At the sight, Amris’s mind, or perhaps his heart, split in two. Half of him mourned the changes and the picture they painted: a town on guard, anticipating no revelry or trade from the north, only threats. The other half reckoned how long the gate would take to close, how well the palisade would hold off a siege tower and how well the wood would burn; it noted how the guards talked idly to one another and how unscarred their faces were; it thought of what would come out of the forest in a few days, and knew that Oakford wasn’t wary enough.
* * *
“Evening, Aldrich,” Darya said to the chief of the men on duty, and raised a hand in further greeting:See, you know me, and I’m not here to knife you in your sleep.Given the horses, going out of her way to be harmless was probably a good idea.
Sure enough, the guards were staring at her and Amris’s mounts in surprise and revulsion. It took a second for Aldrich to snap his gaze up and focus on her face. “Sentinel,” he said, giving her a quick on-guard bow—a gesture that combined courtesy with the need to keep hold of his weapon. “What are those? And who’s he?”
“Amris, this is Corporal Aldrich. Aldrich, Amris,” said Darya, hoping she didn’t sound unfriendly but talking rapidly enough to forestall questions. There’d be enough of those in time. Giving out the answers was neither her duty nor her place. “And these… Might as well say they’re horses. We found them out in the forest.”
Aldrich peered at the slick coats. His nostrils flared at the scent of bad wine. One of his men looked at the teeth and forked the sign of the gods’ protection in front of him. Aldrich, less observant in any number of ways, laughed. “Horses. More like horse-isn’t.”
Two of the men laughed along with him. The others groaned. Aldrich shrugged it off—the man was even-tempered, you could say that for him—and added, “Well, they’re in your care and not mine. Go on in. You both look like hell.”
“Much obliged,” said Darya dryly, though she couldn’t be offended by the comment. Glancing behind her at Amris, she saw the same acknowledgment on his face. Cold water made a poor bath, and it had been days since either of them had spent the night in a bed.
They passed through the gate. The main road grew wider there, and Amris rode up beside her without any problem.
“Well,” said Darya, gesturing around. “Here we are. Welcome to civilization—or the closest you’ll get for a hundred miles.”
* * *
The broad street running from the gate to the manor was much as it had been in Amris’s day, but the buildings along it were far fewer. Oakford didn’t have any ruins that he could see, but trees grew on the site of the tavern where he’d gotten his nose broken at sixteen, and sheep grazed where he’d shod his horse before riding off to meet Thyran’s forces at Klaishil.
What shops and dwellings there were had become patchwork creations. Amris saw log cabins with thatched roofs and first floors made of stone, and houses where timber beams had propped up failing stone walls. Scavenging had clearly been the order of the day in the past, when the usual routes for goods had failed, and the living had taken what they needed from those who could use it no longer.
Amris thought of the fallen tree he and Darya had hidden behind, and the plants that had grown over it.
Life went on, however it might manage to do so.
Two taverns yet hung out their shingles along the main road, and an upper story on one, as well as a rough picture of a bed below the sign of a wolf baying at the moon, suggested rooms to let. A short ways down, a smithy sent up clouds of smoke and the smell of hot metal; a fat brown gelding outside snorted and neighed restlessly as Amris and Darya passed on their uncanny beasts.
The market square was empty, though the ground bore the marks of feet and wagons. “Do people yet come here to trade?” Amris asked.
“Not constantly. There are”—Darya gestured vaguely—“market days and things. Probably. I got rations and equipment up at the garrison.”
The manor had become a fortress, then, though one that showed it little on the outside. The delicate wrought-iron railings he remembered were gone, though, buried behind another wall of logs. Only the gates, with their abstract swirling designs, remained.
“What became of the lord?”
“Gods, I don’t know,” she said. He felt her astonishment that he’d even think to ask turn to gentleness when she remembered his reasons. “Was he a friend?”
“No, nothing of the sort. I doubt we ever spoke. When first I came through, our ranks were far too different.” Amris remembered lights in manor windows, carriages with noble crests, tall, handsome figures on fine horses. “I was only curious.”
“Commander Hallis might be able to tell you, or some of the men. Most of the garrison, the regular army, comes from around here. And there are probably records. Sorry. There are only a few ways I ever bother learning the history of a place. He didn’t leave any treasures, curse the place, or become a revenant, so…”
“No,” he said. “No reason to do so, I suppose.”
The last light of the sun shone on Darya, drawing rainbows across her skin and bringing out the sheen in her dark hair. She sat the not-horse she rode with as much grace as anyone could have managed, and neither the bloodstained and torn armor she wore nor the clear signs of long travel could greatly blight her appearance.
In that moment, Amris realized she was not just comely but beautiful…and felt her more a stranger to him than at any time since he’d woken to stare into her eyes and find that his life had vanished.
Chapter 24
Entering the grounds of the garrison itself was easier than the village had been, since Amris had never been there in his own time. When he’d come through at the end, leading men, he’d had no time to stop for more than a few hours; when first he’d been in the then-town, he’d been a gawky youth in ill-fitting armor with barely a coin to his name, and most decidedly not the sort of man to dine with nobility.
Outwardly, the years hadn’t wrought many changes in the manor itself. The white and tan stone of which it was made had lasted centuries before Thyran and had held its own well against storms and scavengers alike. A flat, featureless parade of ground stretched in front of the gates where gardens had once blossomed, and smaller outbuildings had mushroomed farther back; that was all.
There had always been footmen in front of the manor. Now there were guards, but it wasn’t so dramatic a change. They were only outfitted differently: pikes and short swords, and businesslike leather armor rather than the livery Oakford’s servants had worn, all silver buttons and lace against purple cloth.
