by Victor Milán
“They’d better,” Zaranda said. “It’s why I let them finish off the bandits you and your men unhorsed.”
The mercenary leader’s long flexible face warped itself into a scowl. “Why would you want to encourage these rabble to pump themselves up and rob us of glory?”
“So they’ll quit being rabble as soon as possible,” Zaranda said. “They needed to taste victory, or they’d never have faith in what we’re teaching them—and more to the point, in themselves.”
“But it was our bows that won the day!” Balmeric protested.
“They don’t know that,” Zaranda said, nodding at the celebrating villagers. “Nor do I want them to. Please don’t remind them—and encourage your men not to, either.”
The mercenary grumbled and looked toward the ground. Zaranda stared hard at him until, as if compelled by her will, he raised his head to meet her gaze.
“Are you so hard-pressed for glory that you insist on claiming credit for winning a back-country skirmish? Bear with me, Balmeric; do as I ask, and I will guarantee you all the glory you could hope for. Or—” she took a swallow of her beer “—at least an interesting death.”
For a moment he goggled at her. Then he laughed and slapped her on the arm. “That’s the most any commander can truly promise, though few are so candid, I’m bound. Very well, Zaranda Star, you shall have it your way!”
He raised his own leathern jack. “To glory or an interesting death!”
“Glory or death,” Zaranda echoed. She bumped her mug against his jack and both drank. Then he slipped off to have quiet words with his men.
Alone for the moment, Zaranda surveyed the scene. From his favorite chair, Osbard observed the dance. He looked careworn and somewhat sour. Near him Shield of Innocence sat cross-legged upon the ground, clawed hands upon thighs like a great idol, ugly yet majestic, sloped brow garlanded with a wreath of wildflowers woven for him by the village maidens.
On the hetman’s other side, Farlorn perched on an upended nail keg, his yarting across his knee, and Osbard’s eldest daughter, Fiora—a young woman, brown hair bobbed short in the fashion affected by the female volunteers, and who was fortunate enough to have inherited neither looks nor disposition from either parent—draped over his shoulder. Not far away, Chen sat with her hands clasped around her knees, gazing fixedly at the bard. She had rebuffed all attempts at gallantry by the local youths; fortunately they seemed to have taken the message without invoking her wild powers, and now left her alone.
At the moment she seemed altogether absorbed by the handsome half-elf. Under Zaranda’s tutelage she had bloomed into a handsome young woman herself, though coltish still with adolescence, and she had grown less self-absorbed and obsessive in her pursuit of magic—if only because Zaranda had refused to teach her if she didn’t. For his part Farlorn had begun dealing with her in terms of good-natured banter rather than his earlier disdain.
Now Zaranda felt a stab of jealousy, and wondered why. Does it matter that much to be the exclusive focus of Chen’s attention? Or do I feel old flames rekindling?
Undeniably Farlorn was handsome. Undeniably she was lonely. She had good reasons for refusing to consider resumption of their liaison … or so she had been telling herself. Now, seeing his face roguish and alive in the light of the fire and an appreciative audience, she wondered if that were true.
The village girl meant nothing to him. There had been plenty such, and would be more; and Zaranda had never been the possessive type. But Chenowyn—graceless, untutored, redheaded, still half-civilized, and prone to seem half-human—had yet some quality to her that would make it hard for even Farlorn to treat her as just another dalliance.
Zaranda looked round the rest of the firelit circle. The face she sought wasn’t there. No surprise.
It had been Stillhawk who began sending children, too young to train but old enough not to need adult supervision, some distance from the village as lookouts. One such had spotted the marauders’ approach that day, flashing a quick warning back to Tweyar with sunlight reflected in a little mirror—a trick Zaranda had picked up in the Tuigan campaign, where rapid communication was crucial to coping with the fast-moving nomads.
As a hero of the day’s epic engagement—for the people of Tweyar realized they hadn’t won unaided—Stillhawk had sat through the feast laid out by the villagers. But when the dancing and drinking began in earnest, he had slipped off into the night, uncomfortable with such activities and the nearness of so many people.
