The Gambler's Fortune (Einarinn 3) (51 page)

Ismenia scrubbed her hands over her face, looking up with hollow cheeks and disordered hair. “I will not lie but I will not volunteer what I know,” she said finally.

“We don’t know that much as it is.” Keisyl looked unsmiling at Bryn. “We’ve done our best to keep ourselves out of this folly.” He moved to open the door. “It’s up to you how you answer for your part in all this.”

“No, I’ll leave by the side steps,” said Bryn hastily. “It’s better that I am not seen.”

He patted Theilyn clumsily on the shoulder as he turned and hurried up the stairs. She nodded absently and moved to the long table, picking up her needle and resuming her task with even stitches. After a moment, Ismenia moved to look over her daughter’s shoulder. With a grunt of approval, she pulled up a stool to the great slate slab and began working an awl through the stubborn leather, marking a line of holes for Theilyn’s sewing to follow. Keisyl collapsed on a stool between them, laid his head in his arms and wept, ceaseless tears falling on the indifferent stone. Fithian sat in a corner and drank from his flask with single-minded intent.

The Great West Road,

6th of Aft-Summer

I wasn’t really paying attention when the arrows came raining in; since murderous Mountain Men hadn’t caught up with us so far, my main worry was our empty bellies and the thirst that was closing my throat. The road was deserted and I was some way ahead of the others, having no wish to take a turn supporting Usara any sooner than need be. The mage was doing his best with a rough crutch, though his leg must have been ablaze with agony.

The arrows sprang from dense thickets low beneath mighty trees, cleaving the air with their spiteful swish. I had barely time to register their flight before all burst into flames. Bright gouts of fire flared in the shadows striping the road and a stink of charred feather hovered on the slow-moving air as scorched arrowheads clattered down. A rustle of consternation in the bushes betrayed at least one assailant. I backed rapidly to join the others, where Gilmarten was looking justifiably pleased with himself.

Darni stepped forward, one hand on his sword-hilt. “We have no wish to fight anyone. Can we parley?”

“You have been fighting, we see your wounded.” The shouting voice sounded young, nervous and angry, a bad combination. A second voice told us we had enemies in the branches of the trees. That’s all it told us, since this one spoke the Forest tongue. We exchanged looks of incomprehension.

“You, there, you of the blood,” it yelled in exasperated Tormalin. “Are you prisoner or traitor?”

“My father was of the blood, but I was born and raised an outdweller,” I called out cautiously. “These men are friends and companions of many years. They have attacked no one.”

There was a puzzled silence. “What of your wounded one?” The question came from another direction and I wondered how many we were facing. From the timbre of the halting Tormalin this was an older man and one whose life had been rudely shaken. With luck he’d be keen to avoid any more fighting.

“We were attacked three days ago,” I shouted. “We lost our horses and our gear and only wish to pass through the Forest as fast as we may.”

“Who attacked you?” demanded the first voice, more uncertain but less angry. It was a young man’s voice, easier to persuade but more inclined to impulsive decisions.

“Men of the Mountains,” replied Sorgrad clearly. “Westerlings. My brother and I were born to the Middle Ranges but we’ve lived in the lowlands for many years. We were looking to trade but were driven out.”

“Why do you block the road like this?” Darni’s face darkened. “Have you been attacked?”

“Attacked, burned out, harried and hunted,” raged the first voice. “By men as fair as your friends there and with magic at their backs.”

Usara jerked upright on his prop. “Magic? Of what nature?”

“Has this been magic of fire and water, of strange winds and broken earth?” I stepped forward and scanned the bushes again. “Or has it been terror in the mind, delusion baffling the senses?”

“What do you know of such things?” This was a new voice, a stronger, more measured tone.

“It was trying to understand this magic of the mind that took me to the uplands.” I could feel furious glares from Darni and Usara scorching the back of my neck.

A fluting whistle was passed down the highway from quite some distance ahead. A man of the Forest Folk stepped out of a low thicket, belly spreading in his middle years, dark auburn hair sprinkled with white, square-jawed face quite grim enough to be a match for Darni. “Riders are approaching. Get off the road and we can discuss this further.” This was the last speaker, who looked at us with a measuring copper eye. “We can offer you food and water.”

