Woundhealers Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  There was no time to waste; now it was certain that Amintor knew they were after him. The weather was still too bad to allow the aerial scouts to bring word of the Baron's current position, and perhaps allow a shortcut. In minutes the pursuit was going on as before, following the trail.

  That evening the Baron's own flying reptiles did manage to get into the air for a while, and back to him in his camp, bringing him news of the failed ambush.

  At least, he thought, listening to the reports as his beastmaster translated them, at least some ground had been gained on the pursuers. But that gain was certainly overshadowed by the fact that more than a third of his own total force had now been wiped out.

  When he had gleaned all the information that he could from the animals through their human trainer, a process that involved many questions and several patient rehearings, the Baron's face was grave. He had never believed that a leader ought to hide his feelings at all times from his subordinates. A commander in his situation would be thought a madman, or an absolute idiot, if he appeared to be unaffected by the loss of so many people. There was no getting around it. The attempted ambush had wasted nearly a third of his entire force. And the efficiency with which the ambush had been detected and crushed boded ill for the survival of the rest.

  Amintor was strongly minded to do an ill turn to whoever was responsible.

  There was one ray of hope: his pursuers, whoever they were, did not appear to be able to travel very fast. The reptiles reported that the Baron and his surviving people had been able to gain ground on them since the chase had resumed.

  From the scanty description that the winged scouts had been able to provide, he strongly suspected that his pursuer was Prince Mark of Tasavalta. Amintor knew Mark of old, and considered him an enemy, but would have much preferred him as an unsuspecting rather than an active one. And from what the reptiles had been able to communicate about the fight, the Baron had little doubt that the Sword in the Prince's hand was Shieldbreaker, which he was known to possess.

  None of this would be good news to Amintor's remaining people, and Amintor had not yet informed them of his conclusions.

  He would have to get a look at those who were chasing him to make sure who they were. Much would depend on making sure of that.

  Glancing around at the brighter people among his subordinates, the Baron decided that they were probably capable of making the same deductions he had made regarding the opposition they now faced. It would be a mistake to carry honesty too far-one could very easily do that. With an effort he brightened up, told his people what he thought was going on, and began the job of convincing them that they were still going to be able to survive-not only that, but win.

  "Well, it can't be any overwhelming army that's coming after us; the flyers couldn't be that far wrong about numbers. And whoever it is, for some reason, is not coming very fast. Very determined, because they broke the ambush-so if they're not moving fast, it's because they absolutely can't.”

  He looked around him. The faces of his followers still looked grim. Sometimes he wished he could be rid of them all. He added decisively: "We turn east tomorrow. I want to get a look at just what is coming after us, and how many of them.”

  Amintor's next step was to go into a close conference with his beastmaster and his enchantress to discuss just where the best place might be for this doubling back and observation.

  The two aides bickered with each other, as usual; neither of them was particularly competent.

  The Baron had already rejected the idea of splitting his force into two or three parts, or even scattering it into single trails hoping to reunite at some distant rendezvous. He suspected that if he tried that, the Prince might have some way of singling out and following his-the Baron's-trail. Still, Amintor might try splitting his people up, if everything else failed-but everything else had not failed yet.

  His enchantress, having somehow driven the beastmaster away, told Amintor: "The Prince pursues us because we have Woundhealer.”

  "Likely enough. Likely enough, but we can't be sure of even that as yet. Unless you have some proof in magic of what you tell me... ? I thought not. Tomorrow, as I say, we must get a look at him.”

  And the next day, Amintor, tired from a hard ride, refusing to allow his tiredness to show, did manage to get a look. Lying on his belly on the grass atop a gentle hill, he scanned the hunters' formation as they moved along his trail. They were less than a kilometer distant in a direct line, though if they continued simply plodding along his trail they were still many kilometers behind.

  The first thing that leaped to the Baron's attention as he inspected the Tasavaltans was the blue-green uniforms, confirming that Prince Mark was indeed his adversary. The second thing was the presence of the litter. Just the kind of all-important clue that the damned idiot reptiles could be expected to ignore.

  "Not your usual equipment for a difficult pursuit," he commented to the enchantress, who had crawled up to be at his side. "Considering it in conjunction with the fact that he's trying to get Woundhealer, what is your conclusion?”

  The woman said promptly: "That he was coming to the White Temple. That he has come a long way from Tasavalta, bringing with him someone in need of healing. That this person is unable to ride, or at least unable to ride well. That when the Prince reached the Temple, the Sword was already gone. And-”

  "Enough, enough. And now I would like to know whether you can confirm something I have heard about the ruling family of Tasavalta, which seems to me quite pertinent to our present situation?”

  Magic would not likely be required to answer that. The private affairs of the mighty were a constant topic of discussion among the high and low of all nations.

  The enchantress said: "That the Prince's eldest son has been a cripple since birth.”

  Amintor nodded. He was smiling.

  Chapter 11

  ALTERNATELY waking and sleeping all through the night, never quite sure at any given moment whether or not he was dreaming, Zoltan was carried steadily upstream at the pace of a modest walk. He was still sitting in the water and could feel the movement of it around his body, but he had no sensations of wetness or cold. This bizarre mode of transportation was soft and effortless, and whether he was borne up falls or rapids, or along stretches of the river that were almost level, the speed of it was unvarying.