Ah, well, Zaranda told herself, you didn’t really want to see him anyway. For a moment she had felt that what she wanted was to sit and talk, but that wasn’t it. While the bond between her and the mute ranger was strong, it was the blood-forged bond of comrades-at-arms; they were too close to brother and sister for anything else.
“I feel old,” Zaranda told the night. And she turned and went off to her hut alone.
One bandit, shot from his horse by Farlorn in a field outside the village, had survived. Once bandaged, he put on a show of defiance, announcing he would never betray his fellows, who would soon enough come and rescue him.
His bravado lasted only as long as it took Shield of Innocence to wrap a great hand in the front of his jerkin and hoist him into the air. Whether or not the bandit was a votary of evil, he was human, with an instinctive fear of orcs. Especially huge and ferocious-looking orcs.
Which is to say, he rolled over like a Calimport roach.
Two nights after the victory celebration, Zaranda mounted four mercenaries and half the village troops on erstwhile bandit horses and rode forth, leaving Farlorn and Balmeric in charge of the village defenses. In the heart of night, long after moonset, they came upon the bandits’ camp near the riverbank. They left the horses in the charge of a female recruit and stole forward to surround the sleeping camp.
Stillhawk and a young villager named Hugh, who was skilled at hunting and reasonably stealthy, dispatched a pair of sentries. Then, half an hour before sunrise, the party stormed the encampment. The first bandits to struggle to wakefulness were sent back to sleep by Zaranda’s magic. The few who insisted on showing fight were quickly dispatched, the bulk of the outlaws sensibly surrendering after seeing Shield of Innocence decapitate their doughtiest fighter with his sword-scissors trick.
As simply as that, the Tweyar Self-Defense Force had won its second victory, without cost to itself.
Most of the captive bandits readily accepted parole, agreeing to quit the territory, stripped of arms and valuables but carrying such food as the gang had stocked with them lest, starving, they should be faced with little choice but to return to marauding. The condition was that, were they ever caught again, they would be killed out of hand. The villagers accepted the bargain with an alacrity that surprised Zaranda; apparently the fury of their bloodletting the other day, and the task of cleaning up the grisly aftermath, had left them abashed, with diminished appetite for slaughter.
They were wary when three bandits volunteered to join Zaranda’s company. No one in Tweyar could identify any of the three as having committed any atrocities, though, and once Shield of Innocence had described to the erstwhile bandits in terms leaving nothing to the imagination the fate that would befall them should they attempt treachery, even Osbard was reassured. No one, Zaranda Star included, could readily imagine anyone voluntarily running afoul of the monstrous orc. Stern and instant punishment for wrongdoing was very much a part of his god’s creed.
With renewed enthusiasm, the volunteers returned to their drill. Zaranda took pains to remind her exuberant troops that they would be extremely lucky ever to gain a third victory at such little cost to themselves as the first two. She could only hope they heard.
The month of Kythorn was preparing to give way to Flamerule when Zaranda and Goldie wended their way toward Tweyar along a trail through the riverside trees. It was a stereotypically beautiful Tethyrian summer evening. A faint pink glow dying in the west was all that was left of day. The air was like per
fumed velvet. The sunset swallows yielded to nighthawks, and fireflies winked at one another through the gathering dark. Thin bat cries pierced the murmur of wind in leaves.
They had each had a fulfilling day, though in strikingly different terms. The mare was rhapsodizing over the virtues of the stallions in the pastures where she had passed her day. At last Zaranda shook her head.
“Wouldn’t you like to look for a mate such as yourself?” she asked.
“You mean magical? Ha!” She tossed her head and snorted. “I go for the strong, silent type. Dumb all around—that’s how I like ’em.”
“But how can you bear to couple with others of your own kind who can’t talk?”
Goldie turned her head to give her the eye. “Think what you’re saying, Randi,” she said. “How can you stand to couple with members of your species who can?”
Zaranda sighed, and rode the rest of the way in thoughtful silence.
