by John Booth
Don put aside his crossbow and watched the fight with fascination, wondering if his brother would stop short of killing Daniel or whether the anger inside him had driven him mad.
When the fight reversed and Daniel stood wearily over Mic, Don picked up his crossbow and took aim. His sister’s shouted orders told him all he needed to know and he relaxed his finger. Don waited to see what would happen next. He was frightened by the large amount of blood running through his sister’s fingers, but there was nothing he could do about that. At least Jalia’s knife was no longer making new wounds.
The traders in the camp still had their hands in the air and were uncertain what to do next. Daniel stood over Mic, hands rubbing his chest to ease the pain in his ribs.
“What do we do now?” Cara asked.
“Your brother’s body is lying in the woods across the river. We did not bury any of the robbers, we left them for the crows,” Jalia answered in her typical tactful manner. “If you call off your bowman, you can go and get his body.”
“You think I have only one man up there?” Cara queried, annoyed that Jalia had assessed their strength so easily.
“Or we can stand here till nightfall. At which point Daniel and I will climb up that ridge and kill him. He can’t shoot at what he can’t see,” Jalia continued remorselessly, rubbing in the fact that Cara was defeated.
“Your brother didn’t kill any of us, if that is any consolation,” Grilt said. “He tried, but he missed. We lost three of our party to the others.”
“That does help,” Cara said gratefully. “I knew he had fallen in with robbers, but it is good to know he murdered no one before he died.”
“Call off your man and we can wash and bind your wounds,” Daniel offered. “There has been far too much death in the last few days. I grow tired of it.”
Cara stared at Daniel and saw he was telling the truth. There was something about Daniel. Cara knew instinctively that she could trust him with her life.
“If your girlfriend will remove her knife from my back?” Cara asked.
Jalia snorted derisively and stepped back, sheathing the knife in her right hand. The one in her left was back up her sleeve, just in case.
“Don. Come down and join us.” Cara shouted. “It’s safe.”
Hadon Mallow seethed with anger. Almost the whole day had been wasted in crossing the cursed river and then by these idiots. Worse than that, they had almost shot him. Hadon considered himself a man far too important to be shot by a common peasant. Now they were planning to kiss and make up. It all struck Hadon as outrageous.
At his feet was Grilt’s crossbow, primed and ready to fire. Hadon knew how to shoot a crossbow. He had hunted for sport in his younger years. He reached down to pick up the bow.
Jalia’s knife embedded itself in the side of the crossbow right between Hadon’s index and middle fingers. The force of the throw was enough to enough to push the bow a few inches back, causing her knife to slice into the gap between his fingers. Hadon yelped and withdrew his hand.
“Play nice now,” Jalia said. “We have given our word and I wouldn’t like to see it broken.”
“I was just picking up the bow to give it to Grilt,” Hadon exploded.
“Of course you were,” Jalia said in a tone that said just the opposite and turned her back on the man. Grilt stepped forward quickly and took the bow, removing the bolt and putting it in his pocket. Hadon, who had been reaching for the bow, growled in anger.
“I just saved your life,” Grilt whispered. “She would have killed you if you picked up the bow for a second time.”
Daniel walked Cara to the side of the river to wash her wounds.
“Does it look bad?” she asked Daniel, stretching up her neck and pulling down her jerkin to reveal even more of her breasts. He ignored them with some difficulty and stepped closer to examine her wounds.
Daniel touched her neck, trying to remove some of the blood. A surge of something sizzled his nerves and he staggered back, suddenly feeling so tired that he could barely stand.
“I often have that effect on men,” Cara joked, though she suspected that the fight with Mic was finally taking its toll on Daniel.
He stepped forward again, dipping a piece of cloth in the river and gently wiping her neck. When he had finished he found that there were just a couple of small nicks and a few long red lines.
“You seem to have got off amazingly lightly considering the amount of blood.”
Cara checked her image in a still patch of water.
“That’s incredible,” she said, stretching her skin. “Those red lines must be where the knife pressed. I would have sworn they had cut right through.”
Jalia who had been watching the two of them snorted loudly. “I knew I should have sharpened my knife,” she said and walked away.
“Is she always like that?” Cara asked.
“You caught her on a good day.”
Cara and her brothers crossed the river while the traders watched. They reached the other side without incident.
There were still a few good hours of daylight left and Hadon was eager to make some progress towards Boathaven. The donkeys were loaded and they set off down the trail, with Daniel and Jalia leading the train.
“I felt this strange tingle when I touched Cara neck and then I felt really weak,” Daniel said, somewhat unwisely, he realized as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He waited for Jalia to make the obvious retort. What she said surprised him.
“Did it feel the same as when you touched me in the forest? When you woke up after we had been attacked?”
“The same, but that was much more intense and I was knocked out by it.”
“Once a Magician King, always a Magician King, it seems.”
“Jalia!” Daniel looked around in panic to make sure no one had heard. “You mustn’t ever say that, what if one of the Fairie was to hear?”
“You can heal people, Daniel. At least a little bit, sometimes,” Jalia said. Unlike Daniel, she had taken Ygdrassal’s story seriously when Daniel recounted it to her. “It explains quite a few things that have happened to us over this last year or so.”
