If Crows Know Best (Mage of Merced Book 1) (11 page)

In between the pains, I could hear Annora calling to the baby, “Come down and meet us!” And to the mother, “Bring your baby to life!” The miller’s wife, and then the mother herself echoed the call, “Come out, baby, come!” And following one huge bear-like roar from the laboring mother, I heard a thin wail. There came a lot of sobbing and thanking of the gods, and then Gefretta reappeared, slammed the window and trilled, “It’s a girl!” I met her at the door, meaning to shut it since its magic was no longer needed, if indeed leaving us to shiver had magic at all, and the girl said to me, “Wils’s wife really is a witch, just like I heard.”

Irritated by the accusation in her voice, I said, “Maybe you’d like her to put the baby back, then.”

She huffed out a breath and turned on her heel to go back to her mother. Ticker brought me my bowl of porridge with an apologetic look, and I gave him a grin, to show it wasn’t he who rankled me.

Annora brought out a loaf-sized bundle with a tiny, pinched pink face, and showed it around to all the brothers. “Your mum is doing well. Take her in some porridge with honey. Put another log on the fire to warm the house for your sister.”

“She’s not very pretty,” said the youngest dubiously.

“Neither were you,” Ticker told him.

The younger boys made a show of getting their mother’s bowl ready, while Annora took the baby back into the bedroom. The next bit of our errand of mercy involved carrying out a lot of bloody straw and the afterbirth, which we placed on the burn pile in the forge.

“It’s better to burn it now, so it doesn’t draw rats,” Annora told Tarn, so that became his contribution to the process.

The mother was so relieved by her safe delivery that she insisted on Ticker carrying us home in the sleigh, even though that would get him back home after full dark. I prepared one of their lanterns so I wouldn’t have to send him home with ours. Her largess grew with passing minutes as the babe latched and fed, and she insisted on giving us a sack of oats, a jug of milk, a basket of eggs—and would have kept going, I think, but she fell asleep when the baby did, both exhausted after their effort.

I heard the miller’s wife gushing over Annora’s knowledge and skill with such a harrowing birth, but I never did hear the daughter thank Annora at all. I felt very glad Wils hadn’t picked
that
one to wed.
Imagine dragging
her
around to live in mountain caves.

When Ticker, Annora and I bundled up again and headed out the side door of the forge, we saw a trio of soldiers in the square, in Keltane’s colors. We hung back and watched them erect a window-sized board held up by posts to either side, with a narrow roof jutting out above, and then nail a parchment onto it. Once they had mounted their horses and ridden away on the road toward the coast, I carried the lantern out to look at the notice.

In thick black lettering, in our language, the notice proclaimed that all the lands from the western mountain range to the sea were now a part of Keltane, and under the rule of the sovereign king. Our council was dissolved, and all our citizens owed allegiance and fealty to King Aerelon the Sixth. Signed with illegible flourishes, the parchment trailed scarlet ribbons from a saucer-sized purple wax seal.

I didn’t feel any different, now that I was Keltanese. We had a quiet ride back up to our house, each of us lost in our own thought, including Gargle, as far as I could tell.

CHAPTER 16

With relief I found all as we had left it. Annora bade Ticker farewell, and I hurried to loose Gevarr and help him to the privy. He had the good grace to be grateful for my service, and say so. I told him he had been right.

“We are conquered, as you said. I saw them post a notice in the village.”

“Ah. Was there much damage, did you see?”

“No, but folks’ goods have been taken, and all the villagers are keeping off the streets and out of sight.”

“Our forces would want to preserve the village and road, the better for uninterrupted trade. An occupying force needs food and shelter, so there’s little sense in destroying the services needed.”

“Or those who provide the services?”

“How did the mother fare?” he asked, instead of answering me.

“Well enough under Annora’s care. I think she and the babe would have died, else. Do you know anything about turned babies?”

“Do I look like a man who knows anything about women’s work?”

“No.”

“You’re lucky not to have to worry about getting a baby birthed of Annora up here on this mountainside. Lucky your brother went off and left her a kissless bride, though I doubt he’d agree.”

“He kissed her—I saw him!”

“That’s … not what that means.”

I felt my ears burn after I thought a moment. She really did share overmuch with the man. Or else he deduced overmuch. “Do you have any children?”

“Not as far as I know. A soldier’s general experience with women is camp followers, not ladies and wives.”

“Well, some of them have to be married.”

“The camp followers? Hardly.”

“No, the soldiers! My da was a soldier, and he married and had us.”
And that is what comes of me letting my guard down.

