Thalgor's Witch

by Nancy Holland

  Thalgor walked the perimeter to make sure all the guards stood alert at their posts. A moving camp was a vulnerable camp.

  As he came back to his ox cart, he heard Rygar and the witch talking softly on the other side of it. A strange fire burned along his bones.

  “The second raiding party will be larger than the first?” Rygar asked.

  “Not larger, but you will be weakened by the first attack,” the witch answered.

  Rygar gave a low whistle. “Will they over-run us completely?”

  She paused. Taking time to make up more seductive lies, no doubt. Thalgor’s bones burned hotter.

  “I don’t think so,” she said finally. “But they will leave many men dead and wounded, so the next battle may be your last.”

  “When will the next battle be?” Rygar’s voice echoed less with fear than loss of hope.

  “I cannot see that far. It may never happen.” She paused. “Still, if you could persuade Thalgor to move north…”

  They both fell silent, but in his mind Thalgor saw the witch touch Rygar in a way that would light the flame of desire that lies shallow in a man so young.

  “Yes.” He stepped around the cart and dropped down next to where Rygar sat on the ground. “Tell me what you will do for Rygar if he betrays me for you.”

  Once seated, he saw that the witch lay on a pallet on the other side of the campfire, not near enough to touch Rygar at all, much less as intimately as he imagined.

  “Thalgor…” Rygar warned him in a low tone.

  The witch said nothing, but a white flame lit from her fingertips as she cast a line across the fire from where she lay to where the two men sat.

  As the cold flame burned near Thalgor, it turned green, then reversed itself and sped back to her hand, where she cupped it into a glowing yellow-green bubble and threw it at him. The bubble burst when it hit him and bathed him in a sulfurous stink.

  Rygar gave a snort of laughter and lay down. Within instants he started to snore. The witch turned her back, pulled a blanket around her against the frost. Soon she slept, too.

  Thalgor brushed off the green slime and watched the campfire burn down. What had possessed him to take captive a witch who not only healed and saw, as all witches did, but also had the rare gift of flame? A witch who lit fires of jealousy and lust deep inside him, and brought back memories so dark he could not sleep.

  Chapter Four

  Erwyn trudged beside the ox cart on the second day, her mind mired in ways they might yet escape the attack she felt draw closer every minute. When Rygar came to walk beside her, she thought he meant to continue the conversation Thalgor had interrupted the night before. She still hoped for the young archer’s help, but he walked beside her a long while in silence.

  Finally, without looking at her, he said, “The woman I killed…”

  “My aunt.” Erwyn’s voice felt rough with renewed grief. “She cared for me after my parents…died.”

  He slumped. “I feared she might be your mother, the way you looked at me, but I had hoped to be more wrong than I was.”

  “She was the only mother the child ever knew.”

  He looked up at where Felyn rode with Gee on the cart.

  “Was your aunt a witch?” A new fear shadowed his voice.

  So he knew of the curse that fell on anyone who caused the death of a witch, no matter how innocently.

  In spite of herself, Erwyn looked up at the child, too.

  “No, she wasn’t.”

  “I didn’t aim at her.”

  “I know. I saw the look on your face when she fell.”

  He turned away. “I didn’t aim at anything.”

  “Why would you waste an arrow in battle?”

  “The battle was over. Thalgor had already killed their leader. Their men no longer stood and fought. I hate the need to kill when the enemy only tries to flee us. That’s one reason I became an archer. At least once the battle ends, I can fire a few arrows without the need to aim at anyone.”

  He hung his head, as if to brace himself against her contempt. When she said nothing, he went on.

  “I’m not like Thalgor. He does not like to kill. It grieves him, too. But he knows why we kill. And I know only I am supposed to shoot arrows at men as they run from me.”

  “Why should it grieve either of you?” Erwyn asked. “All any band does is wander and kill.”

