Laura Anne Gilman - [Devil's West ss] - Gabriel's Road

by Gilman

  The bandits doubtless knew this, too. Although perhaps not the bit about the binding spells...

  Zacarías’s frown deepened. "That look in your eye. I know that look. It is the look of a man who is thinking dangerous things."

  The monk looked vaguely disapproving now, and Gabriel was tempted to tell him that such looks only made people more inclined to sin, not less. Instead, he replied, "There're no thoughts worth having that aren't dangerous."

  He had an idea that might end this situation peacefully. But before he said anything to Henry, Gabriel needed to see the situation for himself.

  "You said that the bandits were watching the town. From where?"

  It took a second for the monk to respond to the change of topic. "Up on the ridge, behind the field. Not every day. They come sometime during the night, and are there in the morning, then gone by evening."

  "And they stand there, in clear view."

  "Yes."

  "Mmm. All right. I'm going to take a little walk, let myself think some more dangerous thoughts. Tell Henry I might have an answer for him, later tonight. And tell him come prepared to grovel for my forgiveness, while he’s at it."

  Zacarías made a slight movement with his hand, as though he were about to make a gesture over Gabriel, then stopped himself. "Be careful," he said, instead.

  Gabriel touched his own hand to the hilt of his knife, secure in its holster. "I'm always careful, Brother."

  8

  Gabriel made his way through the town, noting the location of the schoolhouse where boisterous voices were rising in lessons, as well as what must be the bathhouse, a squat shape with a central chimney letting out steady puffs of white smoke. After too many years of bathing in cold rivers and stale water buckets, Gabriel had no patience with folk who scorned being clean as frivolous, or unhealthy. If they survived this, he would be making use of it, possibly for an entire day.

  But first...

  First, he needed information. An idea was only that, an idea. He needed facts to see if it would work.

  The field Zacarías had mentioned was beyond the houses, where the creek fed into the town. The ridge would rise beyond that. Gabriel looked up, past the low roofs, then turned slightly to the left.

  "There you are." The ridge barely earned the name, but he could see the slope rising, the sky a wide pale blue swathe behind it, and if he squinted he could see a shape that might have been a man, standing just at the crest.

  "And how much of us can you see from up there, hmmmm?"

  Just beyond the last of the houses, where several young girls were minding even younger children, there was a low barn and paddock, the smell informing him that this was where they kept their animals when they weren't out in pasture. Beyond that, marching the boundary of the town, were the fields where they grew their shared crops. Just past that he could see a shallow creek, the water meandering in a slow pattern along its muddy bed.

  Gabriel paused a moment to consider the field, currently covered with some kind of leafy plant. Skirting the edges carefully, his nose picked up the unmistakable smell of damp soil underneath the vegetation. Without willing it, his senses stretched out and down, finding the tendrils of water underground, feeling the slow trickle up from deep within the bones of the earth, cool and scented with flint and dusty sage.

  The well drew from these same sources, but Gabriel could not feel it.

  A prickle of fear ran like spider legs up and down his arms.

  "It’s a tool, nothing more." His voice caught and cracked on the last word. A tool. What he did with it was up to him.

  He pushed a little further, and felt only cool stone and damp earth, and a subtle, delicate resistance. The blessing Henry spoke of had been a warding of some kind, to keep the source hidden. Wise, but even the best wardings could not hide usage, and that was what had drawn the bandits’ attention.

  Aware that the girls had paused to watch him, a stranger in their midst, he tipped his hat in acknowledgement and walked on. There was a simple plank bridge visible further down the creek, but he would have to walk away from his destination and then back again, to use it. If it hadn't rained the night before, he might have been able to ford it without difficulty, but the water level was just high enough to make that uncomfortable.

  A curve in the bank closer-by had been carved into a deeper turn, large stones placed in a half-circle to create a harbor where fish might rest during higher currents, the easier for catching. The flick and ripple of the surface told him something lived there even now, moving slow.

