Count Scar - SA (30 page)

This feeling lasted into the early afternoon. Then, quite suddenly, I found myself swaying in my saddle, hiding yawns and struggling to stay awake. Brother Dispenser's draught and charm had
finally worn off, and the powerful weariness that always succeeds any period of magical augmentation of human strength was hard upon me. The count soon noticed. "I'll lead your horse, Brother
Melchior; go ahead and sleep in your saddle for a while. We're safe enough for now out in the open like this."

We were in fact riding among broad fields in a wide section of the big valley that leads down toward the pass up to Peyrefixade, and on from there to the duke's city. And my eyes really did feel
too heavy to keep open any longer. So, making the count promise to wake me as soon as the terrain changed, I let him lash me loosely to my saddle and fasten a lead rope to my mount's bridle,
then fell asleep as soon as I dropped the reins.

I awoke to the sound of shouts, then a distant scream.

For a moment I felt completely befuddled. It seemed as if my vision had somehow been relocated to a position behind our party, which was just passing between two low hills. Then I realized that
the count and I were well back along the road behind the knights and baggage mules; the count must have dropped back to avoid getting the long lead rein snagged among the others while he
guided the horse bearing my sleeping self. Something confusing was happening among those ahead: a horse reared, a knight clutched at a stick that he was pressing against his leg— suddenly I
realized that the "stick" was an arrow! The knights swung their wide shields before them and stared in all directions for the source of the ambush. But the hillsides on either hand seemed empty.

Or rather, they seemed empty until I collected my wits and looked with my newly sharpened second eye. Then I saw the large group of mounted warriors charging down upon the knights, in their
midst the Magian working the charm that concealed them. Instantly I pulled forth my grandfather's telesma and sent forth a surge of powerful magic that extinguished the invisibility of the
attackers.

As soon as their enemies were revealed, our own knights drew their swords and charged to engage them. As his group joined in battle with our smaller one, the Magian pulled up his horse, then
sent a stroke of power toward the count and myself. I parried this with an ease that startled me and sent one back that hit him so hard he fell from his horse, senseless.

"Well struck, Father Melchior, but be ready for more," the count cried, swinging up his own shield and drawing his sword with a hiss. A detachment of attackers had broken away and was riding
around the fighting men. Led by a bare-headed man on a fine stallion who appeared vaguely familiar though he was no one I knew, they surrounded the baggage train and began to stampede it up
over the hill. I saw the seneschal on his mount trapped among the pack horses. He gesticulated as if in surprise as they went, though he'd presumably known perfectly well what was going to
happen.

At a signal from the bare-headed leader, four men of this group wheeled and rode straight for us while the others vanished over the hill with the pack horses. I bent my head to concentrate on
another sending of defensive magic, then felt a sudden stabbing pain. One of the oncoming men was an archer, and he'd just sent a shaft straight through the flesh of my upper arm. Count
Caloran cursed and forced his horse before mine, swinging his shield to cover me and shouting defiance as he prepared to face four armed men single-handed. Pain seared across my vision like a red
band, but I could see our knights were attempting to fight their way in our direction. I could also see there was no chance they would arrive in time.

I used Grandfather's telesma to quench the pain temporarily so I could focus my mind and ran quickly over a battle charm on which Brother Endaris had drilled me to perfection over the previous
two days. Then I took a handful of a certain powder from a sack at my belt, jerked the reins with my good hand to bring my horse up even with the counts, and shouted to him to cover his eyes.

Hurling the powder toward the oncoming warriors, I screamed out the accompanying incantation and threw up the sleeve of my uninjured arm to shield my own face. There was a great flash,
followed by the screams of men and horses.

"Great Heaven, Father Melchior, what have you done?" cried Count Caloran. The horses and men who had been bearing down upon us a moment before were now lurching about in complete
confusion. As we watched, one man jerked out his sword and began to lay about him at random, immediately felling one of his companions with a terrible stroke to the head. Just beyond, a horse
reared and struck out with its hooves, catching the next horse on its neck so that it crashed into the dust with an awful scream.

Further down the road, both our own knights and the attackers had stopped fighting, dropping weapons and even their reins to clutch at their eyes as their horses jostled.

"They are all—blind, Count," I gasped out, swaying in the saddle as the pain began to return. "Those who were right on top of us and thus looking directly—will have no sight for a day and a
night—and will need a week or more to recover fully. Our own men and the ones who were fighting them—will recover in an hour or two."

"And what about that group up there?"

I looked toward where he was pointing and saw several more horsemen on the crest of the hill, all rubbing their eyes. The pain in my arm was growing more and more intense by the moment.

Combined with the terrible weariness of doing far too much magic in a short time while deferring needed rest, it made me feel faint and ill. I fought to answer clearly. "They—may already begin
to see again—like men who have looked full at the sun— but it will take a few minutes before they can see us well enough—to attack."

"Then we had best be far out of view before that happens," said the count grimly. He reached and swiftly tightened the ropes that still lashed me to my saddle, then caught up the lead from my
horse and sent us galloping toward the hill opposite our enemies. As we left the road and hit the broken ground, a terrific flare of pain from my shoulder went through me, so that I fainted dead
away and knew nothing more of either men or magic for a long time.

Chapter Eleven ~ Caloran

Chapter Eleven ~ Caloran

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It had been two hours since I had heard any sign of pursuit. At first I thought we had gotten well away after Brother Melchior had blinded those trying to kill us. But just when I pulled up to
examine his wounds I had seen distant horsemen silhouetted against the sky, coming over the ridge behind us. My own knights or the heretics? No time to wait and find out.

