Thalgor's Witch

by Nancy Holland

  “Why would you let us all die?” he bit out.

  “I cannot murder.”

  “You say you know magic that can kill the raven.”

  “Yes, but if I murder, my gift will be gone.”

  He waved his arm toward the main room of the tent.

  “We can do as well without your gift. I am grateful for it, but it is only one of many things you can do.”

  “My gift,” she repeated with as much force as she could master. “Not only my gift to see, but also my gift to heal.”

  “So my men will die harder. And someday, so shall I.”

  “And what would I be without my gift?”

  “My woman still.” He looked at her intensely. “Always.”

  Something that had grown slowly inside her over these last months formed a tender bud, as if it might someday bloom.

  But the battle she saw threatened much more than their lives together. It threatened the peace they brought to their people, the dream of a life without warfare and wandering.

  “A warrior’s ‘always’ can be very brief.”

  She hoped he did not hear her heart break as she said it.

  The intensity in his face hardened into pain. “How can you refuse to save us?”

  “How can you ask me not to be what I am?”

  His face softened as he drew one hand across her cheek. “You are…” He dropped his hand and looked away.

  She took a deep breath. “Would you not be a warrior?”

  His only answer was to wrap his arms around her and pull her down to the bed in wordless surrender to what would come.

  *

  A somber council met the next day. Scouts brought word of the mass of armed men moving south toward the camp.

  Rygar marked the enemy’s progress on the map spread across the council table. Thalgor began to see lines of force shimmer on the map. He smiled slowly. There might be a way.

  “They must come down this valley.” He drew a line from the enemy’s position to the camp with the back of his sword point, then glanced at Erwyn, who nodded. “If we attack them there, before they reach the camp, we will have surprise on our side.”

  “How can you surprise a leader with as much witch blood as you say this one has?” Gurdek asked.

  Thalgor frowned as the thoughts formed in his mind aided, he sensed, by Erwyn, who sat silent beside him.

  “The man has witch blood, but is no witch. The same cloud that hides his movements from Erwyn conceals ours from him.”

  “Are you certain?” Sett prodded.

  Thalgor sighed. He was certain of so little.

  “And even so,” Rygar mused aloud, “his scouts will see our men as we move toward the battlefield.”

  Thalgor was on firmer ground again. “We know this land. His men do not. We can move out in small patrols and follow different paths. At most the scouts will think they are raiding parties. By the time the enemy is fully aware of how many of our men they have seen pass, it will be too late.”

  “But that leaves the camp undefended,” Gurdek said. “The guard we usually leave behind will not be enough if even a part of them escape our ambush, they are so many.”

  “We will attack only with my men and Sett’s. Mine from head-on, Sett’s from their weak flank. Your men will remain to guard the camp. If they defeat us, we will send messengers to alert you in time to have most of your men take the women, children and livestock away from here, into the woods, and leave your best warriors and the old men here to stage what defense they can. By the time the enemy discovers the camp is empty, those you lead will be a day or two’s march away. With any luck,” he added under his breath.

  A dark silence fell. The plan might thwart the enemy, but what would be left of their band? More women and children than the few warriors who survived could protect from other bands when they made dark-time raids. His people would become marauders. At best.

  But what other choice was there? He saw the dark cloud clearly now, could almost make out the form of the one Erwyn called the raven in the black mist. His men could not see, could not know the terrible vengeance that awaited their people if the enemy won. He had tried to tell them the day before, but they could not believe such savagery was possible. Nor would he if his visions had not shown it to him.

  Sett, who had been silent, finally spoke. “There are worse fates than a marauder’s life.”

  His tone invited no dispute.

  “I will organize our warriors to teach the older boys all they can about how to defend a camp,” Rygar said.

  “And I will get the old men to teach them how to build one,” Gurdek agreed with a sigh.

  “Teach the women, too.” Erwyn’s voice, when she spoke, was rough. “Both of you.”

  From her seat to one side, Tya let out a low sob.

  Only the day before Thalgor had been glad to see Felyn play with the other children in the light snow that had fallen during the night. Now all he could think of was the terror her nightmares about the coming battle had brought her.

  They all sat in bleak silence for a long while, until Gurdek’s woman appeared at the door of the tent to summon him to eat. Slowly they all stirred themselves and went about their appointed tasks with heavy hearts.

  *

  The camp was strangely quiet by day as they prepared for the battle to come. The nights were strangely noisy as women and boys listened to the old men tell them how to build and defend a camp while the men worked to make arrows, bows, and knives, not only for themselves now, but for their women and sons as well. A hurried desperation shrouded everything they did.

  On the second day Sett’s warriors began to leave in groups of six or eight to circle quietly through the woods to the valley where Thalgor’s men would attack the enemy. Their farewells were grave and earnest. Their women wept only after the men left, as their children clung to them in sad confusion.

  That night the remaining council met to plan the departure of Thalgor’s men the next day.

  “I will go with the first party,” Rygar said, “and Thalgor can come with the last.”

  Thalgor had dreaded this moment all day. “You stay here.”

  “Here?” Rygar asked in disbelief.

  “You are needed to guard the camp.”

