The Hands of Lyr (Five Senses Series Book 1)

  “We follow them.” Not a question but a statement. She reached for the clay cup which hung from the windlass and dipped out of the last bucket the last of the water there. “Drink,” she ordered now. “You have eaten road dust long enough to be one with these snorters, even as Hanka and I are.”

  She used her elbow to make an Ushur, busy gulping water, give her more room.

  Kryn drank. Once he had handed back the cup he looked to Jarth’s headquarters. “Perhaps…” He did not finish but strode purposefully toward the door through which he had so shortly come. Nosh followed him to see that he gave a determined shove to the heavy table, sending it a half length away from where it had stood.

  He was down on his knees now, running his fingers across the splintering, ancient wood of the flooring. With an exclamation he pulled Jarth’s dagger out of his belt and set it to a place his fingers now pressed, and bore weight upon it. Three of the planks, creaking and cracking, were slowly forced up and Kryn speedily grabbed into the cavity below. He brought out what could only be a bow well wrapped, below it was a quiver of arrows, and then there were three bags, plump near to bursting. Sitting back on his heel Kryn surveyed this treasure.

  “Rolf’s work.” He had freed the bow from its wrapping and caressed it with his fingers. “None better in the company.” He laid the bow beside him and tossed Jarth’s knife into the air, catching it skillfully. “And I wondered why he sacrificed you for a pointer!”

  “A bow, arrows.” Nosh nodded but now she was more interested in the bags. “What else?”

  He untied the cord of the largest and shook out an array of small tools. There was a hone stone to reedge a blade, two needles for leather work, a snap-spark with a new in-stone. Below those, a roll of well-cured skin for the mending of trail boots and clothing if need be.

  The other two bags were as useful. One Nosh seized upon as soon as the scents from it arose at its opening. This was Layon’s, surely, well selected and beyond price. The other held a packet of gritty salt and a roll of smoked laster meat. Small provender but when taken from what must be the company’s own shrunken supplies a gift beyond measure. It was plain that Lord Jarth had had confidence in Kryn. Enough that he not only expected the eventual arrival of his subordinate but also that the Hold Heir would follow the trail he promised would be set.

  As Kryn reexamined all the finds for the second time, Nosh became aware of a small hand touching her shoulder, and she looked up at Hanka.

  “This be a shadow place,” the child said slowly, glancing back at the door as if she feared that she might be overheard. “We do not stay?”

  “We do not,” Kryn answered decisively. “There will be a trail set, cunningly as only Jarth’s scouts can contrive. Soon we shall take it. But…” Suddenly a look of uncertainty crossed his face as he regarded Hanka. “We shall be heading into the Heights. Those are no ranges for beasts such as yours. There is forage in the land hereabouts, loose your herd leader and they will survive—take them up and…”

  Hanka crossed in front of Nosh to face him, a red tinge rising beneath the brown of her dusty cheeks. She planted her small, callused hands on her hips, her lower lip pushed out a fraction and then she said:

  “What know you of Ushurs, armsman? How many have you herded and tended? Where I go Bashar goes, and the rest follow. There may be little forage up there”—she jerked her head in what might be the general direction of the lowering Heights—“but when there be lean times they live on their back fat. How else can they winter? Also they can find food when you think there is none. You go, the Lady goes, Hanka goes, and so the Ushurs.”

  So set she was on that, that nothing Kryn could add in the way of protest might prevail. Nosh thought she knew what was raising his anger and feeding his frustration. A scout could skim the countryside unseen, but what effective scout ever took a concealed trail with a woman, a child, and eight large beasts in his wake? Almost she could have smiled but she did not—she was sure that what seemed to her to have a measure of humor would mean the opposite to Kryn.

  Even though they were agreed to set out on the trail, there were preparations to be made. Nosh took the too large and shapeless outer garments Hanka had been wearing, and, with her knife, cut them closer in size to the small girl’s wiry body. All scraps were carefully saved and Hanka, herself, produced a rough bag of tufts of Ushur wool gathered from bushes where the herd had wandered.

