If Crows Know Best (Mage of Merced Book 1)

by Aimee Gross

“They’ll join us and we’ll move on, though not to the main road. That’s likely to be busy.” She hopped down. “A meal wouldn’t go amiss, though. Then they can eat when they come.”

  She had fine trout frying in what seemed no time at all, while Gargle washed himself in a pool and enjoyed the results of the gutting, letting nothing go to waste. I would have liked to practice calling fish from the cold sparkling water, but feared I might draw ominous attention by using magic. Thus, I felt useless, so groomed the team and let them graze awhile, shepherded by Wieser. All the while, I could not shake my feeling of being watched by something outside of the world I could see around me.

  The feeling of spider webs brushing my thoughts had ceased since I left the fort; this differed in seeming to surround us, as if the very air was … attentive, somehow. Several times as I worked on the horses, my nape hair rose and my obsidian knife suddenly felt hot and heavy in my boot. I kept my sword and crossbow close to hand, uneasy.

  When I asked her, Annora claimed to sense none of it, and paused to close her eyes for a bit to try. She reopened them shaking her head, “I only hear the water rushing, and the birds in the brush. That little snake in the rocks, there. Sometimes I feel as you describe when magic is being cast abroad, but I don’t feel it now.”

  She walked the bank collecting fiddlehead fern to steam, and when she returned to the wagon, said, “You were heavily touched by the mage’s spellcasting last night. Then you saw the spectre today. Perhaps you have been opened to the worlds beyond ours. My gran said some folk can see or feel the others who exist with us but are out of the sight of most. They are all around us, all the time, but unseen. The ability to sense them is a gift, like the ability to do magic.”

  “If that’s so, will I always be able to see them?”

  “It might not be permanent, but just an after effect of slaying the possessed hawk.”

  “I regret that,” I said, and though I knew I should stop there, could not help continuing, “It wasn’t the hawk’s fault. I wish I had known a way to cast the sorcerer out of it, instead.”

  “The goddess forgives,” Annora said. And as she spoke, rising behind her in the shade of the tree, I saw a flicker of a green-robed woman, arms stretched up like the branches. A blink and the image was gone.

  “Are the gods about us all the time, too?”

  “Of course. They are the world, and the gods together balance us all on the turning wheel of life so we do not go awry. Do you see them, as well?”

  “I may have done,” I said, considering. I helped myself to a plate of fish, and made sure to thank the fish for being our sustenance and the gods, every one, for every other aspect of life. One could not be too careful where the divine was concerned.

  Annora and I took turns watching across the valley the way we had come, and I was doing my stretch on our wagon roof when I saw a wagon with mounted men alongside. I called to Annora, picking berries a short ways away, and she rushed to climb the back ladder to look, too.

  “It is them!” she cried. “Oh, gods be praised forever!”

  “Can you see that far, it’s not Keltanese soldiers coming?” I could not say for certain, myself.

  “Why would they pursue us with a wagon?” came her sensible reply. It proved to be Da and Wils who drew up to us on mounts, with Joren on the wagon’s bench seat, and Beckta and Miskin returned to their disguise as Keltanese guards.

  Perk was nowhere to be seen. My stomach gripped hard.

  “Please, where is Perk?”Annora asked before I could. Wils rode to the side of our wagon and helped her from the roof to sit behind him in the saddle. He rode across to the cargo wagon’s bed. I scrambled down the ladder and ran to look into the bed with them. Perk lay on scumbled blankets, a wide blood-stained bandage wrapped around his left thigh.

  “He took a sword blow while mounted. The bone is not broken, but the muscle is deeply cut.” Wils aided Annora over the side of the wagon. She knelt at Perk’s side. “The healer at the fort sewed him up, but perhaps there is more you can do for him?”

  “Aye, if you could staunch some of the pain, I’d take it as a favor,” Perk said, voice tight.

  I sped to our wagon’s shadowy hut, and snatched up Annora’s pouch of herbs, then grabbed a bottle of mead as well. I handed her everything quick as quick. She bent over Perk’s wound and caught her lower lip in her teeth.

  “Judian, would you see to boiling some water?”

