The Saga of the Renunciates (101 page)

Jaelle carefully redistributed loads on the pack animals as they munched a few mouthfuls of bread and cheese. At last they were ready to start down. Jaelle took the leading reins off of the chervines’ bridles.

“They’ll follow the horses. But they can find the way better than we can.” She started down. “Let me get about forty feet along the trail and then come after me, Magda. Then you, Camilla, and Cholayna. I’ll come back for the extra horses. Vanessa, you stay behind in case anyone gets into trouble, all right?”

“Right.”

Magda picked up her horse’s reins and started down the narrow trail Jaelle was re-making—no more than a scattering of foot-and hoof-prints. The snow was hard, and the snorting of the chervines picking their way along after her sounded loud. She placed each foot carefully; her horse whinnied and tried to hang back, and she felt nervous about pulling on the rein.

“Come along, there’s a good girl.” She patted the horse’s nose, encouraging her gently. When they had gotten a little farther down the trail, she heard Camilla’s and Cholayna’s footsteps behind her; then again the loose, crowding chervines. One of them bolted up around the newly rutted trail in the snow; the small bells on its load jingled wildly as the spooked beast galloped downward. Magda hoped the straps on its load would hold and that they would be able to catch it at the bottom. She heard Camilla’s breath jolt out hard in a curse; looked back and called, “You all right?”

“Turned my foot on a stone. All right now.”

With a quick look behind, Magda saw Camilla was walking unevenly, but there was nothing to be done about it for the moment. They were lucky it was not worse. She felt a stone roll under her own foot, and narrowly escaped turning an ankle as she jolted down hard and unevenly. The horse scrambled more than once to stay balanced.

Jaelle was waiting a few steps ahead. “This is the beginning of the bad patch. I’m going across with my horse. Wait till I call you, then come across, slowly and carefully, understand?” Her face was patched red and white with exertion and there was a narrow band of sunburn across her nose. Magda was glad to rest for a moment; she watched Jaelle picking her way, leading the horse… Then Jaelle was across, and waving her ahead. She came across, feeling with her boots for firm patches, twice feeling rocks slip and roll down beneath her. She found that she was holding her breath as if even breathing hard would dislodge the loose gravel and ice. Once she slid to her knees with a little shout and found herself suddenly looking over a sheer cliff; but she mastered the queasy nausea, clawed herself backward and upright again, and went on. It seemed there were no sounds, not even of her own breathing, until a hand, extended, met hers, and she was safe beside Jaelle.

“All right, love?”

“Fine.” Magda could hear little but her own breathing.

“Tether your horse. I’m going back across for Camilla’s. You come along and lead Cholayna’s—or— can you manage that?”

Magda’s breath caught at the thought of crossing that hellish stretch of loose rubble and rock not once more, but twice. But Jaelle thought she could do it. She nodded. “Let me catch my breath a little, first.”

Jaelle hobbled the horses; hung their reins across the saddles. “I’ll go first. Watch where I step. I’ve been across it four times now. Looks worse than it is, love.”

Magda was still shaky, but this time the crossing was easier. They waited for Camilla and Cholayna to arrive at the far edge of the loose rocks; everyone waved at everyone else, and then Magda and Jaelle crossed again with the horses. Almost all of the chervines were across by now, though they lurched and nearly fell, scrambling up again on their thin hocks, tossing their heads and whickering in distress. But they all arrived safely, Vanessa last, white-faced, clinging to the rein of her horse.

“What’s wrong, Vanessa?” Cholayna asked.

“Ankle.” Now they could see that she had been supporting as much of her weight as she could holding on to the horse; abruptly she let go and sank to the ground. Camilla came and tried to pull off her boot, but in the end they had to cut through the heavy leather to remove it. The ankle was swollen, with a great purplish-red patch on the ankle-bone.

“This is worse than a sprain,” Camilla said. “You may have knocked a chip of bone out of the ankle.”

Vanessa made a wry face. “I was afraid of that. Probably needs X-raying, but there’s no good thinking about that here. There are spare boots in my rucksack—”

“You’ll never get them on,” Magda said. “Take my spares, they’re four sizes bigger. Never thought I’d be grateful for having big feet.”

Vanessa let out her breath in a gasp as Cholayna came to examine the foot.

“Wiggle your toes. Fine. Does it hurt when I do this?”

Vanessa’s answer was loud, profane, and affirmative.

“Nothing broken, I’d say. Just a really bad bruise and a lot of swelling. Are there elastic bandages in that medikit?”

