Bastion

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Bear?” Jakyr ventured. “Bear is not just your friend, he’s a Healer, and he’s a married fellow. Couldn’t he help?”

  Mags shuddered. “Even worse. Either he’d go over all Healer, and that’d not be a lotta help because he’d just talk about how this part fits inta that part and not give me any good idea about how to make her happy, or he’d get more embarrassed than me. And that’d take a lot, t’get more embarrassed than me, but he’d do it.”

  As if he couldn’t help himself, Jakyr started chuckling. “Oh, poor Mags. I don’t know how your situation could be made more difficult. I really don’t. On the whole, coming out here like this is probably the best thing that could have happened for you two. You are at least out from under the eyes of all but three of those would-be guardians of Amily’s virtue. Unless Dallen is also on your side, which would make it two would-be guardians.”

  “An’ now you’re gonna—” Mags began, feeling sure now that Jakyr was going to tell him that he and Amily had to separate their sleeping arrangements and start behaving in a chaste manner.

  But Jakyr interrupted him. “No, in fact, I am not, and I just told Jermayan to shut his hay-hole about it.” His chuckle deepened. “He was very offended for as long as it took him to read me a lecture on responsibility. So the last two dragons of virtue have been vanquished.”

  “Uh—so—” Mags began.

  “The upshot is that despite the fact that I have been trying to squirm out of acting like a parent to you, I am going to have to act—hmm. Come to think of it, this probably isn’t going to be acting like a parent to you.” Jakyr’s face turned thoughtful, as the fire crackled and hissed cheerily, and a gentle warmth crept over Mags, making him relax a little. “Only a very careless father would be inclined to tell you what I am going to tell you. I suppose I am about to act like the disreputable uncle who everyone fears to leave the boys with because he encourages them to drink distilled spirits, stay up late, and do more than merely kiss girls.”

  “Uh . . . what?” Mags replied, utterly bewildered now.

  “I am going,” Jakyr said, leaning toward Mags, his eyes dancing with laughter, “to tell you how to please a woman.”

  Mags thought for a moment his face had caught fire, because surely it couldn’t burn like that without some outside help.

  • • •

  When Mags got over the worst attack of embarrassment he had ever suffered in his life and somehow managed to get his head wrapped around the idea of treating Jakyr’s help just like any other lesson, he listened closely, did not exclaim several times—as he was tempted to—“you’re joking, right?!”—and when he was in the least confused, asked questions until he wasn’t confused anymore.

  Jakyr, for his part, kept strictly on the subject and did not, as he often did under other circumstances, wander off into reminiscence.

  It was . . . highly instructive.

  And Mags was very, very glad for it all. He’d known the first time was going to hurt Amily; it always had with the mine kiddies. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her, or at least, he’d wanted something good to happen beforehand so she wouldn’t be revolted and not want to do it anymore when it did hurt her. As it happened, Jakyr had several ideas on that score.

  They talked—or, rather, Jakyr talked and Mags listened—for so long that both of them were starving. Last night they had put in an order with the village baker for bread, they had gotten it first thing before they rode out, and Mags had taken the bulging saddlebags to the kitchen area. Jakyr made the simplest and quickest possible meal for them out of bread and cheese and some apples, and he kept talking. Finally, it seemed that he’d managed to exhaust even his considerable knowledge of women and how to please them. Physically, at least. Mags was grateful that Jakyr made no attempt to tell him how to please a woman in any other way than physically, since current observation would suggest that Jakyr was not a very good source for that information. They finally finished eating in—at least in Mags’ case—slightly embarrassed silence.

  “Now, if I were you,” Jakyr said, when they had both finished and were sipping lukewarm tea. “What I would do is check how sound carries from where your sleeping spot is set up. If you haven’t already, that is. I can promise you that there is nothing more uncomfortable for someone than to hear the sounds of someone else enjoying him- or herself carnally.” Then he added dryly, “Except, perhaps, discovering that your own adventures were keeping other people awake.”

