Song of Sorcery (21 page)

“Do you know what’s become of my fiddle and guitar?” he asked.

She looked up from beneath a horse’s belly, trying to avoid getting stepped on. “I don’t know. Xenobia probably saved them for Davey. She’s always taking other people’s things and giving them to him, as though that would make him stay with his mama more!”

Ignoring the last part of her answer, Colin stormed. “Well, he can’t have them!” He dismounted, tying the reins to a wagon wheel. He was so angry that he started to stride straight towards Xenobia’s wagon, heedless of the few gypsies who still lingered by the dying campfire.

Zorah’s skirts rustled like wings in the darkness as she overtook him, restraining him with a hand on his arm. “Hey, Blondie.”

He turned impatiently to her. “What is it?”

“Don’t go charging in there like the bear.” She hauled Obtruncator from its scabbard and handed it to him. “Listen, take some advice from a gypsy girl, and use a little stealth. If you use that and
this
,” she tapped the sword, “Maybe you’ll get to leave this camp alive.”

“Oh. Right,” he replied, dropping back behind the wagons in a suitably stealthy crouch, Obtruncator protruding menacingly in front of him. “Thanks.”

But even sneaking wasn’t as helpful as he might have hoped, for Xenobia had taken his instruments inside her wagon, and she was still awake. He could hear her humming tunelessly to herself. Obviously, Davey had not inherited his musical ability from her side of the family. Peeking around the corner of the door in the back of the painted wagon, Colin could see that she was sitting facing his instruments, counting the booty collected earlier in the evening.

He grimaced. Chance was evidently not going to help him much tonight. Resuming his sneaking tactics, he crept up into the doorway and hoped her croaking would cover some of the noise he made as he mounted the step leading inside. In case it had not, once inside he leapt immediately for her neck again, very nearly seriously injuring himself on the second best family sword as he did so.

The gold and silver tumbled from a tower to a heap. “Xenobia,” Colin said, “this is getting monotonous. Really, I don’t like bullying women.” He cast about for something with which to gag her. Her eyes rolled back and her mouth worked furiously as the movement he made in his search increased the pressure on her windpipe. He lay the sword down long enough to grab first his guitar, then his fiddle, and pull them back to him. He seemed to lack sufficient appendages to do everything. Finally, he snatched her own blanket up from under her, almost upsetting them both, and wrapped this encumbrance around her, all the while maintaining his stranglehold with the other arm.

In desperation, he finally picked up the sword and braced it, point against her back, and released her neck, saying, “One word and you’re spitted. Now then, take off your stockings and hand them back here.”

“Stupid! I’m a gypsy. I don’t wear stockings. I go barefoot.”

“Well, um, I’ll wager the Lady Amberwine had stockings. Give me hers, then.” He felt absolutely brilliant for thinking of that. He was complimenting himself on his quick wit as she handed the stockings to him after pulling them from a remote corner of the wagon.

Unfortunately, the sword had plopped down against her blankets when she moved forward to get the stockings. Colin rebraced it.

“Before I gag you, ma’am, you can also tell me where you’ve got your son’s heart hidden. You can just hand it to me if it’s close by.”

“Now, how did you hear about that?” she asked, sounding discouragingly uncowed by his fierceness.

“Never mind that,” he growled.

“Have pity on a poor woman, young man. My baby’s heart was stolen from me.”

“A likely story. Who has it then, if not you?”

“The sorcerer took it. He holds it to insure my cooperation in helping him with his plans.”

“Now that’s smart,” Colin said. “Where does he live?”

“At Dragon Bay. But you’ll never get that far!” she shrieked the last as she bent forward, ridding herself of the sword. Colin had carelessly shown that both of his hands were occupied with stocking as he leaned over to gag her. Taking advantage of her freedom, she yelled for help in a voice piercing enough to be heard in Queenston.

Colin, fiddle, guitar, and sword were out the back of the wagon and clattering toward the horse before help reached Xenobia at the front of the wagon. He ran headlong into Zorah, who was bent over, unhobbling the last of the horses.

