Under The Vale And Other Tales Of Valdemar v(-105

by Mercedes Lackey

  All I could do was blink. “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Who’d obey a horse?”

  One huge silver hoof stamped the earth right between my knees. The threat was, well, obvious. : You will, if you know what’s good for you,: the horse said ominously . :Now get your pack and get on one of us. You’re coming with us.:

  Several thoughts flitted through my mind, but—look, I was in the middle of nowhere, with limited food, limited water, and no idea what to do with myself out here. It just did not make sense to argue with the creature. Hopefully, wherever they were taking me was going to at least have shelter. With more luck it would have a nice lady I could wrap around my finger and convince her to get me away from these . . . things. Companions. Whatever those were.

  So I did what I was told. At first I had a sort of death grip on the thing’s mane, but within a few paces I realized that not only was I in no danger of falling off, this was probably the best ride I’d ever had in my life. I’d have really enjoyed it, except, of course, that I was being carried off into the woods by a couple of possibly-demonic creatures disguised as horses that could talk in my head. Tends to make a man a little nervous.

  I was hoping at least they’d take me toward something like civilization. But no. They left the road for a trail. They left the trail for a path. They left the path for something that might have been a thready little track. Wherever we were headed, it was obviously not civilization.

  “Uh—” I said, finally, “I should point out that I’m a city sort of fellow.”

  : You’ve got two working arms, two working legs, and something akin to a brain. Not much of one, but we don’t need much of one.: That was the second voice, which was coming from the thing that I wasn’t riding.

  Great. Just great. By implication, that meant they were heading even deeper into the wilderness.

  : Yes, we are heading even deeper into the wilderness,: the voice said, somehow conveying both sarcasm and a great deal of glee at my discomfort. : There are bears.:

  I knew there would be bears! The thought flitted through my mind again that I could jump off . . . but I couldn’t outrun these beasts, and the thick . . . stuff . . . on either side of this pitiful excuse for a trail was going to trip me up as much as it would impede them. Assuming it did, they had tough horsehide, not tender human skin.

  And that was when they shouldered through some branches that slapped me in the face (of course), and we came out into a clearing. A lovely little clearing, a meadow, really, with a pond, and a little cottage, and a well—

  A cottage! I brightened immediately. At least I wouldn’t be sleeping with ants tonight.

  Even as I thought that, the second beast grabbed me by the belt and unceremoniously pulled me off the first one. I yelled, and something white stirred in the long grass next to the cottage door.

  The beast didn’t let me go; gods, it was strong. It carried me by the belt over to whatever was there and then dumped me, and I could see that the “something” was a rather pretty girl in white. She was younger than my usual sort, probably younger than me, red-haired and green-eyed, round-faced without looking dollish, and clearly in a lot of pain.

  I’m no Healer, but her left leg and arm did not look at all right. She looked up at me and grimaced.

  :He’s the best we could do, Millissa,: said the first horse, apologetically. :I know you need a Healer, but there isn’t one close, and if you don’t get things straightened up soon—:

  “I know,” she said out loud. “Believe me, I know.” She looked as hard at me as she could, through the pain. “All right, fancy-man. I’m Herald Millissa.”

  “The ladies all call me—” I stopped myself. “My name’s Donnat Stains. Call me Don.”

  “All right, Don. What do you know about dislocations and bone setting?”

  “Nothing,” I said, honestly. “How bad is this?”

  “Things haven’t seized up yet, so—“ She bit her lip. “Just do what they show you. I think we can manage.”

  What they—

  A very clear image came into my mind. First, I needed to deal with her leg. The horses were pretty certain it was broken but that it was a clean break. Working very, very slowly, I straightened the leg under their direction, pulling on it to align the broken bone, feeling it to make sure it was aligned. That poor girl was as white as her clothing, and her hair was soaked with sweat before I was done, but she never once cried out.