Between one shuffling step and the next, I saw his expression change from a grimace of concentration and pain to one of avid interest. On the heels of my light-hearted remark, he wanted to know all about it.

“When was he a soldier? Does he have maps and gear here?”

My turn to be wooden-faced. “He went for a soldier when he was young.”

“Is he gone off soldiering now?”

“I told you, we were separated when we had to flee the invasion. Perhaps you should tell us what you know about the Keltanese plan, so we know if we should remain here or no. You will not be fit for travel for some time, Annora says. Bad to walk much on thawing feet. Hard to tell at first how much damage was done deep.
Really
bad if they freeze again. I wonder if we’ll have to get some bone-setter to cut your feet off?” I knew I babbled, and hoped I could think and talk at the same time. No luck.

He was laughing at me when Annora met us at the door. “I’m fixing some bread and cider for the others. Will you have some? What is funny?”

Gevarr only shook his head and tottered over to the pallet. After all my nagging of Annora to keep her tongue back of her teeth, I didn’t want to say I had blurted out news that Gevarr might use, or pass on, to our harm.

I said yes to bread and jam and hot cider, and helped her fix it. I first put the poker into the fire to heat, then I carried the pitcher down into the cellar to collect the cider. By lack of time during their raid, or oversight, the troops had not pulled up the trap door in the kitchen floor, and emptied the cellar of stored food. Our root crops, parsnips, turnips and the like, still rested in their baskets. A keg of dried beans, another of flour, some honeycombs in jars all remained on the dusty shelves or standing on the dirt floor. A lovely big barrel of cider stood on blocks in one corner. We always put by a large store of food for the winter, since commonly snowed in for considerable stretches. I poked about while I waited for the pitcher to fill, and was amazed to find some small baskets of soft fruit, raspberries and blueberries, sitting fresh as when picked on the shelves. I hadn’t noticed them before.

“Oh, that’s an easy-enough spell,” Annora said, when I carried some up to show her.

“You did this? You can work spell craft?”

“Yes, I’ll teach you. It’s easier than drying fruits or making preserves to put it by.”

I wondered if Wils knew all the sorts of magic she could do. My mum had not fed us summer fruit in the shortened days of winter; I would have remembered. I wanted to find out what all her gran had taught her, and learn it, too.

I plunged the hot poker into the cider and it hissed fragrant steam. A treat on a frigid night, and the cider was not too hard yet for Morie to drink. It would be stout by spring.

As according to my new rules, I took Gevarr’s to him, a generous portion as he had no supper. I determined to direct the conversation, not liking how it felt to be on the defensive after my blunder about Da.

“Do you think you might be able to walk on snow frames? Some call them snow shoes. We have some stored below, to keep the mice from eating the gut laces. So they weren’t lost in the barn fire.”

“I came from warmer climate down south. What are they for?”

“To keep a man from sinking into the snow. It is kind of a paddle strapped to your boot, and spreads out your weight.”

“I’ll try one in the morning.”

“You wear them two at a time. Or, one on each foot, I mean. We could have pulled you on the sled, but that did burn in the barn.”

“Where is it you’re taking me?”

“Remains to be seen,” I said, and backed out of the alcove with his empty cup. In truth, I suppose I only wanted to give him something to ponder besides my da the soldier. And my brother’s unkissed bride.

I chose to carry some of the supplies from the smithy’s wife down to the cellar. It wouldn’t do to have it all stolen if we were overrun again. The milk and eggs were welcome, and Annora stored them in the cool north corner of the larder. I longed for a bit of butter, and thought maybe we should ask for that if someone else needed a birth managed.

“Do you think his toes and fingers will be of full use in the end?” I asked Annora when I had finished stowing the goods.

She considered. “It is a good sign that the fluid in the blisters stays clear, and not bloody. Nothing blackens so far. It’s early days yet, after the injury. Frostbite takes its time showing the full extent of the damage. You say you don’t want to keep him until spring, but it may be spring before he’s sorted.”

I didn’t like to hear that. “If he is able, I’d like to have him help me put up some kind of shelter for Dink. I believe our horses must have been taken by the troops, and our goats and chickens are eaten or run wild. I’d like to haul some hay from the field for Dink and keep him close here. We might have sudden need of better transport than our feet alone.”

“If you can knock together some manner of sled, I can get the hay and drag it back.”

“I’ll look tomorrow for some barn wood with enough strength, and lash it together. Good that our store of rope was generous. And left for us. Nails are going to be hard to come by. Maybe the smith’s wife would spare us some, if I went to the village.”

