I don’t mean that she casually shouted, like Mama would occasionally do. I mean this woman screamed her desires at the top of her lungs. From anywhere within a half-mile radius of the Lakeside Inn you could hear her bellow. When I say she treated everyone like family, that meant that she felt free to shout at you as if you were her own son. If you were actually in the same room with her, it was deafening. Concerned that she was going a little deaf herself, I’d casually checked her hearing and such a few months back and found her in perfect health. I guess she just liked to shout.
We were among only a few guests that day. There were a small number of peasants from Winakur in town on business, stopping in for a pint of ale before they made the long walk back home, and there was a single packtrader who lingered over a bowl of stew, but that was it. I ordered from Mama Breda – who bellowed the order back to her youngest son –and then joined Tyndal at one of the trestle tables.
Tyndal was hacking into an excellent hunk of bright yellow Boval cheese and a half of a loaf of her bread (not as good as Dad’s, but whose is?)
and was waiting for a bowl of the stew that was bubbling over the fire and filling the air with such gastronomical promise. He had thoughtfully ordered a tall mug of ale for me already, which I used to wash the road dust from my mouth while I was waiting for my own lunch.
“How did Master Garkesku take the news, Master?” he asked between wolfish bites.
“With his customary grace,” I said, making a sour face. “He tried to convince me to give him the stone. I tried to convince him that he needs to prepare for a war.”
“Do you think it will be war, then? The goblins – gurvani – have always been peaceful. Since we took the valley away from them, that is.” He looked worried and scared and excited all at the same time.
“Yes, well, apparently at least a few of them want it back, I’d guess. Did they look peaceful last night? No, if this band wasn’t alone, then this is just the opening move,” I assured him, depressed at the prospect.
“We’ll be ready for them!” he tried to sound savage and brave, and might have, if his voice had not chosen that moment to break an octave. I grinned and then fell to eating when the stew appeared. It was three-meat, three-bean stew cooked for days with wine and vegetables. Wholesome and hardy, with the cheese it was exquisite. “Do you really think the Tree Folk will be able to help us, Master?” Tyndal asked me again, after his mouth cleared.
“Honestly, Tyndal,” I confessed between bites, “I’m mostly going to the Alka Alon to see what they know about irionite. Thanks to the Censorate, it has been so scarce in the Duchies that it’s considered legendary. The piece I’m wearing around my neck is enough to buy yourself a decent sized barony, if you were to sell it to one of the rich old Imperial families.”
His eyes lit up. Nothing inspires a poor peasant lad like the idea of wealth. “You should sell it, then!” he exclaimed, enthusiastically.
I laughed and shook my head. “No, I’m going to hang on to it. It is very dangerous, and I just don’t know enough about its properties and abilities. No living man does. The last one who did was the Mad Mage of Farise, and he’s dead. Before that he was mad, and likely not terribly helpful.”
“But the Tree Folk know?” he asked, intrigued that the childhood legends of the little people he’d heard might not only exist, but be talented at his new profession.
“The Tree Folk use it frequently, it is said. Their spellcraft – it’s far more subtle and elegant than ours. No human mage has ever successfully found proficiency at it, let alone mastered it, though many have tried. I’m hoping that perhaps – if we ask nicely enough – they will consent to teach us how to use the stone. It would be invaluable in our defense against future raids. Not to mention educational in its own right.” I didn’t mention ‘powerful enough to rouse the military strength of three Duchies against it’, but I didn’t want to complicate the boy’s thoughts with political reality.
“I wonder what got them all stirred up like that? The goblins, I mean. My Ma used to see them up in the high meadows, sometimes. Said she would trade meat and leather and eggs for iron tools and sometimes even . . . gems. They make good ironwork, she said. But they never gave us any trouble.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “The gurvani I met on the road to Farise were warriors, but they kept to their own territories up in the mountains and rarely bothered the human tribes, not until the Doge’s troops started trying to conquer their mountain passes. I can’t imagine what would drive them to this. Something pretty powerful, I expect. Or it could be as little as a single shaman with a witchstone trying to prove his worthiness to impress a girl goblin.” I fondled the stone in its pouch. “I guess he failed.”
