—From a court gossip rag published in Kingsport, early reign of Chasia
12
Spitfires & Magic
Harric dragged the bodies from the stables. He moved in a daze, his mind scattered, his body still in shock. It felt like a wind blew through a huge hole in his middle, for not only had he witnessed gut-twisting violence, but Willard’s small trust in him had vanished. As soon as the old knight had saddled Molly, he’d left Harric to “bag up what’s left” of Lane, and ridden up the pass to join Caris.
He knew Willard was wrong and hypocritical and unfair in several ways, but the old man was also his childhood hero. He was every bastard’s hero. Without Willard and the Queen, every bastard would be a slave. So no matter how big an ass the man was, his rejection hurt.
“Harric.”
Harric looked up. He realized then that Gren had been talking to him, and he’d had to raise his voice to get Harric’s attention. “Sorry, captain.”
The captain studied Harric, a frown darkening his gaze. He nodded to Molly’s blood-spattered stall. “I’ll take care of Lane. You get your things together.”
Harric stared into the straw and nodded. He wanted to thank him for the kindness, but his eyes began to sting, and tightness gripped his throat.
Someone laid a hand on his shoulder. “Help me into my saddle?” Brolli stood beside him. He looked up at Harric.
Harric nodded and followed the Kwendi into the stables, trying not to look at the gore in Molly’s stall. Brolli looked, and his face seemed paler after.
“You see these men attack?” Brolli said, as they entered Idgit’s stall. Brolli rested a long-fingered hand on the front cantle of the saddle and paused to look at Harric. “I never should to left him alone.”
“They didn’t touch him. Molly warned him.”
Brolli’s brow creased. “You see it.”
“Molly roared.”
Brolli sighed and clambered easily up the saddle to perch on its summit. From his satchel, he produced a small pillow to position beneath him; Harric waited with the straps while Brolli fussed like a cat preparing its bed.
The Kwendi frowned. “You Stilties have the large rump. I have only bone.”
Harric recognized the ambassador was probing him for a smile. He managed to lift one corner of his mouth. “Stilties?”
“Yes. It is my name for your people. I wonder how you balance so high on your stilts.”
Harric pulled the strap across Brolli’s legs and buckled it.
“Too tight,” said Brolli. “Use the third hole.”
Harric readjusted the buckle. Kwendi proportions were all wrong for a regular saddle: not only did Brolli have no rump to speak of, but his burly arms and torso made him ridiculously top-heavy over dwarfish legs. Worse, the legs were too short to grip the horse with his knees. Instead, he clutched the stirrups with his fingered feet, but that quickly exhausted him, and couldn’t be maintained when he slept in the saddle.
“Try to lean forward and put your weight on your arms,” Harric said. “Just grab her mane. It won’t hurt her.”
Brolli nodded. “Thank you. I do not know why you Stilties love horses. When she trots, it is like she is making a kick to my back. I think Idgit means Arse Hammer in your language.”
Harric led Idgit from the stable, then handed Brolli the reins and returned to Snapper. As he tightened the saddle girth, a guard entered with an armload of clothes and started stuffing a shirt with straw. Scarecrows for the battlements, Harric realized. They’d prop them up to make the place look manned before they fled. The man gave Harric a grim nod. Then his eyes flicked to where Harric had laid his saddle packs, and his expression closed and hardened.
I might resent staying behind while others fled, too.
After fastening his packs behind his saddle, he led Snapper out of the stable and mounted beside Brolli in the courtyard. Hunched beside Brolli was a mountain of hair and woolen smothercoat on a white musk-auroch cow as big as Molly. The mountain of hair was Father Kogan in his tentlike coat of woolen rugs. His mane of dirt-brown beard and braids stood in fabulous disarray from his sleep in the dove tower. And though Farley had offered to re-braid his hair, he’d refused, saying, “Widda Larkin did these braids, and now they’re all I got of her. Lands, I miss her.”
The auroch cow was Geraldine, a gift from the fort, as she’d be butchered if captured, and Kogan was too big for any horse in the place.
Of the two, the musk-auroch smelled better.
