by Jo Spurrier
She gave a low chuckle. ‘Oh, a bit of datura, some extract of ergot, a few other things. Short-acting though, so we’ll need to move smartly.’
So, the brew would strike confusion and fear into anyone who came into contact with it. ‘Do you need a sigil too?’
‘Not for this little bit,’ she said with a dismissive shrug. ‘It’s weaker than the one Gyssha hit me with back at the cottage. You’ll be the same eventually, Dee. Now, I’d best go check the lay of the land.’ She leaned back then, bracing herself against the wall of the wagon, and closed her eyes. Just like that, she was gone, flitting away on borrowed wings.
I gave her still form a sidelong glance, and gently pulled back on the reins, slowing Maggie’s stride. If anything untoward happened now, it’d take more than a rap on the door to bring her back to my side.
She stayed that way for about ten minutes, and then she was back, as suddenly as she’d left, straightening and stretching with an arched back and her arms over her head.
‘Any luck?’ I said.
‘Yep, they’re up there, all right. Spread out to either side of the road. Looks like they’re waiting for a target to roll on through.’
‘What about Kara?’
She pulled a face. ‘She’s there, and she’s in one piece. That’s all I could tell from a quick pass. You go see for yourself, Dee. I’m going to get this illusion in place before we pass by their scouts.’ She gestured for the reins and I handed them over, and then braced myself against the wagon just as she’d done, and went in search of a bird.
I found one quickly, a blackbird fossicking among the leaf litter a little way from the road, and soon I was in the air, following the road as it wound its way west.
The road had been sloping gently upwards for some time now, and after a few minutes in the air I saw outcroppings of rock appearing through the trees. I still found it amazing, this view from above with the earth laid out beneath us like a quilt laid over a bed. Through the forest there was a swathe of bare stone, and I understood why the local folk called it the Scar. A thick band of rock rose up out of the forest, milky white but streaked with darker lines, just like a long-healed wound. Around it the trees grew thinner, smaller, with less soil for their roots to anchor into. The road wove around the sun-baked outcrops, while here and there a small bridge crossed a fissure in the rock.
Once I was over the most exposed part of the road, I veered away and flew in a wide circle — and spotted the men hiding in the rocks almost at once. Though hidden from the road they were plainly visible from the air, even though some of them had constructed something like hunter’s hides to let them watch the road without being seen.
On my second circuit I spotted Kara, wearing the same red divided skirts that had caught my eye the day before, and alighted on a boulder a short way away. Kara was sitting near a fellow I vaguely remembered from our encounter on the road yesterday, fidgeting nervously and looking around with every little sound. Kara, too, seemed discontent, sitting with her back to a huge boulder, holding her lips pursed tight as she threw pebbles against a rock face. A little distance away was yet another bandit, but he wasn’t one I’d seen before. I’d have remembered if I had. He had tattoos across his face, circling one eye and scattered across his forehead and down his cheek. Tattoos themselves weren’t that unusual, but these ones looked like the runes and sigils Aleida had started teaching me, not at all the usual sort of thing. Unlike the other men, there was no anxiety in his demeanour, if anything, he seemed rather bored. He looked hard-bitten and mean, more so than the ones who’d squared off with us yesterday, and his clothes bore the kind of stains that came from never having a proper wash. I was very glad, for that moment, that birds like this one didn’t have much sense of smell.
I was about to head off again when another man approached, stepping lightly along the narrow path. The moment he straightened I recognised the kerchief around his neck and the leather hat on his head. When he reached the patch of shade where Kara sat, he swept off the hat to reveal a newly stitched wound across his cheek and forehead.
At his approach, Kara lifted her head, her face hopeful. ‘Anything?’
‘Not yet,’ he said, and her scowl reappeared.
‘Well, where are they? You said this wouldn’t take long. You said—’
‘Honeycake, you know what these blasted caravans are like. They take their own sweet time. It’ll get here when it gets here.’
‘Might even be tomorrow,’ the nervous man grunted. ‘Or the next day.’
