Carefully they edged down the castle hill, leaning backwards for balance. Fynn-roddan and Caslan offered no resistance. Evidently both had decided that broken legs were too high a price for a few seconds of entertainment. Once on the main road, however, the two managed to show themselves sufficiently. Fynn-roddan balked every few rods, while Caslan’s sudden movements might have toppled a lesser rider from his back.
Arran sat easy on Gleanna. “Where are we headed?”
Bryn nodded toward the east. “Creggan Torr is a high mountain, and we’d need a day to reach the summit, but there’s a ridge along the side of it that we can ride and be back by noontime.”
The roads curled about the low hills like smoke about a chimney, and it was on the sharpest turns that Arran learned to admire the Iredail breed. Though Caslan and Fynn-roddan had been primarily bred for racing, they left their high spirits at the curve of the road and stepped easily along. Gleanna was the one more easily distracted, and Arran kept a constant watch over her hooves, lest she should trip over an edge and tumble them both down a hill.
Small stone cottages, standing in the slope of every knoll, seemed to scatter animals like seedlings across the valleys. Cattle and goats usually avoided the roads, but bunches of white sheep planted themselves on dirt paths like wayward cotton. “Ever go lamb hunting?” Soldor said to Bryn, who shook his head.
“What do you hunt around here? Deer?” Arran nudged Gleanna around yet another oblivious clump of ewes.
“Deer. Boar, sometimes. Farmers bring in rabbits, but hunting of them isn’t something you do on horseback. They sell us wild fowl on occasion.”
“Hunted or trapped?”
“It’s a long thing if you want to trap a duck,” said Bryn. “They hunt, with dogs.”
Arran guided Gleanna down a short incline, deeply rutted by the wheels of a farmer’s wagon. “You have dogs?”
“A few,” said Bryn. “But I don’t use them if we have company.”
“It’s never made sense to me,” Soldor said, “why Midlanders are so offended by hunting with dogs.”
Bryn shrugged. “You’ve read their poets. It’s not genteel to let dogs tear up game.”
“So they can tear it up more effectively for supper.”
Arran smiled. “Invite them hunting of a time. They’ll see well enough that a trained dog does nothing like.”
“It would hardly matter,” Bryn said. “For a people so wise to the world, they have incredibly weak stomachs.”
Soldor laughed.
The path sloped upward suddenly; Arran leaned forward in his saddle and urged Gleanna forward. As they plodded upward, the incline slowly eased. Creggan Torr, gray and green in the morning, rose ahead of them.
Bryn straightened in the saddle, quiet as he guided them through a trail of coarse grass that led up the mountain. Arran followed gravely, through low bushes and patches of broken stone.
Soldor struggled up the slope, muttering at his horse from time to time, but the other two did not speak. They curved around the side of the mountain and continued upward. The higher they climbed, the scarcer the vegitation: soon, only a few scrubby trees stubbornly bound their roots about the rocks of the mountainside.
At last Bryn drew Caslan to a halt. “Look,” he said.
Before them spread the countryside of Iredail: the castle at Creggan Bronn; the low hills dappled by clusters of brown village; and, to the west, the green river Kirac, flowing beneath the blue mountains of Orrinshad.
“It was in these hills that we lost ourselves,” Bryn said softly, to Arran. “The Kyrloghid, we call it. Did your mother tell you?”
The rhythm and consonants flowed through his mind like the river Kirac. Arran could see them, knew them, but could not place them. He looked at Bryn.
“It was on this very ground,” Bryn said, “that Areir Darinac, the Last One, great leader of the clans, fought alone against Udroth, general of the Axelarrain. Udroth was a tall man, seven feet high, or so the stories say. And Areir Darinac had been sorely wounded. Udroth killed him that day. And thus Iredail was taken. Severed from Orrinshad, and made a province of Axelarre.”
“What are you talking about?” Soldor asked, nudging Fynn-roddan toward them.
“Only the costs of living in the world.” Bryn gestured toward the valley. “The view is worth the ride, would you agree?”
Soldor frowned, but said only, “It is. Have you ever ridden to the peak?”
“The higher trails are too steep for a horse,” Bryn said. “But I have been there, yes.”
Arran looked across the river to Orrinshad and remembered a song of his mother’s. “We had better ride back,” he said. Soldor would never understand this place, and he was not eager to stand on Areir Darinac’s death-place discussing the climbing abilities of four-legged creatures.
Soldor looked across the valley and smiled. “It’s a pretty view, but I can almost smell dinner cooking.”
“Goat cheese,” said Bryn, winking. He turned Caslan back toward the trail, humming.
Arran followed him, gazing one last time at the river Kirac. Gleanna managed better on the trek down the mountain than she had initially, keeping her footing sure and only hesitating twice.
They circled through the hilly maze of green, winding back toward the castle. Bryn hummed in bits, his eyes tracing the dark hills of Anaroc on the eastern horizon. Arran knew the tune, but again could not place it. He watched a thin boy, baggy trousers held up by a length of rope wound about his waist, chasing sheep. Another boy, taller, came from behind the hill and bellowed something at the younger one, who stopped, tripped over a sheep, and landed hard on his rear.
“That goat’s cheese at breakfast—” he said.
“Yes?” Bryn looked over his shoulder.
“Most of these people raise sheep.”
“A few raise goats,” Bryn said. “Usually only a few. Goats were our livelihood once—but no more.”
With Soldor near, Arran did not want to ask for the story behind Bryn’s statement. Considering Arran’s involvement with the People, Bryn’s tales of past glory might be too much for Soldor to ignore.
But Bryn, knowing this, began to sing the song he had been humming since their trip up the mountain.
“’Ferryman, where is your boat?
Why is the water still?
Who has feared the wandering goats
That used to roam the hill?’
“’My boat lies hidden in the reeds
Along the water’s edge.
The Kirac’s depths rolls silently
And sink too dark to dredge.
“’The looming hills of Anaroc
Fall black upon the wave,
And worlds that wander west of them
A man can scarcely save.’”
Almost Arran could hear his mother singing it. He passed Gleanna’s reins from one hand to the other, gripping them tightly.
“That’s not the sort of music you’ll have at the banquet, I hope?” Soldor called, lightly, from behind them.
“I’ll have all the lutes and crook-horns I can find, for you,” Bryn called back in the same tone. “For me—ear cotton!”
They arrived at Creggan Bronn laughing, with Bryn and Soldor trading good-natured jibes. They passed through the gate and were turning toward the stable when Marlon, with a grease-marked face, ran to them.
“Lord Bryn!”
“Aye?” Bryn said. “Has something—”
Marlon wiped dirty hands on his leather breeches. “Lord Soldor’s carriage, sir. It’ll have to be mended, and the sooner the better.”
Soldor leaned forward in his saddle. “Why? Speak up, man.”
“The foreaxle,” Marlon said. “It’s been sawn partway through, and cracked another fourth of the way across. Pass through the hills of Anaroc once more, and it’ll break completely. And then—well.”