“That was the Fairie magic. It had nothing to do with me,” Daniel whispered back.
“I think that magic wore off long ago. Maybe your magic learnt how to copy it.”
“I do not have magic. I am not magic,” Daniel said as firmly as he could.
“Have it your own way.” Jalia kicked Swift to race ahead of him.
They made good progress on the road, which was flat and wide. There were signs it was made of the same material as the Magician’s road to the west, resisting wear and somehow repelling mud and the encroachment of the forest.
Hadon was not in good spirits, despite their progress. He had bandaged the fingers of his hand and grimaced in pain whenever he moved them. He chose to stay well clear of Jalia and Daniel during the journey, though if either of them noticed his actions, they chose not to comment.
Tonas approached Jalia after they made camp for the night.
“Father is furious with you,” he said nervously. “You should watch your back or better yet, leave as soon as possible.”
“I am not afraid of your father,” Jalia said curtly and led Swift to where Daniel was helping Hala to get down from Blaze.
“My thighs ache and I think I may never be able to close my legs again,” Hala complained as her feet touched the ground.
“Not necessarily a bad fault in a woman,” Daniel told her deadpan and received a sharp punch from Jalia in response. Hala blushed at his comment. Her heart warmed at the thought that Daniel chose to tease her.
“Did you finish it?” Jalia asked Daniel, ignoring Tonas who had followed her and stood just behind her.
“It’s the best I could manage while riding. I think it will be good enough to last a night or two.” Daniel threw a wooden object at Jalia, which she caught adeptly.
Tonas leaned over Jalia’s shoulder as she inspected th
e object, which turned out to be a wooden knife. It was crudely carved with a thick blade and a guard created by a second piece of wood slotted through its hilt. Daniel had bound the two pieces together with a length of string wound tightly around the pieces many times.
“Nosy people can easily lose an eye,” Jalia said as she feinted with the wooden blade, thrusting it at Tonas’s right eye and stopping it an inch from his face. Tonas stepped back hurriedly.
“Lady Jalia, please take some care over my father. He is a vengeful man,” Tonas said formally. He bowed towards her and walked away.
“What was that about?” Daniel asked.
“He thinks his father will try to kill me,” Jalia replied, unconcerned at the prospect.
“Not here or now. His sort uses assassins, Grilt and Tel will not obey his orders if he is unwise enough to command them, and the other men are not so foolhardy as to take you on. If he tries anything, it will be after we reach Boathaven.”
“Whatever.” Jalia reached into her saddlebag and took the knife she had been given by Pendar Dran back in Sweetwater. “Come on,” she instructed Hala and held out her hand for Hala to hold.
Jalia took Hala a little way from the camp. Two of the traders, Balaf and Wilf, were placing stones in a circle for a fire. The dry summer had baked the ground so dry as to wither the grass on it, leaving a flat area around thirty feet in diameter. It was ideal for what Jalia had in mind.
“Hala, I am giving you this knife to protect yourself with,” Jalia said, handing Hala Pendar’s knife hilt first. Hala took it gingerly from her. “A knife is useless unless you know how to fight with it, so while Daniel does his usual duties with the horses and the donkeys, I thought I would begin to teach you.”
“I know how to use a knife.” Hala protested.
Jalia showed Hala the wooden knife in her hand. “Then come at me and I will use this in a demonstration of how to defend yourself against attack.”
“I might hurt you,” Hala said, worried she might cut Jalia with the razor sharp blade in her hand.
“If you manage to cut me in the slightest, I will let you use a switch on my backside,” Jalia retorted, a wolf like grin on her face. “Unless you are too scared to try.”
Hala made a half-hearted stabbing motion at Jalia, who turned her knife away with ease and then smacked her on the bottom with the flat of her wooden blade.
“That hurt!” Hala protested and made a much more serious roundhouse swing with her knife, trying to keep Jalia away from her as much as anything else. Jalia sidestepped the swing and while Hala was unbalanced, poked the girl gently in the chest exactly where her heart was.
“You must work out your opponents countermove before you strike. Wide swings like that must force your opponent away because otherwise they will move in and kill you,”
Hala tried to take on the same wide legged knife fighters’ stance as Jalia. The position was easy to take as she had been trying to keep her legs as far apart as possible anyway, but her muscles were stiff from the long ride and Hala found she could barely move. Her long skirt restricted her movements when she tried.
Hala waved her knife from side to side, trying to keep Jalia as far away as she could. Jalia waited until the end of a wider swing and smacked Hala on the leg with the flat of her wooden knife. The blade stung so much that Hala screeched and stabbed at Jalia without even thinking.
Jalia used the guard of her blade to parry the blow, swinging around to smack Hala firmly on the bottom with her left hand as she went past. Hala tried to swing around to follow and tripped up on her skirt. She ended up sprawled face first on the ground, her knife wrenched from her grasp by the impact.
She heard the traders laugh behind her. They had gathered to watch the training session and were much amused by her fall.
Jalia viewed Hala’s skirt critically. It was far too long for her to fight in. She would have to get Hala a short skirt like her own or perhaps a pair of boy’s trousers.
