Patricia Briggs

by The Hob's Bargain

  There were serfs in the farther fields. The manor and lands were smallish for a lord’s house, or so I’d been told. Lord Moresh had several much larger elsewhere. I didn’t know how many serfs he had to work the land because they seldom came to the village and were discouraged from conversing with the freemen, but I supposed them to be fewer than fifty.

  A work party of six men was clearing the irrigation ditches of winter’s debris. None of them looked up, though I rode less than a long stride from several of them.

  Farther on, a woman piled the burnable rubbish on a small donkey cart. She might have ignored our passage as well, if Wandel’s mare hadn’t decided to take exception to the beast.

  Snorting and dancing, she skittered halfway across the road—startling the poor donkey rather badly. The woman dropped her bundle of dry sticks and ran to the donkey’s head. Briefly her eyes met mine.

  Wandel controlled his mount, then swept a flourishing bow. “My apologies, lady. My mare is overset by having such a large audience for her antics.” The Lass snorted and shook her head, mouthing her bit impatiently.

  Head bowed, the woman nodded, clearly waiting for us to move on so she could get back to her task. I noticed that her hands were shaking—in fear of Wandel? I looked at the minstrel, but, clad in his usual bright-colored foppery, he appeared no more dangerous to me than a hound pup.

  I rode on, thinking about what I’d lost and what that woman would never have. I stored the sight of the other’s lifeless eyes and trembling hands in my memory, to be brought out should the temptation to feel sorry for myself return. At least I’d had a family to lose—and I wasn’t prey for any man who happened by.

  BY MIDMORNING WE REACHED THE END OF THE CULTIVATED fields. Choosing a deer trail with seeming randomness, Kith led us into the dense, thorn-infested woods beyond. I hadn’t been out this way since I was a child without the chores of adulthood. The trails tended to change a bit from year to year, but I didn’t think this was the one I’d taken on the way to the Hob.

  Kith, though, didn’t hesitate. He’d obviously been riding up here lately, because he hadn’t known the paths this well when Lord Moresh recruited him.

  I frowned past Wandel at Kith’s back. He was tense, like a hound on the trail. He was always looking to one side of the trail or the other, and I could swear he was testing the air for scent now and then. Torch seemed to be infected with the same restless urgency as his rider. He paced forward with his head up, nostrils flared, prancing ever so slightly.

  Well, the forest felt different to me, too. As if there were something watching us. But the thornbushes made spying difficult. If anyone was crashing through the thick brush, we’d have heard them. Maybe it was an aftereffect of the magic’s release that made me so unnerved. More likely it was watching Kith act like someone was watching us.

  “Anything wrong, Kith?” I asked. “You’re acting like a mouse in a fox’s den.”

  “Nothing,” he said. “But I feel…” He looked back at me. “If I say this, people are going to think I’m as weird as you.”

  I batted my eyelashes at him. “I’m not weird, I’m evil—the One God declares it so. Just ask Poul’s mother.”

  He rolled his eyes, then turned his head so he could watch where he was going. “I feel like the forest is alive.”

  I thought about it a moment, and decided I felt the same way. Not that I’d say so. People might think I was weird.

  “Me, too,” admitted Wandel. “But forests always bother me. I can’t see if there’s anyone else around. Too easy for someone to set up ambushes.”

  “There’s no one here,” replied Kith shortly. “I’d smell them if there were.”

  Smell them? The trail narrowed, and I turned my attention to riding.

  For the first time, I regretted not accepting Kith’s offer of a riding horse. Trails that work for roe deer aren’t built for a seventeen-hand draft horse—let alone for one with a rider on top. Finally, frustrated, I kicked my feet free from the stirrups and lay flat on his back, trusting him to follow the others without much fuss.

  When Wandel pulled up suddenly, Duck got too close to the the Lass. She let fly with her heels, but Duck had gotten used to her tactics and pushed forward so she couldn’t get room to put much force behind her kick. Infuriated, she spun on her hind legs, disregarding her rider and the dense flora, teeth flashing as she tried to bite poor Duck.

