“But—”
Oliver gave him a hard look.
Trebastion got the hint and muttered “Well, I don’t have a familiar, anyway…” toward the ground.
“This is better than a play,” said the bandit chief. “Dear me! I suppose you were both apprenticed to the same wizard?”
“Oh no,” said Trebastion. “No. I’m not one at all. Except for the harp thing.”
“Out of bones, yes. Strung with hair. Do you know, I never really appreciated the tensile strength of hair before?”
Trebastion turned bright red.
“Ah, well,” said the bandit chief. He passed a hand over his own bald skull. “When I’m murdered, you’ll have to string the harp with something else, I imagine. Or make a drum.”
“Gut might work,” said Oliver. “Better sound.”
“Oh, indeed.” The bandit was clearly enjoying himself immensely. “Well! I have no real use for a wizard, and when we encounter dead people, there is generally no question at all as to how they became dead, if you follow me.”
The bandit with the gold teeth thumbed the edge of his sword in a meaningful fashion.
“We follow,” said Oliver, when Trebastion didn’t say anything.
“However, I also don’t have much stomach for killing children, so we’ll see if we can’t make some use of you. I think your village might be quite interested in having you back, runaway or not. Where did you say you were from?”
“Loosestrife,” mumbled Oliver. There were only five bandits, near as he could count, and that probably wasn’t enough to do much damage to a town of nearly a hundred. Particularly if his mother had gotten back from Wishinghall.
Come to think of it, if the bandits sent for ransom and his mother was back, she’d come and break heads and they could go to the Rainblades with a military escort who happened to be his mom.
“As for you…” The bandit chief turned to Trebastion. “Hmm. Haven’t decided what to do about you.”
“Slit ‘is throat and feed ‘em to the crows,” growled the gold-toothed bandit.
The bandit chief shook his head sadly. “You have all the empathy of a roasted lizard-on-a-stick, Bill, with a far less pleasant aroma. Besides, if you kill someone now, you don’t have the opportunity to make a profit on them later. If nothing else, he can wash the dishes.”
Bill muttered something and thumbed his sword-edge again.
Oliver sighed.
In the end, he and Trebastion were given the scraping from the bottom of the stew pot. They did the dishes, and then they were sent back to the little hide tent, to sleep on a couple of grain sacks.
“Wouldn’t you know it?” said Oliver. “The best meal and the best bed I’ve had in a week, and it’s after we’ve been captured by bandits.”
“I don’t suppose your master had any sage wisdom for this situation?” asked Trebastion hopefully. “Something wizardly and… err… useful?”
“Huh?” Oliver thought about it. As the wizard had gone increasingly senile, it got hard to separate sage wisdom from dementia. “Well… he used to say that if your fly is open, you’re better off buttoning it up than spending ten minutes arguing you meant to leave it open.”
Trebastion considered this.
“Very wise,” he said.
“Oh very.”
“Not so helpful to our current situation, though.”
“We mostly talked about herbs.”
Trebastion snorted loudly. “I just hope Mayor Stern doesn’t turn up,” he whispered. “He probably would pay money for me.”
“I kind of hope the ghuls show up,” Oliver whispered back. “I bet that Bill guy would make short work of them.”
He pulled the drape aside a crack and peered out. The fire had died down, but there was a sentry at the entry of the tower. From the other hide tents came the sounds of snoring.
The sentry looked depressingly alert. Even if he hadn’t, there was a bedroll by the fire. Steel gleamed redly in the darkness.
Bill of the gold teeth slept with his sword next to his pillow.
Even if we could sneak past Bill and do something to the sentry, we’d be in the woods. I might get away, but Trebastion’s like a wounded ox. They’d find us in no time.
A thought formed down in the very bottom of his mind, just a glimmer, no bigger than a tadpole at the bottom of a well.
I could leave him—
No.
He rolled over, uncomfortable to have even thought such a thing.
