Watersmeet (28 page)

Abisina had heard enough. She slipped away to lie awake until dawn. She knew she could not watch her father die.

She told Haret of her decision the next day. Rueshlan was out inspecting the stag herd with Kyron, and Findlay was expected any minute; he had said he wanted to show her his new sword. Abisina and Haret sat at a window above the River Fennish as the evening breeze stirred the surface of the water. The sun had slipped behind the trees, but the air was still warm and humid.

“Human! You’re not listening,” Haret said.

“I am!” Abisina insisted. Then, “Wait, what did you say?”

“I said that we are at most a week away from being ready to go.”

“A week?” Abisina had been slumped in a chair, but now she sat up. “You’ll march to meet the fairies in a week?”

“The weaponry is all but ready, as are the provisions. We’re waiting for Torden to bring in more supply animals. That should take two or three days. I’d say
less
than a week.”

“But Haret!” Abisina cried. “How can I say good-bye now?”

“Good-bye?” Haret stared at her.

“I can’t go back there, Haret! I can’t watch my father—or anyone from Watersmeet—destroyed by Charach.”

“But human, Charach must be stopped.”

Her father’s words. “Then let’s stop him from coming through the Col!” At Haret’s dark look, she defended herself: “It’s not such a bad idea. He can stay on the other side of the mountains with the Vranians! They deserve each other!”

Haret’s eyebrows came together dangerously. “And Hoysta? What about her? Or the fauns we watched dance in the clearing? Do they deserve Charach?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I have hated the Vranians as you have, human.” Haret’s voice was flinty. “They have hunted the dwarves like beasts, destroyed Stonedun—what you call Vrandun—and started a war with centaurs that has affected all of us in the south. But I’ve learned something, and it was you who taught it to me. When I returned from the Mines, I hated myself. But you wouldn’t listen. You reminded me that I had saved you from Icksyon. ‘No one deserves what the centaurs were going to do to me,’ you said. And I say the same to you now. No one deserves Charach.”

“But the Vranians—”

“Human! Haven’t you been listening? Your father has told you about Vigar. Don’t you understand what Watersmeet stands for? You more than anyone know the dangers of casting out folk! I thought you understood—when you came back from Vigar’s garden with your father—I hope I wasn’t wrong.”

Before she could stop him, Haret was gone. At Abisina’s age, her mother had already left home to help free her people from the tyranny of Vran. Even after she had lost so much—Filian who had opened her eyes, Rueshlan whom she loved, her hope for her daughter’s future—Sina worked to help ease others’ pain. Not just with her healing, but working with all the people who did what little they could against the Elders. Wasn’t Abisina being asked to continue her mother’s work?

But she had watched her mother pulled from the wall of Vranille! She couldn’t live through that again with her father.

The day before the army departed, Abisina still hadn’t told her father that she would stay in Watersmeet. She had finished target practice and sat picking at her lunch of cheese, bread, and greens when Rueshlan burst through the door.

“What is it?” she asked, startled at the flush on his face.

“Do you want to ride?” he asked abruptly.

“Ride?”

“It may sound strange, but sometimes, when my mind is swimming in details and plans and questions—galloping across the open space, feeling the wind . . .” His words faltered as he took in Abisina’s stunned expression.

But she caught herself. “Y-Yes. I want to.”

“Truly? You do?” His face lit up and Abisina smiled, though her heart was in her throat.

Without waiting another minute, Rueshlan transformed. It was especially strange to see him as a centaur in their house, but Abisina approached him, staring up at his back high above the ground.

“Put your left foot here,” Rueshlan said, reaching out a hand for her to step into. “That’s it!” he called as she stepped from his hand onto his back. For a split second she was on Drolf again, Surl ready to wind vines around her. But before the fear had a chance to burrow in, her father’s laugh rose from deep within him and the fear drained away.

“Are you ready?”

“Ready.”

