Tyrant Trouble (Mudflat Magic)

by Phoebe Matthews

  I smelled it before I saw it, vegetarian that I am, that nauseating odor of roasting meat. We stood behind a door that opened to one of the many courtyards. I whispered, “Mutton cooking.”

  The fire was around a corner. It cast a moving shadow on the far wall. It was a low fire, probably banked coals beneath a roasting spit.

  We crept forward into the winter night. At the corner we both peered around the wall. A lone guard squatted by the fire. There was a shapeless hunk of meat on the spit. Pushed into the coals was a pot filled with something that did not bubble but gave off a thin curl of steam.

  Closer to the wall and to us were several tall jars.

  From somewhere past the guard and the courtyard's outer gate, we heard the low buzz of talk.

  “What's in the pan?” I whispered.

  “Drippings, probably. To dip bread.”

  “And in the jars?”

  “Mead, I should guess.”

  I yanked him back around the corner and out of sight of the guard. “I don't know what heat will do to the powder. Will they heat the mead?”

  “Shouldn't think so. That mutton is about ready. They'll want to eat.”

  “All right. I'll empty the box into the mead. Might not be enough to knock out anyone, but if it makes them at all ill, that'll do.”

  “Ill? Why?”

  “I told Erlan there'd been a plague. Everyone left to avoid the spread.”

  “He believed that?”

  “Also told him the fires were funeral pyres. Nance and Lor torched the far hillsides.”

  “We saw the smoke last night. You must be magic if he believed you.”

  I didn't explain about Nance's glider. That was her secret. And I certainly wasn't going to tell him that I had puked on his uncle's feet.

  “Give me the box,” he whispered.

  “No, I'm darker than you. Less apt to be seen in the shadows.” He opened his mouth to argue and I pressed my fingertips against his lips. “Tarvik, listen. They know I am here. If they catch me, they won't look for you.”

  “No, I won't let you.”

  “I'm not playing hero, honestly. They think I'm sick and have a deadly fever. None of them want to get near me. You need to go back to your camp so you can lead the fight against your uncle, in case this doesn't work.”

  And while he stared at me, trying to come up with an argument, I ducked away from him and slipped around the wall.

  The guard was half asleep, squatted on his heels by the fire. I watched him breathe in that slow rhythm, his eyes almost closed, his soldier body used to grabbing rest without quite losing consciousness. His clothes were shabby, battle-worn. In the dim light I could see raw scrapes on his face and hands.

  I moved silently a half step at a time, barely lifting my feet, one hand against the wall to steady myself. Nearby voices mixed with the low whistle of wind. With that thin background of sound, I took the little metal box out of my pocket. If it held nothing more than face powder, I'd made a bum choice.

  When I reached the first jar, I emptied the contents of the box into it. So that was done. It either had an effect or it didn't. For a moment I thought about the vial of liquid. Should I add it also? I put my hand back into my pocket, dropped the box and felt around for the vial.

  “Ho! You!”

  I froze. I could not even turn my head to look at him.

  Flattening myself to the wall, I pressed my hands against it. My feet wouldn't move, but what of it? There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and I had to hope Tarvik had the sense to get back to the secret passageway and close the door. I could perhaps stay alive for a while with chants and lies and who knew what. I could froth at the mouth and fall at their feet and pretend to be dying of fever.

  Does that sound brave? Hope so, because it's noble to go out like a hero, but the truth was, I had no choice. I could not possibly outrun the guard and if I did, there was an army of them in the outer yard.

  I felt him and smelled him as he leaned closer. I tried to roll my eyes, to look ill and contagious, and let my head fall sideways. I made some really disgusting sounds and if he came closer, fear and nausea would empty what was left in my stomach and the sounds would be real.

  He looked like every soldier, dirty, weary, frightened, his face slick with nervous sweat. He held his dagger a breath away from my throat. Questions slid across his face as he stared at me.

  “You,” he mumbled, his eyes unfocused. “Templekeeper.”

