Battle Magic (21 page)

When they went outside, they found that Rosethorn had tethered her pony. She had managed to catch one of the horses and saddled and bridled it. From the length of the stirrups, she meant the brown gelding for Parahan. “Are you finished?” she asked them. “Because I would like to put some distance between us and this, now.”

“Yes, Mother,” Briar said. To Parahan he said, “See? She’s calm.” He skittered out of the way when Rosethorn mimed a swat at him. Smiling, Briar took Evvy the flint disk Parahan had recovered. She tucked it into the pocket with the other flint after wiping off the last traces of blood. Briar said nothing to her about the vomit he could see a few yards away. Evvy never faltered in battle, but blood still set her back on occasion.

Moving quickly but without fuss, Parahan resupplied himself from the dead soldiers until he had two swords, a belt, an iron-covered leather jerkin, and leather boots that fit. After testing a couple of the spears used by the Yanjingyi guards, he fashioned a quiver for them and his spear, and slung it across his back. Evvy found a spare water bottle for him. She and Briar swiftly searched the food packs for some kind of midday meal before they swung into their own saddles.

The four of them shared out cold rice balls wrapped in leaves and cold red-bean buns. As they were about to leave, Rosethorn trotted her pony by the open windows and tossed two of her thorn balls inside. Vines began to sprout through the doors and windows as she joined the other three on the road. Chickens erupted from their side of the house, squawking in alarm.

As they moved on, Briar tossed a thorn ball of his own onto the road behind them. In the house, spiked vines were shooting out of the upper windows. Those vines that grew from where dead men lay now crawled over the ground, snake-like, bound to meet their friends in the guardhouse. There was no sign of bodies anywhere. The vines had spread to cover them all.

“They’ll know we were here,” Parahan said.

“Too bad,” Briar and Rosethorn said at the same time.

“I was tired of sneaking around anyway,” Briar added. “Let’s teach Weishu to keep his greedy hands to himself.”

S
NOW
S
ERPENT
P
ASS

They trotted forward as the mules complained. “I don’t see what you’re whining about,” Evvy told them. “You just stood around while we did all the work.” She had put her rice ball half eaten and her bun untouched back into the cloth sling over her chest. Though she had done her part without flinching earlier, the memory of the man whose throat she’d cut kept rising past any other thoughts or pictures in her head. He joined her vivid memories of a handful of people she had killed, trying to survive before she had met Briar and Rosethorn and in bandit attacks on the road to Gyongxe. It never got easier.

When the road curved around the edge of a hill, she looked back. Thick green thorn vines covered everything between the tumbling river and the fence behind the guardhouse. The chickens and the horses that had grazed inside the fence had gotten away, the chickens to huddle on the bridge, the horses to gallop through the fields.

Someone would notice the problem sooner or later, but by the time anyone came to look, the thorns would have reached the
water’s edge, blocking the road completely. They could try to go behind the guardhouse to get at the road, Evvy supposed. She wasn’t really sure when the thorns would stop growing. Rosethorn and Briar created very determined magic.

She looked ahead once more. At least the dead men were covered. That was something, since they hadn’t had time to give them a burial or prayers.

They trotted a mile before the jolting and the image got to Evvy. She cried for a halt. She dashed behind a boulder on the hillside and lost what food she’d eaten. Once she’d covered that mess, she heard Rosethorn call, “I’m coming up. Nobody watch.”

Since that meant Rosethorn needed to take care of business, Evvy thought she might as well do the same. She had her complaints about dried grass, but it was what was available. She was tugging at the ties on her breeches when Rosethorn asked quietly, “Are you all right?”

“It’s just … I don’t like killing people,” Evvy whispered, ashamed of her weakness.

“None of us
likes
it. There would be something wrong with you — with us — if you did. You know Briar jokes to cover it up sometimes. You know he also has nightmares.”

