The Crown of Dalemark (The Dalemark Quartet 4)

“But she’s got to be stopped,” Mitt protested hopefully.

“Yes, but if she’s dead,” Moril said, “won’t Kankredin just move on to somebody else? Somebody who’s more—you know—ruthless?”

Like Navis, Mitt thought. That would be worse. The idea snapped his brain clean out of the bind Keril and the Countess seemed to have put on it. “Then it’s Kankredin we ought to go after.” This was the way Old Ammet had been trying to make him think, he realized. “Can this cwidder of yours do anything there?”

Moril put his chin on his knees and twiddled the last crust of his bread while he thought. “It’s got to be truth,” he said. “I think, if we could catch him talking to her again, I could make him appear in his true shape. Would that be enough?”

“Could be just right!” Mitt said. “I’ve a name or two up my sleeve I could use as long as I know where he is.”

Moril put the crust of bread in his mouth. “I hoped you might have,” he said, munching it. “There are stories about you.”

They got up and dusted off crumbs. “Don’t give Kankredin any kind of hint,” Mitt said.

“What do you take me for?” said Moril. They smiled at one another, conspirators, but not at all happy about it.

Mitt thought, as they walked back between the rustling corn, The worst of it is, if it goes wrong. I might have to kill her, anyway. The hot sun seemed to weigh on him. He felt as if he was in mourning already.

The others were waiting impatiently under the ash tree. They said, almost in chorus, “Where were you?” The rest of the bad gray bread had been tipped into the ditch. Mitt and Moril looked at it guiltily.

“We got lost,” Moril said. “I think we ought to stop at a farm for more bread.”

“Teach your grandmother,” said Maewen. Mitt could see her, as they mounted and rode on, looking from him to Moril and wondering what they had been plotting. She had her nervous, freckly look. He knew he ought to do something about it, but the Countess-horse was balky in the heat and kept Mitt busy wrestling with it all through the long, blazing afternoon. Despite his warning to Moril, Mitt kept wanting to tell the horse, Cheer up! Come Kernsburgh, you could be carrying my dead body! He could see himself, too, dead hands trailing on one side, limp boots swinging on the other, and the whole thing starting to smell in the heat. He had to keep biting his tongue not to say it.

Maewen and he did not say one word to each other until they were camped that night—in a proper field with cowpats in it, near a farm. While Wend and Navis were away at the farm, buying bread, and Mitt and Maewen were doing the horses, Mitt took a deep breath and said, “Are we not on speaking terms or something?”

She jumped and turned to him gratefully. “Yes. Probably. You didn’t have to wait under that tree and listen to Navis and Hestefan being sarky to one another.”

Though Mitt knew there was much more to it than that, he said, “If you shoot someone’s horse, he’s not likely to love you. Mind you,” he added, watching Hestefan fussily washing down the wheels of the cart, “if that Hestefan wasn’t a Singer, he’d be teaching school and living alone in a house with the door barred.”

“Yes! Wouldn’t he!” Maewen said, quite delighted.

They chatted lightheartedly after that, until they saw Wend and Navis returning with cans of milk and armfuls of cheese and bread. Maewen said guiltily, “Oh dear. I bet Navis paid for it all. I hate the way we seem to be living off him.”

Mitt’s attitude to money was much more carefree. “Well, we can’t hardly wave a golden statue at them,” he said.

It was the wrong thing to say. She gave him a nervous, freckly look and went off to meet Navis. Mitt sighed. All the same, he and Moril took good care never to be far away from Maewen in case the voice spoke to her again. But nothing happened that night.

When they went on next morning, they found the farms thinning out again, giving way to more and more bracken and tumbled rocks. The Shield here descended slightly in a series of waves, downward toward Dropwater and the coast, and the green road went with it, up and over and down, up and over and down. The warm, itchy rain came over in waves, too. You could look back and see each white shower traveling back along the way you had come, up and up and up, like a ghost going upstairs, until it was lost in the high green distance.

In the middle of the afternoon Mitt was looking back after the latest shower, having watched it as it came climbing up and swept over them, when he thought he could see a darkish blot, right up at the top, where the road and the rain went out of sight. Next time he looked, the blot was more definite, wavering forward in the high distance.

“Ay-ay,” he said. “Looks like there might be a troop of horses coming down behind.”

Heads snapped round. Hestefa

n and Moril leaned out on either side of the cart. It was what everyone had been dreading.

“Looks to be at least twenty,” Wend said.

“In good order,” said Navis. “Quite a body of hearthmen, I would say. Can anyone see what livery?”

“Too far off,” said Hestefan.

“But coming quite fast,” said Moril.

“And they must have seen us,” said Navis, “if we can see them.” He turned to Wend. “Is there anywhere we can get off this road while we’re in a dip and they can’t see us?”

Wend’s solemn face twisted anxiously. “Not for some miles.”