A Boy Without Magic (Missing Magic Series Book 1)

by Guy Antibes

  “I’ll help,” Sam said.

  “After breakfast.”

  “You mean lunch?” Sam said.

  Harrison grunted and went to work, making some kind of porridge with the water Sam had heated. He tossed in a handful of dried fruit, which plumped up nicely.

  “What about Emmy?”

  “Meat for dogs. I have some.” Harrison began to unwrap some of the supplies and winced as he smelled a package. “This has started to go bad. Emmy won’t mind.”

  He walked up to the dog, who looked like she only tolerated him. Harrison held out the package of meat. Emmy sniffed it and took it off to the edge of the clearing and tore into it. It didn’t take her long to finish, and she trotted to Sam and nuzzled again and then rubbed up against Harrison.

  “There is a lesson for you. Keep your friends well-fed, and it may pay dividends,” he said with a smile. “Now let us see if she will let me work on her back.”

  After a few growls and a monstrous snap, Harrison had done what he could. “I can’t sew up the whip marks, because they don’t go too deep. Her coat might heal without a scar. They used a flat strap to beat her, striking her lots of times. Lenny wouldn’t care.” He shook his head in disgust. “She is definitely better off with us. Time to look at your wounds. Pull down those pants. Let’s look at the burn.”

  Sam did as he was told. He still had a bandage around his thigh. Harrison removed the bandage.

  “The wound has closed, and everything is healing nicely. I was worried the fight might have opened the wound. Unlike Emma, that wound will leave a scar.”

  Sam nodded. “A reminder not to play with fire.”

  “Or something like that,” Harrison said. “Time to go. I know another route to take to the mountains. The villages in this valley aren’t part of my tour. Mountain View wasn’t, and I doubt I’ll set foot there again.”

  “You’ve already told me that.”

  “It will take something I can’t imagine to return,” the healer said.

  They packed everything up. Emmy jumped up into the back of the wagon and made a spot right behind Sam. She could lay her head on his shoulder and look forward if she chose. Sam realized that Emmy had a heavy head.

  The road began to rise, and they were in foothills before the sun set. They rolled along a rocky shelf, but the wagon began to shudder.

  Harrison inspected the wheels. “I’m afraid our flight from Mountain View was too much for our pollen tires. Luckily, I made sure we had iron rims underneath. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll remove the things.”

  Sam already knew about the iron rims since he couldn’t see the tires. He wanted to help, but Harrison shooed him away while te healer spent nearly half an hour working on the rims until Sam pulled out his wand.

  “Tell me where you want me to put the wand,” Sam said.

  In moments, they were back on the road. The wagon rolled much more smoothly.

  “We are out of the region where Mountain View has any influence. There is a village up ahead,” Harrison said, “but I think we will buy fresh provisions and camp out again. I think you can have your first sword lesson tonight.”

  “Not until I finish getting my notebook up to date,” Sam said.

  “Good idea, I’ll do the same.”

  ~

  Harrison pulled another sword from his wagon. Sam didn’t know where he had hidden it, but he suspected the healer’s wagon had secret places. Sam expected he would do the same if he had to travel alone for months at a time.

  “Here. This might be a bit heavy for you now, but part of training is building your strength, and a heavy sword can help do that.”

  Sam looked closely at the blade and could see traces of gold along the edge. “Like my wand, this had gold foil?”

  The healer nodded. “Soldiers will adorn themselves with pollen armor. It’s something they can make for themselves. A little gold foil on the business edge will help cut through it. Pollen isn’t very dense. It makes poor weapons, as you found out very early this morning. When I was a soldier, I always bought gold foil when I could. It doesn’t last long, but any advantage you can get in war raises your chances of survival.”

  Sam thought of something and took out his wand. Gray marks were all over the black iron. “The soldiers painted their pollen swords,” he said.

  “How did you know?” Harrison asked.

  “I could see their blades. I guess they wanted to make it look like they had steel. Why would they paint it? The armor in Lord Lennard’s dining room was made to look like metal. It wasn’t painted.”

  “Decorating with pollen is an acquired art. Most people can make something in the general shape of a sword. A woman might spend a whole day on a veil, meticulously laying down pollen that she has colored with her talent. If those soldiers could make a sword that really looked like a sword to me, they wouldn’t be guards. They would make more money creating decorative items out of pollen. Lenny’s armor and weapons were unusually good works of art.”

  “So I will have to learn to be careful. If I run into a swordsman with a pollen-colored blade, I will lose.”

  “Not really. Once you reach a certain level, I will make a pollen sword, and you’ll learn how to defend yourself.”

  The first lesson didn’t include a single swing with the sword Harrison had lent to Sam. He taught him how to grip the sword, and then he taught exercises without the weapon to improve his flexibility and strength. That would include running, but not tonight. Harrison would run with him, stating that Emmy would likely benefit from the exercise as well.

  Sam felt like he was a first-year in school. He could hardly lift the sword at their next stop at midday.

  “This is harder than I thought,” Sam said. “The sword seems heavier than yesterday.”

