Bastion

by Mercedes Lackey

  But at that moment, everything changed again.

  “That’s the one!” the man shouted imperiously, every trace of lazy drawl gone. “Him! You there! Boy!”

  Startled, Mags looked to see who the man was shouting at and, to his bewilderment, saw the finger pointing straight at him. And one of the horses began rearing and prancing and carrying on like it had a burr under its saddle, tossing its mane and flagging its tail.

  Bewilderment turned to panic as all the rest turned to stare at him. Mags looked from side to side for a place to get into hiding, but there wasn’t anything. He was caught like a mouse in the middle of a kitchen floor, with hungry cats on every side of him.

  “I didn’ do nothin’!” he squeaked. “I bin workin’! I bin workin’, I tell ya! It ain’t me!”

  Truly, he had never seen this man or anyone like him in all his life, so how could the fellow be so sure it was him he wanted?

  “I will be damned if ye take my best worker!” Pieters roared. “Ye kin take yer damned horses and be off with ye, or so help me—”

  But the man had an even louder voice than Pieters, and the boys were all looking very alarmed now. “You will turn over that boy to me, or I’ll bring the Guard here and turn over every stone in the place and find every last lie and every last penny you’ve cheated the Crown out of and every last mistreatment of your servants you’ve done since you were in swaddling clothes!” he shouted, as Endal plucked at his father’s sleeve and begged, “The Guard, Pa! He’s gonna call the Guard on us! We cain’t hold off the Guard! Be reasonable!”

  And that was when things got very strange indeed.

  Jarrik pulled Endal away from their father, and shoved him toward Mags. “Get him! Bring him here!” Jarrik growled, and then motioned to two of his brothers, who surrounded their father and bodily shoved him off to the side, arguing with him in harsh whispers.

  Meanwhile Endal had crossed the yard, seized Mags by the ear, and was dragging him toward the man, with Mags hissing in pain the entire way.

  Endal only let go of his ear when they were within touching distance of the man and the horses, if the barricade hadn’t been in the way. Mags had never been this close to a horse before. Not a real horse. The mining carts and machinery were all pulled by donkeys, and he had never been allowed near the stables, nor the Pieters boys when they were mounted.

  These horses were big. Very big, They smelled sweetly of cut grass and clover, with overtones of leather. Truth to tell, now that he was this close to them, they scared him. Something that big could mash his foot flat with a silver hoof and never notice, knock him down and trample him and move along without even noticing.

  He stared down at the ground, unable to move, while the men shouted over his head. What could this fellow, this Herald, want anyway? He hadn’t done anything! He never left the mine!

  This . . . couldn’t be about his parents, could it? But what did he have to do with what they’d done? He’d only been a baby. . . .

  “This boy is coming with me.” The man was not shouting now, but he didn’t have to, the anger in his voice was like a bludgeon. “You try to stop me, and so help me, I will do exactly what I said I would. The Guard will be here. They will tear this place apart. If you have done one thing wrong, we will find it. And then you will be for it, Master Cole.”

  There was some urgent whispering as Mags stared and stared at his own two feet, until he had memorized every dirt-encrusted line, could have measured out his clawlike toenails in his sleep, knew he would be seeing them perfectly even if he closed his eyes. He couldn’t make out what the whispering was about, but it sounded as if the boys were getting their way with the old man. Finally Cole growled, “Then you’ll be paying me for him.”

  The man barked a not-laugh. “Pay you for him? Slavery is illegal in Valdemar, Cole Pieters. You can be thrown in gaol for owning slaves, or selling them.”

  “I’ve spent a fortune feeding and clothing this boy!” Cole sputtered. “Eating his head off, taking my charity, giving back naught—”

  “A fortune is it?” The angry drawl was back. “What kind of a fool do you take me for? I’m neither blind nor ignorant. I can see from here what kind of slop you feed these children. A good farmer wouldn’t give it to a pig. And if there is a rag on their backs that isn’t threadbare and decades old, I will eat it. As for shelter, where are you having them sleep? I don’t see a house big enough for them. Are you keeping them in the barn? In a cellar?” His tone got very dangerous, and Mags shivered to hear it. “Exactly what have you been spending all the money given to you for the keep of orphans on?”

