Redoubt: Book Four of the Collegium Chronicles (A Valdemar Novel)

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Trouble not to untruths speak,” said a slightly irritated-sounding voice. “Demon-rider of the North, I know you are.”

  He blinked. “Um, excuse me?” he replied. “I wasn’t riding that thing, it was trying to eat me. Or something.”

  The figure came farther into the chamber, dropped down a three-legged stool, and sat down on it with the air of someone who was being put to a great deal of trouble. The cat came back in and made a noise that sounded like admonishment. The man snorted.

  “Pardon it seems I must beg,” he replied, with faint sarcasm. “Reaylis is to saying thing you ride is to being like him, not demon.”

  Mags put his hand up to his head, feeling a bit bewildered and very foggy. “Uh . . . right.” Reaylis . . . was the cat? Well, why not? Valdemar had talking horses, why shouldn’t Karse have talking cats? “Uh . . . why did you help me? Not that I’m ungrateful! But—”

  “Explanation long, time for eating, then sleeping.” The man shoved a bowl at him and put a cup down beside the bed. Both were pottery as rough as the cave walls. The bowl held some sort of fish stew, and since he hadn’t been given a spoon, Mags drank it straight from the bowl. The mug held nothing more sinister than water. The man snatched up both as soon as he was finished, and before Mags could say anything at all, stabbed a forefinger at his head, and the next thing Mags knew—

  He was waking up again.

  He was hungry, and he needed to use the privy. There was no sign of the cat this time and no sounds from outside the chamber. He decided to try to move.

  He regretted the decision a little, because all those wounds he thought he had felt really did exist. They weren’t raw wounds, though; the pain was more ache than anything else, though when he pulled back the sleeve of the oversized shirt he was wearing, there were neat, clean bandages running all the way up his arm, so he couldn’t exactly look at his injuries.

  It seemed the shirt was the only garment he was wearing, but it was so big it came down past his knees. The cat appeared as he was getting unsteadily to his feet. It looked at him with keen intelligence, meowed once, and walked away with its tail in the air. It had very odd markings, like nothing he had ever seen before: reddish-brown face, ears, tail and paws, the rest cream colored. There was a suggestion of stripes in the red parts.

  Clearly, the cat wanted him to follow, so he did. It led him through a larger chamber that looked as if it served a lot of purposes and toward what looked to be a tunnel out to daylight.

  That was exactly what the opening proved to be, and the cat directed his footsteps to a nicely constructed latrine, which he gratefully used. The area around the cave—or mine—mouth was well tended; there were a couple of benches, a small herb garden, a larger vegetable garden. Someone had left a basket of mixed vegetables on the bench. Mags eyed it, decided it wasn’t too heavy for his weakened state, and picked it up, taking it back inside. In the main chamber was an actual fireplace—it looked as if it had been built making use of a natural fissure leading to the surface, or perhaps an air-channel that had been cut—and an area that looked as if it was used as a kitchen. Mags washed the vegetables, then began peeling and cutting them up, thriftily saving the greens and peels together, in case his unknown host had a use for them that he couldn’t figure out.

  The floor was uneven but smooth. The walls and ceiling were rougher. There was a dresser with shelves holding a few dishes, pots and pans, and implements on one side of the fire and a second holding some bags, boxes, and sealed or stoppered pots on the other. There was a small table with two benches just in front of the fire, a little table or stand near the entrance to “his” chamber with a big pottery basin on it. That was the extent of the furnishings.

  There was a pot over the banked fire, keeping warm; Mags gave it a good stir. There was a bowl soaking in a pan of water; he cleaned it. And about then was when he ran out of energy, and he made his way back to “his” chamber to lie down.

  He dozed a little and was awakened by his rescuer, who nudged his shoulder with a toe, since both hands were full. He sat up, and the man handed him a bowl and a mug again.

  “Reaylis says I am to be thanking you for help,” the man said, and sniffed. “So I am thanking you.”

  “You rescued me, you patched me up, you’re feeding me,” Mags pointed out. “I thank you, sir, and taking care of a few dishes and vegetables is scarcely going to repay what you did for me.”

