The Wind-Witch (30 page)

Ungrateful, too, to faint, but he had less choice as to that. His senses slid sideways, like a horse shying.

His hearing came back first, but only as a ringing in his ears, a bothersome buzzing, like flies round a carcass. Then touch reasserted itself, witl1 the water’s cool comfort. For one delicious moment, Kellis was in no pain at all, and he would have felt perfectly well, save that his heart was so heavy, like a great wooden weight in his chest, for some unremembered reason. He tried to hold the memory away, but it found him, sniffed him out, came racing home glad as Meddy to see him awake once more. Pain stabbed his head and his heart, both of them at once. He groaned.
I should not have told her
. . .

“Hush.” A firm touch on his shoulder. “Lie still. You’ve had a bad knock on the head.”

I know
, he wanted to say.
I wish I’d died of it
.

“No, you don’t.” A chuckle. “Well, maybe you
do
, right now, but you’ll feel better presently. Try to sleep.”

Kellis opened his eyes instead. She was there. Truly there, not just put there by his half-dazed dreaming. He could smell the apple-blossom scent of her hair, the smoke smell of Penre still lying faintly atop it. “Lady, I am sorry—”

“So am I,” Druyan said wryly. “I should never have let you walk back. I wasn’t the one kicked in the head, I ought to have known better even if you didn’t. I ought to have known not to listen to you.” She dipped the cloth back into the water, wrung it out, and laid it on his forehead.

She’d been in the kitchen, with Enna, when she’d seen him come weaving and stumbling across the yard like a blind man, and she’d gone sick and cold inside. Druyan sponged the wound_again, frowning. The bone was whole, but he’d slipped in and out of consciousness thrice at least since she’d run into the barn and found him lying on the floor, with Valadan standing over him and Meddy curled in a scared, guilty ball by his side. At least this time Kellis had his eyes open and made sense when he spoke. She squeezed his hand, to reassure him. “You’ll be fine.” Willow tea, she thought, for the headache-but willow tea made you bleed, for all it tamed pain. Better not, at least not yet. She wished she had some poppy sap. “Just lie quiet.”

Kellis wanted to tell her how glad he was to see her, what it meant to him, that she had not forsaken him—but relief and sleep surprised him more decidedly than ever that scared horse had.

“I wasn’t his first choice for an apprentice,” Kellis whispered, not opening his eyes. Druyan had thought him finally asleep, but he was still drifting restlessly on the edge of it, like a boat with no hand on the tiller, at the mercy of the waves’ whim. She felt his forehead—no fever. His wound had stopped seeping blood, and the wet rags had kept the swelling down as much as they were likely to. Come morning she could bind it up with herbs, to start the skin healing. She had been on the point of seeking her own bed for a few hours, leaving Meddy curled by his side for company. She sighed, stretched a little to ease her back. Not much different from the broken nights of lambing time.

“He didn’t even
make
a choice, till the chief got nervous about it. Wisir was old, and if he wasn’t training someone to be shaman after him, what were we to do when he died?” Kellis asked plaintively. “He lived all alone, out past the edge of the camp, he didn’t have any family. No one to watch over him so he’d be able to watch over the Clan.”

Druyan was not entirely certain Kellis was awake. His eyes were closed, though the lids twitched now and again. She made sure he was well covered by the blankets, that his bare toes weren’t poking out into the chilly air. He had come back without his boots. She had no idea where he’d left them. She’d have asked, but didn’t think he’d answer. She didn’t want to risk waking him—he needed rest.

“So Wisir told us he’d picked, finally, and everyone felt better,” Kellis said conversationally. “He was going to make a formal ceremony out of it, Wisir was. Dancing. Feasting. We were hunting deer, a whole pack of us, to have venison for it. The stag was a big one, and it was early in the rut. He was fierce as a catamount, and we should have left him alone. But we didn’t, and the boy Wisir had chosen got an antler in his throat, and he bled to death, right there. So fast.” He sighed. “Nothing we could do. We just stared. We couldn’t take it in.”

