The Wind-Witch

by Susan Dexter

  Her prisoner was trying not to cast too eager an eye on the bowl, she thought—or waiting to be led back to the root cellar and locked inside. He leaned against the wagon , shoulders drooping, his expression neutral. Damn. She had meant to tell Dalkin to plug the hole at the back of the cellar, and it seemed rude to give the order now, right in front of the man. Though why she should concern herself with manners—security should be her only interest.

  She made Kellis help her park the wagon so its wheel spokes would bar the opening on the outside. Hopefully the man wouldn’t realize that he’d just shored up his own jail, or figure out a way to escape in spite of the barrier. Likely he would not—he looked as if he’d be asleep on his feet, except that he kept smelling the food. His nostrils flared, and he sighed, very faintly.

  “You did a good job,” Druyan said heartily, handing over the bowl as if it was a fair payment, gesturing to indicate the cellar, that he should go in. “Tomorrow will be a longer day, but by weeks end the harvest should be in, if this weather holds.

  He nodded, too weary to show much interest in a freedom promised but still days away—and maybe never granted. How did he know whether he could trust her? He was as alone, as vulnerable, as she was. Druyan put her hand on the root cellar’s door, ashamed.

  “Lady?”

  Oh, gods. Pity flared into panic. He wasn’t going to go in! And she had made the mistake he had waited for, she was alone with him! The girls had gone, Dalkin was off feeding the horses. Had she counted the sickles? Rook was off in the marsh, not by her side. Druyan stared at the raider, her heart lodged choking in her throat, trying to keep her fear out of her face. She heard Valadan give the back wall of his stall a mighty kick, and wondered whether he could tear his way out to rescue her. She ought to have left him in the paddock, close, instead of letting Dalkin put him inside. She should have had some weapon handy, and instead all the tools were in the barn. . .

  Kellis could see how frightened the woman was the instant he spoke. She tried not to show it to him—wise of her—but he could read it in her eyes, her whole body, like the one deer in a herd that was prey, when all the rest could safely run. It didn’t matter, he was in no position to take any profit from it. And if he panicked her, she might hurt him, he thought.

  There was meat in the bowl he held—or there had been meat near it. He could smell gravy, and cooked vegetables, and his mouth began to water, helplessly. He was glad she hadn’t flung the bowl at him, made him eat out of the dirt, even though he was hungry enough to manage that, aching head notwithstanding. Yet starved as he was, there was something he craved more than food. . .

  Showing her fear would be the worst thing she could possibly do. Druyan lifted her chin, stalling for time, trying to look confident, keeping an eye out for a purloined sickle. Someone would come, see what was amiss. . .

  She was startled to see that the raider was standing stock still, his hands where she could see them both, holding no more than his supper, making no move more threatening than drawing a breath. Their scared glances skittered nervously, met again. Then he dropped his gaze to the ground.

  “I was wondering if I could .. . have some water? To wash,” he explained hesitantly. Then he ducked his head disconsolately and went into the dark of the cellar.

  Druyan couldn’t decide whether the sickness she felt was relief or shame. The chaff inside her own clothing scoured at her skin, like furious fleas. She, of course, could ridherself of the irritation, and would, in her own tub in her own clean room, before she slept in her own clean-sheeted bed. She snatched up the wooden bucket, dipped it hastily into the horse trough, thrust it half filled and slopping at the man, then shut him into the root cellar for the night, out of sight and guilty thought.

  The kitchen was too warm, as it often was in summer, and mostly empty. Pru and Lyn had bolted their food and returned to their flock. Damn. She’d wanted to tell them to be back at first light, so she wouldn’t need to waste Dalkin’s time fetching them in. Maybe they’d know that, but that didn’t mean they’d appear without a direct order.

  “Oh, Lady, thank the gods you’re safe!” Enna turned from the oven. “Dalkin said there was only one of those brutes left still alive, and him a frightful villain with a scar, and only one eye—”

  Druyan sank down wearily into her chair. Her bones felt very ancient, the rest of her no younger. She wondered if this was how Enna’s bones ached, if she had fmally caught the malady from living near it so long, like a cough spreading from one of them to the other. She shut her eyes and saw uncut grain waving to the horizon, like sea billows. So tired she was, and such a little of the task done. So much still to do. We’ve begun. But if it rains? Storms? I have to be sure that doesnt happen, and I’m too tired to think how to do it.