Leaving Trebastion behind would be wrong. As wrong as sending a twelve-year-old boy out to die, on the chance of bringing back rain.
I’m better than Harold. I have to be better than that.
His last thought, as he fell down into sleep, was, I hope the armadillo’s okay.
The armadillo was fine, insofar as a familiar separated from his wizard is ever fine. He had found a couple of slugs. They were not nearly as good as the slugs in the vegetable garden back home, but they were filling, he’d give them that.
He had paced a circuit of the hillside, which was a much more serious matter for an armadillo than a human.
Oliver and Trebastion were inside the ruined tower. He didn’t dare get too close to the bandits, though. There’s a certain sort of person for whom every moving thing is target practice.
The armadillo waited until darkness fell. When the woods were deep and dark and creaking in the night, he climbed the hill.
The sentry was staring into the darkness, for all the good it did him. Whistles and grunts and all-purpose snores came from inside the tower.
Eglamarck crept through the grass to the edge of the circle of firelight.
The sentry stared off over the familiar’s head.
For humans, darkness is a problem. For armadillos, it’s a natural state.
When he was confident that most of the bandits were sleeping, the armadillo backed away from the firelight and trotted around the back of the tower.
At a certain point, he stopped.
Wizards have more senses than ordinary people do. They can detect magic in other wizards, feel the presence of demons, and a few—the very powerful ones—can taste time passing, which tends to make them cranky.
Familiars have all those senses and one more—the ability to know, without question, where their wizard is at all times.
Eglamarck knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Oliver was on the other side of this particular stone.
He examined the stone without much hope. It looked to weigh at least a ton.
Five minutes of digging was enough to confirm that the floor of the tower was also stone, and there would be no burrowing to the rescue.
That left him with only one alternative.
Eglamarck sighed, curled up into as tight a ball as he could, and sent his mind into the darkness.
Hey.
Hey.
Oliver.
You. Yes. Hey. Pay attention!
Oliver opened one eye in the darkness.
Somebody was talking inside his head. It sounded like—
“Armadillo?”
Not out loud, unless you want to wake the guards. Also, it makes you sound crazy.
“But I don’t know how to think at you,” he whispered.
The voice sighed in his head. Just pretend you’re talking, only don’t move your lips. Like learning to read silently instead of out loud.
Oliver struggled with this concept for a minute, then—
LIKE THIS?
Can you think any quieter? It’s like a gong in there.
SORRY. IS THIS BETTER?
Not… really. Never mind. Not important.
HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS?
I’m a familiar. You’re my wizard. It’s a thing we can do.
YOU NEVER DID IT BEFORE!
Never really saw the point. Anyway, I wasn’t sure if I could until I tried, and there was a small chance you’d go mad, so I didn’t want to risk it.
GO—WAIT. HOW SMALL A CHANCE? Olive
r opened both eyes and stared up in the darkness.
Vanishingly minor, I should think. Although if you start hearing a bunch of other voices in here, and I’m just one of them, then we may have a problem.
The armadillo was the only voice that Oliver could hear. It felt like thinking, only he wasn’t sure what he was going to think next.
WAIT. HOW DO I KNOW I’M NOT JUST MAKING THIS ALL UP IN MY HEAD ANYWAY?
The mental sigh seemed to rattle the inside of his skull. You don’t. And no, I can’t prove it to you.
YOU COULD TELL ME SOMETHING I WOULDN’T KNOW—
And you wouldn’t know if you were telling yourself the truth or not, so what good is that?
Defeated (and baffled) by this logic, Oliver closed his eyes again.
Let’s pretend you’re not insane and not dreaming and I’m really talking to you, and when I see you again, I promise to give you a nip on the shin to prove it’s all happening.
ALL RIGHT. CAN YOU GET US OUT OF HERE?
Oh, sure. My single-pawed assault upon the bandit nest will be the stuff of legend. Mothers will whisper my name to their kits for years to come.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE SARCASTIC ABOUT IT.
Sorry.
