by Jim Butcher
He glanced at the slave behind him. Amara’s expression seemed remote, distracted, and she walked with a definite limp, bare feet pale against the icy grass. Tavi winced and said, “We should stop before long, to get your feet warmed up. We could strip one of the cloaks, at least try to wrap them.”
“The wrappings would freeze,” she said, after a moment’s silence. “The air will keep them warm better than cloth. Just keep going. Once we get to your steadholt, we can warm them up.”
Tavi frowned, more at the way her attention seemed fixed on things elsewhere than at what she had to say. He resolved to keep a close eye on her: Frozen feet were nothing to scoff at, and if she was used to life in the city, she might not realize how dangerous it could be on the frontier, or how quickly frostbite could claim her limbs or her life. He stepped up the pace a little, and Amara kept up with him.
They reached the causeway and started down it, but had walked for no more than an hour when Tavi felt the ground begin to rumble, a tremor so faint that he had to stop and place his spread fingers against the flagstones in order to detect it. “Hold on,” he said. “I think someone’s coming.”
Amara’s expression sharpened almost at once, and Tavi saw her draw the cloak a little more closely against her, her hands beneath it and out of sight. Her eyes flickered around them. “Can you tell who?”
Tavi chewed on his lip. “Feels kind of like Brutus. My uncle’s fury. Maybe it’s him.”
The slave swallowed and said, “I feel it now. Earth fury coming.”
In only a moment more, Bernard appeared from around a curve in the road. The flagstones themselves rippled up into a wave beneath his feet, which he kept planted and still, his brow furrowed in concentration, so that the earth moved him forward in one slow undulation, like a leaf borne upon an ocean wave. He wore his winter hunting clothes, heavy and warm, his cloak one of thanadent-hide, layered with gleaming black feather-fur and proof against the coldest nights. He bore his heaviest bow in his hand, an arrow already strung to it, and his eyes, though sunken and surrounded by darker patches of skin, gleamed alertly.
The Steadholder came down the road as swiftly as a man could run, his pace only slowing as he neared the two travelers, the earth slowly subsiding beneath his feet until he stood upon the causeway, walking the final few paces to them.
“Uncle!” Tavi cried, and threw himself at the man, wrapping his arms as far around him as they could go. “Thank the furies. I was so afraid that you’d been hurt.”
Bernard laid a hand on Tavi’s shoulder, and the young man thought he felt his uncle relax, just a little. Then he gently, firmly pushed Tavi back and away from him.
Tavi blinked up at him, his stomach twisting in sudden uncertainty. “Uncle? Are you all right?”
“No,” Bernard rumbled, his voice quiet. He kept his eyes on Tavi, steadily. “I was hurt. So were others, because I was out chasing sheep with you.”
“But Uncle,” Tavi began.
Bernard waved a hand, his voice hard if not angry. “You didn’t mean it. I know. But because of your mischief some of my folk came to grief. Your aunt nearly died. We’re going home.”
“Yes, sir,” Tavi said quietly.
“I’m sorry to do it, but you can forget about those sheep, Tavi. It appears that there are some things you aren’t swift to learn after all.”
“But what about—” Tavi began.
“Peace,” the big man growled, a warning anger in the tone, and Tavi cringed, feeling the tears well in his eyes. “It’s done.” Bernard lifted his glower from Tavi and asked, “Who the crows are you?”
Tavi heard the rustle of cloth as the slave dipped into a curtsey. “My name is Amara, sir. I was carrying a message for my master, from Riva to Garrison. I became lost in the storm. The boy found me. He saved my life, sir.”
Tavi felt a brief flash of gratitude toward the slave and looked up at his uncle, hopefully.
“You were out in that? Fortune favors fools and children,”Bernard said. He grunted and asked, “You’re a runaway, are you?”
“No, sir.”
“We’ll see,” Bernard said. “Come with me, lass. Don’t run. If I have to track you down, I’ll get irritable.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bernard nodded and then frowned at Tavi again, his voice hardening. “When we get home, boy, you’re to go to your room and stay there until I decide what to do with you. Understand?”
Tavi blinked up at his uncle, shocked. He had never reacted like this before. Even when he’d given Tavi a whipping, there had never been the sense of raw, scantily controlled anger in his voice. Bernard was always in control of himself, always calm, always relaxed. Looking up at his uncle, Tavi felt acutely aware of the sheer size of the man, of the hard, angry glitter to his eyes, of the strength of his huge hands. He didn’t dare speak, but he tried to plead with his uncle, silently, letting his expression show how sorry he was, how much he wanted things to be right again. He knew, dimly, that he was crying but he didn’t care.
Bernard’s face remained hard as granite, and as unforgiving. “Do you understand, boy?”
Tavi’s hopes crumbled before that gaze, wilted away before the heat of his uncle’s anger.
“I understand, sir,” he whispered.
Bernard turned away and started walking down the causeway again, back toward home. “Hurry up,” he said, without looking back. “I’ve wasted enough time on this nonsense.”
Tavi stared after him, shocked, numb. His uncle hadn’t been this angry the day before, when he’d caught Tavi leaving. What had made this happen? What could drive his uncle to that kind of fury?
