Elizabeth of Starland (The Colplatschki Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  After a few more kilometers she slowed the mule, letting him cool down. She found a place where she could dismount and let him drink. She guessed that they were two-thirds of the way to her first stop. Everything was going so well that Elizabeth began to worry. Why was no one chasing them? Why had no one come out of their dwellings to see who trotted past in the darkness? She’d heard a few dogs in the distance but nothing closer. And Snowy had not lost a shoe yet, or stumbled. She watched him drink, reeling in the lead rope as he came back up the bank to graze on the grass beside the path. “Path?” She crouched down and felt the soil. “Oh you idiot.” She’d been riding on the towpath. A flash to the west caught her eye and she stood up. She counted to three hundred and saw another flash illuminate a mountain of cloud.

  “Godown be praised,” she whispered. “Come on, Snowy.” The mule balked but settled and allowed her to lead him to a kilometer post. She used the stone block to mount again and turned the mule to face the river. “Good mule.” And she smacked his rump with all her strength.

  The startled mule lunged forward into the river, his rider urging him to keep swimming. The water ran low and slow and they crossed safely, although Elizabeth knew she’d be miserable for the next few hours. Well, miserable beat the other alternatives. Another flash of light showed her a game track leading the direction she wanted to go, and she kneed the irritated Snowy forward. The flashes of light came faster and faster, and now Snowy required no encouragement to keep going. The trail faded but Elizabeth pushed on, uphill. At least, it felt uphill. And her compass showed that they were going the right direction.

  She smelled the storm before the first wind reached them. “Snowy, we need to find shelter.” He ignored her in favor of picking his way along a narrow ledge. She’d never been in a lightning storm in the mountains, but she’d heard stories about hunters finding the scorched remains of unwary travellers and unlucky animals. Elizabeth made herself as small and low as she could possibly get without pushing Snowy off balance. The track continued up the slope. She heard the thunder echoing off the stony hills around them and began to pray.

  As the rain started, mule and rider found an abandoned mine. The wooden door had rotted away, and Elizabeth managed to shoulder the remaining frame out of the opening. Snowy hung back, pulling against her, but a blast of cold air and a close flash of lightning spooked him. He decided that he’d rather face the cave than the storm, and almost flattened Elizabeth as he lunged into the tunnel’s mouth. Elizabeth sniffed for animal scent but only smelled dank, like the leaky cellar of the second house that she remembered living in. She tied Snowy to a rock, rummaged in a pannier until she found a way candle, and lit it on the third try. She needed to rub Snowy down, light a fire, and then find out where they were.

  Most of the water had drained from her panniers, leaving the contents damp to the touch but not ruined. Well, that was why she’d always carried things in oiled leather, no matter how much the other ladies pinched their noses at the smell. She checked her notes and the book. They remained dry, as were her fur-lined mitts. “Godown be thanked,” she sighed, relieved. Elizabeth stripped all her tack except the halter off the mule, then combed him with her own hairbrush. Not that she needed such a big brush, given her short mop, she thought.

  Even taking her time, lighting the fire proved harder than she’d anticipated. She found enough bits of wood from the ruined door and some other things to make a small but reasonable fire pile. But reading about starting a fire, and lighting her fireplace or a cooking-fire that the servants had already prepared, were very different from trying to light a fire in the wild. In the end she coaxed two small kindling piles to ignite, then the end of a stick, then nursed and prayed the little pile of wood alight. She sat back, pleased with herself, and almost lost the fire to a gust of wind. Elizabeth found rocks and built a windbreak behind the campfire. She took the way candle and ventured farther into the cave, looking for more fuel and for a place to relieve herself.

  In the process she found water. She debated trying to lead Snowy into the cavern, but settled for filling the crown of her hat and carrying the water back to the mule. Snowy drank four hat-fulls before seeming satisfied. Elizabeth realized that she had nothing to heat water in, and after scolding herself, shrugged. She did not have anything to brew, either, or soap to wash with. She gnawed on a stick of jerky and thought about the next day. Then she drank more water, banked the fire, and dozed off. Snowy would hear pursuit long before she did.

