Crossed Swords: A Tale of Maid Cordelia

Ch 12: Ordeal in the Clay Pit

Cordelia froze in position, her head swiveled to her right and her neck craned, to see the activity below. Who would start a campfire? Who would move into the open field overnight? It could be a solitary herder or goat-keeper; if so, where was her flock? She could see nothing; but raised up the way she was, she might also be more visible. She lowered herself till she was prone to the ground, almost flat, and slinked along the rise of the hillock. The grass was moist with dew. She was not cold, but she shivered. Her weapons were on the forest floor; she had left them behind yesterday, when she entered the forest. Shield, lance, sword and scabbard, her greaves, her breastplate, her helmet: all these lay waiting at the entrance-grove, and were useless to her now.

She thought quickly: How to descend the hill while not disturbing the morning silence, and while remaining invisible to the visitor below? She lay low, and scanned the southern horizon. On her right loomed Snow's White Breath, high, cold, and remote; in the valley before her, the solitary campfire now gave way to two and three campfires, scattered amongst a scurrying crowd of perhaps fifty or sixty men and youths, some dressed in goatskin and sheepskin, others in striped woolen caftans. As the day became brighter, she could see dwellings, made of sticks and tree limbs propped up against each other, and roofed over with drooping bearskins and sheepskins. They must be herders, Cordelia thought, and they are on the move. They are travelling through this valley and pitched camp overnight while I slept. If so, they are probably not from the Wretched Tribes, who are not nomadic, and who live permanently in the short end of the valley, just two leagues north, where it narrows. What are these nomads doing here, then? How long will they stay? Are they friendly? Or are they the threat to the Estates that Lord Planya fears so much?

She scanned the camp for weapons; she could see none. The herders used knives with flint blades and crude axes. By now it was daylight, and she had crawled fifty feet down the hillock, positioned close to the camp. She could see the men, burly and bearded, busily stripping the carrels of their wooly skins, spreading them out, folding them, stirring the campfires, preparing some kind of food over them, their voices husky, brusque, bold, speaking a language she could not understand. They were all men. Many had beards; some were so young their beards had not yet grown; some were boys. Dogs ran amongst them, but only a few; Cordelia counted three. Only three dogs to help herd the animals, thought Cordelia, is very few indeed. These must be the men-folk of family tribes, gathered here to rest on the way to their herds, for I see no animals except the dogs. Then she cowered and clung to the ground, as she could see figures and forms moving out from the center, towards the hillock. She could be seen if any of the herders chose to turn and focus on particular spots on the grass she lay on. She estimated another fifty feet before she was at the bottom of the hill where it bordered the camp. Where could she go from there?

Over to her right and a little ways down, Cordelia spotted a stack of stones, a kind of small structure made of heavy rocks; it was a cairn, a short, square outcrop of granite rocks, erected as a marker. She had to squint to make sure it was the silvery stones the morning sun glinted off, and not a storehouse of weapons. She knew the cairn marked the boundary of a field, but she thought it might also be a kind of way-station for the herders, showing how much distance the flocks had covered. If in fact it housed the tribesmen's weapons or supplies, she might be able to use them to defend herself.

I must plan my moves carefully, she thought, for the sun is rising; surely someone will spy me crouching here. Either I return to the forest, or I search out these people and discover what I can. I remember Lord Planya's warning; it may be necessary for the safety of the Estates to find out who these people are and whether they are hostile, for these are the tribes on the other side of the mountain.

She inched her way along the bank of the hillside, intending to reach the cairn – which would have hidden her from view – before the sun made her plainly visible. She watched the tribesmen in the field below; they seemed preoccupied, milling around, tending to chores, washing, breakfasting. She would take the risk.