“I should check on her within the week, to make sure she has no sign of childbed fever. Ticker will come fetch me. I think she’d give me whatever I asked,” Annora said with a smile. I thought so, too.

Come a morning clear for once, I lugged an armload of snow frames up from the cellar. I settled Gevarr on the back stoop, and strapped a pair on his feet. Since his single boot would not fit his swollen foot, and none of Da’s would fit him either, I had wrapped his rag-bound feet with leather and secured that with twine.

“This is how to walk in them,” I said, after I strapped on my own. I paced heel-toe lifting them high, and used the snow poles in either hand to aid my balance. “It is not a fast way to travel, but faster than sinking to the belly with each step.”

I pulled him upright and gave him poles. He proved no more able to walk in the frames than I would prove able to fly if I jumped off the roof. It takes time to get the way of it, and he could not keep on his feet. He ended in a tumble, with Gargle cackling so at him that the bird fell off the eaves and landed with a soft plop in the drifted bank below, scaly black feet uppermost.

I laughed so hard at Gargle that tears came to my eyes. Gevarr perhaps thought I made sport of him, and threw one of the poles away with a disgusted grunt. He tried to rise again using the other, and I went to help him up. When I had him swaying on his feet, I pulled Gargle out by his stick-like legs, still laughing. Gargle tried to peck me, then shook off snow and flapped to the porch rail to perch and preen, grumbling.

I gave it up as hopeless, and removed the frames for Gevarr. “When you are better, we’ll try another lesson with boots. It takes practice.”

“I heard you planning for Annora to go fetch hay.”

“We had plenty of stored hay in the loft,” I said, pointing at the black ruin of our barn.

“Do not let her go alone.”

“Do you think there are troops on the mountain, still?”

He looked off over the snow pack, upslope. “Maybe, or maybe not. But she is at risk if any should discover her. Even wrapped in heavy winter gear, enough of that fresh young face can be seen. And the way she moves marks her a woman.” He brushed snow off his knees with clumsy, thick-wrapped hands. “You have kept her safe up ’til now, and must have good sense for a half-grown boy to have done so. Still … where is my knife?”

“I have a knife.”
Bah, how easily I am surprised into revealing what I should keep to myself. “
Yours is put away
.”

“Give mine to her. If I’m no use to go with her, at least both of you should be armed. Take your sword, too. The one half again as big as you, if you can wield it. It must be your da’s, eh?”

My breath huffed out in a cloud, and I did not speak for a bit. Into that pause the door opened, and Annora stood on the threshold wearing a pair of Wils’s trousers. Both of us stared at her, jaws hanging.

“You think it’s easy to snow shoe in a skirt? Help me strap them on, Judian, and we’ll go look for sled wood in the barn.”

Gevarr waved me away when I made to shift him back inside. “I’ll wait here and see if I can be of any use in sled-making. I might be able to keep the boards from moving by lying on them as you secure them. A dead weight may be all I’m good for.” He was thinking, then, to aid me in keeping the others safe? Or, thinking if I gave Annora his knife he’d have no trouble taking it from her? I could not trust him easily. I called Wieser to watch him before making my way to the barn with Annora.

We used the axe to bang loose enough boards for a five plank sled, and some shorter pieces for bracing. I was able to salvage a handful of the square-headed nails that had held our fine barn together. I despaired of raising another half so large and snug, when men came home and folk got about the business of living again.

Annora dragged the wood over to the porch, where I had shoveled the drifts away to clear a space to assemble the sled. I continued deconstructing the sagging east barn wall, to free up lumber for a shelter for Dink. I stacked these boards by the trough.

She laid out boards, and helped Gevarr to stand when I returned from my stack of lumber.

“You go in, we’ll manage this,” I told her.

“Another pair of hands will make it go faster,” she said.

“Aye, since my pair of hands are good for nothing,” Gevarr allowed.

“You must take care not to pull on the scar at your neck,” she said. “It’s lucky you didn’t start bleeding again, trying the snow walking.”

“No one likes a scold,” he said mildly.

No, and I didn’t like their easy way with each other. We all worked together in the end, though. Because it was true that all three of us could finish the work quicker than a crippled man and a
half-grown boy
. Before long we had a lashed-together, cobbled sled I could pull with a length of rope looped over my shoulders. Annora, born in the wide-river land to the south, said it put her in mind of a raft.

“May it float over the snow, then. I need a tarp and more rope, so we don’t shed all the loaded hay as we make our way back from the field.” I helped Gevarr back into his alcove, and then went upstairs while Annora searched for a canvas tarp and lashing rope.