11. Yawn

By the end of that fifth day, I was cursing my own stupid mouth for this idea.

My legs were so sore, I knew I would hit the ground and stumble.

And I did.

Perch held out an impersonal arm to steady me and then walked away after tying his horse to a tree.

The men had given up on trying to find a clearing like we had camped in the previous night and we were setting up camp in the middle of the road.

Stefan was starting a fire on the edge of the road with fallen branches.

Luka sat next to him on a raised root, skinning the coneys he had caught when riding ahead that day to scout for food.

Allowing myself a moment to stretch, I saw Perch speaking to Alric, who glanced over at me.

Had I done something wrong?

They, not too brutishly, herded the other women over to me after they dismounted.

After escorting us in small groups back down a short stretch of road to relieve ourselves, they chained us across the camp, from tree to tree, with half of them on one side of us and half on the other.

We were each given a bite of the coneys and sour apples Luka had picked.

Despite Bronwyn and Eefa complaining about their discomfort, my idea had allowed us all the opportunity to inhale fresh air all day and not the stink of swine.

While there was pain from riding, I thought the bath from the night before and today’s ride had lightened our mood.

I gave the second half of my apple to Eefa as she seemed especially hungry.

Her thanks was a grumble, but I refused to let her upset me.

I was more than twenty winters her senior.

The comb was passed around like the treasure it was and everyone enjoyed detangling their knots.

I saw Alric observing the collective use of the comb.

Though I was tired, I did not find sleep immediately.

I lay in the dirt, my white priest robe now a sandy color with wear and dust.

I was on the end of the chain, on my side, resting my head on one arm, looking into the crowded trees and their flowering vines.

I could not help but be struck by the forest’s wildness.

If I were free, I believed I would have tried to explore it, pushing myself through the narrow openings between the trees.

I sighed into the dark dirt.

Why was my mind like this? In times of trial, I always had whimsical thoughts or distinct observations of the most useless things.

“I need help,”

I whispered into the forest.

“I do not know where to go, and I do not know who or what to pray to anymore.”

Agnes was not a saint for praying.

She was a guide for prudence and patience.

Rodwin was a sadistic man who had definitely hated women while alive.

I knew not of Tintarian paganism nor in what the clans of the Hintercliff Helmsmen believed.

Smaller countries on the continent had adopted less strict forms of Rodwin worship.

To what god should I petition?

A scraping sound took my attention from inward to outward.

Squinting into the darkness, I thought I saw the tiniest of movements.

A second time, I heard the scraping sound.

I sat up, trying not to rustle the chain.

I stared into Nyossa’s depths, waiting to hear the scrape.

A third time, it came.

But again I could not find the movement, hard as I was looking.

The fourth time I saw it.

One smooth white pebble at the base of one of the trees near me was dragging itself on top of another white pebble.

I blinked.

Nothing was moving the first pebble, no hand, no paw, no wind, no flow of water.

I had to be seeing things.

I brought my left hand, the unshackled one, to my face and rubbed.

Pulling my hand away, half hoping it would not be there when I looked, I sought out the pebbles in the dirt.

About an arm’s length away, just out of reach, there they sat.

I had to be dreaming.

Or I had imagined the moving pebble.

But they looked unnatural, stacked like that.

Laying back down, I looked up through the trees that kissed each other over the road, branches from one side brushing the branches from the other.

Glimmering moths and fireflies flitted through the leaves.

It was just my imagination.

I was going mad and with good reason.

I had been taken from my content life by Tintarian warriors to be dragged through what was most certainly an ensorcelled wood of impenetrable timber, vines and shrubbery.

It was a fever dream where every detail was vivid.

The damn moss here shimmered.

I turned back to the forest towards the pebbles.

Then I saw the bear.

It was hulking, several house lengths away from me, deep in the trees.

There was enough starlight and luminescence from the moss for me to see her outline.

She blinked at me and lumbered away, wedging her ponderous body in between the trees.

