Isobel Page 16

  She swallowed, having a number of things that she wanted to say to him, but being too shy to say any of them.

  “You and Kenna,” he said, referring to his sister. “You’re the same age?”

  She nodded.

  “So next winter…”

  She didn’t look at him, nodding again quickly.

  “You should come see me,” he said. “I know Kenna would be thrilled to see you, and…”

  She looked at his feet and nodded.

  “Okay.”

  There was the sound of his smile and she looked away, grinning.

  “Okay,” he said.

  The high roof of the main hall came into sight and they separated a bit more as they walked, until Allie could forestall it no longer.

  “I’m going to go hide this for the night,” she said, looking at him in hopes that he had an excuse to keep her with him. She watched him search for one for an instant, then he gave her a broad smile and nodded.

  “Wouldn’t want anyone finding it,” he said. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

  Gwen kept Allie at her table for dinner, giving her a list of things that she needed to do the next day, her language not giving it away, but her tone making it clear that she knew that Allie had skipped out today on purpose. Allie’s attention kept drifting back to the main table and the diminished but yet boisterous conversation there. Food was thrown and young men laughed and yelled, their voices echoing in the woody space.

  “Allie,” Gwen said. Allie snapped back.

  “Yes, mum?” she asked.

  “Tell me what I just told you.”

  “Take the hides from the tanner to our hut and divide them up for clothes and patching, finish bringing in the herbs from the garden, help Connor with…”

  Her mind wandered again and Gwen clicked her tongue at her.

  “Absent-minded girl. I’d say this is the growth taking ya, if it weren’t what you were like, every other day.”

  “Milk,” Allie said. “Something about milk.”

  “I only told you twice,” Gwen said. “Listen to me, this time.”

  Allie nodded, but didn’t do any better a job, this time, than the previous ones. Aedan and Drude were in some kind of a wrestling spat, and the rest of the boys were having to hold down the boards to keep the food from flying away. It appeared that Rafa was going to intervene.

  It was getting cold with the sunset, and a pair of the older men put a large log onto the fire, kicking up a writhing serpent of sparks.

  “Allie,” Gwen said. Allie jumped, and Gwen shook her head.

  “Just be where I can find ya, girl. You’ll never remember it all, and I don’t want you wandering. We’ve got too much to do.”

  She knew it was true. There was a small window between caring for the throng of boys and hard winter in which most of the people who lived at the training outpost full time had to take care of a years’ worth of maintenance of their own affairs. Once the deep winter arrived, they would turn to traditional tasks around weapons- and tool-making, and they needed to have their supplies amassed. The number of days for getting out would be few, and anything that had to be dug or cut was risky. While it was easy to track where a man had gone, it was just as easy to get caught out in a heavy storm, or slip and fall and be taken by the elements long before anyone thought to check on you.

  Allie would spend more time out in the woods than most, freed to hunt winter berries and falcon feathers for fletching. There was an understanding that children would have the drearier and more captive responsibilities soon enough, and it seemed to Allie that many of the women were happy enough to stay in the warm.

  “Allie,” Gwen said again. For as stern as the woman’s voice was, Allie recognized the sparkle in her mother’s eyes. She’d had it whenever her sons had gotten into mischief, and when her husband, Allie’s father, had sung songs that Allie hadn’t understood. Gwen loved life, and she’d always left space for Allie to enjoy it, even as she instructed her daughter in the things that would be constant responsibilities as she got older.

  “Sorry, ma.”

  “What’s got into you, girl?”

  Allie shook her head.

  “Too many thoughts,” she answered. Gwen nodded.

  “I know those days. You think what you want, but don’t let your head go wandering off.”

  Allie smiled.

  “Sorry, ma.”

  Gwen took her hand across the table.

  “Your da would be so proud of you. You’re a beautiful young woman, Aileen, with a strong mind. We always wanted that for you.”

  Allie blinked unexpected tears back and Gwen smiled.

