We slogged up the soft muddy bank, Kasia’s feet sinking deep with every step, gouging holes in the earth that filled slowly in with water behind her.I sank down on the mucky grass.I was trembling with magic that wanted to spill out of me in every direction, uncontrolled.We’d moved too quickly.My heart was racing, still back there under the raining arrows, still in desperate flight, and not on a quiet deserted riverbank with waterbugs jumping over the ripples we’d made, mud staining my skirts.I’d been so long inside the castle, people and stone walls everywhere.The riverbank almost didn’t seem real.
Stashek sat down in a heap next to me, his small serious face bewildered, and Marisha crept over to him and huddled against him.He put an arm around her.Kasia sat down on their other side.I could gladly have lain down and slept for a day, a week.But Marek knew which way we’d gone.Solya would send eyes down the river to look for us.There was no time to rest.
I shaped a pair of crude oxen out of riverbank mud and breatheda little life into them, and built a cart out of twigs.We hadn’t been an hour on the road when Kasia said, “Nieshka,” looking behind us, and I drove them quickly into a stand of trees some way back from the road.A small haze of dust was drifting up from the road behind us.I held the reins, the oxen standing with plodding obedience, and we all held our breath.The cloud grew, unnaturally fast.It came nearer and nearer, and then a small troop of red-cloaked riders with crossbows and bared swords went flashing past.Sparks of magic were striking from the horses’ hooves, shod in steel caps that rang like bells on the hard-packed road.Some work of Alosha’s hands, now being turned to serve the Wood.I waited until the cloud was out of sight again up ahead before I drove our cart back onto the road.
When we drew into the first town, we found signs already posted.They were crudely, hastily drawn: a long parchment with my face and Kasia’s upon it, pinned to a tree next to the church.I hadn’t thought what it meant to be hunted.I’d been glad to see the town, planning to stop and buy food: our stomachs were pinching with hunger.Instead we pulled the cloaks over our heads, and rolled onward without speaking to anyone.My hands shook on the reins, all the way through, but we were lucky.It was market day, and the town was large, so close to the city; there were enough strangers around that no one marked us out, or demanded to see our faces.As soon as we were past the buildings, I shook the reins and hurried the oxen onward, quicker, until the village disappeared entirely behind us.
We had to pull off the road twice more, packs of horsemen flying past.And then once more late that evening, when another king’s messenger in his red cloak passed us going the other way, racing back towards Kralia, hoof-sparks bright in the dimming light.He didn’t see us, intent on his fast pace; we were just a shadow behind a hedge.While we were hiding, I caught sight of something dark and square behind us: it was the open doorway of an abandoned cottage, half lost in a stand of trees.While Kasia held the oxen Ihunted through the overgrown garden: a handful of late strawberries, some old turnips, onions; a few beans.We gave the children most of the food, and they fell asleep in the cart as we drove back onto the road.At least our oxen didn’t need to eat or rest, being made out of dirt.They would march on, all night long.
Kasia climbed onto the driver’s seat with me.The stars had come out in a rush, the sky wide and dark so far away from anyone living.The air was cold, still, too quiet; the cart didn’t creak, and the oxen didn’t huff or snort.“You haven’t tried to send word to their father,” Kasia said quietly.
I stared ahead, down the dark road.“He’s dead, too,” I said.“The Rosyans ambushed him.”
Kasia carefully took my hand, and we held on to each other as the cart rocked onward.After a little while she said, “The princess died next to me.She put the children in the wardrobe, and then she stood in front of it.They stabbed her over and over, and she just kept trying to stand up in front of the doors.”Her voice shook.“Nieshka, can you make a sword for me?”
I didn’t want to.Of course it was only sensible to give her one, in case we were caught.I didn’t fear for her: Kasia would be safe enough fighting, when blades just went dull on her skin and arrows fell away without scratching her.But she would be dangerous and terrible, with a sword.She wouldn’t need a shield, or armor, or even to think.She could walk through fields of soldiers like cutting oats, steady and rhythmic.I thought of Alosha’s sword, that strange hungry killing thing; it was tucked away into that magical pocket, but I could still feel its weight on my back.Kasia would be like that sword, implacable, but she wouldn’t only have one use.I didn’t want her to need to do things like that.I didn’t want her to need a sword.
It was a useless thing to want.I took out my belt-knife, and she gave me hers.I pulled the buckles off our belts and our shoes, and the pins off our cloaks, and took a stick off a tree as we passed it, and gathered all of it together in my skirt.While Kasia drove, I toldthem all to be straight and sharp and strong; I hummed them the song about the seven knights, and in my lap they listened and grew together into a long curved blade with a single sharpened edge, like a kitchen-knife instead of a sword, with small bright steel posts to hold the wooden hilt around it.Kasia picked it up and balanced it across her hands, and then she nodded once and put it down, under the seat.
—
We were three days on the road, the mountains growing steadily overnight, comforting in the distance.The oxen made a good pace, but we still had to duck behind hedges and hillocks and abandoned cottages every time riders came by, a steady stream of them.At first I was only glad whenever we managed to hide from them, too busy with fear and relief to think anything more about it.But while we peered over a hedge, watching a cloud vanishing away ahead, Kasia said, “They keep coming,” and a cold hard knot settled into the bottom of my stomach as I realized there had been too many of them just to be passing the word to look for us.They were doing something more.
