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its edge. "As long as we don't run out of wind."
"It's grown more erratic, the last little while," Fiametta admitted. She made
another adjustment to the sail.
He stared at the cloudless turquoise bowl of sky, arcing between the hills. "I
trust there will be no storm tonight. For becalming, we have oars."
She glanced at the oars with unease. There went her last hope of avoiding the
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dreaded shore, even if the wind failed, which it seemed inclined to do. Over
the next half-hour their progress slowed to a crawl.
The surface of the water grew silken, and the little slap of wind waves
against the hull muted to pure silence. The village was still a mile off. She
gave up at last, and lowered the sail.
She jiggled the heavy oars into the oar locks, and made to sit on the center
bench.
"Give over," Master Beneforte snorted. "Your puny little girl arms won't get
us there before nightfall." He evicted her from her place with a wave of his
hands, and took it over. With a grunt, he started them forward with powerful
sloshing strokes that made whirlpools spiral away from the oar blades into the
smooth water. But after two minutes he stopped, his face grown gray again even
against the orange glow of sunset. He gave up the oars to her without even
arguing, and was very quiet for a time.
It was dusk when Fiametta's last aching pull nosed the bow onto the pebbled
beach. Stiff-legged, they stumbled out of the boat and pulled it another foot
up onto shore. Master Beneforte let the bow rope drop to the gravel crunching
underfoot.
"Will we stay here the night?" Fiametta asked anxiously.
"Not if I can get horses," said Master Beneforte. "This place is too small to
hide in. I won't begin to be easy till we're over the border. Hole up
somewhere beyond Lord Ferrante's reach, till things sort themselves out."
"Will we& ever get to go home again?"
He gazed south, over the darkening lake. "My heart stands in my courtyard in
Montefoglia, covered with clay. By God and all the saints, I will not be
sundered from my heart for long."
Over the course of the next hour, they discovered that fisher-folk were not
notable horsemen. Boats, after all, did not require expensive hay and grain.
They were handed from one head-shaking peasant to another, less and less
hospitably as the night grew darker. At last Fiametta found herself standing
with her father in a shed at the end of the village, looking at a fat white
nag that was over-at-the-knees, gray-headed, bewhiskered, and venerable.
"Are you sure you don't mean us two to carry him?" Master Beneforte, dismayed,
asked the gelding's owner. Fiametta petted its wide velvety nose and listened.
She'd never had a horse before.
The villager launched into a lengthy list of the beast's great strengths and
manifold virtues, ending with a declaration that the horse was practically one
of his family.
"Yes, your grandfather," muttered Master Beneforte in his beard. But after
further negotiation, the deal was struck: a jewel and the boat for a horse.
Master Beneforte prised a jewel from the hilt of his dagger under the man's
suspicious eyes. He drew the line in outrage at the villager's request for a
second jewel for a saddle. The subsequent crescendo of argument almost broke
the deal again.
Still, the horse trader offered them bread, cheese, and wine. Master Beneforte
denied being hungry, though both he and Fiametta drank a little wine. They
packed the bread and cheese along.
The rising moon had just cleared the eastern hills when the peasant helped
boost Fiametta up behind her father on the horse's warm, wide back. The
bare-back's downward curve was practically a saddle in itself. The night was
clear, and the moon still near-full, its light sufficient for them to make out
the road in front of them. At the speed they were going to be traveling, it
would be quite safe. Master Beneforte clucked, and beat the horse's fat sides
with his heels, and they ambled off. As they left the environs of the village
the horse seemed to perk up at this break from its usual routine, and stepped
out& well, vigorously was too strong a term. Normally, perhaps.
The heavy red wine, combined with the gruesome day just past, made Fiametta's
eyelids droop. She laid her head against her father's back and dozed, lulled
by the horse's steady rocking clop-a-clop. The horse trader had earnestly
warned them of demons abroad in the dark. After today demons seemed homey to
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Fiametta, compared to men. She didn't fear the dark at all, as long as there
were no men in it&
Her blood was beating raggedly in her ears as she jerked awake at a sudden
jounce of the white horse, under her. Her father was slapping the beast into a
trot, hissing. And no, the thrumming noise wasn't inside her head, but
outside. Hoofbeats on the road behind them. Jostled and sliding, she clutched
Master Beneforte around the waist, and cranked her aching head around to stare
over her shoulder.
"How many?" Master Beneforte demanded in a strained voice.
"I .., I'm not sure." Horsemen, yes, dark shapes on the road behind them, cold
light glinting off metal. "More than two. Four."
"I should have bought a black horse. This cursed beast shines like the moon,"
Master Beneforte groaned. "And this country has no cover worth a whore's
spit." Nevertheless, he yanked the horse off the road and headed them across a
silver-misted meadow toward a coppice of spindly trees.
It was too late. A shout went up behind them, catcalls and hooting as their
pursuers, seeing them, belabored their horses into full gallop.
Three-quarters of the way across the meadow, Master Beneforte pulled the white
horse's head back around. He drew his dagger.
"Get down and run for the trees, Fiametta."
"Papa, no!"
"You're more a hindrance than a help. This needs my undivided attention. Run,
damn it!"
Fiametta huffed out her breath in protest, but she was half-sliding off the
horse's slick back anyway. She fell to her feet and skipped backwards. The
four dark horsemen were turning in to the meadow and spreading out in a
frontal charge. Actually, not quite a charge; their horses bounced in a
hesitant, reined-in canter, as if the idea of attacking a master mage in the
dark was beginning to lose its appeal with proximity. They do not know how
sick he is, Fiametta thought.
The leader pointed at Fiametta, and shouted to one of his men, who peeled off
from the rest and started forward at a much more convincing pace. Fiametta
picked up her skirts and sprinted for the trees. The coppice was close-grown;
if she reached it first, he would not be able to force his mount in among the
lashing branches. If she didn't& A panicked glance over her shoulder showed
the other three closing in on Master Beneforte, who waited for them, dagger
raised, the drama of the tableau slightly spoiled by the fat white horse
fighting to put its head down and eat grass.
"Pigs!" Master Beneforte's shout echoed in her ears. "Scum! Come and be
slaughtered like the vile herd of swine that you are!" Master Beneforte had
often maintained that the best defense was a good offense, most men being
cowards at heart. But his labored breathing drained much of the threat from
his tones. The man detailed to pursue Fiametta was clearly not in the least
frightened of her, however. She crashed into the coppice just ahead of him; he
made his horse rear to a stop, and dismounted to follow. He didn't even draw
his sword. His boots were heavy and his legs were long. She dodged around the
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