by Mel Odom
Once the stew started to boil, Juhg sat by himself and took out his writing kit. He worked in the rough journal he carried, bringing the entries up to date and adding images of the Steadfast River, the campsite, and the men who journeyed with them.
When the stew was ready, all of them crept close and ate out of wooden bowls, thankful for the heat. The meat was decent and the vegetables added extra flavor.
After he’d finished eating, Juhg took the first watch, wanting to get it over and try to get a full night’s sleep. He fed oats to the horses tied to a rope they’d put up between two trees.
Raisho relieved Juhg after a couple of hours. The rain continued unabated and the river gurgled by constantly.
Juhg made his bedroll as comfortable as possible, grateful to be out of the rain. For a while he lay there, unable to go to sleep. Then, mercifully, his thoughts gradually unlocked themselves and let him fall through them.
“Wake up, Grandmagister Juhg. Wake up.”
At first Juhg believed the child’s singsong voice was a memory that had threaded into the dark dreams he had of Grandmagister Lamplighter’s visit to the Cinder Clouds Islands all those years ago, and of Craugh’s bloody disappearance. It was something that didn’t belong but didn’t overly concern him.
Then something wet and stiff and prickly touched his nose.
That was real! Juhg thought. His eyes popped open and he was staring into the garish face of a monster.
“Wake up, Grandmagister Juhg,” the thin, whispering voice taunted.
The coals of the campfire had burned low, casting a soft orange glow across the scarecrow’s face. Juhg didn’t know if it was the same one from the cornfield he’d seen earlier or if it was one that resembled the other.
It had the same moon-shaped face made out of burlap. The eyes were charcoal-colored triangles over a red button nose and a black-stitched mouth. A hat that would have been otherwise comical sat atop its head. A bright purple kerchief was tied around its neck. It wore patched and faded blouse and breeches, both tarred so they would stand up to the elements. The clothing was stuffed with thick straw.
It held a hand scythe at the end of its right arm.
Juhg sat up and started to cry out.
The scarecrow moved quickly, shoving the sharp scythe blade against Juhg’s neck, pinning his head back against the tree where he’d laid his bedroll.
“Quiet, Grandmagister Juhg!” the scarecrow warned. It held its left arm to its stitched mouth, which never moved despite the fact that Juhg heard the words it spoke. It didn’t have hands, just bunches of straw that stuck out the ends of the shirtsleeves. Yet somehow it held onto the small scythe. “I don’t want to slit your throat if I don’t have to.”
Despite the fear that pounded through him, Juhg focused on the incredible creature holding him prisoner. He knew the scarecrow wasn’t actually alive. It was a simulacrum for a wizard somewhere. Probably not far away. He’d seen things like the scarecrow before, but never so large. Usually they were paper dolls or stuffed toys. Animating a simulacrum was difficult work which became even more of a struggle the larger the host object was.
“What do you want?” Juhg felt his Adam’s apple bob over the sharp blade. He thought he even felt a trickle of blood running down his neck.
The stitched mouth tightened up into a smile. “To give you a warning. If I believe you’re taking my words to heart, I won’t kill you.”
“Who are you?”
“Not someone you know,” the scarecrow assured him. “Not someone you wish to know.”
“Did you take Craugh?”
“Craugh,” the scarecrow grated, “has proven himself something of a nuisance.”
Has. Not had. The word choice wasn’t conclusive, but it was indicative.
Craugh escaped! The realization flooded through Juhg, but he immediately wondered where the wizard had gone and why he hadn’t been in touch with them.
“Don’t get your hopes up, halfer!” the scarecrow snarled. “The wizard hasn’t gotten away for long. There are others tracking him down even now.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to know what you’re looking for.”
“A book.” Juhg hoped a book would be innocuous or so ominous that the wizard would abandon his efforts at threatening him. However, seeing as how a wizard animated the scarecrow, a wizard wouldn’t be frightened of a book.
“What book?” the scarecrow asked.
