The Wind-Witch

by Susan Dexter

  The cellar wasn’t quite empty. Druyan saw, as her sight unblurred, a dim shape stir against the faint backlight. Her heart pounded. She couldn’t move. Rook’s furry shoulder pressed her knee. She stared at the prisoner. There wasn’t room for him to stand upright, but he didn’t try anyway. He was kneeling among the empty baskets.

  “Why didn’t you go with the others?” Druyan demanded fiercely, trying to cover her fright. She shushed the dog, finding the barking more a distraction than a protection. “Why did they leave you?”

  She could just make out the pale blotch of his face as he raised it. It changed shape—from his answer, she realized he’d put his hand up to it.

  “I got hit on the head.” His speech was thick, halting. He coughed feebly, as if his throat pained him.

  “When did they go?”

  No reply. Either he didn’t know, or he couldn’t understand her. The light hadn’t increased, but her eyes were more used to what little there was of it—Druyan could make out a dark patch on the right side of his forehead, which might have been blood, dried and crusted. The raider was touching it with his fingers, but with what looked like great care.

  “I don’t know, Lady.” He coughed again and groaned when the spasm jarred his head.

  Likely he’d been unconscious, Druyan thought. Someone had given him a solid clout—the farmhands had been aimed with rakes and hoes and shovels, any of their stout handles good as a quarterstaff in willing hands. Not likely he’d be able to tell her much, even if he wanted to. Assuming the injury wasn’t feigned, to deceive her.

  “I heard them talking . . . I think I did . . . but I couldn’t . . . I wasn’t awake. I’m not surprised they left me.” Kellis was, however, surprised they hadn’t killed him first. And with every heartbeat sending stabs of agony through his skull, a little disappointed they hadn’t.

  “Gone,” Druyan said bitterly, accepting it at last. She shut her eyes on the useless tears. No matter how hard they worked, there was no way they’d other than fail to get the crop in. And if they missed the crop tithe, someone would come to see why.

  “Lady?”

  She startled again, having nearly forgotten him until that croaking question. Rook growled.

  “I am not four men . . . but I can work. I want to pay my debt to you,” he added in that ragged voice that made her own throat burn.

  “You want to get out of there, for which I certainly don’t blame you,” Druyan said tartly, straightening her spine. Hurt, abandoned, captured, he’d likely agree to anything that promised him release. She backed a step away. “All right. Come out. Keep your hands where I can see them.’ She lifted the fork just a trifle.

  Druyan retreated farther from the door, into the sunlight. Even if he was shanmiing his injury, sheand Rook could deal with him, no question. One to one was a world different from four to one. She heard him scramble to his feet, groaning something that was possibly a curse.

  The man had to stoop to get through the door: and when he had come under the lintel and could stand erect, he clung to the frame for dear life. No chance he was aiming to deceive or lull her—he had a palm-width cut on his forehead, and by the bruising around the wound, it had been a solid blow, no trifling scratch. The skin looked seared. Could he have been hit with a torch? Druyan wondered. His drab clothing was splotched with dark-brown stains, and he had—by the smell—been sick all over himself. He kept his eyes tight shut, as if the daylight pained him.

  Rook was growling still, her hackles rising. The man tipped his head toward her, squinting in what must have been a glare to his half-closed eyes. “No need, little sister,” he whispered. “My fangs are very well blunted.”

  “I’m not your sister,” Druyan said testily, wondering if the blow had bitten into his brain. He might be willing to work, but he didn’t sound as if many of his wits remained to him. And now that she’d let him out of the cellar, just where was she going to put him? Could she force him back into his prison if she offered the food she’d brought? Where else was secure enough? She tried to tally their outbuildings in her mind, to recollect the strengths of walls and doors.

  Come to that, was he even well enough to work? She recalled one of Robart’s friends, ailing and useless for most of one summer after he’d taken a nimble from his horse and split his head open on an inconvenient rock. Maybe the raider was only cramped and unused to daylight—but just as likely he was too sick to do even one man’s work.