His dark brows knit together. “Wisir wasn’t very good at foreseeing. Not to know that the person he’d picked to succeed him wasn’t going to live out the week—it would have been a scandal if the Clan had known it.” He sighed again. “Which they did not. Wisir made sure of that—he wasn’t smart, but he was clever. He made another choice, right on the spot, as if that was what he’d had in mind all along. Just pointed his finger, blind—and I wish to all the gods there are that someone else had been standing in front of him when he did it.”

Druyan had not been paying much heed—she had no notion whether Kellis was even speaking to her, if he had any idea she was there to listen. The implications of what he’d just said made her catch her breath sharply. He was explaining himself.

He knew she was there. His eyes were open, staring at her, and both of them were wet. The first few tears had already run down past his cheekbones.

“My qualification for being our shaman’s apprentice, the talent he saw in me—I was
there
,” he said brutally. “My training you can guess at—how hard either of us tried. Wisir was a fool and I was resentful. If I had tried at all, my people might have survived. They trusted Wisir. They trusted
me
.” He shut his eyes again, on the shame of that trust betrayed.

“I don’t think it’s your fault,” Druyan said unsteadily. “Not all of it.”

Kellis didn’t answer.

Kellis hunched over the bowl, scowling refusal at Druyan when she strode up and tried to prise it from his fingers.

“You don’t have to do this
now
,” Druyan told him angrily. “It’s not likely there’s a ship striking near again, so soon.” The raids had taken on a discernible pattern—heavy, then nothing, after that a period of light forays, followed by another crest. They were due a respite, assuming they had learned to read the pattern accurately. And Kellis was due one even if they were wrong—she’d caught him trying to do the milking when she came back to the barn at dawn, and the stuff in the pail had more color than his face did.

“Better to
know,
” Kellis said stubbornly, tightening his hold on the crockery. “We don’t know that ship was alone. Or that it wasn’t.”

They did know that the sea raiders did not repair to their cross-seas homes upon meeting the setback of a defended village—more likely they fell back upon places they knew from past experience to be weak, along the Clandaran beaches. More than once the bowl had shown faint, misty images of places Druyan was certain were not in Esdragon.

“Anyway, one headache’s no different from another.” Kellis dismissed her concern. He looked wan and unwell, and was moving rather cautiously, but he was up and determined to resume his duties, including the prophecies he dreaded. Doing so without reference to those things he had confessed during the passage of the night—if he suspected he had revealed them. He wasn’t staggering any longer, so Druyan let him have his way, however reluctantly.

She protested the bowl, he fought her on it, and she let him do as he pleased about that, too, but was not sorry when the effort came to naught.

“Waves on a beach,” Druyan said a few minutes later, trying not to say told-you-so. “And fishing boats. Not much to judge by, but it didn’t look like they were having any trouble.”

“No.” Kellis dried the bowl with a rag. His tone was neutral, but his movements were abrupt with frustration. “I’ll look again later.”

“You can look again
tomorrow
,” Druyan corrected.

“We don’t know that was a foreseeing!” he snapped back at her.

“I don’t remember peaceful moments spent watching the waves, yesterday? She waved a hand. “Let it be, Kellis. Once a day’s enough.”

“I don’t want to be wrong.” His jaw tensed. “My head may have been half split, but my ears worked just fine. I heard exactly what the captain said.”

So
that
was it. And, Druyan thought, a very legitimate concern for a man with Kellis’ liabilities.

“The captain is my brother,” she said. “I can deal with him. I got you into this, and I haven’t forgotten that.”

“There will be others feel the same way.” He didn’t look especially relieved.

“I don’t say you’re foolish to want to stay out of Robart’s way,” Druyan soothed. “I think it’s a fine idea. Sensible as sunlight? She let her smile fade. “Now be sensible about this, too. You can’t chase after a vision till you drop—you tried that before, and we both know it doesn’t work. It’s even less likely to work right
now
. You’re tired, and your head hurts. Give yourself a chance. Catching the wind, I think you named it?”

Kellis frowned fiercely, but Druyan could see that he had given in. “If you’re worried about Robart’s threats, the best thing I can advise is to keep out of his reach. I never said that you had to escort me.” Of course, she’d never known he
could
.

“Does that mean
you’ll
do what your brother asks, and come home when you’ve passed on the warning?” Kellis inquired sweetly, his wolf-gold eyes ever so innocent.

