Accidental Sorceress (Hardstorm Saga Book 2) (17 page)

I glanced over my shoulder at the road and could see the merchant and the children far ahead now. I did not want to lose them. But I did not want to leave the hollow to be stoned either.

I stepped toward the road, frustration cutting through me as I searched for a solution, looking back through the city gate and hoping to see Ina. Maybe she would know what to do.

But as I stepped away from it, the hollow shifted toward me.

“Come,” I said urgently, and moved away again.

It wobbled to its feet, the uncoordinated effort eerie.

I walked down the road, one slow step at a time, looking back over my shoulder to see if it followed still. And it did come after me, its movements odd and ghostly. If its every step hadn’t been a struggle, its following might have scared me.

“Just a short distance,” I promised.

And it came.

I walked down the road, then off it, up the dirt path that led to the forest. I led him inside, to the shelter of a tree.

I pointed. “You could sit there.”

He sank to the spot, if not understanding the word, then recognizing the gesture.

I watched for a moment, waited. Then I remembered Marga. I was not certain what she would make of the hollow—preferably not dinner. I chuffed for the tiger, then called for her with the roar she had taught me. But the tiger did not come. I hoped she had returned to the deep forest, away from the city.

The wraith huddled under the tree. It did not look up or make any sound. Was it hungry? How much longer would it live? How long could a body live without its spirit?

The Guardians of the Forgotten City would probably have been able to answer my questions, but the Guardians were far away, on the other side of the ocean.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my last chunk of bread, placed it on a stone a safe distance from the hollow. Then I untied my smaller water flask from my belt and set it next to the bread.

“The spirits watch over you, whoever you were,” I said, my heart twisting in sympathy. “Die in peace.”

It showed no sign that it heard me.

I could think of nothing more that might help, so I turned and hurried out of the woods, breaking into a run as I reached the road, eager to catch up with Graho and the children.

I did not have to run far. The merchant had noticed that I had fallen behind and had stopped on the side of the road to wait for me.

“What happened?” He checked me over as if searching for injury. “We were about to come and look for you.”

“All is well.” And as we began walking, I told him about the wraith.

When I finished, Graho responded with, “I am glad to be walking away from such a city.”

The wagon trail we followed ribboned along the edge of the forest, well trampled, dry, easy walking.

From time to time, when the surrounding area looked right, I strayed into the woods to look for mushrooms and dried berries. What I found, I tied up in a rag and hung from my belt. Here and there, I found herbs too. I picked as much as I could, and pinecones, for we would be able to roast the seeds once we had fire again.

On the third trip, Nala followed me to help.

“Barren berries,” she called out, and hopped over to a bush I had missed.

She was much shorter than I, could see under leaves I could not. I collected twice as much with her help.

“Thank you, Nala.” I kissed the top of her head as she added the berries to my bundle. And then I heard rustling in the undergrowth.

I turned at once, putting her behind me. But when the bushes parted, Marga’s great head appeared.

She chuffed at us fondly.

I chuffed back.

For some reason, this made Nala laugh, the sound so pure and sweet, it set the birds trilling above us in the trees.

The tiger came over and rubbed her head against us. Her side was flat, her muzzle had no blood on it, so I had some hope yet that she hadn’t eaten the hollow after I left it.

When Nala and I walked back to the road, the tiger followed but did not come out of the cover of the bushes, rather paced us while she still stayed hidden.

Maybe Marga had heard the dozen warriors coming up behind us. They seemed in a hurry, their boots stirring up the dust. We pulled off ahead of them, giving them no cause to mistreat us, and they paid us no mind.

They disappeared behind the next bend within moments.

Then a young man herding a dozen cows came from the opposite direction. He had a nasty gash in the middle of his forehead, red and infected, oozing yellow pus he wiped on his dirty sleeve, a grim look on his face.

I approached him carefully. “I am a healer,” I started. “I am friend of Ina, the herb woman.”

He stopped and clicked his tongue to halt his cows, which they did, setting to grazing on the roadside at once. Luckily, on the other side from the tiger.

