Bastion

by Mercedes Lackey

  “And no Bards or other entertainers will take the chance, I can tell you that, for certain sure,” Lita put in. “That’s one of the things the Bardic Circle makes sure that all entertainers are kept apprised of, what roads are safe and what aren’t. In fact, I’ll make a point of sending a message back to Bardic Collegium as soon as I can get to a Guardpost, warning them that Therian is no longer safe to travel to, nor is the road that Therian is on safe to use. From there, it will travel to every corner of the Kingdom, and in six months there won’t be an entertainer out there who will take the chance on coming here.”

  “Nor Healers,” said Bear, causing just about everyone to gasp. He shrugged, not looking at all regretful. “Sorry, but that’s how it is. Simple fact, we can’t Heal anybody if we’re risking our own lives. You’ll just have to make do with your horse doctor there.”

  The Headman went red, then white, then red again. Two more of his supporters backed away. “We’ll appeal to Lord—”

  Jakyr cut him off with a rude gesture. “You’re daft if you think he’ll listen to you without you being willing to live on a quarter of what you do now. Lord Halloran doesn’t think you’re worth his time and money,” he said cruelly. “He’d lose money protecting you and tending to you. You think the taxes you pay to the Crown are terrible? You should see what you’d have to pay Lord Halloran before he would be willing to send his men out here to keep you safe. Twice the Crown tax, at a minimum, and I’d not be surprised to find it three times as much. Not to mention that he’d expect an additional tithe of every harvest on top of the taxes.”

  “But you’re independent!” Mags said, in a mocking voice. “You’ll be free! No one will tell you what to do! That’s what you wanted! Remember how they say be careful what you wish for? You wished. You weren’t careful. Enjoy your freedom!” He looked at Jakyr. “Let’s head back to the Guardpost and start sendin’ our messages.”

  Jakyr nodded. “I think they might even cheer when they realize how much road clearing they won’t be faced with this winter. It certainly will make their jobs ever so much easier.” He chuckled, then turned to Lita and Bear. “Lady Bard, Master Healer, would you care to accompany us? I’d like to register your formal witness, and I really don’t think this town is safe for you anymore.”

  “Oh, I agree,” said Lita, and turned to Lena. “Child, go get our things. We’re leaving.”

  “Yes, Master Bard,” Lena said obediently. She headed for the inn.

  “Us too,” said Bear. “Amily, get the kit, would you? I’ll go saddle up the horse so we don’t keep the Heralds waiting. That’d be right rude.”

  “Wait!” One of the villagers ran to Bear and clutched at his sleeve. “You can’t do this! What about your oaths? You take an oath to Heal the sick and the injured, you take an oath!”

  “My oaths don’t cover stupidly putting myself at risk,” said Bear, bluntly. “It’s what they call the lifesaver’s choice—if I drown trying to save you, what about all the other people I could have saved? Sorry. You’ll have to make do with your horse doctor.”

  “They’ll have to make do on their own!” called a man in a farrier’s apron, halfway into the crowd. “Wait while I get my things! I’m going with you!”

  At this point the Headman and his son were standing completely alone. The son looked as if someone had hit him in the head with a brick and stunned him. The Headman was turning red and white in turns and seemed to have completely lost the ability to speak. His mouth kept opening and closing, but nothing came out.

  Jakyr started to turn Jermayan to ride away. Lena came out of the inn, burdened with the instruments and their gear. Amily turned toward the smithy, which must have been where they had been tending a patient. Lita and Bear headed for the stables. Then, as some of the assembled villagers turned to each other in alarm, and a couple of them actually started to wail, Jakyr turned back, as if to add an afterthought.

  “Of course,” he said, casually, “You all do have another choice. You can elect another Headman and toss these two in the gaol.” He shrugged. “It’s up to—”

  Before he could finish the sentence, the villagers rushed the guilty pair, and engulfed them.