Juhg silently wondered how much he could tell without giving away too much. Instead, he jerked his head to the side of the tree away from the scythe, went flat and brought up his knee. If the scarecrow had been a human, dwarf, or elf, Juhg would never have been able to dislodge it. But it wasn’t. It was a scarecrow.
The enspelled creature went up and over.
“Raisho!” Juhg yelled as he rolled and got to his feet.
Only a few feet away, Raisho came up out of his bedroll at once. His hand closed over his dwarven-forged cutlass and the orange glow of the coals played over it. The young sea captain had always been a man of action.
“What is it?” Raisho demanded, looking around. His black hair was in wild disarray.
At that moment, the scarecrow pushed itself back up and came at Juhg, swinging the scythe in large pendulum arcs. Juhg dodged back, barely avoiding each swing.
Raisho cursed. By that time the rest of the camp was up, grabbing weapons. The two guards turned and came from their posts at dead runs. That gave Juhg some heart. At least the scarecrow hadn’t seen fit to kill either of them.
Moving and twisting, Juhg stayed out of harm’s way. Then Raisho stepped in front of him, handling his cutlass with superb skill. The scythe rang against the cutlass as they met, and sparks flew.
“I’ll kill you all!” the scarecrow threatened.
Juhg knew that Raisho was superstitious. Most sailors were. But his friend was worse than most. Many of the tattoos he wore were wards against evil and ill luck.
Raisho stood his ground, though, and turned aside every attempt the scarecrow made to slash Juhg. The ship’s captain cut and thrust at the scarecrow time and time again to no avail. The heavy blade passed though the scarecrow’s straw body without harming it, scattering only a handful of straw and slicing the tarred clothing to ribbons.
Dodging back, thinking quickly, Juhg grabbed a lantern from their equipment, opened the oil reservoir, and emptied the contents over the scarecrow’s back. Raisho kicked the scarecrow’s feet out from under it, causing it to fall flat on its hideous face. Before it could get up, Raisho took out one of the long knives he habitually carried in his boots and brought it down hard into the scarecrow’s back.
The knife blade passed through the scarecrow and into the earth below. Raisho left the knife there, pinning the creature to the ground, then rolling back to avoid the scythe.
“Listen to me, Grandmagister Juhg!” the scarecrow screamed, kicking and flailing like an insect pinned to a display board. “If you continue poking around into this, you’re going to get killed! Your friends will get killed, too.”
“Mayhap,” Raisho growled, “but it’s gonna take better’n ye to make that ’appen.”
Juhg plucked one of the larger coals from the campfire with two wet twigs he found. With a flick of his wrist, the coal landed on the scarecrow’s back. It took a little while, but the lantern oil caught and a gentle flame spread across the scarecrow’s body.
Abruptly, the scarecrow started screaming and flailing with renewed vigor. It beat its handless arms and footless legs at itself but only succeeded in setting its extremities on fire as well. That was the negative aspect of the spell. The wizard’s life was at risk as long as he maintained control of the scarecrow.
After another moment, the scarecrow gave out a final scream and relaxed. No one moved until the fire had consumed the scarecrow, leaving only a huskedout mass of ashes and burned straw.
Raisho looked at Juhg. “What was that about?”
“You he
ard it,” Juhg replied, kicking the scythe from the unmoving thing’s arm. “It was a warning.”
“Why didn’t ’e just slit yer throat while ye was sleepin’?”
“Maybe it would have wasted the whole warning bit,” Juhg answered.
“No reason to get snippy about it,” Raisho said.
Juhg sighed. “I didn’t mean to. I just … did not expect anything like that.” Now that the violence was past, adrenaline flooded his system. He sat down weakly. “But Craugh’s still alive, Raisho. You heard the scarecrow.”
“I did. Doesn’t mean ’e didn’t lie to ye an’ Craugh’s lyin’ somewheres done fer.”
“Maybe we could be a little bit more positive.”
Raisho kicked the remnants of the scarecrow’s body. Charred straw scattered over the wet ground. “At least we ain’t dead. That’s about as positive as I care to be right now.” He recovered his knife and replaced it in his boot. Then he caught the three pieces that remained of the scarecrow and hauled them over to the campfire.
