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“Big” Snorri shook his head He went to the rowing boat andSo needed thanking for not drowning us Finished at last, he turned and gestured for me to lead the way “Rhone And by swift roads”
“They’d be swifter if we had horses”
Snorri snorted as if offended by the idea And waited And waited some more
“Oh,” I said, and led off, though in truth e that Rhone lay north and a little west I hadn’t the least clue about local roads In fact, past Marsail I would struggle to naion’s major towns No doubt Cousin Serah could reel theravity all the while, and Cousin Rotus could probably bore a librarian to death with the populace, produce, and politics of each settlement down to the last hamlet My attentions, however, had always been focused closer to home and on less worthy pursuits
We left the broad strip of cultivated floodplain and clies into drier country Snorri ran with sweat by the ti; perhaps a fever fro for the sun to becoh stony valleys and rough scrub, and with ht, I returned to the subject of horses
“You knoould be good? Horses That’s what”
“Norsemen sail We don’t ride” Snorri looked embarrassed, or perhaps it was the sunburn
“Don’t or can’t?”
He shrugged “How hard can it be? You hold the reins and go forwards If you find us horses, we’ll ride” His expression darkened “I need to be back there I’ll sleep in the saddle if a horse will get me north before Sven Broke-Oar finishes his work in the Bitter Ice”
It occurred to ht yet survive He thought this a rescue e That e is a business of calculation, best served cold Rescue holds er, and allin the opposite direction It her priority By the look of his hand, which seemed worse from one hour to the next, with the infection’s spread nowwould need to be done soon Otherwise hethe consequence for one of us if the other expired ht soon be put to the test I’d made the claim as a lie, but it had felt true when I spoke it
• • •
We trudged on through the heat of the day, forcing a path through a dry and airless conifer forest Hours later the trees released us, scratched, and sticky with both sap and sweat As luck would have it, we spilled froins directly onto a broad track punctuated with re