It was all but full dark when they arrived back in Tweyar. “Looks deserted,” Goldie observed.
“In the weeks we’ve been here, you might’ve noticed a tendency for country folk to turn in early.”
“Where are our people, though?”
“Dining with the locals? It’s been known to happen.”
The mare’s reply was a snort.
At the village stable Zaranda rubbed the mare down, brushed her, and left her with her face happily stuck in a trough of grain. She still saw no sign of human presence. Preoccupied with turning the day’s events over in her mind, she paid no especial heed.
When she entered the hut she shared with Chenowyn, it was full dark inside. But she immediately noticed the smell of indifferently washed bodies. Keeping her hand studiously away from Crackletongue’s hilt, she shut the door behind her.
Lantern-glow expanded, pressing gloom back into the corners. Osbard and two village elders sat in chairs with blankets covering their laps, looking grim, which told her little; that was their accustomed expression. Ernico and his friend and fellow trainee Rudigar were there as well. Their faces were flushed. They would not meet her eyes.
“Good evening,” she told them gravely. “Should I have knocked?”
“Where have you passed this day, Zaranda Star?” Osbard asked gravely.
“At the village of Pansemil, upriver.”
The elders exchanged baleful looks. The youths shuffled feet. “And what errand took you there?” asked Storric, a stout, bearded man. Owner and operator of Tweyar’s water-powered mill, he was father to Bord.
“I was discussing with them the possibility of training them in the use of arms, as I’m training you.”
A hiss of intaken breath. Osbard glanced right and left at his fellows, then back at her.
“So you stand convicted of your treachery,” he said, “by your own mouth.”
From under the blanket, he produced a cocked and loaded crossbow and aimed it at Zaranda’s heart.
A stout stake had been pounded into the packed earth of the village common. Around its base had been piled logs, with plentiful dried brushwood for kindling. Atop this heap stood Zaranda, tied. Before her stood Osbard, holding a lit torch of bound-together reeds.
“Would you mind,” Zaranda asked mildly, “telling me what this is all about?”
Stillhawk, hands tied behind him, stood on a three-legged stool with a noose about his neck and the rope’s far end tied to a thick limb of an oak. Farlorn was perched on a nail keg, similarly bound and attached to the tree. The mercenaries, also tied, sat in a clump across the common from the hetman’s house, guarded by village volunteers armed with spears taken from vanquished bandits. Most heavily watched of all, and garlanded with sufficient rope to rig a Waterdhavian caravel, stood Shield of Innocence, glaring at his captors with eyes that glowed coal-red in the torchlight.
“Whatever you do, Zaranda,” the half-elf said cheerfully, “think twice about accepting an invitation to dine with these folk. Such terrific bores: we go to eat with them, and here they’ve tied us up all evening.”
Osbard opened his mouth but couldn’t seem to quite find words.
“It’s about your treason,” offered Moofar, an elder who stood at his side. He was a wizened old bird with a wen on his beaklike nose. “Specifically and to wit, your treating with our enemies, the people of Pansemil.”
“By your own admission,” Osbard said, emboldened, “you were negotiating to teach them how to attack and overrun us.”
“I admitted no such thing,” Zaranda replied, “because I did no such thing. I offered to teach them to defend themselves, even as we’re teaching you.”
“And they mean to use those skills to assail us,” said Storric, exploring a broad nostril with his forefinger. “They envy how cultured we are.”
“They don’t want to attack you. And what if they do? You’re strong enough to send them packing, with the knowledge and weapons we’ve provided.”
“It’s true, Father!” exclaimed Fiora, who had taken to passing time with Farlorn when she wasn’t training. “They’d stand no chance against us.”
The hetman blushed and scowled furiously. “Hush, Daughter. Don’t speak of matters you know nothing of.”
Zaranda laughed. The villagers gaped at her. “I see. Osbard, you sly old kobold, you—you were planning to use our teachings to invade them, weren’t you?”
He sputtered and dropped his eyes. “We did, and what of it?” demanded Storric.
“Why should you attack Pansemil?”
