Isern strode on through the woods with that loping gait that, however fast Rikke walked, always left her an uncomfortable half-step behind. ‘You really think I’d be pissing my efforts away on you otherwise?’
Rikke sighed. ‘Guess not. Just, in the songs, it’s a thing witches and magi and deep-wise folk used to see into the fog of what comes. Not a thing that makes idiots fall down and shit themselves.’
‘In case you never noticed, bards have a habit of dressing things up. There is a fine living, d’you see, in songs about deep-wise witches, but in shitty idiots, less.’
Rikke sadly conceded the truth of that.
‘And proving you have the Long Eye is no simple matter. You cannot force it open. You must coax it.’ And Isern tickled Rikke under the chin and made her jerk away. ‘Take it up to the sacred places where the old stones stand so the moon might shine full upon it. But it’ll see what it sees when it chooses, even so.’
‘Uffrith on fire, though?’ Rikke was feeling a weight of worry now they were down from the High Places and getting close to home. The dead knew she hadn’t always been happy in Uffrith, but she’d no wish to see it in flames. ‘How’s that meant to happen?’
‘Carelessness with a cook-fire would do it.’ Isern’s eyes slid sideways. ‘Though up here in the North, I’d say war’s a more likely cause of cities aflame.’
‘War?’
‘It’s when a fight gets so big almost no one comes out of it well.’
‘I know what it bloody is.’ Rikke had a spot of fear growing at the nape of her neck which she couldn’t shrug off however much she wriggled her shoulders. ‘But there’s been peace in the North all my lifetime.’
‘My da used to say times of peace are when the wise prepare for violence.’
‘Your da was mad as a bootful of dung.’
‘And what does your da say? Few men so sane as the Dogman.’
Rikke wriggled her shoulders one more time, but nothing helped. ‘He says hope for the best and prepare for the worst.’
‘Sound advice, say I.’
‘But he lived through some black times. Always fighting. Against Bethod. Against Black Dow. Things were different then.’
Isern snorted. ‘No, they weren’t. I was there when your father fought Bethod, up in the High Places with the Bloody-Nine beside him.’
Rikke blinked at her. ‘You can’t have been ten years old.’
‘Old enough to kill a man.’
‘What?’
‘Used to carry my da’s hammer, ’cause the smallest should take the heaviest load, but that day he was fighting with the hammer so I had his spear. This very one.’ Its butt tapped the rhythm of their walking on the path. ‘My da knocked a man down, and he was trying to get up, and I stabbed him right up the arse.’
‘With that spear?’ Rikke had come to think of it as just a stick Isern carried. A stick that happened to have a deerskin cover over one end. She didn’t like thinking there was a blade under there. Especially not one that had been up some poor bastard’s arse.
‘Well, it’s had a few new shafts since then, but—’ Isern stopped dead, tattooed hand raised and eyes narrowed. All Rikke could hear was whispering branches, the tap, tap of drips from the melting snow, the tweet, tweet of birds in the budding trees.
Rikke leaned towards her. ‘What’s the—’
‘Nock a shaft to your bow and keep ’em talking,’ whispered Isern.
‘Who?’
‘Failing that, show ’em your teeth. You’re blessed with fine teeth.’ And she darted off the road and into the trees.
‘My teeth?’ hissed Rikke, but Isern’s flitting shadow had already vanished in the brambles.
That was when she heard a man’s voice. ‘Sure this is the way?’
She’d had her bow over her shoulder hoping for a deer and now she shrugged it off, fumbled out an arrow and nearly dropped it, managed to get it nocked in spite of a flurry of nervy twitches up her arm.
‘We was told check the woods.’ A deeper, harder, scarier voice. ‘Do these look like woods?’
She had a sudden panic it might just be a squirrel arrow, checked it was a proper broadhead.
‘Forest, I guess.’
Laughter. ‘What’s the bloody difference?’
An old man came around the bend in the road. He’d a staff in his hand, and he lowered it, metal gleaming in the dappled light, and Rikke realised it wasn’t a staff but a spear, and she felt the worry spread out from that spot on her neck to the roots of her hair.
There were three of them. The old one had a sorry look like none of this was his idea. Next came a nervous lad with a shield and a short axe. Finally, there was a big man with a heavy beard and a heavier frown. Rikke didn’t like the look of him at all.
Her father always said don’t point arrows at folk unless you mean to see ’em dead, so she drew her bow halfway and pointed it at the road.
‘Best hold still,’ she said.
The old one stared at her. ‘Girl, you have a ring through your nose.’
‘I am aware.’ And Rikke stuck her tongue out and touched the tip to it. ‘It keeps me tethered.’
‘You might wander off?’
‘My thoughts might.’
‘Is it gold?’ asked the lad.
‘Copper,’ she lied, since gold is apt to turn unpleasant meetings into deadly ones.
‘And the paint?’
‘The mark of the cross is a goodly mark much loved by the moon. The Long Eye is the left eye and the cross will keep its sight true through the fog of what comes.’ She turned her head and spat chagga juice without taking her eyes off them, then added, ‘Maybe,’ since she wasn’t sure the cross had done a thing but get smeared on her pillow when she forgot to wipe it off of an evening.
She wasn’t the only doubter. ‘You mad?’ growled the big man.
Rikke sighed. Far from the first time she’d fielded that question. ‘One person’s mad is another’s remarkable.’
‘Be a fine thing if you were to put that bow down,’ said the old one.
‘I like it where it is.’ Though she definitely didn’t, it was getting all sticky in her hand, shoulder aching from the effort of holding it half-drawn and a twitch in her neck starting up that she worried might jerk the string loose.
Seemed the lad trusted her to hold it even less than she did, peering at her over the rim of his shield. It was only then she noticed what was painted on it.