“Then hang on!” he called, and they were ducking through the doorway, leaping out of the ward and onto the root trails, flying through Watersmeet. Faces turned, folk called out as they cantered by, but she didn’t wave or answer, too focused on keeping her balance. As they clattered over the bridge and onto the banks of the River Deliverance, she began to relax. She listened to the thunder of Rueshlan’s hooves and watched the blur of trees rushing past. She felt the exhilaration of speed. At some point she grinned, and then laughed, and Rueshlan’s own laughter rang out again, his bass joining her higher tones. It was their laughter that drove all other arguments from her mind. She would go to the Col. She could not leave her father again.

The next morning dawned clear and hot. Abisina stared at the faces around her. Less than a month earlier these same fauns, now grim and dressed for battle, had flown through the wards with flaming torches to usher in the Midsummer. These dwarves, belts bristling with weapons, had sung hilarious songs around the fire. Frayda, bow slung over her shoulder, ebony hair braided down her back, had welcomed Haret and Abisina to Watersmeet without question and led them to the Gathering. Charach had transformed these merry folk into warriors.

But they were a mighty force. Five hundred dwarves and five hundred humans, two hundred centaurs; each in charge of two stags and one or two wild donkeys laden with food, weapons, and supplies. There were also six hundred fauns, but they were impossible to count, blending into the trees around them with leaf-woven tunics and branch headdresses. And when this host arrived at the Motherland, there would be another three hundred fairies.

They set off to the tune of chain mail clinking, arrows rattling in quivers, harnesses squeaking. The dwarves marched in several single-file lines, each stepping into the footprints of the dwarf ahead. Haret explained to Abisina that this method was used to confound enemies’ estimates of how many dwarves were ranged against them. The fauns appeared at times to report to Rueshlan that a donkey had twisted its leg or that a fallen tree was blocking the route. The centaurs and their charges followed pathways through the woods that were invisible to Abisina. While Rueshlan trotted up and down the ranks, she walked with Findlay or Elodie or Haret on a route carefully mapped out for speed and efficiency. Even with this planning, it would take at least three weeks for a force of this size to reach the Motherland.

On the third afternoon of the march, as Rueshlan walked with Abisina and Haret, Glynholly appeared with a scowl on her face.

“What could possibly make you angry this early in the march?” Rueshlan asked.

“Meelah,” Glynholly answered. “Kyron spotted her marching with the dwarves, wearing one of their hauberks. I’m amazed she kept up as long as she did!”

Before Rueshlan could answer, Kyron galloped up, holding the squirming Meelah, who wore a chain mail shirt that came to her ankles. The sight of the girl held by the centaur made Abisina tremble, but she didn’t cry out.

“Meelah!” Rueshlan exclaimed as Kyron set her down. “What are you doing here? You were supposed to stay home with Breide!”

“I did stay with Breide!” Meelah protested. “I followed her right in the line like she told me to!”

Rueshlan looked puzzled until another voice reached them.

“Put me down! I am perfectly capable of walking myself!” A gray centaur rode up with an irate Breide in his grip, her fiery braids swinging as she tried to take a swipe at her captor.

She, too, was deposited at Rueshlan’s feet, the gray centaur only too happy to put distance between himself and the feisty dwarf.

“Breide!” Rueshlan bellowed. “Did you bring this child on the march? You were to watch her
at home
. And what about Gilden? Don’t tell me you dragged that venerable old dwarf—”

“Of course I didn’t!” Breide defended herself. “I left him under my sister’s care; she’s as capable as I am—almost. I had to come! And then when Meelah discovered I was going, she insisted on tagging along—”

“Rueshlan, I can help!” Meelah chimed in. “I’m only a little younger than Abisina—well, three or four winters—”

“At least five,” Rueshlan corrected her.

“—and I won’t go near the battle. I’ll stay back with Breide and cook and tend the wounded. Oh, Rueshlan! Mama and Findlay are here, and I had to do
something
to save Watersmeet!”

Rueshlan’s eyes softened, but his voice remained stern. “You leave me no choice. I can’t spare someone to go back with you, and it’s not safe to send you back on your own.”

