Rosemary Kirstein - Steerswoman 04 (27 page)

It acquired no great height, wisely conserving its effort,
moving smoothly inland and nearer, until Rowan could count and name each of its
long flight-feathers as it soared low over the dragon field.

Below, a number of dragons paused, lifted their heads—The
heron burst into flame.

Rowan was down from the hill, away, and halfway to the
horses before she realized that Willam was not with her.

She stopped, looked back. She called his name, desperate.
She stood a moment, shuddering; then she clenched her teeth and ran back.

He was approaching at an easy jog, which slowed when he saw
her. She reached him, breathless. He wore a mildly worried expression. “That
was interesting,” he commented.

“Interesting?” She clutched his arm. “Will, the dragons are
not moving in patterns!”

Willam said thoughtfully, “I still think they are, really—”

“That bird was not on any list!”

“Well, no, it couldn’t be, could it—”

His complacency suddenly infuriated her. She shouted. “Your
spells are not working! The dragons are acting freely! There are thirty of them
down there, each one capable of burning us to death!”

He was astonished by her anger, but he did not reply in
kind. He spoke with patient reasonableness. “Rowan, we threw rocks at them, and
they never reacted. You leapt up and ran, and they didn’t chase you. And right
after they got the bird, they went back to what they were doing, like nothing
had happened. There’s something else going on here, some other factor that I
didn’t know about. It’s just a matter of figuring out what it is.
^”

In the face of Willam’s calm, Rowan found herself caught between
shame at losing her temper, and even greater fury at what now seemed to her a
blind and thickheaded stubbornness. “Very well.” She sheathed her sword—she did
not recall having drawn it—and stepped closer, looked up at him, spoke harshly.
“You’ve told me what you know about dragons. Now let me tell you what I know:

“A dragon reacts to motion. It can’t properly see a thing
unless that thing is moving—or unless the dragon’s head is moving, which has
the same effect. Its eyes are immobile, and side-set like a horse’s, so it has
a blind spot directly in front, as horses do. When the dragon is spitting fire
at you, it cannot see you; when it sees you, it cannot flame you until it first
turns its head—and from the look on your face, you didn’t know
any
of
this, did you?”

Her vehemence took him aback. “No …” Did Willam know
nothing
of dragons? Then he recovered, said musingly, “That part about seeing only
motion is interesting …”

She threw out her arms. “That’s why they burned the heron!
And that, Willam, is why they will bum us.”

This reached him. He stood silent. Rowan said: “This plan is
not going to work.”

He thought for some moments; and then he took her by the
arm, leading her off. “Let’s go and check the jammers.”

The first jammer-spell Willam sought was not present: a small
hole in the ground between two tree roots marked its previous position. Will
hissed displeasure, looked about to orient himself, and led Rowan off again.

It took some minutes to find the next. Willam paused under a
pine tree, peered up at its branches, received no satisfaction, and tried an
adjacent tree of very similar configuration. “There.”

Rowan stood below while Willam shimmied up the trunk. Once
at the lowest branches, he reached up and tugged; pine needles hissed against
each other, and bits of debris and dead needles briefly showered on the steerswoman.
As she brushed them off her hair something else fell, something that fluttered,
then thumped when it landed.

A length of cloth, very close in color to the tree bark; and
a small cube, about three inches in each dimension, painted in garish colors.
Rowan stooped to examine it, but could not bring herself to touch it, due to
the truly hideous little face that grimaced up at her from the top surface.

“Go ahead,” Willam said, and he dropped to the ground. “It
can’t hurt you.”

Rowan forced herself to pick up the cube, despite her fear
that the imp-face would come alive and speak to her. To her relief, it did not,
although its expression of disgust and derision was very realistic indeed.

“The decoration doesn’t do anything,” Willam said. “It’s
just there because that’s how Olin would do it. Er—” This as Rowan turned the
cube over. On the underside the same imp was enthusiastically flaunting its
hairy buttocks.

Will held up both hands. “That’s not—that’s not my choice,
really! It’s just, that’s the sort of thing Olin would put there.”