  I grabbed the rolls on the front of the saddle and held on despite the branches that gripped and tore at me while Duck backed rapidly away from the charging she-demon.

  Wandel leaned forward and sang softly to the mare. I didn’t catch the words, but I happened to be sliding off in the right direction to get the full effect of the switch from enraged nightmare to child’s docile mount. The surprise sent me slithering all the way to the ground.

  The Lass stood still, eyes half-closed in ecstasy as Wandel sang a lullaby to her; only the speed of her breathing remained of the wild-eyed beast of a moment ago. The rare sound of Kith’s laughter brought an answering grin to my face.

  Wandel finished the chorus and patted his mare’s white neck.

  “I know,” he said. “Oddest thing I’ve ever seen, too. Most of the Lass’s antics are just flash and spit—I think she enjoys the attention.”

  The mare swiveled an ear toward the harper and cocked her hip, resting on three legs as if she were dozing—but the eye I could see was wickedly bright.

  I found a place in the trail relatively clear of brush and remounted. “Why did you stop in the first place?”

  “That,” said the harper, pointing through the trees.

  “The hob court,” said Kith.

  I maneuvered Duck until I could see the old stone foundation through the dense growth. Somewhere we must have joined up with the trail that I used to take, because the view was a familiar one.

  The stones might have been the remains of some ancient farmer’s storehouse, but by some trick of fancy or weather wear, they looked as if they were the remnants of a tiny castle, complete with curtain wall and battlements.

  “Gram called it the sprite’s court,” I said, “but I suppose we’ll never know. Grandpa trapped the high country in the winter; he said you could find unusual remains all over these parts—reminders of the wildlings who used to live here. He said he found a whole city once, nestled in a narrow ravine; but when he lost sight of it looking for a way down, he was never able to find it again.” I wondered if it really was a sprite’s castle.

  “Your Grandpa liked to tell stories,” said Kith repressively before starting off again.

  I grinned at Wandel. “Yep, and about half of them were hog hooey. But deciding which ones were which was half the fun.” More soberly, I said, “Lord Moresh’s brother disappeared on Faran’s Ridge. They hunted for him for weeks, but never found so much as a scrap of cloth.”

  The harper nodded. “There are many such tales here in the mountains. Too many to be dismissed as complete fiction.” He set the Lass on the trail at a trot to catch Kith, and I brought up the rear.

  THE GROUND BEGAN TO SLOPE GENTLY UPWARD AND the woods cleared a bit. The thornbush disappeared from the mix of underbrush. Overhanging branches no longer reached clear across the trail, so I could sit up, a position that I found much more comfortable.

  Wandel brought his harp out. In keeping with the mood Kith had set earlier, he played a few tunes about the wild creatures who had held these mountains so long ago. I joined in with the ones I knew, ignoring Kith’s exaggerated winces when I lost the pitch. Ever gracious, Wandel ignored my mistakes.

  He switched at last to a tale of King Faran, the wizard-king who conceived of the highway. The ridge that formed the southwestern border of the valley was named after him because he was said to have won a battle there, though there was no real proof of it.

  He had been, according to Gram and to Wandel’s song, handsome and charismatic. He’d spent a long time as a warrior before taking up the additional robes of magery.
Faran ruled wisely and well until the madness that inevitably twists bloodmages caught him—or so the stories said. I don’t know how a bloodmage could be a good king, mad or not. The tower he’d thrown himself from was still standing (or so I’d heard).

  I hadn’t heard the story Wandel played, but it had a catchy tune and merry verses. Kith unbent enough to join in. He added a few verses himself, most of which were of the kind I’d have expected a soldier to know.

  As we came out of the trees to the drier, grassy slopes of the foothill below the Hob, Kith stopped singing abruptly. Urging Duck beside the others, I saw what had brought on his silence.

