River Secrets, Page 2

  He passed the weeks chopping wood, slinging for squirrels and hares so his ma’s dinner pot never lacked meat, wrestling his young nephews and nieces to the ground, and in turn being wrestled down by his legion of big brothers.

  “But why do you have to go off again, Razo?” His mother ripped the hide off a dead hare, the latest offering from Razo’s sling.

  “I’m a member of Bayern’s Own,” said Razo. “It’s the king’s own hundred-band, the best of the soldiers, and I’m one of them. It’s an honor. It’s like…” He could think of nothing in her own life to compare it with. The thought made him feel already hundreds of leagues away.

  When early spring began to shiver the cold from the air, Razo’s excitement tickled him awake at first light. Talone chose me, he remembered. I’m going on an urgent, dangerous mission. Me, Razo of the Forest. He spent two days working till dark to ready his ma for the next marketday, then made his farewells. Rin became quiet and fluttery as if she would miss him, which made his heart pinch. Brun, his oldest brother, grappled him into the hangman’s hold.

  “Not running after that Bettin again, are you, Razo?” said Brun. The other brothers laughed. At age fifteen, Razo had thought he was too young to propose marriage to the pretty, strong-armed Forest girl. Then, on hearing that she was suddenly engaged to Offo, he had run across three days of Forest in two. He’d arrived before the wedding, red faced, triumphant, gasping for breath, and spewing words that sounded like poetry to his own ears. Bettin had just laughed and rubbed his head.

  “But I love Offo,” she’d said. “Good old Razo.”

  His brothers could tease him about his height or the number of scars he was collecting on his body. He could take the joke when they said he would die having never won a fair wrestling match. But the topic of Bettin still smarted too much. He’d imagined being with her always. Now when he closed his eyes, he had trouble imagining anything else.

  But it was useless to fight back, so he just went limp in Brun’s hold until his brother dumped him on the ground.

  With a last kiss for his ma, Razo ambled on his way. He felt a chill skitter across his back and kept looking behind him, fearing that the Forest had folded in half and the homestead ceased to exist. His gut felt hollow, so he tried to fill it with his ma’s nutty travel bread. That worked pretty well.

  Two days of walking later, he found preparations in the capital well under way, horses exercised, barrels and casks loaded, tents rolled. Razo felt the energy like a muscle twitch. Journeys always took too long, but never as long as the readying.

  He was hanging around the stables, chaffing the boys as they shoveled manure, when one of Bayern’s Own, a wiry man with a nose that looked sharp enough to have its own sheath, came up close to Razo. He stank of ale and appeared to be proud of it.

  “Perfect,” Razo said under his breath.

  “Ho there, sheep boy! I’ve been wanting you to explain something to me … to you, to me… about you going to Tira, huh? Why’re you going, huh? And I’m not. That’s what I’d like to know.”

  Razo winced. “You’re aware that you smell like a privy?”

  Two other soldiers gathered in behind the first, and emboldened by his friends, the man poked Razo in the shoulder. Several times. Razo gritted his teeth and kept his eyes on the ground. It never did any good to fight back.

  “You’re no soldier. You’re just friends with the high and mighty, eh?”

  “What’s this, Razo?” Enna stalked away from her horse, brush still in hand. “Your pretty friends here are certainly loud about their opinions.”

  “This has nothing to do with you,” said the man.

  She folded her arms. “If you’ve a problem with my friend, then it has everything to do with me, Lord Puke Breath. Why don’t you explain the situation, I’m oh so eager to hear.”

  In short order, there was a very pleasing shouting match going on. Razo settled back into a stack of hay to enjoy Enna at her best.

  “Aren’t you going to help?” asked one of the stablehands.

  Razo laughed. “Enna can handle three brawlers with her eyes closed. If there were twenty, then I might do something. I’d go find Finn.”

  “I’d dig my own grave,” said another stable-hand, his back turned to Razo, “afore I’d sit back and let someone else fight my battle.”

  Razo opened his mouth but found himself suddenly emptied of jokes. Why fight my own battles if everyone else does it so much better? he asked himself, but the thought irritated him, a bug bite he could not scratch.

