his mind smiled at him, and he was reassured. Aye, Ash’d choose pity over anger any day, he reckoned.
So. It may be that Ash wouldn’t choose to kill the warlord’s men, either. He wished Ash were here.

When it was full dark, he pissed against a tree to make sure he wouldn’t need to go later, then slowly made his way towards
the camp. One of the guards was on watch, of course, but he was lying back, looking at the stars instead of the road. With
any luck he was actually asleep. Then Flax realised that the man was lying on his front, not his back, and he was crying,
trying to keep quiet by muffling the sobs in his sleeve. Flax’s heart contracted. It was the young one, the one with the brown
scarf at his throat. He wondered what a soldier had to cry about.

He knew where Rowan and Swallow were sleeping — near the edge of the trees, well-positioned for slipping away. No fools, them.
But the horses were on the other side of the camp, the Sendat side. Was it better to go quietly off on foot, and lose Mud?
Again he was racked with indecision. If they were on foot, the warlord’s men would hunt them down easily. It was the memory
of dogs baying on his trail, back in Golden Valley, that decided him. He never wanted to hear that sound again.

So instead of waking Rowan, he slipped across the road and made his way behind the bordering hedge to where the horses were
tethered, then crossed back over and slid silently among them. His heart pounded the whole way and he was sweating. The horses
didn’t mind. They whuffled and sniffed at him. He was counting on the warlord’s horses being accustomed to having many different
people look after them, and he was right. They didn’t treat him as a stranger. Mud shouldered others out of the way to get
to him, nickering gently.

Flax froze, but there was no sound from the soldiers. Horses do make noises at night. ’Course they do.

“Shh, shh, there,” he murmured, patting Mud on his side and gathering all the leading reins up, pulling the tethers off their
pegs until he had all five animals on a rein. He collected a couple of saddles and slid them onto Mud’s back, looping up the
girths so they didn’t trail. Mud shook his head but didn’t try to dislodge them. They were the small, flat saddles the good
riders used, so they weren’t a burden to him.

Gently, quietly, he whistled the “follow me” signal his father had taught all his animals. Mud and two others pricked up their
ears at the sound, and gladly fell in behind him. The others came along, as he had thought they would.