by Susan Dexter
It will be dark.
Druyan patted Valadan’s neck. “They’ll still find the path. They’ve been here before—or places just like this.” It was the same story all over Esdragon—where a river met the sea, you found a settlement. Some were on the coast. Some were not. Go upstream, go as far as your ship or any other could, and there was the town or the holding, sited to take advantage of the river’s access to both sea and land. On a cliffy coast, often that was the only place with room for building. Probably the raiders just looked for a river now and probed up it, needing no other guide to the places they’d plunder. Sometimes, as at Keverne, there was a fortress to defend the river and the town—but all too frequently there was nothing at all to protect a settlement. Attack could really come only from the sea, and till the raiders had begun arriving scant years ago, there had been none of that to fear.
It will be dark. Valadan repeated. The stallion pawed vigorously, sending heavy clods of earth flying back. They will not see us.
“That’s what I thought,” Druyan said. “We could hide—we know the marsh.” Protect the folk that way, but not the farm itself.
It will be dark in the barnyard as well. Valadan raked the earth once more, eagerly.
Druyan realized he was trying to offer her a plan, beyond hiding in the mud and the dark. She pursued the logic of it. Could they, having moved everything they might to safety, trick the raiders away from the rest? Defend Splaine Garth as if they had great numbers and nothing to fear, making huge amounts of noise and confusion?
Should a dozen horses rush by them in the dark, strangers will not know. that only I bear a rider, Valadan offered.
Add to that five people making noise from various directions, with two sheepdogs barking and darting and biting . . . It might work. “We should put the brood mares and the cows out far enough to be safe, but we could let the oxen loose, too,” Druyan said. In the dark, a man run down by a bullock wasn’t likely to know he hadn’t been set upon by a horseman. The raiders would never guess that the defenders were almost all women and half-grown chi1dren—if they didn’t see them. They’d not expect a iight from such; the helpless would give up and be robbed, so those folk who dared fight must, by logic, be formidable.
A bluff. That was all it came out to, in the end. Druyan wheeled Valadan about and headed back with all his speed, to do what she could to bolster the mad scheme before she reasoned her way out of using her only hope.
It was twilight when Pru and Lyn arrived, with the dogs in tow. Dalkin and Kellis were just back—Druyan had set them to moving everything vulnerable to fire out of ready reach. There was naught to be done about the thatch on the kitchen roof—they’d just have to hope that the morning rain had dampened it sufficiently to offer some protection. Every window was shuttered as if against a storm, and most of the doors were barred—one or two were designated as ways of retreat if such were needed. Every bucket and pail was filled and standing close to a wall, where it wouldn’t be easily trampled or upset—Druyan was still thinking about firefighting, but Kellis said that if the raiders had torches, they might be able to douse them and further confuse men on strange ground by forcing them to approach in darkness.
The tide had been flooding in, and up the river, for an hour. Druyan rode for the headland again, lingered only an instant before racing back to tell Kellis he’d been right even in the gathering gloom the river’s surface sparkled, and she had seen plain the dark shape thrusting up against the current, with the tide. The raiders would soon be ashore. And once landed, it could not take them more than a few moments to find their way to the spot where Kellis’ vision had placed them. Druyan expertly opened her gate from horseback, then closed and latched it behind her. She chased away the thought that she might never need to do that again—might never have a gate to shut or a farm to fence.
Enna and the others crowded close as she dismounted.
“They’re here,” Druyan reported tersely. She didn’t wait for startled exclamations. “Here’s what we’re going to do about it. With this one thing said, first—I don’t want anyone dead over this. We’ll run if we have to. You all know the ways.” They had blocked some of the spaces between buildings with barrels and such, to confuse the raiders, leaving always a retreat for themselves. But it might be hard to remember where that retreat was, in a confused fight.
“Lady—” Kellis touched her sleeve.
Druyan thought she could make out the glow of torches from the direction of the river. Too soon, she chided herself. They ’ll hardly be ashore yet. It was her own fear she was seeing. Valadan had his ears pricked in that direction, every sense straining, and more acute than her own. She could rely on him to give true warning.