  “Gurdek’s men will guard the camp. That was your plan.”

  “You are needed to guard my tent.”

  “Is your tent more valuable than any other, Thalgor?” Rygar rose to his feet. “Because, perhaps, of the jewels and gold on the chair you took from my father?”

  Gurdek and the others gasped, but Thalgor remained calm.

  “Because of the girl you love who lives here, Brother.”

  “Look at her, Thalgor. She is a girl no longer. Even her father agrees. After this battle she is to become my woman. But that does not make her more dear to me than my duty. And my duty is as your second, until you say otherwise. The blood of the leaders of this band from back before memory flows in my veins, and I will fight with our warriors to defend it.”

  Thalgor stood slowly. “You must protect the witch.”

  “I love Erwyn like a sister, Thalgor. She saved my life. She has saved us all. But I am a warrior, and the battlefield is where I must be. With your leave or without it.”

  He chose to ignore the threat in Rygar’s words. “And who will lead with us both dead?”

  “Gurdek will lead. That is the path you chose yourself. It is a wise path. He is best suited of us all to lead marauders.”

  Thalgor sank back on the bench. “Would you take all hope from me, Brother? All possibility those I love will survive?”

  “What must survive,” Erwyn said in a voice hollowed out by pain, “is the band. No one person is more than that.”

  “Then kill the raven!” he spat at her in a hushed tone.

  The others looked at them in confusion.

  “Thalgor,” Gurdek said in a placating tone, “this is not the time to fight with your woman over birds.”

&nb
sp; Thalgor’s mind searched frantically for a way to protect those he loved, but he waved his hand for Rygar to continue.

  “I will go with the first group, you with the last. The witch, the bone-setter, the herbalist, and the surgeon will go in my group and meet in the woods with Sett’s men, who will hide them until the attack.”

  Thalgor sprang back to his feet. “Who gave such an order?” he roared, turning toward Gurdek.

  “I did,” Erwyn told him calmly. “I have my duty, as Rygar has his and you yours. Mine is to heal.”

  Thalgor shook his head in disbelief. Would this witch never do as he wanted?

  “Your duty is to do as your man tells you. You will stay here with the other women and keep yourself safe.”

  She looked up at him, eyes defiant. “There is no safety to be had in this battle. You know that. I will not hide docilely to be taken captive. You have never asked that of me before. Do not ask it of me now.”

  “You hid docilely enough the night I captured you,” he reminded her grimly.

  “The child was with me. And I had no weapon.”

  “You had your magic.”

  “And I will have it on this battlefield as well.”

  “Kill – the – raven,” he bit out.

  Gurdek made a sound of disgust. Rygar came to stand behind Erwyn, his hands on her shoulders.

  “She is right, Thalgor,” he said. “You know she is right.”

  “Clearly you have no need of a leader.” Thalgor stood. “Make what plans you wish, then tell me what I must do. Like any warrior, I have weapons to ready for battle and farewells to make.” Then he left.

  *

  Thalgor came to their bed late that night. Erwyn thought for a moment of pretending she was asleep, but decided it was unworthy. If he wished to argue, she would listen, but she would not change her mind. Not about killing the raven, nor about going with his warriors to heal them after the battle. If any of them still lived. If she still lived.

  But rather than argue, he slid into the bed beside her and pulled her tenderly into his arms. Her body responded even before she got over her surprise.

  He took her in a slow, solemn mating, done more as if to forget a pain than to remind himself of pleasure. It became a kind of healing for her as well. They slept wrapped together like new lovers, but both dreamt of the battle to come.

  At noon she left with Rygar’s men. She and Thalgor had said their farewells before they rose from their bed. When the time came, she hugged Tya, whose eyes were red from a night of crying over Rygar, and knelt beside Felyn. The child stroked her face, then kissed her cheeks. Erwyn echoed the gesture.

  “I love you,” she whispered, only for the child to hear.

  Felyn nodded and stepped away, the feelings behind that face so much like her own hidden even from Erwyn’s magic.

  “With a woman along, we will look even more like a raiding party, or a band of marauders,” Rygar told Thalgor cheerfully.

  Thalgor glared. “Do you fancy yourself Erwyn’s man?”

  “Are we not far beyond that, Brother?”

  Thalgor nodded and the two men embraced.

  Then the small patrol and the four healers were on their way.

  Erwyn’s legs soon began to ache. She had gotten soft behind the safety of their wall. She said nothing, but the other healers, older men also unused to walking so far, complained openly. The warriors laughed at their weakness, but walked more slowly.

  The sun shone on shallow, crusted snow. A few hardy birds chirped and warbled as they moved through the woods.

  Half asleep as she walked in the drowsy afternoon, Erwyn sensed enemy scouts nearby. They watched the patrol’s progress, but did not seem alarmed by it. Perhaps Thalgor’s plan would work.

  She let Rygar know by gestures where the scouts were, but he nodded and kept on walking, confident in the plan. Or perhaps reluctant to warn the enemy of their intent by an attack on the scouts, who equaled their warriors in number. His farewells to Tya had been those of a man who doubts he will return.

