Cultivated fields gave way to open steppe, and Breea turned in the saddle to look back. Her mountains were distant shadow, edged with a brightness of morning sun. Swallowing the desire to turn and ride back to the comfort of boulders and trees, she put her back to them and urged Letet after Taumea.
Calm and watchful, he set a hard pace across the rolling terrain. Following his lead, she took careful stock of the horizon. The grass grew thick, reaching to her knees, and its sound in the wind became familiar. Pushing through it slowed the horses, so Taumea took to following animal paths where they led a westerly course.
The grasslands were alive with birds and mice, shrews, grass-rats, and insects of countless types. She saw no sign of Timaret marmots, the ones Valiena loved to cook, but that was to be expected so near a village. Prairie-deer droppings were numerous, and their networked trails made for easy passage, but the fleet animals kept a wary distance, vanishing into swales or retreating over hillcrests as soon the riders came in sight. There were also snakes, some quite large, and of course spiders and ticks. Worst of all were blood-feeding flies with eyes like polished, pattered gems. The hum of their approach made both mount and rider skittish.
Clouds swept up as the day passed, and Breea watched with trepidation as the mountains vanished from sight. Wondering how Taumea kept his bearings with the sun gone, she studied the contours of the landscape, and kept watch on the sky to see if she could sense the sun through the clouds. At a rest for the horses, she watered her lodestone cup. The small stone, floating on its cloudwood float, showed Taumea’s path to be true. Ahead, the land rose into smooth, steep-sided hills that made her think of a herd of horse rumps.
Following a dry wash, they wound their way into the hill country. The grasses grew short and varied here, giving the hills a rangy look accented by protrusions of patterned stone. Rounding a bend in the wash, she flinched, then muttered to herself to be still. Taumea glanced up at what she’d seen, a set of stone outcrops on a hillcrest looking like a line of men or beasts. He said nothing.
It set her to thinking about the battles of recent days. Vivid in her memory were the faces of the men she had wounded and killed, and warriors bellowing her name like boys at a tourney. Why would gateguard and kingsmen celebrate her kills?
"Why did they cry my name?"
Taumea hid a grin by taking a drink from a skin hanging from his saddle horn. She glared at him. More maleness was not what she was looking for, and even less any that laughed at her.
Taumea said, "You are like a fresh-grown mare who thinks she possesses still the body of a filly, not knowing that her kick can fell a bear."
Breea was disappointed at his choice of animal. Why couldn’t he think of her as a cat?
He sensed her doubt, but misinterpreted its origin.
"Then let us count coin," he said. "You are the child of a Tetr-Sanis, and favored aspirant of the current Tetr. You have had battle training with Bay-ope, a famous warrior, who is also a Third Sanis Weapons Scholar, now captain of the Tomeguard. You slew a Nagra bear before your fifteenth winter, won the Apprentice Tourney at seventeen, are the youngest woman to make Sanis in a thousand winters, battled and slew the white wolf, are the only woman ever to train as Tomeguard, have half the young men in the library stumbling on flat ground when you pass. You forest-run like a deer, climb trees like a forestcat, and among the rocks are as sure-footed as the mountain ram. A bow has not been crafted which can meet your sling for distance."
Breea shook her head.
Taumea shook his in gentle mockery. "What do you expect of men? To what woman would the son of a Meric king bind himself? And Lord Ierra Domatea? And all his kingsmen? At your word they would cry ‘Death!’ and kill for your whim."
"Enough," said Breea.
"I recall our first meet. You turned a scrap among stable boys into a rule-ordered tournament. They—"
"Windbound," said Breea, interrupting. "What does that mean?"
"Words," said Taumea, "are shaped of wind. A spoken oath is a breath of air, which binds a man. To their thought, no man may feign goodwill at table, song, travel, and battle. Know a person in these and you will know them for true. If one is Windbound, then one cannot hear their cry for aid and not go; one cannot hear of their need and not provide. You are Windbound. I know no other way to say it."
After riding in silence for a while, Taumea pulled from a coat pocket a short brass flute. It looked familiar to Breea, but she couldn’t place it.
"From Bepleed," he said, experimenting with a few notes.
"Bepleed?"
Taumea shrugged. "We are Windbrothers."
It sounded appealing, but Breea wondered what being bound to a man like Bepleed meant. Ston Meric was one tale, but Bepleed?
"He is heartless. He would have killed those people from the Urtchra."
Taumea frowned. "Bepleed is an honorable man."
"Sssshp—" said Breea, imitating an arrow’s passage as it missed its mark, as he was missing her point.
"Word and deed are barely kin, Breea. You should know enough to know threat from act."
"Would he have been merciful? Those were families."
"He is quick to anger. There are reasons. The hillfolk had stolen the wood. What they did with it was not the matter."
"Cooking food and warming children is no matter? There can be no honor in slaying folk for lack of an evening fire."
