“Stay close to me,” Ivy said. “I’ll see that they treat you with respect.”
“That’s all right,” Cazia said. I am not helpless. “I don’t need a babysitter, and I’ve faced scarier things than cowards who fling mud at people’s backs.”
She didn’t say it quietly, and as she hoped a pair of servants--or something, who could tell?--began whispering as if they understood.
Good. Cazia had lived among sneaks and backbiters her entire life. She knew how to deal with people like that.
Before the usual buns were distributed at midday--the Ergoll ate lunch on their feet while walking, which seemed sensible to Cazia, although the food was unbearably bland--a pair of girls approached Kinz and began speaking in Toal. Cazia had learned to tell the difference overnight; Toal sounded like a monotone while Ergoll had a lilt to it. Not that she could understand a word. But the girls encouraged Kinz to follow them to the front of the column.
Then, while they ate, Ivy’s cousin asked her to join him on the western side of the group to talk privately about family matters. The princess didn’t want to leave Cazia alone, but Cazia insisted it was fine.
And it was. It would have to be. Cazia slowed her pace, letting the cart—and the bulk of the crowd—pull ahead. Walking with the princess, she liked to stay close to the center of the retinue. Not directly behind the cart, of course, because of the little surprises the okshim dropped, but close. She honestly wasn’t sure how dangerous the forest was; Belterzhimi’s soldiers were obviously there to stand off a Peradaini incursion, which was clearly not going to happen. As for the grunts, the Straim was the widest, deepest river in Kal-Maddum; if armed, skilled boatmen had difficulty navigating those fast, treacherous currents, The Blessing ought to find it nearly impossible.
Maybe there were bandits or something, but Cazia figured it was safer not to ask about it. Someone would surely take it as an insult.
As Cazia fell behind, spearmen passed her. They moved in pairs with long, flexible weapons and round wooden shields covered in bronze on their backs. Instead of swords at their hips, they carried small knives. The looks they gave her made it clear what they thought of her, and they sometimes muttered nastily in Ergoll.
It wasn’t Enemies outside the camp that she had to fear. It was the ones within.
But if the men stared with stony contempt, the women looked at her with undisguised hatred. Narrowed eyes, curled lips... Cazia was sure they would put an arrow in her back if they thought they could get away with it.
Of course, they probably could. No matter how furious Ivy became, Cazia doubted that her killer would be actually hanged for the crime, considering the history between her people and theirs. Not that it would matter to Cazia once she had been Fire-taken.
It occurred to her that, for once, she was going too far and risking too much, but she dismissed it. No retreat. Not from this enemy.
An archer came from behind and bumped her, hard, knocking her toward the center of the road. She had to hop and dance to avoid the sticky piles of okshim flop, which made the archers laugh. She couldn’t understand what they said, but it didn’t matter. These weren’t the ones who had flung mud on her.
Eventually, she fell back far enough that she was alone on the road. The oak trees grew close to the path, and the morning drizzle dripped from the leaves in fat drops. Only her broad white Toal hat kept them off the back of her neck. It did not take long for them to come to her.
There were four, all women, all carrying unstrung bows and wearing the asymmetrical sleeves of Indregai archers. The one in the lead had shorn blond hair--she had a husband somewhere--and broad, muscular shoulders. She was as tall as Kinz and almost as muscled as Colchua had been. There was a bit of swagger in her step, which the others didn’t match. The leader.
The woman stepped two paces away from her, then curled her lip while she looked Cazia up and down. She appeared older than Belterzhimi, and, while the other three women were younger, they were adults. All older than Cazia herself.
The big blond took a switch from the hand of a woman beside her and flicked it sideways. Tiny specks of mud spattered across the front of Cazia’s jacket.
“Finally,” Cazia said, “someone gets up the nerve to confront me to my face.”
“You are spark.” The smallest and wiriest of the three women could speak her language, if not very well. She lifted her arm and pretended to flick a piece of dirt from her sleeve. “Spark.”
