Bone Magic

by Brent Nichols

  Bone Magic

  By Brent Nichols

  Copyright 2014 Brent Nichols

  Smashwords Edition

  This is a work of fiction. A novel. Totally made up. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, goblin hordes or skulking necromancers is purely coincidental.

  Cover art courtesy of Deedee Davies at www.3dfantasyart.co.uk/.

  Chapter 1

  There was a dead man walking down the side of the road, with the body of a woman slung over his shoulder.

  Tira Archer reined her mule to a halt and stared at the man as he plodded along. Surely, she told herself, he wasn't actually dead. Just dirty, and haggard, and a bit bloody. There were flies, but the woman over his shoulder would explain that. He didn't so much as lift his eyes as he went by, but then, he was busy.

  The road was a straight line cut through deep forest. There was nothing on either side but trees, alive with the chirping of birds and the barking of squirrels. It was, all in all, about the last place she would expect to encounter the living dead.

  He had to be alive. Appearances and odors notwithstanding, he had to be.

  "Good day," she said to his retreating form. He ignored her.

  He seemed harmless enough, but she didn’t turn her back until he was a good long way away. Daisy, her mule, stood placidly in the middle of the road as she waited. It’s not magic, she told herself. Magic made her skin crawl. Earth magic was bad enough. It could help crops grow, or make mice and crows shun a field. In the wrong hands it could be used to wither those same crops, or make weeds flourish. Air magic was much worse. A sorcerer using air magic could blast charging cavalry out of their saddles, or incinerate companies of hard-working archers who were just trying to earn an honest wage.

  But bone magic was the worst. When the dead rose up from the ground and fought the living, it was time to find a new war.

  Tira shook her head, turning away from the man with his gruesome burden and heeling the mule into motion. She was done with sorcerers, and done with war. After enough adventure for a dozen lifetimes, Tira Archer was finally going home. It wasn't the triumphant return she'd once dreamed of, mounted on a charger with her pockets stuffed with gold. She was penniless, and riding a swaybacked old mule that had once pulled a plow. Still, she was going home, and it felt good.

  Except for a nagging feeling that she was being watched.

  She twisted around in her saddle. The man and woman were a distant speck, barely visible. The road around her was empty. She could see for most of a mile up and down the road, and she was the only person in sight.

  It was early spring, the branches of the trees just beginning to bud with new leaves, patches of snow showing here and there. The tall, straight trees, still wreathed in the dried remains of last year's vines, grew thick and close on either side, though. There could be an army within a stone's throw and she would never see it.

  Not that an army was likely to stay hidden. Tira knew a thing or two about armies. For ten years she'd fought in foreign wars, starting out as a pikeman for a prince named Larik. Any fool could hold a wooden pole with a spike on the end and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a hundred other fools, even a teenage girl fresh off the farm. She hadn't seen any action in that role, except at a distance.

  A good archer made triple the pay of a pikeman, so she'd gotten herself a bow and set to work practicing. In addition to better pay, the job proved more exciting. She had the scars to prove it. Eight years as an archer was enough for anyone, and when Larik got his neck stretched by an indignant older brother, Tira decided it was time to go back and see if the old farmstead was really so bad.

  But paydays had become downright irregular in the waning years of the war, and thrift had never been one of Tira's strengths. So she found herself now alone, on an empty stretch of road winding through a shadowy forest, without a single coin in her purse and with the little hairs on the back of her neck standing up and telling her that she was in danger.

  She took her bow from the boiled leather case on her saddle and swung to the ground so she could string it. Her quiver hung from the other side of the saddle, and she slung it across her back. Then she climbed back into the saddle and urged the mule to walk a bit faster.

  Daisy was quite a few years past her prime, and time had robbed her of any cooperative spirit she might once have possessed. She twitched an ear in Tira's direction, but made no other response to the drumming of heels on her ribs.

  "Miserable nag." Tira twisted around in the saddle to peer behind her.

  Nothing.

  "Come on, Daisy, just a little faster, please? I'll make it up to you later."

  Daisy snorted.

