If Crows Know Best (Mage of Merced Book 1) (24 page)

I tried to speak, but could not for the violence of the shaking. The healer passed his hands over my limbs and peered in my eyes. “Get him warm. It is perhaps some reaction to the attack, the boy is not used to battle.”

Someone covered me with a blanket warmed by the hearth.
Idiot
, I thought,
I’m not cold and that wasn’t a battle. The mages have seen me, and now they are hunting me.
I could feel them touching my mind, small glancing brushes at my thoughts. “A-Anno-nora,” I managed. She would know better what to do than this fool of a bone-cutter.

Da dispatched one of the soldiers at once. “Bring Wils and his wife directly here when they arrive through the tunnel.” The man saluted and sped away. Wieser sat at my bedside, and Da pulled a stool next to her and captured my quivering hand in his. “I would hear more about you and doing magic,” he said. “When you can speak more easily.”

I nodded and closed my eyes. I would have sworn I opened them only a moment later, but when I did Annora was seated on the stool, holding a steaming cup of one of her concoctions, looking down at me with worry-creased brows. Da and Wils stood at the foot of the cot in quiet conversation. Wieser alone had not moved. I found my shaking had ceased.

“What time is it?” I asked.

Annora plied me with the cup. “Nearly dawn now.”

“How is it I feel the mages trying to touch my mind?”

Annora waited to see me take a gulp of the brew before she answered, “You recognized what the hawk was doing, and struck it down. So, the mage felt the magic in you, then he saw you through the dying bird. They look for you now to assess what you can do to thwart them. How strong you are.”

I wish I knew
. “Don’t tell me any more about any plans, just carry them out,” I said to Da and Wils. “I have no idea if they can know what I know by my thoughts.”

“If you remember, I told you
not
to set the place on fire,” Wils said, trying to muster a grin.

Do I look as bad as all that
? I wondered.

“I tried to keep them from touching it off, didn’t I? Are the fires all out?”

Da nodded and drew Wils away. The healer stopped at the foot of the bed and sniffed. I heard him mutter “hedge-witch” as he ambled on to the next cot. Annora and I traded smiles, and I finished my cup.

“Should I have needed an arm cut off,” I said, watching the healer’s stiff neck, “I’d still rather have you do it.” Annora stifled a laugh and took the empty cup.

“Get me out of here. I can’t stop my thoughts from going to Wils and Da and what they’re doing. Let’s go to the stables and see the damage. See if Da’s grey stallion Wils thought so high of is still there.” I grew restless now I felt better, and could feel less intrusions from the mages when I was talking.

Annora, Wieser and I followed our noses to the stable yard; a place where stock is housed being familiar enough to a farmer. Much of the roof had burned, and dawn’s light shone through the blackened beams. The size of the fort continued to amaze me. We passed extensive gardens on our way from the infirmary, and a vineyard. Several kitchens were busy at daybreak, and we cadged a loaf at the baker’s and a hunk of goat cheese at the dairy. I shared this out as we stood looking at the stables. There had to be space for forty horses, at least.

“How many men do you suppose there are here, all told?” I said, then added quickly, “No, don’t answer. I have to watch what I have in my head!”

We went inside, and walked from stall to stall, greeting the occupants. Annora spent a little time with each one, soothing them after the fire had stirred them up so. She soon had them nuzzling and calm, investigating Wieser and me without tension. Some larger stalls had two horses within, whether debris and damage from the fire required the doubling up, or usual practice, I could not determine. But the fine grey head I sought came out over the stall half-door ahead of us, followed by that of a dun plow horse that must have been Wils’s mount on the autumn journey here. Both whickered softly to me.

A bow-legged man with a straggly beard stumped up the passage toward us, two haynets slung over his shoulders. This must be the horsemaster who put Wils onto the tunnel to the valley, I realized. “Hullo,” I said. “Is this my da’s stallion?” I petted its cheek, and its stablemate’s, too.

“Yah, that’s the rogue, full of himself, as usual,” came the answer, but his voice was fond. “You’d be the paladin’s younger son, then. I heard you brought down the mage’s spirit hawk in that roaring gale last night. High magic, that.” He spat and slung one of the nets over the door and onto its hook.

