by Tanya Huff
Not so much ex-army that they didn't have a man on watch.
*
“Let me kill him, Adric.”
“He's a Herald, you idiot.” Torso bare but for streaks of blood and a field dressing on his shoulder, Adric scowled down at Jors, who struggled up onto his knees. With Gervis' life in the balance, he'd walked into the camp and been slammed to the ground with the butt of a lance. The point of that lance was now centred on his chest. “Kill one and they all come down on you.”
“Then we tie him and leave him here,” the first man grunted. “Take the horse with us, probably get a pretty penny for it.”
:Chosen!:
:I'm okay.: More or less. :You?:
:He hasn't moved the bow away.:
They might not understand what a Companion was, but they'd dealt with Valdemar enough to know Jors wouldn't provoke the shot.
“We're not,” Aldric growled, “going anywhere without Lorne.”
“And that's why we have the girl.”
Eyes adjusted to the fire light, Jors could see her now, sitting on the ground with her knees drawn up, gaze locked on his face. Fifteen maybe, no older, on that cusp between girl and woman. She looked frightened but determined. A boy, not much older, stood behind her, arms crossed, and a man with his breeches cut away and a bloody dressing on his thigh – the man who'd reminded the company about their hostage – reclined beside her.
“Not the only reason, mind you,” he added, reaching over and lightly smacking her cheek.
Bardi jerked away from his touch, provoking a shove from the boy behind her. As near as Jors could tell, it hadn't yet progressed beyond touching and threat. They'd got there in time and had provided, if nothing else, a distraction. Now, they just had to get away.
He'd seen six of the eight men – Adric, obviously their leader, the one who spoke first, the one with the lance, two by Bardi, the one with the crossbow on Gervis. The other two had to be behind him, but the point of the lance kept him from turning to make sure.
“You know, I've heard stories about Heralds, and this one...” A boot impacted with his thigh without much force, more just making the point that Jors was there to be kicked. “...isn't much.”
Seven.
“He tracked us over rock in the dark,” Adric snorted. “What more do you want?”
“He got caught.”
“Yeah, well, you can't sneak for shit wearing all that white. Get the rope, Herin, and tie him. We'll leave him here when we move out,” Adric added as the kicking man moved toward the piles of gear, “but we'll kill the horse. Drive it off a cliff. Everyone knows who the damned things belong to, and we don't need that kind of trouble.”
“If you don't need trouble...” Jors forced himself to look in control regardless of position or lances or crossbows. “...then you should pack up and go now. You don't think I came out here alone, do you?” He added as Adric's brows pulled in. “You don't think Valdemar is going to ignore Hardorn violating the border, do you?”
“I'll give him violating,” the man with the thigh injury snarled, reaching for Bardi.
“Leave her be!” Adric snapped. “I want to hear this. Go on.”
Jors met his gaze and held it. “We were already on our way out to deal with you. When you took the girl, you hastened the inevitable. Lorne is in custody, all you can do now is run for the border.” He was giving them an out. If they thought they were cornered...
“All I see is you,” Adric told him.
“I was out front, tracking. I've marked the trail for the Heralds following behind me.”
He could hear men shifting position nervously, but he kept his eyes on Adric's face. He thought, for a moment, he'd done it.
Then Adric shook his head. “I think you're telling me a story.”
“He isn't!” Bardi tried to stand, but the wounded raider dragged her back to the ground. “We sent for the Heralds after you burned down Tirin's cot at the sheephold!”
:Smart girl.:
:We will free her, Chosen.:
Adric stared at her for a long moment. “How many?”
“Heralds?” She rolled her eyes. “How should I know? I was with you when they arrived!”
:Brave girl.:
:We will free her.:
“Two lies,” Adric growled, “do not make a story true.” He turned, firelight painting orange streaks on his torso. “Herin, the rope!”
“Got it.” Herin straightened, coil of rope on one shoulder, started back, and paused, head cocked toward the surrounding woods. “There's something out there!”
“Animal.”
“Something big.”