  Kryn made repairs on their own boots and now he cobbled some for Hanka, using smooth bark for the outer parts and lining that with the fleece bits, anchoring it all with odd pieces of leather from the store Jarth had left.

  They overhauled also what they had in their packs, Nosh making a special place for the supplies left by Layon together with those she already carried. Hanka came to her when she was sorting out those and squatted down to watch. Nosh found herself telling the little girl the use of each she handled even as Dreen had done for her long ago—or it seemed long ago.

  At the suggestion of Hanka they checked the hooves of each Ushur, a liberty the animals certainly would not have allowed had not their herder soothed them into it. And from her ointments Nosh spared one which Hanka vigorously rubbed along the hocks of two of the younger beasts where there were signs of some bruising.

  Hanka took the Ushur to pasture each day, setting up her herder’s staff, around which, almost as if they were penned, the beasts grazed, while she used her sling to good purpose, returning each time with something for the pot—as well as meat which could be smoked for their journey. Kryn warned her against the rathhawks, ordering her to be at watch for them at all times. However, the sky remained bare of any such spies. Perhaps with the leaving of the band Dast was no longer considered worth spying upon.

  Nosh turned her old skill to account and wove, with the toughest and longest grasses Hanka could bring her, bags which could be slung over the backs of the Ushur, so that the animals might carry with them some of their own fodder for times when there might be none about the trail.

  The three of them worked from dawn to twilight and then slumped about the fireplace in Jarth’s house, which they had chosen for their shelter. Nosh rubbed some of her cream into fingers cramped and cut during her labor. While Kryn went over his weapons each night as if he feared rust had sprung upon them during the day.

  Last of all Nosh, from the first night they spent under that roof, performed what came to be a short ritual. She spread out a small grass mat on the hearth (the band had left a supply of wood behind them) in front of the flames. On this she laid the Fingers in the proper order by which they would be fitted to the hands. Only two to find and then… the knowledge had grown on her, perhaps dream-borne and strengthened each night—she would return to the Ryft. Though there was danger waiting—looming like the deepest of shadows—from which her thoughts flinched now but in the end must be faced.

  She left the crystals so, there in the open, for the night and she was careful to place herself in sleep so that her head was close to them. What strength might be so drawn from Lyr by that she did not know, only that this was a thing she must do. Kryn watched her each night, but he rolled in his hide blankets apart. This troubled her faintly. She had begun to believe that the Hold Heir had lost his dislike for power. Now it seemed to be rising once more in him.

  They spent a ten-day at Dast, preparing in every way they could to face the eastern wilderness. In all those days they might have been alone in a deserted world except for the animals and a few birds, none of them a rathhawk threat.

  Also, mercifully, they had been free of storms. However, each day brought colder winds. Ice formed at night in the water trough so that it must be broken in the morning before the Ushur could drink. So far there had been no snow, and Nosh was trailwise enough to know that they must be on their way before that arrived.

  Thus she knew relief when on the eve of that tenth day Kryn spoke of starting their trek in the morning. So they arose in the grey light of the dawn, moving in the same order as t
hey had when coming—Kryn to the fore, Nosh a step or so behind—then Hanka, her hand resting on Bashar’s shoulder, her staff swinging free in the other hand. Each of the beasts carried somewhat unwieldy burdens of grass-filled bags, but they made no complaint when they were so loaded.

  The small party thrust overland from Dast toward the Heights that loomed ever darker and higher as they went. The sun spear topped those and then was like a lantern signaling them on into the beginning of the woodlands. Kryn quickened his pace but Nosh held with the rest. He was seeking the signs for their trail, she knew—and she only hoped that it would be such a one as the Ushur could travel.

  But the band had had varges and a few mounts Danus had left as well as the ones from Kasgar. Varges alone, unwieldy as they were in body, could easily leave a trail which could be picked up at once by anyone with scouting knowledge. Had the band separated into two sections for traveling?