  She assessed her prisoner as heartlessly as she would have a stray sheep added to her flock. He did not, in the light of day, have quite the terrifying aspect the sea raiders were getting a name for. He didn’t look as if he could raid a henhouse on his own. He wasn’t much taller than she was, and his build was on the slight side. But that meant nothing. Armed, hale, he’d be another man entirely. She should remember that, not be deceived by pity.

  From a distance she’d have reckoned him aged, by his ash-color hair and the pale stubble on his jaw, but close-to Druyan could see he wasn’t age-gray. His brows—one of which was presently caked with his blood—were very dark. His weather-tanned skin was smooth where it wasn’t bruised: not an old man’s skin. His battered face was lean and narrow, with a long nose pushed out of line from right to left—he hadn’t been born with it that way, but the damage wasn’t recent, either. His teeth, blunted or not, were very white, and he had all of them, at least those that showed. A villainous face, Druyan told herself as ruthlessly as Enna would have.

  He looked back at her, managing to drag his right eyelid open a trifle. That eye—like the left—was gray with flecks of gold, as open and startlingly honest as a dog’s. That must be useful, Druyan thought, stemly distrusting them. No reason he couldn’t be trying to put her off her guard. She held out the sack of food, the bottle of water, but she kept the pitchfork in her right hand.

  “Eat that, while I ready the wagon,” she ordered. There was still better than half the day left to work with. They could make a start on the nearest field. She’d see if he could work.

  He looked first at her face, then at the sack. Smart enough, maybe, to resist a grab that would set the dog on him. Rook was still tense, her back hair standing up from neck to tail.

  “Go ahead,” Druyan insisted, shoving the food into his hands. “And don’t even think about trying to escape. Rook won’t let you stir a step.”

  He unstoppered the bottle, put it to his lips, and gulped the liquid down as fast as he could swallow. Too fast—he began to choke, and coughed till Rook’s growl told him to desist, to behave himself. Stifling the spasm, he put the bottle down, juggled the bag around, and investigated the bread.

  The door jamb was still holding him upright, Druyan noticed. She did not discount the danger of him, but it was very hard to believe there was much worry about him for the next few minutes, while she hitched the wagon and brought Valadan out. She could risk it.

  Druyan made the hand signal to Rook: Hold. One sheep or an entire flock, ’twas all one to the dog, who knew her business. Rook settled happily and fixed the man with her best stare. Halfway to the barn—a dozen steps—Druyan turned back. The man had sat down in the doorway. The bread was gone, and there were crumbs from it dusted down the fmnt of him. He had the cheese clutched to his chest. Rook was watching him alertly. Probably she wouldn’t have tom his throat out if he’d tried to run, but he’d never have got past her, either. Especially not with the cheese.

  Her fine scheme was seeming less and less a workable plan. Druyan sighed. Only a single man to aid the harvest, and already she was losing her fear of him, which was foolish and did not bode well. The hope-that she could hold Splaine Garth, make herself a place, seemed more and more a dream, from which she must wake and rise to unpleasant reality. What use to stmggle so over bringing in a tiny crop of grain? Her husband was dead. She’d no child of his to carry on for.

  Yet go on she must—Druyan knew no way to simply lie down and cease breathing, not on her own. So she’d go on, day to day, hour to ho
ur, as one did, and not think about it, if thinking hurt. She’d bring in her crop, and this pathetic scoundrel would help her, since he professed himself willing. She looked back at him, sitting now a bare yard from Rook’s eager face, not moving except to tear the cheese with his alarmingly white teeth.

  “What are you called?” Druyan asked, wondering why she troubled with the courtesy.

  “Kellis,” he answered, almost choking again on a mouthful too large and too little chewed.

  The Barley Harvest

  The captive was clumsy at farm work. Perchance he’d never been good at such honest toil and so had taken up the more congenial career of raiding. Or maybe his wound made stooping to sever barley stems with the iron sickle a problem. There was no knowing—he didn’t complain or try to shirk, just went on slowly, with dogged concentration, striving to cut grain and not his fingers. Dalkin had needed to show him how to wield the sickle—pleased as a cock robin at owning a skill a grown man didn’t possess. The man didn’t know how to bind a sheaf, either, and Dalkin puffed still more as he demonstrated.