“Big animal,” Adric scoffed. “Now get your thumb out of your ass and get that rope over...”
The sound of a large animal moving through thick brush was unmistakable.
:No one could have followed that quickly from the village.:
:Verati says Tamis says to be ready.:
:What?: That was all the protest he had time for as Verati charged out from between the trees, screaming a challenge as she galloped through the camp. Gone was the stout old lady who fell asleep being brushed, replaced by a gleaming white dervish ridden by a rider in white who whirled a sword above his head.
A man screamed on the side of the camp, going down under her hooves.
Eight.
Diving forward under the lance, Jors took the man who held it to the ground as Gervis answered Verati's challenge. A crossbow bolt slammed into packed dirt. Another scream nearly drowned out the distinctive crunch of shattering bone.
Verati charged back out of the trees, closer to the fire, sending the raider with the wounded thigh rolling away from her hooves. Bardi seemed to be dealing with the boy. Jors got his hands on the lance, drove the butt hard into the lancer's chest, and twisted just in time to block a blow from behind. Gervis reared. Herin dropped the rope and ran.
“Call them off!”
Jors looked down to see a lance point driven into his stomach, the edge sharp enough to cut through his leathers. Pain caught up a second later as blood dribbled out of the tear.
“Call them off,” Adric repeated. “Or I'll gut you.”
“It's too late,” Jors told him. On the other side of the fire, the boy threw himself up onto a horse and rode out into the darkness. Adric was now the last man standing. “You've lost.”
“No.”
“It's over.”
“No!” His eyes were wild. His chest heaved. Blood seeped through the bandage on his shoulder. “Not possible! We were riding against farmers! Shepherds! Stupid villagers!” He spun on one heel, shifted his grip, drew back his arm, and hurled the lance directly at Bardi, silhouetted in front of the fire snarling, “Her fault.”
Bardi. The lance in flight. Then a white blur.
The lance took Verati in the throat. Blood sprayed. She slammed to her knees, Tamis flying over her head.
Jors took Adric down, quickly, efficiently, not even thinking of what he was doing. Gervis was already there when he slid to his knees by Verati's side. The blood had already begun to puddle, it poured so fast from the wound.
:You can not save her, Heartbrother.:
Maybe not her, but Tamis...
The old man lay crumpled, reaching back weakly for his Companion. He still wore his scarf wrapped around his throat, and instead of a sword, his cane lay broken by his side. Jors had seen dying men before, and he knew he saw one now. He moved him, carefully, until he could touch Verati's face. She sighed her last breath against his fingers.
Tamis smiled. “Every story,” he said, his voice barely louder than the breeze in the surrounding trees, “has to end.”
He moved a finger just enough to wrap a line of silver white mane around it. “Stop fussing,” he murmured. Then he closed his eyes. And never opened them again.
“My fault?”
Jors looked up to see Bardi standing on the other side of Verati's body, the firelight glinting on the tears running down her cheeks.
“My fault?” she repeated.
“No.” He tried to put all the reassurance he could into his voice. “Not your fault.”
“I just... I just couldn't let them ride in and ride away. I just needed to do something. I just needed...”
She needed her story to start.
One of the raiders was dead, skull caved in by Gervis' hoof, the rest they tied with their own ropes, trussed up by their own fire waiting for justice. Only the boy had gotten away. and Jors found himself hoping he made it safely to the border, that he carried the story home of how Valdemar's borders were defended – farmers, shepherds, villagers not there for the plundering.
Bardi helped him take off Verati's saddle then watched as he tucked Tamis up against her side. Gervis standing guard over both bodies. “You’re wounded.”
He glanced down. The dribble of blood had stopped before the edge of his tunic, but before he could declare it nothing, Bardi had unfastened his leathers and secured a pad of cloth against the puncture. Jors decided not to think too hard about where the cloth had come from. “Thank you.”
“Yeah. Okay. What do we do now?” she asked, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
“We wait until help comes,” Jors told her, moving to build up the fire. The villagers might not have followed him, but he knew, knew without a doubt, that they'd followed Tamis. One thing to let a young man in Herald's Whites save the day, and another thing entirely to let an old man do it. While they waited, he'd tell her a story. Practice the story he'd write in his report.