  Mags shook his head. “Never thought on it,” he said, blushing all over again. “I was thinking more where’s warm than where is it we won’t—”

  “Well, do. Make sure sound won’t carry or echo to the rest of us. If it does . . . well, might try deeper into this cavern. Lena and Bear have the walls of the caravan to keep sound from traveling, but we have stone walls, and as a miner, you know how those echo.” Jakyr shrugged. “You might even think about going to another cave entirely. It’s not as if you are going to be cold for very long with what you two intend to get up to. There’s still plenty of bedding . . . the only drawback I can see is that it’s going to start snowing soon, and when that happens, a trek through the snow to come and go is going to get unpleasant.”

  “If you don’ mind, I’ll get a lantern and see what I can find now,” he said, getting very tired of blushing.

  “Please do. Remember that young love gets tedious in a great hurry when it wakes up the poor fellow sleeping solitary—or keeps him from going to sleep in the first place.” Jakyr got up. “I’ll see about a proper dinner. I don’t think we can expect the others until tomorrow at this point, so it will just be you and me.”

  Mags nodded, scrambled to his feet, and got a lantern.

  There was one thing true about sound in a cave or a mine: If you could hear it from where you were, someone out there could hear your noise from where he was. So he knew he wasn’t going to have to further embarrass himself by calling out to Jakyr, “Can you hear me?” All he had to do was to listen for Jakyr’s rather noisy cooking. Jakyr liked to sing while he cooked, especially if there was no one immediately around, and most especially if Lita was far, far away. Probably because Lita would have made fun of him. That was going to be useful tonight.

  Venturing down what looked like a promising passage, he discovered that it must have served as a kind of dormitory, for the sleeping nooks were spaced along the walls on both sides, more or less evenly. The tunnel itself had a low ceiling, which kept sound from bouncing around too much, and it had a layer of thick sand on the floor, which also muffled noise. Someone had taken thought for sound carrying to the main room as well—or, possibly, from it—because the tunnel kept turning, like a snake. He wondered if this passage hadn’t been where the occupants bedded down their youngsters, once they were old enough to sleep away from their parents safely. It would make a lot of sense in a communal space to put all the little ones together with a supervisor or two.

  The passage made a hairpin turn, then another, and he realized he could hear absolutely nothing from the main room. With glee, he examined each of the nooks in this new section until he found the best one. It actually had a ledge all around the sleeping hollow where they could put things and a hole in the wall that surely had been intended for a hook or support for a lantern. That seemed to indicate his guess had been right, and this was the sleeping place of one of the older supervising—beings? No way of telling if these nooks had been for lizards or humans.

  He spent the rest of the time moving everything from the existing nook to this new one, adding more hay and another feather comforter, then went out to the smaller woodpile inside the cave and rummaged until he found a forked stick of about the right diameter to hammer into that hole in the wall.

  “Listen for me whacking on somethin’ would you?” he asked Jakyr as he passed. Jakyr nodded absently, intent on something he was simmering. “I’m gonna pound a lantern hook inta the wall, and if you cain’t hear it, you won’t hear nothin’ from there.”

  It
wasn’t easy to drive the branch home without ruining it, but after a couple of false starts, Mags got it hammered in securely enough it would actually take his weight as he tried to pull himself up off the floor with it. The lantern hung perfectly on it; it would certainly take an earthquake or worse to dislodge it. Pleased with the results, he went back out to the main cave. Jakyr looked up at him as he entered.

  “Just in time, the soup is ready. When are you going to do your hammering?” the Herald asked.

  “Done,” Mags smirked, and took the bowl and the bread that Jakyr was holding out to him. “If you didn’t hear that, ’specially the swearin’ I did when I hit my hand, you ain’t gonna hear nothin’.”

  “Congratulations,” Jakyr said, with no more than faint irony. “And now you will also be spared Lita’s snoring. Perhaps I should go looking for a similar nook.”

  Since Lita had not snored once to Mags’ knowledge, he just held his peace and ate his soup. Jakyr made the most excellent soup. Somehow no two batches ever ended up tasting the same.