  • • •

  Four days later, and a great deal of messy business behind them, Jakyr and Mags rode away from Therian as snow started to fall in good earnest. The former Headman and his son had already been sent off in manacles by cart to the Guardpost. It turned out, when their homes and account books were investigated, that they had been up to a great deal more than mere stupidity about appropriating the Waystation. They’d been skimming off the taxes by overcharging the villagers and keeping the overage for themselves. They’d also pressured villagers to sell them prime goods at bargain rates. They had been extorting the innkeeper; forcing him to let them and their “special friends” eat and drink free. They’d probably been up to even more mischief, but that was what had come out immediately. The “special friends” had been as quick to turn on them as the honest villagers had been.

  After that, a great deal of minor harm needed to be undone, and the decisions that the Headman had made that were good had to be ratified. He actually had not been bad at governing when he was honest, but it appeared that the moment he had a chance to make a profit off something, he did so.

  The other four had gone on ahead; it was likely that Mags and Jakyr would get there at almost the same time, since the Companions were faster than the vanners even when the vanners weren’t hauling the caravan, and both the Companions were eager to get back to The Bastion. They were using a ground-eating canter whenever they could, and Dallen was thinking fondly of the apples in storage and wondering if there was a way Jakyr could bake pocket pies.

  “That was a bad business back there,” Jakyr observed, glancing over at Mags as the two of them trotted side by side on a track that led through a tunnel of bare birches. “If that bully of a man had managed to get more people on his side, we’d have had to go through with the threat.”

  “Would we have?” Mags asked. “Done it, that is? Gone to the Guard, told them we were cutting them off?”

  “Of course we would,” Jakyr said, a little grimly. “It’s exactly what Bear quoted—the lifesaver’s dilemma. If we forced those people with the Guard, there would have been resentment, ill will, and covert, if not overt, rebellion. It would cost the Kingdom three times as much to take care of them as it does an ordinary village. Much more than they’re worth, to be blunt. We can’t help people who deserve it if we’re spending money and resources on people who claim they don’t want us. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve cut a village off from help, and it probably won’t be the last. Generally they come back begging to have us back within a couple of moons. Sometimes people just don’t realize what they have until it’s gone, and taking it away is the only way to teach them.” He laughed ruefully. “Though, of course, once we put the consequences in front of them, even the Headman was about to say he wanted us after all. I don’t know how he would have extracted himself from the hole he’d dug himself into, but it would have been amusing to watch.”

  “I’d’a paid good money to watch ’im squirm for a couple candlemarks,” Mags said thoughtfully. “’Pears to me, now that I think about it, these villages out here, they cost more to protect than they bring in with taxes—”

  “Aha! Very good! Very perceptive!” Jakyr cheered. “And entirely correct. They do. You’d have been told that in the classes that prepared you for your first Circuit. These border villages, out here where banditry and other problems are a constant hazard, are supported by the taxes that people pay in the cities and towns and far more peaceful villages.”

  “Huh. So . . . why do it?” Mags wanted to know. “Why keep ’em in the Kingdom at all?”

  “Well, for one thing, you can’t raise sheep or grow wheat and barley in a town, and we need them to supply us with food and other things you can only get from those who are living in the country,” Jakyr chuckled. “But for anoth
er, eventually, these places will stop having problems all the time, settle down, come to have only an occasional problem, and become less of a burden.” He shrugged. “And for a third, because eventually they will come to deserve being protected. They’ll willingly send us their youngsters for the Guard. They’ll supply Heralds and Bards and Healers. Their children who went to the Guard will return home and train their neighbors to defend themselves. They’ll begin to protect each other, taking some of the burden of doing so off the Crown. It’s how these things happen, once they realize that no one can survive alone, that we all depend on the work and willingness of each other.”

  “And if they don’t?” Mags persisted.