The priest’s red-shot eyes presently glared at Brolli, and Harric realized too late that though Brolli knew of Kogan, the priest had seen little of the Kwendi. Faced with the sight of him now—while hungover, in daylight, and at speaking distance—Kogan looked on the verge of violence.
“Good mornings to you, giant friend!” Brolli said, too loud for hungover ears.
True to his nature, Kogan spat. “You may be Willard’s friend, you bald-faced chimpey, and you may be the Queen’s last hope, but don’t bring your god-cursed magic near me.”
“Well understood,” said Brolli, ignoring the insult and rudeness and maintaining a diplomatic smile. “But consider, your Second Law forbids your people magic, not mine. Perhaps the gods give other laws for my people.”
“None what I know.”
“And we must work together to survive Sir Bannus and the Old Ones, yes?”
Kogan’s only response was a burning glare.
“Shall we exchange pleasantries on the road?” Harric said. “Willard wants us moving yesterday.”
As Harric and Brolli rode up the river road to meet the others, the priest followed on Geraldine. Over the chatter of the river beside them, Harric caught snatches of grumbling:
“…Civilized chimpey…legs too short by half, and mis-made arms…what come of magic…”
Harric glanced at Brolli, whose gold eyes flashed with amusement. “Is that what I seem to your people?” he called back to the priest. “A civilized chimpey?” When Kogan only grunted in reply, Brolli looked to Harric. “Do I?”
Harric gave a noncommittal shrug. It wasn’t actually a bad description of the Kwendi, except that Brolli was a couple hands taller than a chimpey, had much broader shoulders, and no more hair on his body than Harric. The most striking difference was that his flat, strong-jawed face had a kind of alien handsomeness no chimpey ever had.
Brolli snorted. “I had the same idea of you, father, as the civilized bear.”
The priest narrowed his eyes. “Call me civilized again and I’ll toss ye in a river.”
*
Harric found the makeshift stables a quarter mile up the road through the pass, well out of sight of the fort and Sir Bannus. It consisted of fifty paces of snake-rail fence and a wagon full of hay. A half-dozen fat and agitated mules and horses stood tied to the fence at intervals—agitated, no doubt, because none of them were Phyros-trained and Molly had just passed by. Caris waited with Willard several hundred paces beyond, and the sight of her—proud and strong and beautiful astride Rag—whispered an ache of fruitless longing through Harric’s heart.
How had Fink put it? Walking around with a broken heart, unable to kiss her back. Something like that.
As Harric rode past the makeshift stables, the stable master watched, hay fork in hand. Harric recognized him as one of the guards who’d cheered his shot with the spitfire. The man had also seen to it that Idgit and Rag each had a new set of iron shoes on their hooves—and would have given Snapper a set, but the beast had lived up to his name and nipped the man when he stooped to examine his hooves. Harric saluted, but the man seemed to look right through him, chewing his lip as if he wished he too were leaving the besieged fort.
Guilt pulled Harric’s eyes back to the road.
Harric wondered how many of the seven guards left alive would abandon their posts and steal horses that night to try their chances in the wilderness.
Gren and Farley stood beside Caris and Willard, waiting to see them off. Two well-wishers made
for a pathetic farewell party, but Lane’s insurrection and its bloody conclusion had severely dampened morale. Of their own company, Willard appeared to be seething with the Blood still, barely controlling his agitation, and Caris had already plunged her horse-touched senses into Rag to keep the mare calm near Molly.
“You ride for the white witch’s tower?” Farley asked, as Harric reined alongside. “You don’t fear her more than Bannus? Captain promised we won’t go near that cursed tower. We’ll take our chances in the wild.”
Harric gave a small smile. “Abellia is gentle and kind. The tales you’ve heard are lies.”
Farley didn’t seem to hear him, for his attention had shifted to Caris, who was stroking Rag’s mane and making horse sounds in the way she did when she’d lost herself in the mare’s senses. “She talking horse-talk?” Farley’s nose wrinkled.
Caris heard him and looked up. It took a while for the words to reach her in her state of commune with the horse, but when they did, a deep blush crept up her neck. Abruptly, she turned Rag and walked her a few paces up the road.
