by Dave Luckett
He could see the mage nodding to himself. The peasant was saying that he had left before the fugitives escaped. The little man grunted. His eyes unfocussed, but his shield wasn't all that it might be. Gerd was concentrating on maintaining his mask, but still he heard odd snippets of the description the other was sending.
"Step into the shadow a moment," said the mage.
Gerd allowed a flicker of fear to cross his face. He did as he was told, though. Folk did, when a mage ordered. And any man would seem apprehesive when a mage stared at him.
There was the nimbus of light, thinner and far less dense than Gerd had seen around his own hand, yet easy enough to see in the shade. It passed over his face, and where it passed Gerd held the spell aside, not allowing the two to meet.
That was a difficult task. He had practised it and practised it with Nela, but Nela's touch was flickering, tiny and feather-light. If this man had more power, it would cover more, and the result would be that the distortion of the spell would become more obvious.
But this was the lightest of brushes. If it had lingered, the magic holding Gerd's face would have warped, but the touch was fleeting. The man had some power, and he was precise enough, but he had a disadvantage of which he was not aware. He thought he knew that he would see a seeming if he looked for it. He looked, and there was none where he was looking, so it wasn't there.
He grunted. "Now you, goodwife." Nela looked stupidly alarmed. "No, I won't hurt you." Patience was needed with peasants. "Step closer."
This was easier. Nela's mask was rigid, but then again most people's faces would be. She showed the whites of her eyes, staring at her husband. His eyes flickered between his wife and the mage. Just as you'd expect.
The mage stepped back. "All right. Wait a moment."
Silence. The afternoon was warm, the birds gone quiet for the still hours until the shadows lengthened. Gerd, listening, heard nothing. The voice that this man was hearing was better shielded than his own. But the mage nodded at last.
"Very well. You can go," he said, dismissing the peasants. Quite politely, really.
Gerd knuckled his forehead. He asked no questions, of course. You didn't ask questions of a mage, that much he knew. He jerked his head to his wife, and they turned and walked away down the eastern road.
*
"This is the last village, I'm sure," remarked Gerd. He looked down at the houses crouching in the hollow, as he leaned on the staff he’d cut the day before.
Village! It was a half-dozen poor dwellings, not much more than huts. Beyond, the mountains frowned down.
"Not often a pedlar would get out here," said Nela.
"Wouldn't turn much of a profit, no. They probably have no coin at all. Perhaps we can trade for food, instead. If they've enough of that." He looked back at the way they'd come. Pinewoods and mountain meadows, sharp, brawling streams, stony pastures, the road trending steadily upwards. "Winters would be hard, hereabouts." He half-waved at the scrap of pasture by the largest of the houses. "Four horses are far too many."
Nela nodded. She'd learned a bit more about how a peasant lived, in the last five villages and fifty miles. "They're here, then," she said.
"Stands to reason. But we can't go on staring at the place all day." He shrugged his cloak carefully over the mail, making sure it was hidden. They would know he had it; still it might come as a surprise, if they didn't see it. And it would be a real asset, anyway, if it came to that. Alissa made good mail.
They trudged down the path to the beaten space between the houses. These were crowded close together, to give as much space for a garden as could be, here by the brook where there was a little soil. Three or four women weeded and spread muck. Might as well get what benefit they could from the horses that were eating their substance. The men would be out with the sheep.
But there was no time for greetings or salesmanship. The door of the largest house opened, and three men stepped out.
Two were Kihreeans, hard-bodied and hard-faced. The third was a mage, a young man, thin, with intense grey eyes. Gerd couldn't be sure whether he'd seen him before. Perhaps.
"You are far off your usual ground," said the mage, staring at them. Gerd felt the brush of his power, and avoided it, ducking his head, saying nothing. He looked back at his wife, who was shuffling uneasily.
"What's your business here?" asked the mage, still probing for a seeming. This one was more powerful. Gerd had to concentrate to shape the spell away from his touch. There were moments when he thought the other brushed close. And he had to answer. Well, if this young fellow could talk and use his power at the same time, so could he.
A travelling pedlar could talk, that was true. It was part of the trade. But they talked to other peasants; that was the thing. Before a mage, especially one who seemed preemptory and impatient, even a pedlar would be a little tongue-tied. It wouldn't be surprising that his answer was a little slow.
Gerd gestured back the way they'd come. "We'm come up from the valley. Maybe go round east after this, but we need food. Trade for it here, like." He grinned, uneasily. "Not much to spare down there. Thought maybe..."
"You thought wrong. It's the same everywhere."
Well, the taxes are the same, as is the requirement to support your local wizards. And find stabling for their horses, no matter how pinched matters might be, what with having to put up guests as well. After all, the horses would be eating your own oats. Gerd grinned again, his mask changing with his own face.
"You should go back," said the mage, with authority.
