Changer's Moon by Clayton Jo;

Author:Clayton, Jo;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2016-03-23T04:00:00+00:00

They reclaimed their own mounts and discarded those taken from the Center stables—poor beasts, bad-tempered and sluggish. Their own macain were uncomfortable and complaining in low hoots but Ildas soon had them snuffling happily at the grain, wrapping himself like living wire about them, warming the chill out of them. Another scoop of grain apiece, some melted water, and they were ready to go on; Rane and Tuli stripped the gear off the sad specimens from Center and turned them loose, hoping they weren’t too stupid to smell out the nearest food and shelter.

“What about those two twits?” Tuli scowled into the snow toward Appentar. “They’ll do the same to anyone that shows up.”

“You’ll see.” Rane swung into the saddle and rode toward the edge of the grove, Tuli following, Ildas perched on the saddle in front of her.

At the gate of the tar the ex-meie dismounted and used her grace knife to cut an inconspicuous mark in the gatepost, then she was in the saddle again riding swiftly away. It was some time before she slowed and let Tuli move up to ride beside her. “That was a warn-off mark,” she said. “Players, tinkers and peddlers have a series of marks they use to leave messages for each other. The warn-off says keep away, there’s trouble waiting for you here. Anyone on the run who knows Lembo and doesn’t know the signs will have to take his chances. Or hers. Lembo.…” She shrugged. “I don’t know about him. Maybe he was away like his daughters said and we just came at the wrong time. Maybe he’s dead. Maybe he’s turned. It doesn’t matter that much right now, we’ve got more important things to get busy on.”

“What next?”

“Oras. Fast and straight as we can. One good come out of this, we’ve got grain enough to keep the macain going on long marches.” She reached back and patted the fat sack tied behind the saddle.

Tuli nodded. “At least there’s that.” They’d been sparing in what they’d taken from tars, but there was no such moderation required when they were taking from the Agli.

They rode north and west and soon passed beyond the edge of the plain into down country, a region of low rocky hills. There were occasional flurries of snow; when it wasn’t snowing, the clouds hung low and mornings were often obscured by swirling fog. Roofed stone circles alongside small huts swam at them out of that fog as they wound among the hills. Now and then, a young boy with a chunky, broad-browed chini pressed into his leg stood in the hut’s doorway and watched them ride past. Sometimes the boy would lift a hand to salute them, more often he watched, silent and unmoving. The stone circles were filled with huddled linadyx, some of them wandering out into rambling pole corrals to chew on wads of hay and scratch down to the winter grass below the snow, their corkscrew fleeces smudges of black and gray and yellow-white against the blue-white of snow.

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