Juhg joined his friend at the fire as the flames jumped up greedily to consume the straw. The renewed wave of heat washed over Juhg, taking away some of the chill that had soaked into him. He held out his hands and was surprised to see that they were shaking.
“Did ye know who it were?” Raisho asked.
Gazing around at the darkness, Juhg shook his head. “No.”
Raisho stirred the burning straw with his cutlass. Embers leapt up into the night sky. “Well, that’s not good,” he grumped.
Juhg silently agreed. “I can stay up for watch duty. I don’t think I’m going to be able to go back to sleep.”
With a grim grin, Raisho looked around at the sailors. “I don’t think none of us are. If ’n we don’t, that’ll be fine. But them that ’as watches will be up. Ever’body else can get sleep if they want it.” He spoke for the benefit of the men.
A couple of the more seasoned veterans went back to their bedrolls and covered up. Juhg didn’t know if they were actually sleeping or only easing their bones after the long, unaccustomed ride.
Returning to the tree where he’d set up his bedroll, Juhg took out his writing supplies from his pack. He lit a single candle, drove a needle into the tree above him, then speared the candle onto the needle so it would burn levelly. Opening his journal, senses alive to the night and the raindrops sounding like footsteps all around him, he concentrated on his work, focusing hard enough that the fear could no longer touch him.
In the morning, they rose with the dawn and saddled the horses.
“I ’alf expected to find the ’orses with their throats cut,” Raisho admitted as he finished saddling his mount. “With us all ’uddled up close to the fire, they’d ’ave been easy targets in the dark. An’ walking to Deldal’s Mills would be a lot ’arder than ridin’. Not to mention ’ow vulnerable it would leave us.”
“You thought of this just now?” Juhg asked, irritated with himself for not thinking of it. He was cold and stiff in the morning, not rested at all from the brief sleep on the hard ground he’d managed or from the hours he’d labored on the journal. Toward dawn he’d finally managed a little more sleep, but it was interrupted by nightmares of what had happened to Craugh, and by the maniacal scarecrow’s face shoved against his.
“I thought of it last night.” Raisho swung effortlessly up into the saddle. He raised the hood of his cloak over his head.
“And you chose to do nothing?”
“Didn’t want to spread out our forces too thin.”
Juhg leaped up against the horse, managed to snare the saddle horn, then pulled himself up high enough to get a foot in the stirrup. Horses weren’t made for dwellers and dwarves.
The horse whickered, stamped its feet and blew.
As Juhg looked at Raisho, he realized how much his friend had grown and learned in the past eight years. The Raisho of old would have been more concerned about missing a night’s sleep or trying to figure out if there was any way to find gold through the scarecrow.
Sometimes Juhg missed the Raisho of old, and it saddened him to think that one day he would miss him altogether.
Your thoughts are too dark, he told himself. So he forced a smile and said, “I’m ready when you are.”
“Oh,” Raisho said, “I’ve a feelin’ ain’t neither of us ready for what Craugh ’as involved us with.”
Shortly after midday, though the rain never relented and Juhg never felt the passage of time through a forest that constantly dripped from unending rainfall, they reached Deldal’s Mills.
“Looks quiet enough,” Raisho commented as they followed the well-worn trail toward the town.
Juhg didn’t comment.
“’Course, a quiet place is where bandits and assassins works best out of.” Raisho eased his cutlass in the sheath he wore down his back.
Out on the Steadfast, the ferry between the two banks of the town bumped over the rolling water. Mule teams drew the ferry either way across the river, taking passengers as well as cargo. At noon it made a delivery every working day to the mill workers, supplying lunches that the mill owners paid for then charged the workers for.
“Where are we goin’ once we reach town?” Raisho asked.
“The Wayside Inn.” Juhg adjusted his hood to keep the light rain out of his face.
“This Minstrel Ordal will be there?”