Not a few of the places they rode to warn were too small to own formal names, insignificant even to those who made their homes there and never previously visited by post riders. There were neither towns nor harbors for landmarks. Druyan might at best recognize a stretch of coast, perchance some rocks leaning back from the surf as if they hated being splashed by the tide. Hungry ship crews landed at such spots to steal themselves a meal, no more complex objective than that in their hearts. It was a hard threat to meet effectively—twice the Riders turned up too late to offer anything beyond sympathy and hopeful promises of future action. Twice in a row, that happened to be, and Druyan remembered with dread what Robart had vowed, what he’d promised Kellis about betrayals.

It was mischance, not betrayal, of course, but convincing Robart of that might have proved tricky. Fortunately, her brother had been riding the nether reaches of the post riders’ route, working his way back toward the Darlith coast, and Kellis was as safe as he was likely to be—considering that a wolf continued to follow at Druyan’s heels and go darting among cold iron weapons that would shed man’s blood or a wolf ’s with equal ease.

The Chief-captain rejoined them during their defense of a hamlet grown up round a brace of tanneries, enterprises that had made their owners both prosperous and vulnerable. The place stank to heaven, even without the smoke of the fires the raiders had set to create confusion. Druyan saw her brother all at once through the haze, his jaw clenched because his eyes had just lit upon her face. The message was plain as any Rider ever delivered, even unspoken—she’d disobeyed him.

Robart came riding over to repeat it, flat out, in case she had not properly read the look. But as he arrived at Valadan’s left flank, Yvain rode up on the right, with one salute for his senior officer and another for Druyan herself.

“I’m going,” Yvain reported to Robart. “Questions asked if I don’t. Our schedule has always been . . .flexible . . . hour to hour, but there’ll be notice taken if it gets much more irregular, Captain.”

“Aye.” Robart nodded and sheathed his sword. He looked about, at scurrying townsmen. “This is over. Get yourself gone, to where you’re supposed to be. I’m late myself.”

Druyan held her peace and indeed her breath, in case the press of time should force Robart to put up his lecture to her as he’d just put up his weapon. Thankfully, Kellis was nowhere in sight. If he saw Robart first, he’d make himself scarce.

Yvain gave his stallion’s sloping shoulder a pat. “This can’t work much longer,” he said in a conversational tone tinged with regret. “The horses aren’t holding up. We’re riding them farther—and harder, to make it look as if the routes are ridden just as usual, with no gaps unaccounted for. The difference is too much for the poor beasts to make up for, even if you don’t take the fighting into account. They’re losing condition. No one’s noticed yet that the roads seem to be taking an unusual toll of our horseshoes this year, but that will come! At present the horses only want rest, but matters can go very much the worse in less time than I’d care to contemplate? Stressed horses could succumb to colic and founder overnight.

“You need remounts,” Druyan said, daring Robart’s attention to state the obvious. She wondered why they didn’t have spare horses, and use them. She knew the Riders by their mounts as well as by their faces, and they all looked tired, dispirited.

Robart barked a laugh, but Yvain couiteously answered her. “That we do, Lady. But we shan’t have them—our duke’s bound he’ll sell such ‘excess’ stock to pay for his ships. We’re lucky to keep what we’re sitting on. I own this fellow myself—else I’d not have him. And he’s fortunate I’ve another courser to share his duties, waiting for me at Tolasta. Most of our beasts won’t get that relief.”

“Our uncle hasn’t poked his nose out of Keverene in a year,” Druyan said, wondering if they’d overlooked that. “Does he
know
how many head he’s got in his herd?”

“No, but Siarl does,” Robart said, squashing her hope before she spoke it.

“Siarl? Tavitha’s husband?” Druyan asked, baffled.

“The Constable of Esdragon,” Robart explained. “The duke’s herds are in his charge.”

How do you suppose
he
feels about them being sold?’ Druyan wondered aloud.

“He’s probably not overly joyful,” Yvain said wickedly. “Siarl’s no fool.”

Robart scowled. “What are you suggesting—that we invite him to put his head on the block for us? Maybe you two don’t realize it, but we’re talking treason.”

Druyan looked around. The other Riders, four of them, had come up, though not quite joined their leaders’ conference. There seemed a lot of men about, clad in sea blue and gray. “Isn’t this?” she asked.