  During one of Zoltan's wakeful periods he was clear-minded enough to realize that the stream had been maintaining an almost level course for an inexplicable distance. This made him wonder if he was still in the Sanzu, which he remembered as an almost endless string of falls and rapids. This stream might well be one of that river's small tributaries- or, for all he knew, he had been translated entirely to some realm of magic where all things, including rivers, were new and strange.

  Zoltan was now wakeful enough to take increasing interest in his mode of travel. The stream itself, he saw from close observation, was continuing to flow normally downhill. Only a small localized swirl or eddy, centered on Zoltan's body and perpetually bearing him along with it, moved in a direction contrary to nature. He supposed it was a weakened water elemental; the strange-looking wizard had hinted at something along that line. There were no other signs of enchantment. The trees and rocks and land along the shores were ordinary-looking objects, even though the total landscape that they made was unfamiliar.

  Eventually, as the eastern sky began to gray with morning, the forces that were impelling Zoltan upstream appeared to weaken. First his feet began to drag in mud, and then his bottom thumped against a rock. Shortly after that first jolt his upstream progress slowed noticeably. Then it stopped altogether and he sank to the bottom.

  Enchantment had now vanished totally. He was sitting in the cold water, little more than ankle-deep, of some stream he still could not recognize in the brightening daylight. He was certainly far from home, and lost. But he was free.

  Numbly, Zoltan judged that Karel's river-elemental, which must have been propelling him al
ong, had now died, or dissipated, or whatever such powers did when they reached the end of their existence.

  But who had that scrawny, crazy, gibbering wizard been? Like someone out of a dream-but it was no dream that here he, Zoltan, was, set free. Was the rescuing wizard some aide or ally of Karel's? That was hard to believe, from the way the peculiar man had talked. Karel himself, in disguise? That was impossible.

  Whoever the strange little magician was, Zoltan understood that he owed him his life.

  Sitting in the shallow stream, he became suddenly aware of a great thirst and turned himself over on all fours and drank. Then with a sigh of repletion he got stiffly to his feet and looked about him in the light of early morning. Still, nothing about the landscape looked familiar.

  All of Zoltan's limbs were tingling now as if he had hardly moved them for a week-which he supposed might be the actual explanation. But his legs were still able to support him. He waded out onto the southern shore of the small stream and started walking, his face toward the morning, assuming vaguely that his home must be somewhere in that direction. He looked ahead of him for the familiar hills but could not see them yet. At least the country was open, and progress easy.

  The girl came suddenly into his mind-not that she had ever completely left it. He was freed now of the enchantment that had made her an obsession, but he had not forgotten her. He seemed to remember having seen her change into a fish, and back again.

  Probably she wasn't human at all, but only a creation of her human master, the man who had bound Zoltan with spells and thrown him into the cave. Or possibly she owed her existence to that harder-to-define and even more frightening presence that had worn small, arm-sized wings and ridden much larger wings up into the night sky.... Zoltan shuddered and looked round him warily in the clear morning. It was hard to believe, here and now, that that had been anything but an evil nightmare.

  His imprisonment in the mud-cave had been more than a nightmare. His stomach certainly felt as if he hadn't eaten for a week.

  Presently he roused himself from speculation to find that the morning's new sun had somehow come around to his left, and he was walking south.

  He corrected his course, but in a few minutes, to his renewed surprise, the sun was on his left again.

  This time he stopped and stood thoughtfully for a moment. But there was nothing to do but try to go on.

  Again he corrected his course, and this time proceeded carefully, paying attention to his directions at every stride.

  Soon he realized that he was being guided by a gentle tilting of the ground. Even when the way to the east lay on a gentle downhill slope, the angle of the earth somehow reversed itself where he actually stepped on it. East became a perpetual climb, and south, the easy downhill course. This experience of the tilting earth was similar in a way to what he had felt when he was in the cave; yet in another way this was different, somehow purposeful. South was now always invitingly downhill, though when he walked south he never descended any lower than the surrounding plain. But east was forever uphill, and the slope under his feet became steeper and steeper the longer he tried to persevere in maintaining that direction.

  Home lay to the east. If he could be sure of anything he could be sure of that. Zoltan gritted his teeth and persevered. If this enchanted slope got any steeper he was going to have to climb it on all fours. His wet boots were drying now, and his feet had begun to hurt in them, but he plowed on anyway, climbing and climbing. All right, then, he would climb on all fours...

  He had just let his body lurch forward and gripped the earth with his two hands to crawl when a recognizable pair of boots, elongated toes comically turned up, came into view a few meters in front of his nose.

  Zoltan looked up to see a familiar figure in storybook wizard's conical hat and figured robe. The wizened face was angrily looking down, the gravelly voice shouted abuse at him.

  "Do you want the bad people to have you again, Zoltan? You're a dummy! Don't you ever want to get home to your mother?”

