Chapter 16
The first day passed in a blur of motion and cold.
Mab had never been on a horse before. Had never, in all her life, traveled farther than the holding's own walls. The nearest village lay six miles south—a full day's walk each way, by the kitchen talk—but she had never once seen it. The world had always ended at the scullery door.
This was different.
The mountain rose around them in stages.
First the gentle slopes of the foothills, brown grass and scattered pines.
Then steeper terrain, the road narrowing as it wound between outcroppings of gray stone.
The air thinned and sharpened. By midday her ears had popped twice and her nose was running from the cold.
Varek's arm never moved from her waist.
He didn't speak much. None of the warriors did. The column moved in a kind of focused quiet, broken only by the creak of leather, the clop of hooves on stone, the occasional sharp whistle from a scout riding ahead.
Mab found she didn't mind the silence.
Around midday, the column stopped in a small clearing where a stream cut across the road. The warriors dismounted, led their horses to drink, pulled dried meat and hard bread from their packs.
Varek lifted her down before she could figure out how to do it herself. Her legs buckled when her feet hit the ground, muscles she didn't know she had screaming their objection to hours in the saddle.
His hand caught her elbow. Held her steady until she found her balance.
"It gets easier," he said.
"When?"
"Third day."
She huffed an exhale through her nose that wasn't quite a laugh. He pressed a strip of dried meat into her hand and walked toward the stream, leaving her standing on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else.
Annie appeared at her side, her cheeks pink from the cold, her eyes bright.
"Brownie ate," she announced. "All of the scraps Drogga gave her. And the puppies are sleeping."
"That's good." Mab bit into the dried meat. It was salty and tough and required more chewing than she had energy for. "This, however, is awful."
Annie giggled. "Drogga says it's good for your teeth."
"Drogga," Mab said, "is welcome to eat my share."
The column moved on. The road climbed higher. The pines grew thicker, then sparser, then gave way to bare rock and patches of stubborn snow that clung to the shadows where the sun couldn't reach. Mab's backside went numb somewhere around the third hour, which was almost a relief.
Varek's arm stayed where it was. His chest was warm against her back. Occasionally his thumb would move against her belly, a small absent gesture, like he was reminding himself she was still there.
She found herself leaning into him without deciding to.
The sun was sinking below the peaks when the column stopped again.
Mab lifted her head from where it had been resting against Varek's shoulder. She hadn't meant to doze, but the rhythm of the horse and the warmth at her back had pulled her under somewhere in the last hour.
The clearing they'd stopped in was larger than the midday rest. A flat stretch of ground sheltered on three sides by rock walls, with a stand of twisted pines breaking the wind from the north. Warriors were already dismounting.
Varek's arm tightened around her waist. "We're stopping for the night."
The words took a moment to land. Night. A real stop. Not just a brief rest for the horses. Relief flooded through her. She wanted to get where they were going, but her body wanted to stop moving more.
Varek swung down from the saddle and reached up for her. This time she didn't hesitate, just leaned into his hands and let him lift her down. Her legs protested again, but less violently than before. Progress.
The camp took shape around her faster than she'd have believed. Warriors moved in patterns that suggested long practice. Tents went up. Horses were picketed along the tree line. Bedrolls appeared. And in the center of the clearing, two fires began to crackle to life.
One of them had a spit being assembled over it.
Real food. Not dried meat that fought back when you tried to chew it.
Mab watched a warrior she didn't know pull a brace of rabbits from a saddlebag. Another was already cutting potatoes into a pot.
She stood there for a second, watching as everyone found something to do.
Drogga was checking the horses' hooves, moving down the line with the ease of long habit.
Two warriors she didn't know were securing the tent lines against the wind.
Another was hauling water from a stream she could hear but not see.
Tibbs had appeared from somewhere and was gathering deadfall for the fires, his arms already full of branches.
Annie was crouched by the supply cart, arranging blankets around Brownie and the puppies, her face serious with concentration.
Everyone had a job.
The realization settled over her with an uncomfortable weight.
She had spent her entire life being useful.
Being necessary. The scullion who washed the chargers and hauled the water and scrubbed the pots until her hands cracked.
She had hated it, sometimes. Had resented the work that never let up, the way her body was just another tool in the kitchen's inventory.