  “Not our band.” He raised his head, eyes alight with a quiet enthusiasm. “Thalgor is not content for us to live like that. He wants to conquer the whole land, end the warfare, and build cities of stone. We were once a great people, you know. His ancestors were our rulers. He wants to bring peace again.”

  “How can he do that if you kill all the men you defeat?”

  The light in Rygar’s eyes dimmed. “It is what this band has always done. We never took warriors captive, even before Thalgor…” He stumbled over his words and went on. “Before Thalgor became our leader. If there is another way to keep our enemies from returning to attack us later, we have no memory of how it might be done.”

  “At least you do not make slaves of them.” She shivered. “My father was no longer the same man after he escaped from slavery in the South.”

  “Your father was a slave? And escaped?”

  Tears filled her eyes. She brushed them impatiently away.

  “Death would have been kinder. A quick death–it killed him in the end, in any case.”

  “I know how it can be. My mother was a slave.”

  They walked on, both lost in thoughts as uncomfortable and confused as the dust and noise of the moving band around them.

  “Rygar!” Thalgor came up behind them and cuffed the younger man on the shoulder. “You’re wanted on duty at the head of the march.”

  “I thought my duty was after midday.”

  “I have decided it is now.”

  Erwyn glared as Rygar adjusted the bow and quiver on his back and hurried off. Without looking at Thalgor she made green fire flow down her arm and spun it toward him.

  “You see too much, witch,” he muttered as he brushed the glowing stench off his cloak and took Rygar’s place beside her.

  “At least I see a future that will truly happen. Not some old legend brought back to life.”

  Thalgor jerked his head in the direction Rygar had gone. “He told you about that? What else did he tell you about me?”

  “We weren’t talking about you.” She stepped with more emphasis than was necessary around a steaming pile of fresh ox waste. “We were talking about war.”

  Thalgor smiled the knowing smile she’d come to hate.

  “Rygar’s not the man to talk to about battle.” His voice held none of the censure his words implied. “He is a poet and a storyteller, that one. He’ll tell you many beautiful tales if you become his friend.”

  “All about you, of course.”

  “Some about me,” Thalgor admitted with more humility than she would have expected. “More about others. If I dream of a different future, a better future for my people, it is because of the stories he has told me. He knows all the legends, all the children’s tales.”

  “Then I will become his friend.”

  Thalgor strode off again as abruptly as he’d come.

  Alone, Erwyn pondered her own words. Could she become friends with the man who had killed her aunt? She’d vowed never to forgive Rygar. And she would never forget. Her heart clenched with pain each time she thought of her aunt’s kindness. But what did hatred and vengeance bring but more war and death?

  A deeper question–could she live contented with Rygar and the others in Thalgor’s band until she found a way to fulfill her promise to take Felyn to the Wise Witches?

  To live content hadn’t been possible among those who had destroyed her own camp. Her captor’s fear of witches had been too intense, her servitude too bitter, her grief at the loss of her home too sharp and deep.

  Time had not healed her sorrow so much as softened it. Life with stranger
s who might be kinder to her, who would let her live free no longer seemed a betrayal of all she had lost.

  Still, her duty lay elsewhere. She tried again to imagine ways she might escape to the Wise Witches, but as she grew wearier her thoughts strayed to visions of a life without wandering, without war. The impossible visions that filled Rygar’s stories and fed Thalgor’s dream.

  *

  The attack came on the third day, just before they stopped for the night. Only a small raiding party, but effectively deployed to cut off the last quarter of the march and capture goods, women, and most of the livestock.

  At the first cries from the rear, Thalgor sent boys to clamber up trees on each side of the road so he could know exactly where the attack came from.

  He moved his men backward in waves so only one rank was left at the front of the march. That kept the attackers from cutting off the rear of the camp, and provided a steady stream of warriors to oppose them.

  He moved rearward more quickly than the rest, Rygar at his side. When they came abreast of his ox cart at the center of the line of march, where Gee, the witch, and her child huddled, he turned to the younger man and said, “Guard them, archer.”

