Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar (34 page)

She didn’t know what hour it was, though she suspected—from the emptiness of the corridors—that curfew bell had already rung, and if she were seen, she would round off a day of disaster with demerits for being out after curfew. And while yesterday the thought would have devastated her, today it did not. If it happened, well, it happened. “A lot can happen between planting and harvest.” Tomorrow she would try to do better.

Tomorrow, and every day after that.

Heart, Home, and Hearth

The air had a sharp bite, and Ree could smell snow even deep in the narrow earthen burrow, under the roots of a great oak tree, where he and Jem had taken refuge.

Winter is coming,
Ree thought.
There’s no escaping it.
He felt Jem shake with coughing in his sleep and snuggled closer, trying to keep the younger boy warm. Summer had been all right for living wild and putting more and more ground between themselves and Jacona—and the Emperor’s soldiers.

Even though Jem was all human and didn’t have the sharper senses of the rat and cat that had merged with Ree during the Change-circle last winter, he’d got wicked good with a slingshot. With Ree’s animal instincts to lead the hunt, they’d rarely missed a meal. But the last few weeks, it had gotten so cold, and it seemed like all animals were either hibernating or had gone south for the winter. He could see Jem’s bones through his skin. Hells, he could see them through the rags that passed for his clothes. Jem was cold all the time, and the last three days he’d been coughing all the time and wheezing when they walked too fast.

Ree remembered being cold, back before the Change-circle, when he’d acquired thick brown fur, now growing a winter undercoat. He remembered how everything hurt until you couldn’t think, and you thought you’d never be warm. Jem had never been as sturdy as Ree had been, even as a human. Smaller and thinner, not eating enough, he couldn’t fight off this illness.

Ree sighed and wished he knew what to do. They’d kept to the forest-covered highlands and avoided the valleys where villages and farms clustered. Avoiding humans, like Jem. Because Ree wasn’t a human like Jem. He was a hobgoblin, part animal, to be killed on sight. He extended his hand in front of his eyes, in the almost total darkness of the burrow, and looked dispassionately at fur and claws.

If not for that, they could go to a farm and get food and clothes. And if Jem were a hobgoblin, like him, they could live here in the highlands and do okay. There were other hobgoblins here, and they seemed to survive well enough. Of course, most of them were older and looked meaner than Ree. And most of them would probably eat a sick human. Ree wouldn’t.

He put his arm over Jem and felt him stir. Jem’s human, pink hand, covered his. He coughed and asked, “Is it time to get up?”

Ree sighed. If they went on like this, he didn’t think Jem would survive the winter. Ree would, but ... he wouldn’t be him. He’d end up strung up on the walls of some city, a bad hobgoblin who’d killed people and maybe eaten them. Someone who no longer remembered he’d started out human. “We’re going to have to go to a farm,” he said. “We’ve got to steal you some clothes and decent boots. And food, too.”

“What?” Jem said, and half turned around, his blue eyes wide in shock. “Why? They’ll kill you.” His voice sounded like he was on the verge of tears, and Ree thought it showed how sick he was, how low his defenses were to cry so easily.

“Nah,” he said, trying to make his voice sound casual and hiding his fear. “We haven’t seen any soldiers for weeks. I bet we’re so far from anywhere that now that the magic’s gone, no one even comes here. They’ve probably never heard of hobgoblins.” Ree didn’t think that was likely. “The wild ones never go near towns. People might notice clothes and stuff disappearing, but they’ll just think it’s thieves. And no one’s going to brave the forest to find thieves.”

“Why do we have to?” Jem coughed, but he tried to make it silent, so Ree could only tell he was coughing from the shaking of his body and the sound like distant, muffled explosions. “We’re doing okay, Ree, really. We hunt and ... and stuff. We don’t need to go near people. Everyone knows hobgoblins. Everyone has edicts. They’ll kill you.”

“Hush now,” Ree said, enveloping him in his arms and rocking him slightly. “Hush now. They won’t. I can hear better than them. I’ll keep clear.”

