Page 26 of Silverbow (The Godsung Saga #1)

thirteen

Enya

E nya followed the Trydent south, swatting at buzzing, blood-sucking bite-mes and growing more irritated as she added the blasted little bugs and the incessant itching to the list of things she hated, right next to Peytar Ralenet and Pallas Davolier.

Where are they? What’s happened to my father?

Beneath her hood, drawn to hide her hair and thwart the insects, she scowled at the drivers of the wagons and carts she passed as she veered Arawelo off the narrow track to step around them.

With a price on her head, she’d considered breaking away from the river, but after Greenridge, she had no desire to lose her way again.

When a mass of crimson came marching north, undoubtedly sent to quiet Innesh, Enya darted to the west to skirt wide of them, just for a while.

Most of the time, she followed the cart path.

Folk mostly ignored her as she wound through little fishing villages.

She watched the boats bob out in the river with their poles and nets.

One trading vessel battled the current with its sweeps, crawling upriver, but the boats that moved south slid by with a speed that suggested fording was out of the question.

As she rode, she pondered her heading. She could turn back to the west and try to find what had become of her family, scattered on the wind like the feathers of a dandelion.

But every eye between Trowbridge and Westforks was likely searching for any whisper of the former inhabitants of Ryerson House.

She could still go to Windcross Wells and try to put things right; throw herself at the feet of Pallas Davolier’s wielders, beg the king’s mercy for her family, explain she’d already been on her way.

Perhaps they would give her ten thousand gold marks.

That made her laugh so abruptly, Arawelo startled.

“Easy,” Enya murmured, leaning down to pat the mare’s neck.

She was absorbed in thoughts of her father’s map as she sat beside her cookfire.

The whole world lay east of Westforks. In the days since Innesh, she’d repacked her emotions into neat boxes, but the anger she’d felt at the sight of the bounty still threatened to catch like a brush fire, one she considered taking all the way to Haarstrond Keep.

Occupied as she was, she didn’t hear the creak of the wheels or the jingle of harness that approached until Arawelo raised her head and whickered.

Enya leapt to her feet, hand going to her belt knife.

“Ho there!” A man called from his seat perched behind a matched team. “Sorry to surprise you, lass. We wasn’t sneaking.”

Enya still gripped the hilt of her belt knife, wishing she hadn’t scrambled a step back from her bow.

It was true they hadn’t been sneaking; it was hard to sneak with a draft team and a wagon, but Enya backed toward Arawelo all the same.

Two curious faces peered around from behind the man, young men of an age with her wearing grins like Liam’s.

Light, Liam.

Enya laid a hand over the heart that twisted, even as it tried to beat out of her chest.

“No, no, don’t be frightened.” He held his hands up to show he had no weapon. “We saw your fire. Thought we might ask to join you.”

The blasted fire. She quieted the urge to bolt and peered up at the man, undoubtedly a farmer with wool piled high in the cart behind him.

There was more gray in his hair than brown, and he wore a coat with patches at the elbows, but the patches were carefully sewn by a goodwife, not a brigand and there was much of him in the faces of the boys who studied her and Arawelo with curious looks.

“Berral Kenara,” he said, laying a hand over his chest. “My boys, Peras and Kenon.”

Enya blinked at him and scrambled for a name. “Ansel. ”

“Pleased to meet you, Ansel,” the farmer said as the boys hurried to unhitch the team. “You travel alone?”

She really hated that question, but she could hardly hide it with the scant camp, so she nodded slowly.

“Mind if we join your fire for the evening?”

Enya eyed him suspiciously. If word of the bounty had reached Innesh, it had certainly traveled well, but there was no telling if it had spread to all the outlying farms. She supposed they would have more reason to question her if she asked them to make their camp elsewhere so she gave a casual shrug. “Sure.”

The farmer climbed down from the seat of the wagon and knuckled his back. “Light, I swear the ride gets longer every year.”

“It is the same, Da. You just get older,” Kenon said with a grin. The lanky, brown haired youth worked quickly to unhitch the team.

“That I may be,” Berral Kenara sighed, pulling a sack from behind the wagon seat. “But still, the wool must go to market.”

Enya inched back into her shabby little camp. “You are from afar?” She asked cautiously.

“Just a day’s ride to the north,” the farmer answered. “You’d have passed right by us if you’ve been following the river.”

