A worn-down family passing us looked up momentarily at his words. ‘Come on now, she’s just a little girl,’ said the father, reaching out to touch the girl trudging along beside him. ‘There’s none of this her fault.’
‘You really think the girl’s to blame for all this?’ Brasti added. ‘She had no say in her parentage. It was Duchess Patriana who set about killing off King Paelis’ children – it was she who gave us Trin.’
‘Watch yourself now,’ the old man said, but I could tell he was still full of good humour. This was the kind of political discussion the common folk delighted in, taking opposite sides of grand arguments about who deserved the throne and who deserved the noose. ‘-Duchess Patriana kept all of Hervor running like a well-timed clock. She was sent by the Gods to rule, that one. Harsh, sometimes, but ain’t that the way of those with power? No, I lived half my life in Hervor. Damned Greatcoats came and now the place is a mess. Thought if I went west to Orison, things would be better but, well’ – here he motioned to the mountains ahead – ‘you see where that got me. No, I’d take Duchess Patriana back anytime – and as to killing off the tyrant King’s bastards? Well, you know what we say in Hervor?’
‘What?’
‘Too bad Patriana missed the last one.’
*
The trail carried on its dull and mildly treacherous way for another three days before turning steeper. It was much colder now, and the pilgrims dragged themselves along like dead men not quite ready to fall down. At night we huddled together for warmth in ragged tents. Unlike travellers in the south, who’d have passed the time getting to know each another and trading stories about their home villages, these people appeared to be content to just listen silently to the wind whistling through the holes in their thin shelters while they waited for the sun to rise.
‘It’s hard to imagine anyone’s ever come this way before,’ I said as we renewed the march on the fourth day. I was used to long periods of travel but my mood was starting to take on the same grey hue as the landscape.
‘What do you mean?’ Brasti asked.
I hadn’t really meant anything; I was speaking more to remind myself I could than for any particular purpose. ‘Just that it’s a long way on foot and I doubt anyone’s come this way for years.’
‘This path is fairly well-worn, Falcio. I’d say people have been going back and forth between Orison and Avares for generations.’ He gestured at the people walking ahead of us. ‘They probably share more blood with the people of Avares than those of southern Tristia.’
‘That’s a troubling thought.’ It was, too. There were enough complications plaguing the country already without having to worry that a large number of country folk identified more with the barbarians over the mountains than with their own people.
A problem for another day, I thought. For now, all that mattered was keeping our heads down, getting through the mountain pass and finding Trin. We could investigate the latest beard-braiding fashions in Avares later.
‘Falcio . . .’ Kest warned, but I could already hear the commotion up ahead.
We ran a few dozen yards and found a young woman who’d taken a fall. A girl of six or seven, likely her daughter, was trying to help her up. The other travellers walked past them without a word. So much for the warm hearts of the north.
As I knelt down to look at the woman’s ankle, which was clearly sprained, the little girl started beating me away, crying, ‘Leave us alone!’
‘I’m trying to help,’ I said, holding her off with one hand while I reached into my pack.
‘Tillia, stop!’ the woman said. Her plain brown hair matched her plain brown clothes; everything about her spoke of poverty. To me she said, ‘We’re fine, sir. I’ll be fine.’
‘You won’t get very far on a sprained ankle.’ I pulled out a length of bandage, careful not to let the coat itself be seen, and started fumbling about to find my black salve. ‘This will help keep it from swelling,’ I said, showing her the salve on my fingers before working it into her ankle. I bound it up, winding the cloth around the ankle several times to give her a little support.
‘Thank you,’ she said suspiciously once I was done, ignoring the hand I’d reached down to help her up. She winced as she stood.
‘Thank you,’ the little girl repeated, as though hoping they were magic words that would make me disappear. When they didn’t, mother and child began plodding along the path.
‘Helped a nice lady in trouble, did you?’ Morn asked, after the others had passed us by.
I turned to look at him. He was smiling, but not with his eyes. ‘That was stupid,’ he said quietly.
‘How is helping someone in need stupid?’
His gaze went to the other travellers, who were staring at us as they passed us. ‘Being noticed is stupid. How much black salve do you think these people have ever seen in their lives? That bandage you took from your coat? It’s made of hemp from Baern, treated with wormroot from Luth: a ten-foot length of it costs more than these people would earn in a month and it might as well come stamped with the King’s crest right on it.’
He was right, of course. If the wrong people got a good look at the bandage, it would raise questions for which we wouldn’t have very good answers. But what was I supposed to do? Leave the woman to stumble around in pain until she couldn’t go on any more? Leave her and the child to rot amongst the rocks and dirt?
As if he sensed my uncertainty, Morn said, ‘You’re a decent man, Falcio.’ He clapped me on the shoulder and set out ahead. ‘You’d make a terrible spy.’
‘Well, I’ll leave that to you, then, shall I?’
He looked back at me uncertainly. ‘You know that the odds are that we’re going to get captured, don’t you?’
‘I do,’ I said. Now it was my turn to smile. ‘And you know what that means, don’t you?’
He caught my expression. ‘Oh, hells. Why me?’
I shrugged. ‘You’re the only Rangieri here, Morn. That makes you the natural choice.’
‘Great,’ he said. ‘I knew you’d find a way to kill me before long.’
I spent the next few hours largely alone with my thoughts. The old man – called Clock, although I hadn’t worked out if it was because of the tick-tock sound his cane made, or because he was constantly asking how long it was until the next break, matched pace with me. ‘Won’t be long now,’ he said. ‘A day or so before we reach the true mountains and then it’s just a hop over and we’ll be in Avares.’
‘A hop over?’ I said, surprised at his optimism. ‘Surely once we start getting into those mountains proper, people will start dying. It’s going to get colder and more treacherous – hells, how much have these people climbed before now?’
‘People don’t die where you’re from?’
‘We try as a rule to avoid it.’
‘Not all of us,’ Brasti said bitterly, a little way ahead of us.