It was so cold.
Here in the shelter of a fir tree, she had at least some respite from the constant cut of wind. But there was never any respite from fear or from the pit of hunger that yawned in her belly like the dreaded Abyss. Two horses also sheltered under the cave made by the fir’s branches; with reins wrapped loosely around a crook in one thick branch, they snuffled at the forest litter, trying to graze. “Watch the horses,” two of Lord Wichman’s soldiers had ordered her after finding her foraging in the woods. “Pull the reins free and flee if the Eika approach.”
She hadn’t known she was so close to Eika. She stayed within the cover of trees on her daily foraging expeditions into the forest, but every day she had to search farther away from the battered holding of Steleshame to find any pittance to add to the shared pot. In this way, with the young lord growing bored of Master Helvidius’ poetry and Mistress Gisela eager to exclude anyone who didn’t “earn their keep,” Anna staved off the cold knife of starvation. It would not have been like this if Matthias hadn’t died.
She shuddered. She could not bear to think about Matthias. Maybe it would have been better to have died with him, it hurt so much to be without him. But the old poet and the child relied on her as well; she had to go on.
She rubbed her hands and listened. She had been told to stay on the lee of the hill, to save the horses should things go awry. Yet, there was grass atop the hill, yellowed and dry under the winter sky and high enough to hide her. If she could watch the raid, wouldn’t she be better able to protect herself and the horses she had been put in charge of? What if the soldiers’ blades couldn’t penetrate Eika hides? What if Lord Wichman and his men were all killed and the Eika came searching for her and she didn’t know they were coming? What if she were unable to flee, or the reins wouldn’t unwrap from the tree limb? What if she fell from the horse? She didn’t know how to ride.
Maybe it would be better to wait here by the horses, to wait for the soldiers to return, driving captured cattle before them, but she couldn’t bear to wait as if she were blind and crippled.
And anyway, there was nothing she could see on this day that would be worse than what she had already seen in this past year.
She crept up the slope on hands and knees. Grass rustled under her weight and she froze, then slowly crawled to the crest, checking always to assure herself that the foxtails waved above her head. At the top of the hill lay a large gray rock with dry orange lichen clinging to it as if to a scaly hide. From behind this screen she dared to peer down into the vale.
A single ragged byre stood at the far end of the vale. Cattle grazed in their dull fashion, watched over by three slaves dressed in far less than what Anna wore. They leaned heavily on staves. Occasionally a cow lifted its head from the grass to low nervously. Goats strayed over one rise beyond which Anna could see copses of trees and the suggestion of floodplain; if she moved just enough she might be able to see the towers of Gent in the distance. A woman so weak that she frequently stumbled hurried after the straying goats and herded them back. Anna could not count very high, but there were plenty of cattle and goats just in this one sheltered vale where grass still covered the hillside. No doubt these livestock had been stolen from Steleshame or some other unfortunate village. According to the reports brought in by the mounted soldiers, many such herds grazed the lands around Gent now, good cropland which had gone to seed under the stewardship of the Eika.
Lord Wichman and his soldiers weren’t raiding, not really; they were just getting back what the Eika had stolen.
A few trees stood in this pasture, which by the patchwork of grass, some long and dying, some short and new, had perhaps once been a series of long, narrow fields. But cattie, grass, and slaves did not hold her attention for long. Other objects stood in the vale, and these she could not help but stare at with a grim, hungry fear pulling at her gut.
Rising above the grass, occasionally under a tree yet most often atop a gentle rise, stood a number of standing stones the same hue as the stone she lay beside but tall and monolithic rather than low and rugged. No Eika with gleaming skin and ice-white hair, with jewel-studded teeth and fierce spear point, stood guard over the slaves and the precious livestock. Nothing stood here except those dozen stones, yet the slaves did not run in the face of such freedom.
Of Lord Wichman and his soldiers she saw no sign.
She knew these stones, they were somehow familiar to her, each alike, each … a threat.
The stone nearest to her stood at the base of the slope at whose height she knelt. Its pitted surface lay a bit more than a long bow-shot away. Hadn’t it been farther away when she first peeked out? Why would stones stand out here in the middle of this vale, in no discernible pattern? Why did they look different from the boulder she hid behind? Why did no lichen grow on them?