The Demon's Den and Other Tales of Valdemar

by Tanya Huff

  As Jors stepped out of the hut, Torbin's head popped up from under the other blanket. He blinked sleepily, and screamed.

  :He's hungry.:

  :How can you tell?:

  :He sounds hungry.:

  He sounded furious as far as Jors could tell. :What do I feed him?:

  :The goat needs milking.:

  He looked from the goat, who continued to chew on the last few bits of fodder, to his Companion. :How do you know?:

  :She's leaking.:

  Jors had never milked a goat, but he'd been around and he'd seen goats milked and how hard could it be? After all, goats producing milk wanted to be milked.

  Although he couldn't prove that by this particular goat.

  As Torbin's screams grew in both volume and duration, Jors finally managed to tie the goat to a hook on the side of the hut and get the small pail he'd found more or less in position under the leaking udder, but it wasn't until Gervis moved close enough to catch the nanny's gaze and hold it that he actually managed to get his hand around a teat.

  :I'm beginning to think the Collegium needs to add a few more practical courses,: the Companion said thoughtfully as Jors decanted the frothy milk into a mug with a carved wooden spout.

  :I'd have been willing to lose an hour of instruction in court etiquette,: Jors admitted, handing the mug to Torbin. He'd found the mug in the hut and had to unpack it from the blanket bundle.

  The child clutched it with both hands, sat down on his bare bottom, and began to drink.

  With Torbin occupied, and blessedly quiet, Jors dealt with the fire pit and released the livestock.

  :Will they be safe?:

  :I'd put that chicken up against a Change-lion.: Sucking at a bleeding, triangular wound pecked into his left thumb, Jors dug a travel biscuit from his saddle bags and handed it to Torbin just as the child put down the now empty mug and opened his mouth to scream. :I think I'm getting the hang of this.:

  :We need to bring the goat with us.:

  :We what?:

  :We were a day from the settlement when we rose this morning and it is now past midday. The child will need to be fed again before you can give him over to his aunt.:

  :I was figuring I'd tuck him up in front of me and we'd concentrate on speed rather than…:

  :Safety?:

  Torbin's possessions having been secured with his behind the high cantle, Jors took a moment to beat his head gently against the saddle. Gervis was right. Alone, he might risk a gallop in poor lighting along a rough track bracketed with branches ready to slam the unwary to the ground, but he couldn't risk it while holding a child. If it were later in the day, he'd suggest they stay the night, but it was high summer and he hated the thought of wasting the five, maybe six hours of daylight remaining. :If we move as quickly as possible and make no stops we should get there before full dark. I really don't want to camp while responsible for this child.:

  :Agreed. Chosen? The child is leaking.:

  Still gnawing happily on the travel biscuit, Torbin now sat in a spreading puddle.

  There had been two square pieces of cotton spread out on bushes behind the hut. Jors hadn't realized what they were for until it became obvious that, as practical as it was to allow Torbin to run half naked around the clearing – or more specifically around the part of the clearing his lead line gave him access to – it was significantly less practical to have him up on the saddle in that condition. Releasing him from his harness, Jors carried the child over to the half-full water barrel and scooped some of the sun-warmed water over his muddy bottom.

  Torbin stared at him for a moment in shock, let loose a sound that would have shattered glass, had there been any glass in the immediate neighbourhood, and made a run for it. Given the length of his legs, he was surprisingly fast.

  Once caught, he objected, loudly, to having his bottom covered.

  “This is ridiculous,” Jors muttered, holding the struggling child down with one hand and securing the folded cloth with the other. “I mean, it's not that I have an inflated idea of my own importance, but there has got to be someone better qualified to do this than me.”

  :You are the only one here.:

  Torbin screamed “Ossy!” again, and with both arms up and reaching for the Companion, he actually laid still long enough for Jors to tie off the last piece of rope.

  :Chosen, that looks…:

  “Yeah, I know. There must be a trick to it.” But as unusual as it looked it seemed to be holding, so Jors lifted Torbin up into his arms then tried not to drop him as one flailing foot caught him squarely in a delicate place.