  She woke up with a rock in the small of her back, aches in places she hadn’t known could ache, and the smell of mule in her nose. Snowy had pulled his rope loose and was now sniffing her for crumbs. Elizabeth sat up slowly in order not to spook him. “And the blessing of Godown to you too this… afternoon?” Yes, the cave faced south, so the sun was on the afternoon side of the zenith. “I wager you are hungry.” She saw a pile of fresh mule dung not far from her saddle. “And I lose the wager.” He’d found grass and mountain apple outside the cave. She re-tethered him, brushed him again, then retreated into the ancient mine to relieve herself and get more water.

  What she found left her dumbstruck. She forgot her bruises and aching muscles, staring as the light of the sun bounced off mica and a piece of polished metal framework to illuminate crates and machines. She’d discovered a cache of equipment, all from the time of the Great Fires. Elizabeth approached with great care, not wanting to trigger a trap. The crates looked like the scraps of “plaztik” that she’d seen in the royal collection of curiosities. Oh, she could do so much with these things! Could that be a mining machine? The beautiful, smooth seams on the metal fascinated her and she wondered how it had been done. Was it a casting? And what coated the metal to keep it so shiny and well preserved? Could the cases hold writings, explaining how to run the machine, or maps to the mine, or something more?

  None of which mattered. She could not take anything that big with her. However, she noticed shiny, glittery bits on the cave floor. Elizabeth crouched and brushed her hand over one, revealing a gear wheel with a missing tooth. Just past the gear she found a polished cylinder that had loops in the ends. The entire thing couldn’t be more than the length of her index finger. She licked her finger and rubbed the cylinder but its pretty blue-gray color did not change. Elizabeth decided to take both pieces with her. “This is not getting me past the frontier,” she reminded herself.

  She washed the dust off her face and hands in the seep of water and drank as much as she could hold. After drying her hands on her skirt, she unfolded her maps. Elizabeth compared where she’d planned to go with the landmarks outside the mouth of the mine. Although not where she thought it was, the mine sat only one valley north of her original goal. “How many abandoned mines are there in these hills?” she asked Snowy. He ignored her in favor of dozing, hip-shot, in the last of the afternoon sun. She returned to the map. If both her copy and the original were correct, the pass at the head of the valley led into the province of Chateauneuf. If she left before sundown, rode hard, and if Snowy did not have a problem, she could cross the small province before sunrise. Or she could detour north, into the foothills of the Triangle Range, staying farther away from civilization. Elizabeth chewed a hangnail as she thought. “Not if the weather gets worse. I’d better go through Chateauneuf.”

  Elizabeth found what seemed to be an abandoned hut just before dawn. She’d had two narrow scrapes during the night and could not push Snowy any farther. He’d started acting a little sore, as if he’d gotten a bruise, and if she had to run from someone, well, lame mules knew better than to run. That and she didn’t want to hurt him if she could avoid it. Elizabeth had watered him well before entering the woods, and after tying him up and taking off his tack, she pulled grass for him to nibble. Not far from the hut she found a thicket of sweet bramble bushes, their branches loaded with green fruit, and she realized that she’d found a gathering shelter. Lord Armstrong’s people also had them, for mushroom hunting and deer hunting in the fall and f
or watching the shahma in the summer.

  She quickly discovered why this one had been abandoned. She’d barely set one foot inside the hut when she heard a hoarse hiss and a terrible stench filled the hut. “Ugh!” She backed out, her hand clamped over her nose and mouth. The stink-snake stayed in the hut and Elizabeth decided that camping out for one day wouldn’t kill her. Snowy tugged at his rope, eyes rolling as he tried to escape the reek. “No argument here,” she assured him, leading him into the sweet bramble thicket. Tom had once warned her that big clumps of sweet bramble were often hollow, and tuskers sometimes shaded up there. She was never to go berry picking on her own, just in case. Not that she’d ever been allowed to do anything short of going to the privy by herself. Luckily, no tuskers lurked in this thicket, just a swarm of gnats that ignored Snowy in favor of harassing his rider.

