The Crown of Dalemark (The Dalemark Quartet 4)

Wend bowed humbly, which irritated Maewen even more. “True, lady. Then I will tell you what no one else knows. I am the one they call the Wanderer, and I keep the green roads—”

He stopped talking and looked over his shoulder. There was a brisk jingling of tack below and nearby. Maewen once more bunched up like a wary wild animal and watched two more riders scramble uphill out of the fog. They seemed to bring the fog with them, fog of their own breath, fog of their horses’ breath, and fill the air with their presence.

“Good morning, Noreth,” said the smaller of the two. “You got ahead of us very quickly. We were hoping to ride up with you.” He was riding a truly magnificent mare. His clothes were like the ones Maewen had so recently acquired, mail coat and cap and all, except that on this man they had a neater, wealthier look. Maewen was shocked to find that she knew his face. She had last seen those clear-cut ruthless features staring over a painted shoulder out of the portrait of the Duke of Kernsburgh.

It gave her a vivid, physical shock, like touching a live wire. Up to then Maewen had not really believed she had been sent two hundred years into the past. But here was a live man, breathing out warm, live, foggy breath, whom she knew to have been dead for well over a century. It made it real. It made it much more frightening. She looked rather frantically across at the taller rider, wondering if she would know him, too. He was young and gawky and obviously in the middle of growing even taller. His clothes, which were quite neat, too, sat on him as if they were his best clothes and he was used to wearing something much scruffier. And his horse looked villainous.

He was a total stranger, but Maewen’s feelings about that changed from relief to dismay when this young one smiled at her. He smiled in a cheerful, friendly way, with just a touch of shyness, as if he knew her quite well. And she had simply no idea who he was. O great One! she thought. Why hasn’t Wend warned me about these people?

She looked at Wend, waiting humbly by the way-stone, but had to look back when the man with clear-cut features spoke again. “As you see,” he said, “Mitt and I have come to be your followers on the royal road.”

Maewen was thrown into confusion again. He sounded so sarcastic. It was just the way a man like this one would speak—and it made her feel about five years old. But it was a double confusion. She suddenly found she had no idea when this was. She had been assuming, in a muddled and buried way, that she had been bounced into this Noreth woman’s place somewhere halfway to Kernsburgh. But from what this man said, she could be right at the start of Noreth’s journey from the North. It gave her a low, grinding sort of worry to add to all the other things. Among the other things was the thought, If Kankredin got to Noreth that early, how soon will he get to me? And a slightly more trivial thought, but just as worrying, was that this man on the fine mare was not going to be made Duke of Kernsburgh until some years on in Amil the Great’s reign. If she was Noreth and at the start of Noreth’s journey, then Amil the Great was somewhere else in Dalemark and nowhere near being King yet. So this man was not Duke of Kernsburgh yet. And she had no idea what to call him. At least she now knew the younger one was called Mitt.

She gave Mitt a flustered smile and tried a stately bow on his companion. He bowed back, ironically, and raised an eyebrow at Wend. He was, naturally, one of those who could slide one eyebrow up without the other one moving at all.

“I am Wend, sir,” Wend said humbly, “and I follow the lady, too.”

?

?Well, well. That makes three of us,” the man said. “How many more are we expecting?”

Maewen could not answer since she probably had less idea than he did. In fact, she had no idea what they expected her to do. She simply sat on her purloined horse and hoped that Wend would have the decency to give her a hint.

Wend said nothing. They all sat, or stood, while the horses fidgeted and the pink of the sky spread and faded toward a gray morning. Below, the mist seemed to be thinning, but not enough to show any landscape that might give Maewen some idea whereabouts they were. She began to feel stupid. This had the feeling of a party when none of the guests turn up.

The man who would be Duke of Kernsburgh obviously felt the same. “Not much sign of a mighty band of followers,” he remarked.

Mitt was horribly embarrassed. “Navis!” he protested.

Navis! Maewen thought in the greatest relief. Or should I call him Your Grace? No. Stupid. Not yet.

“I suggest we give it till full daylight and then be on our way,” Navis said.

It was more of a decision than a suggestion, as if Navis was in charge, but Maewen was simply grateful for someone deciding something. “Yes,” she said. “That’s fine.”

It was the first time she had spoken in front of Navis and Mitt. She saw Mitt give her a puzzled glance, as if her voice, or her accent, or something, was not quite right. She glowered at Wend. She was angry enough to smash his smooth, grave, handsome face. He had tricked her into this, and now he was not giving her any help at all. If one of these two noticed she was not Noreth, it would be his fault, and it would serve him right.

Luckily—probably it was lucky—Mitt was distracted by someone else arriving at last. There were clatterings and a light rumbling from the thinning mist below. It could be quite a number of people. Everyone turned that way. The first thing to appear was a lop-eared glum-looking mule. Then a darkness behind it resolved into the rounded canvas cover over a cart, the whole thing painted a sober dark green. The bearded man driving the cart looked as sober as the rest of his turnout. As the cart tipped forward onto the level land beside the waystone, he looked up and reined in the mule as if he were surprised to see anyone there at all. Maewen read the name in sober gold lettering: Hestefan the Singer. Now this was interesting. Her mind shot to Dad’s family tree. He could be one of her own ancestors. And she had had no idea that Singers still roamed the land as late as two hundred years ago.

“This is a surprise, Hestefan,” Navis said. “Did Noreth inspire you to follow her, too?”

He was even more ironic than he had been before, but Hestefan answered quite simply, “I thought I’d come along. Yes.” His voice rolled out foggy breath, full and trained-sounding, but not very deep.

“But,” Mitt chipped in, “Fenna’s not fit to travel, is she?”

A boy stuck his head out of the back of the cart. “We’re not fools,” he said. “We left her in Adenmouth.” The gathering sunlight struck red on his head. Maewen could not take her eyes off him. She knew him, too. He was the unknown Singer-boy from the portrait in the palace.

“And Lady Eltruda was good enough to lend us a mule,” Hestefan said.

“Lady Eltruda is always generous,” Navis said. He seemed to mean this. At least he did not sound nearly as ironic as usual, saying it. “And what of others following? Did you pass any large numbers of folk hurrying to join Noreth?”

Hestefan slowly shook his head. “We were the only ones on the road.” Maewen caught the Singer-boy, and Mitt, too, looking at her as if they were afraid she would be very disappointed at this news.

Then everyone was looking at her expectantly.

“Er—” Maewen said. “Well, I suppose we’d better be getting on, then.” Thinking that she had better lead the way, she turned her horse toward the green path stretching from the waystone. Then she paused. Wend was on foot. “Will you be able to keep up?” And serve you right if you can’t!

Wend put a horrible old baggy cap on his head and smiled his restrained smile up at her. Maewen was growing to hate that smile. “I walk the green ways every day, lady. Unless you gallop, I shall be beside you.”