FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  “No one sent us here to disturb you, sir,” Elyn said soothingly. “We’re investigating some rather strange goings-on, and although the villagers did send for us, they don’t know we intended to come up here.”

  “Ye want strange goings-on, ye look no futher than them brats o’ theirs!” he spat. “I don’ put no mischief past ’em!”

  Rod and Elyn exchanged a look. ::We didn’t consider that it might have been the children,:: Mayar said thoughtfully. ::That sort of thing is known among younglings first coming into a Gift.::

  ::Yes,:: she thought back. ::And in those with no Gift at all.:: It would not be the first time that bored youngsters terrorized a community by manufacturing “supernatural” goings-on.

  “Well, we won’t bother you any further sir,” Elyn said.

  “An’ ye won’t be settin’ foot on my land neither!” he snapped. “Gerroff wi’ ye! An’ tell that lot down t’the Stone that they kin keep their devilment t’thesselves!”

  There didn’t seem to be anything much more to say, so Elyn turned around and began picking her way back down the stream. Ryu and Arville were only too happy to do the same, quickly overtaking and passing her. Laurel shivered as she glanced back at the old man, still standing guard at his boundary-marker. Rod just shook his head.

  But Alma looked very thoughtful.

  “I don’t know why we didn’t consider the youngsters,” Rod said, as soon as they were out of earshot of the old man. “That should have been the first place we looked.”

  “But don’t you think that if it was the younglings, that nasty old grump would have been the first target they went after?” Alma countered. “Instead, it was the youngsters themselves that were scared out of their favorite swimming place. That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Maybe it’s just one or two loners who were getting even for being left out of things,” Elyn suggested, as Alma stooped again, scooping something out of the stream bed.

  “I dunno about you, but that stuff last night didn’t sound like a couple of kids!” Arville protested.

  “Remons!” Ryu seconded. “Rosses!”

  “Roses?” Rod exclaimed, looking askance.

  “He means g-g-ghosts,” Arville stammered. “It s-s-sure sounded like that to me!”

  Elyn pulled thoughtfully at her earlobe. “Still... I think we should concentrate on the villagers next. Especially the youngsters. Getting the entire village in an uproar—we’ve studied and heard of that sort of thing before.”

  Rod nodded, with a satisfied look on his face. “Even if we can’t find out something directly, I bet I can find a way to catch the troublemakers,” he said.

  “I don’t think it was kids,” Arville retorted weakly, scratching his head. “How could kids be making those... howls?”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure it was youngsters either,” Alma said, with an enigmatic look. “I don’t think it was demons—but I don’t think it was youngsters.”

  They argued about it all the way back to the village—where they finally shut up, belatedly realizing that whether Rod, Arville or Alma was right, it wouldn’t be very productive for them to be talking about it in front of the very people they were going to be investigating.

  Elyn meanwhile separated herself from the rest, and with Mayar, went in search of the likeliest person to know everybody’s business, the village midwife.

  She spent a good couple of candlemarks with that worthy, using the incident the night before as the opening wedge for conversation. “Well,” Granny Merton said, judiciously, “I’d be lying if I didn’ tell ye that fair curdles me blood’o’nights. An’ it’s been a nuisance too. The wimmin as is close t’ their time, they’ve taken t’ demandin’ I bide w’ them every night. Cause if babe should decide t’ come at night, ye ken, how’m I d’be fetched wi’ that howlin’ aroond th’ doors? ’Tis on’y been two, thus far, but a ’ooman my age likes th’ feel of her own bed benights!” She patted the thick stone walls of her tiny cottage complacently. “No demon be gettin’ through these walls, no, an’ I brung too many inter th’ world, and seen too many out of it too, to be afeared of ghosts.”

  Gradually Elyn let the conversation drift, until it ended up as such conversations always did, with the Granny’s assessment of every soul in the village.

  And that was where Elyn’s speculations and investigations ran aground. Because there were only five youngsters about the right age to be the one—or ones—behind the “haunting,” and none of them fit the pattern of the sort of child that did this sort of thing. Their personalities were all open, they were neither show-offs nor shy and withdrawn, they were not picked on or bullied, they were all five very close friends, and in general were happy youngsters. Or they had been until the “hauntings” began. Now they were just as terrified as the rest of the village.

