“Seems complicated,” said Trebastion.
Oliver shrugged. After a moment he said, “Do you know cows?”
“I have met a cow or two in my time,” Trebastion allowed. “Horns. Udders. That sort of thing.”
“Well, they’re just cows, you know. They’re important to the people who own them, but they’re just… cows. But then you get a whole bunch together and sometimes they’ll panic and stampede and run you down. They don’t mean to hurt you, they’re just scared. But they’re still important to the people who own them. You don’t just give up on cows all together.”
“Yes, but you’re still dead,” said Trebastion. “Once they’ve trampled you.”
Oliver sighed. “Yeah.” He’d thought the cow analogy might help Trebastion to understand, but maybe Trebastion understood perfectly well. “Yeah. You still are.”
The armadillo trotted on in front of him, not saying anything, with his ears pricked against the evening dark.
Eglamarck stood watch that night, while the two humans slept.
The eyesight of armadillos isn’t very good, but their hearing is excellent. He could barely see his two companions, rolled up in their blankets in the shadow of a fallen tree, but he could hear their breathing clearly.
Ghuls. A teenage musician with a murderer chasing him. Hmm. While it was certainly safer with another person to keep watch, Oliver and the armadillo might be in more danger travelling with him. The armadillo had not known many murderers in his life, but he had a feeling that once you started killing people for fun, you didn’t stop. A boy and an armadillo might not interest the homicidal mayor, but then again, they might. Better to be forewarned.
An owl called off in the distance. The armadillo crouched instinctively. Owls did not generally prey on armadillos, but the oldest parts of the armadillo’s brain knew a predator when they heard one.
He wasn’t comfortable in the forest. Forests were not armadillo country. He liked deep dirt untroubled by tree roots. Shrubs were okay, and farmland was nice, but trees… he wasn’t sure about all these trees.
He listened for the crackle of twigs that might herald a ghul plowing through the forest and heard nothing.
If only Oliver had been older! A better wizard, one at the height of his powers, could have wrapped them up in a spell that made them seem to be logs or ferns. Nothing as showy as invisibility, but just as useful.
He wished he could make Oliver understand that. Big spells were impressive, sure, but the little ones could be far better for the purpose at hand. Look at all the mileage that Oliver got from the pushme pullme spell. But no, Oliver was young enough to feel that he constantly had to prove himself… and to be fair, the people of his village didn’t help much.
“Treat you like a small child until they need you, and then expect you to move heaven and earth and bring down rain,” the armadillo muttered under his breath. Oliver actually had been very understanding about the whole thing, but he was still irritated on his wizard’s behalf.
He raked the leaf litter with his claws.
His display of temper turned up a sleepy grub, and the armadillo pounced on it and swallowed it down.
A spell to turn up grubs—now that would be something! You could keep your invisibility. Stupid spell. Only useful against other humans, really, or maybe birds. You could smell right through it, and unless the wizard stood still and didn’t breathe, he’d be obvious to anyone who cared to listen. Leave it to a human wizard to come up with something that fooled the eyes and nothing else.
Well. Still. Oliver was his wizard and had been ever since he walked through the door of the old wizard’s cottage, a blurry, distant shape with a smell that said Home. And Mine. Eglamarck couldn’t do more than waddle at that point, but he’d struck out determinedly across the ocean of floorboards and up to the enormous blur and marked it as belonging to him.
Now his wizard was in danger, and not the sort you could fix by rolling up in a ball. (Not that he could roll into a ball. He was a nine-banded armadillo, and unlike some of his distant cousins, things didn’t fit perfectly together. The best he could do was hunch his armored back up and tuck his head under his claws, which was fairly close.) Hmm.
He sniffed the air again.
There was something odd in the forest. Well, obviously, he thought, faintly annoyed at himself. His thoughts were getting sloppy as a human’s. But there was something just at the edges of his senses. Not magic. Magic had a definite taste and smell. This was something else, an aftertaste to the world, something like leafmould and shadow that lingered in his nose just a fraction longer than it should.
For some reason he thought of Trebastion’s song, of the murdered woman still walking under the trees. Bah. Getting superstitious, too. It was the sort of ridiculous thing a human might do, coming back as a ghost instead of getting on with the business of being reborn, like any sensible being. Still, the armadillo had his doubts. Humans loved to blame ghosts for things, his mother had said, but she’d never seen one.
Still, between the ghuls and the strange aftertaste, he wanted to get through Harkhound as quickly as possible.
Animals are not broadly troubled by guilt. Eglamarck considered, dispassionately, whether it would be better to abandon Trebastion. The human was not very good in the woods and would probably bring the ghuls down on himself if left alone. Would newly fed ghuls follow after them?
He didn’t know. His mother had never mentioned it, if she even knew. He couldn’t take the chance that a meal of human flesh would energize their pursuers.
Anyway, Oliver would probably object to abandoning Trebastion. The armadillo had been pleased to see that the company of another human had cheered him up, even if he insisted on spending the last bit of daylight reading up on the invisibility spell.
