A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,106

the grass.

Soon I saw what she had found: a nughobe grove, smaller than the one in which I found Murr but with plenty of dead branches for my fire and a broad, shallow stream that I thought I recognized by the color of the bed; the mud was reddish. We had forded a red muddy streambed near the end of our first day out from Khul Bashab. If this was the same one, then I was getting close. I didn’t remember seeing this nughobe grove, however, so if it was in fact the same stream, I was significantly up- or downstream from where my family had crossed it; the amount of water here attested to that as well. I must have wandered significantly off true north somehow. That meant Khul Bashab was either northwest or northeast of me. When I reached the Banighel River, I would have to decide which way to turn.

But the stream water was cleaner than the pond water, and Murr sounded pleased that he would have a nughobe tree to sleep in that night. I let him pick a tree and then made my fire nearby, dumping out the pond water, boiling plenty of stream water, and refilling all my skins before getting out my journal and setting some beans and potatoes in the pot.

My basic needs are met for today. But I still don’t know what I will do when I get to Khul Bashab. I worry about my ability to make plans since my last one wound up getting my family killed and I’m clearly not good at anticipating consequences. I’m afraid that Murr and Eep might suffer for accompanying me. I’m not sure that I’ll ever be as safe again as I am right now.

—

“More Abhi tomorrow! And more of everyone’s favorite Nentian viceroy as well.” The bard got some wry chuckles out of that, but he was goading the Nentians. He might have a poorly developed instinct for self-preservation.

I slept hardly at all because I was so nervous about my first lesson or sparring session or whatever my training was to be called with Mynstad du Möcher. When I had met her the previous day to acquire my requisitioned rapier and mail shirt, I was surprised by her beauty and I think my mouth might have dropped open. One does not expect, in a storehouse of tools for causing violent death, to find a face that makes one want to live.

She saw my reaction, which inspired a scowl, and then I felt like an idiot. My first thought was that she must have to fight men off, and then I realized immediately that she not only could but had. She would not be personally training Rölly in warfare otherwise.

She was taller than me. Long arms and fingers. Narrow waist, muscular thighs, a physically intimidating person even without a weapon in her hand. She had grown her hair out and gathered it in back with a tie, confident that no one would ever get close enough to grab it. Her complexion was darker than mine, dark enough to be Kaurian, but if that was her heritage, she clearly did not hold with their pacifist theology.

She barely spoke to me and avoided eye contact when I presented Pelenaut Röllend’s requisition along with his request that she assess and train me to standard. She must have thought that I would try to flirt with her after my embarrassing display of surprise. She snatched the paper from my hand, read it, and then turned into the armory, expecting me to follow. She pulled out a rapier and a mail shirt from storage, thrust them at me, and then said only, “Be here at 0800 tomorrow for assessment, sir. I have much to do before then. Excuse me.”

The Mynstad pivoted on her heel and left me there, clutching a mail shirt and awkwardly holding a rapier and its carriage. “Oh,” I said, and then, realizing that was inadequate, added, “I’ll see you then!” She made no answer but kept walking out of sight around a corner of shelved cuirasses, her boots making crisp claps on the stone floor. I sighed and shook my head; I hadn’t felt so inept since my school days. I spent some time in the morning working off my embarrassment with old forms before meeting Fintan at the chowder house, and after arriving home subsequent to Fintan’s evening tales, I spent more time in my bare parlor practicing. I took the forms slowly