  “What’s the plan for the next town?” he asked instead. “Let Bards and Healers go first, instead of us, and feel the place out for us?”

  Jakyr paused in his eating, as if that hadn’t occurred to him. “That’s not a bad thought,” he said. “Provided we can get her Bardic Majesty to agree with it, I like the plan.”

  Mags smiled to himself. If there was one thing he was certain of, it was that he knew exactly how to get Lita to agree.

  Even if it meant he was going to get one less night with Amily than he really wanted . . .

  “Lemme say somethin’ about it, then you come up with all kinds of ideas why that won’t work,” he suggested. “Lita’s bound t’object, you fight a bit with her, then let ’er get ’er way.”

  Jakyr eyed him favorably. “Mags, you are a manipulative young man. You have unplumbed depths to you. I like it.”

  It had been a long ride, and Mags was tired. He was also keen to try the new sleeping nook and make sure it was going to be comfortable and warm enough for Amily. He volunteered to wash the dishes and did so; Jakyr retired to his own nook before he had finished, so he was left to bank the fire and make sure all was safe until morning. The Companions had come in by themselves, of course, so after making sure they were warmly blanketed and had water and fodder, he took a lantern and went to his new bed.

  It must have been fine after he’d warmed it with his body, because he didn’t remember anything past starting to relax in the silence and the dark.

  • • •

  He went out hunting while they waited for the others to arrive, and a plump young buck with only two points to his antlers made too tempting of a target to turn down. A clean shot through the eye took him straight to the ground, and Dallen turned up wearing a spare horse-collar so that Mags could lash together a rough drag of branches to bring the carcass home with little effort. Alerted by Jermayan, Jakyr, clad in a set of old, faded clothing that was other than Whites, was ready at a spot in the valley where there was a tree big enough to take the deer’s weight. With Dallen’s help, they hauled the buck into the tree, head-down, bled him out, and butchered him. Dallen and Jermayan, meanwhile, went to stand watch at and outside the entrance, to guard against trouble and watch for the caravan’s return.

  It was Mags’ first time at butchering anything bigger than a bird, and he found it far more fascinating than repulsive. He and the other mine-kiddies had eaten what they could get or catch either entirely raw, half-burned and half-raw, or entirely burned; it had depended entirely on whether they could sneak their catches into a fire or not and for how long. Several of them had tried to tan rabbit hides into something they could use for shoes, but the results had been less than successful.

  Watching Jakyr however, and working under his direction, Mags developed great respect for the butcher’s work.

  Jakyr thriftily saved the blood in a couple of the biggest pots they had, then made a smallish cut in the belly of the deer, removing the entrails carefully. “I’d just as soon not use the stomach or intestines,” he explained, as he set them aside, absolutely intact. “We haven’t got a good way to make sure they’re clean enough to eat safely.”

  Mags nodded; perhaps the others might have been revolted by the mere idea, but back at the mine, those rejected organs would have fed six or seven kiddies, and some of them might not even have bothered to try to clean out the contents first. Jakyr told him where to bury them; he followed the directions and returned to the butchering.

  Once the rest of the organs were out, Jakyr carried them and the pots of blood back to the cave. He came back just long enough to show Mags how to start skinning, then returned to the cave. “I’ll be back as soon as I get the stew started,” he called over his shoulder.

  I expect I better not tell ’em where the meat in the stew came from, Mags thought, as he painstakingly started the task of separating the hide from the hind legs with tiny, careful cuts of the extremely sharp knife that Jakyr had left with him.

  He had the hide stripped off both legs and was starting on the torso when Jakyr returned, looking quite pleased—probably with the progress of his stew. Mags was very much looking forward to it. “Not bad,” the Herald said, examining the work. “You’ll get better, but not bad.”

  As the two of them worked together, Jakyr corrected Mags until Mags was working almost as smoothly as he was. “Fortunately, we have oak trees right here,” the Herald said with satisfaction. “And plenty of salt for the first step of curing. I was always taught to waste nothing of an animal you take down.”

