Free Dark Mist Rising by Anna Kendall Page B

strung bow, and said, ‘Kwong!' He laughed.
    I put my head into my hands.

    No bears appeared. Shadow was taught to ‘shake paw'. Tom fidgeted in the cave until twilight, ducked outside periodically, slept briefly and fidgeted some more. Whenever he was awake, he talked. Whenever he was asleep, I worried. About Tom – was he reliable? About the savages – would they catch me? And about Maggie, whom I had abandoned. Not that Maggie couldn't take care of herself, and of Jee as well. But she had given me everything she had, and I had left her with nothing. Guilt gnawed at me like rats.
    So it was almost a relief when night came and Tom led me out of the cave. Unfortunately, the weather had changed. A cold drizzle fell and the countryside was so black that I could see neither Tom nor my own feet. But he seemed to know where he was going. He took my hand and led me, stumbling, away from the cave.
    ‘Tom, we can't travel in this. It's too dark.'
    ‘Just wait,' he said, and pulled me around the side of the hill. ‘Stay here.'
    I shivered in the rain while he vanished into the black-ness. Several moments later I saw a light bobbing along. It was a small lantern, a single thick candle encased in a glass housing, with holes on each side for air. Tom said triumphantly, ‘Surprise! I got the lantern from Agnes this morning when I got the bread and cheese. I hid it to surprise you. Ain't you pleased?'
    I was apprehensive. ‘If soldiers see a light—'
    ‘Oh, piss pots! In this rain they can't see nothing. I daresay they're all inside anyway, fucking our girls. Give you six to one odds on it. Peter, you surely can ruin a surprise.'
    ‘I'm sorry, Tom. I am grateful, only I think—'
    ‘You think too much,' he said shortly.
    ‘I merely—'
    ‘I daresay you would not have thought to ask Agnes for a lantern.'
    It seemed best to mollify him. ‘No, I would not have.'
    ‘What do the savages want you for, anyway?'
    It was the first time he had asked. I had prepared an answer designed to both fit whatever he might have heard in Almsbury and to mislead him. ‘They think I am kin to the man who led that raid upon Wellford and killed three of their number. They wish to find him through me.'
    He stared at me, his eyes widening. Rain ran, unheeded, from his hair and over his face. ‘Someone led a raid on the savages?'
    ‘Yes. In Wellford.'
    ‘Where is that?'
    ‘I don't know.' I had made up the name.
    ‘And the raiders killed the savages and got away clean?'
    ‘So I heard.'
    ‘By damn, I wish I'd been there!'
    He seemed to have lost track of the main idea. I said, ‘Someone described the leader of the raid to the savages and said that the man had a young cousin with one hand, so they thought it was me.'
    ‘But you told them naught about your cousin, right?'
    ‘He's not my cousin,' I said patiently. ‘He is no relation to me.'
    ‘Oh.' His voice held disappointment. And then, ‘How did you lose your hand?'
    For this too I had prepared, devising the least interesting explanation I could think of. ‘I misjudged while splitting wood with an axe.'
    ‘Oh,' he said, clearly disappointed a second time. ‘I thought perhaps you were having an adventure with your cousin. Come on, then!'
    I followed his great bulk through the rain, trying my best to keep within the jiggling little light of the lantern. Shadow followed me. We began the long slow climb towards the Unclaimed Lands, from which a few days ago I had descended as a prisoner.

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    We walked by night, slept by day. Tom cut both of us stout walking staffs, which helped with the steeper ascents. The weather continued foul although mercifully warm, and I began to think I would never be dry again. Tom had an uncanny ability to find safe sleeping places and trails in wild countryside beyond where he had travelled before. Each morning he built a small fire sheltered from the rain, cooked a rabbit caught by Shadow or toasted some cheese – while we still had any – and then