“Are we going to do that every night?” asked Oliver as he climbed out of the ditch. “Aren’t there farm houses along the way or something?”
The armadillo stood up on his hind legs and scratched his belly. “I don’t know. Nobody comes out this way, do they? This is all farmland… was all farmland… but I’ve never seen any of the farmers in town.”
Oliver wondered if the farms had been abandoned. The fences weren’t in great repair, it was true. He wondered if there’d be more weeds if there was more water to grow them. A few patches of soil, lying lower than the rest of the fields, were fuzzed with green, but no one had planted out crops. There was a hard crust on the ground. He didn’t think it had been plowed this year. Maybe not for several years.
“All I know is that if we go far enough, then we get to Harkhound Forest,” the armadillo said. He dropped back down and gazed at the distant mountains. “It’s the forest I’m worried about. It has a reputation.”
“What sort of reputation?” asked Oliver.
“A bad one. And my mother said that the slugs tasted wrong.”
“Oh, well…” Oliver knew the ultimate condemnation when he heard it. “How far is it?” He kicked himself mentally for not having asked earlier.
The armadillo considered. “Five or six days to the forest, I think.”
“Six days?” Oliver already felt like he’d been walking forever. Sleeping on the ground for one night had been bad enough. Sleeping on the ground for a half-dozen nights would probably leave his spine in a permanent kink.
“It’ll take longer if we stand around talking,” said the armadillo, plodding down the road on stumpy legs.
Oliver sighed. “Is there a shortcut?”
“Buy a horse.”
They didn’t have enough money for a horse. Oliver counted the coins in his purse and figured that they could afford maybe a hoof and a couple of hairs off the tail, if it wasn’t a very good horse. There was also a distinct lack of people to buy horses from.
He rummaged in his pack and pulled out a biscuit. It had been fresh and crumbly yesterday. Today it was rather chewy, and it made him thirsty. He had to scramble back into the ditch and take another drink of the dusty water.
The armadillo continued to plod. Oliver ran wet hands through his hair and over his face and went after him.
It was a long day, and nothing happened during it, except that Oliver’s feet hurt and his eyeballs ached from the dust and the glare. He shook out the cloth that had held the biscuits, soaked it down, and wrapped it around his forehead. That helped a little with the glare.
They walked and sometimes they stopped to rest. There was not much comfort to be had sitting in the dust on the side of the road, so they never rested for long. When the armadillo’s short legs began to tire—not that he would ever say anything, but Oliver could tell—Oliver would pick him up and carry him.
“You’ve got biscuit crumbs in your hair,” said the armadillo, and then there was the snuffly, ticklish sensation of a snout against his scalp. Oliver laughed involuntarily but let his familiar pick them out.
They saw no other humans. Occasionally there was a farmhouse standing empty. Once, far across a field, he saw something that might be a goat or a sheep, but it did not approach.
It occurred to Oliver that not only had he never gone any farther along this road than the orchard, he’d never really wondered what was out here. It hadn’t been forbidden, and thus interesting, the way that the ruins of the old watchtower had been. It had been known among the children of Loosestrife that there was nothing much in this direction, so no one had bothered. You could stand on the edge of the orchard and see fields and fences and there was no reason to believe that there was anything different beyond them.
Fat lot of good it would have done me if I had wondered, though. Even if I’d come this way on a whim, I’d have gotten bored long before I stopped for the night.
Evening was starting to come on, and he was starting to wonder when to stop for the night—should he stop early, make a fire, and have one of the little packets of tea in his pack? He hadn’t seen any place that looked more comfortable than last night’s tree.
He almost didn’t want to stop. Sleeping on the ground was nearly as exhausting as walking. Maybe if he walked all night, he’d actually be less tired in the morning.
Oliver suspected that the armadillo would tell him what a stupid idea that was, so he didn’t say it out loud.
He was plodding along the line of a fence—one of an endless series of identical split-log fences, edging more or less identical fields—when he heard a bang.
He looked up, startled, and realized that it was the door on a farmhouse near the road. He’d been concentrating on his feet and not paying attention and hadn’t even noticed the house. Hurrying down the wagon-track from the house was a tall, stoop-shouldered man.
The man didn’t speak until he was at the road, and then he stood there and waited until Oliver had drawn closer.
“Boy,” he said, which might have been a greeting or an observation. He had a very deep voice, and the hand on the fencepost nearest Oliver was enormous, with dark red knuckles.
Oliver decided to treat it as a greeting. He didn’t recognize the farmer, but country hospitality, even in these times, meant that he might get a spot in the hayloft and a bite of dinner. “Hello, sir.”
There was a long silence. Oliver waited politely, and then, when that didn’t seem to be working, he said, “May I beg your hospitality for the night, sir?”
“Hospitality,” said the farmer.
Oliver began to wonder if the man was touched in the head. Simple, maybe. Maybe he could only repeat what people said to him. He had dreadfully bad skin, not just pocked but with a strange, stretched look between the marks, and dark, deep-set eyes.
Has he had the pox, maybe? I know it comes with fever sometimes, and a fever can damage the brain… Learning herb-lore meant you picked up a little bit of medicine, even though Oliver wasn’t a healer and would never pretend to be one.
The armadillo gave an odd little shake, settling his armored hide. The farmer looked down as if seeing him for the first time.
Most people would probably comment on the fact that someone had a pet armadillo, even if they didn’t recognize a familiar when they saw one. The old farmer said nothing.
Oliver began to despair that there might be any dinner, but he held out hope that the hayloft might still be open. Hay was terrible on his allergies—the spell only worked on armadillo dander—but the ground was terrible on his back, so maybe if he alternated between the two, he’d survive long enough to get to the Rainblades.
“Might I sleep in your barn for the night, sir? I promise, I will disturb nothing.”
“Barn,” said the farmer again. “The barn. Oh, aye.” He shook himself, rather like the armadillo, and his gaze seemed to sharpen. “And come to the house for thy supper.”
Thy? Oliver thought. Who says thy anymore? It’s a writing word, not a speaking word…
It’s supper, said a rather more practical voice, and that decided him.
The farmer’s wife was named Mrs. Bryerly, which presumably made the farmer Mr. Bryerly, but Oliver was too busy eating to ask.