  She looked about her as she went, trying to see if she could remember any of this way from their labored journey to Dast before. Then she had traveled with the wounded and walked, ready to help with any stretcher slung between varges which might be in danger.

  They camped that night in woodland not far from a spring at which the Ushur could be watered. The animals nosed about under the loom of the trees, and Bashar suddenly hooted, alerting not only Hanka but the other two humans, drawing his herd swiftly to him.

  His long neck was bent as his yellow teeth caught and stripped a mass of fungi from the trunk of a long-fallen tree. Nosh’s protest was drowned in a crow of delight from Hanka.

  “Bashar be a good hunter! Rufwell… Rufwell!” With her staff she knocked loose the crinkle-edged growths, tossing them to the crowding animals, who caught them avidly even out of the air. Hanka made sure that all had received a share of the bounty, rapping one pushing yearling male over the nose when he strove to shove a small sister away from the feast.

  Nosh found a fragment she raised to her nose and then in violent reflex action hurled from her. Such a stench she could not believe could be connected with any possible food.

  “Not for us.” Hanka had ceased her efforts to harvest the last of that weird crop. “But for Ushur—yes—oh, yes. Yankyn always bought it dried from winter market. I have never seen it growing before.”

  Now she turned as if to start out away from them in hunt for more. Nosh caught at her.

  “Not in the dark,” the older girl said firmly. “If this thing is like others of its species, it grows on rotted wood and in the dark you cannot hunt for such.”

  Hanka looked mutinous for a moment and then shrugged. Kryn had placed their packs against that same downed tree, erecting a frail barrier, and they settled within that small suggestion of shelter, hearing the Ushur chewing cud and beginning to lie down for the night about them. Kryn made no move to build a fire and Nosh accepted his trail wisdom that they should do without. At least gathered thus closely together they could keep warm after a fashion. While she did not spread out the crystals in show, she put down the bag of them as she might have lit the missing fire in their midst.

  In the morning the weather changed at last. There was a heavy fog-mist through which they must go at a near-crawling pace so that Kryn would lose none of the signs which had been left. Certainly the varges had not come this way, but it was the path Jarth had marked.

  The fog thickened. Nosh was striving to catch sight of Kryn, who had vanished into it, when her whole body jerked as if a blow had landed on the right side of her head, spinning her off-balance. So intense was that call she could not have denied it unless she had been bound to one of the trees about them.

  She threw herself in that direction, paying no attention to a shouted question from Hanka, uncaring. All which moved her was need. That need she had felt before but this time so intensified that it swallowed up her thinking mind. Something—some small part of her still not so leashed—kept her from crashing directly into trees, but she was bruised and battered as she wavered from one to the next, unheeding of any barriers.

  Twice she slipped in the leaf mold and fought once more to her feet, her hands held out before her now as if she were blind and sought a way she could not see.

  Nosh was dimly aware of some noise behind but that had no meaning for her now, gripped as she was by this consuming need to find….

  The mist wreathed heavy here. Tall trees were only half-seen even as she was near enough to brush against their rough bark. Underfoot the thick mulch of leaves was as slippery as a glare of ice. Nosh began to whimper as she went. Never before had it been so hard to answer this call.

  “Lyr—oh, Lyr!” Her call for help came out in a panting which distorted the words. “Lyr—why…”

  Out of the mist ahead arose a dark wall and under her feet the very ground gave way, so that she fell forward. One of her outstretched hands struck on a sharp point which pierced the flesh, and then her head slammed into a nest of roots embedded in mucky earth.

  But that which had drawn her here was not yet finished with her. She must somehow pull herself up, past that heavy mass of dank-smelling earth and interwoven roots. Her hand blazed pain as she made it close about the thickest of those protruding roots. With the aid of that she dragged herself up, tears of pain cutting through the smears of mud and leaf mold on her cheeks.

  Somehow, she was never sure just how she was able to accomplish it, Nosh dragged herself up and over that obstruction to discover that she now straddled the trunk of a fallen tree, a giant of its kind. Her nails cut into the soggy bark to give her aid as she pulled herself along that trunk.