  By the time Talone finally heard the riot and took over, Enna had the soldiers looking like puppies with their tails between their legs.

  “What is the ruckus?” A stout woman draped in too much yellow fabric came lumbering into the stable. She caught sight of Razo lounging in the hay. “Are you responsible for all this uproar? This is a work area and closed to loafers. Who are you?”

  “I’m Razo, a member of Bayern’s Own,” he said, stopping himself from adding, “Loafing is just a hobby of mine.”

  “Bayern’s Own? But you’re a child.”

  Razo looked up to the sky. “I’m not a child, I’m just short.”

  “Hm,” she said through her nose. “I don’t know what kind of man this Talone is to enlist boys….”

  “I am Talone,” he said, approaching. “And who are you to interfere with one of my men?”

  “I’m Lady Megina, cousin to His Highness the king and chosen ambassador to Tira. I may as well tell you right now that I’ll expect cooperation from my military escort, not demands.”

  Talone crossed his arms, appearing twice as wide. “Regardless, my men have one captain, and you are not it.”

  Her eyes widened briefly, like the upward surge in flames when new fuel is added. “Very well. You’ll command your men, Captain Talone, and I’ll command you.”

  They strode away in opposite directions while the stable-hands snickered into their shoulders.

  Razo had heard of Lady Megina before, a childless widow of twenty years and cousin to the king. Geric had credited her for ending a water dispute in southeast Bayern and managing her brother’s estate with precision. Still, she could have been nicer.

  The night before departure, Isi and Geric held a feast for the travelers but had not shown up by the time the feasting began. Razo was on his second turkey leg and fifth berry pie when Isi climbed onto the bench next to him, resting her elbows on the table, her brow on her hands.

  “What’s happened?” asked Enna.

  Isi met eyes with Talone, seated across from her. Her voice quavered. “We’ve had word from Tira. Over the winter, many Tiran citizens started calling for a return to war. It got quite bad, and to appease them, the assembly agreed to vote on the matter in the fall.”

  Finn shook his head and seemed likely to strike something.

  “That won’t give us much time,” said Talone.

  “If you go.” Isi looked up, as though to keep her eyes dry. “I’m thinking of …of canceling the mission. By the time you arrived, Lady Megina would have less than a month to meet with the assembly members before they all leave for their summer estates. Once they return to Ingridan, she’d have two more weeks at most until the vote. It’s not enough time to sway their opinion in favor of peace, and I’m afraid your company would have a tricky time just keeping her alive. Keeping all of you alive.” She took Enna’s hand and began to talk faster. “But I’m also so afraid that if you don’t go, there’ll be no chance. It’s easy to believe complete strangers are your enemies. If they knew us…But how can you go, Talone? How can I bear to risk all of you? You’d be traveling into a hornets’ nest.”

  Razo scratched at the flea bites on his arms, then realized they were goose bumps. He was not much fond of hornets’ nests.

  Talone stood. “Bayern’s Own.” The rattle of dishes stilled, all faces turned. “Our queen informs me that Tira has used the winter to stir up thoughts of war. If we go, the people just might decide to cut
our throats one by one. The queen is giving us a choice. Even if we go, it’s likely we will fail. Are you willing to take that chance? Will you march with me to Tira?”

  The quiet that followed made the room feel tight and small and airless. Then Finn thumped his javelin against the tiled floor. Razo smiled at him and echoed with his own javelin. Enna banged her fist on the table. The sound of two javelins and a fist took up the whole room, lonely and inviting at once. Then a clatter of replies tossed against the walls. The rumble unified, everyone knocking in time, the entire room becoming one drum under one hand. Geric came up behind Isi, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. She pressed her head against his hands, and when voices joined the javelins, shouting, “Bayern! Bayern!” her shoulders shook with a sob.

  The thumps and shouts pulled at Razo’s skin and clattered against his own heartbeat. He banged his javelin louder, needing to join that noise, inexplicably afraid of being left out.