The answer came at once. Someone he cared about had been harmed — his sister Isana. Had she truly almost died? Oh, furies, how bad was it?
He had lost something, Tavi knew, something more than sheep or status as a skilled apprentice. He had lost his uncle’s respect — something that he had only just began to realize that he had possessed. Bernard had never treated him like the others, not really — never shown him pity for his lack of furycraft, never assumed Tavi’s incompetence. There had been, especially over the past few months, a kind of comradeship Tavi hadn’t known with anyone else, a quiet and unobtrusive bond between near-equals, rather than his uncle speaking down to a child. It was something that had been built slowly over the past several years, as he served as his uncle’s apprentice.
And it was gone. Tavi had never really realized it was there, and it was gone.
So were the sheep.
So was his chance at the future, of escaping this valley, escaping his own status as a furyless freak, an unwanted bastard child of the Legion camps.
Tears blinded him, though he fought to keep them silent. He couldn’t see his uncle, though Bernard’s impatient snarl came to him clearly. “Tavi.”
He didn’t hear Amara start walking until he had stumbled forward, after his uncle. He put one foot in front of the other, blindly, the ache inside him as sharp and more painful than any of the wounds he had received the day before.
Tavi walked without looking up. It didn’t matter where his feet were taking him.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
CHAPTER 15
For Amara, the walk back to Bernardholt proved to be a long and arduous exercise in ignoring pain. Despite her words to Tavi earlier that morning, her ankle, injured during the wild landing beneath last night’s storm, had stiffened and burned hideously, barely supporting her weight at all. Similarly, the cut Aldrick ex Gladius had dealt her back in the renegade camp throbbed and ached. She could barely ignore one injury without the other occupying her full attention, but even so, she had enough presence of mind to feel pain on behalf of the boy trudging along in front of her.
The reaction of his uncle had not been unkind, she thought at first. Many men would simply have commenced with beating the boy, and only after would they have had anything to say about why the beating had been delivered, if at all. But the longer she walked, the more
clear it became just how deeply injured the boy had been by his uncle’s words—or perhaps the lack of them. He was used to being treated kindly, and with some measure of respect. The quiet, cool distance that the Steadholder had shown was new to Tavi, and it had hurt him badly—dashing his hopes for making a future for himself at the Academy and driving home the notion that without furycrafting of his own, he was nothing more than a helpless child, a danger to himself and others.
And here, on the wild frontiers of the realm of humanity, where life or death hinged on the daily struggle against hostile furies and beasts, perhaps it was true.
Amara shook her head and focused on the stones of the causeway beneath her feet. Though she felt some empathy for the boy, she could not allow his plight to distract her from her task, namely, to discover what was happening within the Valley and then to take whatever action she thought best to see to it that the realm was protected. She already had some facts to piece together, and her attention was best spent on them.
The Marat had returned to the Calderon Valley, something that had not happened in nearly seventeen years. The Marat warrior Tavi and his uncle had confronted could well have been an advance scout for an attacking horde.
But the growing light of day made that possibility seem increasingly remote, bringing inconsistencies to light. If they had truly encountered a Marat, why had the boy’s uncle showed virtually no relief upon finding his missing nephew? For that matter, how had the Steadholder been on his feet again at all? If the wounds were as serious as the boy had described, it would have taken an extremely talented watercrafterto have had Bernard on his feet again, and Amara didn’t think that anyone that skilled would live far from one of the major cities of the Realm. Surely, the injury must have been less than the boy described—and if that was true, then perhaps the incident with the Marat had been likewise exaggerated.
Put into the context of fiction, Tavi’s tale of his adventures the previous day made a great deal more sense. The boy, crushed with feelings of inadequacy, could have made up the tales in order to make himself feel more important. It was a far more plausible explanation of what he had told her.
Amara frowned. It was a more plausible explanation, but the boy’s courage and resourcefulness could not be denied. Not only had he survived the violent furystorm of the evening before, but he had also rescued her — at considerable danger to himself—when he could have taken himself to safety without risk. Such courage, conviction, and sacrifice rarely went hand in hand with falsehood.
In the end, Amara decided that she had very little information to work with, until she had spoken to the uncle as well—and he seemed to be in no mood for any kind of discussion. She would have to learn more. If the Marat were preparing to attack again, defending against them would require a major mobilization, at the end of the year and at fantastic expense to both the High Lord of Riva and the Crown’s treasury. There would be resistance to such news— and if she went to the local Count with nothing more than the word of a shepherd boy to go on, she would doubtless hear endless repetitions of the tale of the boy who cried thanadent. She would need the testimony of one of the Count’s trusted landowners, one of the Steadholders, to get more than a token response.
The best reaction she could hope for in such a case would be for the Count to dispatch scouts of his own to find the enemy, and even if they managed to return from such a deadly encounter, it might be with a Marat horde on their heels. The Marat could swallow the valley in one assault and ravage the lands around Riva, while its High Lord, held captive by the onrush of winter, could do little but watch his lands be destroyed.