Harric sighed. “That might not have been the most delicate thing you’ve ever said.”
“I’m sorry,” Farley said. “I didn’t think she’d care. I wouldn’t care if I could talk to horses. Does she really understand what they say?”
“From what I’ve seen, she does. In a way you or I could never comprehend.”
Willard was speaking to Captain Gren. Harric snuck a glance at the knight and saw no telltale purple or blue in his skin or eyes. “Remember, Captain Gren,” Willard said, “keep the men here no longer than three days. That will give us all the time we need. After that, steal away, even if it seems Bannus has not yet cleared the rubble.”
Gren nodded. “It is our honor, Sir Willard. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a gift for your man, Harric.” Willard’s glance hardened, but the captain smiled and nudged Farley, who jerked as if he’d been stuck with a pin. Farley lifted a fat waxed-canvas pack to Harric. From its top protruded two of the fort’s wide-mouthed spitfires, and Harric caught the distinctive scent of resin.
“With the captain’s thanks,” Farley said.
Harric smiled in surprise. “I am honored.”
“Well, you showed you can use them,” said Gren. “And take this.” He handed Harric a leather blast mask shaped like a scowling dove. “Hate to see that pretty face pocked by resin.”
Harric’s eyes stung with sudden tears, and in the depths of his self-loathing, a little light appeared. He dared not blink, lest the tears fall, but in a moment of inspiration, he donned the mask to hide his eyes. “I’ll wear it with honor,” he said.
As if to convey his opinion of that, Willard turned Molly abruptly up the road. “Luck smile on you, captain.”
The snub to Harric was not lost on Farley, whose eyes widened. Gren smuggled a wink to Harric, which Farley intercepted. His boyish face bloomed with a mischievous grin, and from where Gren could not see it, he stuck out his tongue at Willard’s back.
“The mask suits you,” said Gren. The captain held Harric’s eye long enough to suggest he referred to more than just the blast mask. Then he laid a brisk slap on Snapper’s rump and sent Harric trotting after the others.
Harric looked back, uncertain how much the captain guessed about him, and feeling a tug of real loss. “I’ll see you at your knightings!” he called back.
Moons, he hoped he would. If they survived Sir Bannus, they’d deserve earldoms.
*
As they rode up the pass, Harric couldn’t help but glance back periodically. Each time, he half expected to see Bannus and Gygon charging up the stony road, and though there was only ever empty mountains behind, he knew he wouldn’t feel safe until that night, when they’d shut themselves in Abellia’s tower.
A breeze gusted down the river gorge, blowing his hair back. In it, autumn’s chill mingled with the dying scents of summer. The leaves of the trembling aspen still wore jackets of green, but Harric judged that in a few short weeks they’d shimmer like tumbling yellow coins.
When the sun had climbed high into the sky, they reached a stony basin with a clear blue lake in its middle, and beyond it ridge after ridge of green forest. The instant Caris spied the lake, she spurred Rag into a gallop and raced along its dry mud edge. Holly and Idgit snorted enthusiastically, but remained tethered in their line.
“Lady Caris knows what’s best for her beast,” said Willard, “but we’ll preserve the rest of the horses. We’ve many days of hard road ahead.”
Watching Caris ride lifted another weight from Harric’s heart. It seemed when wind streamed through her hair, a hood of worries fell back from her face. Her eyes brightened, her cheeks colored. When she reached the end of the lake and raced back toward them, she leaned down, picked up a sun-bleached stave off spoke-limb from the beach, and veered Rag into the adjoining meadows to joust at the shrubs. Little cries of her laughter reached them on the breeze.
Kogan’s piggy eyes sparked. “Horse-touched got a gift. Never tire of watching them ride. You ever know Brother Mikl, Will?”
Willard grunted. “Dog-touched. Traveled with a pack of stolen hounds?”
“Not stolen, Will. Converted. When a lord set his hounds after Mikl, that lord never saw them again. That lord wondered, ‘Why’d my hounds go quiet? Musta been killt by the priest!’ But Mikl wouldn’t hurt a dog. He made them family.”
“Useful when freeing peasants, no doubt.”