  I nearly fell over my feet racing to set the kettle over the coals.

  “Make ready to head downstream, we’ll follow the river to the next town and then take the long route home,” Da directed the others. He would let no one tell any more of the morning’s tale, only that the pass had been closed. They did make time to dismount and polish off the fish and greens. I fetched the team as soon as I handed Annora the kettle.

  “Wait,” called Wils around a mouthful, “Trade the teams out again, to confuse the descriptions being told where we’ve been seen passing by.” Da nodded approval, and Beckta came to help me. We both froze when Perk cried out as Annora worked on him. Wils stood in the silence that followed, but then we heard Perk tell her, “Go on, go on. Just give me another pull on the bottle first, eh?”

  The wagons stood ready when the food was gone, and Annora finished with Perk at the same time. She bade Wils and Da transfer him to the back of our wagon, in the hut out of sight. Perk grimaced when they lifted him, his teeth hard clenched. As they carried him past me, he held a fist aloft, and gave a pale shadow of his wide, easy grin.

  I saw Wils had been put up on a springy-hocked bay mare with black stockings, not the quality of Da’s mount but a fine horse, none the less. Instead of thinking about Perk’s wound and whether jostling in a wagon would set it bleeding worse, I imagined the herd we would have when we gathered all these horses at home. The barn would have to be enlarged sooner rather than later. Perhaps I should not think about home either, lest I help the mages find me there? I wondered.

  Da and Wils rode alongside Annora and me, looking like Travellers, we hoped. Beckta and Miskin continued as Joren’s outriders with the cargo wagon ahead of ours. I strove to lag behind them enough that we looked like two groups, not a passel of folk together on a journey.

  The first village we reached was no more than a hamlet around a ferry crossing. Wils found it on the map and told me it was called Pilsberry Crossing, before I reminded him nobody was supposed to tell me anything. “Treat me like a mushroom,” I said, “Keep me in the dark.”

  “Should you also be fed a diet of manure?” Wils joked, for that was where the best mushrooms sprouted in the caves, where an animal left scat.

  “If Annora prepares it, I will give it a try,” I said. “Make no mistake about me trying any you turn your hand to!”

  I steered our blue wagon down the single dirt track between the handful of stone houses, after waiting to see that Joren and the others had pulled out. None of the occupants of the drowsy place had heard any news of late, Da learned when he stopped to buy supplies. They had little enough to offer, though they eyed his coin avidly. Da bought some smoked venison, and a couple jugs of cider. He offered, Traveller-like, to do a job or two, but they refused. It seemed if we didn’t want to be ferried across the river, they wanted to see us move on.

  “I should have had a chain,” Da said as we went along. “Travellers melt gold into chain links, and twist off so many for a purchase. I hope those folk don’t remark to the wrong ears that I used Merced coin.”

  “Maybe the Travellers do that more with each other. Zaffis was only too happy with our coin,” I said.

  “Mmm, Wils has told me some of your enterprises in my absence. You’ve both done me proud with all this,” he nodded toward the wagon and horses, and the cargo wagon up ahead.

  I felt my heart swell to hear it, but could do no more than dip my chin. I didn’t want to seem more a boy than a man, with my birthday only a short while away. I concentrated on driving the team, watching the faint
track between Cider’s ears.

  ###

  We fell back into our prior rhythm of rolling along during daylight hours and camping at night. Perk could not bear weight on his leg, but Annora insisted he get out and walk of an evening with a crutch she fashioned—“To keep the breath clear.” She dressed and redressed his wound, with stinking poultices that made my eyes water. Yet, she said the gash progressed toward healing. I wondered if he would always limp. Perhaps for a horsemaster, a limp had little consequence. Perk, for his part, took care to only look grim and pained when he thought no one watched him.

  We saw nothing of Clock or Tock, so sent Gargle home with word that we would be returning soon. I overheard Wils telling Annora what to say, so she could code it. I also heard him tell her that Cochren Luppes had not wanted Da to leave, or to let any of the men depart. “As if I’d send you home with Judian alone. Luppes will just have to act like a fortmaster and fight the Keltanese himself, when they try to clear the pass.”