I knew I shouldn’t ask—I had come to the stables to get away from thoughts that could betray me, after all. But still I blurted, “High magic?”

“Mmm. Weather-working, sendings, possession of animals. Shooting a bolt true through wild gusting wind. Such as that.”

“Which is different from?”

“Low magic,” supplied Annora. “Such as you see me do. Keeping ground fertile, healing folk and animals, preserving crops and fixing broken household things. Working in rhythm with the world. Are we supposed to be talking about—”

“No. Not at all.” I made myself change subjects. “He surely is a fine horse. If we had him at our farm, we could make a profit from stud fees, I reckon. Is his stallmate the plow horse Wils rode in on?”

It was a knobby-kneed gelding that I could easily believe to be as rough gaited as Wils had said. It wuffled at Annora until she came and rested a hand on the broad forehead. She spoke gently in its ear, and it sighed and half-closed its eyes.

“You’ll be young Wils’s bride, I wager,” said the old man. “I’m Senner Brayman. And aren’t you every bit as pretty as he said. How he pined, down here brushing that grey. I’m that glad he made his way home to you. And now you turn up here!”

“She won’t be staying as long as I did, so don’t get too attached to her,” Wils said, striding up.

“Can I keep her to settle all my nervy horses? They’re that spooked from last night,” grinned Senner, hanging the other haynet so he could clap Wils on the back.

“No, I need to fetch her to teach—” here he looked at me, and amended, “—to come and do something else. Judian, can you wait for me by the door?”

Wieser and I dutifully walked away, but I still heard Wils. “We need two dozen readied to ride out before noon. The grey for the paladin, and please something more vigorous than this leg of mutton for me.” I saw him pat both horses out of the corner of my eye; sorry to be disparaging the mount who brought him safely here, probably.

So, they were riding out, and to where? I slapped myself on the leg to interrupt the thought.
Stop now
! I scolded myself. Wils walked up with Annora, arm in arm, and pointed out into the courtyard.

“She’s coming with me. You’re to go down to the cisterns and wait for her there. When she joins you, go out and get the Traveller wagon. She’ll tell you where to drive it. And take care of her!”

“I’m more used to doing that than you are, having done it for longer.” Maybe churlish, but I did not care for being kept in the dark, however necessary it might be.

He made no comment on my sour outlook, and turned away with Annora. Then, swinging back, “Can you find the cisterns?”

“Wieser can,” I said as I waved them on their way. And I would have more time to explore the fort, while Annora performed her errand, since it appeared I would be leaving the place later today. Who could say when I would have another chance to see a fort? I hoped to occupy my mind with poking about.

Wieser and I found several weapons stores, or armories. The soldiers working at them told us the proper term. I saw the wisdom of not keeping all the weapons in one place, they were less vulnerable spread out as they were—
Stop thinking
! I spotted some of the Keltanese arrows we had brought in one cache. I asked a friendly soldier who put me in mind of Cobbel if I might have a crossbow, since mine had been left on the battlements, maybe. He found one with a full complement of bolts, and gave me a short sword besides. “Are you riding out to engage?” he asked eagerly.

I saw the error of my choice in coming to the armory then, and said, “No, just keeping prepared, thanks.” We instead went back to looking at foodstuffs and kitchens. Wieser liked that choice better, since no one could resist giving her a bit of meat or a broth soaked crust when she turned up. I accepted gratefully a cup of honeymead and an egg and onion stuffed in a hand-sized loaf so I could eat it as I walked. Relieved to know that men here had not been going hungry, I wondered if that was why they all seemed so resolute. We made our way past budding fruit trees and bee hives to the side of the keep where the way below to the cisterns lay.

We were gifted again passing through the sunken kitchen on the way to the stairway. Biscuits and honey, tender as could be. I wiped my hands on my trousers, and took up one of the tallow candles. As I struck a light, crouched over the wick in the curved stone entryway, Wieser began to whine. I looked about quickly for the cause of her unease, but found no person near. Peering deeper into the passage, I saw a shadow-shape, with nothing to cast it. I had the same sensation as I had in the forest months ago, of being watched. Hairs prickled on my arms and neck.

