Patricia Briggs (13 page)

I watched, and felt something I'd taken from Auberg—fear, perhaps, but more atavistic than that—lose its fell grip on my shoulders. Melodramatic, but that's what it felt like.

“Shall we go on?” asked Ice. “Or do you think we should go back to Auberg?”

The old herdsman coughed and spat, then said, “Onward. Wish whatever it was had given me a bit of what he gave that old dog.” He glanced around at the rest of us. “I'd almost forgotten it, but my great-aunt was from Fallbrook. When I was just a tadpole, she used to tell me stories of this mountain. Said that if you left a bit of food out for the wild folk, they'd keep the creepy-crawlies away.”

He shrugged and started his mule in the direction we'd been headed. One by one the others followed him.

As he passed me, he doffed his cap. “It's good to remember there is magic that heals as well as the wraiths and whatnot we've been fighting for the past few days.”

He meant me. When I smiled at him, he smiled back.

After the rest had gone on, Kith rode to my side. “It's still here,” he said.

I nodded, watching Duck stare at an oak tree not too far from where we stood. “Do you think we should we be worried?”

Kith shrugged. “If it healed that dog, it stands to reason that it could have hurt any of us equally well. I suspect we're safe enough.”

“But we'll leave some food out for it tonight,” I said, thinking about the bit of meat and bread I'd left at the house in Auberg.

He squinted at the shadows under the oak. “I suspect we will.”

T
HE
G
ROWING
S
EASON

S
ticks clattered together like an odd sort of music, much faster than I'd have thought possible when I started this a couple of months ago.
Ah, missed one—this was going to hurt.

“Ouch,” I said, stumbling backward out of further harm's way. I
would
miss the one aimed at my jaw.

Manta stepped closer to see the damage. “I mistimed my pattern,” he apologized. “Are you all right, luv?”

“She's fine,” said Ice, his brother, coming up behind me. “Raiders don't fight in patterns, anyway. If all you learn is patterns, you might as well be dancing.” Despite his brisk words, he pulled my hand away from my face so he could inspect the welt. “Time to put the sticks up anyway. Practice is over.”

I glanced around. Sure enough, Koret was stepping up to the upturned manger that served as a podium in the barn. I set my sticks in the open-ended barrel with a dozen others.

My knapsack was nearby with the crossbow next to it. I was still a beginner with the sticks, but at least I'd been a natural with the crossbow. Though, as Kith observed dryly, it wasn't that hard, just point and shoot. I just pointed better than others. It didn't hurt that the steel bow shot farther than any of the village crossbows, almost as far as Koret's longbow.

By the time I came to the podium, practice had pretty much ended; Ice hadn't been the only one who'd noticed Koret. We were a scruffy-looking lot gathered around the front of the barn.

There were four Beresforders in our group, including Manta and his blue-eyed brother, Ice—whose real name, I had learned, was Eannise. Ice had been made an elder to represent Beresford, though I'm not certain I wasn't older than he was. Manta was older, I knew—but there was something about Ice that made him a man others would follow.

The Beresforders were easy to pick out because, other than Kith and me, the Fallbrook patrollers were boys—the ones who were too old to be content shuffling around town with the women and children, yet not old enough to guard the lands against the raiders.

The far fields had been abandoned more than a month ago; they were too vulnerable to the bandits' attack. We'd fallen back to protecting just the near fields, most of which were grazing lands and vegetable gardens. There wasn't enough grain produced on the land that was left to feed the village through the winter.

A month ago Merewich ordered the two bridges across the river guarded day and night, without actually saying he intended to claim the lord's fields for the village. Hard on his announcement, Albrin—whose lands had been among those abandoned—took over guarding the eastern bridge by Fell Lake, relocating his horses to the lord's grazing fields bordering the swamps. He, his hirelings, and a number of newly homeless men moved into a hay storage barn over the objections of the steward.

“All right now, lads,” said Koret in a voice that would have carried over ocean waves. “You know there's been a movement afoot to restrict our patrols to the near fields we are actually guarding. I've talked to Merewich, and we've come up with a few alternatives, so for now your routes are the same. New orders are that if you see a group larger than five raiders, come in directly to report.”

