Chapter 9 #2
Digging into his pocket, Mal pulled out a length of twine and began to tie back his unruly, knotted hair. “You feel alert enough to make some bad decisions?” he asked Griff casually as he did so. His smile wasn’t warm; the glint in his eye made it something else entirely.
Griff studied the unhurried motions of that black speck a few moments more before observing softly, “You’ve always wanted a horse, haven’t you?”
Mal started unraveling the scarf around his neck as he answered.
Wrapping it differently, covering his face with it so that only his eyes were visible, before he pulled up his cloak hood and adjusted the toggles.
“It’s not about that,” he insisted, as though Griff had offended him.
“When we grab that treasure”—he gestured vaguely in the direction of the Mire—“we’re going to need a way to carry it all back.
Although,” he added, a crinkling around his eyes suggesting that he was grinning beneath the scarf, “I also want one just so I can name it Griff.”
With that, he put a foot down onto the rocky incline that made up this side of the hill, casually beginning his descent like he hadn’t just goaded Griff, knowing full well that he had always resented being named after his father’s stallion.
“Shouldn’t we wake Alys?” Griff called softly after him, choosing to ignore the slight.
Something sailed toward him, and he caught it instinctively: a crimson scarf, the one that had been Mal’s when the black one had been his.
“Wrap your face with this,” Mal instructed. “It’ll be just like sheep tipping. But better, because you’re doing it with the best in the business. The king of the thieves—well, one day.”
Griff had his answer, then. And he couldn’t resist being part of Mal’s scheme, not when it included him.
He picked his way quietly down the rocky hillside behind the other man, careful with where he was placing his feet so as not to send any stones falling ahead of them to announce their presence.
Partway down, Mal met him with a steadying hand that gripped his arm. “Careful on the job,” he said, slightly muffled by his scarf.
Confusion flitted through Griff’s eyes, the only part of his face visible beneath the crimson wool. He’d very much had the impression that Mal would only laugh if he did something like trip over one of these rocks—but then, there was a horse at stake. Something Mal wanted, something of value.
“Let’s go get that horse,” Griff muttered, taking a few more steps down the hillside and out of reach. “So I can listen to you argue with some other creature named Griff for a change.”
“ ‘Griffon was a really good horse,’ ” Mal quoted as he descended the final few steps back onto level ground, something Wynnie had told Griff often over the years when he complained about his name, even after he ultimately shortened it.
There was no more talking after that.
Crouching in the brush for cover, they drew nearer to the fire and the sounds of the four men making an early breakfast around it.
“This is my year, lads,” one was boasting over the clatter of a pan on the coals and the packhorse’s soft snorts. “I’m going to win it all.”
More of that laughter they had heard earlier on the wind followed this claim.
“What?” the man insisted, sounding slightly hurt. “We come from a whole city of bards; we have an advantage here.”
Griff realized they must be headed to the big music competition held across the mountains in Cardraine every summer; these were hardly bandits, and they had no idea that they were about to be less one horse simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He turned to ask Mal whether they shouldn’t reconsider when Mal drew something from his cloak, a flash of silver gleaming where it caught the firelight: his flask.
He motioned as if to press it into Griff’s hands—a first, in all the times he’d seen the item so far, and clearly an offering of some significance—but Griff shook his head, and Mal shrugged before taking a sip himself and stashing it away again.
Mal didn’t know he was sober these days, Griff realized on a heavy exhale. There was so much he didn’t know. So much still unsaid.
Evidently suitably fortified, Mal now pointed toward the object of their mission tied up several yards away. Not a packhorse at all, Griff saw as he took in the beast’s smaller profile, its large, almost comical ears. A mule.
Mal pointed next to Griff, as if to indicate he should be the one to seize the creature.
Then he pointed to himself, motioning toward a traveler’s pack on the ground just outside the warm circle of firelight.
One of the men had just pulled something from it—a wooden bow that he seemed intent on polishing, given the soft cloth in his hand.
Griff was just trying to work up the courage to step out of the shadows without feeling like a total lowlife when Mal’s eyes squinted like he was fighting back a yawn.
Mal stepped back hardly an inch as the shudder of exhaustion ran through him, but it was enough for his heel to crack a twig.
The mule snorted a steamy breath into the dark morning, and the laughter around the fire stopped.
The man holding the bow had been smiling, but now that smile was gone.
“You all don’t suppose …?” he began softly, no need to finish the thought.
Traveling the road east was a well-known way to be swiftly relieved of all a person owned.
Mal certainly looked awake now.
In fact, he was looking to Griff, as if, for once, he didn’t have a map and a plan.
Of course, Griff didn’t either. He thought quickly of what his father might do if he’d decided to steal a horse—never mind that Seimon would never lower himself to such an act.
He thought of his father’s long unbreakable stride, the way he moved with purpose, always impressing someone when he walked by.
He wanted, more than anything in that moment, to impress Mal, to see those silver eyes spark with admiration rather than mocking.
And like a hawk having sighted its prey, Griff shot from their place of concealment and swooped toward the mule.