Finding the Way and Other Tales of Valdemar Read Free

back. She strapped on her short, stout reed-knife and her longer hacking knife, hung her hand-crossbow from her belt on one side, the quiver on the other, and jammed on her hat. She poured what she could of her fish stew into a gourd and sealed it, tied the gourd to her belt, and with a sigh of regret, poured the rest down the drain into the midden, filling the pot with water and a pinch of soap flakes. She made sure the fire was out, and only then did she leave the hut, latching the door behind her, and putting the “rocks” back over the windows.
    :Are you quite ready?:
    Hmm. While Sherra could sympathize with the Companion’s impatience . . . there could be only one person in charge in Gripping Mire, and that person was her. She picked up her quarterstaff and grounded the butt of it with a thump. “Lady, I know that your Chosen is somewhere out there, and you are concerned. But I know this swamp, and you do not. We either go my way at my pace, and you obey my orders, or you may go alone and I will go back to my fishing. I am sure you are a very important personage on your own ground and in your own land. But you are not there, you are here, and here your concerns are not nearly so important as our ability to survive Gripping Mire.”
    It was not the first time Sherra had been forced to make that speech, and she doubted it would be the last. And every time she did, the person she addressed was always taken aback, having assumed that the authority he (or she, though females rarely exhibited such arrogance, even if they felt it) had outside the swamp would carry within it.
    Sherra dared not allow that. Not if the client was going to live to see the other bank.
    This time was no exception. The Companion stepped back a pace or two, looking astonished that anyone would question her right to be the one in charge. Sherra stood firm. “The fish are waiting, Lady, and you just made me pour the stew that would have been my dinner down the drain. My terms, or not at all.”
    The Companion laid back her ears and narrowed her eyes, then grudgingly acquiesced. :All right. Your way.:
    “Fine. Follow directly behind me and don’t go more than an arm’s length—my arm—off the trail that I set. There are mudholes in there that could swallow you up before you ever realized you were in trouble. And that is only the smallest of the dangers. Which direction is this Chosen of yours?”
    The Companion pointed her nose in the direction that she wanted to go. Sherra oriented herself on that inbred compass that hertasi had, another remnant of their days as dull swamp lizards. When she was satisfied she would not lose the direction no matter what, she gestured to the Companion to follow, and headed up the path beside the swamp.
    “You might as well tell me your name, lady,” Sherra said, after a great deal of huffy silence. “Mine is Sherra.”
    She didn’t look back over her shoulder; she was too busy studying the stretch of marsh ahead of her for a path that would take the much greater bulk of the Companion. But she could sense the rumbling of thoughts in the Companion’s head.
    :Vesily,: came the answer, finally.
    “Well, Vesily, I hope that your human didn’t decide for whatever reason he had to go into the Mire on his own. Even experienced hunters won’t do that unless they have no choice.”
    Finally she spotted a path, marked by the presence of mat-grass, which needed actual soil, not mud, to grow. “Follow me. See this grass?” She pulled up a tuft. “Step only where this grows.”
    :You go into the Mire alone. What makes you different?:
    “For one thing, I am a lizard, and we make notoriously poor eating.” She chuckled. “For another, I have—well, I suppose it is a Gift of sorts. It’s certainly more than just knowing the swamp very, very well. I can find paths to and through anything. I really don’t know how, I just think about it, and I can see it.”
    This was the most talking she had done in a very long time,