  The boy was less willing to be sent off to fetch the shepherd girls, but Druyan was adamant and she was the mistress, the giver of orders. It was fairly obvious by then that she was in no real danger of being overpowered by her prisoner, even granted that he was armed with a sharpedged tool; and necessity pressed. Every able hand on the place had to be set to reaping. Every hour of dry daylight had to yield something for Splaine Garth. The sheep could feed unobserved, other chores could be ignored or postponed, but the grain must be cut.

  Of course, Druyan herself couldn’t be reaping if she stayed primly atop Valadan, keeping Travic’s bow carefully trained on her prisoner, but Enna wasn’t at hand to protest when she abandoned that ill-conceived promise. Any fool could see it made no sense, not now there was only one man to consider in place of four. The prisoner wasn’t going to attack anyone—he could judge the odds weighted so heavily against any success. If he tried anything, it would be running, and between Rook and Valadan, that wasn’t likely to be so much a danger as a delay. And there was nowhere he might run to—Splaine Garth was a pocket farm, surrounded by moor. and marsh.

  Kellis misliked the iron sickle. Dislike was not at all a strong enough term-the tool terrified him. The boy laughed when he didn’t know how to use it—but Kellis didn’t want to know how. He didn’t want to grasp barley stalks in one hand and then swing. a fell crescent of cold iron—keener and more deadly than the best flint knife—at them with the other. He wasn’t even sure his shins were safe.

  There was a smooth wooden handle on the tool, but Kellis could feel the iron rang buried not very deeply under the wood—it wanted to bite his lingers, just as much as the sharper blade did. More, because it thought to take him unawares. Kellis blinked sweat out of his eyes, struggled to make the pale grain stalks come into focus. I’m going to cut my hand off, he thought helplessly. His head was pounding, and every movement made the world dip and sway around him, as if viewed from a ship’s deck in heavy weather. It was not the time to be learning to use a deadly instrument . . . but he had no choice. He had pledged he would work, and this was what he was set to do.

  Even if he set aside his pledge, escape demanded that he be able to run, and he could barely keep himself upright. He could smell the sea, but reaching it would avail him nothing-. All the other directions were equal mysteries to him, and unreachable ones, as well. The horse was hitched to the wagon, and looked stolid and slow. He’d be too slow stealing it, that was certain. He’d be stopped.

  There was another horse, this one only saddled. His nose brought him scents of well-kept leather and sweet hay, and horse sweat in smaller measure, because this horse had not been pulling a wagon. His eye found it eventually, grazing at the field’s edge. It was black as the edge of a storm, saddled but otherwise unencumbered. Trusted, it did not even seem to be hobbled. Kellis drew in a longing breath.

  The horse looked at him. From across the tossing grain, its eyes met his, and it seemed to know very well what Kellis was hoping to do. It made him a promise in trade—a fall likely to part him from his body entirely. His for the asking, if he came near it. In the darkness of the horse’s eyes, lightnings flashed.

  Kellis looked away. He frowned at the wavery grain, grasped a handful, cut at it, his lips shaping a prayer to Valint—though he no longer believed that there was any protection for him, whether the Wolfstar shone upon this land or not.

  There were five of them bending and stooping in the golden field after the girls arrived, amid the gently waving grainstalks, cutting and binding sheaves. After a time, Druyan moved the wagon closer and started throwing sheaves onto its bed—the man came and helped her with that, looking a question at her over his armload of grain first, moving slowly and obviously intending there’d be no misunderstanding. He was sweating heavily—but so were they all. It was a sweat of exertion, not the nervous wetness of deceit. She looked to Valadan for confirmation of thatshe had sent Rook to the sheep that the girls had been forced to leave. The stallion flicked an unconcerned ear. All was well.

  Druyan nodded permission, and when they had loaded the last of the waiting sheaves that dotted the stubble, the prisoner went back to reaping, with never once a covetous glance at Valadan or the horse hitched to the wagon. Not that he’d have gotten far essaying a horseback escape—the gray mare was elderly and had never been known for her speed—but if he’d used the sickle to cut the traces, he’d have ruined the harness and they’d all have wasted time more profitably spent reaping.

