They thrashed about in the darkness for a while, but slowly day turned the dark shadows into gray, dream-like mist. Through the mist came the scream of someone already half-dead.
The men froze, but Erwyn leapt forward to follow the sound. Thalgor found his bearings first and went after her, leaving his men to follow with the prisoners.
A second piteous scream and they were in the camp.
Not even a camp. One tent, a few scattered lean-to’s, and one small fire. As soon as Thalgor appeared the women who stood about outside the single tent tried to gather their children and flee, but his men already encircled them. Then the women saw the prisoners and fell upon them, weeping.
Erwyn moved calmly through the chaos. A third scream rent the air and the laboring woman’s man ran after the witch. Both of them disappeared into the tent.
“Rygar, you and your men stay here and bring those in the tent to our camp when Erwyn is ready,” Thalgor ordered. “Batte, you and your men will escort the others back now. Send one man ahead so there is food and water for the women and children.”
Batte glared at him, then began to organize the move.
Thalgor headed back to camp ahead of everyone else. He hoped for some sleep before what promised to be a hard day.
*
Erwyn entered the small, dark tent afraid she might be too late. But the woman giving birth still lived, her breath ragged, her mind half demented with pain.
Her man gave an anguished gasp when he saw her.
Erwyn didn’t need to worry about him, too. “Sit behind her. Let her sit up so she leans back against you. Now, wrap your arms around her between belly and breasts.”
Erwyn felt the next contraction come, but the woman didn’t scream. Instead she wept silently and grasped her man’s hands, as if his presence made her stronger.
As the contraction eased, Erwyn put her hands on each side of the woman’s belly.
“Your child lives,” she was able to tell them. But she knew the child, like its mother, was tired and weak.
“Warm water,” she said to the woman who was probably the midwife.
When a cup appeared, Erwyn sprinkled pungent herbs into it.
“Drink it all,” she directed the birthing woman.
The woman started to object, but her man took the cup from Erwyn and held it to the woman’s lips. She drank and fell asleep so fast the cup dropped to the ground.
“Stay with her,” Erwyn told the man. “She will sleep for a while, but the laboring will go on. When she wakes, she may be able to birth the baby.”
“And if she cannot?” he whispered, as if his woman might hear him in her sleep.
“You will have to choose. I do not have a magic that will save them both.”
“Why would I want a child without my woman?”
Erwyn nodded, then went to where Rygar waited at the door of the tent.
“By midday, if all goes well,” she told him. “See if your men can kill a rabbit or two. I’ll ask the midwife to cook whatever other food they may have so you and your men can eat.”
Rygar gestured toward the couple in the tent. “Don’t expect Thalgor to hold you like that when you give birth.”
“One expects a fish to swim. Only a fool expects the eagle who eats fish to swim, too.”
“You are a wise woman,” Rygar laughed, “or a woman in love.”
“I am a witch who knows her fate.”
The midwife left to cook for Rygar’s men. The birthing woman’s man slept. Erwyn gathered pillows to lay down, too.
Before she fell asleep she had time to wonder if Thalgor would make the same choice as this man, would choose her life over that of his child. The obvious answer chilled her.
She thought it was the smell of roasting meat that woke her, but then she heard the second wail. The wail of a newborn.
The midwife had wrapped the child and handed it to its mother, still in her man’s arms, both of them lit by a glow of love that turned the small, dingy tent into a place of joy.
Erwyn slipped out unnoticed and ate a hurried breakfast while Rygar’s men turned one of the lean-to’s into a travois to pull the woman and her child to Thalgor’s camp.
The midwife came and sat beside her as the men dismantled her tent. “That herb…”
Erwyn answered her unasked question. “Works without my magic, but less well. I will show you where to find it. It grows only in the darkest part of the woods on the longest day of the warm time.”
The midwife nodded and offered her a piece of dried fruit she had pulled from some secret pocket in her gown.
Erwyn took it with a smile of thanks.
The sun was low in the sky before they reached Thalgor’s camp, slowed by the makeshift travois.
The rest of the marauders were still held prisoner at the near edge of the camp. Erwyn wondered why until she saw the midwife go to their leader and realized she was his woman.
As the captive women gathered around the new mother and her child, a warrior went to tell Thalgor of their arrival.
When he strode up a short while later, Thalgor gestured for Erwyn to stand behind him as he faced the prisoners. He made the same speech to them as he had to those captured from the camp where Erwyn had been enslaved, then added that each of the men could choose to fight with his band, or take one weapon and leave with their families in peace.
Batte, who followed him, growled his disapproval and left, but his second and their men stayed to watch with Rygar’s men.
As each of the captured men pledged to follow Thalgor, Erwyn looked into them and saw the wholeness there. Each time she tapped Thalgor lightly on his back, by his heart, and he nodded his acceptance until only the leader remained.
“I will follow you as your lieutenant,” he told Thalgor.
Batte’s second stifled a laugh. Rygar, his friend from childhood, gave him a small kick in the leg.
Erwyn saw in the leader the thirst for power she’d warned Thalgor of before. She tapped his back on the right, away from his heart. Thalgor shook his head.