  Zoltan stopped, abashed. Slowly he stood up. Still facing east, he had to lean forward to keep his balance. He hadn't realized that this trick was his benefactor's doing also. "Sorry, sir. I'm only trying to get home. And my home is to the east of here.”

  The magician's face paled; no, it wasn't that, it was his whole figure, becoming faintly transparent. Yes, Zoltan could definitely see through the old man's image, out around the edges. But it shouted at him as loudly and vigorously as ever "Zoltan, you dum-dum, Zoltan! I'm trying to help you! I brought you as far as I could through the water, but now you have to walk. You can't go right home. There's something else you have to do first. Didn't I say that? Didn't I say?”

  None of this sounded at all to Zoltan like the sort of thing that any respectable wizard, or any elderly person, ought to shout. But Zoltan, above all, did not want to meet the bad people again.

  "Yes sir," he said. And with slumping shoulders he turned and walked on, in the way that he was being guided. It was easy walking that way-it was all downhill. When he looked around with another question, the figure of the wizard was gone again.

  Much of the morning had passed. Zoltan's boots-after he had paused to take them off, drain them thoroughly, and dry them as well as possible-were becoming wearable again. Walking south continued to be easy. He thought, from time to time, about trying to turn east again, but so far he hadn't quite dared. So he hiked on through an open but inhospitable landscape, going he didn't know where, and he was getting very hungry. The provisions he had stuffed in his pockets on leaving home had long ago been reduced to watery garbage.

  The pins and needles and the stiffness had worked out of his arms and legs by now. But now all of Zoltan's limbs, his whole body, were beginning to grow weak with hunger.

  He looked about him hopefully for fruit on the strange low bushes, or for any of the kinds of plants whose roots he knew were edible in a pinch. He had not yet reached the starving stage, where he would be willing to go grubbing after insects, but he wasn't sure that stage was far away. Nothing more appetizing than insects had appeared. And already his thirst was coming back. The land around him did not promise anything in the way of water.

  Except-yes. He was coming over a low rise of ground now, and straight ahead of him, perhaps a kilometer away, a short, straight line of fresh trees were just coming into view, like the boundary of an oasis.

  Maybe this was why the wizard had insisted that he go south. Keeping the trees in view, Zoltan held a steady pace.

  Presently, having crossed what seemed like several extra kilometers of barren landscape, he began to approach the supposed oasis closely. When Zoltan actually came within a stone's throw of the line of trees, he found them low and thick, making up a formidable thorny hedgerow a straight half kilometer or so in length. Their sturdy freshness certainly indicated a nearby source of water.

  Zoltan turned at a right angle and walked beside this tall hedge until he came to a small gap, where he cautiously pushed his way through. The barrier was not as thick or difficult as he had expected, and he discovered that he had just crossed the boundary of a surprisingly well-kept farm. The border hedgerow was much more pleasant to look at from inside. From this angle it was a flowering hedge, thick enough to keep livestock from straying, but he could catch glimpses of the desert outside. The barrier did not appear to be at all difficult for a human to push through, once you made up your mind that you really wanted to do it.

  Within the outer boundary of trees, the land was divided into fields and plots by shorter, thinner hedges. The entire farm, Zoltan saw, peering around him, extended over at least a square kilometer; it included pastures, orchards, cultivated fields planted in several kinds of crops, and, in the distance, a cluster of farm buildings. There were enough trees near the buildings to partially obscure them.

  Zoltan started walking in the general direction of the buildings, along a path that wound gently between the bordered fields. Meat-cattle grazed contentedly in a lus
h pasture. Then the lane that Zoltan was following broadened, leading him between more short hedges toward the small house and the farmyard. Even more surprising than the cattle and the pasture were the bountiful crops in the well-cultivated fields. Here and there he could see small irrigation ditches, which explained some of the difference between the land of the farm and that outside its boundaries.

  At a little distance he beheld a single human figure moving, hoe in hand, working its way methodically down a double row of some kind of vegetables, just where a plot of garden bordered on an orchard.

  Zoltan hesitated briefly, then turned aside from the cowpath and entered the field where the lonely worker labored. Treading carefully between the rows of vegetables-noticing in passing how healthy they all looked-he approached the man cautiously and saw nothing in him to be alarmed about. He was a bent figure, somewhat gnarled, with calloused hands and a sunburnt neck. Whether he was landowner, serf, or hired hand was not obvious at first sight; the man was dressed in rough clothing, but Zoltan had plenty of experience with powerful people who were disinclined to wear finery.

  The man, intent on his labor, did not notice Zoltan's approach. His back to Zoltan, he kept at his hoeing, the implement in his rugged hands attacking weeds, churning the rich black soil with a regular chuffing sound.

  Remembering his manners, Zoltan kicked a clod of earth when he was still a few meters from the man, making a slight noise. Then he cleared his throat and waited.

  The man looked round at him with only minor surprise. "Well! What be you doing here, then?" he asked mildly enough. His words came in what was certainly a country dialect, though Zoltan could not place its locality.

  "Trying to get home, sir." The sir was something of an afterthought; but the man's tone had certainly not sounded like that of a serf or slave.