It was dawn when the trees parted, when our advance scouts Utac and Aj returned with news that the Highroad was just beyond the next ridge. Though we were weary, though we were worn, still we quickened our pace by unspoken accord, and the simple presence of the Highroad was enough to move me nearly to tears when I crested the hill at the head of our column. Never before had I been so struck by its perfection, by white stone sharply cut and worn not smooth but rough, marred by no frost heave nor wagon-rut.
I took a knee at the edge of the Highroad in grey wool and blue linen. It was cold under my hand, a thin layer of snow gracing the stone like lace. I turned my face to the steely sky. We had not stopped to eat; any meals we had taken had been brief, improvised, taken on foot. My stomach protested this ill-treatment, but my head felt clear, even elevated, as though the absence of material sustenance had lifted me out of a haze.
This was not my first time on thin rations. This clarity was an illusion. The first of many that would come if we could not conjure some solution for what came next.
I wiped at my eyes with the sleeve of my coat, turned and faced Caer Lunan as they descended the hill behind. The old and young were not the only ones to stumble and falter; on this our third day, all strengths were running dry.
“My people,” I said. My loves. It was a thought I had, but it was Grannine’s. I blinked, shook Her words away. I lifted my right hand to point, straight and clear, half-along the length of the Highroad and off into the trees at a diagonal. We were near enough now that the canopy loomed, older, darker, taller than the worn and new-grown trees of Near Runing. The true Northshire Forest loomed. “Now we turn west! God has given us strength—we must rely upon that strength for a while longer yet! Soon we may lay down our burdens and take shelter against the winter, but for now I must ask you to march on. West, to the Forest, and to freedom.”
The Highroad offered a clear and even trail, a balm for knees and ankles weary from our constant up and down. Our pace picked up moving northwest, and I found I was once again near the head of the column. Close behind and gaining on the left I saw the Fensons, the two tall and confident brothers from East Carrig who had spoken out against our plans. There were others with them, and they made all speed for the head of the column. At the head, the tallest of the group had an air of intention to him.
Cold morning air burnt my lungs with each inhalation. I held it in, closed my eyes until I could exhale a cloud of smoke.
Kell Fenson seemed taken aback when I cut across our line and approached him directly.
“Good morning to you, goodsir,” I said, well aware that we were overheard. Dermot’s walking-stick clacked with each step on the Highroad, and that sound grew slowly nearer. “I trust we are all looking forward to a rest.” With him, Modesty Black was marching with her arms wrapped around herself. One of the group had given her an oilcloth, poor protection from the cold, but better than naught. She did not meet my eyes.
“Morning, Mariead,” he answered. I considered asking him to address me as Sister instead, but let the familiarity pass unremarked. The briefer our exchange, the less friction might arise.
“You seem troubled,” I did not speak quietly. A few others in the column were listening in; some deliberately, some merely by virtue of their nearness. “Perhaps I could help.”
He was not a foolish man. I knew this much from looking at him. Perhaps even cleverer than most. He realized that there were six others at his back, and I faced him alone—at least, as far as he could see.
Grannine stood behind me, at my right shoulder, silent and watchful.
“I imagine you could.”
I held up a hand to the train, and the next gaggle of pilgrims—Blake Bauldry, and his wife Grace, and the Fullers—stopped.
“Hold a moment, please,” I said. Bauldry clapped his hands together, catching the attention of the marchers on the westward side of our column, and signaled for them to halt.
This decision had not come lightly. It was a show of sympathy, of power, and it could easily lose me faith among our people. But we needed to be seen speaking. To be seen working through disagreement. We cannot allow this faction to fester in unseen disobedience. They must speak with us. Voice their concerns to us. Else what might I claim as difference between our little band and the rule of the Church? To rule with authority…
I gestured for him to continue. Grannine.
“Yes, my firebrand.”
Standing in the cold will make us stiff, and we have some distance yet to go. Interrupt me if this goes on too long.
“I will.”
“We won’t enter the Forest,” Kell Fenson declared. “You are marching us to perdition, and we are walking blindly. You know the stories.”
Voices among the column. I heard Dermot grumble as he approached, heard Sergeant Cooper making apologies as he wove through the crowd. Kell Fenson looked about at the others, gathering support. I let him.
“The demons that walk the paths. Druid sorcery. You would drag us all to hell merely to escape the Church? I say again, let us rest. Let us find these good soldiers seeking us, God-fearing men all–” Now he raised his voice. “Do not force us to enter that pit of witchcraft and torment. The Forest is–”
I cut him off before he reached the terminal thought, before his crescendo, and he faltered for it.
“Very well.” I let the silence ring before I continued. “We will still need shelter. The snow is falling, and it would be poor comfort after our march to sit and let it gather on us like stones. We cannot remain here in the open, lest we be discovered—not only by the Templar and their host, but by wolves, or bandits. But let it not be said that any one of us is driven further than they are willing. We will not press far into the Forest. We will cross no paths, and we will not stray much distance from the Highroad, at least for now. Is this an acceptable compromise for you?”
