The Crown of Dalemark (5 page)

“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 anymore. 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 shrunk.”

Rith got very interested in this idea. “Then how big do you think the Undying are?” he kept saying, in the same coaxing way he had tried to get at Mitt's opinion of the North. “I've never been able to decide. Do you think they're made of something that isn't as solid as we are, so that they can be of any size? Or what?”

These Northerners! Mitt thought. Rith was laughing, but he was serious, too. They finished eating, and Mitt got up, rather reluctantly, to untie the Countess-horse.

“What size do you think?” Rith said, leading his horse downhill to the river.

“If you must know,” Mitt called over his shoulder, “they're people-sized. It stands to reason.” He dragged the Countess-horse round to follow Rith. “How could—” He stopped and blinked.

There was no wide rolling river anymore. Rith was on his way down to a sunken crease in the hillside that was choked with small oak trees. Mitt could hear water rushing among the trees.

“You're probably right,” Rith called back, “though some of the things they do make them seem smaller. Come on. It really is quite shallow here.”

Mitt slowly followed him down among the oaks, wondering just what river it was that he had seen. There was no question in his mind that the real Aden was the yelling, stony stream in front of him now, glinting bright coins of sunlight under the trees. Rivers in the North always seemed to crouch like this one along dips in the hills. And he had not seen a single willow tree since he left the South. Shivers ran down his back, and he approached the brawling little Aden very cautiously indeed.

So did the Countess-horse. At the edge of the water it put its ears back, braced its hooves, and refused to move. Mitt called it names.

“I'll give you a lead,” said Rith. He stepped into the shrilling water, which proved to be only a few inches deep, and waded carefully, watching the stones in the bottom, until he and his horse had become dark shadows, patterned with sun between the oak leaves.

At this point the Countess-horse found it preferred not to be left behind and took off suddenly after Rith, dragging Mitt in sheets of bright water. Mitt kept hold of the reins and managed to stay on his feet until he was halfway across, where his foot turned heavily on something that flashed in the sun.

Rith called out,
“Look there!”
in a surprisingly deep, strong voice, and dived toward Mitt.

It was all sun-patterned wet confusion. Both horses got away, and Mitt sat down with a splash. Rith plunged his hands down where Mitt's feet had been and stood up triumphantly holding something that shone. Water poured off his elbows as he held it out for Mitt to see.

“Look at this!”

Mitt floundered to his knees. The thing had evidently once been a little statue—a figurine, Mitt thought the word was. As Rith turned it round, Mitt could see traces of a face and the folds of a robe on the side that was green with river slime. The other side was grated and scratched all over, and that side shone a pure buttery yellow. Mitt in his time had worked enough inlay into gun handles to know what that meant. “It's solid gold!” he said.

“I think it is,” Rith said. He sounded awestruck. “Who found it? You or me?”

“You picked it up,” Mitt said. “I only stepped on it.”

Rith turned the dripping statuette round again. “I wish I could be sure—Look, may I keep it for now and give you your share when I've got it?”

If Mitt had not been so saddlesore, he might have argued. But the cold water was smarting him like acid, and he could think of almost nothing else. “Fine,” he gasped, and splashed his way across to the far bank, where the horses were standing head to tail, looking pleased with themselves. Rith followed, stowing the wet figurine in the front of his jacket.

“You're being very generous,” he said several times, as they mounted and rode on. “You really mean I can keep it for now?” He was evidently feeling a strange mixture of doubt and elation, but then anyone would, Mitt thought, who had just picked up a pound of solid gold. He thought Rith was nice to be so bothered about it. All through the next hour or so Rith was either exclaiming at the amazing chance that had led them to that spot or asking Mitt if he really minded waiting for his share. “If it hadn't been for that landslide,” he said, “we'd never have come this way. Look, are you really sure?”

Mitt got increasingly gruff with him. Mitt's leathers were wet through and rubbing his soreness until he was convinced he was being flayed. Besides, he thought angrily, the way he was caught in the earls' plotting, he couldn't see himself having much use for gold or anything else shortly. He wished Rith would shut up. By the late afternoon, when the sea came into view again blue and crisp to northward, Mitt was wanting to scream at Rith, and he might have done had they not come out on a headland overlooking Adenmouth to find themselves looking down on an accident.

A Singer's cart had overturned on the bridge below. The bridge had no sides, and the horse that had pulled the cart was dangling struggling in the Aden. Mitt saw someone pulling uselessly at the horse. A girl lay on the bank as if she might be dead.

“Come on!” shouted Rith, and his shaggy horse was off down the hill as if it was aiming to end in the river, too.

Mitt followed as fast as the Countess-horse would let him, which was not very fast. The hill was extremely steep. Even Rith slowed down halfway, but this was probably because he could see that help was on its way. They could see into a long green valley to one side, where a party of people were running from one of the farms. More people were running across a second bridge, from Adenmouth itself, and a horseman was galloping ahead of them.

Everyone converged on the bridge, but the horseman got there first. He was a hearthman in Adenmouth livery. As the Countess-horse slithered cautiously down the last slope, Mitt saw the horseman leap to the ground, thrust his reins into the hands of the redheaded Singer's boy, and run toward the struggling horse. There he took one look, cocked his pistol, and shot the horse through the head.

