by Kyra Halland
Finally, when she and the Bingtons were getting ready to serve supper, Lainie braced herself. “Mrs. Bington, it’s me and Silas’s first wedding anniversary, and I was wondering –”
“If you can have the evening off?” Mrs. Bington said.
“Yes, ma’am. If I can’t, that’s okay, we can make it a later evening, but –”
“You’ve been a good, hard worker, Lainie. Don’t know how I can spare you, but I’d say you’ve earned an evening off.”
“Oh.” That was easier than Lainie had thought it would be, and the unexpected compliment left her pleased and a little flustered. “You’re sure?”
“I’ll get Byrom to pitch in. Won’t kill the boy to help out for once. And –” She opened the travel oven and took out an iron pannikin. The delicious smell of hot applesauce cake met Lainie’s nose. “I got word of what day it is earlier, when your man was lookin’ for someone to take his watch, so I made this for the two of you. Don’t tell anyone else, or they’ll all want some. Let it cool, then you can take it with you to eat later.” She set the pannikin aside on the washing-up table.
At the kind and completely unexpected gesture, tears pricked at Lainie’s eyes. She had tried so hard to gain Mrs. Bington’s good opinion, and all her efforts had seemed in vain, until now. And baking a wedding anniversary cake seemed like exactly the sort of thing her mama would have done for them if she was alive. “Thank you, Mrs. Bington. I don’t know what to say. We never had a wedding cake; that’s right kind of you. “
“You’re a good girl, Lainie, and I’m pleased to have your help. Even if you’ve still got a lot to learn. Now, let’s get these hungry hands fed.”
Glowing inside at the rare praise and the prospect of a whole evening alone with Silas, Lainie served supper to the hands. They were still feeding a good number of the Forn’s Crossing men, and the reputation of the Bingtons’ grub wagon had spread so that there was always a handful of men from the other crews eating there as well. The Forn’s Crossing men had finally learned some manners, enforced by the polite Strawdale and Thornwood crews and the Windy Valley men’s respect for Silas, so even though there was a lot more work, it was also a lot more pleasant.
As soon as the last of the hands had been served and Lainie had eaten her own supper, Mrs. Bington nodded to her. “You go on now. Mr. Bington’s moved your wagon away a bit, to give you a little more privacy. I expect you back on the job first thing in the morning – no oversleeping, now.”
Lainie had never overslept on the drive, not once, but still she said, “No, ma’am, I won’t.”
She waved Silas over and took the pannikin with the applesauce cake in it, and they retreated to her wagon. All night, they made love and laughed and fed each other pieces of cake and talked about everything in the world except the unanswered questions that lay between them, that had nearly torn them apart. There would be time enough for that later; right now, all that mattered was that they were together.
Chapter 9
FOUR MONTHS AFTER the Windy Valley herd set out, the combined northern herd arrived at Hillpoint, at the northwestern corner of the Ghost Hills. Waiting for them there was a herd consisting of thirty-nine hundred cattle, four hundred sheep, and twelve wagons of wool from the Bentwood Gulch co-op, including Brin Coltor’s BC Crown ranch, and another thirty-two hundred cattle from two smaller co-ops farther north, Fairbank and Sunnyside.
There was a two-day stop at Hillpoint while the herds were combined. As Silas worked on counting the cattle and various other tasks, Lainie went into town with the Bingtons to resupply. Silas covered Paslund’s watch the first night so Paslund could spend the evening in town, then the next night Paslund did double shifts so that Silas and Lainie could have the whole night together. They ate supper in town and Lainie won a handful of gildings in a friendly, low-stakes game of Dragon’s Threes, then, since the hotels in town were filled to bursting, they returned to camp and holed up in Lainie’s wagon the rest of the night. The matters they had argued over seemed distant to Silas as they enjoyed the time together, but he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling in the back of his mind that something big was going to happen soon and, whether they wanted to or not, he and Lainie were going to have to settle the matter of her involvement in whatever it was.
When the paperwork was done and the cattle counted, the enormous combined herd started around the northern end of the Ghost Hills. The peaks of the Spine, the towering mountains that formed the border between the Wildings and Granadaia, had been a blur on the horizon for days; now they came clearly into view, appearing to float atop the clouds, gleaming white with snow even in high summer, looking both impossibly distant and close enough to touch.
Lainie was riding with Silas that day. He had come through the Gap six years ago and had spent his first several years in the Wildings working up and down the Long Valley, and the sight of the Spine still took his breath away. As they rode, he watched Lainie, wanting to see her reaction to the mountains. Her eyes were fixed on the high, jagged peaks; she had grown up in the shadow of the Great Sky Mountains, but they were no more than hills compared to these mountains. He looked at her wide eyes and awe-filled face, and his love for her and for this vast, wild, beautiful land that had produced her swelled in his heart. “Quite a sight, isn’t it?”
Without taking her gaze from the mountains, she said, “It’s beautiful.”
“Almost as beautiful as you.”
She blushed and glanced aside, and that shy smile that had first stolen his heart bloomed on her face. He reached for her, bringing the horses to a stop, and gave her a good, long kiss before they rode on with the herd.