  The horses showed me how to bind up the leg to keep the bone in place. Then it was time to deal with her shoulder. They had me go inside the cottage and wrestle out a table. I put her on the table with her arm dangling over the edge, then held her wrist in one hand and slowly began pulling her arm downward, increasing the pull a little at a time. I gently rocked her arm at the wrist, while keeping her shoulder pushed against the table. And slowly, very slowly, I felt the shoulder slip back into the socket, until at last she gave a little cry, the first yet, that was full of pained relief, if there can be such a thing.

  After that, following the horses’ directions on how to tie up her arm and shoulder was easy.

  They didn’t have to tell me what to do next, it was pretty obvious. There were packs and a saddle lying on the ground, and I figured, smart as these things were, each of them had probably stripped the other before going for help. There was a bedroll right on top; I may be a city sort of fellow, but I know how to make up a bed, and before too long I had her in the cottage, in a bed made up on one of the bedboxes there. That was when she passed out. Not that I blamed her. The pain must have been incredible. Frankly, I’ve seen strong men who endured less pain with more complaining. I certainly had.

  Now . . . at this point I figured that I was done. This was a stout little cottage, stone walls and floor, a real fireplace, strong shutters on the windows, which I suspected the evil beasts could close, a strong wooden roof with slate tiles, a door as thick as my thumb. She was fine for now, one of these things could go off for some help while the other stood guard. In fact, I was going to volunteer to ride off on the not-quite-as-mean one to do just that, provided that they left me there (which I presumed would be civilization), when the mean one planted himself across the doorway.

  : You are not going anywhere. Neither are we.:

  Now, I am considered an easy sort of fellow. But I was just about ready to take an ax to this thing’s he—

  :Do it, and you’re paste, fancy-man.: The beast reared slightly, and I backed away from the door so fast I tripped over my own feet. :We were on our way to meet something, which is still coming this way. We have to be here for it, and someone human has to be here with two good legs and two good arms. Besides that, it’s a good seven days—even as fast as we can go—between us and help. And we don’t have hands. You tell me how we’re to feed her, get her drink, and all the rest of it.:

  All right, put that way, I could see his point. The girl might or might not get fevered. She certainly wouldn’t be able to take care of herself . . .

  “So is one of you going to go?” I asked. “Seriously here, I’m . . .” I gulped. “My skills are not exactly that of even a Healer apprentice.”

  The thing shook its head. :I wasn’t joking about the bears. Or other things. Heralds like Millissa have enemies, and we’re not entirely certain that the fall we took was an accident. With three of us, you can take the day watch, and Ardred and I can take the night with one of us at the door and one out patrolling the perimeter. With only two, it’s more difficult, since you aren’t the fighting type.:

  Well, there was that; the best I could do would be to yell a warning.

  :Once what we are waiting for is here, Millissa will be healed enough to ride, and we can all get out of here. Or else the help we’ve already asked for will be here.:

  Wait—what?

  “How did—”

  :Same way we talk in your head. Only at a distance. It takes another of us, or some human who is very strong in this power.:

  Oh. Well, if we were seven days
from the first vestiges of civilization, then we were probably farther than that from whatever this help was. I didn’t imagine that these white monsters were all that thick on the ground, even here.

  :Exactly.:

  I gritted my teeth for a moment. I was beginning to resent their ability to read my thoughts.

  “What’s a Herald?” I asked, finally.

  The beast snorted, tossed his head, and walked off. Great.

  The first voice sort of—murmured at me. :Ah, I’m Ardred. Sorry about Destin. He’s touchy, and right now, he’s feeling very angry at himself for what happened to Millissa. I’ll be happy to answer your questions.:

  The horse wasn’t in sight. I sighed. This was going to take a lot of getting used to. And meanwhile, well . . . the girl was going to need food and drink eventually, and I needed a bed, and although there is a style I am accustomed to, I’m not altogether incapable of some basic tasks, provided that I’ve not been dropped nearly naked into the middle of a howling wilderness. “Fine,” I said aloud, going out to fetch the packs, mine included. “Let’s start with, ‘What’s a Herald?’ ”

  The first thing that Millissa did when she woke up was try to knock out my brains with a dish. I could see why she and Destin were paired.