“Because,” the miller began. He stopped, frowned. “Because—”
“Because they’re different!” someone sang out.
“Because they’re deviants!” Moofar brayed in a spray of spittle. “Sister marries brother, and they frequently enjoy carnal knowledge of their barnyard animals!”
“Odd,” Zaranda said. “They hold much the same beliefs about you.”
The Tweyarites squalled with communal outrage: “See! The wretches! Such insolence is not to be borne!”
“I must point out,” Zaranda added, “that I’ve seen fully as much—or as little—evidence of such activities in both places.”
Moofar turned white as bleached linen. “Intolerable insult!” he screeched. “Burn her!”
Osbard started forward with the torch, then turned and thrust it into Storric’s hands. “You do it.”
“Why me?” the miller asked, and promptly handed the torch to Moofar.
In his eagerness to pass the torch back to Osbard, Moofar lost control and had to juggle it briefly to keep it from falling to the ground. “You! You take it. You’re the hetman!”
Bellowing elephantine rage, Shield of Innocence began to strain against his bonds. Veins stood out on forehead and stump-thick neck. Ropes parted with a twang. He lunged and with clawed hands caught scrawny Moofar around the neck and hoisted the elder so high that sandaled feet kicked a foot off the ground.
Village volunteers raised the crossbows they had confiscated from Balmeric’s mercenaries. Turning purple, Moofar gestured frantically at them to hold their fire.
“Hold!” Zaranda shouted.
Everybody froze and stared at her. “Shield, it’s all right. Put him down.”
The great orc looked puzzled but obeyed. Stepping back he folded his arms across his chest. Moofar teetered about, feeling his neck.
“Shoot him,” he croaked. “Shoot him, shoot him, shoothimshoothimshoothim—”
“No, no, no,” Zaranda said firmly. “Nobody’s shooting anybody. Now behave yourselves, and listen to me, before I start turning people into newts.”
“Um,” Osbard said, eyes starting from his head. “You said—newts?”
“Newts,” she repeated firmly.
“She’s a sorceress!” gasped Storric. “How could you forget such a thing, Osbard? And you call yourself a hetman?”
“I forgot? I? I didn’t hear you reminding anyone!”
“If you don’t all pipe down and let me have my say,” Zaranda said sweetly, “you�
�ll find out why newts so seldom interrupt conversations.”
Zaranda could no more turn anyone into a newt than she could turn the hetman’s house to solid gold. Under the circumstances, she didn’t feel constrained to point that out.
Still fingering his neck, Moofar glared accusingly at her. “You allowed yourself to be taken.”
“Of course I did,” Zaranda said. “You were starting to get notions. I saw you needed a little talking to, and I wanted to be sure I had your undivided attention.”
She raised her head and looked around the common. The mob drew back as if her gaze were hot to the touch.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” she told them. “We come to your village to teach you to protect yourselves, to throw off the yoke the bandits and the tax collectors of the self-proclaimed nobles have laid upon you all. Yes, we did so for pay; but what we’ve had from you so far is little more than what spoils you recovered from the bandits—which you would never have gotten without our help. Thanks to us, you need never again cower in your houses at first sight of riders approaching. And this is how you treat us.”
The villagers looked suitably contrite. Zaranda was just warming up.
“But that’s not truly what you have to be ashamed of. Oh, no. With your newfound abilities, your new sense of power, all you could think of doing was marching down the river road and afflicting your neighbors with the same depredations you’ve been suffering at bandit hands all these years. Is that worthy?
“We did not come here to help you conquer. We came to help you become unconquerable. Now, do you let us get on to the next stage, or do you throw away everything we’ve all worked for, here and now?”
Silence ruled. “It, ah,” Osbard said. “Well, it could be we’ve acted a little hastily.”
“Could be and is. Now—look at me, Osbard!”
The village chief raised his head as if an anvil were tied to his neck. “Where is my apprentice, Chenowyn?”
“The little bi—the spitfire called up a blight of invisible things that stung like hornets,” Osbard said. “We tied her in a sack and threw her in a woodshed.”