The next week sped by as though it were a dream of its own, though. Gena and I learned and learned and learned. Our hosts taught us to ride and care for and groom the horses. We pitched and packed the living space night and day. We walked, marched, rode, and sang1. Hester, every damn day, would whack us with the wooden swords. It was very much like the first few weeks of learning Classical Ivian under Montigo’s tutelage: not noticing the building exhaustion until you halted and it caught you from behind like a wave crashing over your back and driving you face-first into the sand.
Which is when Gena and I would try out new theories. How did these two realms contact? And did we have any hope of finding any of the ways out here on the veld, or closer to our destination in the east? We had a few workable ideas: to study natural geography, for worldly transition zones may reflect transitions in worldly meaning; astromancy, for perhaps a spell or formula might be devised to derive the location of the ways from some relationship in two cousin skies; or perhaps history, given that the first of the ways was to be found in the storied College of the Apostles.
The eighth night, we were bandying about one more theory (radix lex2) over tea. The tent was crowded; Hester, Ariké, and Eidahn were all inside and we were joined by Chethe and his young grandson, a round-cheeked and cheerfully waddling little lad named Ormu.
“Are all of you kingdom folk so energetic?” Chethe said. His smile drew out the crows feet at the leathery corners of his eyes.
“I’m not sure any of us are actually Anteianites!” I said. I looked to Gena.
“I’d say the apprentice wizard is right,” Gena said, “though it depends on who is counting. Nico would count me as his subject, but my binding to the college is much stronger.”
“And I’m and Orlander. Hester an East Marcher.”
“Ah, but… Nico is a king; Emault is a king; Joan is a… she’s a king, basically,” Chethe said. “Makes you all kingdom folk.”
“Well, then,” I said. “No, we’re not all this energetic. I’d say these are unusual circumstances. I’m worried I’m going to collapse into a heap of bone ash when we reach the Orlan Blue, I’ll be so tired,”
“I ought to tell you to speak for yourself,” Gena added, “but I don’t imagine I can keep up like this forever either.”
“But it’s been immensely rewarding! Our gratitude for your hospitality and your teaching.”
“Of course. You are worthy students of the horse, I have seen.”
“I felt more worthy yesterday. Eidahn put me on that new mare today and…”
Eidahn was laughing. “You try too hard!”
Chethe waved an amiable dismissal. “We do it so much we forget the feeling. The first time you switch steeds you wonder if you have suddenly forgotten everything, no?”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling a bit red. “At least she was a good sport about it.”
“We keep youngsters away from the stallions for a few years for a reason,” Ariké said.
As Ariké was saying this, Ormu, who had been sitting at his grandfather’s side, stood and waddled over to the entrance to the tent. Someone was outside, and Chethe had apparently bid Ormu give the welcome. Ormu was thrown aside, and a man and a woman flung themselves through the tent flap, swords drawn.
Hearing Ormu gasp, Eidhan screamed in a sudden bloody fury and threw himself, unarmed, at the first man. Gena and Chethe and I scrambled to our feet. I didn’t make out Ariké’s response in my own haste. The two assailants were themselves Yariagar by dress, wearing distinct colors: crimson red and copper green, across their sleeves and chaps. The man tangled in a brawl with Eidahn, and the woman seemed to look about, searching frantically for something… or someone. I found a training sword, one which I had taken back from the last round of sparring. Thinking quickly, I advanced two paces on her, locking eyes, keeping the sword “in its scabbard” by my side3.
She called my bluff and swung a lightning strike at me. Adrenaline seized my muscles and heart, and as if it had a mind of its own, yanked my training sword up and overhead. I met her blow. Her sword severed mine, but the odd angle blunted her attack enough such that it sliced along my outer arm, instead of my head at the neck.
She returned to her one-handed guard stance and prowled left. She glanced beside me, and I noticed Gena there, herself in the one-handed guard stance Hester had been teaching us, but holding a saw.
She watched us for a beat, eyeing our sorry weapons and our difficult footing. That’s when Ormu appeared at her side with a fork, driving it deep into her side. She screamed and aimed a wild backhand at him, but missed, and he stabbed again with the fork. Gena and I were scrambling forward over the beds and clutter of the tent to take advantage of the situation when Ormu was yanked from behind by the unknown man, who apparently had freed himself of Eidahn. The woman scrambled for the exit, leaving us a view of the situation: Chethe and Eidahn sprawled on the ground, and the big man hoisting his sword overhead above the child, just out of our reach.
There was a roar from behind him.
The first I saw of Hester was a steel blur at the man’s knees, just as the man’s saber reached its apex. The man buckled, and Hester was upon him, howling, driving his blade into the man’s chest until the hilt met his ribcage.
Thinking quickly again—one down, one to go—I bolted for the exit. As I left, I glimpsed Ormu scrambling away a panic, while Hester had his forearm to the man’s windpipe, crushing the last of the life out of his body in a demonic fit of rage.
Even in the strange, disorienting lights of the camp, a patchwork of random cook fires and torches, I found what I was looking for instantly: the woman, swinging herself up onto a horse, chased by Ariké and a pair of women I recognized as shepherds.
The horse looked a bit jittery, but the woman swung it about to try to take it out the near side of the camp, to the east, directly past me.
Ariké and the shepherds were struggling to try to keep the horse from fleeing. The woman was wresting at the reins in an attempt to navigate the beast, and herself, out of their clutches. So I had just enough time to lope over to a nearby brazier, stick the end of my severed wooden sword in, and pray for it to catch. Realizing that wouldn’t work, I tore off my shirt and bundled up a half-armful of flaming coals4. The woman freed herself and her steed from the scrum and they began barreling down the aisle of tents and wagons. I hurried over and flung the flaming coals in their path.
The horse veered over and ran through me at a gallop. I felt the impact of the huge creature’s breast against my face, and then, somewhere more distantly, my body twisting as it fell.
My Yaria, today, remains as Eidahn’s Ivian: serviceable but embarrassing. And armed with a terrifying arsenal of equestrian nouns. ↩
An esoteric magical doctrine analogizing Mundus to a great tree whose roots and branches were the natural law and its outgrowths, growing slowly and imperceptibly year-by-year. ↩
This is still not the dumbest thing I have ever done. ↩
This is the dumbest thing I have ever done. ↩