  The guard threw his weight against me, crashing me against the stone wall. My body screamed while I managed to choke back sound. I tried to break the impact, threw my arms behind me, felt a sharp pain slightly dulled by shock. He caught my hair and pulled it up until I thought my neck would snap, then swung me away from the wall toward the fire. My vision blurred.

  He opened his mouth to shout to his fellow guards and I knew my luck was over. Erlan was stupid, but not mindless. He would search my pockets and guess what I had done.

  The man's voice broke in a ragged gurgle of sound that died on the edge of a cry.

  I struggled to focus and saw an arm snaked around his neck from in back of him, the elbow forcing up his chin. A hand wearing a lot of gold rings clamped over his mouth.

  The man let go of me and I almost stumbled into the coals.

  Blood ran from my torn elbows, trailing down both arms. I bit back sobs, held in tears. This sort of rough stuff, it looks good in TV action shows and maybe people who tramp the wilderness expect some bruises, but it's not part of normal city living, at least not for me. Whimpering was my normal reaction and I knew that wasn't a choice. Not whimpering. Not howling.

  Tarvik hauled him toward the back wall and I saw the tracks the guard's heels made in the dirt.

  Diving at his feet, I grabbed his ankles, lifted them. It seemed like hours but could only have been seconds. We carried him between us, Tarvik's arms sliding around the shoulders to take most of the weight.

  “Where is he?” a voice shouted. “He's supposed to be here, watching the fire.”

  I froze and stared into Tarvik's widened eyes.

  We were dead. They would capture both of us and take us to Erlan. He would find the vials in my pocket, see his live and healthy nephew, and no matter how thick and stupid his brain, he would know I'd tricked him. That would be the end of us and the beginning of Erlan's pursuit of the missing residents of the city.

  “Looks about done,” another voice said, and I thought he was right, we were done.

  Tarvik's mouth clamped shut and I did likewise. He jerked the shoulders of our prisoner, lifting most of the man's weight by himself and still kept his one elbow wedged so tightly beneath the chin that the man could only make low choking sounds. I stumbled after, clinging to his ankles to prevent his feet from dragging.

  “I'll look around, he can't be far,” the first voice said.

  His companion said, “Gives me the creeps, fixing our food here, all those people dead. Ever see fever spread?”

  We pulled the guard into the passageway, dropped him on the floor and closed the door. I heard Tarvik drag the man across the floor, heard the body bumping against the stones, and didn’t want to guess why the man made no sound.

  When Tarvik reached a doorway, he opened it, pulled his prisoner into a dim room. I had lost any sense of direction and didn’t know where we were, other than in one of the many bedrooms.

  The guard moaned.

  “He'll come around unless I kill him,” Tarvik said. I tried to pretend I had not heard him.

  “Could you tie him up or something?”

  “And have him found?”

  “Maybe we could drug him. Oh. All I have left is the vial.”

  “Use it.”

  “But what if it is a poison?”

  “You can give him the vial or I can break his neck.” Tarvik smiled his wide toothy smile at me. I must have been crazy thinking I could read his face. He could not possibly be having smiley thoughts.

  The best I co
uld do was hope the liquid was a sleeping potion.

  The guard's eyes opened and he struggled, half-conscious, against Tarvik's grip. He was larger and heavier than Tarvik, his skin slick with sweat, his body twisting. He wrenched his head sideways, gasped, went still.

  Tarvik knew exactly how to hold him. I wondered if it was one of those lessons taught to barbarian sons along with sword fighting, how to disable and control large smelly opponents.

  Tarvik kept his elbow under the man's chin and with his other hand, he held his nose.

  I opened the vial and poured its contents into the open mouth.

  Tarvik held him until he passed out, either from the grip on his neck or from the drug. He went limp and slid to the floor.

  Tarvik said, “He is breathing, Stargazer, so stop worrying.”