  What money? Mags thought, dazedly. But Cole was right on top of that one.

  “What money?” he sneered. “Nobbut one person wanted these brats. No fambly wanted ’em, no priest wanted ’em. And their villages couldn ’ford another mouth to feed. Charity! It was my own charity that took ’em in, useless, feckless things that they be! My charity that feeds ’em, and me own kids going short—”

  “Oh, that’s a bit much even for you, Cole Pieters.” There was a growl under the drawl. “If you are going to claim all that, then I think perhaps a visit from the Guard and Lord Astley’s Clerk of Office would be a very, very good thing.”

  There was a great deal more of that sort of thing, most of it so far over Mags’ head that it might as well have been in a foreign tongue. But the man was winning.

  Mags only wished he could tell if that was a good thing, or a bad one. Usually he would immediately have said that anything Cole Pieters was against was going to be good for him, but now, he wasn’t so sure.

  Finally, Pieters literally picked Mags up by the scruff of the neck, hauled him off the ground like a scrawny puppy, and shoved him over the barrier at the man, shouting “Take him, then! Take him and be damned to you!”

  Without a word, the man mounted one of the two horses, reached down and grabbed Mags’ arm and picked him up like so much dirty laundry, and dumped him on top of the other horse.

  Mags froze stiff with fear, his hands going instinctively around the knobby part of the thing he was sitting on, his legs clamping as hard as they could to the horse’s sides. But—but—but—

  “I dunno howta ride . . .” he tried to gasp out, but it didn’t come out any louder than a whisper, and anyway it was already too late. The man was off, the other horse right behind him, and Mags squeezed his eyes and hands shut, and his legs hard, and clamped down his teeth on the chattering they were doing.

  I’m gonna fall off. I’m gonna fall off and die.

  • • •

  As the memory flashed through Mags’ mind some of it must have shown on his face, for Jakyr grinned. “If I were to stand you and that scrawny, filthy little mine-slave side by side, I’d never know the two of you were the same person. The years have improved you out of all expectation, Mags.”

  “They’d kinda have had to,” Mags pointed out. “There wasn’t all that much of me to begin with. Anything would’a been an improvement.”

  Jakyr laughed. “This will be a first for both of us. I’ve never mentored anyone before.”

  “Well,” Mags said, and grinned back, “I been mentored, so when you mess up, I’ll be sure’n let ye know.”

  “Insolent brat!” Jakyr aimed a blow at Mags, but of course, he never connected. Or, rather, he turned the blow into a rough tousle of Mags’ hair. “Introduce me to the rest of your fellow sufferers, then.”

  “Everyone, this is Herald Jakyr,” he said obediently. “I ’spect you know Amily, Jakyr.”

  “By reputation, your father’s stories, and from afar, and I’m very pleased to see you looking fit and healed, milady,” Jakyr replied, and sketched a bit of a bow. “Also pleased to hear of your martial progress from our Weaponsmaster. I am completely confident in your ability to hold your own.”

  Amily flushed with pleasure and bowed a little herself.

  “This is Bear and Lena. They’re giving Bear his Greens afore they leave, and Lena’s
gonna be on her Journeyman’s travels. They’re married,” he added hastily.

  Jakyr eyed the two of them with interest. “So you two are the cause of that near-incident last year. I’m surprised you haven’t made a comic song of that, Trainee.”

  “Call me Lena, and what makes you think I haven’t?” Lena asked, tilting her head to one side. Jakyr broke out into laughter.

  “Well done. Just picking your time to debut it?” he asked.

  “Some things are like wine and cheese: They need to age properly before you bring them out in public,” Lena replied archly.

  “Well said. Now, if you don’t mind my joining you?” Jakyr waved a hand at the bed, which at the moment was the only place to sit.

  As an answer, Mags and Amily moved over on the bed, making room for him. Jakyr took a seat.

