The Western Wizard

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  Even engaged in thoughtful turmoil, Garn remained alert. As they passed a dense copse of vines that lined the looping trail, he heard movement on the opposite side. Instinctively, he crouched.

  Cued by Garn’s sudden wariness, Episte went silent. Rache pulled at his father’s wrist. “What’s wrong?”

  “Quiet. I heard something,” Garn whispered back. He strained for the sound again. The rustle and rattle of needled vines filled his hearing. “Stay here.” He extracted his fingers from the boys’ grips.

  Accustomed to obedience, the children remained still. Episte took Rache’s hand though whether to comfort and protect or out of fear, Garn did not know. Cautiously, he circled the copse, drawing his knife from the pocket of his leathers. With the town at war, he had taken to wearing a sword at all times; but he would not free it until he found the need. It would hamper quiet, careful movement in the forest.

  As Garn completed his creep around the brambles, another wild flurry of movement seized his attention. A doe lay on its side in the clearing, its thrashing tangling its hind legs deeper in the brush. Its body lay twisted from injury or pain, and one foreleg hung limp while the others kicked. As the ex-gladiator approached, the crazed struggle resumed. The animal lashed and wriggled. Though it freed itself from the copse, it clearly could not stand.

  “Papa?” Rache called.

  “It’s all right,” Garn said. “Come here. Slowly and carefully.”

  Leaves crunched as the boys worked their way around the clearing. In the moments before their arrival, the deer went still, head flopping to the dirt, flanks heaving. The jagged edge of a broken shaft poked from the shoulder of its flaccid leg. A flake of silver paint from the crest revealed it as the arrow of one of Santagithi’s archers. The dried blood around the entry hole looked old.

  “Deer.” Rache clapped his hands to his cheeks, excited.

  “What’s it doing here?” Episte approached Garn, looping an arm around the man’s leg.

  The sudden closeness shocked Garn, and he felt torn between joy and revulsion. His own mother had hit as often as cuddled him. He had never known his father as anything but stories told to him by Rache and Santagithi’s other guards. In his childhood, only Rache Kallmirsson had ever given Garn reassuring pats, hugs, or squeezes. After Rache’s betrayal, when Garn had lived with no contact but blade slashes, fist blows, and whip cuts, the physical contact they had shared as children seemed tainted and ugly. It was Mitrian who finally taught Garn to again see touching as a display of affection rather than an attack.

  Apparently sensing Garn’s discomfort, Episte released him. “How come it’s just lying there?”

  “Some hunter hurt it and didn’t finish his job.” Seeing an opportunity to teach and pleased by the boys’ interest, Garn relied on tenets that Arduwyn had emphasized repeatedly. More than once, the red-haired hunter had delayed travel to track a deer that his arrow had wounded instead of killed outright. At first, Garn believed the hunter’s motive was pride, that not delivering a first killing shot bruised Arduwyn’s dignity. Later, he had watched the hunter ignore other game while in pursuit of his quarry. Garn’s questioning had induced a reply he quoted now for his own son’s benefit. “When you wound something, you have the obligation to hunt it down and kill it, no matter how long it takes or how inconvenient it seems.”

  Garn approached the deer. Exhausted, it trembled but did not lurch or thrash again. Shielding the sight from the boys with his body, Garn drove his knife through the neck, tearing to sever the artery. The animal gave one last kick, then stiffened and stilled, bright red blood leaking from the wound.

  “Why?” Rache asked, edging forward to stand beside Episte.

  It took Garn a moment to realize that Rache had questioned his words not his actions. He cleaned blood from the knife and returned it to his sheath. Turning, he faced the children, steeling himself to carry the carcass back to town. “Because there’re too many people hungry to waste food, and it’s not fair to the deer to leave it suffering.”

  “Uncle Garn,” Episte said, using the title the adults had chosen. Initially, the boy had referred to him as “papa” or “papa-Garn,” but that carried false and embarrassing implications about Garn’s and Emerald’s relationship. “Uncle Garn,” Episte repeated, apparently not feeling as if he had captured Garn’s attention fully.