  He had a sudden flash of a much larger shape, ripples of a more worrying size, and he ruthlessly quashed the memory. This was a scarce trickle, far away; the Mudwater could not reach him through it; the water here came from distant snowmelt and underwater springs, and it had no spirit-soul within it.

  He hoped.

  Looking around, he noted that the creek narrowed just below the fish-eddy, the banks coming close enough together that a solid leap would take him across. Checking to make sure that the ground was dry and solid enough that he would not slip, Gabriel braced himself, took a deep breath, and pushed off, muttering a brief prayer to any kind spirit that might be listening that he would land squarely on the other side, and not in the creek, or on his backside.

  The ground came up too fast, and he landed not on his feet but his knees, the toes of his boot digging into the edge of the bank, his hands scrabbling in the dirt for balance.

  He half expected to feel a hand on his shoulder, Isobel's soft voice uttering a dry commentary, and he let his forehead rest against the back of his hands for a breath before hauling himself back to his feet. Risking a glance over his shoulder, he was relieved to see that if the girls had been watching, they'd been polite enough to look away and stifle their giggles.

  Gabriel did not consider himself a prideful man, but there were some things that needed no audience.

  Once across the creek, the breeze picked up slightly, kicking up brief swirls of dust and grit, his boots kicking up their own puffs of dust as he walked away from the creek. Gabriel brushed the dirt from his legs and then rubbed it from his hands before tying his kerchief over his mouth and nose and pulling his hat down low to protect his eyes. The soil here smelled dryer, the previous night's rain leaving cracks where it had sunk into the ground and disappeared, but the sere ground was broken here and there by patches of delicate flowers, pale pink petals brightening a bed of paler green.

  "Lady's Love," he told Isobel, who wasn't there to hear him. They had no medical use and were bitter enough to taste that not even a mule would graze on them, but they grew seemingly overnight given even a hint of moisture. Insects clustered to them when they bloomed, and birds flocked to the insects.

  Everything had a use and a purpose. He heard his father's voice for the first time in decades, low and firm in his ear as they’d watched an otter slip into the waters, its fur a gleaming brown coat. Gabriel had been a terrible hunter as a child, too easily distracted, but he'd listened to his father, and learned. His steps became softer, his breathing quieter, his thoughts softer, until he felt as small and gentle as that carpet of Lady's Love, harmless and of-the-place, that nothing should be startled by him. And step by step, he moved up the ridge at an angle, not bothering to hide, confident that he was not seen.

  He was halfway up the ridge when he felt a shiver run through him, a crackling sensation like muted thunder rolling from the soles of his feet through to the crown of his head. He paused, letting the feeling settle.

  He had not felt the wards when he tried to leave town that morning, the binding on him overwhelming everything else, and they had only been a mild shiver when he rode back in. But they were clear now, warning him that he had stepped beyond their protections, leaving him open to haints and demons and anything else of malign intent.

  The wards were treating him as a member of the town. He wondered briefly if Henry had set them to do that, or if they had decided on their own.

  "Th
ank you," he said out loud, adding trade-sign for gratitude. Some might mock the idea of speaking to a ward, and even a few year ago Gabriel might have felt the same. But he'd seen and felt too much since then; the idea of wards as aware no longer seemed laughable.

  He took another step, and then paused, half-anticipating the return of that chest-crushing pressure, the binding resurrecting itself. But other than a faint tightness in his chest, nothing happened.

  "Drown you and your intentions," he muttered again, tugging his hat down more firmly over his forehead and resolutely not rubbing his arms against the lingering chill before starting forward once again.

  The figure at the top of the ridge was still there, planted as firmly as a hundred-year oak, all his attention focused on the town below them. He had no idea that Gabriel had come up on his blind side.

  Gabriel grinned tightly, unamused. People looked straight ahead, and they looked up, but they only looked down when they were uncertain of their steps, or worried about snakes.