“Not that they’d even go,” Haret muttered under his breath.

“Breide,” Rueshlan continued, “Meelah will be in your care. You must keep her
away
from the battle—with the water carriers and the healers. I need her mother with the archers and I need Findlay’s sword. I can’t imagine what you were thinking, letting a child come to war!”

Breide shifted her weight uncomfortably; for once she had nothing to say.

Though she was often near Rueshlan, Abisina tried to avoid hearing the updates that scouts brought to him—the latest reports from the fairies or the estimates of Vranian swordsmen and archers—but she could never stop thinking about the advancing Vranians. There were still some in Rueshlan’s army who argued that they should fight to hold the Col rather than seek Charach, and though she knew her father would never agree, Abisina guiltily hoped they might sway him. She even tried to say as much to Findlay. They were in the second week of their march, walking along the margin of a dense forest, coolness seeping from the trees into the warmth of the afternoon. The sun hung at their backs, herding their shadows in front of them.

“I don’t think Glynholly is convinced that we should meet the Vranian army,” Abisina began tentatively. “She thinks we can hold the Low Col—well, indefinitely.”

“I’ve heard her say that,” Findlay replied. “Some of the dwarves agree. If we can hold Charach off long enough, they think they can build earthworks to defend the Col with a small band. But Rueshlan—and the fairies—are absolutely against it.”

“Are you?” Abisina asked.

“Of course,” he said with conviction. “For one thing, if we only hold the Col, we risk the fairies making a treaty with Charach. And even if they didn’t and we
could
hold the Col, that’s not what we’re about, is it? Those folk on the other side—they need us. If we stop at the Col, we’d be sacrificing them to Charach.”

Abisina took out her water skin, sipped the mossy-tasting water they had collected at the last stream, and put it back over her shoulder without answering. But the light of the sun on Findlay’s blond hair triggered the anger she had not been able to erase. “They were ready to sacrifice
me
,” she said.

The bitterness in her voice made Findlay stop. “What?”

“The people of Vranille,” she said, looking at him, “people who all had hair and skin like yours—they were ready to sacrifice me to Charach.”

“Abisina, I’m s—”

“What do you know about them, Findlay? What do any of you know about the Vranians?”

“I know it was bad—” Findlay tried to say, but again, Abisina cut him off.

“Bad? They killed babies, Findlay! Innocent babies. They killed my mother after she had cared for every last one of them—saving their lives from fevers and snake bites, easing the pain of the dying. She had to blackmail one of the Elders to keep me
alive
. My crime? I didn’t look like Vran. I didn’t look like
you
.”

He dropped his eyes at the barbs in her words. Abisina steeled herself and went on. “It’s easy for all of you to say, ‘Save the Vranians!’ But they’re not worth the loss of one of your lives, Findlay. Not one.”

Abisina pushed past him, catching the hurt in his face as she did. It was so clear to him: the right thing to do. But he was wrong! He had to be!

She still saw Findlay’s face before her as she rushed on, but then it changed. The brown of the eyes lightened to blue, the shock of blond hair flopped forward to cover his right eye, and it was Corlin she saw. Corlin, who had distracted the boys who were after her with their sticks and rocks. Corlin who had saved her.

Abisina’s steps slowed. Would she ever feel the way her mother felt—that there was enough good in Vranille to make it worth saving?

She reached the top of a rise, a little valley spreading out below her. There, like a beacon in the advancing darkness, she saw a yellow braid snaking down a girl’s back. It was Meelah, but all Abisina could see was Lilas.

About three weeks after the army left Watersmeet, the weather turned cooler in the evening and morning—a glimpse of the coming autumn. Abisina and Elodie sat around the breakfast fire with bowls of hot soup. They had spent more time together since she and Findlay had argued. She appreciated Elodie’s lighthearted chatter as much as the girl’s intuition about when to leave Abisina alone with her thoughts. This morning her thoughts completely absorbed her; in two days they would reach the Motherland, and a day after that, the Low Col.