  The man hmphed. “Well. Correct thinking,” he said, sounding mollified. “You move. Come out. Sit in the sunshine. The Sun will give you His blessing.” He went to a chest in the shadows past the foot of the bed that Mags had not seen, and rummaged, “Here. Pants.”

  He dropped a pair of worn linen trews on the foot of the bed.

  Huh. The sun again. All right, this guy must be pretty religious. Again, vague memories of classes reminded him that the Karsites worshiped the Sun. If it’ll make him happy, I don’t mind sitting in the sun. ’Specially after being so cold.

  He wondered if he ought to try saying something in Karsite, but his Karsite wasn’t any better than the priest’s Valdemaran. He suspected that the only reason he had understood what the Karsite captain had been saying to his captors was the pure accident of them using words he actually knew.

  The man helped him to his feet and then led the way out. Mags paused just long enough to pull on the trews, then followed. As soon as they got into the main room, which was now lit by a variety of lamps and candles, Mags got a good look at him.

  He wore long robes, which looked too big on him, of a faded red. They’d been belted up to a bit below his knees, making them more practical for wandering around in a forest. The sleeves had been tied up too, by the simple expedient of running a cord through both sleeves across his back and gathering them up that way.

  He wasn’t old though; he looked to be in his late teens or early twenties. Much too young to sound as grumpy as he did.

  His blond hair was long and braided into a single tail down his back. He had a square, severe-looking face, a mouth that looked as if it never smiled, and blue, deep-set eyes. His hands were big, and it was obvious he was used to doing a lot of hard work, for the fingers were callused and his forearms well muscled.

  Mags moved slowly and carefully; it felt as if he might tear something open if he moved in a hurry. “My name is Mags,” he said, as they went down the tunnel to the outside. He noticed something he had not on his way out the first time: a door right where the tunnel joined the main chamber that swung outward. It would be very difficult in the confined space of the tunnel to get enough leverage to wrench it open, and almost impossible to batter it down. At some point someone had set metal brackets into both the door and the stone wall of the chamber to allow a stout bar to be dropped into them, holding the door in place.

  “Franse,” said the man, shortly, over his shoulder. “Brother Franse.”

  Mags had not been sure what time of day it had been when he had awakened, but now he was pretty certain it was afternoon. One of the benches had been situated in such a way that it caught the sun. Mags was very happy to sit down on it.

  Franse went to work in the herb garden, pinching off a leaf here, a stem there, obviously collecting just enough for a particular dish or dishes. The garden itself looked as if it had been harvested recently, and Franse was just taking fresh herbs while they were still growing, before the frost killed them all.

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” Mags said diffidently into the silence, “what was it that attacked me?”

  “Demon,” Franse replied, and he added something that sounded like curse words. “Sun-forsaken black-robes are to be sending, send every dark, the night to take. To be like wolves, like dogs, to be in their homes keeping people. To be making people like—baaaaaa!” He put his hands to his head like ears and bleated like a sheep.

  So the thing hadn’t been after him specifically. He sighed with relief, and let the sun soak into him. It felt awfully good, actually, more so than h
e would have expected; in fact, the sun felt a lot like being bathed in a soothing salve.

  The cat strolled onto the path from around some bushes at the end of the garden, tail high. It really was as big as he remembered; its head would easily come as high as his knee. It was a very handsome cat, with its striking cream and red markings. It paraded toward them, looking very self-satisfied, paused long enough to give Franse’s hip a rub, then sauntered over to Mags. It regarded him for a moment. Its blue eyes seemed to stare into him.

  “Hello . . .” He tried to think of the cat’s name. “. . . Reaylis?”

  That got a short huff of purr, and the cat got to its feet, then continued its leisurely stroll into the mouth of the tunnel.

  “Was this a mine?” he asked Franse, who straightened from his work, put his selected handful of herb bits into the basket at his side, and got up. At Franse’s puzzled look, he mimed digging and pointed at the tunnel.

  “Aye. So Old Harald said.” Franse moved over to the vegetable side of the garden.

