The Wind-Witch

by Susan Dexter

  “I don’t remember peaceful moments spent watching the waves, yesterday? She waved a hand. “Let it be, Kellis. Once a day’s enough.”

  “I don’t want to be wrong.” His jaw tensed. “My head may have been half split, but my ears worked just fine. I heard exactly what the captain said.”

  So that was it. And, Druyan thought, a very legitimate concern for a man with Kellis’ liabilities.

  “The captain is my brother,” she said. “I can deal with him. I got you into this, and I haven’t forgotten that.”

  “There will be others feel the same way.” He didn’t look especially relieved.

  “I don’t say you’re foolish to want to stay out of Robart’s way,” Druyan soothed. “I think it’s a fine idea. Sensible as sunlight? She let her smile fade. “Now be sensible about this, too. You can’t chase after a vision till you drop—you tried that before, and we both know it doesn’t work. It’s even less likely to work right now. You’re tired, and your head hurts. Give yourself a chance. Catching the wind, I think you named it?”

  Kellis frowned fiercely, but Druyan could see that he had given in. “If you’re worried about Robart’s threats, the best thing I can advise is to keep out of his reach. I never said that you had to escort me.” Of course, she’d never known he could.

  “Does that mean you’ll do what your brother asks, and come home when you’ve passed on the warning?” Kellis inquired sweetly, his wolf-gold eyes ever so innocent.

  Not a few of the places they rode to warn were too small to own formal names, insignificant even to those who made their homes there and never previously visited by post riders. There were neither towns nor harbors for landmarks. Druyan might at best recognize a stretch of coast, perchance some rocks leaning back from the surf as if they hated being splashed by the tide. Hungry ship crews landed at such spots to steal themselves a meal, no more complex objective than that in their hearts. It was a hard threat to meet effectively—twice the Riders turned up too late to offer anything beyond sympathy and hopeful promises of future action. Twice in a row, that happened to be, and Druyan remembered with dread what Robart had vowed, what he’d promised Kellis about betrayals.

  It was mischance, not betrayal, of course, but convincing Robart of that might have proved tricky. Fortunately, her brother had been riding the nether reaches of the post riders’ route, working his way back toward the Darlith coast, and Kellis was as safe as he was likely to be—considering that a wolf continued to follow at Druyan’s heels and go darting among cold iron weapons that would shed man’s blood or a wolf ’s with equal ease.

  The Chief-captain rejoined them during their defense of a hamlet grown up round a brace of tanneries, enterprises that had made their owners both prosperous and vulnerable. The place stank to heaven, even without the smoke of the fires the raiders had set to create confusion. Druyan saw her brother all at once through the haze, his jaw clenched because his eyes had just lit upon her face. The message was plain as any Rider ever delivered, even unspoken—she’d disobeyed him.

  Robart came riding over to repeat it, flat out, in case she had not properly read the look. But as he arrived at Valadan’s left flank, Yvain rode up on the right, with one salute for his senior officer and another for Druyan herself.

  “I’m going,” Yvain reported to Robart. “Questions asked if I don’t. Our schedule has always been . . .flexible . . . hour to hour, but there’ll be notice taken if it gets much more irregular, Captain.”

  “Aye.” Robart nodded and sheathed his sword. He looked about, at scurrying townsmen. “This is over. Get yourself gone, to where you’re supposed to be. I’m late myself.”

  Druyan held her peace and indeed her breath, in case the press of time should force Robart to put up his lecture to her as he’d just put up his weapon. Thankfully, Kellis was nowhere in sight. If he saw Robart first, he’d make himself scarce.

  Yvain gave his stallion’s sloping shoulder a pat. “This can’t work much longer,” he said in a conversational tone tinged with regret. “The horses aren’t holding up. We’re riding them farther—and harder, to make it look as if the routes are ridden just as usual, with no gaps unaccounted for. The difference is too much for the poor beasts to make up for, even if you don’t take the fighting into account. They’re losing condition. No one’s noticed yet that the roads seem to be taking an unusual toll of our horseshoes this year, but that will come! At present the horses only want rest, but matters can go very much the worse in less time than I’d care to contemplate? Stressed horses could succumb to colic and founder overnight.