That got me thinking, a bad habit of mine when I’m eating. Tyndal knew enough to leave me alone. After a while I turned to back to him with a question. “How did this valley come to be settled here, anyway? What’s the history?”
“Well, I don’t know much – mostly what Ma and her friends told me – but almost two hundred years ago Sire Koucey’s great-great-great-grandsire was given this land for his assistance in the last of the Goblin Wars. The last battle was fought here, near Boval Castle, actually. Sire Koucey’s ancestors did something brave in battle and the Duke of Alshar, himself, granted his family the lands of the Vale as a reward, and also gifted him with a harp of gold, twenty cows, among the finest of his herds, and two strong bulls, named—”
“Hold,” I said, putting up my hand. “Did you say ‘the last of the Goblin Wars’?”
“I believe I did, Master.”
“Then I think I may have discovered the reason we were attacked, then. I knew the gurvani tribes fought against the Alshari when they – we, I mean – pushed beyond the frontier established by the Magocracy to settle. I didn’t know the last battle was here.”
He shrugged. “Does it make a difference, Master?”
“It might. I know the Imperials in the East still hold a grudge over the old Imperial Palace, the site of their last battle. That’s why the Eastern Dukes built new ones when they took over, and gave the old Imperial palace at Reymes to the priests of Goma. Where did your ancestors come from, Tyndal? Before Boval?”
“Well, on my Mother’s side we came with Lord Koucey’s company. He gave us the Heights in return.” The Heights was the name of the farm that Tyndal’s drunken mother owned. She barely held it, now, and she and Tyndal rarely spoke. He often mentioned how nasty should could be, one reason he sought employment elsewhere when he was old enough to leave the farm. Of his father, he spoke even less. Apparently he and his mother had been of very brief acquaintance.
“Ever see any of the gurvani artifacts around? You don’t just put those up because you like to decorate.”
“Well, there are the forest stones – these carved rocks you can find in the woods – but Ma says the Tree Folk put them there, not the goblins. There are plenty of caves, though. We used to play in them, the small ones near the pastures during the summer. I even saw a few goblins once, hunting. They even waved. There might be a few things of theirs left in them. Ma would never let me go to the ones higher up.”
“Very wise of her,” I said. I couldn’t help teasing him a little. “While the gurvani don’t eat human flesh as a rule, it has been known to happen, and children are, I imagine, pretty tasty.”
“Good to know,” Tyndal replied, wide-eyed.
After that, the conversation turned to the usual daily bull session on magic, where Tyndal asked me questions and I tried to answer them without getting frustrated. I was starting to realize that teaching was a lot harder than I’d expected.
When we had sopped up the very last shred of stew and drained our mugs, l paid the shot and had the horses brought around, we got back on the road. I wanted to make as much time as possible before sundown – the gurvani are nocturnal.
We made good time. The weather was pleasant, just a slight chill that presaged the coming winter, and the bright autu
mn sunshine warmed our faces as we rode.
I continued the lesson on warwands from the saddle, as well as I was able, and I was impressed at how quickly Tyndal was picking up the theory. Recent events had spurred his interest in the subject, of course, and he wanted to know everything at once.
We were about two hours north of Hymas on the North Road when we heard screaming in the distance, followed by a particular snarl that I’d heard all too recently.
I glanced at the sun sourly. They are supposed to be nocturnal!
Someone was in trouble, and I was the closest thing to a hero within shouting distance. Tyndal was startled, too, his eyes wide. He was also immobilized by the scream.
“Shit! Tyndal, arm your wand and follow me! Don’t worry about attacking, just keep them off my back!” I said as I stood in the stirrups and summoned my defenses. Traveler lurched forward eagerly. I didn’t bother looking back to see if my apprentice was following, partly because of the potential embarrassment I would have felt if he hadn’t, and partly because I was trying to foresee the situation ahead of us.
