Bastion

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Mags?”

  “Over here, ’tween the vanners,” he called back softly. She waved once and joined him, dropping down into the box stall with him so that no one coming in would see her.

  “What did you mean by problems?” she asked breathlessly. “I hurried as fast as I could. I was helping Bear with the local farrier and a patient. A human patient. The farrier is the closest thing they have to a healer here. Except for the inn, there isn’t much. It’s all herders and farmers. From what I gathered, Lord Hallathon doesn’t even claim them, they’re too far outside his holding.”

  “When we got to the Waystation, some fella had took it over,” Mags explained. “We caught ’im, and he acted like we was the ones at fault. Said his pa had given it to him.”

  The straw rustled as Amily startled. “Wait—what?” Amily replied. “But that’s illegal!”

  “Well, aye. We know that, but it seems like the fella we caught either don’t know it or don’t care. So we kinda need to know just how far this village has gone afore we come ridin’ in with him all trussed up like a hen fer the pot.” Mags rubbed his temple unhappily. “’Cause if most of this village reckons that Crown laws don’t hold, we could have ourselves a bigger piece of trouble than we thought. Reckon the people to find out are Lena and Lita. Lita mostly. If she ain’t found out already.”

  “I’ll go find out,” Amily said immediately, and stood up and ran off before he could say anything else. Not that there was anything much more to say, really. That left Mags still crouching in the straw, unhappy, and not getting any happier as the time passed. He was cold, he was uncomfortable, he was hungry, and he was acutely aware that he was surrounded by a village full of people who might very well consider him some sort of criminal.

  Not the most pleasant situation to be in at best. It was certainly not one he had envisioned himself to be in before they started this trip.

  Course, I could be trussed up in a wagon bein’ kidnapped again, ’bout to be drugged, and turned into some sort of . . . I dunno . . . shell for a ghost?

  There certainly was that. Given the options, this current situation was better. It wasn’t as if, even if the worst happened, he and Jakyr couldn’t mount up on their Companions and be out of there before anyone could blink. A handful of villagers, however angry, were not going to be able to prevail against a Companion in full fighting mode. Since the Bards, Bear, and Amily weren’t obviously connected with Heralds and had already been welcomed, they would be safe enough. The villagers were hardly likely to pursue as far as The Bastion, and they could continue on down to the Guardpost at need, bringing back retribution.

  But he didn’t want to do that. Jakyr didn’t want to do that either. That would, in many ways, just make things a whole lot worse. He wanted some way to work this out so that the fools who had done this realized how much they had transgressed and how much was at stake when they lost. Which they would. Bringing an armed Guard troop down on a bunch of poorly armed villagers—or even a bunch of well-armed villagers—would earn no credit for the Crown. Valdemar governed by cooperation, not by repression. Mags wanted this lot of empty heads and grabby hands to figure out they were the ones in the wrong.

  He wanted them, in short, to figure out on their own that they’d been idiots.

  Wish I could con ’em like Jakyr conned Lita; go to give ’em what they think they want, an’ they quick find out they don’t want it—

  Amily returned about a candlemark later. “Lita’s trying to find out what she can. She hasn’t seen any overt rebellion; these people are pretty much like the last village. She thinks that if there is a problem, it’s just the Headman getting above himself. Maybe since they don’t answer to Lord Hallathon, the Headman thinks they’re independent and don’t have to answer to anybody.”

  That sounded better. He and Jakyr might be able to work with that. “Lemme tell Jakyr. I’ll Mindspeak him. No point in my ridin’ all the way back just to turn around again.”

  “Do that, and I got you something to eat,” she said, pressing some bread and cheese into his hand. “I can’t warm you up here, but at least I can make sure you don’t faint from starvation.”

  “You’re a star,” he said gratefully. He couldn’t imagine how she had guessed how hungry he was. He’d been thinking about chewing on a handful of the horses’ oats at one point.

  “I just heard your belly rumbling,” she giggled, and kissed him, then sat back on her heels and let him work.

  He closed his eyes, reached out into the wilderness where the only minds were birds and animals, found Jakyr’s mind, and relayed what Amily had told him.