  “You need remounts,” Druyan said, daring Robart’s attention to state the obvious. She wondered why they didn’t have spare horses, and use them. She knew the Riders by their mounts as well as by their faces, and they all looked tired, dispirited.

  Robart barked a laugh, but Yvain couiteously answered her. “That we do, Lady. But we shan’t have them—our duke’s bound he’ll sell such ‘excess’ stock to pay for his ships. We’re lucky to keep what we’re sitting on. I own this fellow myself—else I’d not have him. And he’s fortunate I’ve another courser to share his duties, waiting for me at Tolasta. Most of our beasts won’t get that relief.”

  “Our uncle hasn’t poked his nose out of Keverene in a year,” Druyan said, wondering if they’d overlooked that. “Does he know how many head he’s got in his herd?”

  “No, but Siarl does,” Robart said, squashing her hope before she spoke it.

  “Siarl? Tavitha’s husband?” Druyan asked, baffled.

  “The Constable of Esdragon,” Robart explained. “The duke’s herds are in his charge.”

  How do you suppose he feels about them being sold?’ Druyan wondered aloud.

  “He’s probably not overly joyful,” Yvain said wickedly. “Siarl’s no fool.”

  Robart scowled. “What are you suggesting—that we invite him to put his head on the block for us? Maybe you two don’t realize it, but we’re talking treason.”

  Druyan looked around. The other Riders, four of them, had come up, though not quite joined their leaders’ conference. There seemed a lot of men about, clad in sea blue and gray. “Isn’t this?” she asked.

  Her brother winced. “I’d like to think there’s some way it isn’t.”

  “Maybe Siarl would like to think that, too,” Druyan said.

  Tavitha’s husband was a big man, extremely fair of face and hair. Constant exposure to weather in the course of his duties had left Siarl’s skin a deep pink and bleached out his brows till they sat over his blue eyes like two tufts of shom fleece. His lashes were pale and nigh invisible, so that his eyes looked oddly unprotected—particularly once the constable heard why his brother and sister by marriage had come to call on him.

  “I’m under orders,” Siarl said carefully, moving his earthenware goblet about as if ’twas a chesspiece. “The brood mares stay, and any late sucklings at heel. Everything else is offered if there’s a buyer interested.”

  Druyan was too shocked to speak. The duke’s line horses were Esdragon’s greatest pride. To sell so many at once was not merely to wound but to destroy a breeding program that had run more than a hundred carefully recorded years.

  “When’s this grand horse fair to be held?” Robart asked, with sympathy. “Next spring?”

  Siarl snorted, like one of his stallions. “The fair’s always been held late in the spring—show off the new foal crop, the young bloodstock, that’s the point—as soon as the winter coats are shed out and the grass has greened up, so they’re fat and sleek and looking fine. Only this year there was no fair, by ducal decree. Brioc’s shifting it to the autumn, so that this year’s foals will be well weaned and ready for sale with the rest. He wants to keep nothing back, if ’twill bring him gold.”

  “Lucky for him the herds are pastured far enough inland to be safe,” Druyan said acidly. “By autumn they might be the only wealth Esdragon has left.”

  “It’s true, then? He’s selling them all
to trade for warships?” Siarl shook his head in wonderment, lifting his cup to his lips.

  “He spoke of ships to me,” Druyan said, “when I asked him for help against the raids. Brioc didn’t mention the horses, just wanting the warships, to protect the coast. He asked me what sort of timber Splaine Garth could give him.”

  Siarl choked on his wine. “Is the man blind? There’s never been a ship’s mast grown in Esdragon. Our trees don’t yield warships. We’re lucky to have fishing smacks, and a lot of those are built of drifted-in timber.”

  “Ships are all Brioc sees, no matter what he looks at,” Robatt said disgustedly, running his finger through a puddle of spilled wine, which lay on the table like blood.