  By this time there was a small fire in the cottage—excuse me, “Waystation”—fireplace, and there was food of a sort cooking over it. That was thanks to Ardred, who talked me through how to make it. My knowledge does not include cooking. There was tea brewing—that, I knew how to make myself. I had a bed in another of the boxes—Ardred had been kind enough to show me where there was some bracken that wasn’t home to insects, and I did have a cloak to lay over it. All the gear was in the Waystation. I knew, more or less, what a Herald was and what a Companion was. It didn’t entirely make sense, as in, I wasn’t at all sure why anyone would trust the dealing out of laws to creatures as ill-tempered as Destin was, much less something that looked like a horse for the gods’ sake, but, well, not my kingdom.

  So I had put down a dish on the side of the girl’s bed as I leaned over to check on her, and the next thing I knew, she’d grabbed it with her good hand and broken it over my head. Fortunately it was a very cheap dish, so it broke easily and without braining me, but I ended up on my behind on the floor, staring at her.

  “Ow,” I said, very much aggrieved. “What did you do that for?” I completely forgot where I was and spoke Hardornen.

  She stared back at me, wild-eyed, as if she were going to find something else to hit me with. Then, as if someone had inserted a different person into her body, her expression changed, and she flushed and winced a little. “Ah . . . oh. Sorry,” she said in passable Hardornen. “I forgot where I was and I thought you were attacking me.”

  “I was going to feed you,” I pointed out, crossly, rubbing my head. “We’re now short a dish, thank you.”

  “There’re metal ones in my pack,” she retorted.

  “As if I were going to go rummaging through your pack,” I scoffed. “I have standards, you know.”

  “Which you refuse to rise above,” she murmured, then said, louder, “Well, go ahead, you have my permission. It’s the one with the frying pan handle sticking out of it.”

  Lovely. She had a frying pan. Which she would doubtless use to brain me if she got the chance. I made a note to keep it well out of her reach. But I did go rummage and got out the dishes she mentioned. I didn’t give her the . . . well whatever the mess it was I had cooked . . . in them though. I’d use the metal ones, she could use the pottery. One less thing for me to worry about.

  I wondered if she would ask me what was happening, but the changing expressions on her face led me to believe that the damn horses were just talking to her directly, and I wouldn’t need to say anything. I’m sure the mean one was giving her an earful. Mindful. Whatever.

  Bastard.

  I thought hard about glue, dog-food, and fiddle bows.

  I could have sworn I heard a snicker.

  She was a little apologetic later. But when I tried my signature smoldering look on her, she threatened me with another dish, so I gave up that as a bad idea. Obviously she was going to be immune to my considerable charms.

  Perhaps she favored other women . . . ?

  :Or maybe you aren’t as charming as you think.:

  I grimaced sourly, and the gall was even more bitter when she giggled. Obviously that miserable bone-rack Destin hadn’t bothered to keep his thoughts “private.”

  Was there no way to keep my thoughts private?

  A very faint “whisper,” almost so unobtrusive that I didn’t even “hear” it, drifted into the back of my head.

  :Order him to stay out of your mind.:

  I didn’t wait; I just looked out the night-darkened doorway and barked, “Stay out of my head, dammit! A man is entitled to some privacy! Talk to me if you want, but keep your snooping out of my thoughts!”

  There was a sense of shocked silence. I looked over at the other bunk, where the girl was nursing a cup of some sort of noxious medicinal tea that she’d told me how to brew. She was looking back at me. With a certain amount of approval.

  “He’s right, you know,” she said aloud. “Just because you’re Companions, that doesn’t give you the right to breach Mindspeaking ethics.”

  Well, that was a bit of a surprise.

