The Wind-Witch (15 page)

“What, so these raiders of his don’t need to catch the fowl for themselves?” She waved the broom in the direction of Kellis, who was heading for the pigpen at a trot. “You don’t believe that mischief?”

“He has no reason to lie, Enna.”

“None you know of! Unless he’s maybe just crazed. Lady, don’t listen to him! Who knows what deviltry he’s up to?”

Druyan turned and walked away, having no answer to make. What was she to do? What had Travic done, when the lookout he’d posted on the headland had spotted black ships off their coast? She remembered no specifics, but the broad outline was easy. He’d gathered all the men together, armed them, defended the farm.

But she had no men, and a farm was not a castle, with great thick walls to slow an invader’s progress. Most of their fences barely kept the cows out of the crops. Hiding what the raiders would be most apt to snatch was a fair beginning, but perhaps they ought all to take to the marsh. The salt grass wasn’t so high as it would be by summer’s end, but there were places where the ground itself would hide them, coves and twists of boggy ground no invaders unfamiliar with the place could easily penetrate. . .

And what if the thwarted hungry raiders burned what they couldn’t take? If they put the house and the barns to the torch, there’d be nothing of Splaine Garth to hold, year-and-a-day notwithstanding.

Valadan was standing at the gate, still saddled, head high and nostrils flared, on watch for early signs of trouble. Druyan swung into the saddle. No idle ride now, but a swift tour to see what she might contrive to do before night and disaster fell upon them. She made for the top of the headland first, to scry the broadest reach of sea she could.

Druyan saw nothing untoward. But Valadan did not seem calm and unperturbed beneath her, despite the emptiness of the sparkling sea. The calm was temporary. In due time there would come a shipload of raiders.

Druyan studied the beach they would sail by, the river mouth and the lay of the land that would guide them straight to the heart of her farmland. The little ridge of higher, well-drained ground that ran along one side of the river and made such a handy path for them, a sure way to skirt the quaggy marsh, gave them away. One end was by the river, just where the water began to go shallow and a boat of any size had to anchor or risk grounding. The other end turned into the lane and finished at Splaine Garth’s gate. The whole length was very obviously traveled, impossible to disguise. They were farmers, not castellans. They’d never thought they’d have to hide themselves. . .

It will be dark
.

Druyan patted Valadan’s neck. “They’ll still find the path. They’ve been here before—or places just like this.” It was the same story all over Esdragon—where a river met the sea, you found a settlement. Some were on the coast. Some were not. Go upstream, go as far as your ship or any other could, and there was the town or the holding, sited to take advantage of the river’s access to both sea and land. On a cliffy coast, often that was the only place with room for building. Probably the raiders just looked for a river now and probed up it, needing no other guide to the places they’d plunder. Sometimes, as at Keverne, there was a fortress to defend the river and the town—but all too frequently there was nothing at all to protect a settlement. Attack could really come only from the sea, and till the raiders had begun arriving scant years ago, there had been none of that to fear.

It will be dark.
Valadan repeated. The stallion pawed vigorously, sending heavy clods of earth flying back.
They will not see us
.

“That’s what I thought,” Druyan said. “We could hide—we know the marsh.” Protect the folk that way, but not the farm itself.

It will be dark in the barnyard as well
. Valadan raked the earth once more, eagerly.

Druyan realized he was trying to offer her a plan, beyond hiding in the mud and the dark. She pursued the logic of it. Could they, having moved everything they might to safety, trick the raiders away from the rest? Defend Splaine Garth as if they had great numbers and nothing to fear, making huge amounts of noise and confusion?

Should a dozen horses rush by them in the dark, strangers will not know. that only I bear a rider,
Valadan offered.

Add to that five people making noise from various directions, with two sheepdogs barking and darting and biting . . . It might work. “We should put the brood mares and the cows out far enough to be safe, but we could let the oxen loose, too,” Druyan said. In the dark, a man run down by a bullock wasn’t likely to know he hadn’t been set upon by a horseman. The raiders would never guess that the defenders were almost all women and half-grown chi1dren—if they didn’t see them. They’d not expect a iight from such; the helpless would give up and be robbed, so those folk who dared fight must, by logic, be formidable.