Mitt and Rith came down to the bridge while the horse was still jerking. The bang rang in Mitt's ears like the memory of his worst dreams. The white staring face of the Singer-boy looked just like he felt.

“Anything we can do?” called Rith.

The hearthman turned from slashing at the traces that held the dead horse. Mitt almost laughed. It was Navis. It would be. “Hello,” he said.

Navis nodded at him in his cool way. “You see to that girl,” he said to Rith. “I think she's alive. Mitt, you help me cut this horse loose.”

As the two of them dismounted, Mitt noticed the Singer himself wandering about on the bank, carefully laying out musical instruments from the overturned cart. A dreamy-looking fellow with a gray beard. Mitt ignored the Singer as useless and hobbled over to Navis, while Rith sprinted to where the Singer-girl was sitting up, holding her head.

“Get your knife out and cut here, then here,” Navis said. He did not seem in the least surprised at seeing Mitt there. His attention was mostly on the accusing yellow-white face of the Singer-boy. “Your horse had broken two legs—look,” he said to the boy. “There was nothing else to be done.”

“He was blind in one eye,” the boy said. “He walked off the bridge.”

“I just wish mine would do that, too!” Mitt said, to make him feel better. “Mine's a right brute.”

The boy simply stared at him. “Southerner,” he said. “You both are.” He turned his back and led Navis's mare to the other side of the road.

Navis glanced at Mitt. “There's a lot of prejudice,” he said. “Now cut here.” Mitt slashed away angrily. Cool, cool Navis. He had forgotten just how cool.

By the time they had cut the horse loose, the people from the farm and the town had arrived. There was a lot of typically Northern milling about and talking. The chief talker was a lad from the farm, who wanted everyone to know how quickly he had gone for help to the mansion and what the lady Eltruda had said to him. But amid all this there was unnoticed efficiency. In less than a minute many hands had heaved the neat green cart upright and Mitt was able to read the gold lettering on its side.

“Hestefan the Singer.”

“You want me?” Hestefan asked.

He was standing beside Mitt with a cwidder in one hand and a fife in the other. Mitt was embarrassed. He had only said it aloud because he still found it easier to read that way. Now he felt he had to say something. “How did you get past the landslip on the road?” he asked.

“Landslip?” said Hestefan. “What landslip?”

Mitt gave him up again and turned to Rith, who said in a worried whisper, “I think that girl, Fenna, has really hurt her head. Can you help me get her on a horse?”

The Countess-horse was at that moment demonstrating that it was not carriage-trained. They had tried to back it into the shafts of the cart, where it divided its attention between trying to take bites out of anyone near and attempts to kick the splashboard in. Mitt ran and hauled it clear. “You good-for-nothing Countess, you!” He dragged it over to the injured girl, where the Singer-boy held it while Mitt and Rith heaved Fenna into its saddle. The chattering crowd seized Rith's horse and backed that into the cart instead. Nobody thought of using the beautiful mare that belonged to Navis. Typical of Navis, that, Mitt thought, taking the reins from the boy. The lad looked as ill as Fenna. “Want me to boost you up behind her, Moril?” Mitt asked. He had gathered the boy's name was Moril.

Moril simply turned away and walked to the cart.

“All right.
Be
like that then!” Mitt said to his back. All this running about made his backside feel as if it was on fire. It got worse when he set off leading the horse into Adenmouth. Fenna had to nudge him with her foot before Mitt noticed she was trying to speak to him.

“Er—young hearthman. Sir.”

Mitt looked up. She was pale, but she was dark and pretty, and she spoke with just a trace of a Southern accent, which made him try to smile at her. “Sorry. What?”

“Don't think too hard of Moril, sir,” Fenna said. “He loved our old horse. And I heard tell he had another horse killed by Southerners last year.”

Well, he's no call to take it out on me! Mitt thought. But he said politely, “Heard tell? I thought he was your brother.”

“Oh no, sir,” Fenna said. “Moril is Clennen the Singer's son. He'll be a great Singer himself before long.”

Rith grinned at Mitt round the nose of the Countess-horse. “These artists! You can tell what they're like from the red hair. Sit straight, Fenna, or you'll fall off.”

It was not far to Adenmouth, just across another bend in the Aden, which then poured noisily past low gray houses crowded at the edge of a cove. Mitt was glad. By the time they had gone up the main street to the mansion, he was not sure he could have walked another step. Their arrival caused much confusion, for a good hundred more people came out of the houses to see what was wrong and then followed them into the courtyard of the mansion, where rows of trestle tables that had been set up for the Midsummer Feast all had to be moved to make way for the cart.

Lady Eltruda was out on the hall steps, bellowing instructions in a voice like the armsmaster's. “Navis!” she yelled. “Get that thing through to the stables! Spannet, fetch the lawman! You!” she screamed at Mitt. “You in the Aberath livery! Bring that poor girl to me!”

Before Mitt could move, Rith was dragging Fenna and the Countess-horse toward the steps, zigzagging between tables and shouting back. “Aunt! Aunt! I'm here! I got here, and I got my sign!”

At this Lady Eltruda dashed down the steps, yelling, “Noreth, my dove! Noreth!” and flung her arms round Rith.

Mitt stared. He felt terrible.

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