“I could heal your wound,” I offered the man.

“Cow kicked me.” He scowled at one of the animals. “I ’ave nay coin,” he said then. “All I ’ave is milk.”

His master’s milk, I thought, but I did not argue with him. The children needed nourishment badly.

I cleaned his wound by squeezing the pus out first, then washing the inflamed opening with water from my flask. Then I prepared a poultice and ripped a strip of cloth from the bottom of my undershirt to tie it to the gash.

I gave him more of the mixture of herbs. “Change the poultice to fresh every morning for three days. First wash the wound, then dress it.”

He nodded, then took my empty flask, kneeled under the nearest cow, and filled the flask with warm milk.

We all thanked him before he hurried away.

After the cowherd, a wine merchant came with a wagon full of barrels. He slept on the bench while his servant whipped their two horses forward. I wished I could trade him for some wine I could have used for disinfecting wounds, but they had no visible injury or illness, and I had nothing but my healing to trade.

We let them pass too, then stepped back on the road, didn’t pull off again until the sun was dipping below the treetops. I did not see Marga in the woods. Mayhap she was off hunting. She seemed to like the twilight hours best for that purpose.

We gathered dry wood and kindling, then I produced the dry moss and tinder mushrooms I had collected earlier. The merchant used his flint to start a fire.

The edible mushrooms I had we roasted; the berries we ate raw. Then we shared the milk.

We were about to add another pile of branches to our fire when the brigands came, three men, unshaven, gap-toothed, armed with swords and axes.

“Give us yer food,” their leader demanded.

Graho stepped forward. “We have no food. We’re but poor war refugees.”

I stepped back and put my arms around the children, who pressed up against me.

The men moved closer. Soon they could see that we, indeed, had little.

“Give us the wee beggars,” the leader said then, and made a rude gesture. “Ye can make more.”

The other two laughed.

“The little beggars are not for sale,” Graho said calmly.

“I was nay plannin’ on payin’ fer ’em.” The brigand threw his head back as he laughed.

They moved closer another step, stalking us as if we were prey.

We could not outrun them with the children, so we stood our ground and faced them down. I was hoping someone would come along, maybe another troop of soldiers, but the road stood deserted.

The brigand’s leader looked me over. “Give us the woman, then.”

My spine stiffened, my hand going to the paring knife that hung from my belt, but I stuck close to the children. Graho drew his blade.

The three men attacked the merchant all at once. He parried well, light on his feet, his thrusts powerful. He ran his rapier through one man’s thigh, and the brigand fell out of the fight.

But the other two just fought more fiercely as they cursed him. One stuck his foot forward to trip him so he might fall into the other one’s sword.

“Watch out!” I shouted, my heart in my throat.

Graho jumped back and avoided the trap.

The taller of the two attackers hacked away with renewed vigor. While Graho defended himself from that, the other attacker managed to cut him on the arm.

I tried to reach out with my spirit to heal the merchant. I could not. Such dark and endless grief lived within me for Batumar, it drowned my healing spirit.

And even if I had any skill in fighting, I could not help with my small kitchen knife. The children were hugging my legs, hanging on to me in fright, holding me in place.

Then Graho moved on the offensive and cut off the shorter man’s ear. He dropped out of the fight screaming, holding his wound, blood running from between his grimy, stubby fingers.

The fight continued one-on-one.

Graho’s left arm was bleeding. Then suddenly his right side, just below his ribs, where the brigand’s sword cut him.

The brigand wielded a heavy sword, Graho his lighter rapier, but I could tell he was tiring. He had already defeated two of the men. I prayed to the spirits that he would have strength for the third.

The brigand raised his sword and aimed a crushing blow at Graho’s head, but Graho danced back so only the very tip of the sword caught him on the lips. Blood ran down his chin.

He lunged forward and pierced the brigand’s sword hand. The man dropped his sword, lunged for it, but something moved on the road behind us. Other travelers were coming at last.