"Aye, we will, master, but can we trade?" Gerd allowed a wheedle to insinuate itself. "It's a long way to come for nothing."
The mage flicked a glance at the slab-face of the nearest Kihreean. A minute shrug answered him. "Very well. But be gone within the hour. And go back the way you came. Nobody is allowed to go further into the mountains."
They had to barter for food, not buy it. The villagers had little to spare, and no use for silver. The terms would have been ruinous, if there had been any point in holding on to the goods.
"We'll have to get out fast, after this," murmured Gerd. "As soon as Longrobe the Intense works out what we've paid for this truck, he'll smell a rat."
"The villagers are pleased, anyway," said Nela.
"Pleased, yes. So much so they're going to talk about it."
They secured their load - it was little enough, for at least a week's travel - and set off down the path again, going back. Over the brow of the first hill, still moving stolidly. Once over it, they stepped out.
"The nearest cover is a mile back," said Gerd. "We'll have to wait there for dark." But there was no need. They'd barely reached the pines when the hoofs sounded behind them.
"Faster than I thought," said Gerd.
"Should we get off the road?" asked Nela.
"No. Remember who we are. That's who we stay as long as we can. This is a good place, here."
The way led through a hillside stand of pine trees, set to hold the slope. The trees were scattered among half-buried rocks, some of the boulders as big as a house. The path wound between them, but keeping roughly to a height.
They halted at a spot where it widened a little. Gerd turned and leaned wearily on his staff. Nela stared back at the horsemen, blank stupid surprise on her face.
They trotted up, three of them. That left one more in the village. One of the Kihreeans. This was the mage and the other two. They reined in, ten paces away. Too far.
"Back to the village," said the mage, jerking his head.
Gerd felt the liberating wash of decision. He had to get them in closer, first. "Master?" he asked, clearly startled. "We'm doing just like you said, ain't we?"
The mage rose in his stirrups, looking menacing. "Get back to the village. There's something not right about this. You paid far too much."
He was a young mage, and he knew his place and his power. He saw the pedlar step forward, hands outstretched. "They would not sell for less, master. They r
obbed us blind. They knew we had to find food, or starve. Close-fisted bastards. They'd milk their own mothers."
"Aye, but everyone knows that. Pedlars especially. Peasants are what they are. No pedlar would make himself a hostage to them." It was a poor audience, but still the young man wished to demonstrate the elegance of his reasoning. And it was obscurely satisfying for him to look down on these people from the saddle, and to have them approach him, hands out, pleading. "This needs probing. Take them."
The Kihreeans urged their horses forward. Their swords were out. They closed in on the man on the path, with the woman cowering behind, of course. Awkwardly, they began to turn their horses. They didn’t get down. Who'd bother, for this?
"Come," said the mage, and pulled his own horse's head around. He turned his back on them in contempt. He was used to being obeyed. That was the trouble.
There was a confused sound behind him, consisting of a thump, the sudden scream of a horse, a cry, and a bellow of pain, all coming too close together to be separated. Naturally, the mage twisted in his saddle, hauling at his reins again.
Then he had to deal with a mount that was fighting the bit, shying and leaping both at once. There was a golden dragon on the path behind him, glowing and enormous under the shadow of the trees. The mage prided himself on his horsemanship, but it was all he could do to keep his seat. Both the sea-rovers were down, and there was blood on the path.
The mage had only a moment, and his training actually told against him. The dragon drew his eye, of course. A moment or two passed before he saw that it was only a seeming. Then there was the fraction of a second taken up considering a counterspell and then realising that it wouldn't matter to the horse, and then another small chunk of time realising that the pedlar had launched himself at him.
Gerd had spent no more than a second on the two Kihreeans, and was already running forward as the mage swung around. He didn't know if he'd killed them. It didn't matter. Both were out of it, one cut apiece as they were flung to the ground and their horses bolted in opposite directions. He had covered most of the distance between himself and the mage while the young man had been chatting to him. Now he flung himself forward.
He could have killed. The mage was unarmoured, as the Kihreeans had been. The Penrose sword would have sliced through spine or neck as easily as cobwebs. But Gerd flung it aside, leaped, crashed into the rider and hurled him sideways out of the saddle, landing on top of him on the other side, driving the wind out of both of them.
That horse bolted, too, of course. Pure good fortune - or correct riding style - that the mage's foot wasn't caught in the stirrup. Gerd fumbled his dagger out.
"Say a word, and you're a dead man," he snarled, breathless. He needn't have worried. The mage was unconscious.
Footsteps behind Gerd, as he lay prone. If it was one of the Kihreeans, he was dead.
It was Nela, still leading Jane. "Those horses will warn them in the village," she remarked evenly, watching after them.
"Doesn't matter. There's only one more Kihreean." Gerd staggered to his feet. "There's rope in the panniers. The other two?"