Kara shot him a cold glare, and then glanced quickly at the tattooed man, her face wary. ‘Holt,’ she said, dropping her voice. ‘You promised we’d find him.’
‘I know! Kara, look, you have to bear with me. I gave you my word and I mean to keep it, but these folk . . .’
She heaved herself up, caught him by the edge of his jacket, and hauled him away along the path. The tattooed fellow leaned forward to watch the pair, as though keeping tabs on them. Since none of them had noticed me, I hopped across the rocks to follow.
‘You should have told me about these new lads,’ Kara growled at Holt. ‘If I’d known they were joining you—’
‘I told you, sweet, I didn’t know! It’ll be all right, I’ll get them on board. You know me, I can talk them around.’
‘How did they even know where to find us?’
Holt shrugged, looking away, and Kara punched him in the shoulder. ‘Holt! You told them, didn’t you? Lord and Lady . . .’
‘Kara, don’t look at me like that! It’s not that bad. They’ll be useful, all right? None of my lads really know how to fight, and we’ve barely got any decent weapons. These folk are old hands, they know what they’re doing. This caravan’s got a hell of a payload, there’ll be enough for everyone. I promised my lads, and you know I’m a man of my word.’
‘A payload? I gave you a godsdamn payload!’
‘You did, my sweet, but two is better than one, isn’t it? We can’t pass this up, who knows when we’ll get another one as rich as this?’
Kara looked away with a hiss of frustration. ‘Fine. But listen, Holt. Be careful, okay? I don’t trust these men. I really don’t.’
He grinned then, and lifted her chin with a curled finger. ‘You only have to trust me, little kitten. The job’ll be done before you know it, and then we’ll go after your father.’
I’d heard enough, I decided. I leapt skyward, and winged my way back to the wagon.
When I released the blackbird and returned to my body, Aleida had finished the illusion. The wagon behind us was now a high-sided four-wheeled cart holding eight stout ale barrels, and Maggie had been transformed to a flea-bitten grey. Aleida wore a face that was passing-familiar to me — Old Grigg from Lilsfield, a mountain man with florid cheeks and a long and coarse grey beard. ‘See anything interesting?’ she said in Grigg’s rumbling voice.
‘I might have eavesdropped a bit,’ I said. ‘You were right, Kara went with them willingly. But I don’t think everything’s gone quite to plan. Looks like the bandits have a few newcomers, and they’ve got everyone’s back up.’
‘Newcomers?’
‘Old hands, the leader said, with better weapons than the rest of the thugs. The one I saw look nasty, too, with these odd tattoos all over his face. Sounds like they’re waiting for a shipment of some kind to come through. Kara and Holt were talking about a payload.’
‘Tattoos, you say,’ Aleida said. ‘Interesting. And a payload? That makes sense. Well, if they’ve got any kind of discipline they’ll let us pass through rather than risk their main target for a few barrels of ale. If they’re greedy fools, on the other hand . . . If you were making a wager, Dee, where’d you put your money?’
‘Oh, greedy fools, all the way,’ I said. ‘Want to take me up on it?’
She laughed. ‘No dice. All right, when it happens, wait for them all to come down to the road before we start hurling the flasks.’
‘Then what?’
‘T
hen we find out what they’ve done with my money. And Kara, well, let’s just see how this goes. Somehow I doubt she’ll take kindly to being rescued.’
CHAPTER 5
It was, I must say, a rather odd feeling. It happened just the same as it had the day before — we rounded a corner, and there he was in the middle of the road, hat low over his eyes, handkerchief pulled up over his mouth and nose, gloved hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword. ‘Stand and deliver!’
Aleida hauled back on the reins and leaned forward, peering at him as though near-sighted. ‘What? What’s that, young man? Come closer, and speak up.’
‘I said, stand and deliver!’
I was wearing the face of Mistress Stafford, a very prim and proper matron who was Grigg’s wife back at Lilsfield. Playing along, I leaned over to shout in my teacher’s ear. ‘He says it’s a robbery!’
‘Eh? What?’
‘It’s a robbery, you deaf old codger!’
‘Tell ’im we don’t want none.’