The brigand snatched up his sword with his good hand and backed away, his eyes narrow with hate. “’Tis nay the end.” He spat toward us. “We’ll meet again.”

Graho kept his rapier up. “You best have more men with you. And better trained,” he called after the brigands as they ran into the woods and soon disappeared.

As a healer, I could wish no man ill, but I wished they would run into Marga. I did not want them to be eaten. But if the tiger put some fear into their hearts… I would not have been much bothered by their misfortune.

The children loosened their grip on me. Graho grabbed up a handful of dried grasses from the side of the road to clean his rapier. I looked back on the road where I had seen movement earlier. I could discern now that the movement was slow indeed, just one solitary shape, a dark cape.

Graho sheathed his weapon but kept his hand on the grip. He raised an eyebrow. “The hollow?”

I shivered as the black wraith seemed to float toward us. “Why did it come?”

But before I could truly begin to worry that it had come to steal my spirit, it stopped and collapsed into a shapeless heap at the side of the road, well far from our fire.

Satisfied that it posed no threat, Graho moved his hand from his rapier and came to sit by the dying flames. I added wood to revive them. The children settled down around us.

Graho glanced back toward the hollow that was but a darker shadow in the darkening evening. “Maybe it is lost without its spirit. Maybe it follows the only kindness shown to it.” He looked at me, open curiosity in his eyes. “The fishwife said it will die soon?”

I nodded, sitting down by the fire next to Nala, in a spot from where I could best keep an eye on the hollow.

The children too watched it, but didn’t seem frightened. Then again, these were children who had seen more than most, having survived maiming and a journey through the hardstorms with pirates. They had accepted a tiger as our traveling companion. Now it seemed that they would accept a wraith.

Graho looked at it again, then back at me. “Maybe it wishes not to die alone. Even injured animals have instincts. It knows it’s more vulnerable alone than in company.”

Maybe. As long as it kept its distance, I could not see what harm an empty, fading shell of a man could do. As the fishwife said, it would probably soon be dead anyway.

Nala crawled back from the fire once the heat increased. Without her, I was sitting next to the merchant. I caught a glint of red on his face in the light of the flames. “Let me see to your wounds.”

He shifted closer so I might look him over.

His top lip had been but scratched. I used his water flask to clean the shallow cut on his bottom lip. I could not do much more than that. The cut was in a place where I could not place a poultice, not without wrapping his whole mouth shut.

Our faces were as close as they had ever been, far closer than I wanted to be. He kept his blue gaze on me—black now in the darkness. I looked at nothing but the lip I was treating. I held a piece of cloth against the cut and pressed, held the pressure.

The children gathered closer to watch.

I wished Marga would return. The tiger made me feel safer, and I suspected she had the same effect on the children.

When I removed the pressure from the cut, the bleeding had slowed. Ruhni powder would have been helpful to ward off infection, but that I did not have.

I checked Graho’s arm.

The cut no longer bled, needing only cleaning, which I saw to, kneeling in front of him. Then I dropped back to my heels, ready for the next task. “I need you to take off your tunic.”

The corners of his lips turned up into an open smile, but he said nothing as he obeyed. A good thing, or I
would
have bandaged his mouth shut.

I dropped my gaze to his side, paying little attention to his odd-shaped tattoos. This cut was deeper. The injury needed not only to be cleaned but closed. If not treated right, this cut would become infected and bring on fever. This cut could kill him.

I let none of that show on my face. “Water.”

He handed me his flask.

I cleaned the wound, wishing for ninga beetles. I had used them many times to close wounds, holding one up to the edges of a cut, then squeezing its body until it pinched the flesh together, then twisting the body off the head, and the pincers stayed in place.

But I did not know where the nearest creek was, and I did not know whether any ninga beetles even lived in the creeks of Ishaf.

I turned to the older boys, pointing in the opposite direction from where the brigands had disappeared. “I need you to go to the edge of the forest. I need you to find me a bush with long, slim thorns. Bring me a handful.” That way, I could select the best one for my purpose.