“You mean speck. If you’re going to insult someone in a foreign tongue, take care you don’t compliment them instead. Speck, not spark.”
The small woman said something in Ergoll, and the big one flicked her wrist, laying a stinging stroke on Cazia’s upper arm with the switch. “No carrect,” the little one said.
Did they think she’d never been beaten with a switch before? “Correct, not carrect.” The blond struck her again, this time higher on her arm. The sleeve of her jacket absorbed some of the blow, but not much. “Speck, not--”
She didn’t get to finish. The blond let fly with the blows, swinging with her full arm now. They hurt, but her tutors had beaten her harder when she was eight. She curled her arm to protect her injured hand and one of the strikes--the eleventh or twelfth--caught her across the cheek.
One of the women caught hold of the big blond’s arm, stopping the attack. Apparently, there was a limit to what they would do: leave evidence of their bullying.
Cazia touched the bright, burning spot on her cheek where she’d taken the blow. Her fingers came away bloody. The big blond shook off her friend’s grip and glared at Cazia.
She glared right back. Fire would take her before she cringed before these cowards. She stepped close to the big woman--so close she had to crane her neck back to stare at her--and gently pinched the hem of that archery jacket with her bloody fingers.
There was a sudden inhuman screech from somewhere behind Cazia. All five of them turned toward the sound, but there was nothing to see but gray skies, heavy trees cover, and blowing rain. It sounded far away, but not nearly far enough.
It sounded again, a grinding, hissing sound like dying metal. Cazia glanced back at the Ergoll archers. Judging by their expressions, she could tell they had never heard it before, either.
Cazia snapped her fingers and pointed at their bows. She’d meant for them to string their weapons, but the women lifted them and began to withdraw.
That wouldn’t do. Cazia clapped twice, sharply; they looked at her in surprise. She pointed at the one who had grabbed the big woman’s arm then pointed back up the road. “Alarm.”
Then she pointed at the three remaining: the small one who could barely speak her language, the second slender one who looked like she wanted to be invisible, and the big one who’d beaten her. Then she pointed at their unstrung bows.
There was a third cry from between the trees. It sounded as if it was getting closer, but that might have been her own fear. Of course, she herself had no weapons at all, not even a knife at her belt. The fingers of her left hand wouldn’t flex far enough for her to touch her index finger and thumb together, so she could not manage several of her spells. No fire, no blocks, no crumbling stone, no shooting iron darts, not that she had any.
She bent down and picked up the switch the big woman had dropped, then started toward the sound. The Ergoll archers did not follow. Monument sustain her, were they soldiers? Were they not supposed to be the outer guard for this retinue?
Something in her expression must have goaded them, because three of the women began to string their bows. After a mumbled conversation, the smallest one ran back toward the cart to raise the alarm. Brilliant. Cazia wanted to send one with the longest legs and keep the one who could almost talk to her, but they had to do things their own way.
The messenger vanished around a bend in the road before the women had their bows strung and arrows nocked. They started northward toward the sound, and the Ergoll archers let her stay at the front, like bait.
&nb
sp; Fine. Maybe it would have been better to wait for more soldiers, but Cazia was sure she knew that sound. Not that she’d heard it before, not exactly, but it had the same up/down quaver of the roars she heard from The Blessing.
Could the grunts have crossed the Straim? If one had, it would need to be killed quickly. As quickly as possible.
She lifted her injured hand and flexed it again. Fire and Fury, there were so many spells she would be unable to cast still. She could put out a fire if they came across one. She could probably purify a small amount of water... Actually, she had never thought to use that against another living creature; was it possible to “purify” a creature’s blood, turning it into water? Should she cast it toward the heart? The legs? The head?
Another scream echoed from between the trees, but now it was coming from the northwest. It was off the road in the trees. Would she be able to lead it to the open, where the archers would have a clear shot? It was pretty to think the Ergoll would actually shoot at this whatever-it-is before it tore her apart, but she wasn’t going to bet her life on it.
