Redoubt (28 page)

“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 he 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.

“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.”

The cat sauntered in just as he said that, and cat and priest exchanged a long look.
Understanding came over the priest’s face. “Ah! No, is—” he looked at the cat again.
“Is
old
bed. I am to be having bed of Old Harald.”

Oh, well that was all right, then. Mags felt very much better about the arrangement.
He had to wonder, though, if Franse was such a bad hunter,
who
had shot the enormous bears that had provided the furs for the bed? Had it been Old
Harald?

Well, he’s a priest, maybe people give him things. Or he gets them from the temple.
Or they belonged to his former Master.

Franse offered the cat the other leg from his bowl, but the cat wasn’t interested.
“Is not to be liking—” Franse fished a bit of beet from his bowl and held it up.

“Beets,” Mags supplied.

“Ah! Reaylis not liking beets,” Franse explained, and he demolished the last quarter
with relish.

Mags was very, very conscious that he had a considerable debt to discharge here, before
he could even
think
about trying to get back to Valdemar. He was also conscious that he faced a danger
he hadn’t even been aware of when he’d escaped—because he didn’t think he’d be able
to face off one of those demons again, and he
knew
he was unlikely to be rescued by someone like Franse a second time. But first things
first: Discharge the debt.

He slowly became aware as he finished his meal that the pain of his wounds was increasing,
and Franse must have seen that in his face. The priest hastily slurped the last of
his broth, collected their crockery, and hurried out, coming back with a pot that
smelled very familiar. Mags was certain that several of Bear’s salves and balms smelled
exactly like that. The man gestured to Mags to take off his shirt, which Mags did,
a bit self-consciously, only to be surprised at the fact that his entire torso was
wrapped in bandages, as well as both arms. How had the priest managed all that alone?

Franse unwrapped his chest and back first, and Mags tried not to wince at the extent
of the lacerations. Neat lines of stitches showed that some of them had been bad enough
to require sewing up. But they were healing, and quickly, and there was no sign of
infection. It appeared that all the lacerations were on his chest and shoulders. This
man might not call himself a Healer, but he was certainly every bit as good as Bear,
and maybe better.