Fool's Errand (9 page)

“You’re sure?” He took a step closer to me, mistaking my courtesy for passivity. “Because it strikes me odd, three disappearing all at once. A wolf might take one, or one the sow might misplace, but not three. You haven’t seen them?”

I had been leaning on the tail of the cart. I stood up straight, to my full height, my feet set solidly wide. Despite my effort at control, I could feel my chest and neck growing tight with anger.

Once, long ago, I had been beaten badly, to the point of death. Men seem to react to that experience in one of two ways. Some become cowed by it, never to offer physical resistance again. For a time, I had known that abject fear. Life had forced me to recover from it: I had learned a new reaction. The man who becomes most efficiently vicious first is most likely to be the man left standing. I had learned to be that man. “I’m getting tired of that question,” I warned him in a low growl.

In the busy market, a quiet circle surrounded us. Not only Jinna and her customer were silent, but across the way the cheese merchant stared at us, and a baker’s boy with a tray full of fresh wares stood silent and gawking. Hap was still, eyes wide, face gone to white and red. But most revealing was the change in Baylor’s face. If a snarling bear had suddenly towered over him, he could not have looked more cowed. He fell back a step, and looked aside at the dust. “Well. Of course, if you haven’t seen them, well, then—”

“I haven’t seen them.” I spoke forcefully, cutting him off. The sounds of the market had retreated into a distant hum. I saw only Baylor. I stalked a step closer.

“Well.” He backed another pace, and dodged around his ox so the beast was between us. “I didn’t think you had, of course. You’d have chased them back my way, for certain. But I wanted to let you know about it. Odd, isn’t it, for three to go missing at once? Thought I’d let you know, in case you’d had chickens disappearing.” From conciliating his voice went suddenly to conspiring. “Like as not we’ve had Witted ones about in our hills, thieving my beasts as only they can. They wouldn’t have to chase them down, just spell the sow and the piglets and walk right off with them. Everyone knows they can do that. Like as not—”

My temper flared. I managed to divert it into words. I spoke quietly, biting off each word. “Like as not the piglets fell down a creek bank and were swept away, or got separated from the sow. There’s fox and cats and wolverine in those hills. If you want to be sure of your stock, keep a better watch on them.”

“I had a calf go missing this spring,” the cheese merchant suddenly said. “Cow strayed off pregnant, and came home two days later, empty as a barrel.” He shook his head. “Never found a trace of that calf. But I did find a burnt-out firepit.”

“Witted ones,” the baker’s boy chimed in sagely. “They caught one over to Hardin’s Spit the other day, but she got away. No telling where she is now. Or where she was!” His eyes gleamed with the joy of his suspicions.

“Well, that explains it, then,” Baylor exclaimed. He shot a triumphant look my way, then hastily looked aside from my expression. “That’s the way of it, then, Tom Badgerlock. And I only wanted to warn you, as neighbors do for one another. You keep good watch on those chickens of yours.” He nodded judiciously, and across the way, the cheese merchant nodded as well.

“My cousin was there, at Hardin’s Spit. He saw that Wit whore just sprout feathers and fly. The ropes fell away from her and off she went.”

I didn’t even turn my head to see who spoke. The normal movement and noise of the market had resumed around us, but now the gossip hummed with jolly hatred of the Witted. I stood isolated, the warm summer sun beating down on my head just as it did the hapless piglets in Baylor’s cart. The surging of my heart was like a shaking inside me. The moment in which I might have killed him had passed like a fever breaking. I saw Hap wipe sweat from his brow. Jinna put a hand on his shoulder and said something quietly to him. He shook his head, his lips white. Then he looked at me and gave me a shaky smile. It was over.

But the gossip in the market went on. All around me, the market chuckled along, healed by the prospect of a common enemy. It made me queasy, and I felt small and shamed that I did not shout out at the injustice of it all. Instead, I took up Clover’s lead. “Mind our trade, Hap. I’m going to water the pony.”