It wouldn't be a big heroic story, the kind that got put to music to inspire more heroics, although in the end, he supposed, it would be that kind of story too.
“Tamis wanted to be a Bard, but he couldn't sing. He liked his tea sweet, and his beer dark, and the smell of apple wood smoke. He had a yearmate named Shorna, who’d never ridden before she was Chosen...”
NOTHING BETTER TO DO
Jors stiffened in the saddle, head cocked. He could hear bird song. The wind humming in the upper canopy, leaves and twigs rubbing together as percussion. Small animals moving in the underbrush.
:Chosen?: Gervis turned to stare back over his shoulder with one sapphire eye.
:I thought I heard a baby crying.:
:Out here?:
It was a good question. They were more than a day's ride from Harbert on a path that would lead, by the end of the day, to a new settlement set up by three foresting families who'd been given a royal charter to harvest this section of the wood. Besides the usual responsibilities of a Herald on circuit, Jors had specific instructions to make sure they weren't exceeding their charter.
Jors had never met one of the near legendary Hawkbrothers, wouldn't actually mind meeting a Hawkbrother, and had less than no desire to meet a Hawkbrother because a forester had gotten greedy and begun cutting outside the territory they'd been granted. He'd grown up in such a settlement, his family still lived in one, and he knew exactly how tempting it could be to harvest that perfect tree just on the edge of the grant. And then the tree just beyond that.
Go far enough just beyond in this particular corner of Valdemar, and problems became a lot more serious than re-establishing the boundaries between feuding families.
An infuriated shriek pulled Jors from his reflections and sent a small flock of birds up through the canopy, wings drumming against the air.
:There! Did you hear it?:
:Given that I haven't gone deaf in the last ten paces, yes, Chosen, I heard it. But that didn't sound like an infant.:
:No.: Jors had to admit it didn’t. :Whatever it is, it sounds furious.:
As Gervis picked up his pace, Jors readied his bow. He was reasonably proficient with a sword – he wouldn't be riding courier if he wasn't – but even the Weaponsmaster agreed there were few currently in Whites who could match his skills as an archer. It came from wanting to eat while growing up, as foresters depended on the wood for most of their meat. Small game, large; by the time Gervis had appeared outside the palisade with twigs tangled in his mane and an extraordinarily annoyed expression on his face, Jors had learned to place his arrows where they'd do the most good.
But there were predators in the woods as well, and it wasn't unusual for the hunters to find themselves hunted by something just as interested in a meal.
:I smell smoke.:
Jors flattened against the pommel as Gervis took them off the main track onto what might have been a path, might have been a dry water channel. Either way, branches hadn’t been cleared for a man on horseback.
He could smell the smoke now, too, but it wasn't the heart-stopping scent of leaves and twigs and deadfall going up, it was more pungent. Slower. Familiar…
“Charcoal burner!” he said just as they emerged into a clearing.
There was the expected cone of logs over the firepit. There the expected small… well, in all honestly, hut was probably the kindest description. A little unexpected to see three scruffy chickens in a twig corral by the hut, but eggs were always welcome. Completely unexpected to see the half-naked toddler straining to reach the firepit, held back by a leather harness around his plump little body and a rope tied to a cedar stake.
The toddler turned to face the Herald and his Companion, tiny dark brows drew in, muddy fists rose, and he shrieked.
In rage.
:Well?: Gervis said after a long moment.
:It's a baby. I'm not… I don't…: He sighed and swung out of the saddle.
The toddler stared at him in what could only be considered a highly suspicious manner and shrieked again.
“Hey there, little fellow.” Jors kept his voice low and non-threatening, like he would when approaching a strange dog. And he'd rather be approaching a strange dog. Two strange dogs. A pack of strange dogs. He'd know exactly what he had to do to rescue this child from a pack of dogs, he just wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with a child alone.