“Aye, that’s so, Will. Hard to hunt a man if your dogs disappear. And no farm dog in the country would speak a word when Mikl passed by in the night, neither, so he stole a chicken better than any man I knowed.” Kogan scratched his chin through the nest of whiskers. “You reckon it’s like that for the lady and horses?”
Willard gusted smoke from his nostrils. “She emptied the stables in Gallows Ferry. Made a herd of twenty horses and ran them up the road like a stampede. Left Bannus’s crew staring.”
Kogan nodded. He watched Harric from the corner of his eye. “But then, ol’ Mikl were never quite right in the head. Hardly a word in him, except dog words like growls and yips.”
“Caris isn’t like that, if that’s what you’re wondering,” said Harric. “She’s smart, and talks as well as most.”
Kogan raised a shaggy eyebrow. Was that a teasing smile under the beard? “Oh? That’s good for her.”
Nearby, Rag leapt a stump and wheeled only a stride after landing. Caris shouted, eyes flashing.
Moons, I wish I could make her that happy.
His mind returned to the possibility of using the powers of the Unseen to remove the ring, but he couldn’t let his hopes get too high. If Ibergs had been trying in vain to crack the secret of the Kwendi magic, Fink might be just as baffled by it. Harric pressed the pocket containing his witch-stone to feel its reassuring solidity against his ribs. At this point, it was still their best hope.
*
They halted for a stretch and a meal at the edge of a stand of pale stemmed aspen. Harric went straight to Caris’s side and shared a handful of blueberries he’d hurriedly picked along the shore. He loved to be with her after she’d been with Rag. In those times, she had few words, but her spirit glowed, and her mind seemed most relaxed and free of human worry, so the silence was warm and companionable.
Caris watched him, a small smile playing around her mouth. “You know, when I don’t hate myself for thinking about you all the time, I actually like you.”
“Truly? You think one day without that ring you’d—”
“No.”
“But we’d be friends.”
“Probably.”
As Harric sliced into a hunk of hard white cheese made from Geraldine’s milk at the fort, Father Kogan let out a howl of outrage from deep in the aspen. He erupted from the brush, plowing through saplings and shouting, “Moons and magic! To arms! We’re under attack!”
Harric bolted to his feet, spilling his lunch.
Caris faced the asp
ens, sword flashing in her hand. “What is it?”
Kogan crashed into the open, eyes wide and wild. “It’s a moon-damned witch walker! To arms! Rope and fire!”
…Sir Kogan was a formidable lancer in his day…competing with me and knights of the Blue Order…when he wasn’t drunk or breaking horse backs by vaulting into saddles… A great loss to the sport when the god took him…
—Sir Willard, quoted in Tourneys of the Golden Age of Chasia, by Lord Billus
13
Old Friends & New Peril
Harric crouched, scanning the trees for an enemy.
Kogan grabbed up a pine trunk the size of Harric and spun about to face the aspen as if something pursued him. “I seen it in the trees! Went in to pipe a leak and there it was, staring at me like a god-touched statcha!”
Brolli had wakened and now stood with a globe of witch-silver in one hand and a painted war club in the other. Willard moved to the ambassador’s side with Belle in hand.
“What is the word statcha?” said Brolli.
“A statcha! Like it were carved from stone—”
“Statue,” Harric said.
“—only this one were made outta clay and sticks like a drunk potter made it, and it walks like it got no knees, or it would’ve catched me!”
Harric paused. “Mudruffle? I think he means Mudruffle.”
Brolli lowered his club and barked out a laugh.
Willard cursed.
Kogan gave the limb a couple of mighty two-handed swings, and the weapon sang an ominous whuh! with each. “Mud and wattle he is, and I aim to make him kindling.”
“Put down the tree, Kogan,” Willard growled.
“Reckon a club ain’t right for it, Will? It’s made o’ mud and sticks, so a club oughta—”
“A friend, Kogan,” said Willard, and this time, the knight’s words had an edge of menace. “It’s the white witch’s servant, and a friend.” Turning impatiently to the aspen grove, he shouted, “Mudruffle, show yourself. You are safe now.”
The Jack of Ruin Page 10