  He caught my hand and led me into the castle hallway, which looked like every hall I had seen and so I didn't know where we were. We ducked in and out of rooms until we reached the one Tarvik wanted, went through it to another hidden entrance to the passageway, felt our way through the black, exited again, this time into a small inner courtyard with only one gate. The gate was bolted from the inside.

  “No one comes here,” he said.

  Like all the courtyards it was depressingly bare except for a long low bench. But there was a bit of light from the starry sky and it was warmer outdoors than inside the stone walls.

  My teeth were chattering and I must have looked about to pass out, because Tarvik suddenly wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into a warm hug, stroked the side of my face. Could he do that all at once? It seemed to me like he had a couple of extra hands.

  He smoothed my hair, pressed his mouth against my ear, whispered, “He will not die. We did not kill him. He will be fine. Please, don't cry.”

  I wasn't crying. Or I didn't know I was until he started brushing tears from my face. It wasn't so much fear as exhaustion, I think.

  With his hand under my chin, he turned me and pressed his forehead against mine, our eyes so close, all I could see was a blur.

  “Have you slept at all these last few nights?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Blinked your eyes a few times, yes?”

  I was so tired I leaned into his hug, clung to him, felt his body heat radiate through me until I stopped shivering.

  “It must be that I am warm that you like. I'm not sticky or black or even very soft,” he said.

  I moved far enough back from him to be able to see his face. “No. Who said you were?”

  “You did. You called me Tarbaby once and then you said that is what a tarbaby is. You also said a tarbaby is cute. Am I cute?”

  “Good grief!” I put my head back on his shoulder. “Do you memorize every word I say?”

  “I try to. Come on, I think you need to sleep.”

  He led me over to the bench, sat down, then pulled me down beside him. He wrapped my robe tightly around me and even arranged the hood up over my head. If I hadn't been so exhausted I might have argued.

  Somewhere on the trip through the passage he had snagged a jar of mead.

  Now he opened his robe and tugged out the hem of the short linen tunic he wore above his wool pants and boots. I was too tired to think, but the sound of ripping cloth made me watch. He tore off a strip, then dipped it in the mead.

  I couldn't even get up the strength to question him.

  Next he carefully rolled up a sleeve of my robe. My elbow was a bloody mess from its collision with the stone wall.

  He studied it, studied me, said, “Take a drink,” and held the jar to my lips. “Now.”

  Bossy, bossy, but I did it, drank a gulp, stared at him wondering what was next.

  He lifted my other arm, put it in front of my face, said, “Bite down on your sleeve. No, do not bite yourself, just the sleeve,” and he all but stuffed a wad of velvet sleeve into my mouth.

  “Try not to scream.”

  I wondered why and then he washed my elbow and I knew what he meant because, oh God, did I want to scream. Maybe it was the mead that burned, maybe just the cloth rubbing over the scrape.

  That fun experience was over in a minute or two and then, damned if the guy didn't switch arms, stuff my other sleeve in my mouth and clean up the opposite elbow.

  Huh. So whether or not they knew the names for bacteria, the barbarians did know about infection. I tried to keep my mind on all these puzzles. Better than decking him, which I would have enjoyed doing.

  When he was satisfied with his first aid project, he pulled me into a hug, kissed my forehead and cheeks, smoothed my hair, did a whole lot of soft murmuring about how brave I was and kind of reminded me of my grandmother. I didn't bother to tell him that.

  “Done torturing me?” I managed to ask.

  “Hush up,” he said and he sounded angry but I somehow got the impression he was angry with himself, not me.

  He pushed me down until I was lying on the bench with my head pillowed on his thigh, reached the length of me to tuck the hem of my robe in around my feet, then leaned his back against the wall. He kept one hand on my shoulder and it might as well have been his sword.

  Ah, not really, the sword had been heavy, sharp, threatening. The pressure of his hand was firm and somehow comforting.

  “Get some sleep now,” he said.

  “Are you going to sleep sitting up?”

  “Yes.”

  With no hope at all of sleeping, I closed my eyes, listened to his soft breathing, tried to relax.