  Elizabeth carried everything into the thicket without tearing her clothes, to her mild surprise. “Right. Let’s see that hind leg, Snowy.” The mule snorted at her, sidling until he bumped against the closest thorny branch. He sidled back, right into her waiting hands. She stroked his shin, feeling a warm spot. After some effort she got him to lift his hoof and she gave the hoof, frog, and shoe a close inspection. The frog remained soft and healthy looking, and he showed no reaction when she poked it with a gentle finger. Elizabeth smeared liniment on the warm place and then inspected the other three legs. “Well damn.” One front shoe acted as if it were trying to come loose.

  As the mule rested, Elizabeth tried to catch a quick nap. She managed to sleep until just before noon, at least judging by the sun. Then she hunted through the woods until she found a stream. She picked her way upstream far enough to make certain that nothing dead or decaying contaminated the water. Everything looked and smelled safe. She drank until her stomach ached. After leading Snowy to the stream and letting him drink his fill, she let him graze while she consulted her map again. She’d planned on avoiding towns and hamlets, but she could not afford to have Snowy go lame or lose a shoe. “This looks semi-safe,” she told him, tapping a location on the page. He ignored her.

  Two hours later, she led Snowy to the smithy just outside the walls of Sarleau. Elizabeth did her best to act calm and unworried, as if she did not expect someone to arrest her on first sight. “Excuse me, sir,” she called, not venturing past the knee-high fence marking off the blacksmith’s domain.

  A wiry man wearing a leather apron and breeches peered out of the smithy. “Yes?”

  “Godown’s blessing. Do you have time to repair a mule’s shoe? My father thinks it’s loose.”

  He studied Elizabeth and she could see him considering her dirty clothes and good but plain tack. “Lead it in. Does it kick?”

  “No worse than most. Father says it is the off-side front shoe,” she offered, keeping a firm grip on Snowy’s headstall as the smith lifted the mule’s foot.

  He tapped it, then pulled a small pry-bar out of his pouch and popped the shoe loose. “You father ride?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He needs to add a little something to the basket this coming holy day, then. Lost three nails. Bring him here and I’ll reset the shoe.”

  Elizabeth rubbed Snowy’s nose and scratched around his ears as the smith worked. The mule behaved himself, probably because he was tired. Two more nights, boy, Elizabeth thought at him. Two more nights, Godown willing, and we can rest. That was assuming that robbers, wild animals, bad weather, or something else horrible did not grab them.

  “Right, you’re set then,” the smith declared, straightening up. “I’ll just check the other three,” and he worked around the mule. “Others are good.” He gave Elizabeth a hard look. “Mighty good work on those shoes. Not often you see smithmarks on shoes.”

  “Father just traded for him. He told mother that he’d gotten a good trade because the mule ate part of a lord’s lady’s hat and then kicked the lord’s son. They wanted to get rid— Ow! Quit!”

  Snowy lunged at a scrap of grass, stomping on Elizabeth’s booted foot and shouldering her out of his way. The smith smiled. “Glad I’m not breaking him to harness. That’ll be a quarter silver.” Elizabeth dug in her skirt pouch and found the right coin. As she did, the broken gear came out with the coin. “Where’d you find that?”

  She’d already devised a story. “My uncle, father’s second brother, found it in a mine up in the Vorlau. Gave it to me for good luck.”

  The smith spat over Elizabeth’s arm, warding off any bad luck. “Vorlau’s uncanny,” he explained. “Has the priest looked at it?”

  “Yes, sir. He blessed it.”

  “Good. You’d best be on your way.” With that the smith returned to his fire and anvil. Elizabeth wasted no time leading Snowy out of the smithy. She checked his hind leg, but the swelling seemed better, or at least no worse. Since there wasn’t a mounting block of stump in sight, she lowered the stirrup, clambered up onto Snowy’s back, and then reached down, shortening the leather with one hand while keeping a firm grip on the mule’s reins with the other. He took two steps but did not bolt off or try to throw her.

  She urged him forward. They joined the flow of traffic away from Sarleau and Elizabeth pretended she had every right to be riding a mule away from the town. But as they began walking past the outer row of gardens, Elizabeth looked up, catching sight of a heliograph winking acknowledgment of a message. Her stomach dropped. Was it about her? It had to be. Was there daylight enough for Sarleau to forward the message? Yes, there was. Godown, lord of mercy, savior of the lost, help me. St. Gerald, lead me to safety, she prayed. A track branched off the main road and Elizabeth turned that way, to the north. If she could get to the Caapmartin, she could cross the border there. The woods thickened around her, and the track faded as mule and rider reached the edge of Sarleau’s timber reserve.

