Page 62 of Into the West

“I’m very glad that our people decided to deal with stray animals themselves, instead of waiting for you to make an edict,” Isla continued, smoothly filling the moment. Then she turned and looked at the bed, where Sydney-You-Asshole was lounging with the boys. “You hear that, Sydney? No losing your collar. There are some people around here that wouldn’t think twice about shooting you.”

“Mama!” little Hakkon objected. “No one is going to shoot Sydney! He’s a good cat!”

Kordas bit his lip, because while he could be a reckless, bossy bruiser to other cats and most dogs, at least with the children, Sydney actually was a good cat. He put up with all manner of mauling from them, including being stuffed into doll clothes. They could tote him like a rag doll. But let an adult touch his Sacred Belly Fur, and said adult would draw back a bloody stump where his hand used to be.

Sydney looked at Isla with an expression that Kordas interpreted as “contempt,” but meowed something that sounded exactly like, “All right.”

So we have talking cats now?

Of course we have talking cats. We’re lucky we don’t have talking horses, with what we’ve put them all through. I should just be grateful that they aren’t dictating orders.

The scouts sat in silence and listened carefully to what Amethyst had to say. “Well,” said Sai, as Amethyst finished her calm, almost expressionless recitation of what was happening in the strange forest, “Now we know we can’t go back.”

“We know we can’t go back that way,” Jonaton corrected him. “What’s more important is what’s going to happen to any Impies that manage to follow us that far.”

Endars’s left brow shot up toward his hairline. “Impies?”

Jonaton shrugged, and reached for the salt. “Impies. It’s scornful and demeaning. They made me wear square-cut woolen trousers with no pockets for years, and I don’t forgive things like that. The point isn’t what I call our former Lords and Masters. My point is that if there is one thing that Impies cannot do, it’s keep their hands to themselves. If they lay eyes on that forest, they’re going to want to fell some of it, just out of purest curiosity. They’re going to want to uproot saplings. They’re probably even going to want to catch some of those dragonflies. And that’s before the trees fight back. Once they do that, the Impies will want to figure out how they can tame those trees, or use them for weapons. And then the spiders in the river?” He just let that hang there.

It was, in Jonaton’s words, “Officially too damn cold to sit around a fire at night,” so Sai was using the tiny stove in the equally tiny barge kitchen to make what he could, and he had Delia and Amethyst helping him. Delia was still able to catch geese, ducks, and the odd rabbit and squirrel, and Ivar hunted as he scouted ahead, but now the meals were very different. Cabbage leaves were used to wrap bits of food until the leaves were too hard to pry off the core, at which point the core got chopped very fine and added to a soup kettle that was always kept full of all the odds and ends and leftovers. Sai did make a fire on land, right near the barge when they stopped for the day, but no one was sitting around it at night. Instead, the initial flames were used to quickly broil whatever meat they had cut into strips, the bones went into the soup pot, and Sai would make up hand food for the following noonday meal with the meat and pickled onions. Supper was the soup: bones cooked until they were so soft you could actually eat them—Bay got those—chopped root vegetables, chopped squash, cabbage, dried beans. Breakfast was cooked overnight in the coals of the fire, an enormous pot of oat porridge with dried apples in it. Sai tried to vary the herbs and spices he put in. Sometimes he added a precious bit of honey. Bay got the leftovers of that, too, and ate it with a gusto that seemed odd to Delia. After all, there was no meat in it. She wondered why Sai didn’t put dried grapes or currants in it, but it seemed such things were bad for dogs. But he did have a sack of dried grapes they could dip into if they wanted something sweet. There was no more flatbread; it got tough and unappetizing when it was cold, and it was too cold to sit there next to the fire and cook it, so instead of that, they had some sort of hard biscuit that the Fairweathers called “field rations” to dip in the soup.