  Jakyr shrugged. “Then if they still persist in being a problem and claiming they don’t want us, we cut them off permanently, the way you cut off a rotten branch. Sometimes you have to prune to save the tree. That takes a Crown edict, but it’s been done, though it’s rare. I’ve never seen a case of that in the Archives where the village survived for more than a few years after being cut off.”

  “Well,” Mags said after a bit, “I surely would like to see a sound branch at some point. I’m gettin’ truly tired of the bad lots, and that’s a fact.”

  12

  In the next village—much more “town” than “village,” in Mags’ estimation, he got his wish.

  The first indication that all was well came when they rode up to the Waystation, which looked like a charming (and untenanted) little cottage. They opened the door on the latchstring and found it to be well-maintained and well-stocked, as good on the inside as on the outside, complete with provisions that looked as if they must have been placed there as soon as the weather turned cold enough that insects would not be a problem and the cold would help keep them sound. Dallen was delirious to find there was a small barrel of apples, as well as oats, sweetfeed, and this year’s hay—and a couple of extra blankets. Inside, there was the barrel of apples, a couple of bags of fresh root vegetables that would hold all winter, a smaller barrel of pickles, a string of onions. In a sealed chest was a crock of pickled cabbage, bacon, cheese nicely sealed in wax, smoked meat, smoked fish, dried summer vegetables and dried fruit. They didn’t even need the tree-hares that Mags had shot on the way in, by way of precaution, in case this Waystation proved to be as poorly provisioned as the first. They used them, of course, but in a tasty hare pie, rather than the grilled hare spitted over the fire that Jakyr had planned on making.

  When they arrived at the town the next day, children ran out to welcome them at the sound of their bridle bells. As soon as they stopped in the village square, the Mayor was there with a list of all of the things he needed their help on. He took them to the village hall, which doubled as the Guild Hall. There was a stableman each for Dallen and Jermayan to take them to stabling at the biggest inn.

  They’d barely settled the Companions and returned to the village hall, and already there was a line to get in to hear the reading of the laws and the news. The hall was packed. Everyone listened in attentive silence.

  People smiled to see them. Young girls flocked to the stable to pet and spoil the Companions. The contrast with the last two towns could not have been greater.

  It took all day to read the laws and the news, because only so many people could fit in at any one time, and the Mayor was anxious that everyone over the age of twelve got to hear. He confided in Mags that this was considered something of an important date in a child’s life, the day that he or she was first taken to hear the Herald read the law. And when the child got home, he was quizzed on what he’d heard to be sure he understood it.

  Finally Mags understood why most Heralds enjoyed being on Circuit, if most towns were like this. All the danger, all the discomfort of living in Waystations, all the difficulties were more than made up for when you were treated like this and appreciated for what you did.

  Lita and Lena were spoiled as well; there were three inns in this town, and all three vied to have them. Lita finally decided that Lena and Bear should stay at the smallest of the three, and Lena would entertain on her own there, while the Master Bard would divide her time between the other two. That seemed fair to Mags, and evidently it satisfied all three innkeepers.

  Bear actually found a small House of Healing here and was overjoyed to discover that the Head Healer was one of the people he’d taught the use of his kit to back in Haven. For his part, the Head Healer was just as pleased to have Bear there to give a more intensive set of lessons to everyone in the House—and on the third day, to the apothecary, the farriers, the barber, and every midwife that could be got to the town before they all left.

  For their part, Mags and Jakyr’s duties were lengthy, if not exciting. There were quite a number of discontented people who wanted to appeal law-court judgments. There were a couple of quarrels about land and inherited property that the court had not been able to settle. Amusing, though to Mags’ mind, absurdly trivial, were the number of parents who hauled disobedient children in their teens in to have the Heralds “talk some sense into them”—though the sense that Jakyr talked was not to the parents’ liking, more than once. “No, preferring your own sex to the opposite is not something you can ‘grow out of.’ Be happy you have a healthy child who loves you.” Or, “No matter how hard you try, you’ll never get a pig to sing, and you’ll never get your child to be a blacksmith. He’ll make a very fine clerk and support you handsomely in your old age. Let him and get used to it—and find an apprentice who likes hammering.”