  “Old Harald?” It seemed as if Franse treasured words more than gold, he was so stingy with them.

  “Red-robe as was here before me.” Franse carefully examined his vegetables before selecting them. “Master of me. This you are liking?” He held up a bunch of beets. They looked beautiful. Then again, after days of nothing but broth followed by days of only what he could scavenge, anything would look beautiful. He was ready to bite into them raw.

  “Um. Yes, thank you.” Mags paused, trying to think of something to say, but this time Franse actually initiated a question.

  “You can being to arrow?” he asked, miming using a bow. “I am to be finding—” he mimed using a sling “—with you, you can to being to arrow?”

  “Yes,” Mags said simply, then added, “I can shoot a bow and use the sling. But I am better with a bow.”

  The man sighed. “Shooting. Shooting. Good. You will to be shooting damn rabbits that are to be eating—” he waved his arm at the expanse of his garden.

  Mags mouth watered at the thought of meat for the first time in days. “Would it be safe for me to sit out here in the dusk? I mean, if you have these demon things prowling around, I’d rather not risk it, but dusk and dawn is when rabbits generally forage.”

  Franse might not be able to speak Valdemaran well, but it seemed he understood pretty much everything Mags said.

  He made a dome with his hands and looked to Mags.

  “Safe? Sheltered?” He tried to think of one of the words from the old Chronicles that had mentioned magic. “Protected, shielded, warded?”

  “Ah!” Franse nodded. “Warded is garden. Safe it is. To be not moving, you.” Franse got up and took his basket down into the former mine. When he returned, it was with a light bow and a quiver full of hunting arrows. Mags checked both over. The fletching on the arrows could stand being renewed, but the bow had been stored unstrung, and someone had been regularly conditioning the string. It was safe enough to shoot without snapping either the string or the bow and, almost as important, both light enough that he could pull an arrow quickly without tearing open his wounds and strong enough that an arrow from it would kill a rabbit within the small confines of the garden.

  “If rabbit—” Franse mimed a rabbit running away “—out of garden, you stay,” Franse cautioned gruffly, then went back into the cave. “No walk, you. No run, you.” He came out again with a crude wheelbarrow and a rake, going out past where the bushes started to rake up leaves, stuff them into net bags and load them on the wheelbarrow. Mags stayed where he was. The cat came out, jumped up on the bench beside him, and curled up in the sun for a nap.

  After a couple of trips it was obvious that Franse was bringing the leaves in to pile them on top of some of the plants still in his garden. Mags had seen the gardeners at the Palace do that with some of the flowerbeds, so he assumed that this protected them against the cold.

  He started to get up to help, but Franse waved him brusquely back. The second time he tried, Franse glared at him.

  “Not Healer am I” he said crossly. “Not to be hurt my work. Not to be hurt the Sun’s work.”

  Well, that seemed to settle it.

  Mags wished rather desperately that his Mindspeech were working. Franse seemed to know he was a Trainee, and from Valdemar, and Franse himself was a Karsite priest, yet why wasn’t he trussed up and waiting to be turned over to the Karsite authorities? Why, in fact, had Franse just given him a weapon and ordered him to shoot rabbits, when he could probably use the thing to hurt Franse, or even kill him?

  Franse didn’t seem to think much of other Karsite priests either. Mags knew that there were priests of many sorts that went off to be hermits, and given Franse’s apparent misanthropy, he seemed to be the sort of fellow who would do that; but if that was the case, why rescue anyone, much less someone he knew was an enemy of Karse?

  This was all terribly puzzling, and Mags was left to sit there on a bench in the sun and try to sort it out without a lot of clues to go on. So he sat with an arrow nocked loosely to the bow as Franse moved out of sight with his barrow. Evidently the leaves weren’t all he was going after today.

  Then a little bit of movement under the leaves of the bushes ringing the garden caught his eye.

  Cautiously, a rabbit eased partly into sight. It looked around, nose quivering. Mags knew better than to move; rabbits had excellent vision all around their heads, and his best chance at a shot would be if it put its head down behind something to eat. He’d practiced this sort of thing on the target range. If he could see any part of it, he’d know where the chest was, and the chest was his target.