  And insofar as their ability to sneak out and perpetrate the hauntings as a group—that was impossible, because all five of them spent their nights huddled together in one or another of their respective houses, in the main room, with the rest of whichever family they were spending the night with. Out here, a house was just a place to sleep and eat between chores and no one thought much of private rooms or single beds. There were witnesses to every moment of their time when whatever it was howled outside the walls.

  This was pretty much what all of the village youngsters were doing; the parents had discovered that if they could be with friends, they withstood it all better. So the children got rounded up after supper, divided up by age-groups, and bedded down in a huddle.

  Nevertheless, she asked Mayar to go snooping about and see if he could detect any incipient stirrings of a Gift. The Companions in general were much better at that sort of thing than she was.

  “Who’s the old man that lives up above the pond at Stony Rill?” she asked, as if it was an afterthought. “Shouldn’t he be brought down here for safety?”

  Granny snorted. “Old man Hardaker? He has no friends down here. Stingiest old rooster that was ever born. Squeezes every groat till it squeaks, goes into a fury if a crow steals so much as a grain of his, counts everything, living or dead, on his land as ’is own property. Fights the squirrels for the nuts, ’e does. They say ’e killed his wife with overwork, treated her like a slave; that I can’t speak for, it was afore my time. Sure he got no children on ’er, so I suppose he reckoned t’get work out of ’er instead. If I was a haunt, I’d stay clear of ’im. Give half a chance, he’d find a way t’bind a spirit and make it work for him, and count himself lucky that ’e wouldna have to feed and clothe it!”

  Elyn smiled wryly. “He didn’t seem to be aware that there was anything amiss here in the village.”

  Granny made a face. “Never believe it. ’E knows. ’E knows and if he’s being haunted too, he’ll never let on. Gives nothin’ away, that one, not even a thought. But ’e can’t do wi’out us. We’re the only village near enough t’buy what ’e grows, an’ the only craftsmen near enough for him t’get what ’e needs. ’E’d never leave his land t’take ’is goods t’ market, an’ never trust one of ’is ’ands t’ do it for ’im.” She cackled a little. “No doubt, that makes ’im even more sour, the ald sack!”

  Well so much for the old man. If he, too, was suffering from the haunts, he was probably blaming it on the village, and would not give them the satisfaction of knowing he was afraid. Nor would he ever ask for help. And even if he did, it was unlikely anyone here would give it to him.

  Elyn poked about the village a bit more, and found that Granny’s opinion of the old man was universal. No one liked him. Everyone had a story about his penny-pinching and attempts to cheat them. Everyone also admitted that they did their level best to cheat him back. It was a point of honor among the young men to try and steal fruit from his orchard or poach his fish or game. There was no way of telling who had begun the acrimony, but at this point there was going to be no putting an end to it.

  She managed to meet the suspect striplings, and couldn’t make up her mind
whether or not they would be capable of the sheer amount of work and ingenuity that the “haunting” would take. They weren’t stupid, but they also didn’t show the level of intelligence of, say, Rod, much less Alma—and that was what such a task would take, if it was a purely mischief-making endeavor and not the unconscious breaking out of some sort of Gift.

  They also all seemed as genuinely terrified as their parents. Elyn was fairly good at telling when she was being lied to even without the use of the Truth Spell, and she didn’t get that impression now.

  But when she met up with the rest back at the threshing barn, she discovered that Rod had already made up his mind about one thing.

  “We can’t just huddle in here like a lot of scared children,” he said firmly. “And I don’t for a moment think that these are demons or ghosts. I think it’s people. In fact, I think it’s some of the villagers. Maybe some of the younger ones.”

  “But Rod!” Laurel exclaimed indignantly. “I told you that story they told me, and you still don’t think it’s disturbed spirits?”

  “Wait, wait, what story?” Elyn demanded.