Hap, still silent and grave, nodded to me. I felt his eyes on me as I led Clover away. I took my time at the task, and when I came back, Baylor made a point of smiling and greeting me. All I could manage was a nod. It was a relief when a butcher bought all Baylor’s piglets on condition that he deliver them to the man’s shop. As the sore ox and the miserable piglets left, I let out a sigh. My back ached with the tension I’d been holding.

“Pleasant fellow,” Jinna observed quietly. Hap laughed aloud, and even I broke a sour smile. Later we shared our hard-boiled eggs, bread, and salt fish with her. She had a pouch of dried apples and a smoked sausage. We made a picnic of it, and when I laughed at some jest of Hap’s, she made me blush by saying, “You look a vicious man when you scowl, Tom Badgerlock. And when you knot your fists, I’d not want to know you. Yet when you smile or laugh aloud, your eyes put the lie to that look.”

Hap snickered to see me flush, and the rest of the day passed in good companionship and friendly barter. As the market day wound to a close, Jinna had done well for herself. Her supply of charms had dwindled measurably. “Soon it will be time to go back to Buckkeep Town, and turn my hand to making more. It suits me better than the selling, though I do like traveling about and meeting new folk,” she observed as she packed up what was left of her wares.

Hap and I had exchanged most of our goods for things we could use at home, but had gained little in actual coin for his apprenticeship fee. He tried to keep the disappointment from his face but I saw the shadow of his worry in his eyes. What if our coins were not sufficient even for the boatbuilder? What then of his apprenticeship? The question haunted me as well.

Yet neither of us voiced it. We slept in our cart to save the cost of an inn and left the next morning for home. Jinna came by to bid us farewell and Hap reminded her of his offer of hospitality. She assured him she would remember, but her eyes caught at mine as she did so, as if uncertain of how truly welcome she would be. Perforce I must nod and smile and add my hope that we would see her soon.

We had a fine day for the journey home. There were high clouds and a light wind to keep the summer day from being oppressive. We nibbled at the honeycomb that Hap had received for one of his chickens. We talked of nothing: that the market was much larger than the first time I had been there, that the town had grown, that the road was more traveled than it had been last year. Neither of us spoke of Baylor. We passed the fork in the road that once would have taken us to Forge. Grass grew on that trail. Hap asked if I thought folk would ever settle there again. I said I hoped not, but that sooner or later, the iron ore would bring someone with a short memory there. From there, we progressed to tales of what had happened at Forge and the hardships of the Red Ship War. I told them all as tales I had heard from another, not because I enjoyed the telling of them, but because it was history the boy should know. It was something everyone in the Six Duchies should always recall, and again I resolved to make an attempt at a history of that time. I thought of my many brave beginnings, of the stacked scrolls that rolled about on the shelves above my desk, and wondered if I would ever complete any of them.

An abrupt question from Hap broke me rudely from my musing.

“Was I a Red Ship bastard, Tom?”

My mouth hung ajar. All my old pain at that word shone fresh in Hap’s mismatched eyes. Mishap, his mother had named him. Starling had found him, a scavenging orphan that no one in his village would claim. That was as much as I knew of him. I forced honesty. “I don’t know, Hap. You could have been Raider-born.” I used the kinder term.

He stared straight ahead now, walking steadily as he spoke. “Starling said I was. I’m an age to be one, and it might be why no one save you would take me in. I’d like to know. I’d like to know who I am.”

“Oh,” I finally said into the dangling silence.

He nodded hard, twice. His voice was tight when he added, “When I said I’d have to tell you about her, Starling said I had the same Forged heart as my raping father.”

I suddenly wished he were smaller, so I could catch him up mid-stride and hug him. Instead, I put my arm around his shoulders and forced him to a halt. The pony ambled along without us. I didn’t make him meet my eyes nor did I let my voice become too grave. “I’m going to give you a gift, son. This is knowledge it took me twenty years to gain, so appreciate that I’m giving it to you while you’re young.” I took a breath. “It doesn’t matter who a man’s father is. Your parents made a child, but it’s up to you to make the man you’ll be.” I held his gaze for a moment. Then, “Come on. Let’s go home.”

We walked on, my arm across his shoulders for a time, until he reached up to clap me on the shoulder. I let him go then, to walk on his own and silently finish his thinking. It was the best I could do for him. My thoughts of Starling were not charitable.