Still, if a grunt had made it to this side of the Straim, running away wasn’t going to do much good. It would only catch someone else, and then she’d have two grunts to run from.
She climbed the little slope at the edge of the road and slipped between two trees. One thing she’d learned in Qorr was that the quietest way to walk through woods was on exposed tree roots, and the grass had been chopped low by countless caravans and military carts to feed the okshim. She hopped from one trunk to another, then had to jump a muddy patch to reach a third.
The archers didn’t seem to be following her. Fine. She held the switch in her good hand and flexed the injured one. Maybe she could touch her fingers together without the bandages. With her teeth, she began to worry the knot on the back of her knuckles. The cloth didn’t want to give, and her hand still hurt like mad.
There was another cry, and this time, it sounded astonishingly close. While it carried a sibilance that the sounds of the grunts never had, she was more convinced than ever that she had guessed right. Somewhere nearby was one of The Blessing.
A chill ran over her whole body. Why am I doing this? I don’t even have a knife. The familiar sense, last felt just before she started toward Qorr Valley, that she was putting her life in danger largely because she could not imagine things going all that badly, was upon her again. It was a failure of imagination, obviously. Someone with a better head could envision all the ways this might go wrong and would run back toward Vilavivianna and all the Ergoll spears and bows.
Of course, then she would be asking for help from her Enemies, and Fire could take that idea.
Then she heard grass rustling behind her. Her bullies were close behind. So be it. She definitely couldn’t turn and run now, not while they were looking. Besides, she wasn’t planning to actually do any fighting. The closer she came to the source of the noise, the more obvious that seemed, blood purifying spell or not. She just wanted to confirm that the grunt was there, make note of where it was, and sneak back to tell the soldiers. As she tugged and loosened her bandages, she reassured herself that she was only spying, not looking for a fight.
Cazia kept hopping from the base of one tree to another. As she got farther from the road, the grass was thinner and thinner—in some parts of the forest floor, the ground seemed to be made of nothing but fallen, rotting branches.
She heard faint but ragged breathing, so she crouched low before peering carefully around the tree trunk. There was nothing to see, but she got the sense that the thing making those awful noises, whatever it was, had to be close. Just ahead, she could see that the trees suddenly stopped. Was she at the edge of a meadow? As she crept forward, she heard the sound of flowing water.
The Straim. She was coming very near to it. Then she heard another strange, grinding cry, and she suddenly recognized that it was a cry of terrible pain.
The tall grass near the riverbank rustled, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. The next time they moved, she saw it happen. There was a huge fallen tree lying near the slope of the bank, and the grass was shuddering back and forth above it. Whatever was there, it was just on the other side of that fallen log.
Cazia circled to her left, trying to imagine that she could get a little more distance from the source of that noise. Whatever it was, it was close, and frankly, the thought thrilled her.
The knot on the back of her hand suddenly tore free and the bandages around her palm unraveled. A quick test showed that she did have more mobility without it, maybe even enough for a dart spell. Now if only she didn’t have to use it.
She came to the bottom of the fallen tree, where the roots had been torn out of the soil, and crept around to the water’s side. The trunk was so thick that, had she stood up straight, the top edge would have been as high as her nose. Not that she stood up straight. Carefully, she peeked though the broken roots. There was nothing to see. The Fire-taken grass was too high.
I have to know. There was nothing to do but climb up the exposed roots. She retreated to the opposite side of the trunk. Wind and rain had washed the dirt away from the exposed roots, but it was still treacherous footing. If a rotted hunk of wood snapped…
It didn’t happen. Cazia carefully crawled over the top of the trunk.
On the far side of the trunk to the left, she saw a space where the tall grass had been broken and flattened. She moved toward it a little, then saw a sudden flash of rainbow colors as something thrashed just barely in sight.