  Nightfall was a gradual affair at that season—with the sun far away behind the shielding overcast of the sky, the reapers had no clues of sunset color or twilight. Eventually they simply could no longer see what they were cutting, and Druyan’s belly complained that it was well beyond the supper hour. They had sheared a ragged third of the field Splaine Garth’s lady felt a twinge of hope, under her weariness. They’d have seed grain, at least.

  Dalkin ran ahead, to assure Enna they were alive and tell her they were coming in, so she’d set the food out, ready for them. The girls would get a hot meal before rejoining their flock for the night, and Druyan would have let them ride back on the wagon, but they were used to walking and better content to swing along beside it, easing kinks out of backs, flexing tired fingers, and casting sidelong glances at the stranger.

  She’d probably have done better to make him foot it, as well, Druyan suspected, but the man looked done up, and since the wagon wasn’t full laden, there was no telling herself the mare couldn’t or shou1dn’t pull the load. One man’s weight more or less made no matter. Druyan gave him a surreptitious glance herself, as the wheel negotiated a deep rut and they both swayed on the broad seat. Roomy enough that they didn’t need to ride shoulder to shoulder, she was glad—if he’d smelled before, he was twice as fragrant after a few hours of hot work. The odor reminded her that the root cellar would need cleaning once the barley was in, before the turnips were dug. It was a hard place to air out.

  The prisoner’s sweat had pushed out through the older dirt, then trapped an uneven layer of gray dust and flakes of chaff. His pale hair was threaded with green-gold barley stalks, brown bits of weed. His brows and lashes were dustpowdered—he looked, all in all, rather like a badly made com god, left to winter in the field. His stillness bolstered such fancies—save when the wagon rocked him, his only movement was of his fingers, which were clenched tight around the edge of the seatboard but would shift sometimes for better advantage.

  Pru dragged open the barnyard gate for the wagon to pass through. The wheels rattled on bricks laid to prevent mud puddles near the well.

  “Kellis.”

  He didn’t react. Did I mishear his name? Druyan wondered. She shook her head. I can’t be that far off, She reached to tap his shoulder. “Kellis.”

  He gave a surprised start, throwing his head up like a shying horse, and Pru giggled. “Asleep!” she crowed, and doubled over the gate, hooting. Her
brown braids danced on either side of her averted face.

  The man ignored her, fixing his attention on Druyan with what dignity he could. “Lady?” His eyes looked muddy brown in the dirnness. They were red-rimmed, from chaff and salt sweat and pure weariness, and the right still hadn’t opened fully. His mouth drooped.

  “Get down,” Druyan said, too gently to be an effective order. “This is as far as we go.”

  The man didn’t seem likely to exploit her weakness—he had his own to contend with, evidently. Merely obedient, he dropped off the side of the wagon. Druyan couldn’t be sure, over the creaking of the wagon’s springs, but she thought he groaned. “Lyn, please tell Enna we’re here and to send something back with you for him to eat. Pm, you can help us unload the wagon.”

  They off-loaded the grain into one end of the barn, spreading the sheaves in a wide heap so they could dry a bit—easier to thresh later. Piled up in the vast space, the barley looked even more insignificant than the shom end of the field—so much work, so little result, Druyan thought, but refused to be discouraged. Five folk had done what they could. Travic had mustered a score of reapers, so of course a day’s yield had been greater. She was too weary; to judge their efforts now would be unfair. That they had done it at all, she must reckon as success. And see to it that the performance was repeated, day by day till all the barley was cut.

  When the day’s sheaves were all stowed, Lyn came back with Kellis food—a wooden bowl of mutton stew. Druyan frowned when she got it into her hands. If there was a single bone left anywhere in the rest of the pot, she couldn’t imagine it. And the bread thrown atop it had got too close to the oven wall, and was half charred, half soggy. As mistress of Splaine Garth, she was ashamed that even a thieving prisoner should be fed so meanly in her sight.