“Then I will leave.” The marauder defiantly took both a sword and a bow from the pile of their weapons, and all the arrows. Then he motioned for the midwife and the two half-grown children who stood with her to follow him, but she shook her head and stayed where she was.
He moved closer as he spoke a few harsh, quiet words. The midwife pushed the children behind her and shook her head again.
When he reached around her as if to grab the boy, both he and his sister fled to where the others from their camp stood and watched.
The man spoke to the midwife again in the same hushed, violent tone. When she still refused to move, he struck her with a backhand across the face so hard she fell to the ground, then he walked off into the forest.
Those around them had stood frozen, but when the woman fell everyone burst into action. The captured women rushed to the aid of their midwife and comforted her frightened children. Their men reclaimed the weapons that remained in the pile and gathered around Rygar, obviously eager to join his patrol.
Women appeared from Thalgor’s camp with food and tents for the newcomers. His warriors went back for their dinners.
Thalgor and Erwyn headed toward their tent as well.
“So you saved the child and the mother both.”
Erwyn nodded, amused by what might have been a note of pride in Thalgor’s voice.
“Boy or girl?”
“A boy. Can you guess what they named him?”
“Thalgor?”
She smiled up at him and shook her head. “Rygar.”
For a moment he frowned. She held her breath, suddenly afraid she might have misjudged him.
Then he laughed. “Well-named, I’d say.”
Something shifted in her heart at his words.
*
The first harvest had just begun when one of his men woke Thalgor in the middle of the night to tell him Gurdek had caught marauders after the crops they had gathered the day be
fore.
As Thalgor girded on his sword, Erwyn appeared at his side.
“There will be wounded,” she said, and he nodded.
They arrived as the skirmish ended, the last of the marauders found and disarmed. Erwyn moved at once to Gurdek’s wounded, followed by the surgeon, the bone-setter and the herbalist, who had come with them from the camp.
Thalgor got a report from Gurdek–none of their men dead, no marauders escaped–and looked over the men they had captured.
They had been twenty. Two were dead, one nearly so, several others wounded. But a dozen stood untouched, fear in their eyes.
Thalgor sighed. To kill them all, as he would have done a short while before without a second thought, now seemed wrong.
He looked over at Erwyn, who helped the surgeon sever a man’s badly mangled foot.
Did she bewitch him? Was that why what had been normal was now unthinkable and what was unheard of–to take defeated men into his band–now seemed the most reasonable thing to do?
He turned to Gurdek, the question of what to do unasked. But his lieutenant nodded, as if the same question filled his mind.
“They fought well. Clearly they have women hidden somewhere to prepare the food for winter storage. Their leader is among the dead.” He thumped his chest. “My sword found his heart.”
It crossed Thalgor’s mind that Gurdek, who lost his woman to sickness in the last dark time, now spent much of his free time with the midwife whose man had been the leader of the last group of marauders. Thalgor had even seen his lieutenant teaching her son to use a sword.
Rygar and now Gurdek. Erwyn didn’t need to bewitch them. She put a thought in their minds, and their whole lives changed. His, as well, Thalgor admitted reluctantly.
Batte appeared from the woods, followed by his men and the marauders’ women and children.
“I thought they might be a raiding party,” Batte said in a tone of disgust. “So I went to see if there were more. But all I found was a miserable camp and a bunch of weeping women.”
The woman of one of the dead men sent up a wail.
“Silence her!” Batte growled at one of his men, but Thalgor held up his hand to stop him.
“Surely you do not mean to allow these marauders into our band as you did the others?” Batte asked in disbelief. “The others were pitiful and few. These are strong, and almost fifty in all,” he gauged with a glance at the families huddled now around the captured men.
“More reason to take them in, if they are willing,” Gurdek responded. “We can use the extra hands for the harvest and in battle. They will only make us stronger.”
“Your men captured them easily enough.”
“With more warriors and better arms. And we took them by surprise. Your men could not defeat us under those conditions.”
Thalgor stepped between his lieutenants.
“We will take those who wish to be of us,” he said in a tone that allowed for no dissent. “And we will not speak ill of any of our own men,” he added sharply to Gurdek.
The two men went off in opposite directions, both grumbling.
But Batte soon returned, eyes ablaze with anger.
“The witch!” He pointed to where Erwyn and the herbalist conferred over a wounded man. “She heals the enemy!”
Thalgor sighed and asked one of his men to fetch Erwyn.
She looked up at the messenger, then went back to her work.
After what seemed to Thalgor to be a long time while he listened to Batte mumble curses, she finished her instructions to the herbalist and walked over to them at a leisurely pace.
“Why do you heal the enemy?” Batte demanded.
“Do you intend to kill them all?” she asked Thalgor.
“No.” Thalgor couldn’t help but wish he’d captured a more compliant witch. If there was such a thing.
“Then I must heal. It is a rule of my power.”
“Don’t speak to me of rules,” Batte told her. “You do as you please, witch. Even if it helps those who would destroy us as we destroyed your band.”