  “Did they kill one another, Lady? Like rats in a trap?”

  Druyan blinked at the dish of stew set before her, conjured there out of thin air. Not a single white bone could she see, only tender chunks of mutton swimming in a rich gravy. A lovely loaf of bread lay sliced beside it, almost glowing in the candle’s light. She ought to eat, before she fell into sleep. . .

  “Lady?”

  Druyan shook herself awake and found her tongue to answer. “No one’s dead, Enna. They pushed out part of the wall and escaped, probably the first night, right after they were put in.”

  Enna fumbled at her full skirt. Probably she’d hidden one of the carving knives there, for protection. Druyan was too tired to smile at that—and could she call it foolish, in truth? A knife was a very fine weapon, even if it was meant for slicing bread. It could slice raider flesh just as well.

  “They aren’t still here, Enna,” she said reassuringly. Ironically, when they’d needed to worry, they’d been blissfully unaware of any danger. “Probably the ones who got out went back to the sea, and their boat, and they’re gone. One was wounded, and they left him.” She sighed. “I suppose they’re like that, don’t even care about their own. He says he’ll work, so I have promised him that I’ll let him go when the barley’s in. It’s not much, but it’s one more pair of hands.”

  Enna’s lips pursed at that, still not sanctioning such madness, an offer hardly better for being extended to only one murderous stranger in place of four. “Why’d they leave him?” she asked apprehensively.

  “Probably too much trouble to take him along.” Druyan stirred a spoon through her stew, trying to summon energy to lift it to her lips. She was hungry, she knew. She’d discover that as soon as she tasted a bite, and eating would not be a burden. “He got hit on the head with something, and woke only after they’d gone. Maybe they didn’t want to be bothered carrying him.”

  “Or maybe he’s such a nasty wretch they were pleased to be rid of him,” Enna said coldly. “There’s always that. Nice for us to have around.”

  “He can cut barley. I don’t care about his character, so long as he can do that!” Druyan smacked her spoon down onto the table—then let it go and stared at it, aghast. She should beg Enna’s pardon for her loss of temper, for the bad manners of shouting. For spattering stew on the tablecloth.

  iAnd of course her husband should have been sitting across the table from her, and all his men should have been taking their suppers around a trestle and boards set up in the dooryard, and a very great deal of the grain crop should have been stowed safe in the barn, not standing still uncut in the fields, going further past ripeness each minute and prey to every sure-to-come hailstorm. And tears she could not stop should not have been rolling down her dusty face.

  Druyan woke well before dawn, but the birds were calling already in the pear tree outside her easement. She slippedout of bed, relishing despite aching limbs the only coolness the day would likely know. She went to the window, trying to guess what the brightening sky would show.

  If its uniform gray broke up into high-piled white towers of cloud, then soon or late there’d be a storm, probably at days end. Hail, lightning, the disaster of battered fields. Therefore, the gra
y must continue undisturbed by shifts of cold wind off the nearby sea, while too-few hands reaped barley. She dressed hastily and went to the barn.

  Valadan bore her bareback and in secret through the dawn to the farthest-off ridge of the last barley field. With a small silver-bladed knife, Druyan cut a palm-size square of soil, with the barley plants still rooted in it, worms wiggling and trying to hide themselves from sight. She carried the treasure carefully home, to a corner of the orchard, by the wall where it fronted the lane. So no breath of air might brush it, she put an upended basket over the replanted tuft of barley. It must stay just as it was, her tiny grainfield, and its larger fellows would thereby do the same. If no rain touched the smaller, then by sound magical principle none would fall upon the larger. No wind would harm either. She held away wicked thoughts of how much more exciting—and how much simpler—’twould be to raise a wind than to quell one.