I saw it in his face, saw him re-evaluate. He had not considered that I might capitulate without the threat of force.
If I had needed to respond without preparation, I might not have. But I had not been idly wandering while listening to Eris tell her stories. I gestured to the Sergeants and turned my back on him.
“So much for your necessity!” The line faltered as he shouted after me. Now the final bid for command. He has no real way to unseat my compromise, not within the lines he drew. “I thought the Forest was our only refuge?”
Don’t rush. Don’t rush the answer. Let them think it over with you.
“At the moment, goodsir? I do not care.” I rounded on him. Had I made my turn too theatrical? I dismissed the thought. “My thoughts are with the footsore men and women we delay by arguing here. We have all of us walked too long and too far with too little food to debate strategy. If you wish to make a fuss once we have camped, after a meal and some rest, we welcome your challenges, and you will have a place among us. Until then, all argument serves is to prolong our deprivation.”
Quick, efficient. I had chosen the words with some care beforehand. To remind them they were footsore, and hungry, and to cast him in the light of a petty dissenter, making quarrel only for the sake of contention. Perhaps he was. Or perhaps his fears were genuine, and I did him a disservice in the misrepresentation. I truly did not care.
He stole a glance at the column, suspicious, sidelong and almost furtive. I forced myself to follow his glance with a steady look in their direction, and endeavored to stand tall and firm. A woodcutting came to mind—a young woman, too-young, all eyes and fury, but she stood like the arch of a whip. Queen Sienna the Fair, the last of the line of Tarqual. The woodcutting had stood in our library, looking east in the nook where I had spent many afternoons. I stood with her strength in my neck and the warmth of Grannine at my shoulders.
Arran Scour shook his head, and without a word to either of us, he began to walk. His grandson followed, and with a push to the shoulder, Arran urged Father Zachary and Sister Hope ahead. Faith Arquet and the Lees were ahead of them; spurred by those behind, they too resumed the march.
I let out a breath of perhaps more relief than was wise. I turned to Kell Fenson and smiled.
“I had meant it,” I said. “All will be included in our plans, if they wish. Thank you for being reasonable.”
Perhaps that is the end of it. He did not answer me when I walked away.
Grannine, are they following?
I did not look back.
“Not yet, my Mariead,” She said, and hummed low in Her throat. “They seem pensive.”
I caught sight of Eris, walking at the fore. She was still carrying the two children, Finnula and Ramsey, but she was walking sidelong, trying to catch my eye. She made an expression of inquiry. I could almost imagine her voice. You need me, Mari?
I shook my head, offered her a smile and a warding gesture. Wait. It would not do to have us so publicly celebrate what ought rightly to have been a moment of conciliation. Of compromise. It would imply resentment.
I did resent the man. The men, both of them. Men from elsewhere—Church soldiers, stationed in Caer Lunan, who thought they had the right to speak for us all. There was hate for the Church’s evil works in my heart, and it stained each thought I had of them.
That thought gave me pause. Never before had I caught hatred in my thoughts of the Church. Anger, yes. I was furious. What had been done to us…
Grannine whispered in my ear.
“What has been done to us. What has been done to you.”
The empty cold of our walk had quenched and tempered that anger into something that surprised me to behold in the light of day, as keen and hungry as the edge of Queen Frydda’s war-axe. My thoughts were dark, grating and catching on one another, gears in an unoiled wheellock.
Snow was falling. It began to frost the edges of trees, laying lines of shining white that traced their black boughs against the sky. We walked on the Highroad, and its surface seldom betrayed a steady foot, but some of us faltered even so, walking with rag-wrapped feet or bruised ankles.
We left the Highroad.
Sparse trees and bare shrubs scattered ahead the further west our path took us. Druids moved unbidden in a searching arc at the fore of our group, and for the first time since our departure from Caer Lunan, Dermot joined them on the northern flank, the furthest from any potential scouts. Aidan and many of our surviving soldiers formed a ragged rearguard, pressing our line forward and in.
At length, Berel gave a call that drew the nearest two inward, and they vanished for a moment into a dark and deep thicket set above the ground. So close and tightly-woven were the branches that it looked more like a basket than a bush, and it was with an air of excitement that the druid Berel returned to us, eyes upturned in a smile.
“Mariead Lady,” Berel said, with many paces still between us. “We have found our resting-place. It will be not large, and we cannot stay many days there, but it may be warm, and it will be safe.”
With no precautions taken to be silent, the words of respite echoed down our line. I once again wished to sink to my knees in gratitude.
Thank you, I thought. But I did not say. Or perhaps I had said it out loud. The druid’s wool-wrapped head bobbed in acquiescence. Soon we can rest.
“Lead on,” I said.
*
BLANK SLATE 
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