It was a useless thing to want. I took out my belt-knife, and she gave me hers. I pulled the buckles off our belts and our shoes, and the pins off our cloaks, and took a stick off a tree as we passed it, and gathered all of it together in my skirt. While Kasia drove, I told them all to be straight and sharp and strong; I hummed them the song about the seven knights, and in my lap they listened and grew together into a long curved blade with a single sharpened edge, like a kitchen-knife instead of a sword, with small bright steel posts to hold the wooden hilt around it. Kasia picked it up and balanced it across her hands, and then she nodded once and put it down, under the seat.
We were three days on the road, the mountains growing steadily overnight, comforting in the distance. The oxen made a good pace, but we still had to duck behind hedges and hillocks and abandoned cottages every time riders came by, a steady stream of them. At first I was only glad whenever we managed to hide from them, too busy with fear and relief to think anything more about it. But while we peered over a hedge, watching a cloud vanishing away ahead, Kasia said, “They keep coming,” and a cold hard knot settled into the bottom of my stomach as I realized there had been too many of them just to be passing the word to look for us. They were doing something more.
If Marek had ordered the mountain passes closed, if his men had blockaded the tower; if they’d gone after Sarkan himself, taking him by surprise while he fought to hold the Wood off from Zatochek—
There wasn’t anything to do but keep going, but the mountains weren’t a comfort anymore. We didn’t know what we would find when we got to the other side. Kasia rode in the back of the cart with the children all that day as the road began to gently climb into the foothills, her hand on the sword hidden beneath her cloak. The sun climbed high, warm golden light shining full on her face. She looked remote and strange, inhumanly steady.
We reached the top of a hill and found the final crossroads in the Yellow Marshes, a small well beside it with a watering-trough. The road was empty, although it had been trampled heavily on both sides, by feet and horses. I couldn’t guess if it was only ordinary traffic or not. Kasia pulled up buckets for us to drink and wash our dusty faces, and then I mixed some fresh mud to patch up the oxen: they cracked here and there after a day’s walking. Stashek silently brought me handfuls of muddy grass.
We’d told the children, as gently as we could, about their father. Marisha didn’t quite understand, except to be afraid. She’d asked for her mother a few times already. Now she clung to Kasia’s skirts almost all the time, like a smaller child, and didn’t go out of sight of her. Stashek understood too well. He received the news in silence, and afterwards he said to me, “Did Uncle Marek try to have us killed? I’m not a child,” he added, looking at my face, as if I needed him to say so, when he’d just asked me such a thing.
“No,” I managed, through my tight throat. “He’s only letting the Wood drive him.”
I wasn’t sure Stashek believed me. He’d been quiet, ever since. He was patient with Marisha, who clung to him, too, and helped with the work whenever he could. But he said almost nothing.
“Agnieszka,” he said, while I finished plastering up the second oxen’s hind leg, and stood up to go wash the dirt off my hands. I turned to follow his gaze. We could see a long way back behind us, miles and miles. In the west, a thick hazy cloud of dust covered the road. It seemed to move, coming onward as we stood watching. Kasia picked Marisha up. I shaded my eyes and squinted against the sun.
It was a crowd of men marching: thousands of them. A stand of tall spears glittered at the front, among riders on horses and a great banner flying white and red. I saw a bay horse leading, a silver-armored figure on its back; next to it a grey horse with a white-cloaked rider—
The world tilted askew, narrowed, rushed in on me. Solya’s face leapt vividly out: he was looking right at me. I jerked my head away so hard that I fell down. “Nieshka?” Kasia said.
“Quick,” I panted, scrambling up, pushing Stashek towards the back of the cart. “He saw me.”
We drove into the mountains. I tried to guess how far behind us the army was. I would have whipped the oxen if that would have done any good, but they were going as fast as they could. The road was tumbled with rocks, narrow and twisting, and their legs began to crack and crumble quickly. There wasn’t any mud to patch them with anymore, even if I could have brought myself to stop. I didn’t dare use the quickening spell: I couldn’t see beyond the next turn. What if there were men up ahead, and I whisked us straight into their arms; or worse yet I threw us into midair over a canyon?
The left ox abruptly tumbled forward, its leg crumbling away, and smashed into clods of dirt against the rocks. The second one pulled us on a little farther, and then between one step and the next just fell apart. The cart tipped forward, unbalanced, and we all came down hard on our seats in a pile of twigs and dry grass.
We were deep in the mountains by then, the trees wizened and scrubby, and high peaks on either side of the twisting road. We couldn’t see far enough behind us to tell how close the army was. Usually it was a day’s walk across the pass. Kasia picked up Marisha, and Stashek got to his feet. He walked beside me doggedly, uncomplaining while we hurried, feet sore and the sharp thin air painful in our throats.
We stopped to catch our breath by a jutting outcrop with a tiny summer stream trickling; just enough to cup a handful for our mouths, and as I straightened up a raucous cawing near my head made me jump. A black crow with glossy feathers stared at me from the branch of a wizened tree clinging between rocks. It cawed again, loudly.
The crow paced us as we fled, hopping from branch to rock to rock. I threw a pebble at it, trying to make it go away; it only jumped away and cawed again, a sour triumphant note. Two more joined it a little farther on. The path snaked along the crest of the ridge, green grass rolling gently away to either side down to steep slopes.
We kept running. The path dived as one mountain pulled away from it, leaving a sickening drop to the right. Maybe we were past the peak by now. I couldn’t stop running long enough to think about it properly. I nearly dragged Stashek along by his arm. Somewhere behind us, I heard a horse shriek: as if it had slipped, running too fast on the narrow mountain pass. The crows lifted into the air, circling, and went to go and see; all except for our one steady companion, hopping along, its bright eyes fixed on us.
The air was thin; we struggled and gasped for air as we ran. The sun was sinking.