A bluff. That was all it came out to, in the end. Druyan wheeled Valadan about and headed back with all his speed, to do what she could to bolster the mad scheme before she reasoned her way out of using her only hope.

It was twilight when Pru and Lyn arrived, with the dogs in tow. Dalkin and Kellis were just back—Druyan had set them to moving everything vulnerable to fire out of ready reach. There was naught to be done about the thatch on the kitchen roof—they’d just have to hope that the morning rain had dampened it sufficiently to offer some protection. Every window was shuttered as if against a storm, and most of the doors were barred—one or two were designated as ways of retreat if such were needed. Every bucket and pail was filled and standing close to a wall, where it wouldn’t be easily trampled or upset—Druyan was still thinking about firefighting, but Kellis said that if the raiders had torches, they might be able to douse them and further confuse men on strange ground by forcing them to approach in darkness.

The tide had been flooding in, and up the river, for an hour. Druyan rode for the headland again, lingered only an instant before racing back to tell Kellis he’d been right even in the gathering gloom the river’s surface sparkled, and she had seen plain the dark shape thrusting up against the current, with the tide. The raiders would soon be ashore. And once landed, it could not take them more than a few moments to find their way to the spot where Kellis’ vision had placed them. Druyan expertly opened her gate from horseback, then closed and latched it behind her. She chased away the thought that she might never need to do that again—might never have a gate to shut or a farm to fence.

Enna and the others crowded close as she dismounted.

“They’re here,” Druyan reported tersely. She didn’t wait for startled exclamations. “Here’s what we’re going to do about it. With this one thing said, first—I don’t want anyone dead over this. We’ll run if we have to. You all know the ways.” They had blocked some of the spaces between buildings with barrels and such, to confuse the raiders, leaving always a retreat for themselves. But it might be hard to remember where that retreat was, in a confused fight.

“Lady—” Kellis touched her sleeve.

Druyan thought she could make out the glow of torches from the direction of the river.
Too soon
, she chided herself.
They ’ll hardly be ashore yet
. It was her own fear she was seeing. Valadan had his ears pricked in that direction, every sense straining, and more acute than her own. She could rely on him to give true warning.

“Lady, I can’t do anything that will work upon their weapons,” Kellis said. He shook his head disparagingly. “My people never could—it cost us dear. But . . . I can try something else, a charm that might help. If I can work a Mirror of Three, then whatever they see or hear of us will seem to them as if it is three times as great. In the dark—”

It will be dark,
Valadan agreed, pleased, tossing his head in approval.

“They’ll think we have the advantage!” Druyan exclaimed, hearing the two schemes mesh, seeing something like the possibility of hope. She leapt to catch it. “Do it, Kellis! Dalkin, fetch every tool we can tight with out of the barn—shovels, hoes—anything you’d hate to be hit with. Girls, Enna, get the pans from the kitchen-the big ones, the ones that will make a clatter when they’re hit. Take them over behind the smokehouse, and when I give the word, run out beating them for all you’re worth! Hug the shadows, don’t ever let them have a clear sight of you. And watch yourselves—the horses and I will be coming from behind the barn. They’ll follow Valadan, but don’t expect them to dodge around you—keep clear, for your lives.”

Now she
could
see torchlight, surely? Valadan snorted
no
, and Druyan realized the darkness was thicker than it ought to have been, so early—the sky had clouded over, and a low rumble informed her that she had mistaken lightning for the torch flames she anticipated.

Well, a storm would be one more weapon, and they needed every one. “Kellis, where are you going to be doing . whatever you called it?”

“Roof,” he answered slowly, considering. “Kitchen, I think.” He climbed onto the rain barrel and peered upward. When Dalkin staggered laden out of the barn, Kellis waved him over, said something Druyan couldn’t hear, and Dalkin ran off again. Kellis turned back to the roof, scrambled the rest of the way up. “Hand me a bucket,” he called. “I’ll watch for sparks if I can.”

Druyan grabbed a pail and lifted it up till he could reach the handle. Just then Dalkin fetched back, dragging a lumpy sack behind him. “Send that up, too,” Kellis directed.

