Firebrand

“So this is what you do,” Estral mused through chattering teeth. “Gallop through the woods being chased by groundmites . . .”

“Er, sometimes.”

“What is this place?”

“Old Rider waystation, a decommissioned one. If I’m not mistaken, this is Eli Creek Station.”

Rider waystations had been built along routes where there were no other accommodations, no villages or towns, in which Riders could overnight. As the numbers in the messenger service dwindled, and populations disappeared or were built up along different routes, several waystations were decommissioned, closed up, and no longer supplied, but the buildings remained.

“How are we safe from the groundmites here?”

“The station is warded.” Just as the buildings remained, so did the magical wards set long ago by her predecessors who had possessed the ability, as Merla now did. “They will not find us.”

Estral appeared to sag in relief.

“I’ve got to help with the horses,” Karigan said.

“Wait.” Estral produced the longknife, pinching the hilt between two fingers as if she held a dead mouse by the tail. The tip was stained with blood. She handed it to Karigan. “I felt it . . . I felt it scrape bone when I stabbed that groundmite’s foot.”

“You probably saved my life,” Karigan said quietly.

“I—I don’t know. You do pretty well by yourself. I’ve never seen what you could do before.”

“Don’t downplay what you did,” Karigan replied. “You got that ’mite to let me go.”

Estral unbuckled the swordbelt and handed that to Karigan, as well. “I’ll leave the fighting to you. You leave the writing about it to me.”

Karigan smiled and started to turn away.

“Karigan,” Estral said.

“Yes?”

“Those groundmites, they were just hungry.”

Karigan nodded, and went to help with the horses. Yes, the groundmites had attacked out of hunger. In a way, she could not blame them, but even if they were well-fed, she would not wish to stumble across a band of them, for they were more inclined to attack than let an innocent traveler go by. They may have once been peaceable creatures, but their natures had been perverted by Mornhavon the Black just like everything else he touched. No doubt the centuries of being hunted down by her people hadn’t endeared humans to them, either.

She tried not to feel too sorry for them. Those of the band that had survived the clash would probably sleep content with full bellies. They would likely consume their dead comrades, whether they be friends or relations, a fate Karigan, Estral, and Enver had barely escaped.

THE SONG OF HADWYR AND NARIVANINE

By the time Karigan returned to the paddock to help Enver with the horses, she found he had already untacked them, and that Mist was nudging them around the clearing at a walk to cool them down after their arduous run. With no humans leading them, it was an unusual sight.

“When they have been walked out,” Enver said, “I will check them for injuries. Bane has some claw marks on his rump, but I see no other obvious wounds.”

Karigan followed the horses with her gaze. “We were lucky.”

“It is not always luck, or even skill, that leads to good fortune,” he said.

“Then what? The gods? Fate?”

“There are many forces at work in the world.”

Eletians, she thought in both exasperation and amusement. She’d enough “forces” in her world to contend with and didn’t need more.

“Perhaps, Galadheon,” he said, “you can prepare the cabin. I will continue to look after the horses.”

She found the door to the cabin wide open. With the wards in place, there was little reason to lock the doors of waystations. She climbed up the steps and found Estral just inside, staring into the gloom.

“The place could use some work,” Estral muttered.

Karigan peered over her shoulder into the musty, dark interior. Water dripped into a puddle on the floor from a hole in the roof. The rest looked coated in years of dust and cobwebs.

“Let’s open the shutters and see if we can’t get some more light in here.”

When they did so, it helped only a little, for the weather was gray and they were shaded by the woods, besides. The lanterns they’d brought, or Enver’s moonstone, would light the interior well, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to see it in too much detail.

She began to poke around, first righting an overturned chair next to a small table, and then finding a few mouse nests in corners. Unfortunately, the waystation’s wards did not repel rodents. She backed away from an inhabited spider web and, with some trepidation, opened a cabinet. The scent of cedar wafted out. In an active station, it would have been stocked with spare uniform parts and bedding. It appeared to be empty.

She discovered a mouse-nibbled broom leaning against the wall and used it to dislodge soot, and what might have been years of bird and squirrel nests, from the chimney. She turned away coughing and sneezing at the dust.

Estral laughed at her.

“What? What’s so funny?”

“The brave Green Rider, knight of the realm, swordmaster and honorary Weapon, and now chimney sweep . . .”

Karigan looked down at herself and realized she was coated in soot and ash. She tried to pat it off. “My job requires many skills, you know.” Anna, she thought, would find her woefully inadequate for hearth duty.

Estral just laughed harder, and Karigan left her to it to continue her investigation of the cabin. She found kindling tucked in a niche beside the fireplace and piled it on the hearthstone. Then she retrieved her flint and steel from one of her bags and sparked a fire.