  Harrison laughed. “It will, for a while. You also have some growing to do, but it is impractical to buy or trade swords in as you grow. If you learned at a school of higher learning, they might have a collections of weapons, but not in the army, and not in the Toraltian constabulary. Let’s run for a bit.”

  The healer prompted Emmy to follow, but she wouldn’t budge from Sam’s side until he joined Harrison. Once Sam ran, Emmy took off ahead of both of them and ran back. This continued for the whole time they ran, which wasn’t very long. Harrison had to walk back. Sam could continue on for a bit, but by the time they returned to camp, both of them were sweating and breathing hard.

  “You didn’t get much running in at school?”

  Sam shook his head. “No. If I wasn’t in school, I was out on deliveries, until Mr. Washjoy fired me. Running is important for swinging a sword?”

  “The better shape you are in, the more endurance you have. Sword fighting has three components: skill, strength, and endurance. Most sword fights don’t last long. Remember our attackers at the Mountain View gate? How long did we fight?”

  “Five, ten minutes?”

  “Probably less than two. Skill counts first, then strength, and then endurance in that order, just like I said. That’s what I was taught, and I haven’t had any fights that I remember that contradicted that. We will work on all three during our trip. It is easier to get strong and develop endurance than to acquire skill, and you, my boy, need strength and endurance to master the skills.”

  Sam nodded. “How often will we practice?”

  “Twice a day should do it to start; then we will practice sword forms in the morning when we wake up and have sessions midday and in the evening if we can. We will move at a speed that won’t impede your recovery. Healing takes priority.”

  “Of course,” Sam said.

  “I think Emmy would like some water,” Harrison said. He stuck out his tongue and panted. “Your teacher would, too.”

  Sam did a little fetch and carry before he wrote more notes. He looked over his entries so far and agreed that the journal might prove valuable to him later.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ~

  T HEY TRAVELED FOR THREE DAYS,
STOPPING AT ONE VILLAGE to pick up supplies and aging meat scraps for Emmy. The village had a competent healer who gave Harrison all the information he needed. No one needed his services on this visit, but that didn’t keep Harrison from documenting the discussion in a thick notebook he had brought along. His writings would go to someone in Baskin, but the healer never said who.

  Sam was still struggling to make the sword go where he wanted, but he could tell his efforts were making it easier to heft the sword. In the mornings, rather than using a sword to duplicate the forms that Harrison demonstrated, Sam used his wand, and that made the process of learning how to move his body easier.

  “You may be able to defend yourself by our tour’s end,” Harrison said the night they were to enter the first village in the mountains.

  They had just come back from a run. A stream ran at the back of their camp, and Emmy was playing in the water. Sam thought she might have located a fish or a crawdad.

  “I’m looking forward to a bed,” Sam said.

  “Few villages are like the place we went through two days ago. They have an exceptional healer and an observant one. I usually spend two or three days in each villages, depending on the location’s size. When we settle down for a bit, some beds are good, and others are worse than sleeping on the floor, so you’ll be doing that, as well.”

  “When will we arrive tomorrow?”

  “Sometime after midday. The horses will be doing some climbing to get to Horner’s Rest. The village is really the first of the mountain villages.”

  Not long after they broke camp with yet another training session, the road became steep. In places, Emmy walked with Sam behind the wagon to lighten the load. They didn’t practice swordsmanship at midday.

  “I figured that the morning was like climbing ten thousand steps.”

  “Maybe more than that if you were counting,” Harrison said. “How is Emmy holding up?”

  “I think she is more tired than I am. I guess it is because she’s such a big dog.”

  “Emmy is that. I’ve never seen a breed like that. Lenny said she was Sanchian. That is on the other side of the world,” Harrison said. “I’ve never been overseas. Are you curious about her origins?”

  “I suppose so,” Sam said, “but I can’t do any research in the mountains.”

  Harrison grinned. “There is that. Now it is time for me to give you some of my research on Horner’s Rest. Every mountain village has its own quirks, which you will find out today.” Harrison thought a bit before he spoke again. “I will warn you. Villagers are simple folk. I don’t mean they aren’t smart, but they live a plain life. That means they will use a lot of pollen-made items since they can’t easily buy what they need. Villagers wear a lot of clothes made out of pollen.”

  Sam groaned. “Keep my eyes up, right?”

  Harrison nodded. “You have some practice at that, but most people in Cherryton wore natural clothing. You’ll see a mix here, but be prepared, especially when it gets hotter in the middle of the summer. That goes for men and women, boys and girls. We don’t want people to know you can see through their clothes.”

  “I grew up knowing that,” Sam said. “I’ve schooled myself to ignore what I see. Like a healer I suppose.”

  That brought a laugh out of Harrison. “If you don’t, you’ll have to leave the village and camp out along the road to the next village.”

  “I understand. If the bed is bad I’ll do that, and then Emmy can keep me company.”

  Harrison laughed. “Can’t have her roaming loose. She will terrorize the villages, if she does.” Harrison said as the wagon turned in the woods. “We are close,”

  Sam could see plumes of smoke rising from chimneys. The village looked to be a cluster of a fifty to a hundred cottages. A new, much larger house still under construction, dominating the other end of the village. It all looked so serene. He told Harrison that.