  Getting into the saddle while holding a squirming child away from further contact with that delicate, and bruised, place ranked right up there as one of the more difficult things Jors had ever accomplished.

  Tucked securely between the Herald and the saddle horn, legs sticking straight out, Torbin bounced once and twisted around to look back behind them as Gervis moved out of the clearing.

  Jors barely managed to catch him as he tried to fling himself from the saddle.

  “Pa-Ah!”

  Your papa is dead, but his last thought was of you, and I promised him I'd take you safely to your aunt, was a bit complex for a child of Torbin's age. :What do I say to him?: Jors demanded, holding the struggling child close, his ears ringing.

  :He does not want to leave his father.:

  :Yeah, I got that.:

  :You can not explain, you can only comfort.:

  One hand rubbing small circles on Torbin's back, the other hanging on for dear life, Jors murmured a steady stream of nonsense into the soft cap of tangled curls until Torbin reared back and, still screaming, slammed his forehead against Jors' mouth.

  :I don't think this is working,: Jors admitted. He leaned out and spit a mouthful of blood down onto the trail.

  :Try a lullaby.:

  :He'll never hear me.:

  :Not with his ears; he'll hear you with his heart.:

  After twenty-one repetitions of the only lullaby Jors knew, Torbin finally cried himself to sleep, his eyelashes tiny damp triangles against his flushed cheeks.

  Jors sent up a silent prayer to whatever gods might be listening that the exhausted child remain asleep until they reached the settlement, and as he stayed asleep while Gervis' steady pace ate up the distance, Jors half thought his prayers might actually have been answered.

  “What is that smell?” Head up, Jors turned his nose into the breeze which, weirdly, seemed to lessen the impact. “Okay, that's strange.”

  Torbin squirmed and giggled, nearly pitching forward as he reached out to grab a double handful of Gervis' mane. The odour got distinctly stronger.

  The Companion stopped walking. :I think,: he began but Jors cut him off.

  “Yeah, I know.” The smear of yellow-brown on the thigh of his Whites was a definitive clue. “I bet that's going to stain.”

  It was amazing how much poop one small body had managed to produce. Jors distracted Torbin through the extensive clean up – involving most of their water, half a dozen handfuls of leaves, saddle soap, and his only other shirt – by feeding him slices of dried apple every time he opened his mouth. He buried the soiled cloth by the side of the trail.

  :You know, if we carried this with us, we could probably use it to keep predators away from the camp at night.:

  Gervis snorted. :It would keep predators away from this whole part of the country, but I'm not carrying it.:

  Smiling, in spite of everything, at the tone of his Companion's mental voice, Jors patted down the final shovel of dirt and turned to see…

  “Where's Torbin?” He'd left the child tucked in between Gervis’ front feet, chewing on a biscuit.

  :He's right…: Gervis turned in place, his hooves stirring up little puffs of dirt. :He was right here!:

  :You were supposed to be watching him!:

  :I was watching him!:

  Jors swore and dove for his sword as a patch of dog willow by the side of the trail shook
and cracked and Torbin shrieked. Gervis used his weight to force the thin branches apart then Jors charged past him and nearly skewered the goat who had followed them from the clearing and was currently being fed the remains of a slobbery biscuit by a shrieking toddler.

  Apparently, sometimes the shrieking was happy shrieking.

  It became distinctly less happy when Jors attempted to remove Torbin's arms from around the goat's neck. Only Gervis' intervention kept him from being bitten – by the goat, although Torbin had teeth he wasn't afraid to use.

  :Are you hurting him?:

  :No, I'm not hurting him.: He managed to pry one handful of goat hair out of the grubby fingers, but it was almost impossible to hold that hand and pry open the other.

  “Ossy!”

  “That's right, Torbin. Horsey.”

  :Is it wise to lie to the child, Chosen?:

  :It's not a lie, it's a simplification.: “Torbin, do you want to ride on the horsey?”

  “Ide ossy!”