Darni and the wizards immediately stepped forward, or limped, in Usara’s case. ’Gren looked at me and I looked to Sorgrad; the three of us followed more slowly. More Folk than I expected emerged from the trees above us and out of the undergrowth. Leggings and tunics of dun and leather were newly splashed with mud and irregular splotches of fresh dye while rags of green and brown cloth were tied around arms and legs, covering hair and faces. These people were actively seeking to avoid being seen. All were armed with bows and sufficient quivers that Gilmarten would have spent his magic long before they ran out of arrows.

A rattle of hooves behind us turned my head back to the road. I caught a glimpse of heads and backs, yeomen by their clothing, solid chestnut horses trotting stolidly along. I could get back fast enough to hail them, to shout for help and say whatever might induce unimaginative farmers to take me to safety. My hesitation brought Sorgrad’s head around, piercing blue eyes unblinking.

“Go if you want to,” he said softly, “but I’m going on. I want payback as well as a pay-off now. Exiling us is one thing, trying to kill us raises the stakes.”

I still felt a shadow of the qualm that Elietimm bastard had planted in my mind but anger burned it away, hot and urgent beneath my breastbone. Sorgrad held out a hand and squeezed my fingers for a moment; I nodded wordlessly and followed. North of the road, the land was more broken, rising in odd abrupt slopes. Trees clustered densely for a stretch and then left stony ground bare but for hummocks of moss and dips filled with drifts of leaves. Evergreens stood sullen and dusty in the summer heat and dense tangles of bramble and gorse were claiming ever more ground with each season. The Folk walking grim-faced to either side of us looked much the same as those farther south, ancient blood seasoned with a cast of the eyes or a tilt of the nose brought in from both east and west of the wildwood.

We rounded a hillock of gravelly ground and found ourselves on the edge of a wide hollow backed by a rocky crag. The scars of a score or more fires were black on the swept earth and each was surrounded by a close-gathered ring of Folk, a couple of hundreds all told, huddled together with scant bundles of possessions and food. Many were flat-faced with shock; others were hunched in distress or sharpening weapons already gleaming in the sunlight with futile rage. Grim depression twisted an old woman’s face in contrast to the blank disbelief of the child folded in her arms. I wondered where its mother was.

“Men of the Mountains,” said the man who had brought us here. “They have been coming down from the heights, driving us back, killing and burning where they may.”

“We must speak with your leader.” Worry was plain on Gilmarten’s face.

“They have no leader, not in the sense you mean,” I told him. “Where are the men who manage the hunts for you? What about healers?”

Darni was scowling. “ ’Sar needs a healer, if we do nothing else here.”

“Yes, I know.” I stifled my irritation. “Healers or trackers might be able to tell us where the Mountain Men are attacking. Does anyone have a map?”

Both wizards shook their heads but Sorgrad looked up from making a rough head count. “I know the lay of the land around here pretty well.”

“Where would we find a healer?” I asked the man.

“Yonder.” He pointed to the outcrop overhanging a wide, shallow cave. We picked our way through the dense gathering, unease rippling outward as ’Gren and Sorgrad were noticed, blond heads in stark contrast to the varied shades of red and brown all around. The tenor of the murmurs was distinctly unfriendly. The Folk who had arrived with us dropped away to their own people, the sharp tone of questions rising here and there. I smiled reassuringly at Sorgrad but he remained grim-faced. The air grew thick with tension rather than heavy with the apathy of defeat; these Folk might lack any formal leadership but they could still find common cause in lynching Sorgrad and ’Gren quick enough.

A daunting number of people were wrapped in soiled blankets on the broad shelf of rock beneath the crag. Green poultices and oddly stained dressings covered wounds to arms, hands and heads. A double handful of men and women were busy among the prostrate figures, lifting heads to give sips from wooden cups or pellets of closely wrapped leaves for chewing. One of the healers was kneeling beside a gray-haired woman whose eyes were hidden beneath a swathe of linen.

“More work for us, Bera?” he asked with a shadow of a smile. Old blood was black on the front of his tunic and caked around his fingernails.

“This is Harile,” our guide nodded. “A leg wound for you and a puzzle for the rest of us,” he told the healer.

