The Hob's Bargain(19)

Wandel was about halfway to the far side when the Lass lost her footing where the trail crossed the smooth face of a large piece of unbroken shale. The little mare jumped and scrambled frantically but couldn't stop her downward slide even after reaching the end of the slick rock face and hitting the rougher surface of loose rock that made up most of the trail.

I stopped Duck foursquare in the trail. I had few seconds to worry before the Lass's rump hit Duck's chest with considerable force. My stout gelding grunted and rocked back on his haunches, but his weight and his shoeless, big feet gave him better traction than the mare had. He slid backward a pace or two before we all stopped.

"Bless you for bringing that horse," gasped Wandel, patting the Lass, who was blowing hard. "I thought that was going to be it. If he were any lighter, we'd have all been tumbling down to the bottom."

I was busy watching a rock the mare's feet had knocked loose finally hit the valley bottom. Duck shuffled back another step, then took advantage of my inattention to snatch a few strands of grass that poked out among the rocks, proof that horses have no imagination.

I shook my head in reply to Wandel's comment. "Nah, that would have been too easy. Surely all the tales that you've told will win you a more glorious and painful fate."

He laughed. "I'll keep that in mind while we try this again."

Kith was waiting for us at the top by the time Wandel urged the Lass forward. This time, I held Duck back until the Lass was on the far side of the rock sheet before letting him follow. When I reached the small meadow at the top, the others were already loosening their cinches. I dismounted and followed suit, slipping the bit so Duck could graze while he rested.

"The place I want to camp is about a league from here," said Kith. "That will give us an early night, but there aren't very many good places to camp past there. We'll make it to town by late afternoon anyway."

"Right," I agreed, not feeling all that fresh myself. Sitting in the dark for a week wasn't the best preparation for a trek through the mountains. Wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my sleeve, I looked around and tried to match what I saw with my last journey here.

"Hmm," I said, "this isn't too far from where we camped that time, is it?" I didn't wait for Kith's reply.

"Weren't there some runes or something on some rocks down there?"

"Runes?" inquired the harper.

"Mmm. Want to take a look while the horses rest?"

"I'll stay with the horses," Kith volunteered.

There was something in his voice that caused me to look sharply at him, but the expression on his face was simply reserved.

"I'd like to see them," replied Wandel, though he groaned as he stood up from the knee-high boulder he'd been sitting on.

"Walking will help keep you from stiffening up," I said, trying both to sound wise and not to look as stiff as I felt.

The harper raised his eyebrows with hauteur that would have done Lord Moresh proud. "My child," he intoned, "when you have traveled as many miles as I, you will understand that nothing - nothing - keeps you from stiffening up."

"If you don't come back by sunset, I'll come looking for you," Kith offered, watching as I searched for the right place to set off back down the mountain. He might have been amused, but it was hard to tell.

The path I chose wasn't the same one the three of us had taken almost twenty years ago. As I recalled, we'd been trying to find a way down that would allow us to avoid the skree slope (that the boys had already been across once). We'd run into thorn thickets at the very base of the mountain and had had to climb all the way back to our starting point, but scrambling around had led us to...

"There," I said pointing to a large, reddish rock balanced against another, both easily taller than three men standing one atop another.

I had led us too far down, so we had to scramble back up to the site.

"Here," I said, panting. "On the underside, where the weather couldn't wash them away."

They weren't as impressive as I'd remembered them. Merely worn black lines on stone, almost pictures but not quite. Wandel didn't seem to mind.

He scrambled close to the faint marks and crouched on his heels with an ease that gave lie to the stiffness he'd been complaining about. He frowned a moment, then opened his purse and unwrapped a bit of char. With a delicate touch he added a mark here and there, sometimes merely darkening what was already there, but once he added a whole series of the little symbols.

"Can you read it?" I asked in unfeigned awe. I could read a little, thanks to Gram - but that was the king's tongue. Only noblemen knew how to write anything else, noblemen and scholars.

The harper nodded. "A bit. I think. Some of the runes are different." He pointed at one. "I've never seen anything like that. And here, see, this didn't have this tail - but it makes sense if I change it so."

"So what does it say? Do you know who wrote it? How old it is?"

"Well," he said dryly, "it's older than the last time you saw this. Any scholar could have written this. It's an ancestor of Manishe - a common tongue among scholars, though it hasn't been in everyday use for four hundred years or so."

He said "four hundred years" as if it were a few days. Harpers were strange that way.