Crucible

by Mercedes Lackey

  So far, no one among the band had caught sight of her trail. Then again, no one was looking for it either. Maybe they might have been, had she gone in the direction of their exit route to the main road, but she scrupulously kept away from that direction.

  She kept her ears open, too. As the men got used to her presence, they got careless about what they said, particularly as she kept her mouth shut and her head down and spoke only to give them directions about what they were to do next about their injuries or illnesses. It had occurred to her that, although these bandits were doing well enough now, with their individual tents and shelters and each one cooking for himself, once the weather started to turn, they would be in sad shape. And when the winter came in full force, many of them would likely die. None of them seemed to have any winter clothing, or much in the way of bedding. They weren’t making any sort of effort to store food that she could see. Once winter came, not only would they find game grown scarce, but by that time they would have hunted out the immediate area around the camp and would have to go much farther to find anything. So, they would be underclothed, underfed, and with little more than tiny fires, a few blankets, and a bit of canvas or a rough lean-to between them and the blizzards.

  But the truth was, she was fairly certain they had no intention of putting themselves in that position. Or at least that the Cap’n and his right-hand man, Jak, had no such intentions.

  And, sure enough, by listening carefully, she picked up enough to piece together what their plan for winter actually was.

  She was treating one man for an infected animal-bite while two more waited. As she cleaned out the wound and he cursed and growled, the other two took up a conversation they must have left off earlier.

  “So what’s the odds now?”

  “It’s looking like One Tree over Klovera and Red Stick,” said the second.

  The first snorted. “I’m in for Klovera,” he replied.

  The second looked at his companion with surprise. “Jak’s all but moved into One Tree,” he said.

  “But One Tree ain’t got enough housin’ for all of us. Somebody’s gonna be sleepin’ in sheds. Cap’n knows better than that.” The man hawked and spat into some weeds. “Klovera’s biggest. We’ll move on there.”

  By that point Vixen had finished bandaging her current victim and had given him strict instructions. He got to his feet, and the two waiting abruptly cut off their discussion as the first man sat down on the stump in front of her.

  Although Vixen didn’t go over the Border, she thought she recognized those three names as villages outside of the protection of Valdemar and its Guard. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out what the two men had been talking about. The Cap’n intended to take one of them over for his men before winter came. If the villagers were lucky, he’d just show up with his force, armed to the teeth, and “suggest” they should “allow” the troop to move in to protect them. And the result of that was fairly predictable; she might have been getting off lucky because the Cap’n had ordered she be left unmolested—but he’d give no such orders about the women of the village. It wouldn’t be long before the original inhabitants had been reduced to one of two states: enslaved or dead.

  And if they weren’t lucky, well, the Cap’n would likely fall on them in the middle of the night and slaughter them all.

  From there, of course, he could commence raiding back over the Border in Valdemar if he chose. There would be nothing to stop him.

  Bugger, she thought, checking and rebandaging the half-healed arm wound she’d been treating on the first man. Now there’s more at stake than just me.

  • • •

  On the afternoon of the fourth day—the seventh day of her captivity, and the first one on which she thought she might be looked for—things changed.

  Before she got a chance to gather her shawl and head for the forest, Jak turned up again. “Get up and come with me,” he ordered, no friendlier after a week than he had been on the first day of her captivity. At least this time he didn’t seize her by the elbow and haul her along.

  As she expected, he took her to the Cap’n’s tent. The Cap’n was sitting in front of it, having managed somehow to get himself into what passed for a chair—a sort of stool with a back hacked out of one of the pieces of tree trunk that served so many purposes in this camp.

  Since he was sitting, she decided she was going to do the same. She picked a bit of turf, folded her legs under her, and sat down cross-legged. The Cap’n looked amused. Jak did not. What neither of them noticed—she hoped—was that there was a stout piece of wood right behind her. Just in case.

  “Bakken says you poisoned him!” Jak evidently was not going to waste any time dancing around.

