The Hero and the Crown by Robin Mckinley

Author:Robin Mckinley [Mckinley, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780441328093
Publisher: Ace
Published: 1985-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

IT TOOK THEM three days of Talat*s careful walking to come to the crossroads where they had parted with their guide to go on and face the dragon; three days complicated by the fact that Aerin didn’t dare dismount till she found something near a campsite that would let her remount in the morning.

She was deadly tired each evening; her ankle throbbed from hanging vertical so long; and she realized how much weaker she was even than she had thought. It was hard to make herself eat; she was never hungry, and eating hurt, and she ate dutifully because eating was something one did; but she got more pleasure out of watching Talat graze. He had eaten everything edible along the banks of their stream, including some of the bark off the trees, and he tore with great enthusiasm into the fresh grass they now camped beside.

Not infrequently during the day she would come to herself again and look around and realize that she had drifted away. Sometimes it would take her a minute or two just to recognize the trees around her, common Damarian trees whose shapes and leaf patterns had been familiar to her since childhood. Occasionally she woke up and found herself collapsed forward on Talat’s neck. But he would not let her fall off, and she didn’t. He carried her steadily, his ears pricked and cautious; and he seemed to feel no hesitation about their direction.

“Well, my friend, you know what you are doing,” she%his—

120

THE HERO AND THE CROWN

123

pered to Talat, his ears cocked back to listen, when at last they reached the crossroads. “It wasn’t I that got us here.”

When they set out from the crossroads again the next morning, the way opened up. She had not remembered that the narrow path became a small roadway so soon; but that had been when she still had her hair and the use of all her limbs, and open spaces had held no terrors for her. The mountains climbed steeply to their left, but on their right she looked through hedgerows to planted fields, crops waving green and gold in the sunlight. She tried to make herself feel better by thinking that had she not killed Maur—whatever it may have cost her personally—the crops would have been black by now, and the farmers, dragon’s meat. But the comfort was cold, and she could not feel it; she was too deep in dread for what was to come.

She was drifting in and out of awareness again that afternoon, her good hand wrapped in Talat’s mane that she might not fall forward and hurt her burnt arm, when Talat suddenly came to a halt and stiffened—and neighed. Aerin shook herself awake with the sound; and he neighed again, and trembled, and she knew he would have reared to cry greeting and challenge as the Damarian warhorses were taught, but he did not for her sake, and she closed her eyes briefly on tears of exhaustion and self-pity.

She could not

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