“What if they try to hit the town?” Someday I needed to learn how Ice could make his soft voice heard so easily over the shuffling noises of the group. “We lost ten men in that raid on Lyntle's—”

“Eleven,” someone added, “Lyntle's son died this afternoon.”

Ice nodded but continued without pause. “And at least that many more are injured. That leaves us with less than sixty fighting men in town if the patrols stay as they are.”

Koret nodded his agreement. “We've talked to the steward, and the remnants of Lord Moresh's fighting men—there are twenty of them—are staying in the village as of today. They're being mixed with the teams of guards we already have, so there'll be someone with experience fighting in each team. I've pulled Kith from patrol to train them. I don't have time now. As you might have heard, I've begun an afternoon training session to teach some of our women how to defend themselves.” He grinned, adding, “Some of the nastiest pirates I've ever known have been women. Look at Aren.”

I stuck out my tongue at Ice when he cowered away from me.

“There's a couple of those old beldams I wouldn't want to tangle with,” commented someone fervently.

“Women are sneaky,” added another.

“Can we defend ourselves against them?” asked a boy.

“I've never managed to,” admitted Manta. “But I've never minded losing, much.”

The boy puzzled it out, then flushed. “I mean, can we defend ourselves against the bandits?” He blushed again when his untrustworthy voice cracked on the last word.

The people shifted uncomfortably. No one else would have asked the question, but we all waited to hear Koret's answer. Koret knew these things. He had experience.

The old pirate smiled serenely. “Of course.” His eyes, I noticed, were very tired. “Aren, stay a moment. The rest of you to your patrols.”

He waited until the others had left the barn before he said anything. “Touched Banar was killed last night.”

“I know,” I said. The smith's brother had been a gentle soul, if simple. I hadn't spoken to him much, but he'd been a fixture at the smithy.

“The official story is that the raiders caught him. Kith found him. He and Merewich brought the body back to the smith. Then Kith came to me and asked me to tell you to stay out of town as much as possible.”

“Me?” I asked, surprised.

“You haven't been around town much anyway,” Koret said, scuffing a bit of loose straw with the side of his boot. “You might not have heard…. There's a group, the last priest's staunchest followers for the most part, who are becoming rabid about anything smelling of magic. They claim it's the village's wickedness that caused the One God's anger and shook the world.”

I smiled without amusement, then stopped when it hurt my jaw. I'd forgotten Manta'd hit me. “I know about them. My brother by marriage is one of them. Kith thinks they're responsible for Banar's death? Because of the old tales about changelings?”

Koret met my eyes, not speaking a word.

“I'll stay out of town.”

T
HE SUMMER NIGHT WAS RICH WITH THE SOUNDS OF THE
creatures who haunted the dark. Crickets sang from the fields, answered by the frogs in the nearby creek.

I stood in the sheltering shadow of my barn and watched the raiders poke around the empty cottage. I had stopped here deliberately, though the route Koret had assigned me actually passed a mile or so below this.

It had been several months since it had been safe to live here—not since we got back from the Hob, as a matter of fact. I'd come back and found traces of the raiders all over. So I lived in a camp just outside of town.

It wasn't the visions that kept me from moving into town. I no longer had to worry about going into visionary fits every time someone asked me a question, not since the trip to Auberg. The visions weren't gone, but the force of them had eased, much as the earth tremors that followed the big one had subsided.

I thought the cause of both was the gradual decreasing of magic to the level it must have been at before the bloodmages locked it away. The magic, it seemed to me, was like the steam trapped under the lid of a pot of boiling water. When the lid was removed, steam billowed out, then subsided to a steady mist.

What kept me out of town was the looks I received whenever I walked down the street. Melly, Wandel, and Kith were the only ones who treated me as they always had. Crusty old Cantier treated me like a long-lost daughter while his wife hung protective charms around her neck and glared when he wasn't looking. Merewich and Koret wanted me to find out what the raiders were doing, but I couldn't
see
the bandit's camp, no matter how hard I tried. I didn't know why that was. Kith suggested they might have a bloodmage's spell blocking my
sight
.