But standing here with nothing to do, she found she didn't know what to do with her hands.
She turned to Varek, who was unsaddling his horse a few feet away.
"Can I help them prepare the food?"
He glanced up from the girth strap he was loosening. His eyes moved from her face to the cookfire.
"You want to?"
"I want to do something." She looked down at her hands, curled uselessly at her sides.
Varek pulled the saddle free and set it on a flat rock. "Then go."
Mab crossed the clearing toward the cookfire.
The warrior with the rabbits looked up as she approached. He was younger than Varek, with a scar that ran from his temple to his jaw and war-marks that covered only one shoulder. His eyes flicked over her, assessing, then moved past her to where Varek was still tending his horse.
"I can help," Mab said. "With the food."
The warrior's scarred eyebrow rose. "You know rabbits?"
"I know kitchens."
He grunted. Not dismissal, exactly. More like he was filing the information away. "Grald," he said, jerking his chin toward himself. Then toward the warrior with the potatoes: "Fenrik."
Fenrik didn't look up from his knife. "She's the captain's."
"I know whose she is." Grald held out the rabbits. "You skin, or you chop?"
Mab took the rabbits. "Skin. But I'll need a knife."
Grald pulled a blade from his belt and flipped it, catching it by the tip, offering her the handle. The weight of it surprised her. Heavier than the boning knives she was used to, with a wider blade.
She found a flat rock near the fire and set to work.
The rabbits were young, their fur coming away clean. Her hands knew the motion though she'd never once been allowed to do it—Hester had let her watch, nothing more. Garrad had kept her on vegetables and dishes, away from anything that required skill. Away from anything that might prove she had any.
The knife was wrong for the job. Too heavy, too wide. She made it work anyway, adjusting her grip, letting the blade's weight do what finesse couldn't.
"You're holding it strange," Grald said.
"Your knife's strange." She didn't look up.
"It's what we've got."
"Then this is how I hold it."
Fenrik snorted. "She's got you there," he said, still not looking up from his potatoes.
Grald grunted again.
She finished the first rabbit and started on the second. The work steadied her. Gave her hands something to do, her mind something to focus on besides the ache in her legs and the strangeness of being here, in the mountains, surrounded by orc warriors who had sacked her home three days ago.
Fenrik dumped his potatoes into the pot and reached for an onion. He cut it in half, then quarters, then started dicing.
Mab watched his knife work for three strokes before the words came out.
"You're going to lose half of that to the fire."
Fenrik's knife stopped. He looked up, his expression unreadable.
"The pieces are too small," Mab said. She heard herself and almost stopped, almost swallowed the rest of the words the way she'd swallowed a thousand corrections in Garrad's kitchen.
But Fenrik was looking at her like he was actually waiting for the rest. "They'll cook down to nothing before the rabbit's done.
You want chunks. Bigger than your thumbnail. "
Fenrik looked down at his onion. Looked at the pot. Looked back at her.
"Huh," he said.
He didn't argue. Just scraped the tiny pieces into his palm and tossed them into the fire, then started again. Bigger cuts this time.
"What else?" Grald asked.
"What else what?"
"What else are we doing wrong?"
Mab looked at the pot, at the fire, at the rabbits in her hands.
"The spit's too low," she said. "The outside will char before the inside cooks through.
And the potatoes need to go in after the water boils, not before, or they'll go mushy.
" She hesitated. "And if those are herbs in that pouch, you should crush them first, not just throw them in whole. Releases the oils."
Grald and Fenrik exchanged a look. Then Grald stood, walked to the spit, and raised it two notches on the iron stand.
"Didn't know humans could be useful," Fenrik said, but there was no edge to it. Just observation.
Grald snorted. "When's the last time you actually talked to a human?"
"The merchant at the river crossing. Three summers back."
"That was you threatening to break his fingers if he shorted us again."
"Still talking."
Mab focused on the rabbit, but she could feel the smile tugging at her mouth. The banter was familiar in a way she hadn't expected. Different words, different voices, but the same rhythm as the kitchen workers at the holding. People who spent long hours together finding ways to pass the time.
"So you two are the cooks?" she asked.
Grald laughed. It was a rough sound, like rocks grinding together. "We're on rotation. Everyone takes a turn."