If Marek had ordered the mountain passes closed, if his men had blockaded the tower; if they’d gone after Sarkan himself, tak-ing him by surprise while he fought to hold the Wood off from Zatochek—
There wasn’t anything to do but keep going, but the mountains weren’t a comfort anymore.We didn’t know what we would find when we got to the other side.Kasia rode in the back of the cart with the children all that day as the road began to gently climb into the foothills, her hand on the sword hidden beneath her cloak.The sun climbed high, warm golden light shining full on her face.She looked remote and strange, inhumanly steady.
We reached the top of a hill and found the final crossroads in the Yellow Marshes, a small well beside it with a watering-trough.The road was empty, although it had been trampled heavily on both sides, by feet and horses.I couldn’t guess if it was only ordinarytraffic or not.Kasia pulled up buckets for us to drink and wash our dusty faces, and then I mixed some fresh mud to patch up the oxen: they cracked here and there after a day’s walking.Stashek silently brought me handfuls of muddy grass.
We’d told the children, as gently as we could, about their father.Marisha didn’t quite understand, except to be afraid.She’d asked for her mother a few times already.Now she clung to Kasia’s skirts almost all the time, like a smaller child, and didn’t go out of sight of her.Stashek understood too well.He received the news in silence, and afterwards he said to me, “Did Uncle Marek try to have us killed?I’m not a child,” he added, looking at my face, as if I needed him to say so, when he’d just asked me such a thing.
“No,” I managed, through my tight throat.“He’s only letting the Wood drive him.”
I wasn’t sure Stashek believed me.He’d been quiet, ever since.He was patient with Marisha, who clung to him, too, and helped with the work whenever he could.But he said almost nothing.
“Agnieszka,” he said, while I finished plastering up the second oxen’s hind leg, and stood up to go wash the dirt off my hands.I turned to follow his gaze.We could see a long way back behind us, miles and miles.In the west, a thick hazy cloud of dust covered the road.It seemed to move, coming onward as we stood watching.Kasia picked Marisha up.I shaded my eyes and squinted against the sun.
It was a crowd of men marching: thousands of them.A stand of tall spears glittered at the front, among riders on horses and a great banner flying white and red.I saw a bay horse leading, a silver-armored figure on its back; next to it a grey horse with a white-cloaked rider—
The world tilted askew, narrowed, rushed in on me.Solya’s face leapt vividly out: he was looking right at me.I jerked my head away so hard that I fell down.“Nieshka?”Kasia said.
“Quick,” I panted, scrambling up, pushing Stashek towards theback of the cart.“He saw me.”
We drove into the mountains.I tried to guess how far behind us the army was.I would have whipped the oxen if that would have done any good, but they were going as fast as they could.The road was tumbled with rocks, narrow and twisting, and their legs began to crack and crumble quickly.There wasn’t any mud to patch them with anymore, even if I could have brought myself to stop.I didn’t dare use the quickening spell: I couldn’t see beyond the next turn.What if there were men up ahead, and I whisked us straight into their arms; or worse yet I threw us into midair over a canyon?
The left ox abruptly tumbled forward, its leg crumbling away, and smashed into clods of dirt against the rocks.The second one pulled us on a little farther, and then between one step and the next just fell apart.The cart tipped forward, unbalanced, and we all came down hard on our seats in a pile of twigs and dry grass.
We were deep in the mountains by then, the trees wizened and scrubby, and high peaks on either side of the twisting road.We couldn’t see far enough behind us to tell how close the army was.Usually it was a day’s walk across the pass.Kasia picked up Marisha, and Stashek got to his feet.He walked beside me doggedly, uncomplaining while we hurried, feet sore and the sharp thin air painful in our throats.
We stopped to catch our breath by a jutting outcrop with a tiny summer stream trickling; just enough to cup a handful for our mouths, and as I straightened up a raucous cawing near my head made me jump.A black crow with glossy feathers stared at me from the branch of a wizened tree clinging between rocks.It cawed again, loudly.
The crow paced us as we fled, hopping from branch to rock to rock.I threw a pebble at it, trying to make it go away; it only jumped away and cawed again, a sour triumphant note.Two more joined it a little farther on.The path snaked along the crest of the ridge, green grass rolling gently away to either side down to steep slopes.
We kept running.The path dived as one mountain pulled awayfrom it, leaving a sickening drop to the right.Maybe we were past the peak by now.I couldn’t stop running long enough to think about it properly.I nearly dragged Stashek along by his arm.Somewhere behind us, I heard a horse shriek: as if it had slipped, running too fast on the narrow mountain pass.The crows lifted into the air, circling, and went to go and see; all except for our one steady companion, hopping along, its bright eyes fixed on us.
The air was thin; we struggled and gasped for air as we ran.The sun was sinking.
“Stop!”someone far behind us shouted, and an arrow sailed down, clattering against the rocks over our heads.Kasia stopped, pushed Marisha into my arms when I caught up to her, and took the place at the rear.Stashek threw a frightened look back at me.