The wick caught, and I held the dancing flame before me, leaning in to see. The dark shape formed roughly the outline of a man, with a head and shoulders as of a man in a cloak. Where a face should be was only shadow. The image seemed to waver in the air, and I could make out the mortar between the stones behind it. It seemed Wieser saw it also, so it was not only in my mind.

Was this a Sending, a sorcerer walking abroad without his earthly body? Or some spirit of the ancient builders of the fort? It did not seem aware of Wieser and me, though I would be hard pressed to say why I thought that the case. As I stood still with caught breath, the figure drifted deeper into the hallway and dissolved into the stones as if passing through them.

A voice behind me startled me so I dropped my candle. Annora, drawing her shawl about her, saying, “Why is it so cold here?” She looked at my face in some alarm, then.

“Do not say I look as though I had just seen a ghost, because I think perhaps I have. I saw … something.” I retrieved the candle and lit it again, and told her what I had encountered. “Mage or spirit, do you think?”

“Certainly I can feel echoes of the past in this place, ancient as it is,” she mused. “I thought a Sending looked solid, and resembled the sender. Tangible enough that two can talk to one another, across distances.”

“A useful skill to learn, seems to me. But why can I see such a thing as a spirit today? I never have before. Bah! Let’s away to the wagon. Don’t say where we’re bound until I have the team ready.” I took a deep breath before leading Annora and Wieser down the passage, but the shadows within all behaved as shadows should, when we passed by.

CHAPTER 34

I found we had been left the team from the hijacked wagon, when Annora brought me to the Traveller rig. Honey and Cider must have been hitched to the larger wagon, traded in case the ambushed soldiers had worked their way free to report the theft.
Do you think you can stop now—thinking thoughts that betray our plans?
I scolded myself.

I harnessed the two, and climbed up beside Annora and Wieser. “Where can I carry you, Donah?” I teased.

“To the river where Joren Delyth took the wagon yesterday. Did you see on the map?”

I nodded and clucked to the team. I tried humming as we crossed the valley, so I could keep my thoughts from the soldiers climbing up to loose the rockslides, from Da and Wils riding out the gates to attack the enemy soldiers to divert them from the climbers, and from whether Joren would be able to get back to us or be trapped on the far side of the pass, or where Perk, Beckta and Miskin were now … ahh, it was maddening! I next tried whistling loudly, until Annora begged me to stop. She taught me a rhyming question game, and that was more successful at occupying my mind, for I had to focus on her clues.

We were perhaps halfway to the river, and could just make out the tall trees that followed its course across the valley, when a reverberating, grinding crash came from the distance behind us. Deep rumbles and groans followed, and the earth of the valley floor seemed almost to tremble. I swung the horses around so we could look back, and saw a rising cloud of dust mounting above the pass, thickening as we watched. It bloomed so wide and steep, it looked as if another mountain had been birthed over the pass between the peaks.

“I hope no one was hurt,” Annora said at length. It looked to me as if there were many ways to be hurt in such an event—I had no idea the pass closure would loose such a large amount of rock. I sent up a wish for all dear to us to be unscathed, and turned the wagon back on route.

Gargle found us a short way further on, and took up his post atop the wagon’s peaked roof. He bore a cloak of pale dust, only his eyes shone dark, and he set about frantic preening.

“You must have helped with the close timing—” I started, and then bit my tongue.

“Yours is an active mind to try to keep still,” Annora said. She held aloft a handful of nutmeats, and Gargle took some in betwixt his feather cleaning. I noticed he was careful not to jab her hand with his beak, unlike when he took food from my hand. Annora’s heart drew out the best in us all, I reckoned.

When we reached the intended river bend, where I could see signs that the stolen wagon and team had visited, I pulled into the trees on the bank and halted. “Are we to set up camp? Or just lay low?” I asked, watching the broad riffles of clear water.

“They’ll join us and we’ll move on, though not to the main road. That’s likely to be busy.” She hopped down. “A meal wouldn’t go amiss, though. Then they can eat when they come.”

