Vaerashan

FROM THE MANUSCRIPT · READING EXCERPT

Enter the story

Beyond the western settlement where Keral had turned back, the road bent north and narrowed by degrees. For the first two days, Jun barely noticed. The packed trade road became two wheel ruts, the ruts became a track worn between low hills, and by the fourth morning there were stretches where nothing remained but flattened grass under frost and the odd stone set too squarely in the earth to have gotten there by chance. First the farms disappeared, then the fences, then the smoke. By the end of the week, nothing behind them suggested anyone had lived there.

Ahead, the land rose toward winter. Skorr carried him through it at the patient pace he had kept for most of the journey, the great pale urska’s broad paws finding purchase on frozen ground where a kaeldorn would have stumbled. Packs hung along his flanks in oiled hide, more supplies than Jun liked, fewer than they would need. Jun’s iron-shod pole rode lashed along the nearer pack, and the sword he seldom took off hung at his hip. Olian ranged ahead, nearly invisible whenever he crossed a patch of old snow, the white and gray of the Great Vaelic Hound’s coat dissolving into stone and frost until only his movement gave him away.

The Dravorn hide rode high on Skorr’s load, rolled whole inside its weatherproof wrapping, with the cleaned bone and dried sinew tucked against it. Jun checked the lashings each morning. His shield hung on the opposite side where he could free it with one pull.

Boxy was easier to find. The brindled hound had spent most of Anashun enduring the warm country with what Rowan insisted was dignity and Jun considered open resentment, and the farther north they went the more he changed. His head came up and his stride lengthened. By the seventh morning he was bounding through snow that reached Rowan’s calves, throwing powder behind him and doubling back every few minutes with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. Rowan watched him charge down a slope.

“Idiot.”

Boxy vanished into a drift and burst out again. Rowan smiled. Jun caught the smile, and Rowan caught the look.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You were looking at me.”

“I was looking at the tolvay.”

“Hound.”

Jun glanced ahead to where Olian stood twenty paces up the track, enormous and motionless, facing the northern horizon.

“Hound,” he agreed.

Rowan pulled the coat tighter and walked on. The merchant in Vaelor had called it suitable for northern travel, a phrase Jun had since learned merchants used with remarkable flexibility. Jun had bought it anyway, along with dried meat, grain, salt, lamp oil, waxed cloth, blankets, cord, a small iron cookpot, and so much feed supplement for Skorr that Rowan had asked whether Jun meant to open a shop. Jun had ignored the question.

He had also bought paper, more than Rowan knew about. Most of it was sealed in waxed leather under his saddle and the rest was in the satchel at his side, and at midday he opened the satchel and Rowan stopped dead.

“We’re stopping?”

“For a minute.”

“We stopped an hour ago.”

“That was for Skorr.”

“Skorr wasn’t tired.”

Skorr had already folded himself onto the frozen grass with his enormous head on his paws.

“He’s devastated,” Jun said.

Rowan gave him a flat look. Jun pulled out a folded sheet. The first entries were simple: Vaelor, north road, seven days, then where they slept, the streams they crossed, the wind, the names of the last two settlements. He added a line. Old stone markers beginning north of the birch valley. Rowan leaned over his shoulder.

“You’re writing down rocks.”

“I’m writing down where the rocks are.”

“They’re everywhere.”

“Those aren’t.”

Three stones stood out of the frozen ground beside the track, almost buried. Their tops were flat and they were evenly spaced, too neat for outcrops. Rowan crouched by one and brushed the frost off with a gloved hand.

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End of excerpt. This site presents a selection from the manuscript.