"The hillfolk took wood placed for the use of others. They were wrong to do so. Fennash honor demanded he punish them. It would be a deed of little worth, yet it remains honorable."
"You cannot believe this," said Breea.
"Every man," said Taumea, "has in him a way for what is necessary to be that man. To each, their own is all. Only scholars ponder the worth of all beliefs against some ideal."
"And if his beliefs are wrong?"
Taumea considered. "Then honor is in question. Provided that you are truly wrong. A difficult thing to judge. Against what do you measure?"
"Against any measure," said Breea. "How can such cruel intent make Bepleed an honorable man?"
"The honor of men may not weigh in your measures, Breea, but Bepleed is a blade of true steel compared to the pitted corruption of most. Fury and heart’s agony throw his judgment. His people are driven and slaughtered. He stands most watches because his dreams are soaked in the blood of his kinsmen."
Breea understood bloody dreams. She wondered when Taumea had a chance to get so close to Bepleed. Something stiff in the way her friend sat his horse said that he did not wish to talk further. She gazed at him, remembering a ragged boy of thirteen who could outfight anyone less than six years older, even those in guard training. Taumea was essentially her brother, but he had never told her, nor even Valiena, where he was from. Bay-ope knew, she was sure, but never spoke of it. She’d run over this far too many times over the years, but the mystery always drew her back.
As full dark fell, they made a simple camp with no fire. The ground was soft with deep layers of old grass, and she longed to settle onto them. She tucked her braid down her shirt, stepped over to Taumea, and indicated that she’d like a hand taking off her chainmail shirt.
Taumea merely looked at her. She sighed, and reconciled herself to sleeping in the armor. During her Tomeguard siege training, she’d spent an entire fortnight sleeping on the hard stone of Limtir’s great bailey in armor far more elaborate and uncomfortable. This was but a single soft piece, but sleeping in any held no appeal. It was forever catching at her hair. She’d have to tie it up, which made sleep even less pleasant.
Taumea took first watch, and sleep rushed in, but not gently. In her dreams Breea stood knee deep in a cold river of blood, slaughtering men, horses, and things she could never identify. Something vast and unseen raced down the flood toward her. She woke gasping.
Sitting up, she hugged her knees to her chest. When she looked over at Taumea, she caught the glitter of reflected starlight from his eyes.
The next day, Breea read in the saddle.
The Breylach people, before they built Limtir, fought an invasion on a thousand fronts in a war of imagination between destroyer and preserver. Disease swept vast forests of alder, cherry, and oak. Swarms of warped beasts roamed the land in concert with malevolent earth, and aggressive weather walked the landscape on legs of lighting.
Letet halted. Looking up, Breea saw that the sun had set. She dismounted with a stumble. After wrapping the book in its oilcloth, she stretched and groaned. Taumea began to cut handfuls of grass, tying them into bundles in the plainsfolk style. He was planning a fire. Pleased, Breea joined him and they soon had a nice pile. Taumea was quiet, for which she was grateful.
As he cooked them a hot meal, she brushed the horses, looking at the hills around her. A hundred thousand people had lived here. All of it was gone. Trees and towns, even rivers had been slaughtered, but not without fierce and desperate resistance. Ultimately the Breylach met the enemy with horrific weaves of their own. One such, woven by a hundred Breylach, had blinded an entire legion, ten thousand men, by turning their eyes to wood. In the end, when the final armies of each side had lain rotting in pools of poisoned water beneath broken, lifeless trees, all that remained were the strongest Alach upon either side. In the battles that followed, weaves of such hatred were fashioned that the soil itself was burned away. Ajalay’s notes in the margin speculated that the final battlefields were now the Okfoa, the barren stone and gully lands south of the Timaret where even the hardy plains grasses found no purchase.
Grateful for the warmth of Taumea’s fire in light of her dark thoughts, she accepted a wooden bowl of thick, hot gruel boiled with dried meat and slices of dried apple. Staring into the cook fire, she turned her attention inward. The power there felt…strong. Strong enough to destroy a forest, or slay ten thousand men? No, but its intensity frightened her. Using fear like a bridge, the heat roiled up. With a frightened gasp that made Taumea look at her, she tried to push the essence back down, but her will merely sank into it. Suddenly, she was listening, feeling the whole of the land around her. Power billowed, searing her skin as it flowed out of her. It touched the cook fire and the flames roared, consuming all their fuel. Taumea threw himself away from the heat, drawing a dagger in the same motion. Concern for Taumea lent her strength of will, and with a twist of effort she knotted a boundary. Power flow snapped off like a broken branch, falling away to nothing, leaving her gasping in the echo of hot pain.
Taumea was beside her, helping her to sit back, a gentle hand on her shoulder. Ashamed, she couldn’t look at him, fearing both what she was and his certain disappointment in her for a failure that had made such a beacon of the fire. A waft of acrid smoke caused them both to look at the fire. It was a four-foot ring of blackened grass two feet deep, down to scorched soil, with burning edges. Taumea began stomping out the flames.