  Do not think of snakes he thought hard, as though the thought might summon them, either physical or spirit-form. For all his life, it might well, and he had no attention to spare for that nonsense, now.

  Sliding slowly back to his knees, then down to his elbows, Gabriel rested on the ground with his chin resting on the backs of his hands. If he'd brought his carbine, he could have taken the man's fool head off without risk; if he slid forward even a length more, he'd have a decent chance at throwing his knife square into the man's back—or his heart, if he gave him warning enough to turn around. But killing him was not the point.

  The bandit was male, younger than Gabriel but not by much based on the scrabble of beard and weathered cheek visible under his hat. He wasn't trying to hide, standing with his hands shoved into the pockets of his coat, chin jutted up and hat tilted down to make an unavoidable silhouette to anyone looking up from the town. His horse, a rangy roan, was picketed a few feet away, saddled for fast riding rather than a long trail. The bandit didn't do anything, didn't look around or make notes; for all that Gabriel could tell, he had fallen asleep on his feet, or been planted there like a marker post.

  Gabriel watched for a while, letting the sun move over his back, the faint breezes swirling dust around and over him until he was coated with it, insects buzzing at his ears and hair in idle curiosity. Finally, in response to something Gabriel could not see or hear, the bandit shifted, rocking back and forth on his heels before turning back to his horse. He patted its neck and untied its reins, then swung into the saddle with a grunt that Gabriel could feel, even from that distance.

  "No carbine or bow on you, nor even a spyglass," Gabriel said, easing himself into a sitting position with a pained grunt of his own. "You don't care about seeing what's going on down there at all, do you? And you're confident that nobody in that town is a threat to you."

  Confidence was good. Confidence, they could use.

  BY THE TIME Gabriel returned to town, crossing over the creek with even less grace than before, the sky had gone from pale blue to dark red as the sun dropped past the horizon. The air smelled like smoke and something sweeter, like burnt honey. He poked his head into the Hall, where people had gathered around the tables for the evening meal but saw neither Henry nor Zacarías.

  "Excuse me?" He stopped one of the boys running trays from the kitchen. "I'm looking for—"

  Before he could finish, the boy pointed out the door, then tapped his nose, and grinned. "Follow the smoke."

  "Thank you."

  Going back outside, he followed the smell away from the hall to a courtyard of sorts where a small bonfire had been built, the source of both smells rising from it. Nine figures waited by the fire, a handful standing together in a cluster, the rest seated on wooden stumps rough-shaped into benches. He recognized Henry, and Zacarías' long brown robes, but the others were strangers to him. Town elders, he supposed, although as he drew closer, he saw that many of them were not greybeards, but surprisingly young, and several of them were female.

  "Mister Kasun." One of the men turned as Gabriel approached, holding out his hand in welcome "My name is Benjamin. I'm the schoolmaster here in Rabbit's Mound."

  Gabriel took the offered hand, feeling a firm, callused grip shake once, then used that grip to draw Gabriel closer to the fire before letting go. "This –is—well, we're Town Council, such as it is."

  Elected, or at least shoved into the position, then. "You make the decisions for everyone?" Zacarías had said that Henry did, but...

  "We make suggestions for the town," one of the women corrected him. She was tiny, with pale skin that had clearly seen too much sun over the years, but her grip was as firm as Benjamin's, and her wide brown eyes were bright as a sparrow's, even in the firelight. "Then they decide if they're going to listen to us or not. I'm Margaret."

  He was introduced to the rest of the council in succession, long-ago training making him tuck away their names and appearances and, when given, their occupations for later possible need.

  "Henry said that you'd gone to take a closer look at the... situation."

  "Did he now." Gabriel wondered if he'd also told them that Henry had used a binding to keep him here, that he was not doing it out of the rightness of his heart. One glance at the older man, his gaze looking somewhere off to the left, told him he hadn't.