  :Stay there, we’re coming,: the Herald replied. :I’ll meet you at the edge of the village fields. One way or another, this is going to have to be dealt with, contained, or quarantined, and right now. You tell Amily when we’re there, so she can tell Lita. At least under circumstances like this I can count on Lita to have some good ideas about what to do.:

  Hmm . . . that sounded interesting. He suspected that Jakyr had been having the same thoughts he’d been. Well, of course, he must have been; he was a Senior Herald. He must have seen exactly this sort of situation at least once in his life.

  Even if he had seemed as blindsided by it as Mags had been. But you could be blindsided by something and still have plenty of ideas about how to fix it. Jakyr was one of the smartest people he knew, and among Heralds, that was saying something. Concentrate on solutions.

  “I’m goin’ to meet Jakyr,” he told Amily. “I’ll tell you when we’re ’bout to get into the village, you tell Lita, an’ follow her lead. We’ll figger out what’s goin’ on, and we’ll figger a way to fix it afore it all gets outa hand.”

  Amily squeezed his hand, kissed him again, and ran off, stopping long enough at the stable door to make sure no one saw her leave. He took the time while he was waiting for Jakyr to arrive to devour every crumb of the food she had brought him, then slipped back out the way he had come. People were starting to head for the inn, which made getting across the street a little dodgy, but they also weren’t looking for someone skulking about, so he was able to flit from shadow to shadow and get to the hedgerow without being spotted. Handy thing, Mindspeech; he had an infallible means of knowing whether or not someone had seen him; the jolt of the unfamiliar and possibly dangerous would jar a thought out where he would pick it up.

  He got down to the trees without incident. Dallen was waiting impatiently for him in the shadows, and after some interminable time later, they heard Jermayan’s hoofbeats approaching, thudding softly into the leaf-covered track rather than chiming as they would on a hard surface. Jakyr had removed the bridle bells from Jermayan’s bridle, as Mags had removed Dallen’s when he headed for the village.

  The miscreant had been slung and tied face down over Jermayan’s rump. It was not a comfortable position. Mags and Dallen joined Jakyr and Jermayan, and the four of them made their way into the village.

  Someone going to the inn spotted them before they were halfway across the fields. Mags suspected Lita’s hand in that. Whoever it was shouted for the rest, and by the time they reached the inn, half the village was out there waiting for them.

  The villagers couldn’t see the captive until Jermayan turned. Jakyr cut the ropes holding the man on, and between them they unceremoniously dumped the miscreant onto the road in front of the villagers. Jermayan pivoted on his heels, and Jakyr stared at them all with a face of stone.

  “Does anyone know this criminal?” he thundered, as the villagers recognized one of their own with gasps and mutters.

  Several reached for the man, pulled off the gag, and untied him. He, of course, at once began to shout that these outsiders had broken into his home, thrashed him, and—well, the tale built from there. Jakyr remained stone-faced, and he and Jermayan could have been a statue. No matter what the man said, no matter how he cursed them, no matter that he looked about himself as if for a weapon, they remained unmoved.

  Most of the villagers
, at least, seemed uncertain about all of this; the man they had captured was the only one making a great deal of noise. Many began frantic talking among themselves. One old lady cackled, “I told you so, Loran! I told you so! Now you and yer pa are for it!”

  But others clearly backed the man; about a dozen surrounded him, and with clenched fists and threatening looks, they pulled him back among themselves. They were the only ones with torches, which didn’t make Mags any easier. Of course, you couldn’t spook Dallen and Jermayan by waving a torch at them they way you could a horse, but he didn’t fancy having them, or himself, burned either.

  Finally the Headman appeared, shoving his way through the crowd in front of the inn door. He was a burly fellow, clad in leather and furs, with a bald head, broad shoulders, and almost no neck, and his face was red with anger. “What the hell is going on here?” he bellowed, seizing his son’s shoulder, and stepping in front of the young man in a threatening manner. “What have you done to my boy!”

  “Pa! They—” the interloper began.

  “Silence!” roared Jakyr, and at the same time Dallen and Jermayan reared and screamed, and flailed the air with their hooves. It was a very effective way to get attention.

