The Mate He Gave Away novel · Chapter 2 of 40

Chapter 2: The Ford

On the north road Corvin sets his terms and burns supper, the king's captain catches them at the ford to fetch Clem home, and she sends him back with a message, until his second order cuts Frostgate's grain.

We rode out through the river gate before the feast was over.

Nobody stopped us.

The guards had heard the cup hit the table. They looked at the ground as we passed.

Corvin rode a big black gelding.

I rode the gray mare, with my red skirts hitched to my knees and my shoes stuffed in a saddlebag.

By dawn Highcrown was a smudge of smoke behind us.

By noon my thighs were screaming.

I didn't say a word about it.

Corvin noticed anyway. He stopped at a stream and said the horses needed water, though his horse had drunk an hour earlier.

That night he made camp under a stand of pines.

He built a good fire. Then he tried to cook.

I watched him drop a lump of oat batter into the pan and walk away to see to the horses.

The smell reached me first.

"It's on fire," I said.

"It's searing."

"It's black, Corvin."

He came back and looked into the pan.

"Agnes says I could burn water."

"Who's Agnes?"

"Frostgate's cook. She raised me. She'll like you better than me inside a day."

I took the pan off the fire, scraped it clean with a stick and started again.

He sat on a log and watched me do it.

"You cook," he said.

"I'm a miller's daughter. I grew up with flour in my ears."

"Osric never let you near the kitchens."

"Osric never let me near anything. I ran the stores at the Hall for three years. Every sack and barrel. He told the court his steward did it."

I flipped the oat cake. It came out golden.

I handed him the first one.

He ate it in two bites and didn't say anything, which I decided was praise.

When we'd eaten, he unrolled his blanket on the far side of the fire.

"Terms," he said.

"Terms?"

"At Frostgate you'll have my rooms. They lock. I sleep in the barracks with my men."

"For how long?"

"For as long as you're under my roof."

He looked at me across the flames.

"Nobody touches you. Not me. Not anybody. That isn't a promise to him. It's to you."

The fire popped.

My shoulder ached where the mark had been, a dull throb like a pulled tooth.

"What happens when the season's over?" I said. "When there's no pup?"

"Then there's no pup."

"He'll say I failed again."

"He can say it from four days away."

He took off his sheepskin coat and tossed it over to me.

"It's Midsummer," I said.

"It's the north road. Wait till two in the morning."

At two in the morning I woke up shivering and pulled the coat over my head.

It smelled of woodsmoke and horse and pine.

Across the fire, Corvin was sitting up with his back against a tree, whittling something small by the coals.

He hadn't slept.

He was keeping watch.

I pretended to be asleep until I really was.

On the third day we reached the Greywater ford.

The river ran wide and shallow over flat stones, and the far bank was all birch trees.

We were halfway across when we heard horses behind us.

Ten riders in Ravenscar black came down the slope at a gallop.

The one in front wore a captain's silver chain. I knew him. He used to carry Osric's cloak.

Corvin turned his gelding in the water and put himself between them and me without a word.

The captain reined in at the edge of the ford.

"My lord Warden," he said. "The king commands the Luna's return to Highcrown."

"There isn't a Luna," I said.

The captain looked at me for the first time.

"My lady."

"Not that either. I'm Clem Millward. You can tell the king I said so."

"The king says the rejection was a woman's fit of temper and means nothing."

"Then tell him to look at his shoulder."

His face twitched.

He'd seen it. Of course he had. The king had probably screamed for a physician the moment I left the hall.

"I have orders," he said.

"So do I," said Corvin. "Mine say nobody takes a woman off my road against her will."

"Your road?"

"I'm Warden of the North. This ford's mine from the middle out." He nodded at the water. "You're standing in the half that's yours. Stay there."

Ten riders. Corvin alone.

Nobody on that bank moved.

"I'll take your message, then," the captain said to me, stiff as a board.

"Tell the king thank you," I said. "For the horse, and the road, and the honey cakes. Tell him I'll manage the rest myself."

Two of the riders behind him looked away so I wouldn't see them smile.

The captain reached into his coat and pulled out a second letter, sealed in black wax.

"For the Warden," he said. "From the king. I was told to hand it over either way."

He held it out across the water.

Corvin rode over and took it.

He broke the seal and read it with no expression at all.

Then he read it again.

The captain was already turning his horse.

"What is it?" I asked.

Corvin folded the letter in half, and then in half again.

"Frostgate's grain allotment," he said. "It's cut. Until I do my duty by the Debt."

"How much flour is at Frostgate?"

"Fifty days, if we're careful."

"And how many mouths?"

He looked north, where the road went up into the hills.

"Two hundred," he said.

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