  “Do they often do that sort of thing?” I asked tentatively. “Rummage around at will in a stranger’s head, that is.”

  She took another difficult gulp of tea before answering. “Not usually. In fact, Companions generally don’t Mindspeak to anyone but their Chosen Herald. Destin’s something of a law unto himself, though, and I can’t always predict what he’s going to decide to do.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fabulous. And this is what you have laying down the law of the land?”

  “Not . . . exactly,” she said, finishing the tea. “Let me see if I can explain. Or at least, better than they did.”

  Her explanation did make better sense, and I could see now why the gods of this kingdom would have figured out a way to properly answer the particular prayer they’d been petitioned with. And it did prevent some pretty awful abuses of power. I mean, I did know history, and for every good monarch, you generally get a nasty one and an entire herd of mediocre ones. This at least made for a stable form of government.

  What? You don’t think I should have an interest in politics? I promise you, you would be amazed what constitutes pillow talk for some women.

  Still, I don’t think I would be even remotely comfortable with something rummaging around in my head on a regular basis. A man likes to keep some secrets.

  After that, Millissa and I started to get along a bit better. I was feeling positively brotherly toward her as we both drifted off to sleep. Or at least, I was able to feel a lot more sympathy for her. She was putting up with injuries that would have had most people incoherent with pain and was not really complaining about it. Some of that was the tea, but most was that she was either really quite brave or really quite well controlled. In either case, I admired her.

  Now, I am not the sort that tends early to bed and early to rise, so the cold, wet nose shoving insistently at me at the crack of dawn came as a literal rude awakening. The kind that makes you start up out of sleep with an incoherent noise.

  : Up,: said the cross voice in my head. :We need sleep.:

  He needed sleep? I needed sleep! Evidently that didn’t matter, and I knew better than to try to just turn over and attempt to ignore him. He was quite capable of hauling me out of the bed just as he had hauled me over to the cabin.

  Now . . . I’ve been a little less than honest. Just because I haven’t done the usually lowly chores you’d need to do in and around a little cottage—well, other than the farming ones—it doesn’t mean that I can’t or that I didn’t know how. It was because as soon as I was able, I ran away to avoid those very chores, heading straight for the city, which I saw as my natural home. So my skills might
have been a little rusty, but other than the cooking part, I pretty much knew what to do.

  By the time that Millissa woke up, and, poor thing, needed help getting to the privy, I’d gotten things in rough order for the morning. And when I carried her back and installed her in bed again, she looked around with a raised eyebrow.

  “That’s—not bad,” she said. “I—”

  “Didn’t think I knew one end of a broom from the other?” I finished for her. “Oh, I know. I just don’t like it. I’d much rather be waited on.”

  “Wouldn’t we all,” she murmured, but this time with a little, pained smile that let me know she intended for me to hear her.

  “I perform a very valuable service for ladies who for one reason or another need a companion,” I told her pointedly. Her eyebrows arched, but I was not backing down. “Their husbands generally have at least one, and often several, attractive women that they go to. Why shouldn’t they have the same? I’m entertaining, I can tell a good story, I listen, and I mean really listen, rather than pretend to listen and make appropriate noises. I am absolutely faithful for as long as the lady cares to have me about. Sometimes I can even offer advice, although mostly they don’t want that, they just want sympathy. When we part ways, she’s the better for it, and so am I. She knows that she is still worthy of appreciation, which raises her spirits and gives her confidence, and I am heavier in the pockets.” I folded my arms over my chest and looked down at her. “And it doesn’t hurt that I’m a handsome devil, which makes her the envy of her friends.”

  Millissa sniffed a little. “But you don’t love these women!”

  “On the contrary, I do,” I said proudly. “I love women in general, and I make a point of appreciating all there is to admire in my clients.” Believe me, sometimes that was a lot of work, but it was always worth it in the end.

  Millissa’s look of skepticism turned to astonishment. “You sound like you’re proud of what you do!”