After a time she heard the muffled sounds of horses close behind them and then the marching feet of soldiers. She pulled Auld Nancy and Pansy off the path just as a voice she recognized as the metal-nosed warlord’s shouted, “Find them! Do not come back without them lest the disemboweling be yours!”
Grayling broke off a stout elder branch and gave it to Pansy for a walking stick. Off the path it would be harder to walk and slower going, but safer. The three crouched low and crept away.
They skittered and stumbled as the terrain descended more sharply. Grayling suddenly lurched sideways and fell to her knees. Or rather one knee, for her other leg was hanging over the edge of a steep drop into the unknown. Her heart was pounding like a rabbit’s. The world was full of dangers, and she was leading others through it. She was watching over them, but who was watching over her? What if she made a mistake? Finally she rose to her feet and, with a brisk shake of her head, continued on down. And the others followed.
As they circled past the outskirts of a town, there came the noise of conflict. Metal sounded on metal, on earth, on wood. “I expect,” said Grayling, “that the soldiers have encountered edge dwellers.” She, Auld Nancy, and Pansy moved farther off the road.
The ground turned boggy, and Grayling’s shoes squelched a soggy sort of tune: squish squelch, squish squelch. Ahead was a small grove of trees, saplings, not much taller than she. Their trunks were slender and green, supple and strong, but . . . Grayling gulped. Trees, but yet men! Trees to just below their eyes, and men above. Their arms, lifted as if in supplication, were newly leafed out although it was autumn, and their fingertips waved in distress. With soft moans and sighs, the rustling leaves murmured as if calling for help.
Fear suffused the air like a bad smell. Grayling felt her head spin with panic and revulsion. She turned away and hurried off, whispering, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” for she was useless and as helpless as they were. Auld Nancy and Pansy, picking their way over the marshy ground, noticed nothing.
A slippery bank led down to a rocky, fast-flowing stream. Here was the water that stood between Grayling and the grimoire. They would have to cross it.
Pansy, limping and stumbling in the rear, sneezed a great, noisy sneeze.
“Husht!” said Grayling over her shoulder.
Pansy wheezed.
“Husht!” said Auld Nancy over her shoulder.
Pansy gurgled.
Grayling and Auld Nancy turned to look at her. Fie! Someone was there, someone taller than Pansy and bulkier, someone in an iron helmet, someone with his arm tight across Pansy’s throat and a sword in his hand.
“You will do as I say, or this wench will find her head separated from her body,” the soldier said. “’Tis an oddsome thing. They all be looking for you, and I, who wanted only to run off, stumble across you. Good fortune for me, as Lord Mandrake has promised a reward.” He pushed Pansy to the ground. She whimpered as she fell on her injured leg, and her eyes and her nose ran. “Sit and be still,” he said to all of them. “We will wait here until those edge-dwelling brutes are routed or destroyed.”
They sat, Pansy at his side and his sword at the ready. The mist was heavier here near the water, the air dank and rank with the smell of rotting vegetation, and the ground mucky and cold. Grayling wriggled until she was as comfortable as she was likely to get.
The soldier stretched out his legs. “Make a fire,” he commanded. “This blasted damp creeps into my very bones.” He removed his helmet and scratched his head.
Auld Nancy pulled a tinderbox from her pocket and removed the flint and the steel striker. She rose and gathered together small twigs and dried leaves, struck the striker against the flint again and again, and blew on the sparks. Soon there was a tiny fire, which Grayling fed with fallen branches, and the two sat again.
Grayling watched the fire flicker. What could be done to free Pansy? Free all of them? “I have been pondering what to do about this lout,” she muttered softly to Auld Nancy. “Might you call lightning down upon him and toast him to a cinder?”
“Aye, I might,” Auld Nancy said. “But I might miss and toast you or Pansy, fire a tree or nothing at all. You have seen how imperfect are my skills with lightning. He would be alerted and likely angry.”
Grayling wiggled her feet as she thought. Could she do something? She knew about straining beer and spinning wool, finding firewood and gathering herbs. Herbs. Certain herbs were known to cause deep sleep. Was there sleepy nightshade or valerian nearby? She looked about her by the light of the fire but saw none. There were mint, watercress, and water parsley, and, climbing into the trees, the thorny white bryony vine. Beware the white bryony, her mother often said. The berries could kill, and just a bit of the root would empty your belly and void your bowels.
Grayling thought until she had a plan, which she told to Auld Nancy in a hiss and a whisper.