Chapter 7

Blaster collected some horses for us in the morning and we rode off, before most of the shops had opened. Business was bad, fewer customers, less money. Fewer citizens, fewer monthly taxes being paid, fewer constables, more crime... it was a vicious cycle. The 'taint' effected just about everything. The merchants had my sympathy, but I lost a wife... top that.

With barely a break for lunch, we took every King's Gate we could. Magically eating the leagues that would have taken days of riding. By sunset, we were nearing the snowline.

Gaku, looking extremely uncomfortable riding a horse, closed the gap between us, "Blaster told me you were a Poet. He said you were pretty good. Was he serious? You wrote poetry?"

"What is so hard to believe?" I had decided to advance the boy's education, training him in the art of warfare and in the art of diplomacy. He took to the manners I taught him easily, sometimes surprising me. Perhaps I shouldn't be astounded that he would be interested in Poetry as well.

"Poetry is everywhere, Gaku, in the hills and streams around us, in this roadway, even in the sunset. If something makes you feel, really feel intensely... use words to make someone else feel the same. That is all poetry is to me."

"Poetry around here? Where?" Gaku turned wildly about in his saddle and I had to adjust my Short bow out of my way to follow him. "If there is a poem here, I don't see it."

"Recite something for him, Gareth," Blaster said, looking over his shoulder. "Make him a poem about that sunset."

"Let me think." I remembered Blaster being bitten by the Poetry bug when he was younger.

"Yes, recite something." Gaku added.

"Sunsets Never Last"

"Lying on the bottom of the sky"

"Like a child's bright ball"

"The sun sits bloated and red."

"After a moment it deflates..."

"Dimmer and dimmer"

"It shares its color with the sky,"

"Blue to yellow to red,"

"Until with one final flare"

"Dusk is here."

"What will the darkness bring?"

We rode in silence for awhile, watching for a likely campsite. I hardly noticed any longer the glove on my hand insisting that we hurry. I guess the Gods had reasons for us to get where we were going, but the horses were tired and I wasn't getting any younger either.

I pulled up my horse in a small hollow near the entrance to a wooded valley. It would do nicely.

"Gaku! Gather some firewood and get a fire going!" I ordered, "Sir Muse, feel like providing us with some food? You Summon it... I'll cook it."

Blaster looked at me crossly. It was against tradition for Muses to summon animals to be eaten, but these were exceptional circumstances and besides, I was too hungry to hunt.