Page 32 of Into the West

Sai had presented him with a towel that could be used morning and night that did just that. And once they’d arrived at Crescent Lake, he’d been making more such things—even a scrub with a rag and warm water was going to be less than pleasant come winter. The towels were made, he claimed, of mushrooms. They were supposed to be living sheets of fungus that would absorb and thrive on whatever filth was rubbed into them. He’d given two to each of the scouts when they were putting their personal things away. “One to clean yourself, the other to roll your smallclothes in when you go to bed,” he’d said. “In the morning, your smalls will be cleaner than if they’d come from the Baron’s laundry.”

It wasn’t anywhere near as nice as a good long soak in a proper bathtub with proper hot water, but it did clean you really well, including your hair. And Sai hadn’t exaggerated about what the second one did for underthings, either. They came out of the rolled-up towel better than the laundresses had ever cleaned them.

And that was another thing: it was also less awkward if she got her “wash-up” before the others bedded down. She still felt uncomfortable being naked in front of two people she didn’t know very well. It wasn’t that she was particularly bodyshy, but rather that Valdemarans tended to associate nudity with privacy. Healers often made private examinations when the patient was nude, but bathing was done alone, and unless one was extremely wealthy and could afford a handmaid, clothing changes were done in private as well. Therefore, being bare made her feel like she should be alone.

The little stove was going, but it was still cold enough that she hurried through her cleanup and back into a particularly warm, loose shirt and trews and clambered into her bunk. There was just enough soft light from the little lantern at the front door to aid her into place. Outside she could hear voices; it sounded like the mages were bidding everyone goodnight. Then Alberdina apparently said the same. A moment later she heard and felt Alberdina board the barge.

She pretended to be asleep, on her side with her face to the wall. After an interval of soft sounds and the slight rocking of the barge, she heard and felt Alberdina settle into the bottom bunk.

She carefully eased over onto her back and pulled the covers up tight under her chin. There were so many thoughts buzzing in her head, like a hive full of annoyed bees, that it was just too hard to sort them out. And her emotions were tangled up in all of it. Finally one thing rose to the top. Kordas sent me away on purpose. And it wasn’t because of my Gift. Really, there was no other conclusion that anyone with the sense the gods gave a goose could come to.

A part of her was angry, and part of her was jealous of her sister, and another part of her was determined to do so well out here that her name would be in every single report that Rose gave to Kordas on their progress. That part of her was a whole different little tangle all on its own. Send me away, will he? I’ll show him! And Think you can send me off and forget me? You’ll hear about me more often than if I was still back there! And Will you be sorry you sent me away?

Part of her wanted to be vital to the group. She did like them, she liked all of them, and Hakkon and Jonaton she loved like brothers, and Sai was practically her grandfather. She honestly wanted to make them proud of her and happy that she was there, so happy that they’d fight to keep her with them.

Delia had listened to Amethyst’s calm recital of the attack on the village with horror. Even more so that Ivar and Sai had seemed unsurprised to hear about it. As they had lived at Crescent Lake, her early fears of being in a wilderness had faded—with that many people all in one place, it wasn’t really a “wilderness” so much as a temporary city, and the things she had feared, like bears and wolves and pards, if they’d had any sense, wouldn’t come within sniffing distance of Crescent Lake.

The convoy was nothing more nor less than the moving version of that temporary city. Animals, probably even weird magical animals, would hear it coming for a league, and avoid the river while they passed.

But not us. And now it wasn’t just bears, wolves, and pards she needed to think about.

So part of her was afraid.

And part of her didn’t want to disappoint anyone.

And part of her thought, basely, To all the hells with them! Isn’t it my right to choose to keep safe?

And yet another part scolded her for being so selfish.

With that war going on inside her, like a circle of debaters interrupting each other, she somehow fell asleep.

There was more than enough wood, fish, and game aboard this afternoon, so Briada asked Delia to take a turn on the first barge to watch for Ivar. He had ranged far ahead on Manta with Bay ahead of him to sniff out danger. He usually did this right after luncheon, in part to hunt out a good spot to anchor the barges for the night, but there was a special urgency the last three days. The river was definitely running narrower and faster now, and there was concern from Ivar that this could mean they were about to find at least part of the river impassable by barge. And so far they had not found whatever it was that Kordas and his informal council of farmers and the Landwise considered to be a good place to call their new home.