  The entire mob backed up a pace, leaving this “Loran” and the Headman standing alone. The torches wavered in a slight wind. No one so much as whispered. The only sound came from the uneasy shuffling of feet.

  “We, Heralds of Valdemar and agents of the Crown, found this man occupying our Waystation, in complete and utter disregard for the law,” Jakyr said into the silence in tones of ice. Mags had never seen him look so implacable. The wind cut down the back of Mags’ cloak, making him shiver. “This is theft of the second degree, and the law says that the miscreant will be punished by no less than a fine of twenty silver pieces and not more than a year in gaol. You, I presume, are the Headman of this village. What do you intend to do about this clear violation of the law?”

  Some of the villagers looked askance at this. Others looked to the Headman. But some looked as if they found this amusing. The Headman folded his arms over his chest and sneered. “Nothing,” he said, flatly.

  “Nothing?” Jakyr repeated. “Really? A clear violation of Crown Law and you propose to do nothing?” He pretended to crane his neck to look over the crowd, his eyes falling on Lita. “Milady Bard, will you witness this?”

  “I do so witness,” drawled Lita, ambling to the front of the crowd with her gittern slung over her back, her Scarlets making her stand out among the drably clad villagers. “As a Master Bard, I do so witness. As does my Journeyman.”

  “And I,” Bear said loudly. He stepped to the front as well and planted his hands on his hips. As with Lita his green Healer’s robes were vivid against the browns and grays of the clothing around him. “I witness. I’ll swear as much to any official.”

  “So what?” The Headman continued to sneer. “What are you gonna do about it, Master Fancy White Pants? There’s dozens of us and only two of you. We can run you right out of town, and you won’t be able to stop us. The most you can do is run away.” Emboldened by Jakyr’s silence, he continued. “What are you gonna do about it? We don’t need you, and we don’t need Haven to come sticking its nose into our business! That Waystation of yours was a perfectly good cottage that stood empty most of the year, and I took it for my son, and I intend to keep it!”

  “Really. And how do you intend to house Heralds on Circuit, pray?” Jakyr asked, in a deceptively mild tone of voice.

  The Headman howled with angry laughter. “You can buy a room at the inn, just like any other man, Fancyboy.” His face could never have been called handsome, but it was particularly ugly with his face contorted into a superior sneer. “You can pay for it, with all the coin you get paid for doing nothing.”

  Jakyr’s right eyebrow rose, slowly. “Buy? Oh, really? That’s truly your answer to the theft of Crown property?”

  “And then you can take your laws and your justice and you can pack them up and ride off with them on the mule that brought you!” Mags rather wished that he were watching this as a play rather than being in the middle of it. At this point, the audience would have been roundly booing. It was a very uncomfortable situation, standing here, being uncertain as to which way the villagers were going to jump. They could win this, if the entire village managed to see where the Headman was trying to take them all. But how to get them to realize that? “We don’t need you! We don’t need Haven. And we damn sure don’t need some King who never got his white boots dirty!”

  Huh . . . little do you know . . .

  “So, Fancyboy,” the Headman was in his element now. He had a passive audience, and if that audience wasn’t exactly with him, it also wasn’t against him. He had his pulpit for preaching his particular brand of grievance. And he thought he was facing opponents helpless against his arguments. “What do you intend to do about it?”

  With every word, he got more aggressive. It was clear how the Headman had gotten that position. He had bullied his way into it, and no one had yet stood up to him. By now he was used to bullying to get his way, and so far he hadn’t done anything so egregious that people had completely turned against him.

  But from the muttering, and the fact that about half of the villagers were sidling away, this might be the thing that did it. They weren’t entirely sure what was making them so uneasy about what the Headman was saying, but—there was something about the way he was insisting that the village could stand alone that was making them think otherwise.

  And that was when everything clicked for Mags. Because, of course, the last thing this village could do would be to stand alone. And once they made that plain—

  “I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do,” Mags said, as Dallen moved up to stand shoulder to shoulder with Jermayan. “If that’s what you really want, then bein’ left completely alone from now on is what you’re gonna get.” He raised his hand casually, as if none of this mattered in the least to him, and looked critically at his fingernails. “Be a shame when this town gets burned down by bandits, but, hey, that’s what you wanted! Hope you are all good at rebuildin’ fast, on account of you’re gonna be doin’ a lot of it after word gets out.”