“There’s one in my pack,” Jaelle said. She went and found it, gave it to Cholayna and said, “It probably needs bathing and all kinds of things, but there’s no good trying to stop and make a fire here, so bandage it up and we’ll round up the chervines.” The beasts were scattered all up and down the next half mile of the downward trail. “Camilla, you turned an ankle too, didn’t you? Is that okay? Any other casualties?”

Camilla’s ankle, examined, proved to be only strained a little; nevertheless, Jaelle told her to bandage it up and give it a rest.

“Magda will help me round up the chervines. We’re not more than a couple of hours from Barrensclae. With Avarra’s mercy, we’ll be able to ride most of the way from there.”

While they were catching and quieting the scattered pack animals, Magda spotted a scrap of something which had no business on that trail. She caught it up and called softly to Jaelle.

“Look here.”

Jaelle took the brightly colored scrap of plastic from her; yellow, with a torn letter at one edge. “Packaging?”

“From standard high-altitude emergency rations, yes.”

“Lexie’s?”

“Who else? Anyone who saw this, though, must have known she wasn’t going out to study folk dancing. At least now we know they
did
come this way.”

Jaelle nodded and thrust the scrap into a pocket. “Maybe they lost time here, too. Let’s go and find out if they’re still waiting for us. They do need the things we’re bringing—extra warm clothes, trade goods—they’ll do better in the Hellers if they wait.”

“Then you’ll be going on, if we do catch them? You actually think they’ll find that—city?”

“Don’t you, Magda?” Jaelle looked surprised and hurt. “You’re coming too, I thought—?”

“I suppose so,” Magda said, slowly and not at all sure. She could deal with Rafaella, who had been both friendly and unfriendly and would probably only accept her for Jaelle’s sake, and then only if it was her best hope of continuing the search. But Lexie? Magda could hear her now.

Hellfire, Lorne, are there any pies on this planet you don’t have your fingers in?

Barrensclae was well named, Magda thought; a high plateau, without grass or trees, rocky rubble lying loose, and a few stone ruins where once there had been houses and stockpens. She wondered why it had been abandoned, what had impelled the farmers who had lived here to pull up and go away. Or had they all been murdered by bandits in one of the blood-feuds that still raged in the Kilghard Hills?

She put the question to Jaelle, who shrugged.

“Who knows? Who cares? It can’t have been much or we’d have heard a hundred different stories already.”

Camilla said, with a grim smile, “If they just went away on their own, it may have been the only sensible thing they ever did. I’d be more interested to know why they ever thought of settling here in the first place.”

Cholayna said the obvious: “If Lexie and Rafaella were ever here, they’re not here now.”

“They might be hunting. Or exploring.” Jaelle rode slowly toward the abandoned stockpen, near a house which still had some semblance of roof clinging to the old stones. “We slaughtered the chervines here, and slept three nights in that house. If Rafi left a message, it would be here.”

Camilla looked at the sky, lowering gray; the night’s rain would begin soon. “We’ll spend the night anyway, I suppose. No sense going much farther, and Vanessa’s ankle needs looking after. There’s something like a roof on this, too. I suggest we look inside and see if we can camp there.”

“Any reason we shouldn’t?” Vanessa asked. “I mean, the original owners seem to be
very
long gone. What could stop us?”

“Oh, just little things, like—no floor, mold, bugs, snakes, rats, bats.” Camilla ticked them over on her fingers, laughing. “On the other hand, we might just find Rafaella’s pack animals and their various belongings stored there, in which case—”

Magda was not sure whether she hoped they would find the women there or that they would not. When they managed to swing the heavy door inward from the hinges, the place was suspiciously clear of all the things Camilla had warned against: the old stone-paved floor was dusty but not filthy, and there seemed to be nothing lurking about.

“This place
has
been used recently,” Cholayna remarked. “They were here, and not long ago.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Jaelle warned, “anyone could have used this place. Travelers, bandits—it’s possible they were here, but we can’t be sure.”

It looked to Magda like a good place for bandits: she remembered encountering bandits in a travel-shelter once, years ago. She had not thought about bandits on this trip, and wished she had not had the idea brought to her attention just now.

There was no point in letting it worry her. Camilla could certainly manage three times their weight in bandits, and would probably rather enjoy the opportunity to try.

“That’s not what’s worrying me,” Jaelle said. “There are only two of them, and one a
Terranan
greenhorn.”

“Don’t you believe it,” Cholayna said. “Lexie had the same unarmed-combat training as Magda. And Rafaella’s no weakling.”

“Bandits travel in packs,” Jaelle said. “Fair fights aren’t what they’re noted for.” Just the same, she brought in her saddlebags and dumped them on the stone floor. “Cholayna, why don’t you make a fire so we can look after Vanessa’s ankle.”

Before long the fire was blazing, and Cholayna was making what use she could of the medikit. She still suspected that Vanessa had knocked a chip of bone loose from her ankle, but there was nothing they could do about it here.

