? ? ?
In the morning, a knock came at the door of our small cottage well before dawn. We were rural folk, used to rising early, but this was far too early even for us. My mother was drowsy and churlish as she pulled a blanket over her shoulders and went to see who it was. She came back awake and looking more than a little frightened, and sat on my small cot, which was separated a little from the bed in which my three sisters slept. “It’s time,” she said. “They’ve come for you. Get your things.”
My things were hardly enough to fill out a small bundle, but she’d sacrificed part of the cheese, and some ends of the bread, and some precious smoked meat. I wouldn’t starve, even if my new master forgot to feed me (as I’d heard they sometimes did). I rose without a word, put on my leather shoes for traveling, and my woolen wrap. We were too poor to afford metal pins, so, like my mother and sisters, I fastened it with a small wooden peg. It was the nicest thing I owned, the woolen wrap, dyed a deep green like the forest in which we lived. I think it had been a gift from my father when I was born.
At the door, my mother stopped me and put her hands on my shoulders. I looked up at her and saw something in her lined, hard face that puzzled me. It was a kind of fear, and . . . sadness. She pulled me into her arms and gave me a hard, uncomfortable hug, all bones and muscle, and then shoved me back to arm’s length. “Do as you’re told, boy,” she said, and then pushed me out into the weak, gray predawn light, toward a tall figure sitting on a huge dark horse.
The door slammed shut behind me, cutting off any possibility of escape, not that there was any refuge possible with my family. I stood silently, looking up, and up, at that hooded, heavily cloaked figure on the horse. There was a suggestion of a face in the shadows, but little else that I could make out. The horse snorted mist on the cold air and pawed the ground as if impatient to be gone.
“Your name,” the figure said. He had a deep, cultured voice, but something in it made me afraid. “Speak up, child.”
“Myrnin, sir.”
“An old name,” he said, and it seemed he liked that. “Climb up behind me. I don’t like being out in the sun.”
That seemed odd, because once the sun rose, the chill burned off; this was a fair season, little chance of snow. I noticed he had expensively tailored leather gloves on his hands, and his boots seemed heavy and thick beneath the long robes. I was conscious of my own poor cloth, the thin sandals that were the only footwear I owned. I wondered why someone like him would want someone like me—there were poor folk everywhere, and children were ten a spit for the taking. I stared at him for a long moment, not sure what to do. The horse, after all, was very tall, and I was not.
Also, the horse was eyeing me with a clear sense of dislike.
“Enough of that. Come on,” my new master snapped, and held out his gloved hand. I took it, trying not to tremble too much, and before I could even think, he’d pulled me straight up onto the back of that gigantic beast, into a thoroughly uncomfortable position behind him on the hard leather pad. I wrapped my arms around him, more out of sheer panic than trust, and he grunted and said, “Hold on, boy. We’ll be moving fast.”
I shut my eyes and pressed my face to his cloak as the horse lunged; the world spun and tilted and then began to speed by, too fast, too fast. My new master didn’t smell like anyone I’d ever known: no stench of old sweat, and only a light odor of mold to his clothes. Herbs. He smelled like sweet summer herbs.
I don’t know how long we rode—days, most certainly; I felt sick and light-headed most of the time. We did stop from time to time to allow me to choke down water or bites of bread and meat, or for the more necessary bodily functions . . . but my new lord ate little, and if he was subject to the needs of the body, I saw no sign of it.
He wore the cloak’s hood up, always. I got only the smallest glimpses of his face. He looked younger than I would have thought—only ten years older than me, if that. Odd, to be so young and rumored to have such knowledge.
I ached everywhere, in every muscle and bone, until it made me want to weep. I didn’t. I gritted my teeth and held on without a whimper as we rode, and rode, through misty cold mornings and chilly evenings and icy dark nights.