  3

  Burning Again

  Spring poked out everywhere. Leaf tips jutted from twigs like stuck-out tongues; dark buds and curly ferns elbowed their way into life. Because the party was journeying forward into spring and south into warmth, the plants appeared to erupt around them, quick and desperate. And the pace of the horses, the pace of the world, seemed to keep time with the pounding of the javelins still echoing in Razo’s mind.

  Razo often rode near the front with Talone, where Enna led the way by listening to the wind. He knew only pieces of how Enna and Isi had gone to the country of Yasid last year and found a way to share their gifts with each other—the speech of wind and fire. Now in addition to being able to pull heat from the air and send it blazing into fire anywhere she chose, Enna possessed Isi’s ability to hear the voice of the wind murmur about what it had blown by and even direct it to change its course. Talone liked to have Enna near the front, listening. She often knew in advance if anything unexpected lay ahead—a damaged bridge, a wildcat.

  Other times, Razo drifted in the company, lingering in the rear or trotting through the middle where the soldiers and camp workers tangled and produced the merriest talk. The company avoided the topic of Tira and what might await them, perhaps to keep the tension from burying them all alive. In the strained levity, pranks flourished, and Razo knew to shake out his bedroll before climbing in. Knew it now, anyway. Grass snakes were harmless, but could he help it if he yelped like a pup when that cold, scaly body licked across his bare feet?

  Often the laughter was strained; often the dinner songs wobbled and caught in throats. Razo knew he was not the only one remembering the foreboding sound of javelins clamoring in the banquet hall and the stillness afterward that had given him pause to imagine war again.

  Four weeks into their journey south, Razo woke in the darkest part of night to weeping. The sound of it seemed wrong, like an instrument played out of tune. The stifling feel of a new-moon night, the air-cracking sob, the early-spring chill riding a breeze—all reminded Razo of the birth night of his baby sister. Four years old, he’d awakened to his mother crying in the night and found her curled up and weeping on the ground as the labor pains bore down. He had crouched beside her, crying, too, begging for a way to make it better, until a neighbor had arrived to shoo him outside with his brothers. The next morning, in the joy of a baby girl, everyone seemed to have forgotten the pain; but Razo never forgot.

  He crawled out of his bedroll, taking his sword with him in case there was something he could fight to stop the suffering. He did not have to go far.

  Enna slept in a small tent near the ambassador’s, and Finn slept before the opening. As Razo approached, he could make out Finn’s empty bedroll. From inside the tent, he heard their voices.

  “It’s all right, Enna, tell me.” Finn’s voice in a whisper. “It helps to tell me.”

  “I thought I was … was there again…. Finn, I was there again….” Enna could barely speak through the sobs.

  “You were dreaming, dreaming.”

  “It was that last battle and I…was … burning…and, and, and a man came at me … he was on fire….”

  “Shh, all right, it’s all right.”

  “No, listen, he was on fire … was coming after me … because of what I did … and it was so real.” She paused, trying to catch her breath. “It wasn’t real?”

  “The battle was almost a year ago,” whispered Finn, “and you didn’t mean to hurt anyone, you just had to stop the war, remember? The man in your dream isn’t real.”

  “Oh…” She hiccuped and slowed her breath, then it tightened again, and before a rush of weeping overtook her she said quickly, “But I’m sorry, I’m so sorry….”

  “I know, love, I know. Lean into me, I’ve got you.”

  Razo’s head and hands felt as heavy as night. There was no enemy he could battle, nothing he could do, so he returned to his bedroll and stared up at the empty places between stars.

  In the morning, Finn’s uniform was not as tidy as usual and Enna’s eyes were red.

  “How’s it, Razo?” she said, cheerful as ever.

  “Morning, Enna-girl,” Razo said as he fumbled with a horse blanket. It was no easy task to saddle Bee Sting while the mare was nuzzling his pockets for stowed morsels.

  Enna left to put out the breakfast fires. She lit them and put them out each day, a small service she was eager to do whenever camp workers were not watching. Outside Bay­ern’s Own, her identity as the fire-speaker was still a secret.

  As soon as Enna was out of earshot, Razo turned to Finn.

  “Last night…,” he whispered. “That happens often?”