Trying to sling spells from the saddle is a very refined art, a specialty of some equestrian warmagi who can get it right most of the time. I’m as good a horseman as a baker’s son has any right to be, and had ridden extensively during my professional career, but I still had difficulty concentrating enough to complete the simple reconnaissance spell properly.
The fuzzy result gave me only vague awareness of the situation ahead. It was, of course, more goblins. I could foresee a knot of them clustered around one or two humans. That was adequate enough intelligence to determine my plan of action. I put spur to flank and drew Slasher with one hand, a warwand with the other. In moments I entered the scene of destruction, no doubt cutting a dashing and heroic figure.
There was a whole band of them, almost a score. Or at least there had been. Two lay still and bleeding, and two more clutched their heads and screamed piteously in the overbright sunshine. But the others were surrounding the humans and poking at them playfully with spears and clubs and laughing at their torment.
I was coming upon their band from the rear. They had just started to turn to the sound of Traveler’s hoof beats when I was upon them.
Slasher swept the heads off of two as I barreled around the bend. Traveler’s hooves trampled a third. He’s not a warhorse, but he’s quite intelligent, and he knew what to do when I commanded him like this. The momentum of our charge was enough to bowl-over a handful of them in a tangled heap. My wand played across the pile of gurvani as I leapt – or fell, depending on how you looked at it – from the saddle. I was gratified that it chewed holes in their bodies, enough to get their attention.
The goblins had been taken by surprise, but that didn’t stop those of them who hadn’t fell in my attack from regrouping. Suddenly I was faced with a small and angry mob of hostile little furry buggers.
While I was not thrilled with the prospect, they had turned their attention from their victims to face me, and I hoped that helped. Before my boots had skidded to a halt Slasher was parrying their nasty little clubs and spears while I lined up more targets for my wand in my mind.
I didn’t have much in the way of combat spells prepared and hung after the busy night I’d had, so I just fought like hell. A couple of times I even used my wand as a club.
The goblins pressed me aggressively, threatening me from almost every side, but their smaller stature and the potential for hitting allies in the battle made them cautious. I had no such handicap. I poked my sword wherever I felt it would do the most good, slicing arms and legs and eyes indiscriminately.
One by one they fell back, some of them permanently. Traveler, too, was having a grand old time rearing and stomping – he hadn’t seen action in almost a year – and I saw at least one crumble from a shot from Tyndal’s new wand.
Their number had suddenly dwindled to five increasingly panicky little warriors who were visibly considering fleeing from my attack . . . when they were hit from the rear by one of their intended victims.
A young farm woman was wielding a stout cowherd’s staff with anger and precision about their furry ears. The gurvani squealed in frustration as she brained the first, no doubt disheartened by being attacked from the rear twice in one day. A sweep of the staff and she knocked another off of his feet, where Tyndal ended him with a dagger blow to the chest. Her added distraction made cleaning up the others a lot easier, and within moments all of the raiders had been dispatched or fled.
I heaved for breath while my nerves tried to recover from the excitement – it was easier to do this kind of thing when I was augmented, and I made a mental note to rehang the spell tonight.
I was covered from head to toe in hot blood and black hair. I regarded the woman over the heap of bodies. Indeed, I recognized her.
She was young, perhaps twenty, and her hair was plaited in two long braids over each ear. Her dress was the stout brown plaid wool that was favored in Boval, and it, too, was stained with blood – but so was the end of her staff. Her labored breathing made her breasts swell appreciatively, and I was suddenly reminded of one of my natural reactions to combat. She was an attractive woman, I saw, handsome rather than pretty, and she held that staff like she meant it. I was intrigued.
As I said, I recognized her, but in my six months in the Vale I had met a lot of people. Even a lot of pretty young women. That didn’t produce her name in my mind, unfortunately.