“Do you do as you wish in battle?” she asked him.
“I do what I must do to win.”
“I do what I must do to heal. And what I must do is save any life I can. A world where witches do not follow such a rule would soon be a world with only witches and no men.”
For a moment an image of the Wise Witches’ invincible citadel filled Thalgor’s mind. He shook his head to clear it.
“Or only men and no witches,” Batte said thoughtfully.
Erwyn nodded. “Perhaps. Is it not better to have both?”
“Perhaps,” Batte echoed. “Or perhaps not. It is of no importance so long as you have Thalgor’s protection. But beware if ever he should come to prefer another.”
Thalgor stepped forward at that. “Enough, Batte. Tell your men to help Gurdek’s organize the prisoners so we can see who of them chooses to join us.”
Batte muttered to himself as he walked away.
“He is a good man,” Erwyn said, “but he thinks being strong and courageous, and winning in battle is all a leader need do.”
A strange prickle crept up Thalgor’s spine when he remembered his lieutenant was now Dara’s lover.
His warriors brought the prisoners. Erwyn stood behind him as before. Two men he would have liked to add to his band chose to walk away, but none of the men Erwyn was unsure of chose to stay. Most were men he would not have trusted either. Only one, a man with an open face and strong arm, seemed a good warrior to him. When he asked her later why she warned him against that one she shuddered.
“He is a good warrior because he finds joy in killing and causing pain.”
Thalgor remembered that no woman left with the man and shuddered in his turn.
“You are tired from healing,” he told Erwyn. “Let us return to the tent so you may sleep.”
*
Ever since Erwyn had saved the marauder’s woman and her baby, the band’s midwives sent for her whenever they had a difficult birth. Some women still died, and some babies, but fewer than before.
They most often sent for her in the middle of the night, and healing always tired her, especially when she could not save both lives. Many days she was too weary to help Gee with the work of the tent.
Finally the old woman brought the third daughter of a family with too many children to the tent and set the girl to the work Erwyn used to do. Thalgor and Rygar exchanged raised eyebrows, but nothing was said.
The girl, Tya, moved into the sleeping chamber with Gee and Felyn, who was soon her constant shadow.
But Erwyn’s weariness and late night wakings were a burden on Thalgor as well. One night she returned to the tent to find him pacing the small space of their sleeping chamber.
“You no longer fetch water, or weave, or cook,” he complained. “I have an extra mouth to feed, and I must suffer through Rygar’s agonies as he discovers he is in love.”
“Rygar in love? With that girl?”
Tya was lovely, with long brown hair, deep honey-colored eyes, and a body that would be rounded and soft when she was grown. But she was not yet grown.
“Yes. That girl.” Thalgor sighed. “She is too young to take as his woman, so he suffers. And I suffer.”
“Why?”
“That is not the point! What do I have to do to keep you in my bed at night?”
Worn and irritated, Erwyn threw up her hands.
“Batte does not want me to heal our enemies. You don’t want me to help with births unless it is convenient for you. Why do either of you think you can control my power?”
“Batte has nothing to do with it. I control your power because you are my witch.”
She dredged up the last of her energy and pulled herself tall, although that meant she only reached his shoulder.
“I may be your woman, but I am not your witch.”
“So be it. But if you are my woman, you will do as I say.”
“Will I?” She
stood defiantly with hands on her hips, but a familiar heat burned low in her belly.
He reached out and took her hands in his.
“Do I have to tie you to my bed?” His voice was no longer angry, but thick with passion.
Her heart beat with unexpected excitement. “Try it.”
In one swift warrior’s move Thalgor had her on her back underneath him, both her hands held above her head in one of his. He looked down at her for a moment in the glow of the single lantern. Erwyn saw the mixture of anger and need in his eyes shift to pure want. The heat of his desire pressed hard against her body, followed by a familiar, sweet quivering deep inside her.
He kissed her then, deep and wild. Her body strained against his, half in protest, half in need.
He lifted his mouth and gave a low laugh. He slid his free hand between them to pull up her gown, then stroked her breast until she moaned. With a growl, he pressed her legs open with his and entered her in one thrust.
They both froze, stunned by the intensity of the flow of heat and craving between them.
As one they melted. His hands came to frame her face, hers to encircle his neck as they kissed with a passion beyond any they had known.
They finished their loving tenderly, even at the end when he caught his name on her lips as she sank into the sea of pleasure.
When he called her name as he joined her there, Erwyn knew she now freely chose the man she had seen before as her fate.
Chapter Eight
Three nights later a dark dream startled Erwyn awake. She shook Thalgor’s shoulder. He snorted in his sleep and rolled away from her.
“Thalgor.” She shook him again. “Thalgor.”
“What?” He sat up, still half asleep. “A battle?”
“No.” She stroked his arm to soothe him. “A dream.”
Suddenly he was fully awake, and angry.
“You woke me for a dream? Are you a child who cannot know it is a dream and go back to sleep on your own?”
“A dream. A vision.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Witch, it is too late at night for riddles. Go to sleep and leave me alone.” He lay down and turned his back to her.
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