“What is it?”
“I have to walk.”
He walked back to where the dead mule lay at the side of the old road. Its gear had been stripped and taken forward to the campsite. It had collapsed beside a mile marker, a small granite post barely poking out above the litter of forest fall. With a finger he traced the number carved there. Lichen had grown into the chiseled lines. Moss made a little hat on the flat top of the marker, damp and soft. The dead animal had a faint putrescence, and the sheen of light that marked the presence of one of the servants hovered round it, inquisitive, as if it had never seen death before and did not know what to make of it.
In the morning Anne had the servants transfer the baggage from the dead mule to her own, and she insisted on walking even when Sanglant offered her Resuelto.
It was hard going. Roots had torn up portions of the old pavement; water and ice had shattered others. Liath stayed on her horse and didn’t complain. Eventually the woodland opened out, and beyond a river they saw a thread of smoke marking a village. The old bridge had fallen to pieces, planks lost or gaping. Sanglant scouted the shore but could find no boat, and in the end he volunteered to lead the horses and mules across one by one. In some places he had to shove planks together. In others, he simply laid his shield down over the gaps so they could get across. In this way they made it to the other side. Of the servants he saw no sign, but one of them blew in his ear teasingly.
The old road forked one last time before the village, and here Anne took the fork that led away from the first strip of fields.
“We are not going to the village,” said Anne when he objected. He was tired, damp, hungry, and wanting a fire. But they pitched back into woodland again, trudged up through rugged country torn by rock falls. The old road thrust gamely along, finding purchase through a series of switchbacks and supporting arches. Long after midday they reached a ridge. Wind blew incessantly and broke the cloud cover into a patchwork, ragged clots of blue among the gray-white clouds. They struggled along the exposed road for what seemed hours. The footing was terrible, loose rock, pebbles, slick moss. To the right lay a deep and narrow valley, thick with trees. At last the road skirted a hollow sunk into the ridge, and there, in the hollow below, stood nine stones, one of them listing badly. The other eight were squat and square, dark-grained, colored by lichen. It had long since stopped raining, and most of the cloud cover had blown on to the northwest, but the wind cut wickedly here on the height. Anne slipped back her hood and started down where a path cut away from the road and curved down the slope to end as a dirt ring around the stones.