Moons' Dreaming (Children of the Rock)

by Krause, Marguerite

  “You have experience with these people.” The statement from Tamik was accompanied by one of the shepherd’s judicious scowls.

  Somewhere in the ring of listening villagers a voice said, “If you can call them people.”

  Pirse said solemnly, “There has been some discussion on that very point. We say we are all Children of the Rock.”

  “But they deny that,” another voice muttered darkly.

  “They make no vows,” Hanig agreed. “They recognize no system of cooperation between individuals, since even the simplest cooperation requires the making and keeping of agreements.”

  “Whatever they are,” Jonna interrupted, “they have to be stopped.”

  “Seventeen families,” Doron said. “Even spread out as Alder is, that’s a lot of people for six Abstainers to face. Perhaps they’ll have already moved on.”

  “Possible, but not likely,” Pirse said. “Once they make a successful raid on a given community they keep coming back until there’s nothing left. There have been Abstainers at least as far back as Redmother memories and Shaper records go, and we’ve yet to find an answer to their violence.”

  “Short of death,” Jonna said softly.

  “Short of death,” Pirse agreed. The villagers stirred restlessly. He looked at them, once more feeling out of place. Keepers’ vows centered on sustaining and maintaining the fabric of the world. Death as part of the natural cycle they accepted without question or discomfort. To consciously choose the death of another person, even so dubious a person as an Abstainer, was almost inconceivable to them. Fortunately, Shapers had a different way of looking at things.

  “I will go to Alder,” he continued. “I have my sword, but I’ll need a horse, and the names of anyone in Alder who might be able to help me. Former guards, perhaps?”

  “There are a few,” Jonna said.

  The potter raised his voice. “My horse is the closest you’ll find to saddle-trained between here and Bronle. Take her, and welcome.”

  Pirse smiled his thanks. “I’ll send her back as soon as I’m able.”

  “Send her back?” Tamik asked. “You’re leaving us, then?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  The silence which followed his statement was thoughtful. “You’re not returning to Bronle,” Tamik said, the words more statement than question. If anyone in Juniper Ridge intended to betray Pirse to his uncle, they had not done so yet. Most of the villagers had accepted Pirse without question, on the recommendation of Jordy and Ivey, who were known and respected—unlike Palle, the man behind a growing number of unpopular edicts and proclamations that had come south from the capital in the ninedays since Dea’s death.

  “No. Not yet.”

  Tamik gave a curt nod. “Good.”

  “What about you, Jonna?” Pirse asked. “Palle is king, and he has commanded that I stand before the law readers. Do you think I should obey?”

  “He may be king, but he hasn’t kept the Abstainers from our doors.”

  “No, he hasn’t. But I will. Alder needs its prince. After that, there are dragons in the north. That’s where my duty lies.”

  “Go to keep your vows, and the gods go with you.” The old platitude, uttered in Hanig’s reedy voice, seemed to provide a satisfactory conclusion to the meeting as far as the Keepers were concerned, and they began to leave the barn. Those who had gotten to know Pirse stopped to wish him well and offer their support should he ever return to their village. Tamik urged Pirse to gather his horse and any supplies he needed promptly if he intended to get on the road before nightfall. Pirse looked around for Doron. He wanted her with him, just in case she might have some final, useful advice to add before he left.

  But she was gone.

  * * *

  Summer had turned toward autumn. Jordy leaned against the back rest of his wagon’s driver’s seat. One hand on the reins and a fraction of his attention were sufficient to keep Stockings moving along at her usual steady pace. Most of his thoughts were occupied with how best to use the remaining days of the trading season.

  He watched the passing scenery. This was lake country, the terrain flat for the most part, heavily forested from their present position all the way back to the village of White Water, three days’ journey to the south. With the exception of an occasional shepherd or two, no one lived in the mountains beyond White Water anymore. Very few people dwelt anywhere in the region, although Jordy thought it must once have been a beautiful place to live. Every few miles there was a lake, sometimes large, sometimes little more than a pond, always deep and full of fish. After so many ninedays of living on what game Jordy could procure with rock or bow, Tob was enthusiastic about lake fish dinners.