Usara limped forward and Harile’s attention immediately focused on the mage’s stained dressing. “Let me see.”

Usara leaned on his crutch, unlacing his breeches awkwardly. He gritted his teeth as Harile gently eased the foul linen away. The bruising was now a nauseous greenish purple covering most of the wizard’s skinny thigh and the wound looked ominously swollen and angry, seeping with yellow pus. I’d thought Usara had been lucky to catch a glancing blow; after all, if the bone had been broken, we would have been in a great deal more trouble. Now I wasn’t so sure. He might well lose the leg anyway and that infection could kill him regardless.

Harile spoke rapidly to a woman of easily twice my heft, round-faced with a solid bulk to her. She poured water from a kettle hung over a small and smokeless fire and added a judicious selection of herbs from a bag at her belt to the bowl. As she approached, I realized she was singing Orial’s healing song under her breath. Harile picked up the refrain in an absent whistle, using the warm and fragrant liquid to wash away the crusted mess. “The bruising makes it look worse than it is.”

Usara’s shoulders sagged and he scrubbed a trembling hand over his face, a pathetic figure with his breeches around his knees, shirt grubby beneath the soiled front of his gown. Testing one’s magic against the wider world is all very well, I thought, but that’s a wizard who’s going to be mighty glad to be safe on his hidden island again. I wondered if he’d make it with one leg or two.

“There are herbs we can poultice to promote healing,” continued Harile. “We can dull the discomfort and you must rest for your body to mend itself.”

“You’ll be fine, ’Sar,” said Darni briskly as the mage eased his breeches up painfully. “Now, where were you attacked and by what numbers?”

An older man with wiry white hair fringing a bald pate above a lean, keen face pushed past Bera. “What do you know of the storm that has burst over us?”

“This is Apak,” said Bera hastily. “The eldest of trackers.” He was backed by a double handful of people looking just as hard for answers.

Darni looked down with unconscious arrogance. “I am an agent of the Archmage of Hadrumal, Planir the Black. Usara is a mage deep in his confidence and Gilmarten is a wizard of Solura, traveling with us.” His tone forbade further inquiry but Gilmarten bowed hastily.

“Are mages to blame for this calamity?” Apak returned

Darni’s haughtiness in full measure, thumbs tucked in his belt. “We know the Men of the Mountains are backed by magic, make no mistake.”

“I can assure you their enchantments are none of our doing.”

I was relieved to hear a more moderate tone in the big man’s words but Apak snorted, unimpressed. “And what of you three?” His eyes and those at his back were hard and distrustful. I felt ’Gren stir beside me, reacting badly to the palpable hostility coming from all sides.

“We were looking to trade in the Western Ranges,” said Sorgrad soberly, accents of Col resonant in his words. “We were summarily expelled from the heights and we have been pursued with murderous intent.” He indicated Usara and the rest of us still spotted with blood in our stale clothing, his expression neutral in the face of accusing stares.

“What do the Men of the Mountains want with us?” demanded Apak, pent-up frustration finding a target in us. “Why are we fugitives in the wildwood that should shelter us?” He was spitting and stumbling over his words, Forest accents distorting his fluent Tormalin. “Me and mine were grazing our donkeys in the upper margins while the grass was good, the women harvesting herbs, the rest hunting hare or fox. We set our sura in the customary places; the Mountain people have turned their flocks to the upper pastures by now and are busy at their diggings, but some always travel down to trade metal goods and pottery for herbs and woodwork.” The anger in Apak’s face faded to perplexity. “When we saw some men coming, we thought nothing of it, but they carried swords and spears and outnumbered us two for every one. They called us thieves and parasites, cursing us for hunting their lands, saying we stole their pelts. They burned our sura, broke whatever they could lay hands on or cast it into the flames. The women were taken against their will, those who resisted whipped raw.” Burning rage surged in his voice. “We hunt those slopes both sides of Solstice but leave them willingly when the season turns. Mountain Men come down from the heights and we move south before the snows.” His voice trailed off as he gazed into some evil memory. “We fled, what else could we do?”

We were the center of attention, Folk moving closer, abandoning their low-voiced conversations.

“And then?” prompted Darni with more gentleness than I expected.