IT FEELS VERY POINTY IN HERE WHERE YOU’RE SARCASTIC.
Yes, well. It would be awfully pointy out here when the bandits saw me.
Oliver thought hard. He was starting to feel the edges of the armadillo in his mind, an odd sort of shadow on the back of his eyes.
DO YOU THINK…
Hmm?
CAN YOU GET TO MY PACK? WITH MY SPELLBOOK? Oliver squeezed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. If he could get to the spellbook, maybe he could use the invisibility spell, and they could just walk out of here—
Won’t work. First off, I doubt you can even do the spell on yourself, let alone Trebastion, and second, they’d still notice all the tent flaps moving about. And I probably can’t get to the spellbook anyway, unless they leave it lying around outside the tower.
Oliver stifled a sigh.
CAN YOU GO FOR HELP? MAYBE TO MOM?
There was a long silence in his head. Then: I don’t want to leave you here. Something might happen to you. You might need me. And—he had a feeling of the shadow shifting its weight awkwardly—if something happened to you, I’d just be a normal armadillo again. I couldn’t even tell your mother where to find you.
Oliver felt touched and a little sad, all at the same time.
He’d never really thought about it. When the old wizard had died, his familiar had died the same night, curled up at his feet, and they’d buried them together.
OKAY. WELL, IN THAT CASE… I THINK I’M GOING TO NEED SOME HERBS.
It was a long, tedious morning in the bandit’s camp.
They were set to dig a new latrine trench. A bandit sat a few feet away, carrying a crossbow, which put to flight any thoughts of either fleeing or a clandestine meeting with the armadillo.
It was hot, heavy work. The ground was made up of rocks and tree roots. Using the shovel was less a matter of digging and more of wedging the point into a crack and levering the handle back and forth until something popped loose.
Around noon, life got exciting. Oliver wished that it hadn’t.
Bill of the gold teeth came down the hillside and said “You. Bring ‘em,” to the bandit.
“I’ve got a name, you know,” said the bandit.
Bill spat and walked away.
“He seems pleasant,” said Trebastion.
“He’s an ass,” said the bandit. “First he’s rude to you and then he gets drunk and breaks your arm. This isn’t the life I signed up for, let me tell you.”
“We didn’t sign up for this either,” said Oliver.
“No one ever does,” said the bandit philosophically. He gestured with the crossbow, and the two boys headed up the hillside.
They were halfway up the hill when Trebastion froze.
“Oh no…” he whispered.
Oliver looked up to the ruined tower. The bandit chief was standing out front, talking to a stranger.
The newcomer was about six feet tall, with a heavy paunch and thinning hair. His face was red, and he was gesticulating wildly.
“It’s Mayor Stern,” said Trebastion.
“Your mayor, I take it?”
“He’s not my mayor. My mayor was a little old lady from my home village, wouldn’t hurt a fly. This guy kills little girls and buries them in the wheat fields.”
The friendly bandit gave them a friendly shove. They started moving again.
The bandit chief had a faint smile on his face. Bill stood behind him, thumbing the edge of his sword. Oliver wondered vaguely how he hadn’t sliced his thumb to ribbons by now.
There were a half-dozen men farther down the hillside, clutched together like chicks. Like the bandits, they had weaponry, although no crossbows. Unlike the bandits, they looked distinctly ill at ease.
“Other people from the town,” whispered Trebastion. “They’re mostly relatives, I think.”
Some of the men did have a family resemblance to Mayor Stern. Others, though, had a look that Oliver had seen before, in the faces of the crowd that had driven him out town.
It was a look that said, We don’t really like this, but we’ve gone too far to stop. It said, It’s easier to keep going than to turn around.
“There!” shouted Mayor Stern, pointing at Trebastion. “That’s him! That’s the murderer!”
“I am not!” Trebastion shouted back. “You’re the one that killed those kids! I just made the harp!”
“Fascinating,” said the bandit chief, almost to himself.
