Magic Engineer

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Brede and Kadara nod and walk in different directions.

  By the time Dorrin has gathered his wits and senses into his own skull and cleaned the gash in his arm, Brede is carrying the second body up the gentle hill across the road from the way station, and Kadara has a fire started in the ancient-looking hearth. The sun has completely dropped behind the lower hills to the west when Dorrin straggles into the station with an armload of finger-width wood.

  “Thanks. I can use that later, or in the morning. You might water the horses again. Just a little.” The redhead does not look up from her preparations with the stew pot.

  With all the time it takes him, and the stubbornness of the mounts, the stew is ready when he stumbles back into the way station. Brede sits on one end of the stone bench.

  … tu… whuuuu…

  Dorrin jerks his head up.

  “Just an owl,” Brede says quietly. “They hunt earlier here in the cold weather, I think. It’s probably too cold for the rodents late at night.”

  “Here.” Kadara hands Dorrin a tin cup filled with something hot and brown. Then she hands a second cup to Brede.

  “Thank you.” Brede’s voice is appropriately grateful.

  “Thank you,” echoes Dorrin, conscious of sounding like an echo.

  “You’re both welcome. Just eat it.” Kadara fills her own cup.

  For a time, there is silence except for the chewing of hard travel bread and the muffled slurping of the stew.

  Dorrin sets down his cup, then takes out the carving knife and a small piece of wood. In several deft strokes, he fashions a crude needle. Then he strips off the quilted winter jacket and uses the point of the knife to work a series of evenly spaced holes in the outer leather. After more stew, he uses the wooden needle to thread a thin thong he has worked down as finely as he can through the holes.

  “Clever…” mumbles Brede through another mouthful of stew and travel bread. He is finishing his third cup of the spicy brown stuff.

  “Had to do something,” Dorrin replies, as he redons the jacket, leaving the front unbuttoned, for the fire leaves the way station passably warm. He slowly finishes the cup and edges toward the pot for seconds, filling the cup perhaps halfway. Then he cuts a small slice of the travel bread, realizing that the headache has begun to fade.

  “You’re a healer. Why can’t you heal yourself?” asks Brede after a large mouthful that finishes his fourth cup of the brown stew.

  Dorrin shrugs, ignoring the twinge in his arm. The cut is not infected, but it will take a little while to heal. “It’s not that simple. It doesn’t take much to strengthen your body so a cut doesn’t fester, especially if you clean it. But knitting the muscle, or knitting bone especially, takes a lot of energy. There are stories about unwise healers who saved mortally wounded patients-and died. The patients lived.”

  “Then what’s the point of healing?” Brede’s brow furrows.

  “I’m not a great healer. But most battle deaths are from infections, and a good healer can stop a lot of those.” He grins crookedly. “You can’t fight again in that battle, but you get to fight a lot more battles.”

  The blond man nods. “I guess that makes sense.”

  “Also, sometimes healing makes a difference. Enough effort to exhaust a healer, but not kill him or her, might save someone just on the edge.”

  Brede nods again as he finishes his second thin slice of travel bread.

  “You think it will be like this all the way to Vergren?” Kadara’s eyes flicker toward the darkness outside.

  Brede shakes his head. “Not likely. The higher hills are too sparse for highwaymen.” Then he shrugs his broad shoulders. “Still, you can’t really tell. I can’t. Glad Dorrin can, though.”

  …tu… whuuuu…

  “So am I,” admits Kadara.

  Dorrin, pleased to be of some use to his more athletic and weapon-skilled companions, looks down at the coals of the fire, their red-white of honest destruction almost, but not quite, the white-red of chaos. As almost an afterthought, he pulls over the saddlebags and opens them, checking the contents. A glint of coin catches his eye, and his hand follows. In the bottom of the left bag is a silver… and another wooden token. He shakes his head, even as he replaces the silver in his wallet. After a moment, he puts the token there as well.

  “What was that?”

  “Wooden token,” Dorrin admits.

  Kadara’s eyes narrow. “How did you work it, Dorrin?”

  “Work what?”

  “The horses?”

  “I wondered about that,” Brede adds. “Nobody was really interested in selling to us, not until you started talking to that shopkeeper.”