  Halfway up the foothill, below the first cliffs, was a boulder twice the size of my croft. It hadn’t been there long. Looking up, I could see the raw places on the mountainside where it had broken loose and bounced. A shattered oak lay in aftermath of its passing, leaves still green with spring’s promise.

  I whistled. “I’d have hated to be here when it fell.” The sight of the boulder, a reminder that our world had come crashing down around our ears, cast a pall over our party. At least it dampened Wandel’s mood, and without his steady cheer, Kith’s grim nervousness infected us all.

  We were silent as we climbed the gentle rise to the Hob. The mountain was the tallest of those surrounding Fallbrook, but we didn’t need to go over the peak. The trail to Auberg twisted and turned over the mountain’s shoulder, working its way along the only negotiable path through the cliffs. The route itself was about the same length as the one the King’s Highway followed, though it looked shorter on a map. Maps, even good ones, didn’t take into account the amount of a trail’s climbing and descending.

  The first part of the path was easy, just as I remembered it. The trail followed the bottom edge of the cliffs in a gentle rise that traversed the side of the mountain in the opposite direction from Auberg. The only alternative was to go straight up the cliffs. I smiled and followed the others.

  It was several hours before the cliff gave way to a steep slope dotted with evergreens. The trail twisted back and forth among the trees until we reached the base of an enormous, steep, skree slope.

  It looked as if a giant had taken a bucket of sand and poured it down the side of the mountain. The slope stretched from the very peak of the mountain to the bottom, now far below us. The trail narrowed to a goat’s path that traversed the skree at a very steep angle. We’d be going up.

  Wandel swore, looked at me, and flushed.

  “That’s why no one in their right mind would take a wagon through here,” I said. “There’s a lot of grazing up there.” I nodded toward the top of the trail. “The shepherds bring their flocks up this during the height of summer to save the fields in the valley—and they lose a few sheep here every year. I haven’t ever been all the way through to Auberg, but I’ve been told this is the worst of it—though there are some other rough spots.”

  Kith had already started up the slope ahead of us. It was obvious from the way his horse slipped and scrambled that the path didn’t offer much better footing than the looser rock on either side. It was steep, too.

  Wandel started his horse across. I waited until he was well on his way before setting Duck to it. On a trail like this, I wanted room to maneuver. Ideally I’d have waited until Wandel was at the top, but Duck was already starting to fret at being left behind. When we crossed, I wanted his mind on his footing, not on catching up the horses ahead of him.

  Before we were a tenth of the way up, Duck was coated in sweat and gray dust. I could feel the subtle trembling of his overworked muscles as he hauled me slowly up the mountainside. I sat as still as I could, and crouched over his big shoulders to let the gelding find his own pace.

  If the trail hadn’t been so narrow, it might have been better to dismount. On my own, I probably would have done so. But since Kith had tackled it mounted, the rest of us manly warriors had to do the same. I smiled sourly to myself. I would have expected childhood competitions to die out with adulthood—but there was no way I was going to dismount if Kith was riding.

  Wandel was about halfway to the far side when the Lass lost her footing where the trail crossed the smooth face of a large piece of unbroken shale. The little mare jumped and scrambled frantically but couldn’t stop her downward slide even after reaching the end of the slick rock face and hitting the rougher surface of loose rock that made up most of the trail.

  I stopped Duck foursquare in the trail. I had few seconds to worry before the Lass’s rump hit Duck’s chest with considerable force. My stout gelding grunted and rocked back on his haunches, but his weight and his shoeless, big feet gave him better traction than the mare had. He slid backward a pace or two before we all stopped.

  “Bless you for bringing that horse,” gasped Wandel, patting the Lass, who was blowing hard. “I thought that was going to be it. If he were any lighter, we’d have all been tumbling down to the bottom.”

  I was busy watching a rock the mare’s feet had knocked loose finally hit the valley bottom. Duck shuffled back another step, then took advantage of my inattention to snatch a few strands of grass that poked out among the rocks, proof that horses have no imagination.