Well, that was the thing with humans. They liked to be around each other and cram themselves three or four in a den if they could, then cram their dens in together as close as house martin nests. Leave a human alone for too long and it would get weird and sad.
The old wizard had been getting that way, his mother had said, until Oliver came along. They’d eased the old man’s final years. That was something.
If he didn’t want that to be Oliver’s only contribution to the world, though, Eglamarck was going to have to come up with a plan to get them to the Rainblades in one piece.
When you looked at it logically, Oliver thought, they had really done quite well. It took two entire days in the forest before they were hopelessly lost.
“We’ve gone in a circle,” announced the armadillo, about mid-afternoon. “I don’t know how we did it, but apparently we did.”
“How can you tell?” asked Trebastion. “All these cursed trees look alike. And the shrubs. I had never realized how interchangeable shrubs are.”
“Well, for one thing, I can smell that we passed this way before,” said the armadillo. “For the other, that’s last night’s fire.”
Oliver and Trebastion looked dutifully down at the remains of the fire.
“Ah. Hmm,” said Trebastion.
Oliver sighed. His pants were already growing loose. Another few meals of cattails, and they’d fall right off.
You couldn’t blame the armadillo, though. The forest canopy was so thick that daylight itself was spotty, and there was no way to see the mountains any more. If Oliver had a hard time of it, how much worse would it be if your head was only three inches off the ground?
“High ground,” he said. “We need to get to high ground and see if we can’t get a good view. A big rock, say, or a hill.”
“We could climb a tree,” said Trebastion.
They looked up the enormous length of the pines, most of which were three feet across and didn’t branch until forty feet up.
“You first,” said Oliver.
“Point taken.”
“Uphill,” said the armadillo. “It’s not worth much, but we’ll keep going uphill and see if that comes out anywhere.”
&nbs
p; It is not always easy to determine “uphill” in a forest. The ground undulates gently. Tree roots uplift everything around them. Sudden rainstorms wash away loose earth and create gullies. Oliver put the armadillo over his shoulder and tried to pick a course that went up more often than it went down.
In the end, they came to a steep patch of hillside where a tree had fallen down. There was enough of a gap in the canopy that, by standing on the broken stump, Trebastion could just see over the nearby trees.
“Not much,” he reported, turning in a circle. “Trees, trees—hello, what’s that?”
“What’s what?” Oliver was trying to steady the taller boy’s legs.
“Some kind of hill sticking up. No trees on it. And there’s ruins, like an old castle or something.” He shaded his eyes with his hand. “Well… it’d be a really old castle. A tower, maybe.”
“Makes sense,” said the armadillo. “You build a watchtower on the highest land you can find, so you can see your enemies coming.”
“Let’s make for that, then,” said Oliver.
It was easier said than done. However easy it is to spot a hill with a ruined keep when you are peering over the trees, when you’re down in them, it’s a little more difficult. They had to stop and find an opening in the canopy twice more before they got close enough to make out the rise in the land.
It was getting dark by the time they reached the base of the hill.
“We can sleep in a shelter tonight!” said Trebastion excitedly. “Even if it is just ruins!”
“Walls!” said Oliver happily.
“Race you to the top!”
“Ha!” Oliver took off after Trebastion.
“Now wait a minute…” said the armadillo.
They charged up the grassy hillside and broke from the tree-line.
“Wait!” said the armadillo. “Look, if we’ve seen the ruins, someone else might have—”
“As long as they’ve got food!” said Trebastion.
The armadillo scurried along after them as quickly as his little legs would carry him.
And stopped.
And sighed.
Someone else had seen the ruins. Apparently, someone else had seen the ruins quite some time ago.
The bandit camp at the top of the hill had a settled look. The firepit had been dug into the ground. There were hide drapes softening the edges of the ruined tower. And there were a dozen men, all of them with swords and daggers and crossbows.
Swords and daggers and crossbows that were currently pointing at Oliver and Trebastion.
“Well,” said the largest bandit, who had one eye and three gold teeth. “Well, well, well. What do we have here?”
Eglamarck melted silently into the undergrowth as the bandits moved toward the humans.
7
Oliver would have kicked himself, but it wouldn’t have helped very much. Also, he might have hit Trebastion by mistake, since they were wedged together in a space barely larger than a closet.
The bandits hadn’t been particularly cruel. They had taken Oliver’s pack with his spellbooks and his knife, and they had shoved both boys into a small, stuffy enclosure in the back of the ruins, but they hadn’t beaten them or hit them or anything like that.
Still, they were quite thoroughly trapped. Stone walls stood on two sides, and the other two had hide drapes over them.
There was not much point in moving the drapes. There was a guard standing right there, and most of the bandits were sitting by the fire less than twenty feet away. Most of the base of the tower was still intact, although the top was open to the sky. The only way in or out of the tower was through a ten-foot tumbledown gap in the wall.
They had also taken Trebastion’s lute, so there was that much to be grateful for.
“I feel like an idiot,” said Trebastion.
“You and me both,” said Oliver.
“Just ran right up, not even thinking. Why did I do that? It could have been the mayor! We’re lucky it’s just bandits.”
