The Hob's Bargain(18)

"Your Grandpa liked to tell stories," said Kith repressively before starting off again.

I grinned at Wandel. "Yep, and about half of them were hog hooey. But deciding which ones were which was half the fun." More soberly, I said, "Lord Moresh's brother disappeared on Faran's Ridge. They hunted for him for weeks, but never found so much as a scrap of cloth."

The harper nodded. "There are many such tales here in the mountains. Too many to be dismissed as complete fiction." He set the Lass on the trail at a trot to catch Kith, and I brought up the rear.

The ground began to slope gently upward and the woods cleared a bit. The thornbush disappeared from the mix of underbrush. Overhanging branches no longer reached clear across the trail, so I could sit up, a position that I found much more comfortable.

Wandel brought his harp out. In keeping with the mood Kith had set earlier, he played a few tunes about the wild creatures who had held these mountains so long ago. I joined in with the ones I knew, ignoring Kith's exaggerated winces when I lost the pitch. Ever gracious, Wandel ignored my mistakes.

He switched at last to a tale of King Faran, the wizard-king who conceived of the highway. The ridge that formed the southwestern border of the valley was named after him because he was said to have won a battle there, though there was no real proof of it.

He had been, according to Gram and to Wandel's song, handsome and charismatic. He'd spent a long time as a warrior before taking up the additional robes of magery. Faran ruled wisely and well until the madness that inevitably twists bloodmages caught him - or so the stories said. I don't know how a bloodmage could be a good king, mad or not. The tower he'd thrown himself from was still standing (or so I'd heard).

I hadn't heard the story Wandel played, but it had a catchy tune and merry verses. Kith unbent enough to join in. He added a few verses himself, most of which were of the kind I'd have expected a soldier to know.

As we came out of the trees to the drier, grassy slopes of the foothill below the Hob, Kith stopped singing abruptly. Urging Duck beside the others, I saw what had brought on his silence.

Halfway up the foothill, below the first cliffs, was a boulder twice the size of my croft. It hadn't been there long. Looking up, I could see the raw places on the mountainside where it had broken loose and bounced. A shattered oak lay in aftermath of its passing, leaves still green with spring's promise.

I whistled. "I'd have hated to be here when it fell."

The sight of the boulder, a reminder that our world had come crashing down around our ears, cast a pall over our party. At least it dampened Wander's mood, and without his steady cheer, Kith's grim nervousness infected us all.

We were silent as we climbed the gentle rise to the Hob. The mountain was the tallest of those surrounding Fallbrook, but we didn't need to go over the peak. The trail to Auberg twisted and turned over the mountain's shoulder, working its way along the only negotiable path through the cliffs. The route itself was about the same length as the one the King's Highway followed, though it looked shorter on a map. Maps, even good ones, didn't take into account the amount of a trail's climbing and descending.

The first part of the path was easy, just as I remembered it. The trail followed the bottom edge of the cliffs in a gentle rise that traversed the side of the mountain in the opposite direction from Auberg. The only alternative was to go straight up the cliffs. I smiled and followed the others.

It was several hours before the cliff gave way to a steep slope dotted with evergreens. The trail twisted back and forth among the trees until we reached the base of an enormous, steep, skree slope.

It looked as if a giant had taken a bucket of sand and poured it down the side of the mountain. The slope stretched from the very peak of the mountain to the bottom, now far below us. The trail narrowed to a goat's path that traversed the skree at a very steep angle. We'd be going up.

Wandel swore, looked at me, and flushed.

"That's why no one in their right mind would take a wagon through here," I said. "There's a lot of grazing up there." I nodded toward the top of the trail. "The shepherds bring their flocks up this during the height of summer to save the fields in the valley - and they lose a few sheep here every year. I haven't ever been all the way through to Auberg, but I've been told this is the worst of it - though there are some other rough spots."

Kith had already started up the slope ahead of us. It was obvious from the way his horse slipped and scrambled that the path didn't offer much better footing than the looser rock on either side. It was steep, too.

Wandel started his horse across. I waited until he was well on his way before setting Duck to it. On a trail like this, I wanted room to maneuver. Ideally I'd have waited until Wandel was at the top, but Duck was already starting to fret at being left behind. When we crossed, I wanted his mind on his footing, not on catching up the horses ahead of him.

Before we were a tenth of the way up, Duck was coated in sweat and gray dust. I could feel the subtle trembling of his overworked muscles as he hauled me slowly up the mountainside. I sat as still as I could, and crouched over his big shoulders to let the gelding find his own pace.

If the trail hadn't been so narrow, it might have been better to dismount. On my own, I probably would have done so. But since Kith had tackled it mounted, the rest of us manly warriors had to do the same. I smiled sourly to myself. I would have expected childhood competitions to die out with adulthood - but there was no way I was going to dismount if Kith was riding.