‘The Midden’

  A statement of accusation as he would not ask it as a question.

  ‘Craddon please. If we go this way, will we see fewer people’

  She reached her hand towards him in the dark to where he was above her. Waiting to support him as he fell the small step hoping that his heart and his health would keep.

  The smell was horrendous. But it mixed with the stench of burning. Of soot that caught the lungs from the flames and the screams a little further off. Distant screams and metal scrapes in the darkness.

  Her hand silhouetted in a red smeared sky – the scar along her palm. She saw him sign in the air in silhouette perhaps a lightness spell. She caught his paper skinned hand and she felt the weight of him against her briefly. Hardly more weight than her own.

  He breathed heavily but kept moving. The soft and noxious path petered off to the nearby stream.

  ‘Manchona?’

  Her face twisted in pain.

  ‘It was she who told me to find you’

  She saw his shadow stop briefly and felt his steps stopped. Another anguished cry pierced the dark and a woman’s scream. The battlements could not be seen at this distance.

  He moved again.

  ‘Sully will have released horses to the downs and taken the path to the South West.’

  Wreaking of sewage, soot, sweat and fear they continued along the path.

  The back of the inn that was boarded. Or, as they got closer, had been attempted to be boarded closed. Forces would come this way soon to ransack.

  ‘Go to the back. He may have left word’

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  She opened the gate of the rear yard. It was quiet and dark although a torch had been left in the alcove.

  Craddon moved to the inside the inn and cast around the bar and fireplace in the uneven light of a fire left to embers. The place was strangely quiet but still drunken figures in the corner. She confirmed they were drunk not dead. By their clothes travelers not soldiers.

  She heard paper rustle and looked up.

  ‘We have most likely until sunrise. We should be well away by then.’

  The larder steps led to a scene of hurried packing but she found a sack and sufficient supplies.

  Out in the yard he had started the water pump but was now resting exhausted on the nearby stone step, his face strained.

  She was gentle on his skin of with the rough soap and as she changed him reflected that this was all wrong – that the manservant should be here. Stripping off her own filthy clothing near a wall she washed and then stuffed it all in a sack she’d found with the provisions.

  ‘He left the cob’

  He had little breath but in determination held to the horse’s pummel as she led them from the yard. He directed her off the path almost immediately.

  ‘Through here to that stand of trees then beyond. About a mile from here we will re-join the trail’.

  There was a faint sound of marching boots coming closer.

  ‘Is that our Taranthan forces?’

  ‘There are none around here and how would they know? Too fast. It’s more of the same dark Kevarthin’.

  She heard them slow as the forces came towards the inn just as they reached the stand of trees.

  ‘Do we hide?’

  ‘Go further along here and down into that gully’

  She held the nose of the horse close to her soothing the creature, her ears listening, her heart in her chest held close. Craddon again lifted his head focused this time with no signing. She sensed when he had done whatever was needed as he relaxed into exhausted wariness.

  They waited. There were shouts as if orders from the distant inn. But no fire.

  Slowly the light began to rise. Sounds of creatures that came with the morning.

  She had dropped into a doze but now she heard him move.

  ‘Lets move again. Almost certainly they have left troops. If we come across them do not speak. Best if you hid your face.’

  As they found the path again they heard hoofbeats come over the rise behind them and slow as they came up to them.

  She felt him stiffen while on the horse but made no move to change direction or halt. She kept her head down, her hearing for all the sounds, her heart hammering and was surprised her hand did not shake on the lead.

  She smelt their horses, their leathers, their sweat and from the corner of her eye saw their black cloaks dusty from the . It seemed that the riders only glanced at them as they went past but then focused on the road and their errand ahead.

  ‘I should teach you how to do that. Remind me when we next stop’

  ‘You cloaked us?’

  ‘I made us of less interest than what they were pursuing.’

  ‘What were they pursuing?’

  He gave her a crooked smile.

  ‘If they only they knew.’ He looked over to where they had disappeared into the folds of the road. ‘Us.’