I wondered if she too, like the stones, was an illusion.

In the morning, our shackles were removed and the same pairings mounted the same horses, but Perch did not approach me.

I assumed the duty of carting the ninth prisoner around would be shared.

Again, I hoped for perhaps Luka or Thatcher.

“Good morning, Edith,”

Alric said, appearing next to me.

He was so silent on his feet.

“Good morning,”

I replied.

“Perch is heavier than I am and his horse cannot take a second day with two riders.

You will be with me today.”

He indicated his head towards where his gray was tied.

I followed him to the horse.

“This is Maggie,”

he said, offhandedly, throwing his leg over her.

He looked down at me, standing next to Maggie.

Before leaning down with a helping hand, he took me in and I did him, my neck craned up to see him.

I noticed his eyes were hazel and the gray at his temples more prevalent than I had first seen.

He had gray in the stubble on his face.

Some may have found him handsome.

Most would have said he was too grim.

Behind him on the horse, I was much more aware of his body than of Perch’s.

Arguably, the bigger man was more traditionally attractive, but perhaps it was him being a likely ten winters younger than me, I was more in fear of offending him as one of my captors than noticing that Perch was a man.

I did not yet know how I felt about his captain.

My thighs cradled his, my groin up against his backside, my stomach against his lower back.

His scent, though tainted with sweat and dirt, did something to my senses.

He smelled no better and no worse than another man one day away from his last bath, but I found myself inhaling it a second time.

I felt numbed by it, the way I was after puffing on Mischa’s lightleaf pipe.

I had to speedily throw my arms around his waist when he tapped his heels to his mount’s sides and led our company of soldiers and imposter priestesses down the Nyossa road.

This put me up against the straps of his breastplate.

I noticed, likely due to the sun, he had not replaced his undershirt and wore the breastplate over the shortsleeved tunic.

His vambraces, shield and sword were strapped to Maggie’s saddle, behind me.

The sway of Maggie’s trot also affected me in a way Perch’s mount had not.

Likely because her rider affected me in a way Perch did not.

Once he had his company at the pace he wanted, his bare arms came back down more to rest at his sides, partially resting against my own wrapped around him.

Perch had assumed this position all day yesterday and I had not noticed it.

Had I? I had been nervous to be up close to one of our captors, but I had not observed individual breaths, every shift in weight or tilt of the head.

Where had I placed my head the day before? Against Perch’s back? Surely not.

Had I? My neck was tired from holding my head up.

My body was stiff in the saddle.

I had to relax it or my already strained muscles would be even more painful.

I distracted myself by watching the forest pass by, noting each flower and vine, but by the sun’s beginning to lower in the sky, signaling the afternoon was underway, I had rested my cheek against his back.

It occurred to me to pull away, but I was snug and stayed where I was.

We began down a completely canopied stretch of road and the sun stopped shining down on us through the trees.

A coolness settled over us.

The warmth of his body warmed me, but I saw a prickling of the skin on his arms.

I wondered if he wished he had his undershirt on.

As the sun descended and our canopied road continued, I was languid against him, my legs molded to the backs of his, my breasts pressed into him, my arms having slid down to his hips.

My face was buried in his back and I dozed.

My being sat behind him had no effect on him and I decided the heat in his eyes that I had seen on the road to Nyossa was an invention of pride.

I decided his gruffness with me after my bath had not been the fluster of a man aroused, but one exasperated with his circumstances.

This caused me to slacken even more.

His lack of attraction to me made me feel calmer.

In a half sleep state, I yawned lazily and then stilled.

My open mouth was pressed against him, his tunic the only thing between us.

I cautiously pulled my head back and felt it.

He had stiffened, from the muscles in his neck to the tightness in his calves.

He took a more secure hold of the reins, lifting his arms off of mine.

He sat up straighter and leaned forward, removing the hard pillow of his back.

He exhaled, in a deliberate manner, through his nose.

And we had been concerned about Mischa upsetting her rider.