  It eased a little more into sight, stretching its neck out. There was something in particular that it wanted, but it was not sure it was safe to get it yet.

  Then it sat up tall on its hind legs and took a good look around in all directions. Mags remained very still. There wasn’t any sort of breeze, so there was nothing to carry his scent to it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the cat watching it, also not moving.

  Satisfied, the rabbit dropped back down to all fours and hopped slowly into the garden, moving with great caution.

  Then came the moment Mags had been waiting for. The rabbit put his head behind a huge, green leaf.

  Mags was pleased to find his aim was still good.

  He started to get up, but the cat jumped down, stood in front of him, and glared at him for a moment. Startled, he remained where he was. The cat sauntered over to the garden and ducked behind the leafy vegetable. A moment later it came out again, head high, with the rabbit’s neck in its mouth. It carried the rabbit, arrow and all, right to Mags, then dropped it at his feet and darted off again.

  He had just pulled out the arrow and cleaned it when the cat returned with a small, sharp knife (held by the handle) in its teeth.

  This time it stood there looking at him with the knife in its mouth until he took it. It sat down and watched him expectantly.

  Well, what else was there to do?

  He skinned the rabbit and cleaned it, bundling the meat in the skin to keep it clean and keep the bugs away, and then offered the cat the offal and the head, which Reaylis cheerfully accepted and ate. Well, it ate the offal; it took the head and sauntered off with it. Mags wasn’t sure what it was going to do with the head. Save it for later, like a dog? Find a sharpened stake just outside the garden and impale it there as a warning to other rabbits? Given what he had seen from this cat already, he would not be in the least surprised to find a row of staked vermin skulls out there on the other side of the hedge surrounding the garden.

  Just as he was considering these possibilities, Franse returned with a wheelbarrow full of acorns. His eyes lit up as he spotted the bundle of fur on the bench beside Mags.

  “Ha! Triumph!” he crowed. “Good hunter you are! Ha!” He took the bundle and went into the cave, coming out only a moment later. “Tearing hurts you were not?” he asked, in a voice that was almost accusing.

&
nbsp; “The cat did all the work,” Mags said. Franse nodded as if this was something to be expected. “He took the head away, too,” Mags added.

  Franse shrugged. “Reaylis does what Reaylis will do,” he replied. “Food is to being soon. With meat!”

  The priest trundled the barrow full of acorns into the cave. Mags waited to see if another rabbit would appear, but by the time Franse came back and signaled that he was to come back inside, nothing had turned up but the cat.

  The priest waved him in the direction of the little chamber where his bed was, and he wondered with a twinge if he had usurped the poor fellow’s bed. And if so, how was he to make amends?

  Franse came in with the usual bowl and mug, but there was a look of intense satisfaction on his face as he handed both to Mags, who was sitting cross-legged on the fur blanket. Mags’ mouth watered as he smelled the savory meat in the bowl; it was some sort of beet soup or stew, nothing like anything he’d ever had before, and his stomach registered its approval with a loud growl.

  The priest actually grinned a little, then went out and came back with a bowl and a mug for himself. “Now, shoot you, we like men can eat!” he said happily.

  Mags blinked. “Not a good hunter, are you?” he ventured.

  Franse sucked the meat off the section of ribs he was holding, licked them dry, and grimaced. “No good hunter, I,” he admitted. “Only Reaylis hunter is.”

  Well, then, that was what he could do to make amends. “Do you know how to dry meat?” he asked cautiously. “Or smoke it?”

  “Aye, aye, I am to being dry fish and vegetables and in smoke hang,” the priest assured him, and bit into the leg with strong, white teeth. “Reaylis brings not enough to smoke.”

  Well, the bow and arrows would be good for small game. Mags wasn’t about to try for anything bigger than a goose with it, though. He decided to broach the subject of the sleeping arrangements. “I hope I didn’t take your bed . . .” he began, tentatively.

  “Eh?” The priest looked startled.

  “Now that I am getting better, I can sleep by the fire,” Mags elaborated. “If this is where you sleep, I can sleep by the fire.”