Delia had no idea what they were looking for—but then, she hadn’t asked, either. Maybe it was just “somewhere with enough farmland for all our people where no one is living at the moment,” because Ivar mentioned nearly every day that he’d seen signs of settlement—several columns of rising smoke in thin streams, for instance—that told him there was a village, or at least a building or two, not that far from the river. Which only made perfect sense; with no roads to speak of, the only way to travel to other people would be by the river, and the most reliable source of water without a well would be the river. Endars, who was Landwise along with his other powers, would generally say something like, “We wouldn’t want to try and settle here anyway,” so that more or less settled anyone suggesting something like sending for Kordas and seeing if they couldn’t negotiate with the potential neighbors.

The wind had flinty teeth today, but at least the sunlight warmed her a little. The beautiful leaves were gone; carpeting the riverbank, floating along the river. Here and there evergreens stood out starkly among the bare branches. She spotted Ivar in the distance, long before the others did. “Ivar’s coming!” she called, but in a spirit of resignation. He didn’t leave all that long ago. So it’s not a good night-anchor site he’s found.

“Hakkon!” Sai called. “Time to pull in again.”

With the same resignation she felt, they tied the barges up to the shore, and by the time they were done, Ivar had dismounted. “Luck’s run out!” he called, sounding far more cheerful than he had any right to, in Delia’s estimation. “Rapids ahead. This stretch of river is better than anything I passed, so it might as well be here we make base camp. I’ll walk perimeter now, an’ around sunup we can scout out a place to put a Gate to get past it all.”

And with that, Sai began unloading camping materials, while some of the others went to their barges to pack their own rough-camping gear.

A “base camp” turned out not to be any more elaborate than the usual night camp, but with one exception. Six horses had their charms muted; as long as their riders directed otherwise, they wouldn’t automatically try to get back to their barges. But if something happened, where the rider was not with the horse, or was incapacitated, the charm would bring them back as long as they could move.

This was because, in the morning, three pairs of riders were going to go scouting in different directions; one pair would travel along the current riverbank to see if things smoothed out ahead, one would go to the northwest, and one would go to the north-northeast. Nobody really wanted to go so much as a furlong back in the direction of the Empire, but if that was what it would take to find another navigable river . . . then that was where they would go, and hope that the river either bent westward again, or they could find a third river that was going the direction they wanted.

The first team, following the course of the river they were currently on, would be Briada Fairweather and Jonaton. They wouldn’t need to be Woodswise and able to map as Ivar and Hakkon were; they just needed to follow the river—for two days, or however long it would take to get past the bad stretch, whichever came first. It was Jonaton going, because if they found smooth water straight ahead, Jonaton would be able to prepare the site for the exit Gate. The second team, going into the deep unknown to the west, was Ivar and Bart Fairweather. The third team was Hakkon and Bret Fairweather.

That left all the mages (except Jonaton), and Delia and Alberdina, to mind the base camp. Four days, perhaps five. That was how long they would be here, with all of the people with experience in fighting gone. But they knew there was no choice in the matter; better send those who were adept with weapons out. If those left behind had to, they could barricade themselves in the barges. And if they lost all the horses at the base camp, they could still go on with the six the others were riding, and get more when the convoy caught up with them.

The last several nights, the mages had been working out how to create devices called “shield pods,” which, when armed and broken, would put up a barrier against most things—for a time. They were fortunate to have two mages who were extremely good with shields (which only spoke of tragic pasts, in Delia’s romantic mind) to take the lead in inventing these improvised versions, using mainly local found materials. Delia admitted to being a bit in awe of what she was a part of. She knew the mages were smart, but seeing them in motion was remarkable. Apparently, this inventing task was something they’d expect to have a salon or laboratory for, and yet, they were going to create it from twigs and mud? On a boat? Surrounded by weird animals and unknown danger? There they were, not only working the problems, but laughing and enjoying the process. It helped with Delia’s anxiety, if all was said honestly. One couldn’t help but be uneasy out here where anything might try to digest or poison you. Hearing the mages fearlessly making things, and loving it, made her feel safer.

So far, they hadn’t had much luck in keeping the shield pods up for very long; it was as grueling for them to craft the prototypes as if they were doing hard labor, so they were pretty seriously immersed in the work.

But she certainly wished they’d been more successful as she eyed the rocky shore where they were now anchored. “Is there anything I can do to help prepare the camp?” she asked, as they all unharnessed and unsaddled the horses and rubbed them down before turning them loose to browse.

“Take your crossbow and Venidel, and the two of you do some scouting for browse you can cut and haul back here,” Ivar said, patting his horse on the neck as a sign that she was free to meander to a patch of still-green grass she’d been eyeing. “They’re going to eat this spot clean by noon tomorrow, and I want them kept right by the barges while we’re gone. Hells, if there was an easy way, I’d put them on the barges.”