“Can you help me with him?” she said, glancing at her companion, who lay in the dirt next to the road, clutching his shoulder and moaning.
“Uh, yes, of course,” I said, confused by her casual reaction to violence. Most women would be squealing and screaming at the carnage and how close they came to death. Hell, I guess I expected her to swoon and shower me with kisses, but she was acting as calmly as if she was selling cheese in the market.
I stabbed Slasher into the ground while I knelt by the fallen. Tyndal came up beside me, eyes wide and darting as he looked for more foes, bow in hand.
“That was all of them,” I said, not as sure as I sounded about the fact. He nodded, and turned his attention to the live humans, once the dead goblins no longer disturbed him.
“This man needs help. Bring my bag from the horse.” He nodded and turned, but that wand never left his white-knuckled fist. He threw a casual wave to the woman, whom he apparently knew, and trotted off.
The injured man was a little older than the woman, maybe twenty-eight, and he had several wounds to boast about. He also had a bloodied harrowing knife in his hand. He stared at me with unreal eyes, and I could tell that there was a problem. The woman knelt beside me and cradled his head in her arms.
“He’s going into shock. Tyndal, your cloak! Is he your husband?”
She shook her head. “My brother-in-law, Sagal. We were headed to Hymas, and they came out of nowhere. How bad is he?”
“I’m not a healer,” I warned.
“I know who you are,” she said, her pretty eyes flashing. “But I bet you can do something. Or are all you good for is tracking down wandering cows?”
She was right. I’m not a healer, but I had learned plenty of combat aid in the Army, and every spellmonger does a little healing on animals or people, depending on his situation. Blushing indignantly, I summoned magesight and pushed my awareness into the muscles and bones of his shoulder.
It was a mess. The scapula was cracked and the humerus was crushed, but not beyond repair, and certainly not life-threatening. A stab wound in his gut was more worrying – it wasn’t bleeding badly, but it was dangerously close to the intestines. A punctured gut could lead to peritonitis, which would kill him in a few painful days if he wasn’t tended to. But that would be in a few days. He needed to be stabilized long before that.
Tyndal brought his cloak and covered the man as I opened the leather satchel that I had carried to Farise and back. My supply of bandages was low, but there was enough there to cover the gut wound. I opened a
vial of Memphor’s Liquor and poured it onto the bandage before I pushed it into the wound.
The man moaned and his eyelids began to flutter. I took half a dried charro root and crushed it between my palms before sticking it in his mouth and holding my water skin to his lips. It would need a little time to work, but it would likely keep him out of shock if we could get him off the road.
“What’s his name again?” I asked the woman while I began to fashion a litter out of Tyndal’s cloak. I used my staff for one side, and hers for the other.
“Sagal. He’s married to my sister Ela. Their farm is about half a mile back up the road. She’s going to go insane when she sees him, just to warn you. What was your name again? I just remember that you’re the new spellmonger.” She didn’t seem impressed. So I tried to impress her.
“Master Minalan of Castal, among other places, at your service,” I grunted. “Warranted by the Duke to practice general spellcraft and thaumaturgy.”
“That’s right, I remember you. You set the firewards at Goodman Iarl’s place last month. I saw you there that day. My holding is just behind his, up the ridge and north.”
“So, now you know me, what about yourself? Do you have a name?” Tyndal and I took the ailing farmer and placed him as gently as we could in the stretcher. He moaned in pain at the movement, but he seemed to be a little more comfortable.
“Of course. Alya, daughter of Roral, of Hawk’s Reach. That’s our farm.”
“I’ve heard of it. Your dad, too. Well, Alya of Hawk’s Reach, I hope you’re fond of your brother-in-law. Goddess willing, he will survive. If you are not fond of him, there is still time to poison him before he gets home. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
She grinned and showed a fetching set of dimples that paled in comparison to her smile. “No, I really am fond of him. He was friends with my late husband.”
The Spellmonger Series: Book 01 - Spellmonger Page 9