  “Village people are no different from those in Cherryton. Everyone prays to Havetta. The women wear veils. People work hard. The apprentice system is the same with seven years of education for every child. There are bullies, drunkards, and adulterers, just like in Baskin.”

  Sam had figured as much. “Where do they work? We didn’t pass much in the way of farmland.”

  “Villages will have a blacksmith, like your father, a merchant of some kind who brings in products from Mountain View and Riverville, in the case of this village. A few have bakers, who will bake more bread than pastries, and an inn. There are a few farmers, but the farming is smaller scale and more varied because there is less tillable land. Men will leave the villages and work in the mines for a week, returning home for weekends and holidays. Then you have healers and odd folks. Some people write books or do other crafts in the villages and will travel to a town or a city to sell their works.”

  “Why don’t you work in a village rather than live on the fringe of Cherryton?”

  Harrison smiled. “Getting personal, eh?” He laughed, softly. “I like access to more varieties of people, products, and information. Even with many of the same vices as a town, villages are more intimate, if you know what I mean. It can get suffocating for some, and that some includes me. I’ll bet you’ll find you are the same after the summer is over.”

  “Maybe. Cherryton was getting suffocating for me. I can’t imagine it getting worse.”

  “Maybe it won’t be,” Harrison said. “You might be surprised by what you pick up as we go along. I learn something new during every trip.”

  Sam looked at the healer and turned back to the road as they approached the village. He still didn’t quite know exactly why the healer went about his business collecting patients and information for someone in Baskin.

  They turned into a small stable yard next to an inn on the edge of the village. The place looked more like a tavern with a second story. A few pens behind the stable held horses, goats, sheep, and a few cows.

  “Is this a farm?” Sam asked.

  “No,” Harrison smiled. “The innkeeper trades livestock. Some of it is for the butcher in this village, another trade that each village has. Meat keeps better on the hoof rather than cut up.”

  “But they can wrap meat in pollen. It will keep for longer that way.”

  “I’m sure the butcher does that, too, but he only has a hundred or so customers, so the fresher, the better, even if it is pollen-wrapped.”

  Sam nodded. He would meet the butcher to see if he could purchase scraps for Emmy if the inn didn’t have enough.

  “We will stay here for a few extra days. There are some very good patches of herbs close to Horner’s Rest. I will teach you some herbology. Something else for you to put in your notebook.”

  They left the wagon in the stableyard and tied Emmy to a wheel. Instead of behaving like the recluse Harrison was at Cherryton, the healer walked through the village shops sharing stories and asking about the well-being of the village, just like he had at the other villages they had visited. Harrison must not have hated his tour, since Sam noticed a more persistent smile on his face. People seemed to respond to good humor and volunteered all kinds of unsolicited information. It was all Sam could do to maintain a straight face. People volunteered all kinds of information, stories and gossip for the price of Harrison’s smile.

  “The new man, Bagbox is up to his usual tricks,” the general store owner said. “There are rumblings he is going to descend on the village with a little army and begin collecting taxes.”

  Harrison’s eyes shot up. To Sam, it looked like an act. “But that would be illegal!”

  “Indeed. The villagers wouldn’t like that. Just because he claims to own two coal mines, doesn’t mean he doesn’t put his trousers on a leg at a time like the rest of us.”

  “Even the women, you say?”

  The storekeeper laughed. “Not the women, but you know what I mean.”

  “Unfortunately, I do,” Harrison said. “Taxing without the right to do so is theft.”

  “Out here, might some
times trumps right.”

  “So true,” the healer said. He laid something on the counter, but Sam couldn’t see it. Pollen-made, he thought. “Here is my order, we will be staying at my usual place.”

  “Right you are. I might show up one of the nights you are here with some of my friends, and you can give us an army tale or two.”

  Harrison smiled. “I’d like that. Good day.” He turned and left the store with Sam following behind.

  “Did you learn anything?”

  “Mr. Bagbox is seeking to create a fiefdom with hired swords?”

  Harrison nodded. “Mischief in the mountains. He won’t be the first to try, so I will be sending a letter to Baskin tonight. This won’t wait for my report,” he said.

  “You’re a spy!”

  Harrison furrowed his brow. “I just ask questions and report the answers,” he said, but he winked at Sam as he said it.

  “Actually, I suspected it before we left. You just confirmed my suspicions.”

  “Am I suspicious?” Harrison asked.

  “No. I suppose you would tell the storekeeper that you would be passing the information along to interested parties. What about our adventure in Mountain View? Does that qualify?”

  Harrison sighed. “No, unfortunately. As the town lord, Lenny has the right to detain me, so I will avoid Mountain View. I did until he became the town’s lord, not that I did anything but sleep in the keep and leave as soon as I could. By the time all my enemies die out in Mountain View, I’m afraid I will have already joined them.”

  Sam wrote out the encounters throughout the day and the conversation he had with Harrison after the general store visit before he went to bed. Harrison was still wringing information in the common room. The healer told him not to wait up for him.

  ~

  The next day, Harrison found Sam playing with Emmy, who was tied up in the stables. The healer looked a bit worse for wear, but he beckoned Sam inside. A line of patients sat along the wall of the common room.