  Most often, though, what he said was a variation on a theme. “You want to get out on your own and have your own life,” he told more than one sullen youngster. “That’s right and proper, how it should be. But you’re not going to be allowed to get out on your own if you don’t stop playing the fool and doing your best to make your parents miserable so that they’ll throw you out. And you,” he would say, turning to the parents. “I understand that you think your child isn’t old enough to know his own mind, but I promise you, he is. He may well be wrong, but he does know his own mind, and he’s got a perfect right to think that way. And you need to stop letting him prove he’s smarter than you are by rising to the bait he throws out to make you angry!”

  No one on either side of those disagreements was entirely happy with the answer, which Mags supposed meant it was probably the right one. But Jakyr was the Herald, and that made the answer stick.

  It kind of surprised him. He hadn’t thought that Jakyr was that . . . clever . . . when it came to quarrels within a family. Especially not when you looked at the way he and Lita sniped and battled with each other.

  But then again, maybe when it was happening to someone else, it was a lot easier to see what needed to be done. When it was happening to you, things got blurrier, the way a picture did when you brought it too close to your eyes.

  What with all the work, they stayed a full seven days. Jakyr seemed to be getting impatient after a while, but Mags thought that he had never learned quite so much about ordinary folk. He knew all about the very poor and the very rich, but about the sorts of people in the middle, not so much. He picked up a lot of useful trivia about various trades, about how a village was run, and about good ways to handle all sorts of problems.

  On the whole, it was a very instructive stop. With Lita off in her own inns, and he and Jakyr able to go and relax in the smaller inn that Lena was playing in before they left for the Waystation, things were quite pleasant in the evenings. Lena seemed to appreciate having them in her audience as well—though, really, with Bear there, giving her adoring and encouraging looks after every song, she didn’t need them to bolster her spirits.

  But their luck started to change as soon as they left the town and headed back toward The Bastion.

  It was a glorious morning, if cold. There was a heavy hoarfrost coating everything, which was pretty enough but made Mags more than glad for the fur-lined winter cloak that Princess Lydia had insisted he have as a present from her. The sun beamed down from
overhead; they’d wanted to give the others a good head start and had decided to stay long enough to have luncheon. People waved them out of town, and Mags’ spirits at least were high.

  When they were into the forest, Mags happened to glance back at the unusual sound a bird made, and what he saw behind them through the skeletal branches of the trees made a chill go down his spine.

  “Jakyr!” he said urgently, as Dallen whipped his head around to see what had alarmed him. “Behind us! Blizzard!”

  Jakyr swiveled in his saddle and saw what Mags had seen: charcoal-gray clouds on the horizon, looming closer with every moment.

  “Do you carry some sort of blizzard attractor?” Jakyr asked, in mingled irritation and alarm. “I swear, every time you and I go anywhere in winter, there’s a blizzard. Never mind, time to move. It’s a damn good thing the others started so early this morning!”

  As Dallen and Jermayan went from an easy lope into a full-out gallop, Mags had to wonder if Jakyr was right. Blizzards certainly did seem to play a large part in his life—far larger than he liked, to tell the truth.

  There had been the early one that had nearly caught them on the way to Haven when Jakyr had first rescued him, for instance. That blizzard, like this one, had caught them on the road. They’d barely made it to the Guardpost they were aiming for and had been snowed in there for two days. Then, later that same year, there had been the blizzard that lasted three whole days, shut down all of Haven for a solid week, and had kept it under snow for a good long time after that. He’d been caught at the stable and had nearly died trying to get from his stable room to the Collegium in the teeth of it. If it hadn’t been for having Dallen in his head, he probably would have just given up, laid himself down in the snow, and that would have been the end of it.