The old piebald stallion moved beneath her with a heavy-yet-smooth trotting gait, bouncing the woman very little in the saddle. Her sapphire-blue eyes squinted grimly at the grey sky as they left the village of Herne behind, traveling south towards the flatter lands beyond the scattered ruins and rugged, rust-colored boulders. The air was frigid, and it bit at her cheeks, nose and ears. She tucked the fawnskin shawl closer beneath her chin, before pulling forth the makeshift map Ryheric had scrawled in charcoal for her.
No child unattended will survive in this cold for more than a day. She could not shake the thought that had come to her immediately upon hearing of this lost little one. Why had Sicarra not run out at once to look for her daughter, upon hearing she was abandoned in the wilderness in the middle of winter? Neither ropes nor chains would have held Brynleigh back to hear that someone dear to her was lost and helpless and in peril. Perhaps it was a difference of culture, though this did not feel likely to her. A mother is a mother, no matter what people she calls her own. She could only conclude that the reasons must be such that she would never comprehend them. The deaf Dunlending woman had perhaps suffered traumas or other difficulties that were unknowable.
The landscape began to stretch out in front, wide and open, scattered with trees and scrubby grasses that showed where solid earth could be followed. Between these pathways, shining flats of open, marshy water reflected the brooding sky, and thin, silvery rivers flowed out like spreading fingers of a gargantuan hand.
"We are seeking a child, Jack," she murmured to the horse, who was forever curious of people, and particularly fond of children. His ears and nose were far sharper than her own, and she prayed he might pick up a scent or sound that she could not.
She unfolded the crude map again as Jack turned to follow the land down a gentle slope towards a river to the southwest that was bordered by short, bare-branched trees. A flurry of black birds startled from somewhere in the tall, brown grass and rushed over their heads with a clamoring chorus. Her finger touched the map where Ryheric had pointed out the camp they would all use as a gathering spot.
Her heart was unable to decide if it longed to find the poor, lost waif, or whether it would be better not to, if the child's fate proved to be a cruel one.