  "Now, that was just rude." She broke off the conversation as branches crackled somewhere to the right. She drew and nocked an arrow in one fluid motion, and waited.

  More brush crackled behind and to the left. Someone was making a fairly clumsy attempt to surround her. If she'd been on horseback she could have galloped out of the trap. As it was, she had plenty of time to prepare.

  It wasn't hard to track the progress of the people on the right as they blundered their way through the undergrowth. Branches broke, leaf buds fluttered back and forth, and she even heard a voice mutter, "Put your head down, she'll see you!"

  Finally a man came into view, grunting as he heaved himself over a fallen log. He was fortyish and fat, armed with a cudgel that he almost dropped as he clambered over the log. A teenage boy scrambled after him, thin as a heron and armed with an axe. Not a war axe. A woodcutter's axe, and he almost cut himself getting his feet back on the ground.

  By the sound of things, there were two more men stumbling onto the road behind her. Tira didn't bother turning to look. She kept her arrow pointed more or less at the fat man, but didn't draw back as he walked into the middle of the road and raised his hand.

  "We..." There was a long pause as he caught his breath. Climbing over the log had taken a lot out of him. "We want our children back. Turn them over, and we'll let you live."

  Tira chuckled. "Sure. Children. I've got them right here in my saddlebag." The smile dropped from her face and she put an inch or two of tension on the bowstring. "What are you talking about, you fat idiot?"

  He gaped at her, then scowled and gestured at the road behind her. "There's four of us, you know."

  "Yes, and I have more than four arrows." She tightened the string another six inches and lifted the bow. "What I don't have is any children, so start making sense or get out of my way." She knew his type only too well. He was a bully and a lout, and if she tried to placate him she might end up in real trouble. Besides, she was annoyed. Who was he to accost her, and accuse her of... what, exactly? Stealing children?

  His face darkened, and he nodded into the empty air beside her. She heard the scuff of feet behind her, and she turned in her saddle. There were two men coming up behind her, a father and son by the look of them, united by great mops of straw-colored hair, vast, bulbous noses, and vacant expressions. The father had an axe, the son had a hatchet, and they were closer than Tira liked. She fired at the tip of the older man's shoe, and the broadhead arrow punched through the soft leather and into the packed dirt of the road. The man stopped short, letting out a howl, and Tira turned her back.

  The fat man blanched, but his hands tightened on his cudgel, and he didn't move out of her way. "I want those children," he said, his voice hoarse. "You give 'em back."

  She had another arrow nocked by this time. He was no more than a dozen feet away, too far to hit her and close enough that she couldn't miss, but still he wouldn't back down. Was it courage, she wondered, or a truly astonishing level of stupidity? He seemed to think she had children in her pockets.

  Stupidity, then.

  "Get out of the
way," she said, "I'm running out of patience."

  He stared into her eyes for an endless moment. Then his face twisted, the cudgel rose, and he leaped at her.

  She drew the string back and fired, acting on instinct, not consciously aware of her aim. The string left her fingertips, the bowstring thrummed against her wrist, and the cudgel vanished from the fat man's hands. He froze, gaping at her with his hands held high above his head, and the boy beside him, the skinny one with the axe, reached out and grabbed his arm. He tugged the fat man to the side, pulling him to the edge of the road, and rested the head of the axe by his feet.

  "Ah!"

  The exclamation came from behind her, and Tira turned. The son, jaw hanging slack, held her first arrow in his hands, staring at it. Beside him, his father stood on one leg, examining his big toe where it poked out of a long cut in his shoe. Blood welled out of a cut just behind his toenail.

  Tira snapped her fingers. The son gaped at her, and she gestured him forward. He walked up to the mule, and she took the arrow from his hand. Then she nudged Daisy forward.

  Her second arrow was embedded in the cudgel that lay in the middle of the road. She caught the pommel of her saddle in her left hand and leaned down, picking up cudgel and arrow. She worked the arrow loose and tossed the cudgel into the trees. Then she rode away and didn't look back.

