Macurdy was relieved. He’d decided the dwarves had deep pockets, but hadn’t been sure that Tossi would go for another expense like this. Now he gave instructions: He, Melody and the rebels would leave at once. Jeremid and the dwarves would follow at dawn.
Within a few minutes, they were headed north up the road in the moonless dark, Macurdy and Melody on their own horses, the six rebels doubled up on three others. None of them knew where they were going. The men were either from Wollerda’s Company, off east, or Dell’s Band, which had been broken. There was another band off north, Orthal’s Company, but they didn’t know where it was. Macurdy grunted. “We’ll find it,” he said.
It took some four hours to reach forested hills; fifteen or twenty miles, he guessed. By that time there was a hint of dawn in the eastern sky. Half an hour later they left the road at a creek, splashing westward through gray dawn-light, heavy forest on both banks. When they’d gone a hundred yards or so, they left the stream, pushing through a fringe of osier and willow onto dry ground.
“We’ll rest here a few hours,” Macurdy said. “Tie your horses and get dry wood for warming fires.” He and Melody helped, and after they’d piled a stock of branchwood, he built and lit a pair of fires. Then the two of them walked back out to the roadside, carrying the oiled leather rain capes that were part of their saddle gear, and picked their careful way up the slope to an overlook forty or fifty feet above the road.
At the top, Macurdy sat down on leaf mould just within the forest edge. “What do you think?” he asked.
“About what?”
“Anything. Our evening’s work. Our rebels. How we’re doing.”
“Macurdy, you’re a magician, and I’m not talking about how you make fires. Things go right for you.” She shifted closer to him. “All that excitement made me horny. If you had to separate Jeremid and me tonight, the least you can do is kiss me. The very least.”
She held her face toward his, perhaps a foot away. He didn’t close the gap. “Melody,” he said. “I like sitting here with you, but . . .”
“I know. You’re married, with some kind of strange Farside vow.” She sighed. “All right, I won’t push it. Who takes the first watch?”
“I will.”
“Wake me up if you get too sleepy. I don’t want to miss the others.” She paused and grinned wickedly. “Especially not Jeremid. I may not be in love with him, but he knows how to please a woman.”
Macurdy managed to grin back at her. “So do I. Take my word for it.”
“Take your word?” Melody sputtered. “Bastard!” He could tell she wasn’t serious though, and as if to prove it, she chuckled, the sound reminding him of Varia. “You know, Macurdy, I loved you from the first, before I knew you well enough to like you. Now I like you, too.”
Then she wrapped herself in her rain cape and curled up on the cold ground. When her breathing and aura said she slept, Macurdy put his own cape over her and stood up. He was getting sleepy, and considered doing calisthenics to stay awake and warm, then decided he was too tired. Instead he fingered his gums and broken front teeth. They’d begun to hurt. He’d assumed they’d start to rot in time, but hadn’t thought it would be so soon. Presumably they had tooth butchers in this world, but he was willing to bet they were a bloody, painful lot.
He sat down again. They were back barely within the trees; the sun, when it rose, would shine in his face. It ought to be all right to sleep till then. He should have three or four hours before the dwarves arrived.
The sun rose, but by then he’d turned his back to it, as Melody had. An hour later it was Blue Wing’s raucous voice that wakened him, from a limb almost directly overhead. “Macurdy! Macurdy!”
He jerked abruptly to a sitting position. “Huh? Oh! Blue Wing!” He turned to Melody; she was sitting up too.