  “Here’s the rough plan. Mags and I, Amily’s escort, and you and Nikolas will be the only people knowing your route. You will be avoiding inns, buying supplies as you need them, and overnighting in the caravan at Waystations. Bear, you and Lena will take the caravan. You were probably told that, but I have made a change, and Nikolas approved it. You’ll have a third party hidden in the caravan the entire time. Amily and her escort will leave once you’re gone and will catch up with you at a Waystation; the only people who will know which Waystation it is will be the person with you and Amily’s escort. At that point, the person with you will take Amily’s place, and Amily will go into hiding in the caravan. Meanwhile, Mags and I will leave going in another direction, double back, and pick you up on the road somewhere between here and the start of our Circuit. We’ll know your route, so it will be trivial to find you. And at that point, we’ll all become a team. This district has a reputation for being a particularly thorny one. The bandits that holed up in The Bastion were only the most obvious of the problems. This is no sinecure; it will be a real job, even a difficult job. We’ll have our work cut out for us.” He looked at each of them in turn. “Bear, I am counting on you to win people over with your skills and willingness to share them. Lena, these folk don’t see Bards all that often; they are more likely to talk to you than to me and Mags. You’ll be very valuable to us.”

  “What about me?” Amily asked, sounding just a touch forlorn.

  “You, my dear, will be your father’s daughter, possibly the most valuable of all,” Jakyr said with conviction. “I’ve been told of how you have mastered the art of seeming invisible, quietly observing and listening. Healers often have assistants. I know you’ve helped Bear out in the past, so you will be Bear’s assistant. You will be the one that goes to the locals and the markets for supplies, which will allow you to talk to them without anyone official-looking about. The more you can act like a common servant, the better. People will take you for being at their social rank, as opposed to the rest of us, and they’ll put down anything elevated in your speech as simply a matter of coming from the capitol. What Lena doesn’t uncover by coaxing it out, you likely will by gossip and eavesdropping.”

  Amily nodded happily. “I’ve watched Bear and Mags bargain enough, I think I can do it too.”

  “Don’t bargain too sharply,” Jakyr chuckled. “We want them to think they’ve been more clever than the city girl. That will put them off their guard with you. We can certainly afford to be a little bit cheated in return for getting a lot of information.”

  This was a side of Jakyr that Mags had never seen, one of the network of Nikolas’s intelligence agents as well as a Herald. Clearly, he knew his job and how to do it well.

  “All right then, I’ll leave the four of you to plan. I don’t think I need to emphasize that we keep this just among us, right?”

  “Everyone else gets told Lena and I are going out on her Journeyman’s round, and I’m going with her to teach,” Bear agreed. “And we got lucky to get offered the caravan, so I can carry a lot of supplies with me.”

  “And I’m going to visit unspecified relatives,” Amily added. “I’m going to be quite unhappy at being separated from Mags for at least a year and maybe more, but, then, I would be just as separated from him if I were here, which is something I’ll tearfully tell people over and over so they can comfort me.”

  “Excellent,” Jakyr said. “I’ll leave you to it then.”

  He let himself out, and the four of them put their heads together.

  6

  “I think we should go look at this caravan,” Bear said. “We need to figure out how much room there is for each of us.”

  :The caravan is stored in the wagon shed. It should be obvious. It’s the white one with faint flowers and vines bleeding through the paint.: Dallen sounded highly amused for some reason. :Six coats of paint, and the designs are still bleeding through. If we could ever figure out who made that paint in the first place, we’d never need to paint anything with more than one coat again. Oh, and there are people around there who can tell you exactly how much space there is for personal gear and supplies for Bear and Lena. So multiply that by three for the supplies you think you will need for two of you, and divide the remaining storage by three for the personal gear and you’ll be able to figure out what you’ll get.:

  That sounded promising. Mags relayed that to the others, and they went to look for the promised caravan.

  There was only one building on the grounds where vehicles were kept. Most of them were homely, working wagons and vans. There was one Royal Carriage, which held eight, but it had been decades since any Royal Family of Valdemar went on a Royal Progress, so all of the fancier wagons that would have carried their luggage and baggage had long been pressed into more practical service.