Jem shook against his shoulder, and Ree knew he must go, and he must be successful. If he died it wouldn’t matter—Jem would be able to go back to the world of men. But Ree couldn’t go on without Jem. They had escaped Jacona together, and Jem had saved Ree’s life, killing the giant snake thing that would have devoured him. More important than that, Jem, by caring what happened to Ree, by needing him and treating him as if he were fully human, had saved Ree’s human heart.

Ree’s body might survive, but not his heart.

 

Jem said, “Something’s wrong.” He was almost impossible to understand, he was shaking so hard. They stood atop a hillock sparsely grown with thin pines.

Ree turned to look where Jem pointed. A narrow valley cut deep into the forest. Fences had fallen, and Ree could hear animals making what sounded to him like distressed noises. He could see three cows, one of them with horns, a horse, and possibly a goat. Squawking sounds like chickens suggested the farm had some, somewhere he couldn’t see.

“Maybe it’s been abandoned?” Ree didn’t really believe his own suggestion, but it was an excuse to try raiding the place. Jem had resisted it all the way here, and even now his lips were set in that straight line that was often the only indication of his steely resolve under his compliant exterior. Jem shook his head and didn’t try to speak.

“Come on. I can hide if I have to.” Ree didn’t like the way Jem’s breathing sounded and would have picked the younger boy up and carried him, if he thought Jem would allow it. At least this valley was isolated even from the other farms and villages. No one outside the farm would see them.

Jem leaned on him as they picked through cold mud and patches of burrs that caught in Ree’s fur and hurt his bare feet. Jem gasped the first time he stood on one of the burr patches; then he started coughing and couldn’t stop.

If that wasn’t enough, as soon as the cows saw them, they started bawling and hurried over to them, complaining as loudly as they could. Being sandwiched between the bodies of animals big enough to squash him wasn’t how Ree wanted to die. He held tight to Jem, his heart pounding in his chest while his nose twitched with the smell of
food
. They were too big. He had to stand on his toes to see over their backs. He tried to breathe slowly, to pretend he wasn’t scared. That was one thing he’d learned—you
never
let anything know you were frightened.

If he fooled the cows, they were dumber than the ugly hobgoblin he and Jem had found in the hills. But the animals didn’t do anything to stop them going to the farmhouse, and they didn’t try to hurt him or Jem. Ree almost cried when he saw the door. Jem was still coughing when Ree hauled the door open and pushed him inside. He slammed the door closed and put his back against it, panting. The cows were complaining outside, loud enough to wake the ...

Ree swallowed. The too-familiar reek of waste and sickness fouled the room. He blinked, and the shape on the floor a few paces ahead resolved into an old man whose face twisted into a grimace of pain but who still found strength to glare. But he wasn’t dead. And that was good. Or perhaps bad, as the grimace of pain became a concentrated look of something like hatred.

The rough wooden door at his back was the only thing that kept Ree’s knees from buckling. He swallowed again. Jem bent over, still coughing, his whole body shaken by those wracking coughs.

Jem. I have to look after Jem.
He darted forward, his toe-claws clicking on the wooden floor and catching in a woven rug near where the old man lay. Catching the younger boy’s shoulders, he helped him to sit near a hearth large enough to stand in. Someone, presumably the old man, had piled wood in the center and topped the wood with a collection of twigs and fluffy stuff Ree didn’t recognize.

Ree looked at the old man. He vaguely remembered his mother telling him how old people always expected you to be polite. “Sir?” His voice trembled. “If you could tell me ... Is there a fire starter around here? My friend is sick. He needs warmth.”

The old man’s blue eyes softened. The hatred—Ree wondered if it had been hatred or fear—abated. “There on your right side, on the mantel,” he said in a raspy voice, as if he were holding back pain.

It took Ree several tries and some colorful curses to get enough of a spark from the flint to light the fire. First the fluffy stuff caught and burned in the blink of an eye, but by then the twigs were burning and the bigger logs were starting to catch.