Moving at an easy pace that covered about ten leagues a day, to allow the cattle to finish fattening up for the market, the herd traveled south towards the Bottleneck, the narrow pass leading into the Long Valley at the feet of the Spine. Several days later, the herd reached the place where the valley between the Ghost Hills and the Spine narrowed to form a funnel that led into the Bottleneck. Silas was riding at the rear of the herd that afternoon when Lainie rode over to him.
“What’s up, darlin’?” he asked.
She looked around; the nearest hand was busy with some stubborn cattle and pretty well out of earshot. “There’s something out there,” she said quietly.
Silas reached out with his mage senses and brushed up against a quantity of power in the distance, only lightly shielded. “That’s new,” he said.
She nodded. “I just noticed it.”
“Maybe ten leagues away, or a little more.”
“That sounds right. And I think there’s four or five of them, or more, and at least one of them has Wildings power. He’s suppressing it.”
Silas checked again, and agreed with her assessment of how many mages there were. He couldn’t detect a Wildings-born mage who was suppressing his power, but he was willing to take Lainie’s word on it. Were they genuine renegades? he wondered. That many rogues cooperating with each other was unheard of. He supposed they might be working for someone else, maybe the people behind the breeding project that had produced Fazar, who, he had guessed, had ambitions regarding the Wildings.
“It still doesn’t seem like enough men to do any real damage to an outfit this size,” he said, mulling it over. With the addition of the northeastern herd, there were over a hundred and twenty trail hands in the outfit, plus cooks, horse wranglers, wagon drivers, and bosses, all of them armed. Four or five or even six mages, no matter how powerful they were, were unlikely to win a fight against that many Plains, even using magic. If they did, it would no doubt cost them at least a few of their number. And then they would have to take control of thousands of cattle.
His mind boggled briefly at the sheer number of cattle that would be gathered at the Gap. The northern herd numbered twenty thousand and some head, and word had it that the southern herd, which included the Bitterbush Springs co-op herd, would add another fifteen thousand. Thirty-five thousand or more head of cattle would be sold
at the Gap to buyers from Granadaia. Many of the animals would be slaughtered after they traveled through the narrow pass in the mountains, their meat magically preserved to feed the citizens of Granadaia through the next year; the rest would be kept alive as breeding and dairy stock. It was a rich business indeed, and only a handful of mages had no hope of really being able to make an impact, whether their aim was to disrupt the market or enrich themselves.
“Rustling a few cattle, maybe even a hundred or so, would give a thief a decent payout at the market if he sold to one of those buyers who don’t look too closely at the brands,” Lainie said. “But if they have to divide it among four or five men or more, it just don’t seem worth it, ’specially if they have to fight all these hands.”
“If it’s economic and political influence they want,” Silas said, thinking of the breeding project, “taking control of a small herd wouldn’t do any good. But if they attack the market itself, that would take a dozen or more mages, and they wouldn’t just have to fight the drive crews; they’d also be up against the buyers from Granadaia, who would fight back to protect their own interests.”
After another thoughtful silence, Lainie said, “If they could split the herd in two while it’s going through the Bottleneck, that would get them a nice big bunch of cattle without a lot of trouble.”
Silas looked ahead of them south to the Bottleneck. At its narrowest, the pass was a scant two leagues across for a stretch of about six leagues. It was the perfect setup for a handful of renegade mages to stir up trouble and divide the herd. “I think you’re right,” he said. “Let’s keep an eye out for when they make their move. In the meantime, we should keep our power hidden. I don’t want them to know we’re here.” He hesitated; what he was about to say would stir up their argument again, but this particular issue couldn’t be avoided any longer. “And, darlin’?”
“Yeah?” The word came out clipped, as if she knew what he was going to say.
“If it comes to a fight, I want you to stay out of it.”
“No.”
“Lainie, listen. I don’t want them or anyone in the outfit to find out about you. Please. Do what I say, and stay out of it.”
“What about you?” she demanded. Though she kept her voice low, he couldn’t miss her vehemence. “You think I’m going to just leave you to face five mages by yourself? You think I don’t care if those mage-killing cowhands find out about you? If that’s what you think, you’d best think again. I’m in this, whether you want me to be or not.” She jerked Mala around to ride back to the wagons.
“Lainie, wait!”
She looked back at him, eyes flashing, face flushed in anger. “What?”
He stared at her, feeling helpless. He didn’t know what to say that he hadn’t already said. That however badly the Mage Council might want him, whatever they might do to him if they ever got their hands on him, if they found out what she was capable of they would do even worse to her? That he was going to keep her safe if he had to tie her to a wagon and set an armed guard around her? The truth was, if that was what he decided to do, she couldn’t stop him – but to do so would be an outrage against her courage and her free will. He owed her better than that.
“Do whatever you want,” he finally said, though it felt like he was ripping his heart out by the roots to say so. “But if you get yourself killed, I’ll hunt you down through all the heavens and all the hells, and when I find you I’ll give you the whupping your Pa would want me to give you for getting yourself killed.”
She grinned at him now, a hard, challenging grin. “Same to you, Vendine.” She heeled Mala in the sides, and the mare went galloping back to the wagons.