:I doubt he's going to bite.:
Jors realized the fingers on his outstretched hand were curled safely in. “But you don't know that for sure,” he muttered as he uncurled them. “It's okay, little guy. We're not going to hurt you. We're here to help.”
Blue eyes widened as the toddler stared past him. Leaning against the support of the harness, he scrambled around about twenty degrees of the circle the rope allowed him until he was facing Jors, hands reaching out and grabbing at the air. “Ossy!”
“Ossy?” Glancing back, Jors thought Gervis looked as confused as he felt. “Ossy… Horsey! He thinks you're a horse.” The shrieking picked up a distinctly proprietary sound, interspersed with something that could have been me or could have been random eee noises, Jors wasn't sure. :Come a little closer, and see if he'll quiet down.:
The noises changed to happy chortling as Gervis moved slowly and carefully close enough for the toddler to throw himself around one of the Companion's front legs. It wasn't exactly quiet, but it was definitely quieter.
:He's sticky.:
:Is that normal?: Jors wondered, heading for the hut.
:How should I know?: The young stallion sounded slightly put out. And then a little panicked. :Chosen? Where are you going?:
:To look for his parents. They can't be far.: If they were, Jors intended to have a few official words with the sort of people who'd wander off leaving their child tethered to a stake in the deep woods. Might as well tether out a sacrificial goat.
And speaking of goats, as he came up to the hut, he could see a bored-looking nanny staring at him from the back of the chicken corral, jaws moving thoughtfully around a mouthful of greenery. The fodder in the pen, still green and unwilted, suggested the parents were…
He froze, one hand on the stretched hide that covered the opening to the hut.
:Chosen?:
:I heard.:
Moaning.
He found the charcoal burner no more than ten feet out from the clearing, pinned to the ground by the jagged end of a branch through his chest. Jors could do a field d
ressing as well as any Herald, maybe better than a few as he spent so much time out on the road, but not even a full Healer who’d been present when the accident happened could have changed the outcome. With the branch in the wound, the charcoal burner died slowly. Pulled free, he'd bleed out instantly.
Looking up, Jors could see the new scar where the deadfall had finally separated from the tree. The charcoal burner had probably passed under it a hundred times, forgot it was up there if he'd even noticed it at all. It wasn't easy to see a branch hung up in the high canopy – Jors had lost an uncle to a similar accident when he was eight. Could remember the tears on his father's face as he carried his brother's body back in through the palisade.
The charcoal burner was older than Jors expected, mid-thirties maybe, allowing for the rough edges of a hard life – although it couldn't have helped that he'd been slowly dying since the branch had pinned him. When Jors knelt by his side, he opened startlingly blue eyes.
The knowledge of his imminent death was evident in the gaze he locked onto Jors' face as he fought to drag air into ruined lungs. “Torbin?” he wheezed. “My son?”
“He's fine.”
“Take… to sister. Rab…bit Hole.” A callused hand batted weakly at Jors' knee, leaving smears of red-brown against the white. “Prom…ise.”
“My word as a Herald. I will put your son in your sister's arms.”
He held Jors' gaze for a long moment then closed his eyes and sighed.
He didn't breathe in again.
*
The only evidence of a woman inside the hut was a faded ribbon curled up on a rough shelf. Jors set it on the pile of the charcoal burner's possessions, wrapped them in the more worn of the two blankets on the pallet, and tied the bundle off. Without a mule – and mules were more trouble than they were worth in the deep wood – he couldn't carry much more than his own gear, but Torbin's inheritance from his dead father and his missing mother was so tiny the Herald didn't feel right leaving any of it behind.
While Jors buried his father – the soft, deep loam making an unpleasant job significantly easier than it might have been – Torbin had fallen asleep curled up against Gervis' side, still secured by the rope for safety's sake. Herald and Companion both had agreed he was too young to get any sort of closure from seeing the body. Although, given that their combined experience with small children could be inscribed on a bridle bell with plenty of room leftover for the lyrics to Sun and Shadow, Jors could only hope they'd made the right decision.