Some people just avoided me, sending nervous glances my way when they thought I might not be looking. It was the others I minded most: the ones who crossed the street to get away, then watched me with fear or hatred. People like Poul, my brother by marriage, and Albrin, Kith's father.

I'd thought it was getting worse lately, but I hadn't thought it would go so far as murder. Deliberately, I turned my attention to my former home.

The croft was already showing the lack of care. The first earthquake had pulled a shutter loose from a window; it had fallen to the ground since the last time I'd been here a few weeks ago. The garden fence had developed a decided lean, and I could smell the polecat who'd taken possession of the barn. The farm had kept me sane after my family had died; it hurt to reward it with such neglect. The raiders' presence tonight was a further indignity.

In the months since I'd come back from Auberg, I'd gathered quite a bit of experience watching raiders from the shadows, but it wasn't the same as seeing them here, in my home. I leaned into the roughness of the barn wood. Having something solid against my back helped me stay still. Daisy the cow no longer smelled bad—something had come up here a couple of weeks ago and eaten most of her.

The group of raiders I'd come upon was small—only three that I could see—though I suspected there was another one hidden near the thicket just east of the house. Something had frightened a sleeping bird out of the gorse bush anyway. If I'd seen them before they were so close, I would have avoided them. But they'd come just as I was leaving. There was no sense risking their seeing me by moving about, so I settled down to wait.

There weren't enough men to make a real raiding party—this bunch was probably out scavenging. Since they were doing it at night, they were probably scrounging without permission. Two of the men entered the cottage with a torch, leaving the third on guard just outside the door. I don't know what the one by the gorse bush was doing.

The men were on foot, so their camp might not be too far away—something that would interest Koret. Although we'd found the remains of a number of overnight camping places, no one had been able to pinpoint their main camp. If they had a camp outside the range of our usual patrols, it would explain why we hadn't been able to find them. Kith felt their camp would be some distance from where they attacked, so we'd concentrated our searches in the western slopes. Maybe they weren't as smart as Kith thought they were.

As I sat musing over possible nearby camping sights, I noticed movement in the darkness. It wasn't in the gorse bush, but I thought it might be the same man. I resisted the urge to move to a better location, knowing any movement might give my position away as easily as it had let me see the fourth raider.

A shadow moved near the cottage, and the man on guard disappeared into it without a sound. I stiffened at my post. Whoever it was had moved with amazing swiftness.

One of the men in the cottage cried out, and then the peace of the night dissolved in wild cries and…the sounds of an animal feeding.

It wasn't any of their fellow raiders attacking them, not unless they'd taken to cannibalism. I thought of the thing that had attacked me on the Hob. I'd told Merewich about it, and Koret as well, but no one had seen anything out of the ordinary since.

Well, maybe they'd take out the raiders and leave us alone. My caution increased by the ache that still troubled my arm, I concentrated on being very quiet and stayed in my place until long after the sounds had died away, leaving only crickets and frogs in their wake. Dawn crept out slowly, and in the early morning light, I walked to the cottage and surveyed the area.

The ground, dark with blood, was torn up in front of the door. A few paces away a sword lay in its sheath. Inside the house there was little more: enough blood to prove both men had died, their weapons, and a well-chewed shoe. I wondered if it had tasted bad.

I started up the trail to the upper field, passing a dark stain where the fourth man had stood lookout. As I came to a switch in the trail, I heard a man cough. Quietly, heart pounding, I darted under the boughs of an evergreen, realizing only after I was there that it was the same tree I'd hidden in the day Daryn died.

I crouched motionless in Caulem's trousers and tunic, staring at a hole that was developing in the trousers' knee. It seemed to take a lifetime for the two raiders to move past my hiding place. As soon as they were gone, I dusted off my hands and set off parallel to the trail at a steady trot.

When I reached the field where Daryn and Father had been killed, I slowed to a walk. I hadn't actually seen it since that day. The plow was gone, but even without it I could tell where they had been cut down. The dirt hadn't been harrowed behind them, and short tufts of wild grass grew awkwardly around the big clumps of dirt.

There was a bench at the far end of the field, a short, sharp rise with a flat area beyond it. It caught my attention because we'd cut a stand of trees there to build the cottage, and the bare area we'd left seemed to be full of trees again.