  “Then you have to let go of the goat.” The goat aimed a cloven hoof at Jors' ankle as he bounced the toddler and made clucking noises that didn't sound remotely like a Companion's hooves against hard-packed dirt, but the combination was enough to convince Torbin.

  “Ossy!” Releasing the goat, he squirmed out of Jors' grip and wrapped himself around Gervis' front leg.

  :He's still sticky.:

  Practice made getting up into the saddle this second time a little easier.

  :Fast as you can, Heartbrother. We're down to half a canteen of water, one cloth, and…: “Ow!” :Why does he keep hitting me there?:

  :Perhaps he wants to make certain you never have children of your own,: Gervis sighed as he lengthened his stride.

  They reached the settlement as dusk deepened into dark. Like all family compounds in the deep woods, it was surrounded by a strong palisade designed to protect against both wild animals and bandits who might consider that isolation meant easy pickings. The gate was already closed, but Jors wasn't too concerned.

  He was not only a Herald, he was a Herald holding a small child.

  Followed by a goat.

  Steadying Torbin with one hand, he rose in the stirrups and hailed the settlement. He caught a quick glimpse of a blond head over the wall by the gate then his entire attention was taken up by the sudden need to stop Torbin from crawling up Gervis' neck to chew on his ears. At least, he assumed that was the intended destination as “Ears!” seemed to be one of the words shrieked during the struggle.

  By the time he managed to pay a little more attention to his surroundings, Gervis had entered through the palisade, the gate was swinging shut behind them, and a middle-aged woman was plucking Torbin from the saddle saying, “Oh, the poor wee mite! No wonder he's unhappy, he's wet.”

  “Usually,” Jors muttered, dismounting.

  Beside the dried blood left on his knee by Torbin's father, he had yellow-brown smears on one thigh, various fluids drying on his shoulder, vomited apple on one boot, and his lap was distinctly damp and unpleasant-smelling.

  He felt weirdly smug when Torbin, still shrieking and now clearly furious, tried to launch himself out of the woman's arms and back to his. He felt understandably relieved when the woman competently prevented the launch and said, “I'll just get him straightened out and quiet, and you can explain what's happening when you're all clean and fed.”

  There was, apparently, a trick to making oneself heard over a screaming child.

  “I assume,” she continued, “that there's no emergency requiring more immediate attention?”

  When Jors assured her that there was not – a combination of sign language and facial expressions supporting the answer drowned out by screams – she left him to the care of her brothers, who just as competently showed him where he could tend to Gervis, wash, and change into his other, distinctly cleaner uniform. He had to borrow a shirt.

  The deep woods settlements didn't have Waystations, as sleeping outside the palisades ranged from being a bad to a suicidal idea, depending on how long the settlement had been place. Heralds bunked down with their Companions – either in the communal barn if the weather was bad or outside it if not. Some of the older settlements built a Herald's Corner that offered a little privacy, but this one, young enough that some of the logs in the palisade leaked sap, was still concentrating on getting a secure roof over everyone's head before the cold weather came.

  With Gervis unsaddled, brushed down, and settled with water, food, and three little girls who stared at him in adoration, Jors headed off to the male side of the communal showers, dumped a hide bag of sun-warmed water over his head, scrubbed himself down with a bar of soap and a soft brush, and felt a lot better. His ears had almost stopped ringing.

  *

  “Ah, Dylan, he got broke a bit when he lost Tiria.” Allin, the older of the brothers, leaned back against the wall and scratched at the edge of his beard. “Was a fine fellow before, 's why we agreed to let him set up on the edge of our grant. Got to say, I'm not surprised he ended like you found him though, Herald, all alone out there like he was, heartbroken, no one to watch his back.”

  “Loved his boy, though,” Helena added, glancing over to the pallet where Torbin lay asleep with a child close to his own age and a large orange cat. “I expect he'd have come back to people when the boy got a bit older. It's one thing to mourn while rocking a baby, it's another thing entirely when that baby's running you ragged.”