  “Hertor,” Dorrin says absently, musing about the silver and the token.

  “Well…” Kadara shifts her weight, and the hazel eyes fix upon his.

  Dorrin shrugs. “His dog.”

  “What about the dog?” Kadara’s voice bears an exasperated tone.

  “The poor thing was old and in pain. It had some sort of infection. I could sense how much she hurt. So I healed her a little.”

  “I thought you said you couldn’t heal that much.” Brede’s voice is accusing.

  Dorrin sighs. “It’s not that simple…”

  “You said that before.”

  “Dogs are smaller than people. It didn’t take very much for her, and she hurt a lot.”

  Kadara shakes her head, slowly. “For that, he gave you a token? I saw you slip it to the horse dealer.”

  “I didn’t know what it meant,” Dorrin says sheepishly. “I thought it might help, but I didn’t want to mention it in case it wasn’t anything.”

  “Well,” Brede laughs easily, “it certainly helped get us the mounts. Who would have thought a dog meant so much?”

  Dorrin frowns, recalling the tone in Hertor’s voice when the man had said, “Best bird-dog I ever had.” But he says nothing as he sets aside the saddlebags.

  “Let’s get these cleaned up.” The firmness in Kadara’s voice indicates her words are not a suggestion at all. “We have a long ride tomorrow.”

  XX

  DORRIN SQUIRMS UNEASILY in the saddle. His legs are nearly raw, and his buttocks bruised. Would it have been better to walk? Ahead of him, Kadara sits easily in the saddle of the larger chestnut mare, practicing blade exercises as the three horses trudge the cold hard clay.

  Dorrin wonders whether he should do the same with the staff that sits in the lance holder, but another twinge from his over-stressed legs discourages him. With his lack of skill, practicing on horseback would probably result in damage to Meriwhen or himself. Why he has named the mare Meriwhen is unclear, even to himself, but, for whatever reason, she needs a name. He cannot just say “horse” or “mare.” Why does the mare even need a name?

  He looks at the staff. Can he afford to put off practicing? To have Kadara and Brede defending him and looking down at his ineptitude? One encounter with brigands and his shoulder is still healing, while Kadara and Brede dispatched the three bandits as if they had no skills whatsoever.

  He glances at the structure ahead. “That can’t be the keep of the old Dukes of Montgren.” The small white stone keep is scarcely fifty cubits square with walls no more than fifteen cubits high. Yet it sits on the flattened top of a ridge that extends hundreds of cubits on each side of the small keep. The ridge is covered only in grass, long and often matted by wind and weather, but grass nonetheless. Below the ridge, in the valley, lies Vergren, low stone walls age-streaked, but apparently intact. High white clouds dot the midafternoon sky, and the sun’s warmth on his back is more than welcome.

  “What’s the problem?” Brede circles his gelding back toward Dorrin. Kadara rides beside Brede, her short red hair fluttering in the breeze.

  “Nobody ever mentioned…” Even as Dorrin gestures, his thoughts are calculating, wondering at the force it took to level the old citadel.

  “Well, there’s the keep, and someone’s home. Let’s pay them a visit.
” Brede’s cheerful voice echoes across the ridge line. His big gloved hand gestures toward the red-edged white banner flying from the tower.

  “I’ll pass, thank you,” Dorrin says. “I’d rather just head into the town itself.”

  “Do you really think we intended to ride up to a White Wizard’s keep?” asks Kadara.

  Dorrin flushes. Why does he always take Brede so seriously? Because the big young man always sounds so sincere? Dorrin chucks the reins, suppressing a groan as the mare starts forward and his thighs remind him that he was never cut out to be a horseman. He steadies the staff in the lanceholder, and does not look back, fearing that Kadara is laughing at him again. Why does he always fall for Brede’s outrageous statements? Why is it so hard for him to laugh? He tightens his lips against his own questions and against the throbbing in his legs.

  The three ease their horses to the right along the road downhill toward Vergren itself.

  “Wonder… what happened to the old keep of the Duke…” Dorrin mumbles to himself as the three ride abreast.

  “What?” asks Brede politely.