  “The men at the fort all seemed strong in their mission, and I could not see they lacked for anything,” said Annora.

  “That’s Da’s doing, he took over the running of the place during the siege. Kept everyone lifted up and doing their best. Luppes is better since his wine ran out, but he’s not the leader Da is. And he knows it. I’m sure Da will want to keep sending the fort arms and other supplies, since you taught them to use the code so we can keep in touch. I hope the enemy doesn’t find the tunnel.”

  I hoped not, too, so I forced the tunnel site from my mind at once.

  Gargle returned two days later with far more news than I could be told. Woven beneath Virda’s words of how the garden was coming on and the twenty chicks she got for helping birth twins for the wheelwright’s wife, Wils read out to Da by the fire that night the real word from the farm. It felt like when we used to read by the hearth at home, except that I was banished to check the horses and unload bedrolls from the wagon.

  “For my own good,” I grumped to Wieser, but proximity let me hear that the warehouse prisoners were arriving in dribs and drabs from the cliffs, and being shuttled to the caves on our mountain by Gevarr and Cobbel. Whatever else was revealed made everyone equally happy, as far as I could tell by their reactions, and it was not until a week later that Tock arrived with the letter that changed everything.

  CHAPTER 35

  We kept to lesser roads and tracks to make our way toward home undetected, so the summer rains mired us more than once that week. The men had got quite good at levering up the axle with a pole while Annora and I put flat rocks under the wheels. I tried to do the muddiest work to save her from it. That day I was just scrambling to my feet swearing, covered to the chest in black muck and rotting leaves from under the cargo wagon, when Tock alighted on the hut roof.

  Maybe he thought I tried to take on his plumage color, because he bobbed his head in what appeared to me to be approval. Annora took his message to decode, while I tried to wash off some of the worst of the slop in the stream next to the road.

  Every face that came round to me when I returned looked as bleak as snow-dusted rock.

  “You’d best tell me what this one says.” I wrung out my shirt front, sinking onto a log at the edge of the wagon ruts.

  Annora held out the paper for me. Virda had sent a scrawled market list, which in code beneath said tersely, “Stay away. Soldiers taking magic folk.”

  “Taking them where?” I said into the silence.

  Da had an answer first. “No matter at present. Wils, you take Annora and Judian and head south. Delyth drives the wagon to our place, with me, Beckta and Miskin. Perk, you’ll have to ride with Wils.” The men began to move, gathering gear and shifting it from one rig to the other.

  I felt my home sliding away over a cliff while I could do nothing but watch. “Why can’t I take Annora up to the caves? Not go through the village but go around the backcountry way instead?” I tried.

  “And if they’ve tracked you to home by your thoughts?” Wils said.

  “I have not done one scrap of magic since I shot the hawk!” I said, and this was true. But I had thought of home.

  “We don’t know if they’re looking for Judian specifically,” Annora said, tugging at the rain-swollen wagon door.

  Da jerked it open for her. “They only have to know they are looking for my son,” he said.“The whole fort knew who I was, and who Judian was after that night. Finding my home will not be difficult for the enemy. I’m well-enough known as former paladin.”

  Wils brought the maps out. “It will be better to continue north, and pick up Grebble Road southeasterly. Better for fast travel.” Da looked over as Wils traced the route. I tethered Wils’s bay to the back of the Traveller wagon, and climbed up on the seat.

  “Yes,” Da said. “It’s not far to the junction. Mount up.”

  All of us did as we were ordered, which is what people always do when it’s Da doing the telling. We had three more miles of rough track to cover to reach the crossroads.

  Wils’s expression grew so empty as he drove. Annora sat beside him with me at her other side. Wieser sat on the floor behind the seat but stretched forward to lay her nose on my boot. I could hear Tock call, circling above with Gargle.

  I could not stop wondering if Morie and Virda were safe. Gevarr and Cobbel would take them away to the caves, unless at the caves themselves, situating the refugee soldiers. And would Virda be taken, since midwifery was a sort of magic? Who would care for Morie, had they left her alone at the house? How I wished I could fly home with my crows and see.