  The caravan wasn’t difficult to spot. It was actually taller than most of the other vehicles here, taller even than the Royal Carriage. It had exceedingly high wheels; the ones in the front were smaller than the ones in the rear, but the ones in the rear came almost to Mags’ collarbone. It was very far off the ground. From where Mags stood, it looked like an entire cottage on wheels!

  He measured the rear wheels against himself, wonderingly, as he gazed at the contraption in the light coming in through the open doors.

  “That’s so she can ford rivers,” said someone behind them. They all turned.

  It was an older man, quite gray-haired, and tough and wiry looking, with formidable muscles, in a rougher version of the blue-and-silver Royal livery, clearly made for a hard workingman who expected to be outdoors a great deal.

  “That’s why she’s so tall,” the man continued. “She’s meant for the road, and rough road at that. Tall, so she can ford rivers. You want to hope there are always bridges, but sometimes there ain’t. So, I reckon these two are the ones that’ll be taking her out, and you’ve come to see her?” At Bear and Lena’s mutual nods, he grinned. “She’s built for six, so you two will have heaps of room. I’ll show you about.”

  Mags noticed at once that the wheels were outside the body, but that the wagon itself had been built outward over the open wheels, which would add some to the interior of what was undoubtedly going to be very cramped living space. There were racks along the side where you could store boxes; the boxes themselves were stacked up to either side, out of the way. There were railings along the top as well; presumably you could store more things up there. Mags approved.

  “This here’s the front,” said the fellow. “Oh, I’m Ard Ardson. I’m the Wagonmaster, as was my father, and his father before him, and his father before him. If it goes on wheels and belongs to the Palace or the Collegia, it’s my job to keep it in trim.”

  “Then I’m right glad you were here, Master Ardson,” Bear said earnestly—and looking daunted. “I’ve—ah—never handled a wagon before . . .”

  “And you won’t be handling one now,” Ard told him. “One of your teachers, I misremember who, found out about this scheme and reckoned she was due for a trip. I guess teaching you lot’s harder than driving and tending to a wagon and pair!” He laughed at his own joke. “She and I had a short run with this beauty. I�
��ve already checked her out, we had some hands-on, and I am here to tell you I’d let her drive any rig in this building, including this one, so no fear there. Two-hitch, four-hitch, wheel-changing, there’s nothing I wouldn’t trust her with.”

  This was the first any of them had heard of it, but Mags was extremely relieved to hear it. He certainly didn’t know anything about wagons and horses, and he rather doubted Jakyr was an expert—although you never knew. But at least Bear and Lena would have an expert with them from the beginning.

  “So as I said, this is the front.” Ard gestured to what looked like a little porch with a door in the middle. There was a fold-down seat currently locked in the “up” position for the driver and fold-out steps that were in the “down” position between the shafts. “As you can see, driver is all cozy, or as cozy as you can be driving in bad weather, which I would advise against. Horses won’t like it, and you’re better off losing a day. The storage boxes on the outside are for supplies, so you can keep clothes and the like on the inside, out of the weather. The boxes are all waterproof, I just checked ’em myself, which is why they ain’t loaded up now. Canvas bags for fodder and wood on the top, or anything else that’s light and easy to haul up or throw down.”

  The more Ard spoke, the more admiration Mags had for him. He definitely took his job extremely seriously.

  “The boxes on the top are going to be lashed into place. Don’t take ’em down unless you have to. They will have canvas, stakes, and rope. Two bow tents, a skirt for around the bottom of the wagon and a floorcloth for under the wagon, if there’s more than six to sleep, and they’d rather sleep under the wagon.” He raised an eyebrow. “As I said, she sleeps six, but it’s a tight six, and if the weather ain’t bad, the last lot to take her out preferred to have two sleeping below. With four, it oughta be fine. Yer teacher and the assistant can use the benches. I reckon, women don’t seem to toss as much as men. Oh, there’s a cupboard-box that bolts in under the rear; that’s for your pots and pans you use over the fire. They’ll get black and nasty and stay black and nasty, and you won’t want ’em in the wagon ’cause they’ll get smuts all over everything. Now, go on up into her.”