As she picked herself up from the ground, Colin thrust his instruments into her arms. She clutched them to her and ran toward his horse just before her kinsmen came howling around the wagon yelling and screaming what Colin assumed to be uncomplimentary and disparaging remarks in their gypsy language. They were brandishing knives, clubs, and a mace left over surely from the Second Rebellion, as well as several other miscellaneous implements designed for incising and slicing, and quite a few blunt objects. Backing slowly away, Obtruncator hoisted before him, Colin faced the invading horde at first with a tentative thrust here and there. As they collectively perceived that he was no master with the weapon, they jostled each other to strike the first telling blow, crowding him back against a wagon. Colin did the only thing he was capable of doing at that point, and started whacking and banging the sword around himself as furiously as he was able to wield the cumbersome object. He hoped to create a wall of such unpredictable destruction between himself and his attackers that perhaps sheer indecision as to where they should attack would delay his opponents in dispensing with him.

The gypsies did back off in the face of his assault. The first brave soul who attempted to storm his bastions got a fearful clout on the head, which would have surely scalped him had it been from the blade rather than the flat of the sword. As it was, he fell to the ground, insensible. Another belligerent fellow, the possessor of a staff, brought the staff up to block the Obtruncator, which obtruncated it on the spot.

Whirling a sword that was taller than he was and at least a tenth part as heavy did begin to tell on Colin’s strength after a time. His arms, tireless at playing fiddle or guitar, quickly wearied with the labor of bashing the sword about. He wondered, as he wearied, who exactly had originated the term “swordplay.” Undoubtedly one of Rowan’s frost giant ancestors. Someone sidled in then to take advantage of his waning strength, and Colin was saddened to see his fellow-fiddler, Cheese-nose, flashing his dagger in confusing convolutions.

He was also extremely worried, as Cheese-nose evidently knew his way around daggers as well as he did around fiddles. While trying to determine what the other man would do next, he saw a glint of metal from his other side. One of the worst things about this night fighting was that, in spite of the full moon, it was difficult to see in all the confusion and darkness who was doing what.

Colin switched his attention from Cheese-nose to the sneak-attacker, whipping Obtruncator to where he had seen the metallic flash, nearly beheading three people in the sword’s path.

He didn’t hear the barking and yapping until Ching dashed between his legs and a blur of dog knocked Cheese-nose aside. Colin regained his balance, and thrust to drive off the attacker on his right side, while he avoided the recovering Cheese-nose on his left. The right-hand attacker tripped over the dog and stepped heavily backward, grinding his heel into Ching’s tail. Swords were forgotten as the dog growled and snarled at all and sundry, trying to get at Ching, who now made of himself a hairpiece and muffler for the right-hand attacker, who was no longer attacking but screaming in agony. The new hairpiece was anchored firmly to his head by four sets of claws.

Although the animals created a diversion that gave Colin time to inhale, he knew he would be cut down as soon as the first gypsy returned his attention to the battle.
 
But then the bear came lumbering into the fray.

Colin didn’t stick around to see his enemies scatter, as he was too busy scattering himself. He bolted for his horse, leaping into the saddle as though he’d sprouted wings. Ching made a corresponding leap from the head of the gypsy he’d been riding, and transferred to Colin’s shoulder instead. Then somehow they were on the horse and off through the open meadow. Colin was shaking so hard he nearly dropped the sword before he could return it to its scabbard.

As he galloped across the space between the circle of wagons and the wood, he saw Davey, muscles rippling magnificently in the moonlight as he sprinted at full speed toward the camp. Colin resisted an impulse to run him down, but held him at bay with the horse’s nervous pawing hooves. “Where’s Maggie?” he demanded.

The gypsy looked genuinely confused. “She’s not with you?”

“No.”

“Then she must have thought you were killed in all that noise, and run away. I let her go a long time ago.” He appeared unconcerned by Colin’s threatening air and shrugged impatiently, starting to walk in a wide circle around the frenzied horse. “Look after your own women. I’ve enough problem keeping up with mine.”

