“I’d let a rotrose spray me if it meant we were out of this damned wind already,” Mal muttered as he limped—though nowhere near as badly as Griff did—near the mule’s other flank.
Alys, having wandered a good deal ahead of them again, paused and turned back to watch them catch up. A hint of a smirk at her lips, she suggested to the worse off of her limping friends, “You could always just ride Little Griff.”
Griff’s leg radiated pain with every step, but he was about to summon some sort of protest—the last thing he wanted was to look weaker than he felt, riding the pack animal already burdened with the extra food they’d taken from the travelers—when Mal grinned and said, “Actually, Alys, I think the mule might be Big Griff, if we want to be accurate.”
That sealed it. Griff wasn’t getting on that beast—it was insulting on so many levels—but he still wasn’t going to give Mal the satisfaction of knowing his goading was having any effect. He limped determinedly forward, his mouth set in a firm line.
But Mal, putting a hand on the mule’s lead as well, tugged the beast to a stop.
Griff turned back to him, a question in his gaze.
“Look, we really need to reach the edge of the Mire by dusk,” Mal said with his usual impatience. “Unless you’re feeling poor enough that we need to make camp here …?” Pausing just long enough for Griff to shake his head, Mal patted the mule’s empty saddle. “Up you go, then. Else we’ll have another ghost leering around the cottage, and I’ll never hear the end of it from Wynnie.”
Griff’s mind turned over the more baffling part of that statement. “There’s a ghost in the cottage? Since when? How do you know?”
Mal nodded, and before Griff could properly ask, he said brusquely, “I know because I can see them. And yes, they’re horrible. This one has been around since about the time Alys moved in with us. She has a broken arm and a torn throat, some kind of mauling victim, and she’s a stage-five clinger.” That was new, at least to Griff, and it brought up several more questions—since when had Mal developed such a rare ability? Were there anyspirits around them now?—but Mal’s tone and his pointed look made it clear he wasn’t interested in seeing anything right now but Griff on the back of that mule.
And with a grunt of effort, up he went.
The mule skittered sideways in protest, trying to balance this new load (a skill no doubt learned over the years) while Griff gripped the base of its mane and Mal held tighter to its lead until creature and rider alike settled in.
“Okay up there?” Mal asked on a panted breath.
“Why? Worried about me?” Griff returned softly as he patted the mule’s neck.
Mal snorted, glancing up sharply. “Maybe in your dreams. We’re just each other’s least favorite afterthought, remember?”
Griff nodded and looked away, out across the great grass sea, as Mal tossed the mule’s lead up to him and beckoned Alys to join them.
“I have something for you, by the way,” Mal said, and Griff didn’t look back, assuming he meant a gift for Alys. But unshouldering his pack, Mal dug out a long object awkwardly wrapped in cloth and used both hands to pass it up to Griff.
Maybe Mal had become more generous in recent years. Though the last time he’d really known the bright-haired thief, Griff had been the one taking all sorts of odd jobs around town to make sure he had enough money to get Mal a really nice cake and one of those dwarven crystal statues he had long admired on his birthday.
Pulling away the trappings, Griff saw he had just been handed a blade—or part of one. The tang was gone, leaving only metal with no sure place to grip. There were ancient runes engraved into the steel near the base in another language, one Griff had studied well.
“This was Rhun’s. Apparently he broke it out here. He ever teach you any languages?” Mal asked, the words unceremoniouslydropping them into the no-man’s-land of a topic they had both long avoided: the father figure they had shared for a few years until he was gone.
“No, but I can read this anyway,” Griff said—to Mal’s back, the other man conveniently having turned and pulled up the hood of his cloak so that Griff couldn’t read his face. Still, his rigid posture suggested he was listening carefully to every word. “It’s elvish. But the writing on the blade doesn’t tell us much—it’s just a proper name, like Griff or Alys or Mallow.”
Not even the use of Mal’s full name, the elvish one he had always loathed, provoked him into turning around, though the line of his shoulders sharpened.
“It saysAmaranth. Perhaps that’s who owned the sword, or maybe whoever forged it gave it a special name,” Griff continued, a growing suspicion gnawing at him the longer he inspected the blade. “The elves are awfully protective of their weapons. An old piece with markings like this probably has some enchantment on it. Do either of you know who gave it to Rhun in the first place? Something that could give us a clue about what it can do?”
Mal turned back to him, a hand disappearing into his cloak and reemerging with his flask. He took a sip. Then he shrugged and said, “All I know is his friends brought it back from the Mire like it was the last piece of him. A troll smashed it, or so they said. Maybe we’ll find the rest of it while we’re in there. Putting it together might tell us more.”
With that, he pulled something else from his cloak. It was a rolled parchment neatly tied with string, which he tucked under the edge of the mule’s saddle.
“You’re putting me in charge of navigation?” Griff asked curiously.
Mal took another sip from his flask. “Sure. Why not?” Lower, he muttered, “Be a shame to break the chain of chaos you’ve already set in motion.”
Griff wasn’t sure whether this was meant for him or for Mal himself.
They rode and walked on throughout the warm, windy day, watching the line of once-distant trees grow taller on the horizon, the stench of the Mire growing with each step. As the last of the light bid them farewell, Mal signaled for them all to come to a stop at the edge of the trees, through which there was no marked path—the dense tangle through which they would have to break their way.
It had been over a week of hard travel, but the Mire was finally in their sights. They had made good time, all things considered. Even if Mal kept muttering otherwise.
“We’ll make camp here,” he announced with an air of generosity, putting a hand on the mule’s lead again, much to Griff’s relief. There was something restless about the shadows surrounding them with the light failing, and Griff had no desire to greet any curious, hungry creatures lurking at the edge of the Mire.