Oliver watched one of the men behind the Mayor. His face had gone completely blank when Trebastion spoke, as if whatever he was thinking was not allowed to come out where it could be seen.
It’s not just facing that the Mayor’s a murderer, thought Oliver. It’s facing that he’s been going along with a murderer. It’d be so much easier for him if it was Trebastion…
“You see?” said the Mayor, turning back to the chief. “You must give him to me for justice!”
Trebastion turned pale. Oliver grabbed his arm. The older boy looked ready to bolt, and if he did that, he was going to wind up with a crossbow bolt between his shoulder blades.
“Must I?” said the bandit chief slowly. “I’m afraid I don’t see that at all.”
“Justice must be served!” shouted the Mayor.
“I certainly hope not,” said the bandit chief. “I’ve been avoiding justice for a number of years now. It seems to have worked so far.”
The Mayor was turning redder by the minute, and Trebastion was turning greener. Oliver tightened his grip on Trebastion’s arm.
The friendly bandit nudged them closer to the campsite. For once, Oliver was glad that Bill was there. The gold-toothed thug stood behind the bandit chief and looked as if he would be happy to stab anybody who moved.
Mayor Stern leveled a shaking finger. “Surely you must see that this cannot be allowed to go unpunished!”
“But I don’t see that at all,” said the bandit chief. “What I see is that your men are trying to slink away down the hillside and that my men have all the crossbows.”
Several men who had been in the Mayor’s party immediately stopped inching for the treeline and tried to look as if they hadn’t been going anywhere.
The Mayor took a deep breath.
And then, quite suddenly, his manner changed. It was as if the yelling had all been an act, and when he realized that it wasn’t getting him anywhere, he moved smoothly onto the next thing. “Very well. You seem to be a reasonable man. I’m sure that we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
“That’s better,” said the bandit chief. “Bill, see our two—guests—inside, just in case Mister Stern gets any ideas.” He smiled pleasantly.
Mayor Stern looked over at Oliver and Trebastion. His eyes passed over Oliver, and the minor mage felt a sh
udder crawl up his spine, as if a cockroach had just scuttled over his feet.
There’s something all twisted up inside him. It’s like he’s another ghul, but only on the inside.
Oliver felt as if he’d picked up a piece of rotting meat and felt things squirming under his fingers.
He looked away, to the bandit chief, and saw something fixed and sharp about the man’s smile.
He sees it, too. He doesn’t trust him either.
“Inside,” said the chief to Oliver and Trebastion. “Can’t risk anything happening to the little lambs, can we?”
“Of course not,” said Mayor Stern, with his fake, squirming smile.
“At least,” said the bandit chief, as Trebastion and Oliver plodded into the tower, “not while we’re discussing the price of mutton…”
8
“We have to get out of here!” hissed Trebastion. “We have to get out of here right now!”
“The guards are still there,” said Oliver. “Bill hasn’t gotten any smaller. I don’t think we’re going anywhere.”
He did have a plan—or part of one—if the armadillo could find the right herbs, but it was going to require at least one meal to work. You could do a lot with herbs, but you had to get them inside people first. Just waving leaves at their captors wasn’t going to do much.
Trebastion was in no mood to listen to reason. “If Stern gets me—Do you know what he did to those kids?”
“Actually, no,” said Oliver. “And I don’t really want to, either.” Someone with a smile like that would be capable of things that Oliver couldn’t even begin to imagine.
“The harps were relieved to be dead,” said Trebastion. “They hated me for bringing them back and making them remember what had happened. Almost as much as they hated him. Oh lord, I wonder what they did with the harps?”
“I’m less worried about the harps than about us.” Oliver peered out of the tent flap. What he saw was the back of Bill’s calves. He let the tent flap close again.
“He won’t want you,” said Trebastion miserably. “Unless he thinks I’ve told you things, and he probably won’t care. But he’ll take me back, even if he has to kill every bandit to do it.”
“He can’t do that,” said Oliver.
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