  “Go, now. Your shoes are nearly worn through, and outgrown, besides. I left some sheepskin by your bed. Measure it out and get it cut tonight, and I’ll sew them for you tomorrow.”

  Allie ducked her head and gathered her scraps, leaving them in a bucket by the door. Someone - on some nights, Allie herself - would take the scrap bucket out to the goats once the meal was over.

  She cast a final glance over her shoulder where Aedan was having a spirited argument with the man across the table from him, then skipped across the yard humming to herself about new shoes.

  She was up with the sun the next morning, shooed out of the hut she shared with Gwen to go tend animals and procure small foodstuffs that Gwen would use to make the breakfasts they shared privately before they started their days.

  All day as she scrambled around the yard, seemingly only steps ahead of Gwen’s broom flicking at her to keep moving, she saw boys leave. Most we eager to be home, seeing family and friends. A good number were sad to leave Rafa, though, and the stable, calm routine he represented. The Caledd were almost to a man animated and noisy. Some of them were moody and angry, though, and often a few the younger boys would come to Rafa in the spring with healing bones and bright bruises.

  Some of them had older family members who came to fetch them, but Caledd families ran large, and most of the boys had older siblings who would lead the caravan home, or were old enough themselves to do it. Drude and Aedan were unusual in both being only sons, though they had been coming and going on their own since they’d been old enough to sit astride a horse. The path between Drest’s hillfort and Rafa’s school was almost visibly worn, with how often Gede would travel it. At a wandering pace, horseback, it would take a quarter of a day’s daylight to get there. At Gede’s intentional trot, it was much less.

  At midday, Gwen brought Allie a bowl of hot stew where she was working in the kitchen to help seal portions of mead into clay bowls that would be broken open at special occasions over the winter. Her mother sat with her while she ate, then took her bowl and left her to her work again.

  She wasn’t unhappy, working. The smells of the kitchen were therapeutic and the women who worked there full-time were jovial and friendly. Allie was the only girl in the community, and while she wasn’t close to the other women like family, they were glad to dote on her in their own ways. Most had lost family to the wars, and Allie could see how being around her and the boys that Rafa trained kept the melancholy away.

  In the early afternoon, Gwen came to her with her new slippers for her to try on. They were too big by design, but the newly-shorn wool was cozy against her feet, not mashed down from a year of wear like her old shoes, and they were delightful.

  “Do they fit right?” Gwen asked, feeling Allie’s foot through the still-soft leather.

  “They will right before they’re worn out and I need new ones,” Allie said, wiggling her toes. Gwen smiled.

  “As it should be.”

  And then Allie was back to grooming horses. Their winter coats were coming in, and burs and broken twigs were tangled in the thick hair. They would let the horses range, unkempt, so long as it wasn’t hurting anything, but the mounts for the boys going home needed to be prepared for their journey, and the horseman would look over each of them carefully before they left to ensure that the boys would arrive home safely.


  That was how Aedan found her.

  He lugged his bedroll across the withers of his tall chestnut horse, laughing at something surly Drude had said, then spotted her.

  “I’ve been looking for you, today,” he said.

  “Ma has kept me busy,” she answered. “I got away for too long yesterday.”

  He grinned.

  “Do that a lot, do you?”

  She answered with a wide grin of her own and shrugged. He leaned in confidentially.

  “I left a present for you at the rocks where you hid your bow yesterday. Promise you’ll come see me?”

  She nodded eagerly, and he squeezed her hand, sending a jolt up her arm.

  “Have a good winter, my forest pixie.”

  “Don’t be a stranger, little one,” Drude called from horseback. She waved at him, then stood back as Aedan mounted up and booted his gelding into a fast canter. Drude yelped and started after him, giving Allie one last, exuberant wave, then bending over his horse’s neck to chase after Aedan. Allie watched after them with a grin she couldn’t control, then turned back to her work.

  Allie was helping to purify the salt that they would use to preserve the venison that one of the men had butchered early in the afternoon when Isobel came into the kitchen. Gwen looked up from where she was stripping tubers that would go into a stew for dinner.