  "And did you?" Joad was the lead baker, an anxious-seeming man with a strong look of the Tenocha southlands to him, but not a trace of accent.

  "You definitely have a watcher," he agreed. "And from the look of his gear, and himself, I'd agree; they're not law-abiding folk." If he'd run into that observer on the Road, he might have kept riding through the night rather than share a camp with him. Not that he'd any sense they'd not respect hospitality law, but he'd a suspicion, and oft enough, suspicion was all you got.

  "We knew that already." Soren, who hadn't given an occupation. Young, likely still green and impatient with it. "If that's all you have to add—"

  "Soren." It was only his name, quietly spoken, but the young man ducked his head, stepping back to let the one who'd reprimanded him come forward.

  "And having seen with your own eyes and your own senses, Rider, do you have anything to add to what we already knew?" The woman who had spoken was not old; she was ancient, hair the grey of fog, skin wrinkled as a dried apple, leaning on a thick wooden cane. Gabriel fought the instinctive urge to bend in her presence, like a child leaning at a grandmother's chair, then gave way to it, removing his hat and ducking his head.

  "I do, if you will hear me," he responded, echoing her formality.

  "That is what we are gathered here for. I am called Rachel. Come sit with us and speak what you have to say."

  It wasn't the studied formality of a courtroom, nor the fluid tradition he'd observed in native gatherings of this sort, but something else, something equally important, and Gabriel reminded himself to step carefully. These people wanted a protector, a guardian, and Henry at least was not above tricks to get it. While he’d made the choice to return and help them, he had no desire to take on an entire bandit camp, with or without their dubious aid. He needed to be careful to say only what he intended to say, and not what they wanted to hear from him.

  There was a stout chair set close by the fire, and Rachel sank into it with a little sigh, resting her cane next to her, within easy reach. He had the thought that, as ancient as she was, she would be able to lay that across someone’s backside with surprising strength, if need be.

  There were a scattering of stools and smaller chairs as well, clearly brought out from the houses for this meeting, and he watched as most seated themselves, leaning forward to hear what he had to say.

  This close to the bonfire he could identify the sweet smell as something herbal, and from the bright-colored shapes rising from the flames, likely medicinal as well as ceremonial. Lifting the now-dusty kerchief back to his nose would be rude, but he took a position upwind from the fire, so that the risk of inhaling th
e intoxicants was less.

  "You already know what they want," he said, not bothering to ease into anything. "You also know that they have no claim to take, only to request that you share."

  "They're bandits," Henry reminded him, as though he’d somehow forgotten that fact. "They have no respect for claims, or Law, only what they can take."

  "If that were true, they would already be in your town, living in your houses," Gabriel retorted. "The fact that they’re playing this game proves that they know the –rules—mayhap even better than you."

  Henry looked as though he wanted to respond but something in Gabriel’s expression must have reminded him that the rider was still sore over the attempted binding, and he shut his mouth with an almost audible snap.

  "They will not dare start anything," Joad said into the pause, but the way he clasped his hand together, almost in prayer, suggested he didn't believe that.

  Before Gabriel could respond to that foolishness, Margaret jumped in. "They're just waiting for the right moment. When we're distracted, or down with the grippe the way we were three winters past and can't defend ourselves."

  "Our wardings—"

  "Aren't enough!" Samael, head of the weaving family, had been quiet until now. "You've seen how they keep moving closer, taunting us. They're not afraid—"

  "They're not afraid, no," Gabriel broke into the rising agitation, pitching his voice to carry without shouting. "But they're not going to attack. And not because of your wardings, because you're right; it would slow them down, make them uncomfortable, but it won't stop them." Not even the Mudwater or the Knife can stop a determined host, just dissuade them. "But they're not going to attack because they don't have to, not with the game they're playing."

  "The Agreement—" Joad protested, and the third woman, a healer named Althea who had introduced herself as Mercy’s mother, nodded her head vigorously in support.