  I shook my head in reply to Wandel’s comment. “Nah, that would have been too easy. Surely all the tales that you’ve told will win you a more glorious and painful fate.”

  He laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind while we try this again.”

  Kith was waiting for us at the top by the time Wandel urged the Lass forward. This time, I held Duck back until the Lass was on the far side of the rock sheet before letting him follow. When I reached the small meadow at the top, the others were already loosening their cinches. I dismounted and followed suit, slipping the bit so Duck could graze while he rested.

  “The place I want to camp is about a league from here,” said Kith. “That will give us an early night, but there aren’t very many good places to camp past there. We’ll make it to town by late afternoon anyway.”

  “Right,” I agreed, not feeling all that fresh myself. Sitting in the dark for a week wasn’t the best preparation for a trek through the mountains. Wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my sleeve, I looked around and tried to match what I saw with my last journey here.

  “Hmm,” I said, “this isn’t too far from where we camped that time, is it?” I didn’t wait for Kith’s reply. “Weren’t there some runes or something on some rocks down there?”

  “Runes?” inquired the harper.

  “Mmm. Want to take a look while the horses rest?”

  “I’ll stay with the horses,” Kith volunteered.

  There was something in his voice that caused me to look sharply at him, but the expression on his face was simply reserved.

  “I’d like to see them,” replied Wandel, though he groaned as he stood up from the knee-high boulder he’d been sitting on.

  “Walking will help keep you from stiffening up,” I said, trying both to sound wise and not to look as stiff as I felt.

  The harper raised his eyebrows with hauteur that would have done Lord Moresh proud. “My child,” he intoned, “when you have traveled as many miles as I, you will understand that nothing—nothing—keeps you from stiffening up.”

  “If you don’t come back by sunset, I’ll come looking for you,” Kith offered, watching as I searched for the right place to set off back down the mountain. He might have been amused, but it was hard to tell.

  The path I chose wasn’t the same one the three of us had taken almost twenty years ago. As I recalled, we’d been trying to find a way down that would allow us to avoid the skree slope (that the boys had already been across once). We’d run into thorn thickets at the very base of the mountain and had had to climb all the way back to our starting point, but scrambling around had led us to…

  “There,” I said pointing to a large, reddish rock balanced against another, both easily taller than three men standing one atop another.

  I had led us too far down, so we h
ad to scramble back up to the site.

  “Here,” I said, panting. “On the underside, where the weather couldn’t wash them away.”

  They weren’t as impressive as I’d remembered them. Merely worn black lines on stone, almost pictures but not quite. Wandel didn’t seem to mind.

  He scrambled close to the faint marks and crouched on his heels with an ease that gave lie to the stiffness he’d been complaining about. He frowned a moment, then opened his purse and unwrapped a bit of char. With a delicate touch he added a mark here and there, sometimes merely darkening what was already there, but once he added a whole series of the little symbols.

  “Can you read it?” I asked in unfeigned awe. I could read a little, thanks to Gram—but that was the king’s tongue. Only noblemen knew how to write anything else, noblemen and scholars.

  The harper nodded. “A bit. I think. Some of the runes are different.” He pointed at one. “I’ve never seen anything like that. And here, see, this didn’t have this tail—but it makes sense if I change it so.”

  “So what does it say? Do you know who wrote it? How old it is?”

  “Well,” he said dryly, “it’s older than the last time you saw this. Any scholar could have written this. It’s an ancestor of Manishe—a common tongue among scholars, though it hasn’t been in everyday use for four hundred years or so.”

  He said “four hundred years” as if it were a few days. Harpers were strange that way.

  “The mercenary patois has its roots here.” He tapped the rock with the hand that still held the char, leaving a dark blotch on the stone. “But of course they have altered it almost beyond recognition—simplifying it to three or four hundred code words that even the stupidest man can command in a short period of time with the proper instruction. That way it doesn’t matter what country a man comes from.”