  Laurel looked both excited and apprehensive as she turned towards their mentor. “Some of the older boys told me that around early apple harvest time, they went up to the old man’s orchard to steal fruit, like always. They heard the sound of someone digging! At night! And then they didn’t think anything more about it, except that the next day, Stony Rill was as red as blood! And it was that night that the hauntings began! They think the old man was looking for treasure and dug up a burial mound! And now the spirits are angry!”

  “All the more reason to think it’s them,” Rod snorted, as Alma got an extremely thoughtful look on her face. “What a ridiculous story!”

  “It’s not ridiculous!” Laurel stamped her foot and crossed her arms angrily over her chest. “You just don’t like it because they didn’t tell you!”

  “I don’t like it because it’s not logical.” Rod’s chin looked even more granite-like than usual. “If it was spirits that were disturbed because the old man was digging their bodies up, why haunt the village? What did the villagers do to them? Why not haunt the old man?”

  “Well maybe they are! And they just spread out! Or maybe they are trying to get the villagers to do something about the old man!” Her eyes flashed with anger. “Just because you don’t believe in ghosts—”

  Behind them, a couple of the Companions whickered as if laughing.

  “Then they’ve got to be stupider in death than they are in life,” Rod countered. “Because you’d think it would be a lot easier to just appear in front of people and say politely ‘that old man is robbing our graves, and we’d hate to have to make you miserable because of what he is doing, but if you don’t make him leave us alone, we’ll just have to make all of you as unhappy as we are.’ Instead, they’re getting nothing done except to make people terrified at night!”

  Arville’s head swiveled back and forth between them, as if he was watching a ball game. Ryu just lay flat on the ground with his ears over his paws.

  “Oh!” Laurel said, driven to speechlessness with anger. “Oh!”

  “Anyway, you just stay here in the barn and tell Elyn what you think of me,” Rod said ungallantly. “I’ll be outside with Arville and Ryu and the Companions laying a trap. Because it’s not ghosts, it’s people, and I am going to catch them!”

  “Wait, what?” Arville replied, looking panicked.

  “If you don’t need me,” Alma said carefully. “I do have something I need to check in here.”

  ::Mayar?:: Elyn thought.

  ::He asked us, and it’s a good plan. Certainly better than Laurel’s idea of holding a séance to find out what the spirits want. If it’s people, we will catch them. If it is demons, well, you will find us stampeding into the barn fast enough. And if it is spirits, we can try Laurel’s idea.:: Mayar seemed quite satisfied with whatever it was that Rod had decided.

  Well, she was supposed to be getting them to think and plan for themselves, wasn’t she? And they had certainly plunged into this, not only with enthusiasm, but with some forethought.

  “Go ahead and set your trap, Rod,” she said firmly, cutting short any protests. “Alma, Laurel, we three will try and make enough sounds in here to make it seem as if all of us are in here.” She glanced out the open door. “If you’re going to get things set up, Rod, you’d better do so now, and then you’ll be in hiding well before sunset. I want all of you that are going to be setting up the trap to go in and out several times so that if anyone is watching us they’ll likely lose count. Get water or wood, anything you think is a good excuse. Laurel, you and I will take care of the camp chores and make a lot of noise about it while Alma does her investigation.”

  Laurel looked ready to burst with indignation, but didn’t protest. Alma dove into the storage compartments and assembled a mortar and pestle, a couple of buckets of water, some dishes, and some other apparatus and set to breaking up something in the mortar and pestle that made enough noise to cover just about anything.

  Looking very unhappy, Arville and Ryu made several trips in and out of the doors carrying water and small amounts of wood, some odds and ends, before finally going out and not coming back again. The Companions made a more convincing job of it, bringing in quite a good deal of firewood before one by one vanishing. Elyn shut the door after them, lit all the lanterns, and she, with Laurel’s sulky help, began making noisy supper preparations. At this point, Alma was doing something inscrutable with the dishes and the water; whatever it was, it was making some sound too, so Elyn left her to it.

