Bastion

by Mercedes Lackey

  “The initial plan is this. We’ll send Bear and Lena out first, with a caravan big enough to sleep all of you,” the Dean continued. “That way no one will be able to track your passage by looking for you at inns. You’ll actually be rather comfortable, I would think, since I expect you’ll be camping at Waystations.”

  “And . . . where will we be goin’, sir?” Mags asked, unable to think of anything else to ask.

  The Dean rubbed his hands together, looking satisfied. “Well, now, this is the beauty of it. The Circuit we’re sending you to cover is out in the hills not desperately far from that mine you came from. Once you get to the hard winter part of it, you’ll actually be able to make a sort of headquarters in a part of the hills known as The Bastion. From there, it is an easy ride to each of the villages you are to visit.”

  There was something here Mags was missing. “So . . . there’s somethin’ special about The Bastion?”

  “There certainly is.” The Dean smiled knowingly. “It’s the place where the bandit horde that captured your parents was laired up. If there is anything left that can tell you anything about them, you’ll have plenty of time to look for it over the winter.”

  • • •

  Mags left the Dean’s office with feelings so mixed he was having trouble sorting them out. His room at the stable seemed a good, quiet place to try to get a grasp on everything that was about to happen to him, so that was where he went, sitting quietly on his bed, back to the wall, staring blankly at the opposite wall.

  He couldn’t exactly argue with this plan. It was a good one. He could, quite literally, vanish. No one would be looking for him when he was declared dead, and yet not one of his real friends was going to suffer a moment of grief. Even those who weren’t Heralds or Trainees would be quietly put in the know by those who were.

  He’d be with his friends and be able to protect his friends. Everyone who was truly at risk would all be in the same place, and they could watch each others’ backs.

  He’d be with Amily—and finally away from all those all-too-watchful eyes that seemed to think they needed to keep him and Amily under supervision. Not that they’d be unsupervised, obviously, but at least there wouldn’t be the feeling that every single person—and Companion!—on the Hill was reporting back to Nikolas on everything they did.

  This was not going to be easy, though. He had no real experience of wilderness living in the hard conditions of winter. Not to mention everything else that was going to be expected of him.

  And just which Herald was going to be his mentor? Not Nikolas, of course; the King’s Own couldn’t be spared. Mags dreaded going off for months with a stranger; what if whoever it was didn’t much like him?

  But . . . they were going to be spending time, and a lot of time, in the last place his parents had been alive. What chance was there he’d find some clue as to who they had been? Now that he had the benefit of those memories dumped into his head, he knew he could infer quite a bit from very little, if he could find some belongings of theirs. Even fragments would help!

  He couldn’t help but also feel some panic at the idea that suddenly, with very little warning, he was going to be thrown out on Circuit. No matter what Dean Caelen said about him “not needing” to learn how to stand in judgment on people, that was exactly what Heralds on Circuit were often required to do! What if he made mistakes? What if those mistakes hurt people? Heralds were often the only recourse people in these remote villages had to an impartial judge—what if he made the wrong decisions?

  What if he—

  :That’s why you go out with a senior Herald, dunce,: Dallen chuckled, making those concerns, at least, evaporate. :What, you think the idea is to throw you into these situations and make you flounder? You do nothing but watch and learn for a while. Then the senior will ask your opinion before he makes a decision, then he will let you make a decision, but has the option to override you if he thinks it’s a bad one. And that is just assuming that your senior even bothers to go through the motions of the usual Circuit with you. Most likely, what you will be doing is to make his job easier—spying. Using and honing the skills you already have. Finding out the stories behind the story they are giving him.:

  Oh. Well. Now he certainly felt foolish. :Good thing I didn’t go blurtin’ all that out, then, I guess. And the wilderness survival? I guess that’ll be part and parcel of being out in the dead of winter.:

  :Personally, I think you did very well at that. You’ll just be picking up a few more tricks and skills, I expect. You should have been taking that class this fall. The Judgment class, as well.:

  Well, yes. A little kidnapping had put paid to that . . .

  But Dallen was continuing. :It’s no matter. Now that I know what the plan is, I can simply show you everything you would have learned in the Judgment class so at least you have an idea of what your senior is doing, so you can anticipate what he might want from you. Want me to?:

  It had been a while since Dallen had done something like that. Mostly, it had been during his first year here, when he’d had to go from an uncivilized half-feral thing that had never seen a bath and didn’t know how to behave like a human. If it hadn’t been for Dallen, he would probably still be a half-feral thing that didn’t know how to behave like a human.

  Well, maybe that was an exaggeration, but it wasn’t too much of one.

  Since then, Dallen had been careful never to “give” him anything that might have constituted cheating. It would have been easy for Dallen to merely bestow on him things he was supposed to be learning in class, but Mags had never asked for that.

  Until now, that is. But then, this one time, it wouldn’t be cheating, would it?

  :Please,: he said.

  • • •

  Having Dallen share information like that was nothing like the way the assassin’s talisman had flooded his mind and tried to drown him in memories. In fact, there really was no “experience” at all. He simply said please, and everything he needed to know on the subject was just there, in his mind, exactly as it would have been if he had learned it the hard way. There weren’t even specific memories attached to the knowledge, which was much better than having it the other way around.