“Oh,” Evvy breathed. She had been so caught up in the picture of the dead man that she had forgotten all the times she had been roused in the night by Briar — and Rosethorn — crying out in their dreams.

“Parahan will be different. He’s a soldier. We saw that today. It wasn’t just bragging from him. It may not bother him as it does us. But you aren’t weak because you threw up, girl. You’re human.”

“Thank you,” Evvy whispered. Feeling less like slime, she scrambled down the hillside to wash her hands. They went numb as soon as she dipped them in the icy brown torrent. She got to her feet and tucked her fingers into her armpits to warm them, glaring at Briar and Parahan as she walked over to the mules. It wasn’t fair that men didn’t have to twist themselves into knots to pee!

Rosethorn looked up the gorge, her eyes narrow. “My boy’s restless. Not you, Briar, my mount. I don’t think he likes what he smells on the wind.”

Evvy gulped. Their long travels from Chammur had taught them respect for the animals that worked the trade roads. She went to her pack and searched for the bag that held her exploding quartz balls.

“We have no choice but to ride on,” Parahan replied. “Wait here.” Without stopping for anyone’s reply, he hung his sling of spears from his saddle horn, taking only one as he climbed the dip between two hills to their right. Evvy could see him long after she stopped hearing him. Her respect for the big man went up several more notches. It took plenty of skill to move so silently over loose gravel and long grass.

She, Briar, and Rosethorn continued to load their ponies with the magical weapons they might need for another, perhaps bigger, battle. She and Briar had their daggers as well. Evvy wore two blades inside and two outside her belt in addition to one at the back of her neck inside her jacket. She didn’t know where all of Briar’s were except for the obvious ones.

As far as Evvy knew, Rosethorn didn’t carry extra weapons. A kit with blades in it hung at her waist, but they were supposed
to be used with plants. The only non-plant use Rosethorn had for her belt knife was to cut her meat. Of course, Rosethorn could turn most plants into something nasty. Evvy hoped that would be enough.

She feared that it would not be. Here in this steep gorge with its single road, she could not forget that for her entire life the one fixed idea in her world was that the emperor of Yanjing was as powerful as any god and more powerful than some of them. She had seen nothing at the Winter Palace to teach her any different. When they had destroyed the guard station, they had declared their own war against the Yanjing empire. All she could do was pray that Gyongxe could somehow do what no other country had managed to do when the imperial armies marched: defeat them.

A few stones rattled down the hillside, distracting her from her dark thoughts. Parahan was coming back.

“I don’t know what’s on the road ahead,” he told them when he reached their group. “I only saw about a mile’s length of it. But there’s a game trail that way” — he pointed uphill — “that takes us out of view while still allowing us to travel along the line of the river. We might be able to skirt anyone on the road itself.”

“Tie everything down that might make a noise,” Rosethorn ordered. “Muffle the harnesses, whatever jingles. Evvy, your chickens must take a nap, I’m afraid.”

Evvy grimaced, but she took out the packet of cat-sleep herbs and sprinkled some over the crates. She used only a pinch for each: The spell was powerful. Normally the Trader spell that disguised the cats was enough to make people think they heard hens, but Rosethorn didn’t want to risk any noise as they moved to higher ground.

Rosethorn continued to say, “We’ll walk. Check your own gear. Nothing that clanks. Parahan, muffle those spears.”

When they were ready, Rosethorn told Parahan, “Evvy leads.”

His eyes went wide with surprise. “Evvy! But —”

“You’ll see,” Rosethorn told him. “Go on, girl.”

Evvy said nothing. She was already summoning her magic. With her in the front and Rosethorn in the rear they set off, each of them leading a pair of animals. Evvy slid the reins up over her elbows so she could stretch out her hands. Gently she flicked and twitched her fingers, shaking them to and fro lightly at the same time as she sent her power out to the many bits of stone uphill of her. Inside her head she could feel the stones in the cut between the two hills giggle as they shifted and slid, all sizes easing around one another. They had never had this kind of energy before, but it was more interesting than just tumbling down, pushed by streams of snowmelt or rain or the feet of animals. They liked it. The only sounds the rocks made were faint clicks as they edged into position, each one sliding into the right spot next to another. Behind her Evvy left a smooth stone path under the horses’ and the mules’ feet. Better yet, the new footing gave way just enough to cut the sound their hooves made.