“Lady, I can’t do anything that will work upon their weapons,” Kellis said. He shook his head disparagingly. “My people never could—it cost us dear. But . . . I can try something else, a charm that might help. If I can work a Mirror of Three, then whatever they see or hear of us will seem to them as if it is three times as great. In the dark—”
It will be dark, Valadan agreed, pleased, tossing his head in approval.
“They’ll think we have the advantage!” Druyan exclaimed, hearing the two schemes mesh, seeing something like the possibility of hope. She leapt to catch it. “Do it, Kellis! Dalkin, fetch every tool we can tight with out of the barn—shovels, hoes—anything you’d hate to be hit with. Girls, Enna, get the pans from the kitchen-the big ones, the ones that will make a clatter when they’re hit. Take them over behind the smokehouse, and when I give the word, run out beating them for all you’re worth! Hug the shadows, don’t ever let them have a clear sight of you. And watch yourselves—the horses and I will be coming from behind the barn. They’ll follow Valadan, but don’t expect them to dodge around you—keep clear, for your lives.”
Now she could see torchlight, surely? Valadan snorted no, and Druyan realized the darkness was thicker than it ought to have been, so early—the sky had clouded over, and a low rumble informed her that she had mistaken lightning for the torch flames she anticipated.
Well, a storm would be one more weapon, and they needed every one. “Kellis, where are you going to be doing . whatever you called it?”
“Roof,” he answered slowly, considering. “Kitchen, I think.” He climbed onto the rain barrel and peered upward. When Dalkin staggered laden out of the barn, Kellis waved him over, said something Druyan couldn’t hear, and Dalkin ran off again. Kellis turned back to the roof, scrambled the rest of the way up. “Hand me a bucket,” he called. “I’ll watch for sparks if I can.”
Druyan grabbed a pail and lifted it up till he could reach the handle. Just then Dalkin fetched back, dragging a lumpy sack behind him. “Send that up, too,” Kellis directed.
By the stench, she knew it for the last of the potatoes and turnips, not yet consigned to the compost heap. Missiles now, evidently. Kellis balanced the sack over the peak of the roof and knelt on the thatch, trying to secure a similar equilibrium for himself.
Druyan saw him begin tugging loose stems out of the thatch, breaking the straws so that each one became many. Another time she’d have been interested further, eager to see how the charm worked and what else he did; now all she could think was that Kellis would be lucky not to fall off the steep roof and break himself into many pieces, the moment his attention shifted from his balance to his spellcasting. There was no charm would work at all if its caster couldn’t relax and concentrate—maybe that was why he wanted the vegetables to throw, a second line of offense in case the first proved unworkable.
Beside the gate, Valadan was plunging. Druyan saw again that distant glow. Now it is torches, the stallion said urgently.
“They’re coming,” Druyan relayed, loud enough only so her own nearby folk would hear. She saw no one. That was as it ought to be—it meant all her people were in their chosen places, hidden. She mounted and rode behind the great dark shape of the barn, where the dozen riding and plowhorses waited, and the team of oxen
. She slipped off their restraining halters, one by one. Valadan could control them. She didn’t want any of the beasts trailing a tangling rope.
Silence—save for another far-off roll of thunder. The storm might be deflected by the headland or the greater mass of the Promontory farther away, might not swing their direction. That would be a pity—wind and rain would be such a help. . .
The torchlight was near, and Druyan could hear voices, too, or thought she could. One of the horses stamped restlessly. And all at once she heard the commonplace clucking of a chicken, as a hen that had evaded Enna’s roundup chose that moment to stroll across the barnyard, heading fussily for her roost. She hoped no one else heard the bird—it would be just like Enna to send Dalkin out to rescue it just as the raiders arrived.