  “You, stop!” a man called. Elizabeth stopped, heart pounding. A man in forester’s brown walked up to her, frowning. “What do you think you are doing?”

  “Ah, your pardon sir, it took longer than planned to get Father’s mule shod and I need to get home before dark. I thought it would be faster to come through the woods and I’m sorry I didn’t realize there would be trouble and forgive me, please,” she babbled, starting to cry.

  “Who’s your father?”

  She blubbered something incomprehensible ending in “of St. Alberta by the Woods,” a village ten kilometers up the road.

  “The new family? From Vorlau?”

  She sniffed. “Yes, sir. Please don’t, I didn’t mean to, Father will be unhappy…”

  The woods guard waved his hand, spooking Snowy. “Stop whimpering. Go that way,” he pointed to the east, “and get back on the main road to St. Alberta. Godown bless, I hate weepy women.”

  “Thank you, good sir. Godown be with you, may His blessings…”

  “Go!”

  Elizabeth went. Godown be blessed, St. Gerald be praised, thankyouthankyouthankyou.

  She reached Caapmartin just before dawn two nights later. She’d spent the previous day in the ruins of a Lander settlement. Snowy’s leg got no worse but Elizabeth did not push him, either. If word had reached the border fort south of Caapmartin, and she assumed that it had, she’d need every bit of Snowy’s speed and strength to get across to the Freistaadter. He’d been balky the night before, sulling up until she let him stand knee-deep in cold water and graze the cresses on the bank for what had felt like forever.

  Elizabeth stopped in the cover of a copse of trees near the top of the last hill overlooking Caapmartin. She’d begun shaking as if she had summer fever. Once she crossed Martin’s River, she’d be much safer. But she would also be completely on her own. Could she do it? She was just a woman: weak, ugly, and fair prey for anyone wanting to please King Laurence, or themselves. “Godown makes nothing inferior,” she reminded herself. “Now or never.” She forced herself to relax before Snowy caught her nerves. She tapped him with her stick and he stepped out, picking his way down the deer trail that curved a
cross the long slope.

  A false-deer flushed from the brush just below them, spooking the mule. He reared, snorted, and charged forward, catching her by surprise. Elizabeth ducked low on his neck, trying to steer him as best she could. She happened to glance back in time to see a flash of light on metal at the crest of the hill. The border guard! Oh shit, St. Gerald be with me across the border and I will give you a gold coin and pay for a ritual every year on this day should I live so long, she promised, turning her attention back to the track ahead of her.

  Snowy reached the base of the hill and slowed from a headlong gallop into his running walk. Elizabeth let him catch his breath as she peered into the lingering shadows. The sun still hid behind the ridge on the other side of the river. She saw motion around the ferry and at the ford upstream of the boat crossing. Elizabeth took a deep breath, then another, and turned Snowy downstream. Only a fool tried to cross the Caapmartin Narrows, everyone knew; only fools or the suicidal, or a desperate woman on a lame mule.

  “Stop! Stop in the name of the King!” Her whip hand slapped down, stinging the mule’s hip. He surged back into a run and she aimed him at the boiling water of the narrows. She thought she could hear hooves behind her but she didn’t look back.

  “Come on, Snowy, Godown will help us. Please obey this once,” she implored deity and beast both. Snowy jumped, plunging down into the frigid water. As she fought to stay on the mule and to keep from drowning, she heard screams, human and animal, behind her. Then the water’s roar covered everything and all she could do was hold on as Snowy swam to the opposite bank. The bitterly cold water churned, grabbing at them and trying to roll them under its white surface. Elizabeth held her breath as the mule sank, pulling her below the water for a horrible instant. He scrambled for purchase, slipping back into the water. He found a firm place a little farther downstream and clambered out of the river. Elizabeth slid off his back, leading him away from the water’s edge. Something whizzed past them, clattering against the rocks, and she sped up, all but dragging Snowy up the trail and behind the shelter of some trees.