  Rygar nodded and stood over them, an arrow on his string.

  Once Thalgor reached the battle, his men sent up a cry. He pulled his sword and held it over his head for all to see before he waded into the nearest skirmish to run the sword through a man who thought to stab one of Gurdek’s men from behind. Thalgor pulled the sword free and breathed the acrid smell of death.

  The blood lust took him. He hacked and hewed his way through the battle as he searched in the noise and dust for the leader of the raiding party.

  He found him by the gold on his breastplate and his size, nearly as tall as Thalgor himself.

  Thalgor had almost reached the enemy leader when an arrow slid behind his shield and lodged in his hip. He pulled it out carelessly despite the pain that would come when the blood lust faded, and strode the last paces to his adversary.

  “Leader!”

  The tall man raised a grizzled head from the now dead man at the other end of his sword. Thalgor recognized the young man, newly a father.

  “A challenge,” Thalgor called.

  Silently the tall man turned to face him.

  One of the enemy archers drew his bow, arrow aimed at Thalgor, but the tall man waved him back.

  Thalgor smiled. A battle with a man of honor. A worthy death, or a worthy victory.

  The battle continued around them, but felt far away, quieter, as Thalgor and the tall man circled, each seeking a weak spot in the other.

  Slowly Thalgor edged their duel away from the women and children to create a hole in the battle line through which most of them could flee to safety. If his opponent saw what he did, the man gave no sign, but focused on the search for an opening that would allow him to kill Thalgor and send his warriors into disarray for an easy victory.

  The tall man lunged first, but Thalgor easily parried the move. Their circle tightened. Thalgor smelled his opponent’s sweat and the blood on the stranger’s hands as well as his own. The battle around them became even quieter, even more distant.

  Thalgor spotted a vibrant red scar across the tall man’s knee and lunged at his legs. The other man moved quickly enough that the stroke missed his knee, but the sword caught the flesh of the man’s calf and tore it open.

  The stranger took a step back and gave a roar of anger before he charged at Thalgor, sword raised over his head.

  In one smooth movement Thalgor raised his shield to protect his head and thrust his sword upward, but it missed the man’s vulnerable belly.

  The tall man’s sword clanged twice against Thalgor’s shield before both men stepped back to catch their breath.

  The opponent’s eyes were slightly glazed. Thalgor’s would be, too, from the pain of his wounds and the blood lust of the battle.

  He lunged toward the tall man’s heart. His sword met only his enemy’s shield, but Thalgor smelled weakness.

  The over-eager archer must have sensed his leader’s weakness, too, because an arrow sang through the air and lodged at an angle in the leather of Thalgor’s breastplate. An answering arrow from among his men felled the archer when he stood.

  The tall man took one look at his fallen comrade and spread his arms wide, sword on one side, shield on the other, so his belly and chest were exposed.

  An old trick. If Thalgor accepted the invitation the other man’s sword would plunge into his neck while his own found only the enemy’s shield. He shook his head and saw the tall man smile. A worthy adversary indeed.

  The other man lunged again. Thalgor side-stepped him and raised his sword arm across his chest, as if to defend himself. But as his opponent rounded back toward him, he brought his sword back and up. The sharp blade caught the enemy under the breastplate and slid through flesh well into his body.

  The tall man gave him an astonished look, then fell dead.

  The attackers took one look at their fallen leader, grabbed what goods they could, and fled wildly into the trees along the road.

  Gurdek urged their men after the enemy, but Thalgor stood over the tall man’s body, breathing hard as the battle lust ebbed. Melancholy took its place.

  When he looked up, the witch was at his side.

  “Will you kill them all?” She looked past him to where the enemy had fled, his warriors on their heels.

  “All we can catch.” He sucked in air against the pain from the arrow wound in his hip.

  The witch either did not notice his pain, or did not care.