  “How does he think to crew these ships, once he’s built them?” Siarl grumbled. “A fishing boat’s a far cry from a warship; we’ve no sailors can do what he intends.”

  “I’m sure Dimas has some thoughts on that,” Robart answered softly.

  “That’s where this comes from, then? Sell off my horses so Dimas can play fleet captain?” Another stallionlike snort—Siarl knew Dimas too well. “Sell them cheap at that, flooding the market that way. What happens when his fleet’s sunk—and you know there’ll he losses, those sea raiders are cruel fighters—and there’s nothing else to sell?”

  “There’s the mines,” Robart said helpfully.

  “If those mines brought in that well, he’d be leaving the horses alone, wouldn’t he?” Siarl shook his head. “I don’t like what I see of our future, Robart. I would I was Brioc’s age, and unlike to live as witness to the full disaster. And I’ve three sons . . .”

  “Perhaps we can forestall that sort of future,” Druyan offered. She spoke, carefully, of the work the post riders had done thus far, using their own resources to accomplish unofficially what Brioc’s policies would not allow them to do openly, what the duke’s army was not able to do. When she had finished, Siarl was looking at her with frank amazement, his white brows lifted up very high.

  “You’d heard nothing about this, then?” Robart asked. “That’s most reassuring.”

  “Nary a rumor. You’ve kept your secrets very well, Captain.”

  “Proves the saying, that it’s only true tidings if a post rider passes it on.”

  “We want to continue,” Druyan said, ignoring Robart’s digression, though she smiled at it.

  “If your uncle leams of this . . .” Siarl’s white brows moved to meet one another.

  “We’re taking every care that he doesn’t,” Rohan assured him. “That’s taking an awful toll on our horses.”

  “So you’d like remounts from me?” Siarl frowned in constemation as he understood. “You know I can’t let you have them. There’s a tally stick for every horse in the herd. If I gave you half what you need, the shortage would be noticed. Most years, not a problem, but this year—”

  “Swap with us,” Druyan said coolly.

  “What?” Even Robart stared at her, uncomprehending.

  “You can’t tell me Brioc knows one horse from another,” Druyan went on earnestly. “All he knows is how many he’s got. So let us bring you our horses before they’re badly out of condition, and take fresh stock in exchange. It’s a fair trade. The post riders’ horses mostly came out of the ducal herds in the first place.”

  “So they did.” Siarl smiled.

  “Your tallies will balance.”

  “Assuming you don’t lose a horse.” Siarl looked concerned. “You’re talking about horses hard-ridden, going into fighting. And most of them aren’t trained for it.”

  “None of them are trained for it.” Druyan shook her head. “Siarl, I won’t put your head on the block—I won’t make Tavitha’s children fatherless. If we lose a horse, I will send you one to replace it from Splaine Garth. We breed good strong stock—I wish you could see this year’s crop! Most of the older horses went with Travic and his men and got swallowed up into Brioc’s army, or we’d be using them first, for the Riders—but we can send you something on four legs to make up your numbers, even if it’s only greenbroke. Depend on it.”

  “Does Travic know about that?” Robart asked, frowning at her.

  “Travic won’t mind,” Druyan said, quite truthfully.

  The Battle for Sennick

  There came a spate of quiet days, when Kellis saw nothing of raiders in the dark bowl of water—nearly a full sennight of them Part of that blessed lull could be explained by the water falling out of the sky—heavy rains made sea travel in open boats less than pleasurable, even for men bent on plunder. If there were raiding parties bound for Esdragon, they might have put their boats in at some deserted, unsettled cove to wait upon favorable winds and drier weather. Those already near were unlikely to venture forth, either.

  The rain made the crops prosper. The respite renewed everyone’s hopeful spirits. Druyan threaded a new warp upon her great loom and nurtured a dream that there would be no more raids, that the fierce sea-folk should have at last learned from their many defeats that Esdragon would not lie before them with her throat exposed, that she was no easy victim. She wove stripes of blue, and gray, soft greens, and wet-slate black, all the shades of the Duchy of Esdragon, and the cloth grew by an ell a day, as if ’twere a magic web, a sorcery to safeguard them all. . .