Ideally, with Bernard’s testimony, she might get the Count to mount a more active defense from Garrison, and to send to Riva for reinforcements. Perhaps even manage a preemptive strike, something that might disperse the wave of an oncoming horde before it broke upon the Realm’s shores.
On the other hand, if there was no imminent invasion and the Crown’s agent roused the local Legions and incurred vast expenditure on Riva, it would be a major embarrassment before the other High Lords, and the Senate. Gaius’s reputation might not survive the subsequent attacks, further agitating the already restless High Lords with what could be tragic results.
Amara swallowed. Gaius had assigned her to represent his interests in the Valley. Her decisions would be his. And while he would bear the moral and ethical responsibility for her actions here, the High Lords might demand legal retribution against her for the misuse of Crown authority—and Gaius would be compelled to grant it. Imprisonment, blinding, and crucifixion were some of the gentler sentences she could expect from such a trial.
The Crown’s reputation, the possible security of the Realm, and her own life rode upon her decisions. Best she make them carefully.
She needed more information.
They came to Bernardholt some time just after the sun reached its peak.
Amara was struck at once by the solidity of the place. She had been born and raised in a steadholt, and she knew the signs of a strong holding—and one in a heightened state of alert. The steadholt’s central buildings had walls higher than some military encampments, reaching nearly twice the height of a man and made of seamless, dark grey stone, laboriously raised from the ground by a powerful earthcrafter. The gates, heavy oak bound with steel, were half-closed, and a grizzled holder wearing an old sword stood on the wall above them, squinting laconically out over the distance.
Outbuildings stood not far from the walls, all of them one-story affairs, including what looked like a forge, vast gargant burrow, a combination barn and stables, and several animal pens. The granary, she knew, would be within the central enclosure, along with the kitchens, the living areas, and several smaller holding pens for animals, usually used only in emergencies. A pair of gargants, tended by a tall, handsome young man with wind-ruddy cheeks and black hair, stood in harness, waiting patiently while he threw several long, heavy ropes into a sack and secured it to one side of the harness.
“Frederic,” Bernard called, as they drew closer. “What are you doing with the team?”
The young man, already tall and strong for a boy not yet old enough to depart for the Legions, tugged at a forelock with one hand and ducked his head to the Steadholder. “Taking them down to the south field to pull out that big stone, sir.”
“Can you handle the fury in that one?”
“Thumper and me can, yes sir.” The boy started to turn away. “Hullo, Tavi. Glad you’re back in one piece.”
Amara looked at the shepherd boy, but Tavi barely lifted his gaze to the other young man. He waved a hand, the motion vague.
Bernard grunted. “There’s another storm in the air. I want you back in two hours, Fred, whether the stone’s moved or not. I have no intentions of more people getting hurt.”
Frederic nodded and turned back to his work, as Bernard strode on to the gates, nodded to the watchmen over them, and slipped into the steadbolt proper. Once inside, Bernard said, “Tavi.”
The boy, without waiting to hear anything else, paced toward the side of the great hall and flung himself up the wooden staircase built along the outside of the building and into a door on the upper story, where Amara knew living quarters would commonly be situated.
Bernard watched the young man vanish inside with a grimace on his face. Then he let out a heavy sigh and glanced back at her. “You, come with me.”
“Yes, sir,” Amara said, and sketched a small curtsey. It was then that her ankle chose to give out on her altogether, and she wavered to one side with a little yelp.
Bernard’s hand shot out and gripped her shoulder, through the scarlet cloak, steadying her—and closing tightly over the painful cut on her upper arm. She let out an involuntary gasp of pain, and her balance swam.
The big Steadholder stepped forward and simply picked her up as though she weighed no more than a child. “Crows, girl,” he muttered with a scowl. “If you were hurt, you should have said something.”
Amara swallowed, as a pang of relief from her beleaguered body warred with a nervous anxiety at the Steadholder’s sudden proximity. Like Aldrick, he was an enormous man, but he exuded none of the sense of placid, patient danger that surrounded the swordsman. His strength was something different — warm and reassuring and alive, and he smelled of leather and hay. Amara struggled to say something, but wound up remaining awkwardly silent as the Steadholder carried her into the great hall and then into the kitchens behind it, where warm air and the smells of baking bread wrapped around her like a blanket.
He carried her over to a table near the fire and promptly sat her down upon it.
“Sir, really,” she said. “I’m all right.”
Bernard snorted. “The crows you are, girl.” He turned and drew up a stool to the table and sat down on it, taking her foot quite gently between his hands. His touch was warm, confident, and again she felt soothed, as though some of that confidence had transferred into her by the touch. “Cold,” he said. “Not as bad as it could be. You used crafting to keep your feet warm?”
She blinked at him and nodded mutely.
“No substitute for a good pair of socks.” He frowned over her foot, fingers moving smoothly. “Hurt there?”
She shook her head.
“There?” Pain flashed through the whole of her leg, and she couldn’t keep the grimace from her face. She nodded.
“Not broken. Sprain. We need to get your feet warmed up.” He rose and walked to a shelf, withdrawing a small copper tub. He touched a finger to the spigot above the washbasin and held his hand beneath it until the water streaming out steamed and turned his skin red with its heat. Then he started filling the tub.