  I woke hours later when the sky began to gray. I was alone on the bench, my head pillowed on something soft. When I sat up I heard myself moaning. Every surface of my body felt bruised. The scrapes on my arms burned. I spread open the rolled pillow and saw it was Tarvik's fur cloak.

  He was wandering around in the cold winter morning with nothing more than a sleeveless tunic over his pants and boots.

  Above the courtyard wall the open sky turned light, and there were faint drifts of smoke, probably from cook fires. The smell of roast meat lingered. There were no sounds other than those of any morning, rising wind, something creaking somewhere, chattering flocks of birds.

  I peered through the narrow crack at the edge of the gate and saw an empty outer courtyard. The gate bolt was still in place on the inside.

  Okay, time to head back the way we came, through empty rooms and down the lightless passageway until I saw the silhouetted form of Tarvik in an open doorway. I moved quietly up behind him.

  Without turning his head, he reached back, curled his arm around me and held me pressed against his back. Over his shoulder I could see across an open grassy expanse that stretched from the castle to the edge of the hilltop, far enough away that the men standing there didn't notice us. We were within sight, but we were in shadow. Erlan's army seemed to be gathering, sorting themselves into a ragged order, tying on their packs.

  Some were roping blankets to the few horses. Others collected weapons and piled them into carts. All of them stumbled with exhaustion, their hands shaking as they lifted and secured supplies.

  They looked like men who had not slept much, and as we watched I saw several rub their eyes and shake their heads.

  Tarvik stepped back with me glued to him, and quietly closed the passage door. My eyes had adjusted to the light and now I could see nothing in the corridor. I felt him turn, lean toward me.

  With his breath warm on my face, he said softly, “They are packing up and leaving.”

  “Are they? Why?”

  “I don't know yet. Come on, let's look.”

  I pushed his cloak against him and he took it and put it on.

  We moved methodically through the passageway, again going in and out of rooms, checking doorways, watching for moving shadows, listening for any sound at all from inside or outside. The castle seemed deserted. But each time we went into a walled courtyard, and the castle was edged with a maze of those empty little useless pockets that contained nothing more than a bench or fir
e pit, we could hear voices from the outer grounds.

  They spoke in low tones. Most of what we heard were instructions on how to carry or fasten something. It took them the better part of the morning.

  When we reached the courtyard with the mead-filled jars, they still stood against the far wall. The spit above the fire pit was empty, the ashes cold.

  Two warriors were in the courtyard. My breath caught and I almost turned and fled. I felt Tarvik stiffen at my side.

  They sat against a far wall, their eyes open and looking at us, their heads tilted and sagging toward their shoulders. I expected them to shout or jump up to chase us.

  Tarvik grabbed his dagger from his belt. I put out a hand to stop him.

  “You don't need that,” I whispered and walked over to them.

  Neither moved. They breathed through open mouths. They stared from unseeing eyes. They looked the way Tarvik had looked after Alakar drugged him.

  We hurried to the jars and peered into them. They were empty, the one into which I had dropped the powder as well as the other two.

  After that, we stayed out of sight behind walls and doorways. Out on the open grass we saw several more men lying unconscious, ignored by the others.

  “How long will they be like that?” Tarvik whispered.

  “If it is the same potion you drank, a day or two, maybe longer.”

  “Erlan must think they're sick.”

  “And is leaving them behind to die.”

  Tarvik sighed. “They won't die, Stargazer. You know they won't. I didn't.”

  I don't know why I was upset. The whole purpose of drugging the mead was to convince Erlan that the castle was infected with plague. That's what I had told him to make him want to leave and it appeared to be what was happening.

  For some reason, I'd assumed he would take his drugged warriors with him.

  “What will we do with them?”

  Tarvik shrugged. “As soon as the army leaves, we'll have to find all of those left behind and tie them up.”

  “You can't keep men tied up forever.”

  “When my blacksmith returns, we will chain their ankles.”

  “Like slaves?”