  “I don’t know which one Bakken is, and how, exactly, am I supposed to have poisoned him?” she asked, calmly. “More to the point, why would I bother?” She heaved an exaggerated sigh. “What does he say is wrong with him?”

  “He’s covered all over with blisters and red spots, and his skin itches fit to claw off!” Jak said in tones of deep accusation.

  She tsked sadly. “That’s not poisoning, that’s what happens when you go blundering into a patch of itching oak,” she told him. “I suppose they don’t have that growing where you’re from.”

  Now, so far, she had only said as much as she had to, feigning fear of both of them. So she might have left it at that, except. . . .

  Since she was, more often than not riding circuit alone out here in the near-wilderness, she had trained herself to be acutely aware of wildlife sounds wherever she was. And in the general direction of the game path leading to this camp, the birds had gone very quiet.

  Now, that might have been because a large party of these bandits had gone out and were coming back. But she didn’t think so.

  “Itching oak is a vine,” she continued. “It grows on tree trunks. There are three scalloped leaves to each stem, and at this time of the year many of the leaves are a reddish green. That’s the easiest way to tell it.” While she spoke, she was searching for the mind of a bird, any bird, in the direction of that quiet. “You just ask him if he blundered through something like that. And get his clothing off him and wash it. He should wash all over, too. Anything that touched a leaf will have the poison on it, and the only way to get it off is to wash with good strong soap.”

  She found a bird. And looking through its eyes, a glimpse of a blue uniform was all she needed. The Guard was out there, and from the fact that they were skulking through the brush, they’d read her warning and thought they had enough men to take the camp. They were close enough that they must have taken out the sentries. Now she had to stall to make sure the Cap’n and Jak didn’t notice anything until it was too late.

  Jak glowered at her as the Cap’n smirked. “I have things to treat the rash, if the silly man will let me, since he thinks I somehow poisoned him,” she continued, doing her best to keep their attention on her. “But if he won’t, the only things I can suggest are to wash himself and his clothing to keep the rash from spreading. Milk and vinegar are the only things that help that he would recognize, and I haven’t seen either a cow or a cider press in this camp. I’m only an herb-Healer, I told you. I can’t work miracles, and I can’t do anything if he won’t let me help him.”

  She was babbling now, and she just hoped they would put it down to nerves at the way Jak kept glaring at her. Surreptitiously, she began moving her hand toward that stick. “It won’t kill him, as long as he doesn’t scratch himself and get the scratches infected, he’ll just have a bad sennight or so,” she continued, as the Cap’n shook his head a little. Clearly this Bakken was not a favorite of his.

  Never had she wished more for human Mindspeech. She wanted to warn whoever was in charge not to be all noble and give these dogs the chance to surrender. She’d seen how the men looked at her when they thought she wouldn’t notice. If it hadn’t been for t
heir orders and possibly the knowledge that raping her would pretty much guarantee she’d never take care of their illnesses and injuries again, she’d have been the plaything of the entire camp. And they were planning on taking over an entire village. They didn’t deserve a warning—

  “If you can get milk, or vinegar, vinegar would be best, and he can—” she continued when shouts erupted from every direction. The Cap’n and Jak started—and in that moment of hesitation, she grabbed the stout branch behind her, stood up and swung it with all her might at the Cap’n’s head.

  It connected with a satisfying crack, hitting him so hard she nearly lost her grip on the stick. He went down without a sound, and she whirled and ran. She didn’t pay any attention to her direction; from the sound of things, the Guard had surrounded the entire camp, and there would be blue uniforms no matter which way she went. Her Greens should identify her immediately and keep her safe.

  She got about twenty feet when she was hit from behind in a tackle and tumbled to the ground. Hysterical with the fear she had not allowed herself to feel all this time, she writhed in her captor’s grip and flailed at him with the stick until he caught it and yanked it away from her.

  It was Jak, of course, and his face was a mask of fury. He reared back and hit her in the jaw with a closed fist, and she saw stars.