  Then—before her a familiar blaze cut through the mist.

  “Lyr!” She mouthed that name and fought along the last space of trunk between that beacon and her outstretched hand.

  It had been well hidden either by accident or design, so wedged-in that bark had near completely grown over it before the death of the tree. Nosh steadied herself on the trunk. With her bloody right hand she drew her dagger out of her belt sheath, and, holding hard with her left hand to this slippery perch—made doubly so by the condensation of the mist on the decaying bark—she stabbed at the spongy wood around that flame of light. Then it was free and she dared loosen her hold on the trunk to snatch it to safety as she resheathed her knife.

  However, those movements had made her lose her precarious balance and she slid to the left, falling from the trunk to the forest floor with enough force as to drive the breath out of her. Nosh lay there on her side, weighted down by her pack, holding the Finger in a death-tight grip, sobbing with reaction.

  So Kryn found her. He tore off her pack and held her against him as he knelt beside the tree.

  With a childlike smile Nosh held out her hand. “See?” she asked softly.

  His hold on her tightened. “Stupid… lack brain— you might have been lost—fallen—killed here! All for a piece of glass! Never—never must you go racing off so again!” The hot anger in his voice was biting.

  “It was the call….” she tried to explain. “So strong—so very strong! I could not stand against it—not even long enough to say where I must go.”

  “Well, you have it. Can you stand? We are far from the trail.” He was brusque and harsh, dropping his hold on her to get to his feet and reach down and jerk her up beside him.

  There was a crashing not too far away. Kryn bit off a hot word. “Those doubled-damned beasts have followed us. And one of them is likely to break a leg in this mess.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Luckily Kryn proved to be a false prophet; none of the Ushurs suffered hurt from their climbing up into the full grip of the forest slopes. Without speaking to Nosh, Kryn approached the leader of the herd and secured the girl’s pack on top of the grass load it already carried.

  Nosh watched the beasts mill around by the long length of the dead tree, bending their necks so they could sniff at the decaying bark, apparently on the hunt for the fungi they esteemed so highly. She felt odd, as if somehow there was more tha
n just the now-tattered mist between her and the rest. One more—only one and then—what would be demanded of her?

  She was woefully tired and it was hard to get to her feet. Kryn, having made sure there had been no hurt of any of the Ushur, came to her side at last.

  “There is the track that they used for the varges—I came upon it just as you left the trail. Perhaps it would be better now for us to follow that.”

  His words meant little or nothing. They could take any trail that he pleased to set them on. But—both of her hands gripped the bag of Fingers, softly glowing—but if the call came again, she must take the path that chose, whether Kryn cared or not.

  They came back along the way the Finger had drawn her and found a cut marked heavily with hoofprints; Kryn estimated that the freshest of the tracks was nearly a ten-day old. But varge pace was limited. They would find only perhaps a trio of herders with the ponderous beasts; the rest of the band would have followed the upper way at a much swifter pace.

  Unfortunately the varges also needed pasturage and what little there had been was cropped to the very roots. At sunrise of the second day Hanka made her protest.

  “There be no graze—even the patches where it once was are smaller and farther apart. The Ushur must take another trail.” She spoke with authority, slamming the butt of her herd goad into the ground to add emphasis.

  Kryn frowned. To trail the animals off again, seek to find that other marked way—it would lose time and perhaps even at the worst lose them, too. He had no true knowledge of this side of the Heights. But Hanka was speaking the truth. If they wasted the grass loads to feed her herd on this level, what would they have left when the road—such as it was—climbed into bare rock and perhaps even the first of the snowfalls?

  Nosh resumed her pack on the second day. That odd feeling of being apart still clung, though not so obtrusively. As Kryn now she looked upslope and wondered where above that other trail might lie. The Ushur were surefooted beasts; they had proved that earlier, and perhaps would be as able to walk the same narrow way there as the men who had gone before.