Her mouth compressed, but she found the cord and handed it to him. He cut off a length, grudging it, turned the mage over on his face and tied his hands. "One broke his neck in the fall. There was nothing I could have done for him. The other will need a month's nursing - broken arm, bad leg slash, lost a lot of blood. He's barely conscious, but I've stopped the bleeding." She looked down at the mage. "For a moment I thought you'd kill this one."
"I didn't think you'd want me to do that," he said. "He is a mage, after all."
She almost smiled, but shook her head. "A mage who likes his power over people. They go ill together, mages and that sort of liking. And there are times when what I would prefer isn't to the point." A moment later, she was all business again. "Do we take the horses?"
"No. We'd never be able to feed them. This is going to be close enough as it is." He stood up. "We circle the village, moving fast. Keep an eye on the houses. Some Kihreeans can use a bow. It's possible he might come after us, but I don't think so, not at one against two. He will take the horse and ride hell-for-leather for the nearest reinforcements. We'll have to be far away by the time they arrive. All right?"
She nodded. They moved.
*
Beyond the village the valley narrowed. The path faded away altogether. Naturally, they got lost.
It might have been worse. At least the season was kindly, though it was advancing. Sending a mage-shadow ahead made it possible to spy out the ground, but Nela's sending range was not long, and less if she was tired. Gerd had not yet learned to understand what he saw through the sending's eyes. They felt their way south, up pine-clad cols, then along the ridges, with dark narrow gorges on either side, often ending in rock walls that had to be sidled past, taking them off their direction. Finally they limped for days on end over a splintered knot of jumbled stone, a fractured high plateau of ice and rock where the wind howled endlessly. There were places, high meadows, folds in the mountainside, where a little fodder could be found, in this season. It kept Jane alive.
At last, thinner, wind-chapped, footsore, they stumbled down yet one more narrow chasm to find that it was opening out to the west. A brawling stream leapt towards a narrow meadow, where - just in sight - a shepherd was bringing his flock down from the summer pastures.
"We follow the water now, I think," said Gerd. He unwrapped his right hand, flexed it, and examined it. The cut he had taken from a sharp-edged stone on a mountainside three days back was deep, but it looked as if it was healing.
"Slowly," said Nela. "Jane needs the grass. She's had a hard time."
Gerd looked back at her. They'd stripped Jane of all load, saving only the mail shirt. The rest was on their backs. The food had run out. Breakfast had been water and the last of the bread. "We can't move fast, anyway. How's that foot?" Nela had twisted it, descending a treacherous rock-strewn slope that Gerd only remembered in a haze of pain and exhaustion.
"I can walk." She had said that at the time.
They descended the valley slowly. It led to another, gentler, greener, with pasture. They passed sheep folds, empty now. The wind sighed in the pines. Autumn had arrived already, up here.
Late in the day they came to their first village. Or almost. The watch met them, half a mile out.
"Watch?" asked Gerd, leaning on his staff. "The village has a watch?"
He was looking at a grizzle-bearded oldster in a rusted pot-helmet, and three yokels with cudgels. The old man might have been a warrior once. At least he knew how to hold a spear.
"They called out the great muster three days gone," said the veteran. "Now, who are you, come down out of the mountains?"
Gerd glanced back at Nela. In their coarse filthy clothing they looked nondescript, though Gerd still wore his sword under his cloak.
"Just prospectors. We looped through from the north. Been out three weeks or so. Why? What's going on?"
"Well, at least you're not a Kihreean. So, you haven't heard the news? Well, I'm no great one for Walse, you understand, but my daughter married and moved away there. I don't know what's become of her. Those wild men have gone too far this time..."
23
Gerd finished speaking. He stared into the flames. This was luxury: a fire, and food to cook on it. A dry night. A hollow to themselves by the hedgerow, out of the wind. There were other people sleeping in the same fallow field, but they were farther off. The village was packed, every house full to bursting, and this was still two days' journey from Walse. Or, more accurately, from where Walse had been. The news coming out was bad.
Nela watched him. "I slowed you down, I'm afraid," she said. Her face, when Gerd glanced at it, showed only sorrow. "You might have been in time, otherwise."
"No," he said. "We couldn't have moved any faster. Without you, I'd never have got out at all, anyway."
She made no sign. "Nor I, without you." She, too, mused on the pl
ay of the little flames. "And I was a fool to think they'd have spared me, considering what they've done. I owe you my life."
"We owe that much, each to the other."
"At least. Each to the other, in equal part." They waited, one on either side of the fire. The night was cool and dark. The last of the old moon had already set, and autumn was in the air.
"And your friend? Alissa?" she asked.
Gerd shook his head, a slow sweep, without hope, but still certain of his course. "I must go and try to find her. Or find word. I owe her my life, too."
Nela nodded, partly to him, partly to herself. Then she gathered up her cloak and spread it out on the ground by the fire. "It's as well this is the last night of the moon," she said, and he wondered what magic she was speaking of. "Come," she said. "It is time."