Blood For Wages

4: The Nobody Inn

Three days of riding south. Three days of following something that wasn't her nose or her head, wasn't her heart or her gut. Three days of being tugged onwards by the gods-only-knew-what ability she'd been born with; seeing a faceless man's silhouette burning in front of her waking vision, every twitch of her split reins keeping him centred and growing closer.

The road was rough and desolate and just the way Fia liked it. It cut through the high valleys, skirting lakes that sat flat as puddled iron, protected from the raking winds that scoured the high fells and gnawed at exposed flesh.

Fia's sable brumby trotted along, quite unperturbed by the sometimes brutal conditions. It was a hardy breed; broken and tamed, maybe, but still able to recall that it'd been born wild, or so Fia believed.

At dusk, on the second day out from Last Hallow, Fia saw a small party of Painted Kyn moving a mob of wild horses down the gravelly shallows of a mostly dry river bed. Their course was set to converge with hers and so, out of deference for the herdsmen, she sat her horse and waited for them to pass her by. While she waited, she removed her hat and tied up her short hair so that the shaved sides were revealed and the Kynish tattoos that swirled across the sides of her scalp and disappeared into her coat collar were unveiled.

Wild horses were skittish beasts, and could have vicious streaks in them a mile wide, so they were always walked from place to place by anyone who knew their business. Spook and get a mob of wild horses on the run, and nothing short of a cliff would stop them until they blew themselves out.

It took an hour for the herd to pick their way down the river and the Painted Kyn to draw abreast with Fia. They were clothed in simple skins and furs that were nevertheless expertly cured and sewn. Their waving red hair, plaited and adorned with bones and stones, glinted in the setting sun. Tattoos ran down the sides of their faces, over their ears, across their brows. They had deceptively shy eyes that bit into Fia whenever she came across them; dark as coal, diamond hard. Bows and spears were fastened to their saddles. Knives hung on their belts. Fia even thought she saw one of the new flintlock rifles tucked carefully into a bedroll secured to the beautifully crafted trail saddle of one of the Painted Kyn as they rode past her.

"What do you call her, wanderer?" the leader asked in his own fluting language, pulling up his own horse and gesturing at Fia's brumby.

"If she's got a name she's yet to tell it to me," Fia replied in the Kynish tongue.

The leader gave her a small smile and nodded thoughtfully.

"There is importance in names. A store of strength and power," he replied.

"I don't doubt it."

"Yet your mare has none."

"Like I say, she's yet to divulge it to me. I'm certain she's a name, but it ain't one picked from any dialect or based on any image we invented. Names might hold power, but so do secrets. What power might a secret name might hold, eh? Anyhow, a lady's allowed her secrets, wouldn't you agree?"

The Kynish leader smiled his knowing smile and made a small hand gesture at Fia's mount. The horse pricked up her ears and whinnied low in her throat.

"I doubt very much that this Northern beauty is much of a lady," he said.

Fia patted the neck of the black horse. "I surely hope not," she said. "She'd a reputation as a spine-wrinkler and a widow-maker when I took her on."

The leader of the painted Kyn looked at her, running his eyes along the visible tattoos that decorated her skin.

"What brings you out here?" the man asked. "Hunting. Running?"

"I've not decided just yet," Fia said. "I keep changing my mind."