  At just that moment, Mags felt something cold on his cheek. He looked up, to see tiny snowflakes coming down out of the sky. Jakyr followed his gaze and grinned.

  “Could not have come at a better time. We won’t have to worry about any of this going bad, nor about smoking or salting it—although I probably will be smoking it piecemeal over time.”

  “When did you learn all this?” Mags asked, curious now. He hadn’t taken Jakyr for much of a hunter. Just showed how much he didn’t know!

  “What, did you think I was brought up in the city?” Jakyr mocked. “Our inn was in a little village just like the one we left. Father would never pay for anything he could do himself, so he butchered his own animals, and we used everything. Nothing went to waste. He’d have had a right fit over me burying the guts, let me tell you. The intestines would have gone for sausages and the stomach for tripe and onions. I just don’t have a good place to properly clean and wash them.” He sighed. “Too bad, because I make a very, very good tripe and onions.”

  They worked together in silence except for Jakyr directing Mags’ knife. With two of them working together, they got the hide off and salted, the meat stripped from the carcass and packed away where it would get and stay good and cold and out of reach of vermin, and some of the smaller bones stewing, crammed into a stockpot to make broth by the time they were hungry. Jakyr added the tongue and handfuls of the diced scraps to the stewpot; they both cleaned up and changed. Jakyr insisted that they carry the bloodstained clothing to the cave where the bathing basin was, soak it in the cold water, and leave it there, weighted down with rocks. “Give it a day or two and the blood should be gone,” he said, “And if it’s not, we’ll scrub with some salt and that will be that.”

  “Huh.” Mags scratched his head. “Useful—”

  “Usually in every couple of villages there’s someone running a laundry who knows how to clean Whites—but they get very upset when you bring them Whites with dried blood on them,” Jakyr said with a laugh. “I learned how to take the blood out first to keep my head from being threatened.”

  :Caravan is nearby,: Dallen said at that moment in Mags’ head. Judging by the way Jakyr’s head had come up at about the same time, Jermayan had warned his Chosen as well.

  The caravan clattered in through the entrance in a swirl of tiny flurries, the vanners looking very happy to see a place they associated with food, shelter, wa
rmth, and peace. Lita was driving, as usual, and brought the whole rig right into the cave, backing the caravan into place with a skill that made Mags feel great envy. Mags ran up to them, with Jakyr strolling at a much more leisurely pace behind him.

  Lita tossed Mags the reins, and jumped down off the driver’s seat, her eyes widening as she caught a whiff of the savory stew. “Blessed gods, what is that heavenly smell?” she exclaimed, as Bear, followed by Lena and Amily, popped out of the door. They didn’t wait for Mags to unharness the vanners and lower the stairs, they jumped right down after Lita.

  “We got a deer,” Mags said, and then was occupied with welcoming Amily, leaving the rest of the explanation to Jakyr. Bear knew better than to lift the lid on the stewpot, having had his knuckles rapped hard by Jakyr the last time he’d tried, but he did poke at the pot where the bones were simmering away, looking interested.

  “Huh. Broth,” he said. “I wonder if it’s gonna be as good as beef broth.”

  “Probably,” said Jakyr. “It should actually be richer than beef broth. Venison makes good broth. Why do you ask?”

  Mags and Amily got to work unharnessing the vanners, wiping them down, blanketing them, and giving them fodder.

  “It’d be damned useful if we could preserve some, somehow,” Bear pointed out. “In case someone gets sick.”

  Jakyr considered that idea, then shook his head. “I’ll try, but we haven’t got a lot of jars I can seal easily, and I can’t think of any way of keeping vermin out,” he said with regret. “Don’t worry, though; if someone starts to get sick, we can pot a rabbit or a bird and make broth out of the whole thing.”

  “What’s in that stew?” Lita demanded, and then, when she saw a look of faintly malicious mischief cross over Jakyr’s face, she waved her hands frantically. “No, no! I changed my mind! I don’t want to know! I want to enjoy my food in ignorant bliss!”