By the stench, she knew it for the last of the potatoes and turnips, not yet consigned to the compost heap. Missiles now, evidently. Kellis balanced the sack over the peak of the roof and knelt on the thatch, trying to secure a similar equilibrium for himself.

Druyan saw him begin tugging loose stems out of the thatch, breaking the straws so that each one became many. Another time she’d have been interested further, eager to see how the charm worked and what else he did; now all she could think was that Kellis would be lucky not to fall off the steep roof and break
himself
into many pieces, the moment his attention shifted from his balance to his spellcasting. There was no charm would work at all if its caster couldn’t relax and concentrate—maybe that was why he wanted the vegetables to throw, a second line of offense in case the first proved unworkable.

Beside the gate, Valadan was plunging. Druyan saw again that distant glow.
Now it is torches
, the stallion said urgently.

“They’re coming,” Druyan relayed, loud enough only so her own nearby folk would hear. She saw no one. That was as it ought to be—it meant all her people were in their chosen places, hidden. She mounted and rode behind the great dark shape of the barn, where the dozen riding and plowhorses waited, and the team of oxen. She slipped off their restraining halters, one by one. Valadan could control them. She didn’t want any of the beasts trailing a tangling rope.

Silence—save for another far-off roll of thunder. The storm might be deflected by the headland or the greater mass of the Promontory farther away, might not swing their direction. That would be a pity—wind and rain would be such a help. . .

The torchlight was near, and Druyan could hear voices, too, or thought she could. One of the horses stamped restlessly. And all at once she heard the commonplace clucking of a chicken, as a hen that had evaded Enna’s roundup chose that moment to stroll across the barnyard, heading fussily for her roost. She hoped no one else heard the bird—it would be just like Enna to send Dalkin out to rescue it just as the raiders arrived.

The torches were very near. Druyan could see their light gleaming on metal edges, just as Kellis had said. Then the light went out of sight, blocked by the barn. Her mouth went dry. Her hands, tense on Valadan’s reins, felt very cold. He shifted a little beneath her, as if to draw her attention to the moment, away from disheartening fear. Had it been like this for Travic and his men? she wondered. Or did she feel worse because women did not make war, and she was out of her element?

It is not wrong to be aware
, Valadan assured her. She saw his ears prick sharply forward.

The gate shattered open, battered wide by a great blow that broke open the latch. There were shouts-some of them at least threats and bluster directed at the landholders, the owners of the mined gate and the farm behind it. Now was the moment they should have appeared, first confused, then swiftly terrified, to be vanquished and pillaged, sent rumiing before they had a chance to think about it.

“
Who’s there?
” Druyan called loudly, bold as ever Travic would have been, angry about the gate, which would likely take a whole day to mend. Anger helped, she found. It was a hot strength warming her chilled blood. “What do you want?” she demanded.

“Hungry men,” came a bold answer to her first question, amid coughs of laughter. “Come for our supper, mother.”

“You can eat cold steel,” Druyan said under her breath, and shouted the signal. “
At ’em, men!
”

On cue, the clatter started up behind the smokehouse, swirled into the farmyard. Druyan gave Valadan a quite unneeded squeeze with her calves, and he sprang into a gallop, neighing as he went. Eight draft horses, four palfreys, and two bullocks streamed behind him, thundering around the corner of the barn and across the yard.

There wasn’t time to take a count of the raiders as they swept through them. The men hadn’t bunched, but jumped in every direction to avoid trampling. Druyan had an impression of several, probably less than a dozen but surely close to that number. Big men, armed mostly with swords and round shields with shiny, light-catching bosses at their centers. They wouldn’t need heavier weapons, against farmers. One raised a torch high, and Druyan took a swipe at him with the mattock she clutched in her right hand-it didn’t chop flesh so well as soil, but it did well enough. There was a howl and the torch got dropped, which had been her objective. She knew her own ground in the dark. The marauders did not.

The wild-eyed horses created all the mayhem any general could have desired. Valadan tried to regroup them for another charge—Druyan, trying to keep her eyes everywhere at once, saw Dalkin slash a hoe blade across the ankles of a raider who had his back turned, then dart away into the noisy shadows where Pru and Lyn were clashing pots and screaming tit to rouse the long dead.