“Mmm,” said Oliver. He wasn’t sure how lucky that was. Sure, the bandits hadn’t killed them outright, which was good—which was great!—but what next? Would they try to ransom them?
The armadillo had gotten away. Oliver wasn’t particularly religious, but he thanked whatever gods watched out for wizards that his familiar had avoided capture.
He wondered what the armadillo was doing. Watching, probably. The armadillo would never just abandon him. Familiars and wizards didn’t leave each other. If bandits had captured the armadillo, Oliver would have… would have…
Well, he’d have figured something out.
He leaned his back against the stone wall and tried to get comfortable.
Ransom. Hmm. That would be interesting. The villagers from Loosestrife would certainly try to ransom him—and his mother might be back soon, she’d see to it—but what if the bandits didn’t want to go all that way? It was days and days, and they didn’t have horses.
Would anyone give money for Trebastion?
Maybe the killer who’s after him…
That was an unpleasant thought.
“Just ran right into their swords,” said Trebastion again. He kicked at the stone wall.
Oliver actually had a pretty good idea why they’d done it. He’d been wandering around so long with a vague distant goal—Get to the Rainblades, get the rain, get away from the ghuls—that actually having an immediate goal and reaching it—The base of the hillside! Right there!—had gone to his head. He’d been so happy to reach the ruins, even though there was no real point to it, except to maybe see over the trees.
Well, he’d gotten an excellent view over the trees. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been paying much attention, because the view over the swords had been so much more immediate.
The leather drape swung aside. “Come on, you two,” said the guard. “Out on your feet. The boss wants a look at you.”
“Maybe he’s looking for a court musician,” said Trebastion hopefully.
“He’ll probably need to look harder, then,” said Oliver.
Trebastion rolled his eyes and climbed out of the tent.
Evening had fallen. The bandits were lit by firelight. Oliver half-expected them to look wild and savage and villainous, but they mostly just looked tired and a bit irritable.
He had expected to be shoved in front of the huge one-eyed man with the gold teeth, but instead the guard steered them to a short, balding man in a patchwork jacket.
He wasn’t a terribly impressive figure, but Oliver, meeting his eyes, saw a glitter of intelligence in them.
“Well,” said the bandit chief, looking them up and down. “Bit young for rangers. And if you’re poachers, you’re not armed for it.”
“Didn’t take any bows off’m,” volunteered the guard.
“Let me guess.” The bandit chief put his chin in his hand. “You’re old enough to be runaway apprentices… possibly indentured servants. Am I right?”
“Not exactly,” said Oliver. “I’m a wizard.”
A roar of laughter went up from the bandits. The bandit chief shook his head slowly, smiling. “Are you now?”
Oliver felt the tips of his ears get hot. “Um. Well. I—I can do a couple of spells. Not very—well. My village sent me. To bring back the rain.”
“Did they, now?” The bandit’s smile didn’t change. “And if we asked them, would they agree, or would they tell me you’d run away from your master?”
Oliver stared at him. “My master’s dead. They’d tell you I came to get rain.”
“Dead!” said the bandit. “Did you kill him, then? Little thing like you?”
“No! He was old—he—” Oliver trailed off. His voice sounded high and childish in his ears and the bandit’s grin was getting wider and wider.
It turned out that there was a worse fate than being sent off on a suicide mission by a bunch of grown-ups. It was being sent off on a suicide mission by a bunch of grown-ups and not having other grown-ups believe you
.
Doesn’t matter, he thought. They’re bandits. They don’t count. Nobody cares what they think. Did you think that if you explained nicely, they’d say, “Oops, sorry, our mistake!” and let you go?
There was another roar of laughter from the bandits. Trebastion had tried to explain what he did. It hadn’t gone over any better than Oliver’s explanation had.
“Well,” said the bandit chief. He held up a hand, and the other bandits fell silent. “You two certainly have imaginations, I’ll give you that.” He studied Oliver’s face. “All right, then. Suppose you were a wizard. What could you do?”
It was on the tip of Oliver’s tongue to utter the words of the pushme pullme spell.
No. He’s not going to let us go. It would be very stupid to tell him everything I can do.
Even though part of him burned to show the bandit chief what he could do, Oliver gritted his teeth and muttered, “I mostly work with herbs.”
“Oh, herbs,” said the bandit, in the dismissive tone used by people who don’t know anything about herbs.
(This is generally not a very wise thing to say, because people who do know about herbs may take offense, and you will then find your socks stuffed full of stinging nettles and your tea full of cascara, which is no less potent a laxative for being tree bark.)
Oliver would have given a lot for some cascara bark, and maybe a few minutes alone with the stew bubbling over the fire.
“He’s a good wizard!” said Trebastion, who was a little slower on the uptake. “He’s got a familiar and everything!”
“It’s not much of a familiar,” said Oliver, wishing he could stomp on Trebastion’s foot. “It’s really more like a pet. And it’s not like it talks or anything.” He hoped the armadillo wasn’t listening. “Anyway, it’s probably run off now.”
Minor Mage Page 8