  “What about their women and children?”

  “They were a raiding party. Either they have none, or the ones they have are safe in some large camp somewhere.”

  Her hand went unerringly to his wound. Her fingers both measured it and eased the pain.

  “Surely some of them were good warriors.”

  He looked down at the leader he had killed.

  “Why all these questions, witch? Your uncle could have told you as much as I.”

  She took her hand away from his wound. The pain did not return, but his skin felt cold without the warmth of her touch.

  “My uncle and I rarely spoke.”

  Batte came up beside them.

  “Are there many wounded?” Thalgor asked him.

  “Enough.”

  “Take me to them,” the witch said.

  Batte gave her a dark look. “So you can kill those the raiding party left alive?”

  “So I can heal them.”

  “You are a witch and a captive. Why would you heal our warriors?” Batte growled.

  “Because it is a law of my power to heal where I can.”

  “It is the law of witches to lie when they can.”

  Thalgor held up his blood-stained hand.

  “Batte, take her to the wounded. Take the surgeon, the bond-setter, and the herbalist with you. You can watch and see for yourself if she harms or heals.”

  “But…”

  An invisible cloud rose between Thalgor and his old friend. The witch’s work. But his wounded men needed her help.

  “Batte, do as I say.”

  *

  The pain of the wounded flooded over Erwyn as she moved about the battlefield. The surgeon and the bone-setter seemed untouched by it, but the herbalist rubbed his forehead as if it ached. Witch blood, Erwyn thought.

  “The worst off first,” she told Batte when the small party was assembled.

  The first man was so near death his eyes no longer saw. She closed them with one hand and set the other over his faint heartbeat to let it stop. The man gave a sigh and died.

  “I knew you would kill,” Batte said with icy venom.

  “He was already dead,” the herbalist told him. “You could see that. She only made it easier for him.”

  Batte grunted and led them to the next man.

  This one looked unharmed except for an arrow lodged in his neck. The surgeo
n started to pull the arrow out, but Erwyn stopped him.

  “Why leave the weapon in, witch?” Batte reached between the healers and yanked the arrow out. Blood spurted from the open wound faster than Erwyn and the surgeon could stop it, drenching them all. The man quickly died.

  Erwyn stood up and took the arrow from the stunned Batte. She broke it in two and threw it at his feet.

  “Fool!” Her body shook with rage.

  Batte stood, white-faced, over the dead man.

  “Here, healer,” a young man called.

  He led her and the others to a wounded woman, big with child.

  “My baby,” the woman wailed, her hand clasped to her side where an errant arrow had pierced her womb.

  Erwyn laid her hand on the woman’s belly and knew at once the child was gone. She whispered instructions to the surgeon on how to treat the woman’s wound. Then she told the herbalist to send for the midwife and handed him leaves for a tea to help the woman birth her dead child.

  She helped two more fatally wounded men die. The next three had badly broken bones her sight helped the bone-setter repair. The sword cuts and arrow wounds she helped the surgeon clean and closed it with ointment and cobwebs from her bag. Soon the wounds were ones the surgeon could repair, the breaks ones the bone-setter could set on his own.

  “Take me to the enemy wounded,” she told Batte, who had rejoined them after she saw to the pregnant woman.

  “No.” He stood in front of her, one hand on his sword.

  “I told you. It is a law of my magic to heal.”

  “Even you cannot heal the dead.”

  “You killed them all?”

  “Did your band not do the same?”

  She hung her head, reluctant to admit she’d expected it to be different in Thalgor’s camp. Reluctant even to wonder why.

  “They attacked us. They deserved to die.” Batte’s scornful tone compelled her to look up at him.

  “Your warriors attacked my camp. Did you deserve to die?”

  “We defeated your warriors.”

  “So it is not attackers who deserve to die, but those who lose the battle?”

  “Yes, witch.” He rattled his sword in its sheath. “And remember you were among the ones who lost.”