  “I think she’s had a productive day, don’t you?” Isobel asked Gwen, indicating Allie. Gwen gave Isobel a mischievous smile and shrugged.

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “May I borrow your daughter for a few hours before dinner?”

  Gwen looked at Allie and Allie stopped breathing.

  “I suppose there’s no harm in it. Don’t be late for dinner.”

  Allie nodded quickly and skittered after Isobel before Gwen changed her mind.

  “You’ve been practicing?” Isobel murmured as they walked down the dim hallway toward the front door.

  “Yes, of course,” Allie said. Isobel nodded.

  “I have something to show you,” the woman said, taking a cape from a peg by the doorway and swinging it across her shoulders as they went out into the crisp air.

  Isobel didn’t seem to have anything else to say to her as they walked, so Allie simply followed, head up, enjoying the space to think and take in the world as it went by.

  They passed the arena, forging a path through the woods, Isobel’s heavy skirts kicking up thin, dry snow as she walked.

  “What wins wars, Aileen?” Isobel asked finally.

  “Men with swords,” Allie said with slight bitterness, thinking of the formations of red Roman soldiers that had driven them north.

  “Wrong,” Isobel said, without turning.

  “Just men, then,” Allie said.

  “Still wrong.”

  “Fine, what wins wars?”

  “Tactics,” Isobel said. She turned, slowing to let Allie catch up, and Allie sped up to walk next to the tall woman. “The Roman empire spans beyond your ability to understand. No one has stood up to them with any lasting success, including your father’s own people.”

  Allie didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing.

  “What is different about the Caledd?” Isobel asked. Allie shook her head. She’d never thought about it.

  “I don’t know.”

  Isobel nodded as if that were her best answer yet.

  “Distance, for one,” Isobel said. “Rome is preoccupied with many other things, and the men of the north are mere nuisances, but you are significant nuisances, for as many generals as you have sent home in disgrace. You have rolled back the empire, generation after generation. There aren’t many places in the world, to my knowledge, that can boast such a thing. The Caledd are special.”

  “Our fighting men are strong,” Allie said. Isobel nodded.

  “And trained since childhood, certainly. You kill more of each other than the Romans can boast. But you use the land. The thick woods, the shape of the land itself. The Romans are often beset before they know what has happened. It is an admirable skill.”

  Allie waited again.

  “In what discipline could you beat Aeden?” Isobel asked.

  Allie flustered.

  “What? Why? What about Aedan?”

  “Your mother knows, too,” Isobel said with a small smirk. “But if you were to compete with him, how would you beat him?”

  Allie shook her head.

  “I couldn’t.”

  Isobel sighed.

  “You have natural advantages. You need to train yourself to use them.”

  “Like what?”

  “Think, Allie.”

  They passed through a spot where the wind had drifted snow, and Allie’s feet crunched through it as they walked. If she had to beat Aedan…

  “I’d climb,” she said. The twitch of a smile from Isobel encouraged her, and she kept going. “He might be able to follow me up, but he’d never keep up with me.”

  “And a Roman with a sword would never reach you,” Isobel said with a nod. “Never look at yourself as smaller and weaker. This is your land, and as a Caledd, you can win, so long as you see the advantages, not the weaknesses. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Allie said, looking up at the trees with new perspective. She’d climbed trees her whole life. The wood under her hands was almost as familiar as the dirt under her feet. Of course that was where she should be. It was stupid that she hadn’t thought of it before, hiding from Gede.

  Isobel pushed through a cluster of bushes and Allie followed, stumbling into a narrow clearing, rough with the stubble of cut brush. Isobel stood, looking down the length of the clearing.

  “I had the workmen cut everything down, but it will be up to you to maintain it,” she said.

  Allie stared.

  “Why?”

  Isobel watched her for a minute with dark, piercing eyes.

  “Because for as willing as they are to tell you no, no one will say it to me. If you’re willing to put in the work, I’ll give you the opportunity.”