She had fine trout frying in what seemed no time at all, while Gargle washed himself in a pool and enjoyed the results of the gutting, letting nothing go to waste. I would have liked to practice calling fish from the cold sparkling water, but feared I might draw ominous attention by using magic. Thus, I felt useless, so groomed the team and let them graze awhile, shepherded by Wieser. All the while, I could not shake my feeling of being watched by something outside of the world I could see around me.

The feeling of spider webs brushing my thoughts had ceased since I left the fort; this differed in seeming to surround us, as if the very air was …
attentive
, somehow. Several times as I worked on the horses, my nape hair rose and my obsidian knife suddenly felt hot and heavy in my boot. I kept my sword and crossbow close to hand, uneasy.

When I asked her, Annora claimed to sense none of it, and paused to close her eyes for a bit to try. She reopened them shaking her head, “I only hear the water rushing, and the birds in the brush. That little snake in the rocks, there. Sometimes I feel as you describe when magic is being cast abroad, but I don’t feel it now.”

She walked the bank collecting fiddlehead fern to steam, and when she returned to the wagon, said, “You were heavily touched by the mage’s spellcasting last night. Then you saw the spectre today. Perhaps you have been opened to the worlds beyond ours. My gran said some folk can see or feel the others who exist with us but are out of the sight of most. They are all around us, all the time, but unseen. The ability to sense them is a gift, like the ability to do magic.”

“If that’s so, will I always be able to see them?”

“It might not be permanent, but just an after effect of slaying the possessed hawk.”

“I regret that,” I said, and though I knew I should stop there, could not help continuing, “It wasn’t the hawk’s fault. I wish I had known a way to cast the sorcerer out of it, instead.”

“The goddess forgives,” Annora said. And as she spoke, rising behind her in the shade of the tree, I saw a flicker of a green-robed woman, arms stretched up like the branches. A blink and the image was gone.

“Are the gods about us all the time, too?”

“Of course. They are the world, and the gods together balance us all on the turning wheel of life so we do not go awry. Do you see them, as well?”

“I may have done,” I said, considering. I helped myself to a plate of fish, and made sure to thank the fish for being our sustenance and the gods, every one, for every other aspect of life. One could not be too careful where the divine was concerned.

Annora and I took turns watching across the valley the way we had come, and I was doing my stretch on our wagon roof when I saw a wagon with mounted men alongside. I called to Annora, picking berries a short ways away, and she rushed to climb the back ladder to look, too.

“It is them!” she cried. “Oh, gods be praised forever!”

“Can you see that far, it’s not Keltanese soldiers coming?” I could not say for certain, myself.

“Why would they pursue us with a wagon?” came her sensible reply. It proved to be Da and Wils who drew up to us on mounts, with Joren on the wagon’s bench seat, and Beckta and Miskin returned to their disguise as Keltanese guards.

Perk was nowhere to be seen. My stomach gripped hard.

“Please, where is Perk?”Annora asked before I could. Wils rode to the side of our wagon and helped her from the roof to sit behind him in the saddle. He rode across to the cargo wagon’s bed. I scrambled down the ladder and ran to look into the bed with them. Perk lay on scumbled blankets, a wide blood-stained bandage wrapped around his left thigh.

“He took a sword blow while mounted. The bone is not broken, but the muscle is deeply cut.” Wils aided Annora over the side of the wagon. She knelt at Perk’s side. “The healer at the fort sewed him up, but perhaps there is more you can do for him?”

“Aye, if you could staunch some of the pain, I’d take it as a favor,” Perk said, voice tight.

I sped to our wagon’s shadowy hut, and snatched up Annora’s pouch of herbs, then grabbed a bottle of mead as well. I handed her everything quick as quick. She bent over Perk’s wound and caught her lower lip in her teeth.

“Judian, would you see to boiling some water?”

I nearly fell over my feet racing to set the kettle over the coals.

“Make ready to head downstream, we’ll follow the river to the next town and then take the long route home,” Da directed the others. He would let no one tell any more of the morning’s tale, only that the pass had been closed. They did make time to dismount and polish off the fish and greens. I fetched the team as soon as I handed Annora the kettle.