  Trying to see through the dazzle, she realized that he was getting ready to hit her again. And would probably beat her to death before anyone could reach her.

  . . . never, ever, anger a Healer . . .

  She set his brain on fire.

  Figuratively, of course. She had treated enough people who had fits to know what their minds “felt” like in the middle of a seizure. It was very much as if their brains were on fire, a sort of lightning coursing through their heads. And that was what she did to him.

  His back arched so far that it looked as if his head were going to touch his heels, and he fell over sideways, convulsing.

  She pulled her legs out from under him, scrambled to her feet, and ran.

  • • •

  “. . . and they were going to take over a village on the other side of the Border,” she finished, as Guard Captain Lence Danners took notes. “And that’s all I can tell you. I never figured out where they had come from or why they were so disciplined, I’m afraid.”

  She was holding a cold cloth to her sore jaw . . . ironically, the one person a Healer couldn’t Heal was herself. She was going to have to resort to her own herbal remedies for the bruising and the headache.

  “We’ll get that out of them, never fear,” Lence said, sanding the pages to dry them. He looked up, his mouth set in a wry smile. “Given Healer Vixen’s reputation, I’m surprised you aren’t railing at me for not coming to the rescue sooner.”

  “I might have a reputation for a temper, but I didn’t think I had one for stupidity,” she pointed out. “By my reckoning, this was the first day you could possibly have come looking for me. I didn’t expect you to actually attack today!”

  Lence laughed. “Well, you’re better liked than you think. When you didn’t turn up six days ago, Gaveford sent a fast rider to Hart’s Home, looking for you on the way, with orders to get us if you weren’t there. We found your warning two days ago, and we’ve been setting up the attack since.” He evened up the papers on his lapdesk. “Well done, that, by the way. I never thought Animal Mindspeech was all that useful, but you sure as blazes proved me wrong.”

  Despite the pain in her jaw, she couldn’t help but smirk.

  He eyed her with a new respect . . . and caution. “Something tells me you have a habit of doing that.”

  She tried to look innocent, and probably failed. Innocence wasn’t something she was good at. “It’s . . . possible,” she admitted. “Are we done?”

  He nodded. “We’ll be in this camp sorting things out for a couple of days. Are you comfortable enough here?”

  Since the alternative was to saddle and tack up Brownie and ride another day to Gaveford, she nodded. Lence crooked his finger at his orderly.

  “Take the Healer to my tent, bring her things to her, and see that she’s comfortable,” he ordered. “Get her whatever she needs that we’ve got.”

  Since that was clearly a dismissal, Vixen followed the orderly out into the area the Guard had made into their own neat, orderly camp. “If you don’t mind my asking, ma’am, how’d you manage to hide your Gift?” the orderly asked as she walked beside him down the rows of tents.

  “I just told them I was Healer Rosie, an herb-Healer,” she replied. “They were looking for Vixen, but they only knew the name, and their leader was in bad enough shape that they took what they could get. I travel with all that stuff anyway; sometimes it makes more sense to use something other than a Gift.”

  “Clever,” the orderly said. “But . . . who’s Healer Rosie?”

  “Oh,” she replied, thinking for a moment how very different she was from little Rosie, whose parents were so sure she would be a Herald. . . . “No one I know.”

  About the Authors

  For as long as he can remember, Dylan Birtolo has been a storyteller. No matter how much other things have changed, that aspect has not. He still tells stories, in whatever format he can. He currently resides in the great Pacific Northwest, where he spends his time as a writer, a gamer, and a professional sword-swinger. His thoughts are filled with shapeshifters, mythological demons, and epic battles. He has published a few fantasy novels and several short stories in multiple anthologies. He has also written pieces for game companies set in their worlds, including Battletech, Shadowun, Legend of the Five Rings, and Pathfinder. He trains with the Seattle Knights, an acting troop that focuses on stage combat, and has performed in live shows, videos, and movies. Endeavoring to be a true jack-of-all-trades, he has worked as a software engineer, a veterinary technician in an emergency hospital, a martial arts instructor, a rock-climbing guide, and a lab tech. He has had the honor of jousting, and yes, the armor is real—it weighs over 100 pounds. You can read more about him and his works at www.dylanbirtolo.com or follow his Twitter at @DylanBirtolo.