“I see.” She examined the other surfaces, which displayed other
offensive postures and gestures. “I know that Olin is a trickster, but I
frankly thought he’d be more subtle than this.”

“Well, generally.” Willam took the cube from her; his flush
of embarrassment was impossible to hide. “But doing this would be like Olin
saying that undermining Jannik’s spells takes no subtlety at all.”

“Thumbing his nose at Jannik,” Rowan said; and thinking of
one image in particular, could not help adding: “So to speak.”

“Please.” He was turning the cube over in his hands, prizing
at the edges. “I’m just glad it was this one that we found first. Some of the
others are even worse—Here we go.” The side with the face on it flipped up with
a quiet click. Willam prodded at the contents of the box with his index finger.
“It looks good. Here.” He stepped closer to Rowan, tilted the box to show her.

Inside: a tangle of colored strings; a flat rectangle etched
with copper lines; a pair of black insectlike objects, with their many legs
rooted to the copper; various other objects similarly attached, some as small
as apple seeds, brightly colored; and, filling the bottom half of the box, a
squat black square with two metal studs.

Willam indicated. “Push that yellow button.”

It did look like a shank button, pulled from some festive shirt.
The steerswoman touched it hesitantly, attempted to gently push it aside. It
did not shift; but when her fingertip slid across it, the button moved
downward, into some slight recess. One of the apple seeds emitted a brief green
glow.

Rowan, startled, drew her hand back; then, more cautiously
repeated the action, to the same effect.

“If the spell didn’t have any power left, or if it was set
up wrong, that light wouldn’t light. This one is working.”

Rowan pressed the shank button down again, and once more,
finding the obedient little light weirdly charming. She did it again. “And this
box somehow stops Jannik’s power over the dragons?”

“Yes. It sends out … something like a noise, that we can’t
hear, but the dragons can. It’s really very loud. It’s as if you were trying to
talk to someone when you were standing next to a crashing surf, or a grinding
millstone.”

“I wouldn’t be able to hear the voice.”

“And the dragons can’t hear Jannik’s commands, or the commands
sent by the controlling spell in his house.”

They replaced the jammer-spell, and searched out others.
They did not check each and every one, but selected a sample, spread out around
the two dragon fields. All were, according to the test, functioning.

Through all this, Rowan was engaged in an internal struggle.
The jammer-spells definitely existed, were definitely magical, and Willam
seemed very at ease with them. Perhaps he was mistaken about their
effectiveness against dragons—but if nothing else, he was capable of
constructing a spell that emitted green light when prompted to do so.

That in itself was a wonder. Rowan felt the tug to believe
in Willam’s skill, utterly.

But the heron was no less dead.

They ended where they had begun, sitting in the grass at the
top of the little hill. Rowan had insisted that they approach with stealth and
caution. Willam had acquiesced. Their caution was unnecessary. The dragons
ignored them.

They had brought along one of the jammer-spells; Willam set
it down on his right side, away from Rowan, presumably to shield her from its
offensive decorations. Rowan found his protectiveness amusing.

Then the two of them watched, again, to no result
whatsoever.

At last Willam heaved a weary sigh. “Tell me, lady, what’s
the difference between a bird and a stone?”

“A bird is alive; a stone is not. A heron is large, a stone
is small. A large bird moves slowly; a tossed stone, quickly. The bird flew
directly above; the stone came from only slightly above, and to one side.”

“Above,” he said thoughtfully. “And slow.” He searched his
pockets, coming up with a handkerchief. Inexplicably, he began to tear at it,
pulling its four turned edges free.

Rowan watched in confusion. “What are you doing?”

“Making a shoot,” he said, continuing to tear; each edge was
now attached only at a corner. “It’s nothing magical; I’ve seen little children
playing with them in The Crags … Or maybe they
are
magical … it’s
hard to tell, sometimes.”