A serpent. She’d almost forgotten that the Indregai serpents had joined the troops, traveling at the very edge of the convoy. It seemed to be alone.
From where she stood, only the tail and perhaps a third of its body was visible. It still had the beautiful sheen of colors on its scales, but near its tail, she could see something sticking out of it, as though it had burst through its skin.
Feathers. They were blue-black feathers hanging from its tail in irregular clumps. She didn’t know much about the Indregai serpents, but she knew they didn’t have feathers.
A bird call caught her attention and made her turn around. It was the three Ergoll archers. Cazia waved them closer. Fire take them, why had they sent away the only one she could talk to? The big oaf’s spite was going to get them killed.
The three women moved closer. Cazia pointed to the other side of the trunk, then made a serpentine motion with her arm. Then… how was she going to explain “feathers” with only hand gestures?
Before she could figure it out, the women hurried away from her, blundering through the tall grass with all the grace of an okshim herd. They’d understood it was a serpent on the side of the trunk, and as far as they were concerned, that was all they needed to know.
She watched their faces as they broke through to the edge of the flattened grass. There was dismay and alarm, but none of them rushed toward the creature the way they might have hurried to an injured human. No, they hung back, clearly worried but unwilling to risk going close.
There was no point in hiding now. Cazia came up onto her knees in full, peering over the edge of the trunk at the entire serpent. It was shuddering, and about a third of the way down its body, its scaly skin was grotesquely swollen. Had it swallowed something big, like a half-grown boq? Maybe the feathers on its tail—actually, behind the fringes of its head, too—had come from its last meal.
Or maybe it was about to lay an egg.
It opened its mouth and let out another cry. Monument sustain them, Fire pass them by, there was nothing natural in that noise, and the expression on the Ergoll women’s faces confirmed it.
“You should kill it,” Cazia said, her voice soft.
The women couldn’t understand her words, but they understood her meaning. The big blond lifted her bow and drew. Cazia immediately rolled away from them, hearing the unmistakable sound of an arrow striking solid wood as she dropped to the forest floor.
Warning shot. If the archer had been a
iming at her, it would have passed over the trunk. Still, she had--
There was a sudden tearing sound, as though wet cloth was being torn. That same tremulous screaming returned as well, along with cries of horror from the women. Cazia rolled over to see if there was a gap between the bottom of the log and the forest floor that she might peer through, but she had no such luck.
Then she heard screams. Terrible, blood-curdling screams. One of the women cried out in Ergoll, and the other two ran around the end of the log and sprinted through the high grass toward the road.
A moment later, a long serpentine figure passed over Cazia. It was dark, like a shadow, and it flew on three pairs of long, slender wings. Cazia was unable to breathe for a moment. That thing is going to kill me.
But it didn’t. It moved through the trees, six feet above the ground, after the fleeing archers. It didn’t even look like it was flying; it was moving so slowly, weaving back and forth and languorously beating those wings. It moved as if it was swimming through the air.
Magic. Ivy and the others had to be warned. This serpent had been transformed by The Blessing. Cazia rolled to her feet, rustling the grass around her.
The flying serpent turned to look at her.
Fire take the whole world, couldn’t she have waited just a few breaths more? The creature began to circle around, weaving through the trees, and Cazia bolted into a hard run.
She circled the fallen log and found what she’d expected: one of the archers lay atop a bloody mat of broken grasses. Cazia ran toward her--Great Way, her arm was gone at the shoulder--and was astonished to see that she was still clinging to life.
She bent low over the woman and stared into her eyes for a moment. It was the one who’d stopped the lashing Cazia had just been taking. Her eyes fluttered and fell closed.
Cazia snatched a handful of arrows from the quiver at the dead woman’s hip. Five. It wasn’t enough, but the flying serpent had navigated its turn and was weaving through the air toward her. There wasn’t time for her to cast a spell; it was too close.
The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way Page 24