  Jennifer Brozek is a Hugo Award-nominated editor and an award-winning author. She has worked in the publishing industry since 2004. With the number of edited anthologies, fiction sales, RPG books, and nonfiction books under her belt, Jennifer is often considered a Renaissance woman, but she prefers to be known as a wordslinger and optimist. Read more about her at www.jenniferbrozek.com or follow her on Twitter: @JenniferBrozek.

  Brigid Collins is a fantasy and science fiction writer living in Michigan. Her short stories have appeared in Fiction River, The 2015 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide, and The MCB Quarterly. Books one and two of her fantasy series, Songbird River Chronicles, are available in print and electronic versions on Amazon and Kobo. You can sign up for her newsletter at tinyletter.com/HarmonicStories.

  Ron Collins is an award-winning author whose most recent publication, Saga of the God-Touched Mage, spent a couple of months at the top of Amazon’s Dark Fantasy best seller lists. He has contributed nearly 100 stories to premier publications, including Analog, Asimov’s, and the Fiction River anthologies. He is a Writers of the Future prizewinner. In 2000, CompuServe readers named “The Taranth Stone” as their best novelette of the year. Of “Gifts of Rage and Despair,” he writes: “I admit I’ve fallen a little in love with Kade and Nwah. Each time I write about them, they teach me something new.”

  Dayle A. Dermatis has been called “one of the best writers working today” by USA Today-bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith. Under various pseudonyms (and sometimes with co-authors), she’s sold several novels and more than 100 short stories in multiple genres. Her latest novel is the urban fantasy Ghosted. A recent transplant to the lush climate of Oregon, in her spare time she follows Styx around the country and travels the world, all of which inspires her writing. She loves music, cats, Wales, TV, m
agic, laughter, and defying expectations. To find out where she is today, check out www.DayleDer matis.com.

  Kerrie L. Hughes loves art, history, science, animals, people and all things having to do with books. She has edited thirteen anthologies, including Chicks Kick Butt, co-edited with Rachel Caine, from TOR, and the upcoming Shadowed Souls, co-edited with Jim Butcher, to be published by Penguin in 2016. She has also published twelve short stories, most recently, “Do Robotic Cats Purr in Space?” appearing in Bless Your Mechanical Heart, from Evil Girlfriend Media. Kerrie has also been a contributing editor on two concordances: The Vorkosigan Companion and The Valdemar Companion.

  Michele Lang writes supernatural tales: the stories of witches, lawyers, goddesses, bankers, demons, and other magical creatures hidden in plain sight. She also writes tales of the future, including the apocalyptic adventure Netherwood and other stories set in the Netherwood universe. Author of the Lady Lazarus historical urban fantasy series, Michele’s most recent story in the series, “The Witch of Budapest,” was released in 2014. Her YA fantasy story “The Weaver” will be appearing in the Fiction River: Sparks anthology in January 2016.

  Fiona Patton lives in rural Ontario, where she can practice bagpipes without bothering the neighbors. Her partner Tanya Huff, their two dogs, and their many cats have taken some time to get used to them, but they no longer run when she gets the pipes out. She has written seven fantasy novels for DAW Books as well as over forty short stories. “Before a River Runs Through It” is her eighth Valdemar story, the sixth involving the Dann family.

  Angela Penrose lives in Seattle with her husband, five computers, and some unknown number of books, which occupy most of the house. She writes in several genres, but SF/F is her first love. She majored in history at college but racked up hundreds of units taking whatever classes sounded interesting. This delayed graduation to a ridiculous degree but (along with obsessive reading) gave her a broad store of weirdly diverse information that comes in wonderfully handy to a writer.