  As he sat there contemplating the new information, it occurred to him that the assassins were idiots.

  Because if they had really, truly, wanted him to join them of his own free will, they wouldn’t have tried to turn him into someone else with that talisman. Instead, they would have done what Dallen had just done. They’d have given him everything they wanted him to know gently, painlessly, unobtrusively. And he would just know facts about them. He’d have had no reason to doubt what he knew, no reason to question what was there.

  With Dallen blocked out of his mind because of their drugs, it would have been much harder to fight against them, if all they had done was give him plain facts and information. Even if everything they had given him was purely biased in their own favor—as long as it was facts,

  But instead, they’d tried to force it all on him. They’d tried to flood him with memories that weren’t his. All his instincts had been to fight back.

  And a good thing, too.

  He was just thinking that, when there was a tap on his door, and he knew from the feel of the presences on the other side it was Bear, Lena, and Amily.

  “Come!” he said aloud, and the three of them practically tumbled into the room, all talking at once.

  He got up and opened his shutters, which he had left half closed. Light flooded in, making up for the fact that some cold got in, too. The glazing on the windows didn’t keep all of the cold out.

  It took a little time before they managed to settle down enough to talk sensibly, and it was very clear from the beginning that they were wildly excited about this plan. Bear and Lena shared a seat on the top of his clothing chest, which doubled as a bench. Amily cuddled up with him on the bed.

  Bear was the quietest of the three, but Mags got a sense of quiet vindication from
him, and who could blame him? He was going to get his full Greens before they all went out, so he and Mags’ mentor would technically be the most senior people in the group. It wasn’t unusual for quiet young Healers to get full Greens, but most of them were very powerfully Gifted. Bear might be the youngest Healer who relied entirely on means other than a Gift to accomplish his Healing to ever get his Green robes.

  It was a huge vindication for Bear, and was going to be an enormous slap in the face to his father. Deservedly so.

  Lena was wildly excited. She’d never been away from home until she came to Bardic Collegium, and she’d never been away from Bardic except for visits home, since. She had already been to see the caravan they were going to use and was full of descriptions of every nook and corner of it—

  He couldn’t imagine why she was so taken with the thing, but then again, it might just have been the novelty. A room that moved . . . that was pretty different. He suspected that she hadn’t yet contemplated the fact that there would be an awful lot of them squeezed into a place that was, maybe, the size of his room here at the stables.

  Mags might have been more interested, except he already had memories of what caravan life was like from Dallen. A novelty, but living in nice tight rooms in winter was much preferable, at least in Dallen’s estimation, and Mags didn’t see any reason to argue with him. He could see where tempers could get out of hand with four to six people crammed into the same tiny space, barely the size of two of the stalls that the Companions shared.

  But then, if they were going to The Bastion, presumably there would be some sort of shelter there . . . wait, Caelen had said something about caves, hadn’t he?

  He closed his eyes a moment and thought back to those old Guard reports. Yes! Caves! That was it! There were caves—the reports had definitely said several of them. That wouldn’t be so bad. Mags knew from his mining days that caves stayed about the same temperature all year round, once you got away from the entrance some. He knew a lot about mines and caves—if there was a place that had a crack or fissure that went all the way to the surface, often enough you could make yourself a decent sort of fireplace there. And they wouldn’t have to hunt for such places themselves, because the remains of the bandits’ old fires would show them where such places were. Provided they got themselves in place before the snow fell, they could make things quite comfortable, more comfortable than in a Waystation, probably as, or more, comfortable than in the caravan itself.

  “What are you thinking about so hard?” Amily asked. “You haven’t said a word.”

  “Thinking about the best way for all of us to set things up so we don’t want to tear each others’ faces off before winter gets too deep,” he said dryly.

  “I suppose of the lot of us, you’re the closest to guessing what this is going to be like,” she replied, and made a little face. “And that’s without having to evade your hunters.”

  “Living together that close is gonna be a strain, no matter what. We just need to be careful about things from the very beginning,” he assured her, and squeezed her hand. “We’ve been friends a long time. We’ll just have to keep reminding each other why. We just have to be . . . easy with everybody else’s bad habits—or what we think are bad habits. Get my meaning?”

  He looked over at Bear and Lena, who were giving him thoughtful looks of their own. “It’s hard living so close like we’ll be doing,” he told them. “Sometimes, the least little things’ll make you mad. Habits, little ticks, that kinda thing. There won’t be much privacy, ’less we can arrange some when we get to The Bastion. You lot ain’t never lived without some privacy. It’ll take getting used to.”

  They all considered that for a good long moment, long enough to make him satisfied that they had actually taken in what he said and hadn’t dismissed it with an airy, “But we’re all friends, we could never get angry with each other!”

  On the other hand, they’d all had experience with getting angry with each other. Granted, it had been because their emotions had all been manipulated in a sense. The talismans that the assassins had carried had had some unexpected side effects—there was something about the protections here on Valdemar that made the things act like irritants to everyone within close range. So, perhaps that made his friends more inclined to take Mags’ cautions seriously.