Holt pulled his kerchief down with a swift tug and raised his fingers to his lips to give a piercing whistle. At that signal, the rest of the bandits materialised from their hiding places, swarming down to surround us.
Holt came closer then, drawing his sword. I could see the humour had faded from his eyes, replaced with something more vicious. Our voices were echoing over the rocks, and I did wonder just how far away this caravan they were waiting for might be.
He levelled the point of the sword right where Grigg’s impressive gut ought to have been. ‘I was going to only charge you a tax for the honour of passing through my domain,’ he said. ‘But given this display of insolence I think I’ll take the lot. Now you’d best hop down, or I’ll open you from gizzard to gullet.’
Aleida stared at the sword, as though only just realising what he held, and hesitantly reached out to touch it with one fingertip.
I felt a pulse of power, and in a flash the metal melted and flowed, rippling in the sun. Suddenly, what he held was not a sword at all, but a snake — grasped by the tail.
It lunged at him with shining fangs. With a shriek he threw it down, stumbling back — and at that moment, Aleida dropped the illusion, revealing the wagon and Maggie and herself, dressed all in black with her long black hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back like a waterfall of ink.
Swiftly, she hurled two of the flasks, one in front and one to the side. But I could hear voices behind us, from the rear of the wagon, and leaned around the side to throw one of mine back there. It shattered against a boulder and the amber liquid inside immediately bubbled away into a thick white vapour, hiding the men from sight. As the cloud enveloped them their voices changed from shouts and threats to screams and terrified babbling.
I turned back to see Aleida jump down from the seat, landing so nimbly and so lightly I could tell she’d used some power to negate Gyssha’s curse and reshape her feet. She sauntered towards Holt with her ugly club of a wand in her hand, laughing a chill laugh while the bandit scrambled backwards on his hands and backside while the steel snake kept lunging and striking after him in the dust.
He’d escaped the vapour, unlike most of his companions. Right beside the wheel, one young lad was hugging his knees to his chest, rocking back and forth and whimpering. Another fellow had run head-first into a boulder beside the road and knocked himself out cold. A third was stripping off his clothes and shrieking something about spiders, and I could hear yet more of them gibbering from behind the wagon.
A movement from above caught my eye and I quickly looked up to see Kara’s blonde head peering at us from a vantage point up the slope, her eyes wide as she recognised me and our wagon, and then she ducked out of sight again.
On the ground, Aleida closed with Holt just as the silver snake reached the end of its power. The sleek, gleaming shape withered limply to the ground, and then turned into water and melted away.
Holt stared at the spot in confusion, then looked up at her. ‘You!’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ she said in a cheerful voice, and with a flick of her fingers, knocked his hat from his head with a gust of wind.
I saw the bandit’s eyes grow narrow as he glanced around at the chaos we’d made of his ambush. There were only a couple of his men left unaffected by the vapours — one of them bore the same tattoos I’d seen on the man in the rocks. I held another flask ready to remedy that, should the need arise, but I doubt Holt realised that. All his attention seemed to be on Aleida.
With a startling swiftness, he drew his knees to his chest and then somehow turned the movement into a backwards roll. Next thing I knew he’d popped up on his feet again, with allies at his back.
Aleida hesitated, her knife in her forward hand, while the wand in her backhand began to glow. I stood up on the footboard, ready to throw the flask if they tried to rush her.
But the bandit leader raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Wait! Fall back, lads, and put up your weapons.’ He didn’t even glance back to make sure they obeyed — they all did, except for the fellow with the marked face, who just lowered the point of his sword, watching Holt and Aleida both.
Aleida’s gaze slid past Holt to the tattooed man, and she lifted her chin. ‘Huh,’ she said, looking him up and down. ‘Well, well, there’s something I haven’t seen in a long time.’
Holt glanced between them. He seemed to me rather miffed that Aleida was focused on the other fellow, rather than paying attention to him. ‘I’d have a care if I were you,’ he began to say, but the marked man brushed past, ignoring him utterly as he watched Aleida with a predatory gaze. ‘Little girl, you’ve never seen anything like me before.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that,’ Aleida said. ‘Armund’s Mark? What relic did you dig up to carve those into your skin?’