Up and up they climbed. At last she heard a soft bird whistle. She glanced back to see Parahan point off to her left. There, in a dip on the far side of the western hill, was the game trail.

She turned onto it, hands still moving. The trail itself was beaten earth. This time she urged the stones to either side, letting them roll into deeper grass.

The ground began to rise again. To their right, to the northeast, hill after craggy green hill rose, stabbing into the sky. Behind
them were the mountains of the Drimbakang Sharlog. Evvy could hear Rosethorn was struggling to breathe. She needed her special tea for managing in the heights. Evvy or Briar would make it when they stopped for lunch.

They must be higher than Evvy realized if Rosethorn was having trouble. These were mountains, for all they looked like hills close up. They hummed in Evvy’s bones. What would she do when she came to the big ones, those with rocky sides that had been swept of almost anything but stone and snow? Those mountains would sing in a voice that would surely rattle her poor head clean off her neck.

Short of the top of the fourth hill, another soft whistle from Parahan brought her to a stop. This time he left his horse and mule and crept ahead of the others. Evvy sat in the grass and even ate a bit after she thumped the muscle cramps from her thighs. Working her magic and teasing those stones had thrust the horrors down where she didn’t have to think about them. Briar had made a cold mix of Rosethorn’s breathing tea and was pouring it for her. It was just as well they had gotten a chance to rest.

Parahan returned and beckoned them close. “There is half a company in the road,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “Fifty soldiers. Yanjingyi regulars, curse it! Not locals.”

“If we’re quiet they’ll never know we were here,” Briar replied, his voice just as soft. “The game trail will put that next ridge between us and them. Even if they look up they won’t see us. We’ve
got
to take word to the God-King about Weishu’s plans. Guaranteed he doesn’t know these
kaqs
are here, either.”

Parahan grinned at Briar’s use of the Trader slang; Rosethorn nodded at his thinking. Once more they went forward with
Parahan in the lead. Evvy reached farther ahead with her power, shooing the rocks away. Even the animals seemed to understand that the alternative to silence was death if the enemy caught them.

Between more hills they went, the green shoulders rising sharply on both sides of their group. The biggest worry came when they reached a stream. It ran along the foot of a tall ridge on their right. They couldn’t avoid a little splashing as the animals crossed. When they halted on the far side, there were no sounds of movement anywhere. Parahan crawled to the shoulder of the hill on their left, to see if he could glimpse the road and the enemy. When he came back, he said they were now beyond the soldiers below. If their present trail kept on parallel to the road heading west, they might evade the Yanjingyi soldiers completely.

Rosethorn and Briar weren’t listening. Like the ponies and the mules and even Parahan’s horse they had pointed their noses into the wind that came down from the north and over the stream. “Bamboo,” Rosethorn whispered. “Seaweed. Vinegar.”

Briar frowned. “Peony? Pomegranate for certain.”

They turned their heads to stare uphill at the ridge.

Parahan said a few things in his own language and drew his swords.

“Wait,” Evvy told him. She threw her magic up the slope and let it spread. When it spilled over the top of the ridge, Evvy felt weight on the stones there, the kind of moving weight that said people to her. She shifted the rocks, straining to pull the bigger ones toward the edge. Someone above shouted.

Briar knocked Evvy down. Still wiggling her hands, her power, and the rocks, she looked around. Arrowheads lay on the dirt as long wooden splinters, the remains of their bolts, sprouted
tendrils and leaves. Rosethorn smiled grimly and muttered, “Try to catch
me
unawares, will you?”