Ree breathed in slowly, almost a hiss. An echoing hiss came from the fireplace, followed by a gray cat twice the size of any cats he had ever seen in Jacona. The animal sniffed, meowed. “Sorry,” Ree found himself saying. “I didn’t see you in there.”

The cat made a sound that could have been a complaint, then walked up to the old man’s face and rubbed its forehead against his cheek, meowing. Ree stared in amazement. Crazy animals inside and out. All he wanted was food and warm clothes for Jem.

But the old man wasn’t screaming or anything, and he clearly needed help, too. “Sir,” he said again, hesitating. “You ... are hurt?”

“Caught my feet in the hearthrug three days ago,” he said. “I ain’t been able to get up since, and the livestock to look to, and the snow coming down, and no way to light the fire.”

Ree hesitated. It went through his mind like lightning that the old man couldn’t even get up to light the fire. That meant he couldn’t chase them away or hurt them, or denounce them. He couldn’t defend clothes or food, and Ree could look after Jem and they could leave.

He looked at the old man, but the man was studying Jem, with an intent, concentrated frown. Not as if he disapproved of Jem, but more as if he were trying to add something together. And perhaps trying not to show his own pain. By the flickering light of the fire, it hit Ree that boy and man had the same profile. The man’s face was just aged and weathered and seemed to have frozen in that expression Jem only got when he was riding high on stubborn.

Jem looked back at the man, his eyes wide and guileless. “We’ll help,” he said, softly. “Won’t we Ree? We’ll stay till you’re back on your feet.”

What could Ree say to that? They could leave, could take clothes and food, enough to survive the winter, but in Jem’s eyes he’d never be the same. And perhaps not in his own eyes either, if he knew he’d left an old man to die. Much less an old man who looked like Jem. He’d killed a man once, but that was different.

So he crossed his arms and tried to look strong. “Of course. But first you need some warmth. He needs a blanket, sir. He’s got something that makes him cough. Cold too long and not enough food.”

The old man looked from Jem to Ree. “I lost two boys to consumption,” he said, and shrugged. “No healers for miles.” He pointed. “There’s beds with quilts in that there room. It was my boys’ room.”

Ree found a cold, empty-smelling bedroom with quilts piled high on two large beds. It looked like a metal stove had been added, probably to replace the magic ones that Ree remembered being sold at marketplaces. The hole in the wall where the stove chimney let out had been plastered over, but it looked crude and rough beside the faded paint on the rest of the walls.

Ree peeled two quilts off the bed and carried them back into the middle room. Now that his heart had stopped trying to leap out of his chest, and with firelight warm and buttery in the room, it looked almost cozy.

Jem huddled by the fire, with his ragged clothes and bones showing under his skin, wasn’t so good. Ree dropped one quilt around the younger boy’s shoulders; then he laid the other one over the old man. “Sir? You need food, too.” He was asking the old man’s permission to feed him as much as stating fact.

The old man sighed. “There’s stew in there.” He pointed into the hearth, where a pot of something hung on an hinge. “It’s been so cold, it’s probably still good. You can swing it over the fire and it will be bubbling nicely in no time. My wife’s recipe.” He cast a look at Jem. “He needs to eat. But you and I have something to do, before we eat.”

“We do?” Ree swung the pot over the fire. His stomach growled when he smelled it. He and Jem had tried to roast things over camp fires, but they hadn’t had real cooked food in ... much too long.

The man gave a cackle like a whiplash, and Ree wondered if it was just the pain making him mean. How could he look so much like Jem and act like he hated the entire world?

“This is a working farm,” he said. “Ain’t no one been working at it for days. The cattle will be starved, and the cows’ll need milking.”

Ree had a vague memory of going to a fair with his mother once, and a pretty lady who milked a cow and for a coin poured some milk in people’s cups for drinking. Ree’s mother had bought him some milk, and it was the best thing he’d ever tasted. But he was hungry now and stew would do. “Why do we need to milk them? We have stew.”