  Her hair clung damply to the back of her neck. Druyan forebore to wish for a breeze, as she drew from her pocket a hollow ball of yellow glass. She held the sphere so that it caught the light, like a tiny sun. The day was brightening—in the barnyard the red and green rooster crowed to welcome the dawn.

  Druyan reached into her pocket again and found a lock of grayish, unwashed fleece from the spring shearing. Quickly she teased the fibers out to fluff with her fingers and wrapped the cloud of wool about the ball, swaddling it, shrouding it. The golden glow on the horizon transmuted to silver. Above the farm, the sky was overspread with a static gray blanket of cloud. The cover settled in. Wind could disturb it, tear it, destroy it—but there was no slightest hint of a breeze. All was still. Druyan lodged the fuzzy ball in the gnarled branches of an apple tree and left it there.

  The sun’s fiery face might be veiled, but his heat was in undeniable evidence, and there was hardly a breath of breeze for comfort. On the one hand Druyan rejoiced—her weather spells were so far effective. But on the other side, it made tiring work sticky, as well, and added salt sweat to the barley chaff making her skin itch. She twitched her shoulders against her shirt, but found no ease for the spot she could not reach with any of her fingers. She wanted to rub herself against a fencepost, like a horse.

  They worked their way toward the end of the field, the trees that bounded it drawing ever so slightly nearer, the raggedy mess of stubble widening behind them. The wagon trailed them, ready for the sheaves to be thrown onto it. At the first Druyan had moved it wherever she wanted it—but somehow after a time the wagon always was where it was needed, without her fetching it. True, the mare was browsing as she walked, seeking tasty fallen grains among the stubble, but on her own she’d have been as likely to wander over to the hedgerow to forage, or into the uncut grain. She did neither.

  Druyan cast a glance toward Valadan, who was nosing for a little grain himself, a ways off. He caught her looking and pricked his ears at her, though he did not raise his head. He was keeping the mare where he wanted her, and where he wanted her was wherever his grateful mistress needed the wagon to be.,Druyan gave him a pat next time she went by to the wagon, and wondered whether there were early carrots to pull. He deserved one.

  Kellis eyed the horse again. How hard would it be, he wondered, to fling himself onto it as he passed and whip it into flight? He’d need to ride only a couple of miles to be safe away—the woman and the children had no easy way to follow him. If he could just get out of the field. . .

  Which he could not, probably. A measure of his dizziness had abated after food and sleep, but much remained, courtesy of the sword blow. Sometimes when he bent to grasp a handful of grain stalks, the black spots swirling in front of his eyes merged into one vast darkness, and his ears filled with sea sounds. What would happen if he tried to run, to wrestle with a startled horse, and one of those fits of weakness claimed him?

  He did not see those odd lights in the horse’s eyes just then, but Kellis did not think he had imagined them, or what the horse had promised him if he tried to steal it. And the beast was still warning him—with subtle changes of posture that he read with perfect clarity—not to come too close to it. It did that whenever he took sheaves to the wain, even when he thought it could not see him considering it. What it would do to him if he tried to throw himself onto its back, Kellis did not like to guess. But then, he did not really have to guess, for he had its promise.

  And he had the other promise: If he worked, till the unending grain was all sheared off and bundled, the woman had said she would let him go. Kellis decided to be patient, to try to bear holding the iron sickle awhile longer. Maybe she would keep her word. It was no worse a bargain than others he had made lately.

  The wagon was full. The prisoner hesitated before throwing his latest load of sheaves on top of the precarious pile. There was a puzzle—just what was she to do about him, Druyan wondered, while she and the wagon went back to unload? If he decided to leave, he could just walk away. Two young girls and a younger boy wouldn’t give him much trouble. Tie him? All she had with her by way of rope was the thin twine they were using to bind the sheaves. Wouldn’t hold him a minute. Well, he could help her unload as well as anyone, couldn’t he?

  “Right,” Druyan said to the man briskly, putting confidence into her tone whether she felt it or not. Sometimes, feigning sureness would calm a fractious horse, and control could be gained merely by acting as if one had unquestioned control. She hoped that would prove to be the case this time. “You come back with me to put this load in the barn. Pru, leave the sheaves just where you tie them, we’ll throw them on when we get back.” She made encouraging noises to the gray mare, and the wagon began to roll barnward while Kellis was still scrambling onto the seat. Valadan followed after discreetly.