  "Well," she said to Daisy as they rounded a bend in the road, "that was interesting." The hair on the back of her neck was still standing up. She was pretty sure those four knuckle-draggers hadn't seen her until a moment before they started making noise. There was someone else in these woods, and whoever it was, they now knew what Tira could do with a bow.

  Another mile brought her to a pasture where cows grazed among tree stumps. She saw a cottage in the distance, with laundry flapping on a line and ducks flapping in a pen. The road curved around a low hill, and she came to a village.

  A dozen cottages surrounded an open grassy square and a wooden building with a domed roof. A white cup painted on either side of the door identified it as a temple to the goddess Neris. A bridge stood on the edge of the village, a narrow river flowing under it.

  A couple of children were beating a rug hung on a rope between two trees, and a heavyset woman weeded a vegetable plot beside one cottage. All three of them stopped what they were doing to stare at Tira.

  She swung down from Daisy's back, unstrung her bow, and cased it. Then she put on her best smile and strolled over to the woman. "Good morning. It's a nice sunny day today, isn't it?"

  The woman stared at her, not speaking.

  Tira bit back a sigh. She had grown up in a place similar to this, and she'd had good reasons to leave. Still…

  "I'm traveling," she said. You could never go wrong stating the obvious to country folk. "I've run out of money, and I'm hoping to do some work to earn a meal."

  The woman stared at her, not speaking.

  "I can see you're going to be a treasure trove of information." Tira took the wide-brimmed leather hat from her head and ran her fingers through her short blonde hair. "Let me rephrase that as a question. Do you know where I can do some work to get a meal?"

  A long, silent moment stretched out. Finally the woman said, "You're not from around here."

  "No, but I wanted to improve myself by visiting the intellectual capitals of the world."

  A man's voice spoke. "You talk funny."

  Tira turned. Villagers were peering out of their cottages like prairie dogs popping up out of burrows. It was a sea of slack jaws and vacant eyes. None of them looked much brighter than the vegetables in the woman’s garden.

  "Where'd you come from?"

  She didn't see who asked, but it didn't matter. "Carsia," she said. "I fought in the wars there."

  "Where's Carsia?" someone asked, but before Tira could answer, someone interrupted with, "You can't be in wars. You're a woman!"

  "I guess they were desperate," Tira said. "Anyone who can use a bow can find employment where the fighting's hottest."

  After that the questions came thick and fast. Wasn't it dangerous? Had she ever killed someone? Was it true that there were elves in Carsia? Did she fight elves? Were elves real, or just legends? Was she rich? Wasn't she scared? How come she didn't have babies and a husband?

  They gradually left their cottage doorways and drifted closer, until she had a crowd around her. A little boy pointed at the short sword on her hip and said, "Girls don't use swords. Why do you have a sword? I thought you had a bow."

  "I'm not very good with a sword," she told him, "but it's nice to have options."

  He frowned, confused. "Why don't you just shoot them with arrows?"

  "Well, I might run out of arrows. Or people might be too close to me."

  "I bet you're not so tough without your bow."

  At first she took it for another question. She turned, looking for the speaker, and found the fat man from the road shoving his way through the crowd toward her. The cudgel in his hand was splintered by her arrow, but it looked solid enough. He raised it high as he came at her.

  She moved instinctively, springing toward him, catching him under the chin with the edge of her hand. He gagged, his hands came down, and she plucked the cudgel from his grasp.

  His friend, the skinny boy with the axe, was right behind him. The boy backed away, his free hand up in a placating gesture. The rest of the crowd melted back with him, leaving Tira by herself with the fat man in the middle of a ring of shocked villagers.

  "Marko! Marko, are you all right?" The heavyset woman who had been weeding her garden shoved through the crowd and rushed to the fat man's side. Marko was on his knees, his head slumped forward, his hands clutching his throat. Tira could hear him breathing. He was taking great, hoarse, rasping gasps, but the air was getting in.

  "He'll live," she said, and laid the cudgel across her shoulder. "Does this imbecile live here?"

