Tan nodded. But he also said, “We might be wiser not to stay at that inn.”
Still stunned by beauty, Mienthe hardly understood him for a moment. Then she did, and, unreasonably, resented it. She said grimly, “Of course,” and nudged her horse forward again. She wondered if Tan thought they could get all the way through to Ehre without stopping. She knew she couldn’t.
“There must be good places along the road for a cold camp,” Tan said, not quite looking at her. “I’m sure travelers used to have to camp three or four nights from one side to the other, or many more than that for slow wagons such as those we passed. I should think the builders will have let their road encompass some of those old campsites.”
“Yes,” said Mienthe.
“I’m sorry—”
Mienthe snapped, “For what? Of course we can’t stop there. You’re perfectly right.”
“For being right,” Tan said gently. “It hasn’t happened often of late, Mienthe; do grant me my one moment of reasonable competence in these days of striking idiocy. I do think we oughtn’t stay there, but I hope we may stop for supper.”
“Oh,” said Mienthe, in a much smaller voice. She felt she ought to apologize as well, but wasn’t sure for what, or how. She said merely, “All right.”
The public house offered hot spiced wine and roasted kid, soft flatbreads, a compote of dried apples and raisins, and little cakes dripping with honey, “Which my wife makes them special,” said the host, a big man from Feierabiand, with a generous belly and a booming laugh. “With honey from her sister’s bees, down near Talend. The bees there, they make a special honey from the trees that flower at midsummer, dark as molasses. Good to keep off illness, they say it is, and good especially to sweeten a dark heart, not that that matters to you, esteemed lady, eh?”
He winked down at Mienthe, clearly assuming, just as the muleteers had, that she was with Tan. At least Tan did not suggest to him that they were running away together. Not where Mienthe could hear him, anyway. She tried not to wonder what he told the host to explain why they were not staying the night at the house.
But at least the host also told them of a cold campsite a little more than an hour’s ride up the east side of the pass.
Even so, Mienthe was certain for some little while that the lowering dusk would catch them still abroad on the road. Certainly the host’s estimate seemed a little overoptimistic, or else he’d been thinking of riders with fresh horses, or at least riders coming down from heights rather than trudging upward.
They had lanterns. The road was, after all, good. She tried not to be frightened by the mere idea of riding up the twisting length of any mountain road, no matter how fine the road or how bright the lanterns.
But at last they came up a rise that had been, by the worn and rugged look of it, part of the old road, simply incorporated into the new. Then they crossed one of those improbable iron bridges and came onto a section of the road where the stones were so new and fresh they looked all but polished, and beyond that the new road ran again into a section of the old. “Yes,” Tan said, gesturing away down the rugged slope that fell away from the road, “you can see where the old road plunged way down into that valley and then crawled slowly back up to this height.”
Mienthe nodded obediently, although she was far too cold and tired to appreciate how much effort the new road had saved them, just so long as it had. But then they turned along a long switchback and came out at last, with the last of the slanting light, onto a broad flat place that had plainly been used as a campsite for many years. A cliff reared out a tight little nook, just right to keep off the weather, and circles of firestones were laid ready before the cliff. There was even a neat stack of firewood against the cliff, which someone must have gathered with considerable labor, because even the small twisted trees of the heights were rare so high.
Mienthe arranged wood with numb fingers and struck a fire while Tan unsaddled the horses. He did not hobble the beasts, which were as tired and cold as their riders and very willing to be led into the nook. He was limping, Mienthe saw; he had been only very slightly lame in Kames, but he’d used himself hard on their flight and the limp was much worse now. She was immediately worried, and then resented the necessity of worry, which she knew very well was unfair. But there was nothing she could do if the half-healed knee had been reinjured—nothing either of them could do, this side of Ehre. So she worried. “Your leg?” she asked Tan.
“It will do,” he said, and stopped limping, which made Mienthe feel guilty and more resentful still. Even worse, Tan did not seem to notice her bad temper.