“At least there’s no shortage of ice,” Cholayna said, looking out into the snow. “Cold packs until the swelling goes down; after that, hot and cold alternately. A proper medic would put it in a cast, but it’s probably not dangerous without one. It’s going to make walking hard for a few days, but since Jaelle says we can probably ride most of the way from here, it could be worse. At least you’re not in danger of being lamed for life if you don’t get proper Terran treatment.”

Unasked, Magda pulled out the cooking kit and started making soup from the dried meat in their supplies. A hearty aroma began to steal through the old stone house. Toasting did wonders for the hard journey-bread, too. Soup, cooked grain-porridge, and a kettle of hot bark-tea—it was the first real hot meal they had had since leaving Thendara, and it greatly revived their spirits.

When they finally crawled into their sleeping bags, Magda soon knew all the others were sleeping peacefully. Still she lay awake, troubled without knowing why. She could not help feeling that this whole trip was somehow a reflection of her failures—with Lexie, Vanessa, Cholayna, and, perhaps especially, Rafaella. Somehow, she had made Lexie feel that she must compete with what some people in the HQ insisted on calling the “Lorne Legend”; had said the wrong things to Vanessa and Cholayna or they would not have been here; without meaning to, she had come between Jaelle and Rafaella… But whatever the unknown dangers of the road, Jaelle was right, they could not turn back.

The next morning, Vanessa’s ankle was swollen to the size of a peck basket, and she was running a fever. Cholayna dosed her with salicylates from the medikit, while Magda and Camilla repacked the loads to redistribute weight and Jaelle went out to search the terrain for any signs of the passage of the other women. She came back late in the day with the carcass of a chervine calf slung over her back.

“We can all use fresh meat. Vanessa particularly needs the extra protein.” She set about skinning and butchering the carcass with an expert hand; Cholayna turned her eyes away, but Vanessa watched with fascination.

“Where did you learn to do that?”

“Leading mountain expeditions. We don’t have a lot of fancy packaged rations available,” Jaelle said, “and hunting skills are one of the first things you learn to feed yourself in the wilds. I could bring down a full-grown animal before I was fifteen years old, and if you’re killing your own meat, you have to be able to skin it and cut it up and dry it for the trail, too. We’ll eat as much of this fresh as we can. I’ll roast a haunch for supper, but it’s too small to dry properly. What we can’t eat, we’ll put out for the
kyorebni
before we leave.” She looked regretfully at the delicate dappled skin of the little animal. “Hate to waste this hide, I could get a nice pair of gauntlets out of it if we had the time to tan it.”

Cholayna shuddered and kept her eyes even more averted than they had already been; but she said nothing. It must, Magda thought, be difficult for her all round, taking orders when she was accustomed to giving them, and resigning herself to being the oldest and the weakest. This assault on her ethical principles—Magda knew Cholayna had never eaten meat, or anything which had once lived, before this—must be the final trial. But she had kept silent about it, which could not have been easy.

By the next morning, the worst of the swelling was gone from Vanessa’s ankle, and Jaelle, looking uneasily at the sky, said they should press on. Cholayna felt that Vanessa should rest her ankle for another day, but Jaelle was uneasy about the weather and studied Magda’s maps for a long time, seeking an easier route.

“We’ll head straight north, but we’ll go around by the trail instead of going straight over the ridge. They have enough of a start on us now that it’s very unlikely we’ll catch up with them this side of the Kadarin; more probably not much before Nevarsin,” Jaelle said.

With horses and chervines well rested, they started again, along trails that did not need to be negotiated on foot. There were flurries of snow as they rode, and it was damp and cold; they all dug out their warmest sweaters and underclothing. At night the sleeping bags were dank and clammy, and even Cholayna drank the hot meat-soup gladly.

On the third afternoon, the trail began to rise again, each hill steeper than the last, and finally Jaelle said that on the upward slopes they must dismount and walk to spare the horses the extra weight—except for Vanessa, who was still unable to bear her weight on the injured ankle.

“I can walk if I have to,” said Vanessa, brandishing the thick branch Camilla had cut for a walking stick that morning. “I don’t need special treatment, either!”

“Believe me, Vanessa, I’ll tell you if it’s necessary for you to walk. Don’t try to be heroic,” Jaelle added. “If we end up carrying you, we’ll never get through.”

They were slogging up the fourth or fifth of these hills—Magda had lost count in the dreary dripping fog— when her foot turned under her, and she lost her footing, fell full length and slipped backward, sliding down the steep path, scraping against rocks, ice and tough roots in the way. She struck her head, and in a flash of pain, lost consciousness.