  “Well…” Dorrin explains. “The Founders’ accounts all mention the keep of the Duke, but it’s clear that the White Wizards leveled it after his death. The Prefect of Gallos still rules Gallos, and the Duke of Hydlen still holds Hydolar. All of Hydlen, I mean. It’s all rather confusing.”

  Brede looks at Kadara, then back at Dorrin. “Lortren explained that.”

  “Dorrin was probably thinking about machines,” opined Kadara.

  The wiry redhead flushes.

  “It’s a matter of practical politics,” Brede explains. “Fair-haven took over Montgren because it was so close. The wizards don’t really rule the other duchies. They just have treaties or understandings. And they get paid for maintaining the roads.”

  “Stupid,” mutters Dorrin. “Who wants to travel that much anyway?”

  “It’s not stupid,” snaps Kadara. “Recluce has the Eastern Ocean. That’s nothing more than a highway.”

  Dorrin knows she is right, and that his anger is at being on a road mat isn’t even a highway. His legs and thighs hurt, and Kadara and Brede have each other. As the timbered gates of Vergren appear, Dorrin reins in Meriwhen and lets the two blades lead the way.

  Although the timbered city gates are heavy, and the oiled iron hinges twice the size of Brede’s forearms, the gates have been fastened back against the gray stone. They have not been closed in years, except to work the hinges. Only a single guard is present, and she sits behind an overhead crenellation, surveying the three horses and their riders. A sense of whiteness surrounds the guard, but her expression does not change as the three pass underneath. Meriwhen’s hoofs click on the stones.

  “Whereto?”

  “We’ll start at the central square,” Brede replies. “All towns have them.”

  On the right side of the narrow street walk two women in boots, trousers, and heavy shapeless shirts. Each carries a large basket of damp laundry, but neither looks or speaks as the horses edge by.

  Dorrin glances down an alley, but, unlike the alleys in Tyrhavven, there is no rubbish, no mud, only hard clay with a few weeds growing next to the rough plastered back walls of the buildings. He grins at a pile of horse droppings, even as a youth appears with a shovel to remove them. The boy keeps his eyes from the horses and darts back into a doorway.

  “It’s quiet.” Kadara’s soft comment is the only sound besides the clicking of hoofs.

  As if to disprove the assertion, a horse and wagon lurch out of an alley before them. The wagon bed is of oiled but unpainted oak, as are the high spoked and iron-banded wheels.

  “Gee-ahh!”

  In the wagon are covered baskets, neatly lined up. The driver wears the same shapeless trousers and shirt that the laundry women wore. Brede reins up, as do Kadara and Dorrin, while the wagon driver eases his way into the narrow main street.

  Whuuu… uffflff.

  Dorrin pats Meriwhen on the neck. “Easy, girl. Easy.” Extending his senses, he touches the baskets, then nods-potatoes. They follow the wagon southward toward an opening in the stone and plaster buildings.

  In the center of the square is a flat stone platform, ringed on three sides by a low brick wall topped with a slate capstone. Dull red bricks pave the area around the platform, running perhaps two dozen cubits to the stone curbs that form an approximate square.

  On the north side, facing the square, cluster three buildings which appear to be a drygoods, a butcher, and a cooper. The southern side boasts a long narrow building without description or visible activity. On the western side is an inn. A recently painted sign, in green letters, proclaims The Golden Ram. Under the old Temple letters is a stylized golden ram.

  Brede studies the green and white awning shading the varnished and shining double oak doors. “Too expensive.”

  “Obviously,” adds Kadara.

  A heavy-set man, wearing leathers, and a double-bladed sword in a shoulder harness, stands by an older brown gelding.

  Brede reins up. “I beg your pardon…”

  “Speak up, big boy.”

  “Lodgings? Somewhere less expensive than… ?” Brede gestures toward the Golden Ram.

  “Take the corner street there. Bunch of places down a ways.” The mercenary points to the southeast comer of the square, swells his cheeks as if he wants to spit in the gutter, then looks toward the unmarked building and swallows.

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” mumbles the bearded man, untying his mount.