  Finn rubbed his eyes. “The last few months, maybe once every week or more. Isi believes Enna will get better with time, as the memories fade. I think Enna needs a chance to use her talents without being destructive.” He looked back at Enna leaning over a newly dead fire, then turned and heaved a saddle onto his horse. “It haunts her, Razo, all that she did. I try to sleep near so she needn’t wake up alone. In the palace, I used to sneak into her room, sleep beside her.”

  “Yes, I bet you did,” said Razo, elbowing Finn and raising his eyebrows.

  Finn looked sharp. “I won’t have you thinking that I treat her as a wife when we aren’t wed. I sleep beside her to comfort her, that’s all. I would never dishonor her.”

  Razo smirked. “Then you’d better marry her.”

  “She won’t.”

  “Won’t what?” asked Enna, coming upon them.

  “Marry me,” Finn said with a note of humor.

  Enna rolled her eyes. “Is that the only tune you know, piper? Play a different one or I’ll take my coin elsewhere. I feel years too young to be having babies.”

  “Shame,” said Razo. “I for one am raring to see what kind of frightening mongrel would be your offspring. Finn’s wide shoulders, Enna’s black hair, Finn’s large hands, Enna’s scheming look…”

  Finn smiled as if he saw the baby in his imagination and thought it beautiful.

  The next day, the party crossed Bayern’s border and waited for their Tiran escort. Under a shivering sun in a flat landscape, they scratched themselves and played tired pranks so numerous, Talone demanded they cease at once. When the bathing and laundry and shaking off dust peaked from boring to exasperating, Razo escaped into a copse of river trees to hunt.

  For Razo, the worst part of journeying was always the bleak, road-weary, stale, and pale food—slosh that was potatoes and meat, somehow; hard little bricks that Conrad tried to convince him were actually bread; disks of salted meat Razo tied to a stick and declared made a mighty fine ax. So Razo’s grumbling belly often drove him to hunt for the cookpot. He kept his sling at his hip with a pouch of stones. Some of the soldiers mocked him for wearing a simple Forest weapon so openly, but none protested when he added fresh meat to dinner.

  The river beside their camp was spring full, the brushy river trees in heavy leaf, but strangely he could see no squirrels darting about, no fat quail on the bank quivering
to hold still. Instead of hunting meat, Razo passed an hour pelting an upright boulder that begged to be a target. When his stomach reminded him that he had not eaten in two entire hours, he picked back up the nicest stones, working his way around the boulder.

  Then he saw the body. It was so charred, he could not tell what clothing it had worn, not even if it was a man or a woman. He touched the foot. Cool and hard. It had been there a while.

  Suddenly the chirping of insects seemed urgent, warning of something, pleading for Razo to run away. It struck him ridiculous that after the unmitigated slaughter of a battlefield, just one dead body could frighten him motionless, but still he could not move. He imagined his own skin ached, was aware of the heat of his breath on his lips. His gaze was swallowed up in the white wilderness of the river, and he realized now how loud it was, loud enough to drown the sounds of a murderer approaching, rocks crackling underfoot.

  Get going, you numbskull. He forced himself up and sauntered away, very casually, just in case anyone was watching. As soon as he left sight of the river, he broke into a run, not slowing until he had fetched Talone.

  “Is it Bayern, do you think?” asked Razo as they crouched over the body. With Talone next to him, the insect chatter lost its menace and the tree shadows seemed to take a step back.

  “Not from our party. At noon count, no one from our camp was missing, and you say it’s been dead for at least several hours.”

  It gave Razo a little thrill that his captain trusted his opinion. “Is there a settlement nearby? Maybe some vil­lager…” He examined the area, frowning.

  “What?” asked Talone. “You have that look as if your mind is working.”

  Razo smirked. “For once, huh? I was just noticing the ground isn’t blackened around it. The body wasn’t burned here, and I hope it didn’t walk here on its own. So why didn’t the murderer dump the body in the river? Or even in that copse? The boulder and trees hide the body from our camp, but we’ve a good look at the road from here. Coming from the other direction, our Tiran escort would’ve spotted this body, no question.”