  “Pish,” Bear finally said. “If we all start acting too tetchy, I can brew up a tea to mellow us all right down.”

  Mags had to smile at that. “Just so that we aren’t so mellow we don’t take danger seriously,” he cautioned.

  “So do we know who your mentor is?” Bear wanted to know.

  At that moment, a tall shadow filled the doorway, making them all turn to stare.

  “That would be me,” said Herald Jakyr, stepping into the room. “Hello Mags.”

  • • •

  Jakyr had been the first Herald Mags had ever seen. In fact, before he met Jakyr, he hadn’t even known there were such things as Heralds. Jakyr had come in response to a desperate plea from Dallen, who had been unable to get anywhere near his Chosen, thanks to the efforts of Cole Pieters and his sons. At that time, Mags had no more idea that things like Heralds and Companions existed than if he’d been brought up on the moon. Cole Pieters had done a stellar job of making sure every one of his slaves was as ignorant as he could get away with. The less they knew, the better he could intimidate and rule them with fear.

  In fact, when Dallen turned up at the mine where he was little more than a slave, he’d thought, from the way Master Cole and his sons acted, that the Companion was a demon or monster skulking around the compound.

  Then when Jakyr, his Companion, and Dallen fought their way into the compound itself—well—that was when his life absolutely turned upside down.

  • • •

  They heard the commotion before they emerged from the mine, but it didn’t sound like monsters were invading Master Cole’s property. It sounded more like the day some fool from the local highborn had come nosing about, or at least trying to. He’d brought an armsman with him, but it didn’t do him any good. There was two of them, and a half dozen of Cole Pieters’ sons, and if they didn’t know how to use swords, they didn’t need to, as anyone around would know they were damned good with their crossbows. Master Cole had run the man off then, and no mistaking it. He hadn’t come back either.

  Cole had been hollering about his rights then, and he was doing so now. His voice echoed harshly down the mine shaft. “I know my rights! Ye can’t just swan in here and make off with whoever ye choose! These are my workers, homeless criminals every one, signed for and turned over to me to use as I need until their time runs out!”

  Criminals? Now Mags knew that was a lie, and a big fat one too. None of them were criminals, not even he. No one had been signed over by gaolers. Everyone here was here through no fault of their own . . .

  “Evidently,” drawled a new voice, sounding lazy, but with a hard edge of anger beneath the words that Mags doubted Master Cole was hearing. “Evidently you don’t know your rights as well as you think you do, Cole Pieters. I do have the right to ‘swan in here’ and take whomever I please. You are the one violating the law, denying a Companion access to his Chosen, and preventing a Herald from exercising his duty.”

  Mags relaxed. He didn’t really know what a Herald or a Companion were, though the latter sounded dirty, and he really didn’t care. As long as it wasn’t monsters come to tear him to pieces, or devils to torment him, he didn’t care.

  He emerged, blinking as usual, into the bright light of noon. And there was something of a standoff going on in the yard between the mine and the house and its outbuildings.

  There was a man all in white, with two white horses, standing right at a barricade hastily thrown up across the lane leading to the yard. Behind the barricade were Cole Pieters and all of his sons, just like the time when that other fellow had come snooping. Only this time the crossbows weren’t trained on the stranger, much to Cole Pieters’ obvious fur
y, as he kept looking back at his sons.

  “Pa,” said Endal Pieters, his voice flooded with uncertainty, crossbow pointed at the ground and not even cocked. “Pa, that’s a Herald. That’s a Herald, Pa!”

  “I can see that!” Pieters snapped. “And the man’s daft, and so’s his horse! There’s nothing here for them to take! I ain’t letting go of any of you, no more your sisters, and there’s nothin’ in that trash—” he waved at the emerging mine crew “—that any of them should come calling for! This is just an excuse to come snooping where they ain’t wanted, and they can turn around and—”

  “Pa, it’s a Herald—”

  “I don’ care if it’s the King hisself! I know my rights!” Pieters’ face was getting very red indeed. Mags wondered if he was finally going to have that apoplectic fit he’d been threatening to for years now.

  Well, Pieters might or might not know his rights, but the kiddies knew when to stay out of the way. The mining crew going in scuttled across the yard and down the shaft as quick as may be, while the outgoing crew scuttled toward the eating shed as fast as they could. It didn’t do to fall under Master Cole’s eye when he was like this because if he saw you, then you would be the next thing he took out his anger on when things settled down. It was especially true if he saw you looking at him.

  So they all kept their heads down and got across the yard as quick as they could, heading for the colorless daughter waiting in the shed for them, and the equally colorless cook ladling out bowls of soup nervously. And it was a sign of how bad things were that there was no one to take the little sacks from them, the sacks that held their sparklies.

  Mags caught Davey looking sly then, and he knew that Davey was thinking up some deviltry to be sure. And right enough, Davey was just about to snatch Burd’s little sack from him, when up comes Jarrik and takes it from him, then takes Davey’s with a dirty look. Mags was quick to hand his over before Jarrik could even put his hand out for it. He couldn’t be rid of it soon enough. Then he headed off across the yard as Jarrik headed for his brothers and the standoff at the gate.