The torches were very near. Druyan could see their light gleaming on metal edges, just as Kellis had said. Then the light went out of sight, blocked by the barn. Her mouth went dry. Her hands, tense on Valadan’s reins, felt very cold. He shifted a little beneath her, as if to draw her attention to the moment, away from disheartening fear. Had it been like this for Travic and his men? she wondered. Or did she feel worse because women did not make war, and she was out of her element?
It is not wrong to be aware, Valadan assured her. She saw his ears prick sharply forward.
The gate shattered open, battered wide by a great blow that broke open the latch. There were shouts-some of them at least threats and bluster directed at the landholders, the owners of the mined gate and the farm behind it. Now was the moment they should have appeared, first confused, then swiftly terrified, to be vanquished and pillaged, sent rumiing before they had a chance to think about it.
“Who’s there?” Druyan called loudly, bold as ever Travic would have been, angry about the gate, which would likely take a whole day to mend. Anger helped, she found. It was a hot strength warming her chilled blood. “What do you want?” she demanded.
“Hungry men,” came a bold answer to her first question, amid coughs of laughter. “Come for our supper, mother.”
“You can eat cold steel,” Druyan said under her breath, and shouted the signal. “At ’em, men!”
On cue, the clatter started up behind the smokehouse, swirled into the farmyard. Druyan gave Valadan a quite unneeded squeeze with her calves, and he sprang into a gallop, neighing as he went. Eight draft horses, four palfreys, and two bullocks streamed behind him, thundering around the corner of the barn and across the yard.
There wasn’t time to take a count of the raiders as they swept through them. The men hadn’t bunched, but jumped in every direction to avoid trampling. Druyan had an impression of several, probably less than a dozen but surely close to that number. Big men, armed mostly with swords and round shields with shiny, light-catching bosses at their centers. They wouldn’t need heavier weapons, against farmers. One raised a torch high, and Druyan took a swipe at him with the mattock she clutched in her right hand-it didn’t chop flesh so well as soil, but it did well enough. There was a howl and the torch got dropped, which had been her objective. She knew her own ground in the dark. The marauders did not.
The wild-eyed horses created all the mayhem any general could have desired. Valadan tried to regroup them for another charge—Druyan, trying to keep her eyes everywhere at once, saw Dalkin slash a hoe blade across the ankles of a raider who had his back turned, then dart away into the noisy shadows where Pru and Lyn were clashing pots and screaming tit to rouse the long dead.
The bullocks, while not so easily excited as the horses, decided they nonetheless craved the safety of their normally quiet pen, and sought it at a lumbering canter. Druyan went after them fast, before the raiders could see that part of the "mounted men" were only a brace of plow oxen. She yelled every sort of cry she could think of, particularly the names of the men who wenen’t there but should have been, and took more swings with the mattock whenever she saw an opportunity.
The raiders were beginning to put their backs to the buildings, which gave them leisure to look about. That would have been unfortunate, and the problem was dealt with by every shift possible. The dogs chivvied their legs, dodging sword blows as easily as they did cow kicks on a normal day. Enna slammed a frypan solidly into a raider’s head and knocked him nearly off his feet, though she lost hold of the pan and had to scramble away without it. Dalkin rained blows with his sharp hoe. There was only one torch still alight, and that went out as Kellis got lucky with his water pail. He followed up that shower with a malodorous rain of turnips.
The horses were out of even Valadan’s fonnidable control, dashing madly wherever they pleased, mostly wanting to escape the noise and the strangers and even each other. When one crashed a banicade, it did not return, and the others were apt to follow it and be lost to the defenders. Valadan’s own charges were more effective—he willingly went at his targets with hooves and teeth, and ’twas all Druyan could do to keep in her saddle. They chased one raider as far as the gate and sent him flying over it, but they couldn’t do likewise with the others.
Three of them had managed, Druyan saw with sinking heart, to group despite her efforts. The now-panicked horses were running around them instead of scattering them, and ’twas growing plain indeed that they were merely loose horses. A fourth raider joined his friends, and he had Pru fast by her collar despite Meddy’s leaping and barking at his back. There was another downpour of vegetables, halfrotted potatoes this time, followed by frantic chanting.