  Wils started to talk, and I listened to him to keep my thought away from magic and home. “I never knew what Da could do until I saw him fight, when we rode out together. Somehow he knew just where to send men to drive back a surge of enemy. Then he swept around like a holy fire. I had practiced long days with sword and axe when we were stuck at the fort, and I thought I could handle weapons. But he … how he made his sword ring through the air. It was his own sword, I gave it back to him and took another. I was staggered to see him wield it.” Wils swallowed.

  “What is the best thing to do in a battle?” I asked, for I might need to know soon.

  He shifted his shoulders. “Be somewhere else.”

  “Did you have to kill anybody?” I persisted.

  “Yes.” It seemed at first he would not say more, but then, “I saw six fall to me, but maybe not all of them died.” Annora put her hand over his on the rein, and settled her head on his shoulder.

  I did not know what to say. Was it wrong to feel I would have liked to see my da fight? But what Wils said rang true—better to avoid a battle than seek one. Did Wils already carry the ghosts of the slain men with him? It could have been because I was thinking deep about what Wils said that I did not notice the sky darkening before us. Canyons and cliffs of black cloud seethed above before I chanced to look up and see them roiling.

  “Queer weather of a sudden,” I said. Not queer, uncanny, came into my mind unbidden. I had just opened my mouth again when Gargle and Tock flew in front of our faces, in a fury of flapping and cawing. We rolled out of the canopy of trees and onto the wider crossroads, with Wils cursing as he tried to fend the birds away from Annora’s head.

  Emerging from the trees on the opposite side of the main road was a squad of Keltanese soldiers.

  I could see the back of our stolen wagon continuing north, with Miskin and Beckta in their Keltanese garb as escort. Da had pulled his grey stallion to a stop on the rise—watching to see us turn aside to the southeast.

  “Take arms but stay,” Wils murmured to Perk in the back of our wagon. And why had I not thought to ride in the back? Wils gave the barest glance to the soldiers and swung the team onto Grebbel Road. I looked to where Da had been and found he had vanished into the woods. Ten foot soldiers, I counted as we turned past, with two more in the trees holding horses. One closest to the road stepped out toward us with hand upraised.

  I could see on Wils’s f
ace the conflict—stop as if Travellers abroad, or make a run with Perk shooting from the rear? The desultory way the soldier held his hand up, and the fact that the others did not charge forward … he pulled the team to a halt.

  In stilted Mercedish, the soldier said, “We be seek a boy and the father. Home near here.”

  “We are Travellers, come from far away,” Wils said, looking at his boots.

  “And isn’t she a pretty piece I’d like to ride,” the man said under his breath in Keltanese. Wils gave no flicker of reaction, though I knew, too. The man wasn’t talking about the bay mare. “You be?” the soldier pointed at me, switching back to his clumsy Mercedish.

  “Cousin,” I said, for Wils and I looked much alike. The soldier squinted, as if he did not know the word.

  “Egorace.” Wils pointed down the road, naming a town some twenty miles ahead. “Find field work.” The soldier looked blank. “Work,” Wils repeated, and I made motions of digging as with a shovel.

  This appeared to reach him, and he nodded and waved us on. I cast another look at the sky, which now bore green-tinged clouds ringing the hills we approached. A looming thunderhead shaped like a smithy’s anvil capped the crest of the hill. As I watched, streaks of cloud began to rotate slowly. Thunder rolled over us.

  “We should stop,” I said to Wils.

  “Some distance from them, first.”

  Da rode down the road bank out of the trees. He had crossed behind the soldiers to rejoin us. “Keep going, but do not rush,” he said to Wils.

  I said again, “I think we should stop,” and pointed to the strange sky before us.

  Annora said, “I don’t know as much about weather-workers as Virda, but I think that has to be their doing. Judian’s right.”

  “Perk, look out behind. Do they follow?” Da risked a look back, too.

  “No,” came from Perk, and Da nodded.

  “Are there more crossroads ahead?” I asked, and Wils handed me the map. I felt my nerves start to thrum and taughten. A crack of thunder made us all jump, and the team lurch forward. Even Da’s obedient mount jittered and sidled.