“This is like a staff.” Hanna settled her hands into a comfortable grip on the haft. She tried a few whacks at the stout post sunk in the ground in the middle of the yard. To Liath’s surprise, Hanna grinned suddenly. “Thancmar and I have crossed staves a few times. When we were younger, we sparred with staves to pass the time while we were out with the sheep.”
Hathui did not look impressed. “When you’ve learned to handle a spear on horseback, you’ll be able to boast. But an Eagle unhorsed in bad company is most likely a dead Eagle. What the sheep admired will do you little good here.”
Hanna only laughed. “I have ridden hard for ten days and not given up, although the Lady alone knows the blisters I have, and where I have them! I can learn this, too, by Our Lord.”
“And you’ll still have to learn swordcraft, even so,” continued Hathui as if Hanna hadn’t spoken. The hawk-nosed woman still looked dour, but there was almost a smile on her face.
“Come inside,” said Wolfhere.
Liath ducked under the lintel, built low as an added means of protection, and immediately sneezed. She wiped watering eyes and blinked as Wolfhere lit a brand and searched back into the far shadows of the chamber. Everything was neatly stored away here: sacks of onions and carrots; baskets of beans and peas and apples; jars of oil; wooden barrels of chops packed in lard. Something had gone rancid. Beyond the foodstores of the householder lay five chests closed with hasps of iron. One was inlaid with brass lions. This one Wolfhere opened. The hinges were well oiled, opening without a squeak.
Liath picked her way across to him, once stepping on something that squashed under her boot and sent up the sickly sweet scent of rotting fruit. A fly buzzed in her ear.
“Hathui notes you are adept at knife-fighting, which skill I suppose you picked up from your father Bernard as you traveled. I believe there is an old sword here, still serviceable. It was recovered from the fort.”
“Which fort?” she asked, then knew what he meant: This fort, the old Dariyan fort built by order of Arki-kai Tangashuan seven hundred years ago, reckoning by the calendars she knew. Now of course it was known as Steleshame, a small estate under the authority of the freeholder Gisela that was also an official posting stop for the King’s Eagles and thus under the king’s protection rather than that of the local count.
Wolfhere lifted out a bundle wrapped in cloth, and slowly unwrapped it. “It’s shorter and blunter than the swords we are used to, but perhaps you will find it a good tool to use as you become accustomed to swordcraft. Hathui mentioned you wield a butcher’s knife with great skill.”
As he pulled the last layer of oilcloth off, she looked down into the chest and caught her breath. On yellowed linen lay a bowcase, in it rested an unstrung bow. The case was made of red leather. Worked into the leather was a portrait of a griffin, wings outspread. The creature held in its beak the head of a deer, but the tines of this deer’s antlers were transformed into the heads of crested eagles, as if, being devoured, the deer was in the act of transforming into the predator that had killed it.
“May I?’ she asked.
“What is it you see?” Wolfhere asked, but she had already reached in and drawn out the bowcase. “Ah,” he said. “Barbarian work. Look at the shape of the bow.”
The unstrung bow curved the wrong way. But Liath knew this kind of bow well enough. She turned the leather case over. No decoration adorned the other side of the bowcase, but there were ten symbols pressed in a circle into the leather, like runes. “Are these letters?” she asked. Wolfhere shrugged. “This is like the bow my father had. He said it came from the east. Da always said this kind of bow had the greatest range and the odd property of being effective from horseback. He taught me to use it, because when we were traveling—” She broke off and looked down at Wolfhere, who still knelt on the dirt floor, a short sword laid on oilcloth at his knees.
“You were traveling?” he asked quietly. “You and Bernard journeyed for a long time, Liath, and never stayed in any one place for too long.”
“Until Heart’s Rest,” she said bitterly. Until she had begged him to stay just one more season, and then another, until what Da rightly feared had happened: His enemies caught up with them. Why not tell Wolfhere the truth? He had not been there when Da was killed. She was in his power now, in any case, if he wished her ill. “We were running. Always running.”
“What from?”
His calmness only made her terrible anger—at losing Da, at all the years of fear and hiding that had come to nothing in the end—stand stark in contrast. “Maybe from you.”