Druyan rode to Pru’s rescue, swinging the mattock like a sword. Out of nowhere a bullock came bawling, big as a cottage, and slammed into Valadan’s near shoulder so that the stallion all but fell. Druyan shot helplessly off over l1is right side, to land with a great thump against the horse trough.
The impact drove all the breath out of her. Dazed, Druyan saw Valadan rearing and striking out with his forefeet, dropping down to avoid—barely—a sword cut. Struggling to fill her lungs, she saw Enna dash for the kitchen door-forgetting it was barred, not one of the several escapes they’d chosen. Druyan tried to warn her, but her shout was only a wheeze. Enna tugged uselessly at die door, then turned at bay, and Dalkin leapt to her side, swinging a sickle in either hand, which was stupid—he’d be more likely to cut himself than slash a raider. Druyan tried to get up, but her limbs answered her sluggishly, as if she was beneath deep water.
A fifth man joined his fellows, and they all held their swords at the ready, impervious to attack from most directions now. Kellis’ chanting from the roof had ceased, and there was only Lyn still desperately clashing pans. Most of the horses had either escaped or were clumped together by the smokehouse. None was still running.
A tendril of wind brushed Druyan’s bruised cheek. Tears sprang to her eyes—the storm had passed them by. If only they’d had its help, perhaps they wouldn’t have failed.
A sixth stranger appeared from behind the barn, dragging Lyn by her yellow hair. Meddy was barking as if she’d lost her wits. There was a curse, and then she began to yelp.
Druyan put her lips together. She had barely been able to draw a breath in, but she had enough air for one oddly pitched whistle.
Valadan heard and swung toward her. So did something else, farther away and swifter yet.
A great, icy gust of wind came howling through the gap between the buildings. It had not even died before a counterblast ripped through from the other side. Both gusts raised dust—Enna dodged away under its cover, snatched up a pan, and jumped back to Dalkin’s aid. Rook’s sharp teeth found an ankle, and all at once Pru was loose. Lyn’s captor let go his hold of her as he turned toward his shouting mates. Meddy flung herself at him, sending him sprawling.
The wind howled like a starving wolf. Thatch lifted off the kitchen roof, there were great stinging pebbles mixed with the choking dust. Valadan reached Druyan’s side, and she scrambled back into his saddle. Two of the draft horses, used to working as a team, rallied to Valadan’s call andigalloped at the little knot of men. Dalkin was yelling and
running toward them, too, his twin weapons waving.
Now the rain—not gentle drops, but a virtual sheet of falling water, as if the lightning that flashed above had ripped open the belly of the cloud. The wind drove it sideways as it fell, and it struck like slashes of a dagger blade. Thunder cracked, and Druyan flung back her head and screamed encouragement to the wind, squeezed her legs about Valadan to send him running with the storm.
Kellis yelled something from the roof—Druyan thought at first he was in fear of the wind, but he yelled it three times, and all at once there seemed to be thirty horses running with Valadan, and as they swept through the gate at the raiding party’s heels, she wondered where the army had come from, with their swords and spears and clashing armor, fooled herself by Kellis’ illusions.
Lightning hit the tree at the end of the lane just as they reached it—Valadan sat back on his haunches and slid to a desperate halt as branches fell in front of his nose, and Druyan felt every hair on her head lifting and crackling, like a cat’s fur on a dry winter’s day. The crash of thunder—just overhead—deafened her for an instant. She steered Valadan around the shattered tree and begarito gallop down the lane, but he halted again, in air so thick with rain as to be nearly solid water, ears flat against the lash of the wind.
They have gone, he said, sounding disappointed.
Mending
The storm that saved them cost Splaine Garth three venerable apple trees, one beehive, and half the kitchen roof-the last doubly unfortunate, as the storm took the best part of a week to blow itself out and considerable rain fell in the meantime. Kellis got blown off the roof with the thatch, and came out of the adventure with a lump on his head and a much-bruised shoulder. No one else was injured, i though the wet weather made Enna pay dearly for her active part in the defense.
