The Reluctant Champion

7. The Village

They traveled the churned-up road silently. Galen had withdrawn into himself and brought up the rear like one dreaming with his eyes open. Madoc, stiff with disapproval, rode ahead of him. The tree-woman walked before them both, always a dozen yards in front of Madoc and never seeming to hurry.

This bothered Madoc more than he would admit. Every now and then he would urge his horse into a trot, then into a light canter. The woman's steady, heavy stride wouldn't speed up or lengthen. Yet, somehow, she would stay a dozen paces ahead.

"Give it up," said Galen after Madoc's fourth or fifth attempt. "You'll not catch her if she doesn't want to be caught."

Madoc's horse was blowing hard, and he dismounted to give it a rest. "How does she do it?" he asked. "She just doesn't look to be moving that fast."

"Aye. But it's no use to ask. Perhaps no one understands movement so well as someone who has spent her whole life rooted in one place."

"Not her whole life," Madoc responded. "She apparently took vacations." Then he squinted up at Galen. "And how do you know so much about this? Met her kind before?"

Galen slipped off his own horse and walked by Madoc's side. "Not exactly," he said. "But people of her world, yes, I've met them before. More lately, by chance."

Madoc frowned at him. "I think sometime you will have to give me your whole story, Mister fallen-from-the-moon."

Galen looked away. "Sometime, yes, I will. But they don't like to be spoken of. Some call it bad luck, but in truth it draws their attention and they make bad luck."

Madoc grunted. "And how did you get so familiar with them?"

"I grew up on a farm. I think anyone who has much to do with the land or with the elements has half a foot in that other realm. My old nurse taught me rhymes, little rituals, superstitions. They were woven through our day. And then, of course, I went to sea, where the elements climb into your bed and sleep with you."

"Meet any mermaids?" Madoc leered at him.

"Get that grin off your face. In fact I once did, but it's not like you think. I found them in a cove on an isle in the MiddleSea. They were as tall as my hand and played in the surf like minnows. They sang the sun to bed with tiny, high voices and slept the night in clamshells."

"Um. Do you think she's trustworthy?"

"Who, the tree-woman? By no means. All these beings follow their own way and it is never our way, even if their interests run with ours for a while. Never forget it."

Madoc shook his head. "And when we catch up with this caravan, then will our interests run together? That's what worries me."

Galen hesitated. "Aye. Well. Madoc, look at these tracks."

They were climbing toward a ridge and the ground was stonier here. The churned mud of the valley had given way to firmer prints, still confused but easier to distinguish. Madoc looked from the track to Galen and back again.

"Are these the tracks of a caravan, think you?" Galen asked.

Madoc was slow to answer. "Maybe not. Lots of people on foot. Not many wagons."

"And the wagons—look at that one there."

Madoc looked at the narrow ruts that ran clear for a short space. "Too close together for a wagon. Deep tracks, though. Whatever it is, it's heavy. Galen, what are you thinking?"

"Nay, I'm not thinking. And how do you account for that?" At intervals along the way the brush was withered and the tree-trunks scorched.

"Maybe it would be good to scout this—caravan—closely before we rush in on them," Galen said.