  Allie stared at the narrow archery range. It was just begging for lost arrows, and the plants would start to creep back into the open ground as soon as the sun touched the soil next spring, but it was hers.

  “Thank you,” she said. Isobel nodded.

  “Be back before dark. Don’t let your mother worry.”

  Allie gave her unspoken promise and pulled her bow from over her back, testing the string as she eyed the burlap target at the far end of the aisle.

  She had work to do.

  She was hurrying back to the homes so quickly that night as dusk fell that she nearly forgot to check for Aedan’s gift. She took a quick look at the sky, measuring whether she could go back for it and keep her promise to Isobel, but curiosity overpowered responsibility well before she made a reasoned decision. She ran back, ducking through the low branches of sapling trees to get to the stand of rocks.

  She found a leather-bound parcel there and she sat down, ravenously untying it. A bundle of arrows fell out in her hand, fletched with chicken feathers and tipped with stone. Practice arrows, or hunting arrows, if need arose, not fighting weapons, but so much better than what she had. She clasped them tight, then re-wrapped them, setting off at a run again.

  She needed to get back before Gwen started looking for her, or else she’d never be able to sneak everything into her bedding.

  Her feet flew across the ground. She was weightless, flying. The forest pixie. Huntress, warrioress, nothing would stop her and nothing would catch her.

  She was an archer.

  She spent much of the next month out in the woods, hunting feathers from falcons and practicing with her bow. The snow would keep even her in, soon, and she wanted to spend as much time on her little range as she could. She was getting better, stronger, and the arrows Aedan had left with her had been a tremendous help. They actually did the same thing every time she shot them, unlike the practice shafts that wandered wherever they p
leased, often landing dozens of yards apart.

  She was practicing in trees, at this point, climbing and perching with her bow, finding her old sense of balance quickly coming back. She could hit a target from any tree along her range at least one out of two shots, and was narrowing the error of the ones that missed.

  The first time, she’d nearly fallen out of the tree, but she was learning to adapt her stance to the limbs that were available.

  It would be a new challenge when the trees grew their leaves back next spring, but she looked forward to it. For as much visibility as she would lose, she would gain that much invisibility to the forest floor. She practiced stealth, working from branch to branch without giving herself away, imagined sneaking up on enemies from above and showering them with arrows, fleeing before they could retaliate.

  Rafa would occasionally come to the arena to practice, and she would sit as high in the trees as she could safely get and watch him. She didn’t think he ever practiced around the boys, and she felt as though she might have been invading something private, but the victory of it was more than she could resist. She had to try.

  As the weather took a slow turn toward hard winter and the old men started forecasting the first real, hard snow of the season, Allie’s thoughts turned to Aedan. If she was going to visit him, it would have to be soon. Otherwise, she would have to wait until one of the days that everyone would go to Drest’s hillfort, to ensure that she didn’t get stuck along the way by herself, and that just didn’t have the same allure to her. She wanted a day all on her own, where no one held any expectations for her behavior.

  So she picked a day and she stole a horse.

  The mare was one of Isobel’s line of horses, a great black beast of a horse who seemed unaware of the knee-deep snow as she shuffled along in her bouldery trot. Allie spent the first portion of the ride finding all of the air holes in her clothing and pulling them tight, then she settled into the slide-shuffle of the mare’s pace and watched the world go by.

  The evergreens were still vibrant against their light coats of snow, while the sturdy trunks of the leafy trees stood stoically bare against the gray sky. The snow absorbed all of the noise like a blanket over her head, so that it felt like the world was an illusion encompassing her and the great warm mare as her breath came in soft grunts at the rhythm of her trot. Shallower snow would have crunched more as the mare lifted her hooves and brought them down onto the layer of snow, packing it hard, but at this depth, she was pushing more of it out of the way than she was crushing it, making a gentle whooshing sound. Smaller horses would have struggled in this depth of snow, unable to push it aside, until they got down to the size of the mountain ponies the Caledd traditionally bred for non-war purposes. The deft little animals had broad hooves that kept them up on top of the snow, even when they were laden with rider or supplies.