Watching the gypsy walk blithely away from him and back to the camp, Colin saw one more thing before he fled into the woods. Zorah, visible to him but not from the camp, popped out from under one of the wagons and waved wildly for a moment before disappearing again.

12

Colin’s terrible screams had come to a shuddering climax long before Maggie reached the portion of the woods that would enable her to reach the bear’s wagon undetected. For a long time after that she stood staring dry-eyed at the circle of wagons, unable to believe the evidence of her own ears. She wandered further into the woods, to the upstream end of the camp, her stomach heaving and body trembling with shock and fury.

She had to control an almost unbearable urge to fly into the gypsy camp and dismantle it and everybody in it with her bare hands. She didn’t have even her dagger now, though, and if she met the same end as Colin, who would there be to help Amberwine? She envisioned plagues both magical and mundane that she would cause to infest the gypsies if it took the rest of her life. Suddenly the sounds of a furious battle erupted from the camp–the clanging of swords, the screams of combatants, and the neighing of horses.

By the time she found a vantage point from which to observe the melee, the other noises were joined by Ching’s yowl of pain and indignation, a dog’s frantic yapping, the coarse shouts of the gypsies, more fearful roaring from the bear, and the thunderous thudding of unshod hooves galloping over the grass.

All she was really able to see were confusing shapes flitting about in the diffuse light of the moon, but she did finally see a streak of pale hair as Colin, on the opposite side of the camp from where she now stood, rode away across the meadow, stopping only long enough to threaten Gypsy Davey. The gypsy appeared to talk his way out of the situation, and, before Maggie could cross the meadow to join Colin, he had ridden off into the woods. Her own cry for him to wait was drowned out by the bellowing of the gypsies pursuing their horses, who were for some reason scattered all across the meadow.

She fled back into the woods and ran until she reached the part of the meadow where she had left her horse and package of belongings. Now it seemed almost a game to elude the gypsies. She was giddy with relief that Colin had escaped, and fairly skipped through the damp, clinging meadow grass as she ran to the stream. As she had anticipated, her horse and pack were gone, undoubtedly the current property of some enterprising used horse dealer. There was, of course, a good possibility that her horse was one of those trotting over the meadow just ahead of a cajoling gypsy, but she was not about to take the time to look for him, or to try to catch any of the horses and persuade one to allow her to mount.

Snatching her hidden cache of clothing from beside the stream, she heard the callings and neighings come rapidly closer to where she knelt, until the noise and thundering shadows were all around her. She had to dodge several rocketing horses to reach the safety of the willows at the edge of the wood.

When she felt she was safely concealed, she changed out of the bright clothing she’d made from her underwear and into her brown skirt and tunic. She pocketed her medicine pouch and took the remaining phial of love potion from her hair, dropping that into her pocket as well. She wadded the bright gypsy dress so that only the green showed and wouldn’t betray her by its color.

Of the wildflowers that had graced her hair that night, only one remained after her tussle with Davey, and that had wilted. She could detect no vestiges of the love-philter perfume on her skin. Taking the flower from her hair, she tied her kerchief around her head instead. It was then that she heard a horse breaking through the underbrush nearby, the voice of its pursuer close behind. With her dark skin and clothing she melted into the forest as though she were an animated tree trunk.

By the time she could no longer hear voices, neither could she find a path underfoot. The sun had risen, and as she searched it came from oblivion to reach mid-point in the warm spring sky. The leaves overhead glimmered feverishly, their tops glazed with a citrusy hue, and all around her were mosses, tall grass, fallen leaves, and the trunks of dead trees underfoot. The path had completely disappeared. She had blended into the forest a little too successfully, and realized that she was lost.

Wandering, she came at last to the bank of another stream. Although willows and other taller bushes grew close by the bank in many places, at one point they receded into a clearing, and in this spot the stream was lined with a field of berries.