  Kellis settled himself, and they tried not to watch one another. They were each filthy from working, but he had started off the day nearly clean—or as clean as a man could make himself with half a bucket of stale water, in a dark cellar. He hadn’t been able to do much about his garments, which were—and maybe always had been—the color of dirt, but he’d washed his face and gotten the caked blood out of his hair. He had a sark of thinner stuff under his woolen tunic—Druyan could see a raveled edge where he’d tom the strip that was now bound about his forehead. It kept the sweat out of his eyes, besides protecting the cut as it healed. He had tied strips around his palms, too—protection trom the blisters of work he wasn’t used to, she supposed.

  The contrast between his pale hair and his dark brows was now startling. It wasn’t a coloring one saw in Esdragon, and Druyan wondered whether the other raiders shared it. She hadn’t seen any of them, only heard their battle cries. Travic would have known. . .

  It hit her full force, that her husband wasn’t going to be coming home, to be pleased with the news that she’d brought his harvest in for him. That she could never now give him the child he’d wanted to pass his farm on to. He’d been fretting about having to leave at harvest—now, to him, it no longer mattered.

  They said her grandmother had taken her own life, to follow the mate she’d loved. By such a standard, Druyan didn’t suppose she’d loved her own husband. She might have died for Travic, trying to bear him a child as his first wife had—that was always a hazard of wedlock. But she didn’t quite feel she wanted to die because he was no longer with her. She didn’t feel that way at all.

  Well, few wives knew that son of passion, from all Druyan had observed. Nice if you had it, probably, but neither expected nor regretted-a childhood passion for romance, not much to do with the reality of a marriage. Travic had been a decent man, and now he was gone, and she missed him, because any person you were with day in and day out for eight years would leave a hole in the routine of your days, for a time. But though she mourned Travic, the empty feeling was not very much worse than it had been after their old blue merle sheepdog had passed on, summer before last. And shouldn’t she mourn a husband more deeply than a dog? There was regret. There was grief, for what she did not feel.

  She told i
t to Valadan, later. There was no one else to confide in—Enna’s loyalty to Travic would have judged her even more harshly than Druyan’s own conscience did. So, falling-down tired as she was, Druyan stood by her horse’s shoulder in the dark and let the words tumble out when she’d surely have been better abed—a bed wherein she’d only have felt fresh pangs over her relief that she was alone in it, with no other body to trouble the rest she needed with movements of its own, to add its heat to the stifling room.

  She rode to the second field, which rippled unbroken and half as wide as the sea. They’d finally finished the closest Held by dusk, but the nearest also chanced to be the smallest. She tried to guess how much more time they’d need, to harvest the bigger fields. She didn’t know how much longer she could hold off the cold wind from the sea—she could feel it stalking all about, like a cat in the tall grass—and the pall of muggy heat she’d draped over the farm was so oppressive that part of her longed for it to break free of her control. She loved storms, with a passion that she had never shown Travic—it was very hard not to yearn for one when she felt it close by, willing to come to her call. The white flashes of lightning, the resounding crash of the thunder, the cleansing wind, the slashing silver fall of rain. . .

  Valadan dipped his head to her, snorting. Hardly thinking, Druyan grabbed his mane and leapt again onto his unsaddled back. The instant she had a leg on either side of him he was away, swift as the wind she craved, as exciting as any storm. They rushed through the heavy night, and his hooves were the thunder, his whipping mane stinging her cheeks like rainfall.

  That night, she slept soundly.

  From sunup to twilight, they bent and cut, bent and cut and tied. A dulled sickle brought a brief respite from reaping while its edge was whetted anew, a full wagon brought a longer relief, at least for the two taking the wagon back to unload it. Druyan had her suspicions about just how hard the girls worked while she was out of their sight, but she didn’t blame any of them—it was cruel hard work with so few of them to share it. Her hands were blistered, her back seemed permanently bent. When she fell into her bed at night, all she saw behind closed lids was barley, endlessly waving.