“Wait,” called Wils around a mouthful, “Trade the teams out again, to confuse the descriptions being told where we’ve been seen passing by.” Da nodded approval, and Beckta came to help me. We both froze when Perk cried out as Annora worked on him. Wils stood in the silence that followed, but then we heard Perk tell her, “Go on, go on. Just give me another pull on the bottle first, eh?”

The wagons stood ready when the food was gone, and Annora finished with Perk at the same time. She bade Wils and Da transfer him to the back of our wagon, in the hut out of sight. Perk grimaced when they lifted him, his teeth hard clenched. As they carried him past me, he held a fist aloft, and gave a pale shadow of his wide, easy grin.

I saw Wils had been put up on a springy-hocked bay mare with black stockings, not the quality of Da’s mount but a fine horse, none the less. Instead of thinking about Perk’s wound and whether jostling in a wagon would set it bleeding worse, I imagined the herd we would have when we gathered all these horses at home. The barn would have to be enlarged sooner rather than later.
Perhaps I should not think about home either, lest I help the mages find me there?
I wondered.

Da and Wils rode alongside Annora and me, looking like Travellers, we hoped. Beckta and Miskin continued as Joren’s outriders with the cargo wagon ahead of ours. I strove to lag behind them enough that we looked like two groups, not a passel of folk together on a journey.

The first village we reached was no more than a hamlet around a ferry crossing. Wils found it on the map and told me it was called Pilsberry Crossing, before I reminded him nobody was supposed to tell me anything. “Treat me like a mushroom,” I said, “Keep me in the dark.”

“Should you also be fed a diet of manure?” Wils joked, for that was where the best mushrooms sprouted in the caves, where an animal left scat.

“If Annora prepares it, I will give it a try,” I said. “Make no mistake about me trying any you turn your hand to!”

I steered our blue wagon down the single dirt track between the handful of stone houses, after waiting to see that Joren and the others had pulled out. None of the occupants of the drowsy place had heard any news of late, Da learned when he stopped to buy supplies. They had little enough to offer, though they eyed his coin avidly. Da bought some smoked venison, and a couple jugs of cider. He offered, Traveller-like, to do a job or two, but they refused. It seemed if we didn’t want to be ferried across the river, they wanted to see us move on.

“I should have had a chain,” Da said as we went along. “Travellers melt gold into chain links, and twist off so many for a purchase. I hope those folk don’t remark to the wrong ears that I used Merced coin.”

“Maybe the Travellers do that more with each other. Zaffis was only too happy with our coin,” I said.

“Mmm, Wils has told me some of your enterprises in my absence. You’ve both done me proud with all this,” he nodded toward the wagon and horses, and the cargo wagon up ahead.

I felt my heart swell to hear it, but could do no more than dip my chin. I didn’t want to seem more a boy than a man, with my birthday only a short while away. I concentrated on driving the team, watching the faint track between Cider’s ears.

###

We fell back into our prior rhythm of rolling along during daylight hours and camping at night. Perk could not bear weight on his leg, but Annora insisted he get out and walk of an evening with a crutch she fashioned—“To keep the breath clear.” She dressed and redressed his wound, with stinking poultices that made my eyes water. Yet, she said the gash progressed toward healing. I wondered if he would always limp. Perhaps for a horsemaster, a limp had little consequence. Perk, for his part, took care to only look grim and pained when he thought no one watched him.

We saw nothing of Clock or Tock, so sent Gargle home with word that we would be returning soon. I overheard Wils telling Annora what to say, so she could code it. I also heard him tell her that Cochren Luppes had not wanted Da to leave, or to let any of the men depart. “As if I’d send you home with Judian alone. Luppes will just have to act like a fortmaster and fight the Keltanese himself, when they try to clear the pass.”

“The men at the fort all seemed strong in their mission, and I could not see they lacked for anything,” said Annora.

“That’s Da’s doing, he took over the running of the place during the siege. Kept everyone lifted up and doing their best. Luppes is better since his wine ran out, but he’s not the leader Da is. And he knows it. I’m sure Da will want to keep sending the fort arms and other supplies, since you taught them to use the code so we can keep in touch. I hope the enemy doesn’t find the tunnel.”