  Realizing he was still not meeting Episte’s gaze, Garn forced himself to do so. With time and familiarity, he felt certain he could overcome his prejudices. For all the time he had spent plotting Rache’s downfall, they had ended their relationship at peace. Proud of recognizing his bias and putting it to rest, Garn crouched to Episte’s level and clutched the boy’s hands with genuine warmth. “What is it, Episte?”

  Episte stared into Garn’s eyes with a child’s innocence and ignorance of tact. “When you made my papa’s legs not work, how come you didn’t kill him?”

  Garn froze. A million thoughts converged on him at once. He fought for the controlled, rational part of his mind that would have the answer to Episte’s question, that could make a child understand the differences between an animal and a man, that could explain hatred, bitterness, and an adult’s need for vengeance. Then, emotion swept logic away, stripping Garn of coherent speech. Compassion, terror, revulsion, and desperation grappled him at once. His memory sparked images of the crippled sword master whom he had loved, then despised, then learned to respect.

  Trapped, Garn surrendered to emotion, and rage rescued him from the need to consider strategy. “That’s not a subject for children. Don’t bring it up again. Ever.”

  The boys withdrew from the ferocity of Garn’s reply, shocked into frightened silence.

  The heavy-handed cruelty of his own method grated on Garn even as the dismissal of the topic brought relief. He knew a more competent parent might have found the words to defuse the situation and the problem, but he had never learned the skill. For now, and he hoped forever, the matter was settled.

  CHAPTER 15

  War’s End

  The war raged for ten years, and even then showed no sign of ending. Colbey could not recall four consecutive months of peace since the first attack a decade ago. Regularly, men rode to battle the way they once did to their jobs and shops. Those who returned did so in days or weeks, in triumph or defeat, or when food ran low for both armies. Often, Colbey joined the skirmishes and, equally often, he remained behind to train Renshai, women, and children.

  Santagithi aged rapidly in the warring years. His hair went white, and Colbey’s keen eye for physical detail told him that the old general’s reflexes had slowed while his own only seemed to sharpen. But Santagithi’s mind remained quick, evidenced, if by nothing else, by the fact that the war continued. For, while the ranks of the Vikerians had swelled with neighboring Northmen eager to kill Renshai, Santagithi’s allies sent no aid at all. By the time Santagithi’s message arrived, Béarn had been set upon by a small but cunning band of traitors led by Morhane’s bastard son. Pirates had also hit the coast, cued or instigated by Rathelon’s men. Sterrane had enlisted the aid of Pudar and discovered that the diverse and ever-changing populace of the trading city shared and traded diseases as well as goods. When the Pudarian soldiers left Béarn, with the pirates dispatched but Rathelon still at large, an epidemic of the consumption remained behind. The disease galloped through the royal city, leaving many Béarnides as pale skeletons. By report, Sterrane had lost his wife. Arduwyn and Bel buried two children, and the archer himself had begun to shake with chills.

  Yet while plagues in the southwest killed indiscriminately, widows and orphans abounded in the Town of Santagithi. Trade ground to a halt. Men hunted for food in groups. Though it obviously grieved Santagithi, teen-agers became warriors overnight to replace casualties of the ceaseless war. Still, Santagithi adamantly insisted that no child join the war before the age of thirteen. So, though Rache was the first blooded, Episte joined Colbey’s troop nearly two years before him.

  Now, hal
fway down the line of formation, Colbey watched the two youngest Renshai among the troop of seventy men he and Santagithi led between the Granite Hills’ barren crags. Episte had inherited the Renshai’s tendency to appear younger than their ages. He stood no taller than a ten-year-old, with wide, innocent eyes and a hairless face. Though small, his hands gripped his father’s longsword with confidence. In battle, he moved with the skill of the ages, and his sword danced like a live thing.

  Thirteen years old to the day, Rache stood only inches shorter than his sire and nearly as broad. His face was becomingly angular, and his hair hung in a tawny cascade of tangles. His chin sported a few coiled tufts of beard. He raised his head proudly as he rode toward his first battle at Episte’s side. He had not landed a single blow since the incident in Santagithi’s courtroom a decade ago.