  “The Guard will be overjoyed to discover they won’t have to ride out this far just because someone lost a sheep or a cow,” said Jakyr, picking up Mags’ cue. “And they’ll be thrilled to scratch this place off the list of towns they need to safeguard the next time a really big raider band sets up around here. And I can tell you from experience that once word gets around that you no longer have Guard protection, as my young Trainee pointed out, you will be a target, over and over and over.”

  :Well done, boy!: Jakyr Mindsent, :I’ll take it from here.:

  Now the villagers who had been pulling away from the Headman moved right away from him, with murmurs of real alarm. Everyone here still remembered what life was like when bandits held The Bastion, and no one wanted those dark days to return.

  “They’ll also be thrilled that they won’t have to clear the road, once the snow starts, or mend it in the spring,” Jakyr continued, with a malicious grin. “But of course, you are all independent! You can do that for yourselves! You don’t need the Crown’s help! I’m sure you all cannot wait for the snow to start so you can get out with your sledges and pack those roads down! It will be just like a winter festival every day! And when the roads and the bridges need mending? Well, I’m sure you can all take the time away from your fields and herds and run out immediately to mend them!”

  At this, a couple of the Headman’s supporters started to move away.

  Jakyr’s smile had become positively poisonous. His voice held entire volumes of malicious pleasure. “It’s true, you’ll save on taxes, because you won’t be paying them to the Crown anymore, but do you know what it will cost you to hire mercenaries to guard you? Bard, would you happen to know that?”

  “The last time I was pricing a mercenary to act as my bodyguard, it was ten silv
er pieces a month and food and lodging,” Lita replied, standing hipshot, with her arms crossed over her chest. “So that’ll be fifty silver a month for a company of five, and either you’ll be building ’em a place to live, paying for ’em to be put up in the inn, or five of you will have a new houseguest who might take a liking to your wife or daughter. Ever tried to get between a merc and a girl he fancied?” She chuckled dryly. “Of course, you might get lucky. The lad might not be the sort that fancies women. Then you’ll only need to be able to keep him off your own back.”

  A few more of the Headman’s supporters peeled away. Now he was standing in front of no more than half a dozen, but he didn’t yet seem to notice.

  “We don’t need to hire mercenaries! We can defend ourselves!” he shouted. “What do you take us for?”

  “Farmers. Herders. Hunters. Woodsmen. Mothers. Servants,” said Jakyr. “You all have things you need to do every day to make a living. When will you have time to do that and learn to handle weapons? Hmm? Swinging a sword isn’t like cutting firewood. Bandits and raiders do nothing all day except practice to kill people—except, of course, when they’re actually killing people. Do you really think the lot of you would be a match for an equal number of bandits?” His face darkened. “I’ve seen what happens when that’s tried. It’s called a massacre.”

  “And even if you was,” Mags put in, “You’d have to get there afore they stole your sheep or your silver or your daughter. Bandits want a profit, an’ they ain’t gonna profit if they have to make a fight of it. You think they’re gonna tell you when they’re gonna come? They hit you when you ain’t expectin’ it. Their way is get in, get out, get gone. By the time you all come from your work and run to the rescue, they’re gone and you’re robbed. And maybe someone’s dead, too.”

  “But while we are on the subject of bandits and robbers, let’s just talk about the road again,” Jakyr went on. “Let’s just say that you’re lucky, and no big bandit group decides to set up around here and prey on you. Let’s say you actually can manage to fend off most of the scum that would come attack your town. The Guard not only keeps the road clear and mended, and keeps your bridges from falling to pieces, the Guard guards the road. You’ve got a fine inn there, a fine, big inn. How many travelers do you think it will see when robbers discover there is no one guarding the road, and they can swoop down on anyone any time they like? How many peddlers and traders will take that chance, do you think? It doesn’t take a whole horde of robbers to shut down a road, you know. All it takes is one.”