  “Then he should've been heading for people a couple of months ago,” Jors sighed.

  “I'm sure you did your best, Herald.” Helena smiled as she refilled his mug. “But what do you know about babies, a young man like you? And your Companion's a stallion too, isn't he? Never mind, my grandson's near enough to Torbin's age as to make no difference, and we'd be happy to take him in.”

  All his instincts said these were good people, and Jors knew Torbin would be happy here. He could get on with doing what he'd been trained to do.

  Except…

  “I promised his father that I'd take Torbin to his aunt in Rabbit Hole.”

  “Dylan wanted him sent to Mirril, did he? Makes sense, she was as near broke up when Tiria passed as he was. Girls grew up together.”

  It occurred to Jors as he finished his bowl of stew that it was a good thing these foresters knew Torbin's aunt. Had they not, he could have spent days trying to find her, wandering around Rabbit Hole looking for a woman related to a dead charcoal burner with very blue eyes. Well, maybe not days, Rabbit Hole wasn't that big, but it was still going to be a lot easier going in with a name. Facing another two days on the trail with Torbin, Jors was looking for all the easier he could get.

  *

  “There's a spring where you'll be stopping, so chill any milk you have left in it overnight and it should be good until he drinks it all. There's six hardboiled eggs in the pack; as long as the shells don't crack they'll be fine for two days, but it probably wouldn't hurt to chill them in the spring as well. Let's see, what else…” Helena frowned, bouncing Torbin on one hip. “Oh yes. I've put six cloths in the pack, but let him spend as much time without anything on his bottom as possible. It's just baby poop,” she snickered, as Jors failed to prevent a reaction. “After he goes, take the cloth off him and pay attention. If he starts to pee, dismount.”

  “Or point him out over the trail,” Allin added.

  That got a laugh from most of the gathered adults and a delighted shriek from Torbin, although he couldn't have understood he was the subject of the discussion.

  After checking the girth one last time – any further checking of his tack would start to look like a deliberate delay – Jors swung up into the saddle. “I'll return when I've placed him safely with his aunt.”

  “There's no hurry, Herald. Do what you have to.”

  :Ready?:

  Gervis shook his head. He'd had his mane braided by small fingers the night before, and the early morning sunlight painted ripples into some of the strands. :As
ready as I am capable of being.:

  “Ossy!”

  “All right.” Deep breath. “Hand him up.”

  *

  Jors spread the sixth cloth out over the bushes and hoped at least one of them would be dry by morning. He'd done his best, but there was a limit to how much he could get out with spring water and a stick.

  “Point him over the trail,” he muttered, heading back to the camp. He'd moved downhill to do Torbin's laundry in the hope of avoiding contamination. It might be, as Helena had said, just baby poop, but as far as he was concerned, there was no just about it. :How is it possible for him to expel more than he's taken in?:

  :Are you counting vomiting?:

  During one of their stops, Torbin had eaten a handful of leaves he'd ripped from a bush by the trail. And some dirt. And a bug. A little further down the trail, he'd brought them all back up again. Jors had been happy – for certain specific definitions of the word happy – that he'd changed back into his stained uniform. Gervis had insisted they stop immediately and clean his mane.

  :Chosen!:

  He'd have never heard an actual verbal call over the shrieking.

  Arriving at the campsite at a dead run, Jors found Torbin straining against Gervis' hold on the back of his smock, the Companion's teeth gripping a fold of the fabric as the child fought to get to the spring.

  :He ate another bug.:

  “Ossy!”

  Jors scratched at a welt across his bare chest and sighed. :At least he's not a fussy eater.:

  *

  Wrapped up in the fluffier of the two blankets Jors had taken from the charcoal burner's hut, thumb tucked deep in his mouth, eyelashes a dark smudge against the upper curve of chubby cheeks, Torbin looked as though he would never consider trying to throw himself off a Companion's back causing that Companion's Herald to temporarily stop breathing. As though he'd never try to poke his own eye out with a stick. As though he'd never drop a half dead cricket into someone else's supper.