  The farm wagon creaks around the square and out of sight along the southwest corner street. Less than a dozen people walk the raised stone sidewalks that front the buildings on the square.

  “Shall we?” asks Brede.

  Dorrin looks at the well-painted and orderly-appearing inn, dreading where they may end up in order to keep expenses low. A good half kay down the street, after inquiries at the Gilded Cup and the Trencher’s Board, finds them at the Three Chimneys.

  “How much for a place to sleep?” asks Brede.

  “A copper a night-that’s the common room. You provide your own blankets, pallet. Darkness, you can sleep on the planks if that’s all you have.” The thin woman innkeeper rakes her eyes over the trio.

  “And the stable?”

  “That’s two a night a horse, just hay and water. No grain.”

  “What about food?”

  “Plain and good. Soup and bread. Yellow cheese. Beer or mead. Three coppers each for soup and bread. A copper more for the cheese, and two for beer or mead. One for redberry.”

  “Well… we’re hungry right now.”

  Dorrin’s stomach growls, as if to reinforce the message.

  The wiry woman looks the three over.

  “Sit there.” Her bony finger jabs toward a corner table. “Less trouble that way. No blades out in the house. Understand?”

  “We understand.” Brede smiles.

  The Three Chimneys cannot properly be called more than a hostelry, not with only two bunkrooms and a single common room for eating. Personally, Dorrin would have preferred paying more and feeling less out of place.

  An older woman, neither heavy nor thin, with silvered hair cut short enough to reveal long ears, appears behind Kadara. Her graying apron, bearing the signs of past stains, is freshly washed. “The regular, dears?”

  “Regular?” stammers Dorrin.

  “Soup, bread, and beer. That’s three coppers, and a lot less than anywhere else in Vergren.”

  “How about redberry?” the healer asks.

  “That’s still three, but I could make the loaf a little bigger.”

  “I’ll have that.”

  “The regular, with cheese,” adds Brede.

  “And you’d be needing that, young fellow.”

  “Just the regular.”

  As the serving woman steps toward the kitchen, Dorrin looks around the squarish room. Less than half the tables are filled, certainly because
it is well past midday, and at many of the tables sit older men, silently nursing mugs and little else.

  “Wonderful place,” observes Kadara.

  “Not much sense in spending coins we haven’t figured how to replace.” Brede responds.

  Dorrin rubs his nose, trying to stifle a sneeze. “Aaaachooooo…”

  “It’s not that bad.” Brede grins momentarily.

  “Aaa… choooo…”

  “Here you be, dears.”

  Three chipped brown earthenware bowls land upon the table, followed by three equally chipped mugs, and three large, scraped, and bent spoons.

  “And here’s the bread.”

  True to her word, she supplies Dorrin with the largest loaf of the dark brown bread, although the smallest loaf-Kadara’s-is well over two-thirds of a cubit long. The server slips a small wedge of cheese onto the table before Brede. “Be you needing anything else, dears?”

  “No, thank you,” Dorrin answers.

  She bobs her head and is gone to pick up a mug and a copper from a fat and bald graybeard.

  Brede breaks off nearly a quarter of the loaf and chews his way through it even before Dorrin has had two mouthfuls. Kadara has almost finished her section of the bread in the same time.

  Dorrin uses the battered tin spoon to sample the dark substance presented as soup-lukewarm, salty, and bitter, but without anything that feels dangerous. He takes one spoonful, then another, chewing on the bread between spoonfuls.

  “… how may I help you, your honors?”

  Dorrin looks up at the forced heartiness of the hostel keeper’s voice.

  Three guards in white leathers stand in the doorway, two men and a woman. The men are clean-shaven, and all are hardfaced.

  I “The only large table I have is there,” announces the wiry woman, pointing, it appears to Dorrin, right at them, rather than at the vacant adjoining table.

  The three sit around the table. The older gray-haired man wears a black circle on the lapel of the white leather vest. His eyes range over the three, and he pauses for a moment, as if studying Dorrin. Dorrin meets the glance, then looks down.

  The senior guard looks away and points. A fingertip of flame appears before the face of the serving woman, who turns quickly, sees the white leathers, and scurries toward the three guards. “Yes, your honors?”