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“Expecting trouble?” I asked, noting the cousin’s easy way with his weapons.
“Always good to travel in company,” said Little Leon. “Folk like their salted fish. There’s always some who will take what they want without payment. Sheep, for instance. Or you and your brother losing your goods and carriage and horse to brigands.”
“Twins?” asked Big Leon abruptly, looking first at me and then at Roderic, like maybe he had a country superstition that twins would bring bad luck to a journey.
I stuck with the story I’d told the innkeeper. “No, he’s older. And a cursed lot of trouble, if you ask me.”
Little Leon laughed appreciatively. “That we saw, eh? Him and Em are well matched.” Unlike his taciturn cousin, he was a talkative fellow who told us far more than I had ever wanted to know about Emilia and her notorious ways. His gossip did make the miles pass, though. He then regaled us with the gripping drama of his escape from the Great Hallows Blizzard, as folk were calling it now. The storm had howled out of the north on the second day of November and not let up for five relentless days. He’d been on the road to deliver a wagonload of pig iron from a furnace called Crane Marsh Works in Anderida to the blacksmith in Lemanis, and had barely made the village of Rhydcerdin as the whiteout descended to blind him.
“I heard the dogs barking and the temple bell ringing. That’s what guided me in.”
I gestured toward a land barely dusted with white. “I see little trace of snow now. How can it have thawed off at this season?”
“It weren’t a natural storm, lass. Some thought it was the Wild Hunt’s last gallop, but I am of the opinion it was one of them mansas taken by a rare fury. The snow came so deep that for weeks no one moved except from house to privy and privy to byre, maybe to the inn for a pint once a few paths were shoveled out. Then not seven days ago came such winds as were not natural winds. All the night they blew. I thought they would scrape the soil right off the bones of the earth. When we woke the next day, we came to find that the snow had been blown away, and to what place I am sure we will never know. I can’t say what spirit raised that wind, or if it were a withering of cold mages acting in concert what managed it. Were you caught out in the storm?”
“We weathered it in a safe place.” But a sick feeling dug at the pit of my stomach, because I wondered if the mages of Four Moons House had called down the blizzard to kill me. “Did anyone die?”
He glanced at Big Leon, who was scanning the countryside with the gaze of a man who sees brigands everywhere. As the sun rose, the clouds began to shear off to reveal a blue sky. We fell in beside a river, flowing west. “Not so I heard. How far does your brother mean to walk?”
Rory wore a fur hat and a wide grin, striding with the easy grace of a man enjoying the novelty of the landscape. He did not look tired, as if staying up half the night carousing and engaged in other activities was as refreshing as sleeping.
“As far as he wants,” I said. “How far are you taking this fish?”
“To the Crane Marsh Works. This is what’s owed them for the pig iron. It’s part of the winter feed for those who work the furnace. I was meant to bring it weeks ago, but I’ve only been able to move out now.”
In my thoughts, I paged through Uncle’s library of maps. West across the flats on a decent road, and thence up into eastern Anderida, home of mines and ironworks since the days before the Roman invasion. The Romans had left roads and paths aplenty to move the precious metal. The mansa had sent soldiers along this route first thing, looking for me. After six weeks, I hoped my trail was cold. Evidently Tara Bell and Daniel Hassi Barahal had chosen this route as well, going in the other direction, and their trail was not just cold but thirteen years dead.
“Your brother booked passage for you all the way to Crane Marsh Works,” the carter added, with a curious glance at me, as if wondering why I hadn’t known. “Last night.”
“I went to my bed early,” I said, “for I was exhausted after our harrowing encounter with the brigands.”
“How many were there?” asked Big Leon.
“I was hiding my eyes,” I said, perhaps too glibly, for the comment earned me a sharp, assessing look. Big Leon then hopped down from the moving wagon and fell back to walk at the rear beside Rory, musket under his right arm while he tamped tobacco into a pipe.
“Never mind him,” said Little Leon. “You know how some folk are.”
“He walks like a soldier.”
“Him? Why, I soldiered in my youth, and you’d not guessed it, had you?”
“What, in the Iberian wars? Him, too?”
“Him, too, but we don’t talk about that. We don’t dwell on old grievances here, lass, for you know how kin might have got mixed up on opposite sides of that war. Why, I’m the son of a Atrebates mother and a Trinobantic father, a mixed marriage if there ever was one, for you know the Atrebates Celts sided with the Roman invaders while the Trinobantes Celts fought against them.”
“The Roman invasion?” I laughed. “That ended two thousand years ago, not thirteen years ago like the Iberian war.”
“Yet folk recall them just the same, whether it were Caesar or Camjiata. Hard to say who might have fought on which side, eh? So tell me about Adurnam. I hear there’s a temple there dedicated to Ma Bellona, the Mother of War, She of the bloody hand, that’s so big a thousand men can stand in the forecourt without touching one shoulder to another. Is that true?”
Behind, someone began coughing convulsively, and I whipped around to see Rory with the lit pipe in hand, doubled over, hacking. Big Leon calmly removed the pipe from Rory’s fingers and began smoking as he walked; after a bit, wiping his eyes and starting to laugh, Rory loped after.
“Yes, it’s true,” I said, turning back. “I’ve seen such an assembly with my own eyes.”
Traveling by wagon was not fast but it was steady, and both Little Leon and I liked to tell, and to hear, tales. By the afternoon of the second day, we read the signs that meant we were approaching a blast furnace and mine. The land began to fold and rise; the woods—mostly elm, oak, lime, and alder—were heavily coppiced. Charcoal stacks or their blackened remains dotted the surroundings. Smoke smeared the blue sky, and gradually a sound could be discerned, faint at first and then rising into a din matched by a miasma of fumes that made my eyes water and my nostrils prickle. A pond made by damming streams spread silvery-blue waters alongside pits and mounds of dirt and heaps of slag. The huge stone edifice of the furnace spewed smoke that covered half the sky as we approached. I covered my mouth and nose with a kerchief, eyes streaming. Rory started to cough. Both Leons tied kerchiefs over their faces.
Two young men came running.
“Here you are come, Leon! After that storm blew off the snow, we put bets on what day you’d arrive. Old Jo won! Who are these folks?”
