“It will take us some time to reach the pass.” Saoud knew the look on Tariq’s face, too. He pulled out the map his father had given him, and traced the line that would be our route so that we could all see it. “Let alone to cross the border. We can think on the way.”
“It would make us less vulnerable to bandits, if we keep moving,” I said. I tried to sound neutral, so that Saoud would voice his opinion too.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “But it’s better than trusting the Maker King’s alternative.”
Arwa brushed the last of the gold dust off of her hands and was only a simple spinner-girl again. Tariq doused the fire and buried the smoldering remains. Saoud took his staff too, and looked at me. I squared my shoulders, pretending confidence I did not entirely feel, and started walking back in the direction of the rising ground.
The four of us would go together.
WITH SAOUD’S INCLUSION, we woke early every morning to spar before we took up our journey again. Though I was the better fighter, Saoud had his father’s gift of teaching, and could square off against Arwa and Tariq so that they learned. If I tried it, I would probably break their fingers. It was not that I lacked control, Saoud’s father said, only mindfulness of how my opponent moved. I was a bruiser, Saoud an artist, and we each of us had our place.
Right now, my place was stirring the pot by the campfire while Saoud and Arwa did their best to knock the other off their feet. Tariq had caught three rabbits the night before—game had been good to us in the mountains—and we had put the remains of the last one into the porridge to thicken it. It was plain road fare, and nothing special, but compared to the dried meat and fruit we’d have for lunch while we walked, and whatever Tariq might conjure up for us to roast that night, this meal was a promise that, at least at the outset, the day would not go too far ill.
With a victorious cry, Arwa leveraged her staff behind Saoud’s knees and dumped him into the dust. She was getting better. Soon he was going to have to stop giving her openings.
“I know, I know,” she said, laughing, as Saoud rolled to his feet. “If I shout then I cannot claim a surprise attack.”
“What else?” asked Saoud.
“I dropped my elbow, I looked down at your knees before I swung for them, and I didn’t retreat quickly enough to avoid you kicking me, if you’d wanted to,” she recited. “Do I get to have breakfast now?”
“It’s almost ready,” I told her.
“I am going to the river, then,” she announced, and disappeared into the greenery that flanked our camp.
Saoud looked like he might have protested. The farther we went up the mountainside, the more dangerous the road became. The main road was well kept, of course, so that the wool convoys could come through, but we were avoiding that way lest any word get back to my mother. Our path was steeper, the river’s current faster, and the possibility for danger more present. Arwa was no spoiled flower, like the Little Rose in her pretty castle, but she was in our charge, and Saoud and I were still trying to figure out the line between protecting her and giving her the privacy she required.
“I’m still in earshot!” she shouted, and Saoud rolled his eyes.
“Get the bowls,” I told him. “And get the water bucket ready for heating so we can clean up as soon as we’re done.”
Tariq, whose sparring lesson had been done before Arwa’s, had already struck the tents, and soon enough we were on our way again. With the path more difficult to see, I was even gladder of Saoud’s decision to join us. I could discern the way ahead, and he could guard the back. For all our planning, though, it was Arwa who first saw the signs of danger.
We walked steadily uphill all day, and though the morning had started off fair-weathered enough, the sun was shrouded in light grey clouds by the afternoon, and rain was gathering in the leafy canopy above our heads. Arwa had stopped walking to wring out her veil when she gave a low cry, and waved frantically to Saoud.
“It’s a bear print,” he said. “Nothing else in these mountains is that size, save the dragons, and they have three toes.”
“There’s no water in it.” Arwa’s voice was so muted, she barely said the words aloud.
The forest around us grew, all of a sudden, impossibly large and dense and dangerous. We listened, ears straining against the gentle patter of water on leaves and boughs above us, hoping to hear some sound of the beast that tracked us, but there was nothing but the rain.
Saoud moved slowly. He’d been using his staff as a walking stick, as had we all on the ascent, but now he reached behind him to tie it to his pack. I did the same. Arwa and Tariq had to lay theirs on the ground, and I made a note to fix their packs at the earliest opportunity. Tariq had two knives in his belt, the legacy of his father, but Arwa had only her eating knife. I had a set of matched blades, and Saoud had the long knife that his father had given him when he reached his sixteenth summer. Not very good inventory for going up against a bear.