He watched Lainie go. He had done what he could, but, in the end, he couldn’t take her free will from her. She had made it clear before where her priorities lay when it came to a choice between her safety and doing what she thought was right, and so she had chosen. He could only pray that the gods would protect her in her choice and that he wasn’t fated to lose her one way or the other.
* * *
THE MOOD AMONG the drive hands at supper that evening was high. The big market was less than a month away, and everyone seemed relieved that the herd had made it this far without running into any serious trouble, despite the fears and rumors that had run rampant earlier in the spring and summer. The general opinion was that, from here on out, the great size of the outfit would serve to discourage rustlers.
Lainie couldn’t quite share in the good spirits. The five mages she had found were right up ahead, and there was no way she could think of to warn the trail bosses without revealing how she and Silas knew about them. She was pretty sure that the mages were keeping to the low hills on the west side of the Bottleneck, that there were five of them or maybe even more, they were powerful and so confident that most of them weren’t bothering to shield very heavily, and at least one of them was Wildings-born or possibly even an A’ayimat. She didn’t know what they were planning, but if her guess was right that they were going to try to divide the herd, it was going to be big, and it would happen soon, while the herd was passing through the narrowest part of the Bottleneck.
Most of all, she knew that, whatever they did, she was going to help stop them. Silas might refuse to admit it, but, strong and skilled as he was, she had skills and powers he didn’t have, and it was going to take everything they had to fight those mages. She knew – she truly did – what it had cost him to agree to not stop her from taking part in the upcoming fight. She was just as scared for him as he was for her. But this was a battle they had to fight; it would be shameful and cowardly and wrong to stand by for the sake of their own safety and let a bunch of renegade mages interfere with the biggest source of the Wildings settlers’ living. They had to fight this battle and win it, and neither of them had any hope of winning it alone.
* * *
THE NEXT DAY started out hot and muggy, and only got worse as the sun climbed higher in the sky. Well before noon, storm clouds began building up over the mountains to the east as well as the hills to the west. The rear of the herd, where the wagons, sheep, remounts, and most of the bosses were, had nearly come to a standstill while the front part passed through the narrowest stretch of the Bottleneck.
Lainie was sitting on the seat of the wagon where she slept, trying to patch one of Silas’s shirts. Her mind wouldn’t focus on the task; it kept straying to the mages up ahead of the herd. With the front part of the herd going through the Bottleneck, they were bound to strike soon, most likely today. But, stuck back here, she didn’t know what was going on farther up.
A sharp stick of the needle in her finger jolted her attention back to her sewing. She sucked at her bleeding finger and ruefully examined her stitches, which were more uneven than usual. With a sigh, she put down the shirt. “I’m going to find Silas,” she said to Mrs. Bington, who was driving the wagon.
“It’d wiser to stay here, with that rain on the way,” Mrs. Bington said. She pointed at a particularly tall, dark pile of thunderheads building up over the west slope of the Spine several leagues ahead, at the narrowest part of the valley, that Lainie hadn’t noticed before in her preoccupation.
Lainie looked at the the roiling, purple-black mass, and a feeling struck deep inside of her that there was something wrong about it. She reached out towards it with her mage senses, and recoiled at the vast amount of power at work in the storm – Granadaian, Wildings, and something else, icy and filled with greed and hate… Her mind darkened with a memory of cold, merciless beings seizing possession of her body, of being pushed loose from her flesh and bones.
A chill of fear ran through her. She tried to push it back and think clearly. “I want to make sure he has his rain cape,” she said. Before Mrs. Bington could say anything more, Lainie jumped down from the wagon and fetched Mala from the remounts.
Silas had managed to get assigned to work farther up the herd today. Lainie found him just short of the narrowest part of the Bottleneck, looking at the stor
m right up ahead. He was on Abenar instead of one of his day horses, a clear sign that he was expecting trouble. By the time she reached him, a heavy, dark curtain of rain had descended from the knot of clouds, and a chilly, rain-scented wind had started whipping down the slopes, stirring up dirt and trampled grass.
“Hey, darlin’,” he greeted her as she rode up beside him.
“That’s no natural storm.” She pointed to the storm, which had begun to sink down along the mountain slopes towards the floor of the narrow valley. Brilliant flashes of lightning danced constantly from the clouds to the ground and between the clouds, burning afterimages onto her vision, and the thunder rumbled loud and deep enough that Lainie could feel it in her bones. The wind blew harder as the storm got closer.
“Got to be at least five or six mages working it,” Silas answered.
“I only found five. But they’ve got help.”
Silas got that looked of closed concentration on his face that meant he was reaching out with his mage senses, then he hissed a curse in the Island language. “It’s that power the wiseman called up.”
Again Lainie tried to squash the swell of fear inside her. “The Old Ones.”
As they spoke, the nearby trail hands had been shouting and signaling to each other, discussing what to do about the approaching storm, and now the nearest trail boss came riding over. Lainie recognized him as the boss from the Fairbank herd, a level-headed, competent man. She and Silas and the other hands gathered around him. “What do you think, boss?” one of the hands asked, raising his voice over the sound of the wind and thunder.
