Garin and Aelyn shared a look before Garin quickly looked away. He and the elf didn't share much in common, but on this, they were in agreement.
"I wouldn't mind horses," Garin muttered.
"But how would we conduct our lessons? We'd be 'hoarse' halfway through the day!" Bran grinned at him. "If you take my meaning."
Garin rolled his eyes. "You would be, anyway."
"Besides, not only do those folks need their horses, but didn't you see those skinny beasts? I wouldn't have been surprised if they collapsed halfway to Halenhol — and then what good would they do us?"
"They'd get us halfway there," Aelyn snapped.
Halfway. Weren't they halfway there yet? Sixteen days they'd been walking, and they had many more miles ahead of them. As much as Garin enjoyed learning more of the World from Bran, the would-be chicken herder never stopped lecturing and quizzing him. Even swordplay was growing dull amidst the rest of the drudgery.
He was realizing just how much of traveling was the long, boring moments in between the stories folks told.
But even more than what he had to face was what he no longer had. He missed kicking his feet up by the hearth at the end of a hard day's work. He missed the teasing from his older brothers and sister, and his mother's fond smile and tight hug. He missed the freshly baked bread to the stale hardtack they ate now; the tender meats to their tough, salted pork; potatoes and cabbage rather than whatever bitter roots and foul-tasting mushrooms they could find in the surrounding forest.
He'd never admit it to his companions, but he missed home.
After the town faded from sight, Bran walked up next to him again. "Where was I? Ah, yes — the Siege of Halenhol. Now, Queen Jalenna had fair warning of warlocks among her enemy's ranks. To counteract these, she sent out the Mute Monks to silence them—"
"Why don't you ever tell stories from your life?"
The question seemed to come from nowhere, but he realized it had been simmering inside him for a long time. As he lifted his gaze from the road, he found not only Bran's eyes on him but Aelyn's as well.
When Bran didn't answer, Garin barreled on. "You had a different name before — both you and Aelyn said so. You've been a deserter and a highwayman according to what you told those brigands. You know magic and magical artifacts, and say you've trained as a warlock. And to hear you talk, you've seen the Extinguished firsthand."
Bran gave him a small smile, though his eyes looked flat and sad. "Not much slips by you, I see."
"I can't figure you out. You must be a madman or a myth, but you seem as grounded as a man could be. But I don't know you at all, do I? How could I, when I don't even know your name?"
Aelyn had drifted closer and flashed him a sharp smile. "A brave thing, to run off with a man you don't know. A brave thing — or a stupid one."
Garin stubbornly kept his gaze on Bran, who had averted his eyes. "Who are you, Bran? Or whatever your name is?"
Bran stared at the muddy road for several long moments longer. In the gray light, with his shoulders slouched forward and his eyes hooded, he looked a worn and defeated man, like a farmer after he'd watched all his crops gone to rot.
"When we reach Halenhol," he said quietly, "you'll hear many stories about me. That I'm a hero. That I'm a murderer and a traitor. Some good things, but many more of them bad, and all of them exaggerated." He finally lifted his gaze, but only to stare down the road. "I suppose, by not telling you, I wanted to preserve this simple guise I've worn in Hunt's Hollow. The chicken farmer, friendly and helpful, his past buried and dead behind him, ready to settle down into a quiet life in the far country. I wanted to inhabit again the realm of my childhood before it was torn away from me."
Bran looked at him finally. "My name is not a lie, Garin. I was born Brannen Cairn, but all the children knew me as Bran the Bastard. So you see, it's not my current name that is the lie, but the one I adopted upon leaving. The one all the World came to know."
Garin stiffened his jaw. It wasn't an answer, not like he wanted. More than ever, he burned to know the stories behind the man next to him. It wasn't even that he distrusted him — especially as he'd been using his birth name all along.
"Birth name or not, if the other name is the one everyone else knows you by, I want to know it. And if I'll hear it in Halenhol anyway, why not tell me now? If the stories they tell about you are lies, why not tell me the truth?"
"Because you'll never look at him the same, boy," Aelyn spoke from Bran's other side. "Because he knows that once you are privy to all his sins, you'll go running back to your little mud-road town and shudder to think you ever traveled with the likes of him."
Garin felt his face flush. But though he wanted to lash back, he held his tongue. Theoretically, the elven mage couldn't harm him as long as that ring was on his finger. Yet provoking Aelyn would be like poking a stick at a caged bear.
And what if he was right?
Bran suddenly stopped, and Garin stumbled to a halt, watching as the man stood stock still.
"It seems our mysterious companion is having second thoughts as it is," Aelyn taunted.
"Shh!"
The intensity in Bran's shushing quieted Aelyn instantly, and he, too, looked around, alert. Garin strained his senses, but he saw nothing in the encroaching woods, could hear nothing but the wind stirring through the leaves, and the birds—
He frowned. The birds had stopped singing.
They come, little Listener.
Garin's heart lurched into a gallop, and he whipped his head around as if he could find the speaker. As if the words hadn't come from within his mind.
"Wings!" Aelyn hissed as his gaze turned upward. "Death on wings!"
Bran gripped Garin's arm tightly and pulled him off the road. "Get into the trees and find cover — a gully, a cave, anything."
Garin stumbled to keep his feet under him. "Why? What's coming?"
The man's eyes were on the road behind them as they slipped into the forest. "Quetzals. A whole tangle of them from the sound of it."
"Quetzals?"
"Winged, feathered serpents. They're small, but they attack with perfect coordination. A tangle can take down a chimera if they're hungry enough."
Garin imagined the sight and shuddered. He'd never seen a chimera, but he'd heard they were bigger than bulls and much deadlier. Besides, he wasn't fond of snakes, and snakes flying through the air were even worse than slithering on the ground.
"Feathered serpents?" Garin mustered a laugh. "No worse than a nasty flock of chickens, right?"
Bran flashed him a wolfish grin. "Exactly. Now go! Leave them to a professional herder."
Releasing him, the man spun, hands untying the straps across his back and letting both scabbard and pack fall to the ground as he drew the sword.
Despite the danger, Garin paused and stared at the weapon. Even in the shadowed forest, its silver blade gleamed, and strange blue symbols, like on the walls of the dark pendant's chamber, squirmed across the steel.
Bran shouted over his shoulder. "Run, Garin!"
He stumbled through the brush, blood hammering in his ears, knowing he was a coward and scarcely caring.