“Where are you from, Ansel?” Peras asked. He wore brown hair and blue eyes that matched his brother’s.

Enya blinked, scrambling for a lie that wouldn’t give her away. “A little place near Greenridge.”

“You’re heading to Trout Run?”

Enya swallowed. Trout Run wasn’t a map dot she knew either, but it sounded like it lay south so she nodded. “Is it far?”

“Leave here at dawn and you’d make it by mid day on that horse of yours,” Master Kenara answered.

He started unpacking a spread from the sack behind the wagon seat and laid out bread with cheese and jams, canned olives and pickles, and salt beef.

Seeing the horses hobbled, his boys came to join him.

He pulled a split log from the depths of the wagon, and added it to her scant pile of sticks in a shower of sparks.

“What are you doing out here all alone?” Peras asked wonderingly.

“Heading downriver,” Enya said, forming up a story in her mind. “I have an aunt near Bridgewater. She’s offered to take me in since…” She couldn’t bring herself to form the lie of her lost family .

“You didn’t have a suitor?” Kenon asked around a mouthful.

“Kenon,” his father hissed.

“None that I liked,” she answered with a small smile. A suitor, light. It seemed so long ago she was lamenting their attention. The farmer gave her an apologetic look, whether for his son, or her prospects, she wasn’t sure.

“Peras here is all but promised to Elsa Nygren,” Kenon said quickly, and spots of pink appeared on his brother’s cheeks.

“I am not,” the older boy grumbled.

“You are to.”

“Kenon has never even danced with a girl on feast days,” Peras snipped.

“I have!”

Despite the things so precariously packed away, Enya laughed. It was so…normal, the sound almost felt like a betrayal and she quickly wiped the joy from her face.

“Forgive my lads, Miss Ansel. They don’t oft leave the farm.”

“It’s alright, Master Kenara,” she answered, watching the flame that grew larger and warmer than her usual fires. In the pocket of her cloak, her fingers brushed over Liam’s horse head carving. She knew every inch of it by touch - every grain, every score of the knife, just as she knew her list.

***

The hiss and pop of the fire jerked Enya awaked in the gray light of dawn. Berral Kenara was already tending a teapot, his boys still sleeping lumps beneath their wagon. She pulled her cloak around her as she settled in the dirt.

He nodded a greeting and glanced toward the sources of the soft snores that drifted their way. “You’re welcome to ride with us today, Miss Ansel, if you do not mind being slowed. Tales of trouble come from the west. Hard to know what the road might bring.”

“I should ride on alone,” Enya said.

“You got papers, girl?”

Enya stiffened.

“Didn’t think so. Not ones you could use, even if you had them.”

Regret flooded her chest as her fingers curled around her belt knife. She would do what she must to escape, but Berral Kenara made no move toward her. He reclined on an elbow and looked again to where his boys still slept. “Good man, Renley Ryerson.”

Enya blinked in surprise, her heart taking off at a gallop. “I don’t know who that is,” she said slowly.

The farmer gave her a flat look. “Fine horse for a girl from Greenridge. Good man, Renley Ryerson.”

Enya swallowed. “You know him?”

“Met him a time or two. It was Del I knew better. Sorry to see his name on that scrap of parchment and his boy’s.”

Enya’s mind scrambled for how this farmer from somewhere on the Trydent knew her father and his stablemaster.

“Can’t imagine he’s done anything that deserves a bounty on his whole House. And even if he has, his time served should count for something.”

Enya gaped. “Time served?” Master Kenara shifted uncomfortably, realizing he had perhaps said more than he should have. “How is it you know the Lord of Ryerson House, Master Kenara?”

“I didn’t know him well. I was only in the city watch you see, with Del. Not a good enough sword to serve in the Queen’s Guard. Not like Renley.”

Queen’s Guard? Renley Ryerson? That wasn’t possible…that wasn’t…

He lied about the gift. What else?

A cold that had nothing to do with the dewy morning slithered across her skin even as anger sparked anew, and within it, was the bitter taste of betrayal. Had I known him at all? Or Del? Did Liam know?

“Don’t suppose he ever talked much about his time in Misthol. Most of us don’t. Better not to.”

Her father said little and less of the capitol. She had gleaned enough over the years to know he was not fond of the city, but Enya, stupid foolish Enya, hadn’t thought much of it. “Why is that, Master Kenara?”