So at the moment, they were all crowded into the women’s barge where the kitchen was. Delia had retreated to her bunk with her bowl of soup and one of those biscuits. She had to scrunch into a corner to have enough room to eat, which restricted what she could see, but she could hear everything perfectly well. Ivar and Alberdina sat on Alberdina’s bunk, Briada and Bart took up Briada’s bunk and Bret part of the floor, and Hakkon and Jonaton were in the bunk reserved for the sick or injured. Everyone else had found a place to sit on the floor. Delia thought about offering someone bunk space, but it was a bit hard to get up here, regardless of the fact that the Fairweathers had somehow popped up into place in the upper bunk like a pair of goats. Amethyst was nearest the prow to keep the kitchen area clear, and her high voice carried very well back to where the bunks were. A soft mage-light enclosed in a cage in the middle of the ceiling cast a pleasantly dim glow over everything.

“You know, I almost wish the Impies would try taking that forest,” Hakkon said after a moment, punctuated only by slurping.

“That’s assuming that they’d lose; they might not. They might win,” Venidel pointed out. “I mean, at some point Imperial mages were powerful enough to kidnap a young Earth Elemental from the deeps of the earth, and not only keep it imprisoned, but hide it from its mother. It doesn’t do to underestimate them.”

“Particularly not the mages with the army,” Briada pointed out. “The ones in the Capital may have been lazy buggers, but the combat mages are sharp and ruthless and used to improvising.”

“They did some terrible things with the power they had,” Sai said gravely. “Imagine if they could control those trees. Imagine if they could walk that forest up to people they wanted to intimidate, and surrounded them with it. No getting in, no getting out.”

“I didn’t think those things could walk!” Bret exclaimed from the floor.

“I don’t know that they can,” Sai corrected. “But I also don’t know that they can’t.”

“Can we talk about something else?” Delia asked. “We all got past the thing, except for one pig. Don’t we need to look forward and not back?”

“They won’t like our news back at the fleet,” Ivar replied. “The further we go downriver, the stranger things get. Between us, just in the last few days we’ve seen bright red bare-skinned rodents mimicking the movements of frogs, moving in herds. Bushes that split, and split, so many times they look fuzzy, but they’re just masses of tiny blue thorns. Vines that form entire structures like they’d climbed a building, then the building vanished. Conjoined deer. Fish that emit smoke when they surface. Outcrops of crystals as tall as me. Solid rock that looks like flowing waterfalls in the light, with nests of mushrooms for the glowing eels in them. Animal ribcages arranged like a fenced ring and nothing growing inside. It’s getting worse.”

“Well, I have an idea for looking forward,” Briada put in. “Delia, you’re our special shooter. Would you also like to learn how to defend yourself at closer hand?” She tucked her now-empty bowl back behind her and leaned over the edge of her bunk so she could see everyone. “Lessons are open for all, actually. I’m thinking combat batons, to begin with. Then move into knives, then staffs, then swords.”

Not that long ago, Delia would have laughed at the idea. Now . . . well, as colder weather sent the fish to the bottom of the river where she couldn’t see them, the geese and ducks that were showing up were clearly migratory stragglers, and the rest of the animals along the river were spending as much time in their warm dens as they could (or hibernating altogether), there was less that she was useful for during the day. Gathering firewood for the entire day generally took no more than the morning.

And she liked the idea of being able to defend herself, even if it was with nothing more than a stick. “You aren’t going to break anything, are you?” she asked Briada, only half joking.

“Well, accidents happen, but I haven’t broken any weapons on a student yet.” Briada grinned.

“I’d be game for some of that,” Jonaton said unexpectedly.

“I would too,” Venidel added.

“Anyone else?” Briada asked. “No? Listen, no shame here. I can do some pretty nice woodcarving, and if we end up somewhere unable to move until spring, I’d be willing to teach anyone that, too.”

“I’m too lazy.” Endars uttered a very dry chuckle.

“I’m too old,” said Sai.

“I’d dispute that, Master Sai, but I wouldn’t accept you as a student if you wanted me to teach you,” Briada replied. “During the day we need you ready to do your finger-wiggling and chanting in case we run into something bad. And at night, well, I’m not teaching anyone at night. Three of you is all I can handle, anyway. Delia’s going to be wood-gathering in the morning; Ven, are you willing to take your beatings in the morning?”