“In all likelihood. If not, we can send word or meet him somewhere.” Juhg’s body ached with the constant motion of the horse. He looked forward to sitting by a roaring fireplace.
“Minstrel Ordal?” The tavern owner looked over Juhg’s head. Juhg had to tiptoe slightly to look over the counter in the Wayside Inn. “I haven’t seen her today, but she should be along with the evening crowd.”
“‘She’?” Raisho repeated.
The tavern keeper was a portly man with a beard and a wandering eye. He’d introduced himself as Fhiel, but most of the other patrons seemed to call him Jolly. Juhg assumed it was because the tavern keeper laughed at all the jokes he was told, no matter how old those jokes happened to be.
Fhiel nodded and looked a little confused. “She. That’s right. Haven’t you met Minstrel Ordal?” Suspicion hardened his features.
“No,” Raisho said.
“I have,” Juhg replied. “But it has been a few years. The last Minstrel Ordal I saw was a man.”
A broad smile split Fhiel’s face. “Ah, well then, kind sir, you’re in for a treat, you are. No one quite plays the harp the way this Minstrel Ordal does.”
Juhg paid for ales for Raisho and his men, then got a tankard of hot mulled cider for himself. “We’ll wait for Minstrel Ordal. If you’ll just let her know we’re here.” He put coins on the countertop.
With a practiced move, Fhiel scooped the coins away. “Perhaps you’d like something to eat while you’re waiting.”
“No, thank you,” Juhg answered. “We’ll eat when we buy supper for Minstrel Ordal.”
“Good, good.” Fhiel rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “I’ll make sure the bread’s baked fresh by then, and that we have plenty.” He ran his good eye over the group of sailors with renewed appreciation. “You look like a hungry bunch. Nothing like cold rain to bring up an appetite.”
Juhg took his mulled cider to one of the tables near the large fireplace. Logs blazed in the hearth as he shed his cloak and hung it from a coat tree in the corner. Sinking into one of the big, stuffed chairs, he sipped the cider and let out a contented sigh. Once more among civilization, in front of a fire and with a warm drink in his hand, the fight with the scarecrow seemed far in the past.
Raisho sat across from him. “I thought ye said Minstrel Ordal was a man?”
“I did,” Juhg agreed. “In my experience, he always has been in the past. But I guess things change.”
“How did Minstrel Ordal change from a ‘he’ to a ‘she’?”
“Minstrel Ordal is an hereditary title,” Juhg explained. “Usually it’s passed on
from father to son. I guess this time there was no son to carry on.” He sat staring into the fire for a time, then got out his journal and started working.
It didn’t take long before his actions drew the attention of the inn’s guests.
“Halfer,” a thick, bull-necked man bellowed across the room. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Writing,” Juhg answered. It feels so good to be able to say that! But some of the old fear stirred within him.
“Writing?” The bull-necked man stood. He looked like a logger, his arms and back big and strong, and his hands marked with scars from knives and axes. “Is that a book?” He said it like an accusation.
“Yes.” Juhg looked up. “It is a book.” He took pride in that fact.
“Are you stupid?” the man bellowed. “Are you trying to bring the goblinkin down on us? If they find we’ve got a book here, they’ll likely burn the town down around our ears.” He started across the room. “I don’t know where you got that, but you need to toss it into the fire. Toss it into the fire right now!”
“No,” Juhg replied.
“Then I’ll do it for you.” The man came at Juhg.
Casually, stretching smooth and quick as a great cat, Raisho shot out a foot and tripped the man. By the time the man hit the floor, the sea captain had his cutlass out and the point resting against the big man’s throat.
The big man froze at once.
Three of his companions shifted in their seats and started to get up.
Immediately, Raisho’s men loosened their blades in their scabbards.
Tense silence filled the tavern.
“I wouldn’t,” Raisho said in a carefully measured voice, “was I you. We’ve come a far piece under ’ard times, an’ we didn’t come ’ere to be ’andled like rough trade.”
The men stood for a moment, obviously trapped by their pride. They didn’t like being bearded in their own tavern.
