The Crown of Dalemark Read Online Free PDF Page B

said. “I only stepped on it.”
    Rith turned the dripping statuette round again. “I wish I could be sure—Look, may I keep it for now and give you your share when I’ve got it?”
    If Mitt had not been so saddlesore, he might have argued. But the cold water was smarting him like acid, and he could think of almost nothing else. “Fine,” he gasped, and splashed his way across to the far bank, where the horses were standing head to tail, looking pleased with themselves. Rith followed, stowing the wet figurine in the front of his jacket.
    â€œYou’re being very generous,” he said several times, as they mounted and rode on. “You really mean I can keep it for now?” He was evidently feeling a strange mixture of doubt and elation, but then anyone would, Mitt thought, who had just picked up a pound of solid gold. He thought Rith was nice to be so bothered about it. All through the next hour or so Rith was either exclaiming at the amazing chance that had led them to that spot or asking Mitt if he really minded waiting for his share. “If it hadn’t been for that landslide,” he said, “we’d never have come this way. Look, are you really sure?”
    Mitt got increasingly gruff with him. Mitt’s leathers were wet through and rubbing his soreness until he was convinced he was being flayed. Besides, he thought angrily, the way he was caught in the earls’ plotting, he couldn’t see himself having much use for gold or anything else shortly. He wished Rith would shut up. By the late afternoon, when the sea came into view again blue and crisp to northward, Mitt was wanting to scream at Rith, and he might have done had they not come out on a headland overlooking Adenmouth to find themselves looking down on an accident.
    A Singer’s cart had overturned on the bridge below. The bridge had no sides, and the horse that had pulled the cart was dangling struggling in the Aden. Mitt saw someone pulling uselessly at the horse. A girl lay on the bank as if she might be dead.
    â€œCome on!” shouted Rith, and his shaggy horse was off down the hill as if it was aiming to end in the river, too.
    Mitt followed as fast as the Countess-horse would let him, which was not very fast. The hill was extremely steep. Even Rith slowed down halfway, but this was probably because he could see that help was on its way. They could see into a long green valley to one side, where a party of people were running from one of the farms. More people were running across a second bridge, from Adenmouth itself, and a horseman was galloping ahead of them.
    Everyone converged on the bridge, but the horseman got there first. He was a hearthman in Adenmouth livery. As the Countess-horse slithered cautiously down the last slope, Mitt saw the horseman leap to the ground, thrust his reins into the hands of the redheaded Singer’s boy, and run toward the struggling horse. There he took one look, cocked his pistol, and shot the horse through the head.
    Mitt and Rith came down to the bridge while the horse was still jerking. The bang rang in Mitt’s ears like the memory of his worst dreams. The white staring face of the Singer-boy looked just like he felt.
    â€œAnything we can do?” called Rith.
    The hearthman turned from slashing at the traces that held the dead horse. Mitt almost laughed. It was Navis. It would be. “Hello,” he said.
    Navis nodded at him in his cool way. “You see to that girl,” he said to Rith. “I think she’s alive. Mitt, you help me cut this horse loose.”
    As the two of them dismounted, Mitt noticed the Singer himself wandering about on the bank, carefully laying out musical instruments from the overturned cart. A dreamy-looking fellow with a gray beard. Mitt ignored the Singer as useless and hobbled over to Navis, while Rith sprinted to where the Singer-girl was sitting up, holding her head.
    â€œGet your knife out and cut