“Take off your skirt,” Jalia ordered.
Hala’s face blushed bright red and leaving the knife where it lay she went to whisper in Jalia’s ear.
“I am wearing no underwear, and there are all these men watching me.”
Jalia was a little surprised, the girl was only twelve and had nothing to show that the men were likely to find interesting. Then she remembered that Hala’s bottom was badly striped from the night before. She nodded in understanding and Hala sighed with relief at her lucky escape.
“I think we will practice some knife throwing now. But not with that knife, you will use mine instead.” Jalia walked over to a tree that stood beyond the camp and cut away a small circle of bark. “Do you think you can hit that from where you are?”
Hala stood fifteen feet or so from the tree and nodded her head. Jalia walked over and handed her one of her knives. “Go on then,” she encouraged.
Daniel had just finished unloading the last of his donkeys when Hadon Mallow walked up to him. Hadon’s fingers were bandaged with cloth and dried blood showed through.
“I was only picking up the crossbow,” Hadon said as if expecting sympathy.
“To aim it at Cara, perhaps?” Daniel inspected his donkey’s back for cuts or bruises.
“They threatened us and they tried to kill me,” Hadon said vehemently. “I had the right.”
“If they had wanted you dead, that bolt would have gone through your heart or your eye,” Daniel remarked. “Don Marin had the look of a master bowman.”
“Jalia killed their brother and yet they did nothing to her.”
“It wouldn’t have brought him back.”
“Your woman stabbed him in the heart, while he was surrendering,” Hadon protested. “We could have taken him prisoner.”
“Don’t be a complete fool,” Daniel said curtly and walked away, leaving the man fuming with barely suppressed rage.
Back on the far side of the river, Cara and Don inspected the body of their brother. They had made camp for the night in the place where the traders had camped the night before. The siblings recovered all the robbers bodies, but they had slung all but their brother’s into the river, where the current dragged them away
“A thrown knife struck him in the guts and then a sword blade neatly pierced his heart,” Cara said quietly as she stepped back from her brother’s body.
Mic stood some distance away, tears streaming down his face. He had loved Bril more than the others of his family and now he was dead. It all seemed so unfair, as Bril had been so young and full of life.
“There was some time between the knife wound and the strike to the heart,” Don remarked. “Blood had time to dry on his hands.”
“It was a mercy killing,” Cara said and Don nodded in agreement. A wound like the one in Bril’s gut was always fatal, but the victim sometimes lived for days before he died.
“Nothing has been taken from him except his crossbow. He still has the medallion father gave him,” Don remarked.
“I did not take those two for grave robbers. Wrap his body as tightly as you can. We will take him home for burial,” Cara instructed. Don began the work as Mic continued to weep.
“Once we have buried Bril, I will be going onto Boathaven,” Cara stated as she looked up to the stars trying to suppress her tears. “I have some things I need to discuss with Jalia al’Dare and Daniel al’Degar.”
“I will come with you,” Don said as he pulled rope tight against the wrappings over his brother’s body.
“No. This is something I must do alone.”
20. Priven
Hadon was bustling around before the break of dawn, urging his fellow traders to move on. He carefully avoided disturbing either Daniel or Jalia but they were woken by the sounds.
Jalia shook Hala awake. The girl groaned at the aches and pains running through her body, especially everything below the waist. She found that her right arm ached as soon as she started moving it. Jalia’s training session had continued after supper, even beyond the
point where Hala complained that she could no longer see the tree she was throwing at, let alone the target.
It had taken Hala many throws to get Jalia’s throwing knives to stick into the tree. Then she found that when Jalia moved her two feet further away her throwing went wrong again. Jalia explained to her how a knife turned as it flew through the air and that she had to compensate for that spin by letting go earlier or later. Hala had never known there was so much to learn about throwing a knife and getting it to stick into something at the other end.
“It will become instinct if you practice enough,” Jalia told her when the light faded to the point that even Jalia agreed the tree could no longer be seen. “We will practice again tomorrow.” Jalia promised, though to Hala it seemed more like a threat.
“There’s fresh brewed tea in the pot,” Daniel counseled as Hala got to her feet. “I suspect Hadon will push us hard to get to Boathaven and his boat.”
“I’ve never seen a boat,” Hala remarked. “Why don’t they tip over?”
“I haven’t a clue,” Daniel answered honestly. “The largest boat I’ve ever seen was in the harbor at Ranwin and that had massive hung sheets of cloth they call sails to catch the wind. You would think that the wind would tip it over for certain.”
“You came from Telmar,” Hala said, continuing her interrogation. “That’s supposed to be a city on seven islands in a massive lake. Surely you saw boats on the lake?”
Daniel let his mind wander back to their time in Telmar. It hadn’t been a pleasant time. “We were too busy to look at much. There were fishing boats on the lake, but I don’t remember them being large. It doesn’t matter though. You will see this magic boat for yourself when we get to Boathaven. We may even choose to take it all the way to Slarn.”
“I don’t believe in magic,” Hala said with absolute certainty. “I have never seen a single fairy in all my time in the forest.”