  She stretched out the preparations as long as she could; it wasn’t easy to tell in here whether the sun had set or not. Since it was a threshing building, it was as sealed against vermin as could be managed. The food was ready in what seemed to her to be far too short a time, but there was no point in wasting it. She and Laurel ate; Alma came and fetched herself a bowl of the thick soup Elyn had made, then went back to her buckets. Halfway through the meal, she had stopped messing about with the buckets and was pounding again, this time using the pestle as a hammer against a stone, pounding something she had wrapped in a bit of cloth.

  She unfolded the cloth, peered at what was in there, and then did something with it. “Aha!” Elyn heard her say.

  And that was when everything exploded outside.

  The long, moaning howl began. Elyn heard Ryu yelp, Arville burst out with a terrified exclamation of “G-ghosts!” and Rod shout “Got you!”

  And that was the signal for what sounded like a battle royal.

  She ran for the doors, but they were both bolted again. She and Alma and Laurel pounded on them fruitlessly for a while, while outside she could hear, not only Rod shouting, but the sounds of fighting, of other men shouting, of Arville and Ryu howling, of angry whinnies and hoofbeats.

  ::Get back!:: Mayar “shouted” in her mind.

  She cleared Laurel and Alma away from the doors; there was a furious kick and a crash and the door burst open.

  Through the now-open doors poured a tangled heap of people and nets, some free and fighting and some not, followed by all five Companions, relentlessly driving them all inside. Arville and Ryu were the most tangled up, but there were some strangers in there too, all of them masked and draped in tattered rags that smelled like mold and rotting wood.

  Masked they might have been, but they were fighters; Elyn slashed Ryu and Arville free with her sword while Alma and Laurel joined in the fight. By now all the noise had brought the villagers out of their homes and up to the barn; several of the bravest grabbed pieces of firewood and waded into the affray while the Companions circled the outside of the mob and kept anyone from escaping—

  —including one masked miscreant, who, alone among all of them, was not armed and not fighting. Mayar was the one who caught him by the scruff of the neck in his teeth as he tried to get away, and kept him dangling off the ground while the rest of the gang was subdued and tr
ussed up.

  With them was an assortment of noisemakers that had produced all the unearthly howls. There were bull-roarers, a set of several predator-calls strapped together so they could all be sounded at the same time, and a contraption with a rough piece of twine that could be pulled through something like a drumhead of rawhide, producing a truly uncanny moan.

  “I told you it was just people!” Rod shouted in triumph, when the last of them—the fellow dangling from Mayar’s teeth—was firmly bound and set with the rest.

  By now all of the village—most tellingly, including all of the youngsters, including the ones that Rod had suspected—had crowded into the barn. “Well it might not have been spirits,” Laurel sniffed, examining first her improvised club, which she then cast aside, and then her nails. “But it wasn’t who you thought it was.”

  And hanging in the air was the unspoken, so there!

  “Let’s find out who it is, then,” Elyn said evenly, before they could start fighting again. She pulled the mask off the one nearest her, revealing a fellow with a lot of bruises, a black eye, and a surly expression. She looked at the villagers. “Anyone you know?”

  Baffled, they all shook their heads. She continued to pull off masks to similar bafflement, until she came to the last. Then came the gasps.

  “Old man Hardaker!” shouted someone. The old man snarled, but said nothing. “Why would you do this to us?”

  “I think I know,” Alma said in a hard voice, and came forward with that bit of cloth. “Look.”

  She opened it up, and a small piece of something yellow and shining glimmered in the lamplight.

  They all stared. “Great Havens,” Elyn finally said. “Is that gold?”

  The villagers gasped as Alma nodded. “You know how Herald Bevins always says ‘Find the motive and you find the criminal?’ I went looking for a motive. When we were up at Stony Rill I thought I saw a little bit of gold-sand, so I started gathering up what I thought were likely bits of sand and rock. I panned this out of what I crushed up.” She grinned in triumph. “When Rod told me the story the boys had told him, I was pretty sure I was right, anyway. The old man here was digging for treasure, all right, but it wasn’t in a burial mound. And when Stony Rill turned red, it was just because he’d been washing the gold-rock. Right, old man?”