  But it was not.

  The great fleet of raiders did not strike all at the selfsame place. Few spots in Esdragon were so rich as to offer spoils enough to content a dozen captains and their crews all at once. The raiders split their forces and attentions, so that each dawn some new spot was under siege, or a port that had been visited once before knew trouble again. The Riders mustered every village watch and rode frantically to turn out any town garrison that would hearken to their warnings—or could. Splaine Garth was not alone in losing men to the duke’s army. All along the coast, defenses were weakened by the measures meant originally to succor them.

  There were too few post riders to stand and fight as they had done in those now fondly remembered early days, when merely to lift a sword had seemed enough to ensure their success and raiders were put to flight by any show of force. They were suddenly thrust back upon the tactic Robart preferred all along for his sister Druyan—warn, ride, and rouse local forces as swiftly as might be—and then they were forced back to fighting once again, because there was no one else to do it, in places like the market town of Sennick.

  The “nick”—the valley that gave Sennick its name—was gentle-sloped to either side of the river that had cut it, and so there was room to either side for settlement and commerce. The banks of the river, the edges of the harbor where the river met the sea—the town had spread all along them. Unlike marshy places such as Splaine Garth, Sennick’s land was underpinned with sturdy rock, and building was possible at any point.

  There had been talk in past years of building some sort of a wall about the town, but no one had been able to devise a way of walling off the river that would not divide one half of the town from the other half, and ’twas Sennick’s river that the raiders used, rowing up it boldly in the sunfall light, abandoning the surprise of the dawn attack in favor of the concealment and confusion that oncoming night would offer them.

  Eight riders were there, lending mobility to the town forces if they could not offer strength. Sennick’s narrow streets were no places to attempt massed charges—not that there were enough horsemen to ply that tactic anyway. The Riders tried to stay in pairs, to use the height and speed their horses lent them to see trouble sooner and bring Sennick’s fighting men afoot to bear upon it. They kept a watch for fines, as well, and sent parties with buckets where they were worst needed.

  There was a plan to their work, conceived for the moment though it necessarily was. But in action that plan resembled chaos more than organization, at least to Druyan’s eye. The Riders, beset from every side, were reacting as best they might, struggling to force the raiders back upon their ships, and one moment’s seeming success might be proved a ruse the very next insta
nt, as a building went up in Haines just after they’d thought a whole street was swept clear of the sea thieves.

  They were slow to recognize that the fires were now a more deliberate tactic than they had previously been. Some of the raiders had been lessoned by previous repulses, and now Sennick’s defenders were kept very busy firefighting on several fronts. And while they sought to douse one blaze, its kindlers were a dozen streets away, hot at their work again.

  With many streets aflarne, the Riders could no longer make full use of their mounted speed. Streets not entirely blocked were nonetheless a terror to the bravest horse. Valadan would go anywhere Druyan desired him to, but none of the others had battled chimeras in its first youth, and though the post riders’ mounts trusted their riders, they would hardly face flames for them. Kernan’s black-leg gray disobeyed his master for the first time in five years, plunging sideways out of a street lined by dancing yellow flames, shying with such force that the post rider was unseated and sent sprawling onto the unforgiving cobbles, where he lay stunned.

  Druyan hastily dismounted and raised the captain to his feet, while Valadan bullied the gray back toward them.

  “They’re learning,” Kernan said, and spat blood out of his soot-framed mouth as he climbed to his feet. “We can’t fight the fires and them—and they know it! There were torches through the house doors first thing.”

  “What about their ships? If we—”

  Kernan cut off her plan with a headshake, trying to get a toe into the gray’s near stirmp while it circled around him. “They’ve learned there, too. I just came from the river, the ships are left close-guarded. Best we can do now is go after any raider we see, nothing fancier.” He gained his saddle and groaned. “No use trying to get men to the fires before they spread—these were set to spread, half Sennick’s aflame now.”

  Valadan stood calm while Druyan remounted, despite the near crackle of flames, the waves of heat and billows of smoke. “I’ll pass the word to Robart.”