“Don’t they forge cold steel?”
He glanced sidelong at me. “What would a lass like you know of such stories? Anyhow, the mansa of Falling Star House is a responsible man. That young fellow there will keep a watch over the valley, and if there is a fire—for you can be sure fire is the worst danger to them who work the furnace—he can put it out. Might be you could sleep in the magister’s kitchens. I can have a lad sent up to ask.”
“My thanks,” I said, scanning the sky. My eyes felt gritty, and I blinked away tears. “We’ve an hour’s light left in the day. We’ll keep walking.”
He wished us well and did not argue. Even here in wild Anderida, there were few places you might walk for an hour without coming upon a hamlet or a village where a bed might be begged and a supper paid for with copper coins. The lads insisted we take a swallow of ale before we left. Rory charmed them into opening one of the barrels right away, and I plied my most polite brusque smile, and sooner rather than later we ended up walking south on a spur of the Roman road, toward Hawkwood Furnace. Rory carried a tiny gourd filled with salted fish along with the bundle of travelers’ food Emilia had given him. In exchange for his services, I presumed.
“We might as well eat the fish now,” he said, “for I’m hungry and we’ve not eaten anything more than that stinking cheese and dry bread this morning.”
They were very strong, and the tiny bones satisfyingly crunchy. I saw him lick his fingers, each one, after savoring the salty morsels, and so I did the same.
“We’ll smell of fish forever,” I said.
“That would be nice.”
We strode along companionably into the dregs of the afternoon. At times we chattered about inconsequential things; at times we remained in charitable silence, not needing to talk.
In the way of those whom Lady Fortune favors—not that I would dream of asking for favors from a Roman goddess—we came upon a farmstead just as dusk lowered its mantle. The folk who lived there were of old Atrebates stock, black of hair, pale of skin, and short of stature. They greeted us kindly and did not remark on our height more than five or six times over the course of a country meal of millet porridge and boiled mutton. They refused to accept any coin, it going against the custom of hospitality, so I gave them stories instead. The great tales whose warp and weft weave history fell no more strangely into their ears than the ordinary goings-on in Adurnam, which lay only a few days’ walk away but which they had never heard of. We sat up late by a smoky fire in a hearth backed with an iron plate, and they listened, in their way, as intently as the djeli Lucia Kante—whatever she had been, ghost or spirit—had in hers.
In the chill mist of winter dawn, they set us on our way with a quarter of precious cheese and the last loaf of yesterday’s bread.
Some hours later, at the big furnace beside the village of Hawkwood, we turned west into the southern reaches of Anderida. The tracks were easy to follow. Often, we could mark our goal by the columns of a temple standing atop a distant hill. Every prominent hilltop had its temple enclosure or stone pillar, however humble. I did not mind walking. Stagecoaches and toll roads were too easy to watch. The weather held as we made our way from one furnace to the next, past the scars left by abandoned mines and alongside empty pastures that in spring would greet starving cattle with fresh shoots. Out here, no blizzard had struck; no snow had come down at all in the last six weeks, we were informed. The weather had held mild.
On the next night we were met with pitchforks and hostility and only grudgingly allowed to sleep above a farmstead byre, with the snuffling and snorts of the livestock as our lullaby. But on the night after, we—guests! utter strangers! how exciting!—entertained a hamlet so full of fellowship that drums and fiddles were brought out for a sweaty evening of dancing. I had to warn Rory off a smitten lass, no more than fifteen, whose ardor was innocent and therefore dangerous to her and especially to us if he mistook her glowing infatuation for worldly experience. Many ales later, when one man put a hand on me in a place it was not wanted, Rory turned on the fellow with a look so like a snarl it was as if I could see behind the appearance of a man to the animal he was in the spirit world. And though my unwanted suitor had served ten years in the warband of one of the cousins of the Prince of Tarrant, who lived hereabouts, the former soldier backed up so fast that he stumbled over a bench and fell flat on his ass to the general delight of the assembly.
“I could have handled him easily enough,” I objected the next morning when we had set off again. Although the weather remained fair, my stomach felt sour and the skin around my eyes tight as a headache settled in.