Rowan knew the term
shoot
only as applying to the
hunting method of an Outskirts insect called a trawler. A trawler would
construct a parabolic web, which it would fly like a kite above the redgrass
tops. Small insects, unable to see the gossamer, would become stuck to the
threads. When enough were trapped, the trawler would reel in its dinner.

Willam’s shoot was a square of cotton with strings trailing
from each corner. He searched in the grass for a small stone, rejecting several
candidates before finding one that suited him.

Then he tied the free ends of the strings to the stone,
wadded up cloth and stone together, stood, and tested the weight of the
combination in his hand.

He threw high. The cloth-wrapped stone arced up, and at the
top of its trajectory, as it slowed, the handkerchief, predictably, unwrapped.

The stone drifted, downward, slowly.

It hung from the handkerchief, which had spread into a parabolic
shape that cupped the air beneath it as it fell, pulled down by the stone

Like a kite, with the weight of the stone in place of the
tether, the stone’s fall in place of the wind

In a single, amazed, delightful rush, the steerswoman
generated a flurry of equations: mass, gravity, shoot size, speed, all elements
interdependent, all interacting, each element requiring the existence of the
others, all of them making each one necessary.

It was lovely; it was clever; it was more than clever: it
was elegant.

Although, Rowan realized with a touch of smugness, for best
effect, Willam might have chosen a slightly heavier stone

The steerswoman startled when the handkerchief burst into
flame.

The stone dropped. Burned cloth fluttered. Ash floated, and
dispersed. “Did you see that?” Willam asked.

“I … I’m afraid I wasn’t paying attention to the dragons
for a moment.”

“They ignored it completely until it was about four meters
above.” He sat on the grass once more, arms around knees, thoughtful again.

Rowan felt a moment’s pang, longing to pursue her equations;
then she recovered. “We,” she said, “are much more than four meters away.
Possibly they can’t see that far at all.”

“Or they’re just not interested. But they don’t care about
stones flung at them.” He rested his chin on his knees, expression unchanged:
intent, focused, calm.

And as she regarded Willam, it came to the steerswoman suddenly
that there was a great deal going on beneath that immense calm, behind those
wide copper eyes. As much, perhaps, and as quickly moving, as that interplay of
calculations that had so fascinated Rowan a moment ago.

At this, he became comprehensible to her. He was neither
blind nor arrogantly stubborn; he was merely certain, with a confidence born of
long and careful thought.

“That big bird,” he said. “It flew low over the dragons like
it hadn’t a care in the world.”

So it had. “The dragons don’t generally attack birds passing
by.” Else, birds would soon learn to avoid dragons entirely.

“But they attack birds now. So, that’s different. And the
only new element is the jammers.”

The dragons, if nothing else, seemed to be stupider under
the influence of the jammer-spells. “If they don’t usually attack birds, then
they must be able to recognize a bird as a bird. But no longer.” She sat beside
him.

“What
can
they recognize?” he asked, apparently of
himself. The steerswoman could not help but answer, if only with the obvious.
“They recognize each other.”

“Not really. They don’t have to. They all know the pattern
they’re following.”

He still believed in the pattern.

He knew magic.

And his mind, Rowan now understood, moved much as her own
did.

The steerswoman accepted the pattern as fact, and the
dragons as supremely simple, and recast the situation in terms of that
knowledge. “The heron was not in the pattern they expected.”

Willam turned to her. “That’s it.” He seemed proud of her
finding the solution. “That’s simple, it would need to be something simple.
It’s not a decision, it’s just a reaction. The dragons will attack any motion
that’s not in the pattern.” He stopped short. His face dropped. “You were
right. This won’t work.”

“Unless we can move as quickly as a thrown rock … I don’t
suppose you have a spell that would do that? Cause us to move very quickly?”
Some folktales of wizardly magic included such spells.

“No.” He sounded as disappointed as she felt. “It can’t be
done. The best we can do is make something else move fast, and sit on it—or in
it. But I can’t do that myself.”

His “we” confused her for a moment, until she realized that
he was referring to the wizards. He was including himself among them again, by
habit. She decided not to correct him.