AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Just as well we were delayed in our departure,” Ragwrist said.
“Only because you’ve not issued orders with your usual vigor,” Dsossa put in.
“Dsossa, bring your new horsehand forward.” She trotted her horse toward the last of the gargant houses-on-wheels.
Wistala watched the gargants being brought into line, along with laden wagons drawn by more brutes. The smell of all the horseflesh reminded her of her missed breakfast.
I’ve been too long indoors if I’m regretting my third meal in the sun’s track, Wistala thought.
Dsossa brought forth Lada. There was some reluctance on the younger’s part, but Dsossa kept a firm grip and so brought her to her grandfather.
“I thought your story of the farewell kiss a bit overripe,” Ragwrist said to Lada. “Here is your grandfather. Say farewell properly.”
“Lada, what are you doing, pray tell?” Rainfall asked.
“I want to leave this place!” she said. “I’ll make my own way in the world.”
“Sixteen years of experience and already so worldly?” Rainfall asked.
Lada raised her chin. “It is too late, Grandfather. I’ve signed a contract and been apprenticed.”
“Ragwrist!” Rainfall said, and seemed to run out of words after that.
>She looked lovely, Wistala guessed, judging from the stares of the locals, in her heavy fur-trimmed coat, which hid the small increase at her midsection, hair under its cap curled and tucked so it resembled a bouquet of flowers. Her eyes and cheeks, brightened by the cold of the day, glowed.
All eyes were on her but the ones she sought. When Hammar rose from his chair before the stage and took his party of huntsmen to the inn for a new cask to tap, he walked out of his way to avoid her at the edge of the crowd. She fought her way through, tripped and muddied herself, but managed to come up on the men at last.
Wistala didn’t catch what she said, but she did hear her call out to him.
Thane Hammar stared at her for a moment and then turned his back. The tall man who’d given orders on the road stepped forward. Two of the men at the tail-end of Hammar’s party slapped each other, pointed to her, and laughed.
Lada broke into tears and fled the circus.
Wistala didn’t overly care for Lada, whatever Rainfall’s regard for his granddaughter, but even if she was an ungrateful whelp, she didn’t deserve contempt.
Wistala decided.
She missed the rest of the circus to hurry back and speak with Rainfall, once he emerged from Lada’s room in the small barrow-chair Forstrel moved him about in.
“I want to stay at Mossbell,” Wistala told him as Widow Lessup sighed at the dirty dragon-tracks on the stairs. “If things go hard with the thane, I want to be at your side, Father.”
“It will fade. Hammar will put an arrow through a winter wolf or a mountain bear and forget all in boasting,” Rainfall said. “But your presence here might tempt him into rashness.”
“I’m set.”
“Oh, my poor floors. I wish she would go away,” Widow Lessup said to herself—loudly enough for all in the upstairs to hear—as she bent with a rag.
“Nevertheless,” Wistala said.
Rainfall sighed and scratched her between the ears. “I shan’t be sorry for your company. You are a far smoother ride up these bumpy stairs than this barrow-chair. I suppose next spring I can teach you how to properly tend the garden, even if vegetables aren’t to your taste.”
Chapter 19
Wistala heard feet hurrying up and down stairs the next morning—more than the usual morning noises. There’d been another raucous celebration with the circus folk, but Wistala had kept to her low room. When Anja threw open the door of Wistala’s basement refuge, she knew something had put the household in disarray.
“Is Lada down here?” Anja asked.
“Why should she be?” Wistala asked.