I urged our tired horses rapidly on, up a narrow, brush-choked gully away from the road, across rocky pasture lands where I kept us below the ridge line, down dry stream beds and along faint
boulder-strewn tracks that even the old Master of Melchior's Order might have hesitated to follow in his search for solitude. We seemed finally to have lost our pursuers—as well as ourselves.

And all the time the priest lay motionless across his horse's neck, and it crossed my mind to wonder if I was doing all this to save a man already dead.

But he was still breathing, though I didn't like the cold pallor of his skin, when I finally untied him and lowered him to the ground in the shelter of a grassy hollow among the rocks. I wrapped
him in the horse blankets, knowing that before dark I had to get that arrow out of his arm. Otherwise by tomorrow the flesh would be starting to turn green, and he would lose the arm even if by
some chance he did live. I always kept a small field kit with me; an old soldier knows you can never tell when you'll be separated from the baggage train. I found a spring among the rocks and
built a fire to heat water, then cut the vestments away from his arm and shoulder while waiting for it to boil. This was going to hurt him like the very devil, but then he was unconscious already.

He had saved my life back there with his magic, and I was going to have to see if soldier skills that had pulled more than one warrior through over the years would also save a priest. If we made it
back to Peyrefixade, I thought, buckling a strap tight around his arm above the spot where the arrow protruded, I hoped the archbishop would take our being ambushed and nearly killed by the
heretics as sufficient indication that I was not a friend of theirs after all.

The arrow had penetrated deep enough that getting the barbed head out would be no easy matter, but not so deeply that I wanted to push it out the other side. I washed the area well with boiled
water, passed the blade of my knife through the flame, and set to work.

It was a long process, and the pain must have reached him even in unconsciousness, for he moaned several times as I dug the barb out of his flesh. The wind rose as darkness approached, and I sang
hymns to counter the wind's voice. The priest's blood rushed out, in spite of the strap, when I finally drew the arrow free, but the flow quickly dwindled to a trickle. Probably no severed arteries,
then, I thought with grim satisfaction. I washed the area again and wrapped it as well as I could with the bandages from my kit. Even if he lived and saved the arm, he would always have an ugly
scar.

Well, at least his scar would be hidden by his clothing, I thought, returning to the spring to try to wash some of his blood off me. At this point I had done virtually everything for him I could. The
emperor's personal physician had carried poppy juice from the East, but I never had; it was too scarce and too expensive. I did have some powdered willow bark I could brew up into a potion that
would help against pain and inflammation, but Melchior would have to be awake to drink it.

I examined his saddlebags, lying where I had thrown them when I pulled the saddle off his horse to get the blanket. He might have something in his own kit of powders that would help, but I was
certainly not going to start rummaging around in there. The power of the magic that had blinded those attacking us still staggered me. In spite of an arm across my face and eyes tight shut, I had
been dazzled by the white light which had seemed to pass right through bone and flesh.

Melchior also carried the conviare, the same one that had drawn the magical fire to my bed in Peyrefixade. It was sealed in lead marked with potent symbols, which he had assured me would
muffle its powers, but I could not help but wonder if it had helped draw the heretics to us.

They had to have been heretics, in spite of their horses and swords that had made me momentarily think Prince Alfonso had decided to come after me at last. The Magian who had made them
invisible, whom Melchior had felled, was highly unlikely to have been a member of the peaceful Order of the Three Kings, which left only the powerful heretical magic-workers of whom they had
been telling me.

When I looked at him again the priest appeared to be resting slightly better, breathing deeply and steadily though with no sign of returning consciousness. The pain and loss of blood, coupled with
the exhaustion that had already seized him as we came down from Conaigue, would make him sleep a very long time. But assuming he ever woke he would need food. A check of my own
saddlebags revealed only a little bread and cheese, both rather dry, and a wrinkled apple left from the end of last autumn's harvest.

Well, a soldier knows how to live off the land, if not by hunting—and I had neither bow nor hawk—then certainly by raiding local villages. Far off, lower down the mountain, I could see a spot of
yellow glowing in the twilight as someone lit a fire or lantern.

So there was someone else, someone who might have food, within a few miles of here—unless I had spotted the camp of the heretics. Reminded of how far a light may be seen once the sun goes
down, I doused the small fire I had built; the minuscule amount of heat it gave would have been swallowed up anyway by the cold mountain wind.

Now I just hoped I would be able to find Melchior again myself without the firelight as a beacon—and that he would still be alive when I returned. I had seen stronger men die from the shock of
such a wound, and they hadn't already drained their bodies' strength by working powerful magic.

I went on foot because I didn't want to risk my horse stumbling in the dark, and because a stealthy approach was more likely to be successful. As I started down the mountain toward the distant
light, my boots feeling their way on an almost invisible track, I wondered if I might possibly be back in my own county. The borders of my own lands, the duke's, the prince of Nabarra's, and
those belonging to the Order of the Three Kings lay close together here, and after my desperate retreat I had no idea where we were. But if the light ahead was from the house of one of my tenants, I
ought to be able to get food and help.

It was full night by the time I groped my way to the source of the firelight. The ankle I had strained falling from the damned tree during the duke's Paschal Court had begun to ache again. The
moon cast a cold blue light that exaggerated the shadows while doing little to show the way. More than once, the noiseless shape of a hunting owl shot past me, and I heard the faint and quickly
cutoff squeak of its prey. As I made out at last the shape of a cottage and outbuildings before me, the light inside went out.

I paused by a stone fence to consider. This was no cottage I recognized. As well as I could see in the moonlight the farmstead appeared fairly prosperous: a solid building of stone, the smell of farm
animals, and a plowed field beyond doubtless planted in barley, all silent now except for the constant whisper of the wind. Could I trust whatever man or woman had just doused the light inside?