  Scraggly grasses and ferns peeked through cracks in the cold, gray stone. Streams wound through passes and the lusher valleys, but the creek bed Santagithi’s army rode through lay parched. Obviously wearied by the un-varying continuity of war, many of the men stared at the dust clouds raised by the hooves of their horses. But, to Colbey, every contest became a new endeavor. Whether he rode to his first war or his millionth, his blood warmed, and his sword could never take enough lives to sate its hunger. He felt the wary prickle that signaled an unseen peril, an uneasiness that went far beyond the inevitability of combat. Colbey left his position in line. “Santagithi.” He drew up his horse directly beside the general’s.

  Santagithi nodded ever so slightly, a gesture that acknowledged Colbey’s presence but gave a clear warning the general did not wish to be drawn from his thoughts.

  Colbey continued, undaunted. “When was the last rain?”

  Santagithi frowned, obviously annoyed by what appeared to be small talk pulling him from his strategies. “Four days. Why?”

  Colbey scanned the horizon. The mountains rose, sheer, from the path. A bend ahead hid the winding continuation of the trail. “This creek is dry. I didn’t think it was the right time of year for that.” Colbey gave the facts, without speculation. Santagithi could draw a conclusion far better than he could.

  Santagithi drew up his steed with a broad gesture that arrested the entire army as one. He signaled for Jakot at the rear. “Good one of us has some sense. Men can drain a stream as well as nature, and it is of the gravest importance that we discover which is responsible in this case.”

  Jakot pulled up beside them and Santagithi turned from Colbey to address his captain softly. “Turn the men around and lead them back to the caves. We need to talk.”

  Jakot’s expression went as serious as his general’s. “Yes, sir.” Without question, he quietly herded the men around. Colbey and Santagithi followed the troop from the pass, up a wide slope, to the caves. There, the men dismounted, waiting, as Santagithi conferred with the officers he had brought with him: Colbey, Garn, Mitrian, and Jakot.

  Santagithi explained his fears. “Someone quiet, preferably someone the Northmen will not view as a threat, needs to sneak up that mountain.” With a careful gesture, he singled out one of the slopes that formed the valley they had just exited. “And find out what’s going on.” He fell into an uncomfortable silence.

  Colbey knew that the general wrestled with his decision. The only reasonable choices for the mission were Mitrian and Episte, either of whom would need to be sent without a sword. If the Vikerians spotted the spy, they would be less likely to act against a woman or one they believed to be a child, especially if they discovered him or her unarmed. Yet Colbey knew, without the need to read a thought, that Santagithi did not wish to send his daughter or Rache’s son alone and weaponless into the territory of the enemy.

  The Renshai spared Santagithi the decision. “I’ll go. I know stealth best. I can achieve your purposes as quietly as anyone and in less time.”

  Santagithi frowned, the same wall of discomfort and guilt radiating from him that Colbey met whenever he placed himself in danger or Santagithi suggested a course of action for the oldest Renshai that did not quite seem to fit with his usual strategies. It appeared to Colbey as if Santagithi had been purposefully hiding some piece of information even from his thoughts, as if he knew the old Renshai could read them. Several times, Colbey had tried to relax the general enough to let that idea slip from him, but without success. Whatever bothered Santagithi was a thing he wanted to keep not only from his people and from his friend, but from himself. Still, though the concept bothering Santagithi for more than a decade did not surface, his strategy did.

  Colbey seized upon the knowledge to make his argument. “If we can’t sneak one man to a vantage above the Northmen you and I both know are there, how can you expect to station an army there?”

  Santagithi stiffened, apparently still surprised by Colbey’s ability, though he had experienced its effects for nearly a decade and a half. “All right,” he said at length, though with obvious reluctance. “But be careful. And don’t do anything except look.”

  Colbey slipped from the cave mouth. Santagithi turned to his other officers and began to detail his strategy.

  * * *

  Colbey clambered up the cliff face as lithe as a cat and as silent as a cat’s shadow. Finding an intermittently broken ledge the height of three men above the ground, he flowed along it, easing across the gaps. After a quarter mile, he stopped at a bend in the riverbed. Crouched against a crevice, he wedged his feet against rock, clinging to a twisted root for support. Arranging a curtain of brush over his hiding place, he gathered his mind into a firm, controlled knot.