  "He lives just out of town." The boy with the axe was speaking. "I'm his neighbor."

  Tira ran her eyes over the crowd. They were shocked and confused, but a few faces showed the first glimmerings of anger. There were at least a dozen adults in sight. Things could get ugly if they decided she was a threat.

  "Does he attack innocent travellers a lot?" she asked, emphasizing the word innocent. "He's not a very good highwayman."

  The boy with the axe seemed to be taking on the role of village spokesperson. His face was as long and thin as the rest of him, but his eyes looked alert and intelligent. "Marko didn't mean any harm," he said. "We've seen your tracks in the woods in the last few weeks. When some of the children disappeared, we thought it was you."

  "I just got here," Tira told him, pitching her voice so the whole village could hear. "I'm passing through. I've never seen your village before, and I don't have your children." She thought of the prickling sensation she'd felt on the back of her neck. "There's someone else in the woods. I'm just an innocent traveller."

  The boy with the axe surprised her by saying, "I think she's telling the truth. She could have killed us all on the road with her bow, but she didn't. And she wasn't being sneaky, she was just riding along. I think someone who was stealing children would be sneaky."

  Marko, his voice barely above a whisper, said, "Well, I still don't like her." That drew a few chuckles, and just like that, the tension drained out of the crowd. Tira handed the cudgel to Marko and he used it to lever himself to his feet. He limped away, leaning on the heavyset woman, and the villagers dispersed.

  Tira was watering Daisy at the river when she became aware of footsteps scuffing through the grass behind her. She turned to see a bearded farmer approaching, with the skinny boy, now minus his axe, trailing behind.

  "I guess it's high time someone welcomed you to our town," the farmer said. "My name is Banek. I'm the High Mayor of Raven Crossing."

  It struck her as an absurd title. Even calling this little village a town seemed pretentious, but she nodded gravely as if she didn't find it all ridicul
ous.

  "Tira Archer. I'm pleased to meet you, Mr. Mayor."

  "Just Banek, please." He shuffled his feet, cleared his throat, and looked up at the sky.

  "Was there something else, Banek?"

  "Well, actually, yes." He cleared his throat again. "The others tell me you were looking for work."

  She nodded. "I'm hoping to earn the price of a meal."

  Banek scratched at his beard. "Well, yes. We might be able to do a bit better than that." She waited patiently while he fidgeted, and finally spoke in a rush. "We'd like to hire you to find those missing children. There's three of them, they've been gone since the day before yesterday, and it's not the first time this has happened. We want you to bring them back safely, and we want you to find out who's doing this, and make them stop."

  "I want to come!" the boy blurted. Banek and Tira looked at him, and he turned red, but he squared his shoulders and kept talking. "I know the countryside, I know what the children look like, and they know me. I can help!"

  "No, Tam," said Banek, "your place is here."

  "I won't get in the way," Tam said desperately.

  Tira shook her head. "Forget it, son. I work alone."

  "But I can..." His voice trailed off as he took in her expression. Finally his shoulders slumped and he turned away.

  Banek shrugged. "The exuberance of youth. I remember how it was. I set out to find my fortune, walked for ten miles, and had to walk all the way back." He smiled at the memory. "These three didn't wander off, though. Two of them are sisters. Sarina and Salina. Sari's nine, Lina's ten, and they fight like badgers. No way either one of them would go very far with the other. The third one is a boy. Mikail is twelve, and he'd die of embarrassment if anyone saw him with girls." Banek gave a grim chuckle. "No, wherever they are, it wasn't their idea."

  Chapter 2

  She took the job. The pay was dreadful, four silver crowns, and not a bit of it in advance. They advanced her a meal, and that was what finally decided it for her. Banek gave her thorough descriptions of all three children, and told her where Mikail had last been seen, fishing on the banks of the river at a bend half a mile upstream from town. There would be no usable tracks, she knew. The hamfooted villagers would have trampled every bit of spoor into the ground by now. Still, she set off in that direction with the sun low in the sky, the anxious best wishes of the villagers echoing in her ears, hoping against hope that she might find something.