Night caught us before we reached the cottage, but there was a moon and both of us knew the road. The old pony meandered along placidly and the clopping of her hooves and the creaking of the two-wheeled cart made an odd sort of music. A summer rain began to fall, damping the dust and cooling the night. Not far from home, Nighteyes came nonchalantly to meet us, as if mere chance had brought him out upon the road. We journeyed companionably together, the boy in silence, the wolf and I in the effortless communion of the Wit. We absorbed the other’s experiences of the day like an indrawn breath. He could not grasp my worry for the boy’s future.

He can hunt and he can fish. What more does he need to know? Why send one of our own off to another pack, to learn their ways? We are diminished by the loss of his strength. We grow no younger, you and I.

My brother, that is perhaps the strongest reason why he should go. He must begin to make his own way in the world, so that when the time comes for him to take a mate, he can provide well for her and their children.

What of you and me? We will not help him in that providing? We will not watch the cubs while he hunts, or bring back our kill to share? Are we not pack with him?

Among human packs, this is the way of it.
It was an answer I had given him many times in our years together. I knew how he interpreted it. It was a human custom that made no sense, and he need not waste time trying to understand it.

What of us, then, when he is gone?

I’ve told you. Perhaps we shall travel again.

Ah, yes. Leave a cozy den and a predictable food supply. That makes as much sense as sending the boy away.

I let his thought hang unanswered, for he was right. Perhaps the restlessness Chade had stirred in me had been the last gasp of my youth. Perhaps I should have bought that wife-finding charm from Jinna. From time to time I had considered the idea of looking for a wife, but it seemed too perfunctory a way to take a mate. Some did so, I knew, merely seeking out a woman or man who had similar goals and no excessively irritating habits. Such partnerships often grew into loving relationships. But having once experienced a relationship not only founded on years of knowing one another but blessed with the heady intoxication of genuine love, I did not think I could ever settle for anything else. It would not be fair to ask another woman to live in Molly’s shadow. In all the years that Starling had intermittently shared herself with me, I had never thought to ask her to marry me. That thought gave me pause for a moment: had Starling ever hoped that I would? Then the moment of wondering passed and I smiled grimly to myself. No. Starling would have found such an offer baffling, if not laughable.

The last part of our journey was darker, for the track to our cottage was narrow and overshadowed on both sides by trees. Rain dripped from the leaves. The cart jounced along. “Should have brought a lantern,” Hap observed, and I grunted agreement. Our cottage was a darker hummock in the shadowed hollow we called home.

I went inside and kindled a fire and put our traded goods away. Hap took a light and settled the pony. Nighteyes immediately sighed down onto the hearth, as close to the fire as he could get without singeing his coat. I put on the kettle and added the few coins we had gained to Hap’s small hoard. It wasn’t going to be enough, I grudgingly admitted. Even if Hap and I hired ourselves out the rest of the summer to bring in hay and other crops, it still wouldn’t be enough. Nor could we both work that way, unless we were resigned to our own chickens and garden perishing from neglect. Yet if only one of us hired out, it might be another year, perhaps longer, before we had saved enough.

“I should have started saving for this years ago,” I observed sourly as Hap came in from outside. He set the lantern on its shelf before dropping into the other chair. I nodded at the pot on the table and he poured himself a cup of tea. The stacked coins on the table were a pitiful wall between us.

“Too late to think that way,” he observed as he took up his cup. “We have to start from where we are.”

“Exactly. Do you think you and Nighteyes could manage here for the rest of the summer while I hired out?”

He met my gaze levelly. “Why should you be the one to hire out? The money would go for
my
apprenticeship.”

I experienced an odd little shift in perception. Because I was “bigger and stronger and could earn more” was no longer true. His shoulders were as wide as mine, and in any test of endurance, his young back would probably hold out better. He grinned sympathetically as he saw me grasp what he already knew. “Perhaps because it is something that I’d like to give you,” I said quietly, and he nodded, understanding what those words really meant.

“You’ve already given me more than I could ever pay back. Including the ability to go after this for myself.”