  Eyes tightly closed in concentration, Colbey probed before him with a tendril of thought, just as he had with the sentries before the tent of Prince Verrall of Pudar. He had not actively attempted to read men’s minds since that time; his blood brother’s insistence made him cautious with his gift to the point of paranoia. Yet Shadimar had only deemed such a violation an act of war, not a blasphemy. Clearly, then, battle was a legitimate use for the talent. Colbey let his consciousness meander forward, connected to his thoughts by a thready, mental umbilical cord.

  Gradually, the tendril tapped lightly against another man’s thoughts. Bored. Bored and hungry. Colbey thrust deeper. Tired of the wait and anxious for combat. Clashing steel and death screams. Colbey drew a long breath, feeling strength seem to ebb from him. Having never before used his mind powers so actively, it never occurred to him that the effort might drain him as fully as physical war. Sweat beaded his brow as his consciousness bounced from one Vikerian mind to the next, counting, no longer focusing on content. Every one seemed nearly the same, ruthless barbarians as eager for death as to deal it. They were all warriors who would abandon strategy for a chance to fight like wolves, who would rather think with their swords than their heads. And Colbey understood them all. Except one.

  Again, Colbey gathered his thoughts to him. After his previous efforts, the attempt seemed ponderously difficult. Uncertain of the best way to enter the leader’s mind swiftly and deeply, he drew his mental strength into a dense ball, then thrust it for the lieutenant with the abrupt and deadly speed of a striking cobra.

  Colbey received a brilliant flash of light, surrounded by pain. The Northman recoiled in sudden agony, thoughts scattering. Then, as he grew accustomed to Colbey’s presence, the attack dulled to a throbbing headache. The other wasted a few moments wondering about the source of the pain. Seeing the futility in such an exercise, he abandoned this line of thought for the more pressing matter of his plan and his charges. By the scouts’ report, Santagithi’s army should arrive any moment.

  Even as Colbey identified the leader as Valr Kirin, the strength of his own mind and body drained away. Colbey’s grip failed, and he plummeted from the mountain ledge.

  Colbey tried to twist, but found himself unable to gather enough power even to tense. Fully paralyzed, he knew fear for the first time in his life. He tried to prepare his mind for the coming impact, but his efforts had drained the power of directed thought
as well as of his body. He landed on the stones in complete relaxation, without pain. Habit goaded him to mentally explore his body for injury, but experience told him that the simple task of trying would steal consciousness as well as strength. Instead, he lay still, granting himself neither thought nor movement until he felt strength ebb back into his limbs and his mind. Only then did he allow his mind to touch his body.

  Colbey lay in a sparse growth of brush near the creek bed. Bruises racked his left hip and shoulder. Stones had torn the skin the length of his left calf, and blood oozed from a gash across the back of his head. Finding nothing worse, Colbey considered himself lucky to the point of gods’ protection, though logic told him it was the limpness of his body that had spared him. Had he landed stiffened, he would have broken at least a few bones.

  Colbey clambered to his feet and clamped a rag to the back of his head to staunch the bleeding. He limped back to the cave.

  Santagithi met Colbey at the mouth. The general’s gaze followed the dirty tatters of the Renshai’s jerkin, then locked on the blood-plastered clump of hair at the nape of his neck.

  Colbey did not explain. “Seventy-four Northmen are lying in wait at a dam they built. And there may be still more waiting in reserve. If we had continued further, they would have unleashed the stream upon us.”

  “Did they see you?”

  “No.” Colbey felt dizziness sweep through his head in a wash of black and white spots, and a ringing noise filled his ears, so loud that he scarcely heard Santagithi’s question.

  “What happened to you?”

  “I fell.” Colbey explained, his voice sounding distant, as if someone else was speaking.

  “How?” Santagithi pressed.

  Colbey understood the general’s need to understand. Santagithi had too much faith in Colbey’s agility to believe he had fallen accidentally. Often the general found foul play in situations others perceived as coincidence. Still, Colbey wished the grilling could wait until his vertigo passed. “I lost my hold. No one’s fault but my own. I have absolutely no doubt about that.”