  They were met just before sunset by four of Sett’s men, who led the healers to their patrol’s campfire while Rygar and his men turned back to meet up with the rest of Thalgor’s warriors and prepare to fight at dawn.

  Erwyn never failed to be amazed at the cheerful air a camp took on before a battle. Especially among Sett’s men, who were the most thirsty for battle of all in the band, just as Thalgor’s were the best fighters and Gurdek’s the most stubborn and solid. Like the men who led them.

  The men told stories about other battles around the campfire, some they had fought themselves, some from legends or from the stories of their fathers and grandfathers.

  She listened impassively so her distaste and worry would not mar the ritual the warriors needed to be ready for the next day. But their tales haunted her dreams and woke her in the night, alone on the hard ground and shivering.

  *

  At first light Thalgor crept to a rock that overlooked the valley where the enemy camped. The enemy warriors below were preparing for the day’s march as a few men, slaves by their tattered clothing, took down the leader’s tent and cooked breakfast gruel over a single large campfire.

  In the midst of the carefully ordered chaos stood a man Thalgor knew at once must be the raven Erwyn had described. He was taller than the others, perhaps taller than Thalgor himself, his black hair streaked with white, his face fierce, even at this distance, as he wielded a whip meant for oxen against the slaves who dismantled his tent and cowered near the fire.

  Evil radiated from this man. Not the craven obsessions of his brothers, but an evil Thalgor had seen only once before, in the first man he had killed long ago.

  But this man’s evil was darker yet, fed by witch blood, a link to the ancient magic as strong and vital as Thalgor’s own.

  Magic made him think of Erwyn. He looked to the hill where he knew she camped with Sett’s men. And then down behind him to where Rygar’s patrol had spent the night. What he would not give to have them both safe inside the walls of the camp. But they chose their duty over their love for him, love he never doubted.

  Erwyn chose it doubly–her duty to heal and her duty not to murder, not even the unspeakably evil man below him who now turned his whip on one of his warriors.

  What a thing was duty. What a thing was love.

  Had he ever told Erwyn he loved her? He scarcely knew it himself until these last few days when he realized the laws of magic that bound her bound him, too. He could only love her as she was, even if the cost was his own death. Or hers. A world without Erwyn was unthinkable. So he ceased to think and became nothing more than a warrior intent on victory.

  A victory every instinct told him, as he looked out over the mass of men camped in the valley, was all but impossible.

  Almost silently Rygar moved into position next to him.

  “All the patrols are ready,” he reported. “When do we attack?”

  “Now.”

  Thalgor stood, drew his sword and raised it over his head so that it shone like a beacon in the early morning sun as he led his men down the hill toward the unsuspecting camp.

  *

  Erwyn looked out over the enemy camp from her hiding place on a hill thick with evergreens.

  She saw their leader at once and watched how he treated those who served him. Her heart filled, first with horror, then with something like hope.

  His brothers’ arrogance had helped Thalgor defeat them, but bolstered by his far more powerful witch blood, the man below her was ten times as arrogant as they. That might be the difference Thalgor’s men needed to win this battle.

  She heard a cry. Thalgor’s battle cry. Her blood froze.

  But the element of surprise served them well. Thalgor’s men were past the sleepy guards at the edge of the camp and half-way to the leader’s tent at its center before the enemy gathered his forces to meet them full-on.

  Once they did, the battle became slow and grim. She saw an arc
her who might have been Rygar from his size take an arrow in the left arm. He merely pulled it out, tied a rag around the wound and raised his own bow again as if nothing had happened.

  She would never understand how the blood lust protected men from the pain of their wounds. If they went on fighting, their wounds were often harder to heal later, but this time, at least, she was glad for the oblivion brought by fury.

  Thalgor was easy to find by his size in the dust and confusion of the fighting. She almost thought she heard his voice above the clamor of metal on metal, the whoosh of arrows, the moans of dying men, as he urged his warriors on. Already he clearly searched for the enemy leader, in hopes he could bring the battle to a quick end. But it was as if his opponent fled him. Not from fear, Erwyn was certain, but to prolong the bloody battle, to delay the moment he thought inevitable when Thalgor would fall beneath his sword.

  Rather than search for Thalgor, the enemy leader walked up and down behind the jagged line of his warriors to urge them on.

  Occasionally he would strike a man who didn’t fight as his leader wished across the back with the broad side of his sword. The dead and wounded he stepped over like so much fallen wood. When one of Thalgor’s men broke through the line and plunged at him, the enemy struck him down with a single blow to his heart, then stepped back behind his men and returned to pacing.

  Erwyn heard the restless shuffle of Sett’s men around her, knew he watched as she did for the time and place when a second attack would be most effective.

  She saw it a moment before he did, a break in the enemy line that cut a full quarter of their men off from the main battlefield.

  Sett called the charge at once. In a wave of fierce resolve, his men stormed past Erwyn and rushed into the battle. To win, or die. Or both.

  Chapter Twenty

  This second surprise threw the isolated enemy warriors into total confusion and what few still lived after the onslaught took flight. With a roar that echoed over the battlefield, Sett turned his men to where Thalgor’s men were beginning to tire as they fought an equally weary enemy.