‘Come here, sweet thing, and I’ll tell you.’
‘Oh, I don’t think you’ll find me very sweet,’ Aleida said. ‘Not at all. Would you like to try me?’
There was a rustle of movement behind me, and a quick cry of surprise. I glanced around to see a blur of movement, and Kara, sprawled in the road as though she’d been shoved down. Then, I felt power flex around me, like the air itself was squeezing me in a fist.
Where just one of the tattooed thugs had been facing Aleida, now five of them were mobbed around her, pressing close, reaching for her with scarred, calloused hands. They’d appeared in the blink of an eye, moving faster than humanly possible.
But while I’d been taken by surprise, it seemed Aleida knew what she was dealing with. She already had her hands raised, knife and wand crossed in a ward, raising a shield around herself. She held it just long enough for the thugs to realise they couldn’t touch her — and then I saw fire bloom around her hands.
I was already raising an arm to shield my face when she dropped her ward and loosed a burst of flame, hot enough to blister the wagon’s paint, and hurled them back.
Behind her, I stood, the last flask of her potion still in my hand. I couldn’t see Aleida’s face, but I could imagine the look in her eyes. She liked a good fight, my teacher. When things started to get dicey, she always got this mad, manic gleam in her eyes, and a wicked smile upon her lips. Could she deal with them all? Maybe. She sure thought she could. But all I could think of was last night, when she’d collapsed trying to undo the spell on Toro, and Aleida’s warning that the other witch was likely out there somewhere, angry at our interference. It was no time for brawling with thugs on the road, especially ones who could move as fast as that. As Aleida’s flames died away, I gritted my teeth and hurled the flask.
It shattered on the road at their feet, and the tattooed thugs retreated further, scrambling away from the thick white vapour.
Aleida just turned to me with fury in her eyes, the white vapour swirling around her like fog. ‘Damn it, Dee! You’re spoiling my fun!’
‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ I snapped. ‘I thought the plan was to get in and out quickly so we can be on
our way! You know, before someone takes too much interest in our presence!’
‘Oh,’ she said, and took a quick glance skywards. ‘Yeah, right. Good point.’ She looked back at the marked men, who’d regrouped a dozen or so yards away, beyond the reach of the potion cloud.
Aleida reached up to the bracket on the front of the wagon and swung back up to her seat, keeping her eyes on the bandits. ‘Kara?’ she said without looking around. ‘Hop up, girl. We need to talk.’
Kara had found her feet, and dragged Holt around my side of the wagon, away from the noxious cloud. ‘Talk about what?’ she demanded.
‘We know what happened to your father,’ I said to her. ‘Come with us, and we’ll tell you.’
Her eyes widened, but then she turned to Holt. ‘Only if he comes too. We go together, or not at all.’
Aleida barked a laugh. ‘I think that’s the smartest thing I’ve heard you say yet. Fine, he can come. Get up here, both of you.’
Between reins and wand, I couldn’t spare a hand to help her up. Not that she needed it, climbing up with ease, not getting even a little tangled in her divided skirts. Holt followed her without argument.
‘Roll on, Dee,’ Aleida said, still watching the marked men with her wand in her hand, the crystal still smouldering with a flickering flame at its heart. With a click of my tongue and a slap of the reins, I set Maggie moving once again, and left them in our dust.
I concentrated on driving until we were past the rocks, leaving Aleida to watch behind. ‘Toro still with us?’
‘Yup. He’s clearly got some sense. Those tattooed fools are hanging back, though. Must have realised they were biting off more than they could chew.’
Kara was peering around behind too, leaning past Holt to look back. ‘Should have let her take them on,’ she muttered, giving me a sidelong glance as she settled back into her seat.
Aleida gave a negative grunt. ‘Nah. It was a good call, Dee, we’ve got bigger things to worry about. Sorry I snapped at you like that.’
I still didn’t like it, but I was learning to shrug off her flashes of temper. ‘What were they?’ I said. ‘Warlocks?’