  A break in the trees on the eastern side of the road gave Jordy a brief glimpse of flashing sunlight on the lake where he intended to camp on this particular night. Another day’s travel and they would reach the small village of Long Pine. If the weather held and they continued north, six more days would bring them straight to Broadford; six days of fallow fields, abandoned farm sites, and lonely, empty village squares whose names even the Redmothers had forgotten. Or, they could take the road that led east out of Long Pine and cross the Broad River just before it fell into the marshes that separated Sitrine from the land of the horse people. He had good customers in Sitrine, and the villages were only one or two days apart. They could work profitably all the way north to Raisal, then back into Rhenlan along the coast. The only drawback was that it would take ninedays to complete that route. By then it would be well into autumn, and they would be lucky to reach home before snow closed the roads for the winter.

  Besides, he wanted to see his wife.

  In the back of the wagon, Tob sat up. “Dad? What’s that noise?”

  Jordy listened. The wind was out of the southeast, strong enough to produce a great rustling and sighing in the trees along both sides of the road. Stockings’ harness jingled and the wagon creaked rhythmically. The wind quieted for a moment, and Jordy caught a snatch of something on or near the road ahead of them before the wind returned, covering the sound. He pulled back on the reins.

  “Dad?”

  “Hush.” In the comparative silence that fell after the horse and wagon came to a halt, the sighing of the trees seemed louder than ever. Then the wind paused once more and the noises became clearly audible. Distant shouts intermixed with the long, high neigh of a distressed horse, and the unmistakable ring of steel against steel.

  “Get my bow,” he commanded. Tob obeyed without comment. Jordy climbed down from his seat. Taking Stockings by the halter, he led her a few yards along the road until he found a space between two trees large enough to admit horse and wagon. He coaxed the mare into the underbrush, careful not to guide the wagon over anything too large to bend before its weight. Only when the patch of light that marked the location of the road was nearly invisible behind them did Jordy stop and tie Stockings’ lead rope securely to a low tree branch.

  Tob, his eyes round and solemn, jumped down from the wagon, Jordy’s bow in one hand and his quiver of arrows in the other. “You think it’s Abstainers,” he whispered.

  “I think it’s someone in trouble. I’m going to take a look.” Jordy took the bow and strung it before slinging the quiver over his shoulder. He didn’t want to frighten the boy, but he wasn’t going to lie to him either. “You know what to do.”

  “Stay here, stay quiet, and wait,” Tob recited, obviously unhappy but not, thank the Mother, rebellious.

  “How long do you wait?”

  “Until you come back.” Under Jordy’s patient stare he continued reluctantly. “If they are Abstainers and they continue past here without seeing me and you haven’t come back, I’m to go on to the next village. If they do find the wagon, I hide in the forest and let them take it.”

  “Good boy.” Jordy put his hand on Tob’s shoulder and smiled. With his other hand he pushed a wisp of black hair out of the lad’s midnight-blue eyes. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”
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br />   Most of the brush that had been flattened by the wagon’s passage had already begun to spring back by the time Jordy returned to examine it. He snapped off a few telltale, dangling branches and used them to sweep away the wheel marks that led into the forest. That done, he hurried silently along the road. As he walked, he fitted an arrow to the string of his bow. The noises of battle grew more distinct. It was a battle, not just Keepers against wolves. Wolves did not wield swords. Nor, however, did it sound like a few unfortunate travelers fighting a band of Abstainers. The lawless ones were not known for waging protracted battles. They preferred to take their victims by surprise, winning without ever really having to fight. Any sign of competent resistance—a drawn and well-aimed bow, for instance—was usually enough to send them away to await a less difficult target. The continuing sounds of struggle increased Jordy’s unease.

  The road curved into the square of an abandoned village fifty yards from the shore of the lake. The village was abandoned. The square was not. Jordy slipped into the shadows next to a half-fallen wall. Abstainers they were, both men and women. Five of the would-be thieves were scattered lifelessly across the trampled grass. The other six continued to fight, outnumbered and outmatched by the nine travelers they had attacked. The travelers had a wagon similar to Jordy’s own in size and overall design, except that this wagon was drawn by a matched team of black horses, their harnesses studded with silver. The driver’s seat was shaded by a blue and red canopy and the wagon bed was completely enclosed by wooden walls and a peaked roof.

  Jordy lowered his bow. He wasn’t needed. Four of the travelers stood shoulder to shoulder next to the wagon, knives drawn, but as far as Jordy could see, unbloodied. The other five were king’s guards.

  One of the mounted guards exchanged a brief flurry of sword strokes with a loudly swearing Abstainer woman before he found his opening and decapitated her. Two of the Abstainers tried to flee, but another guard spurred her horse after them, trampling one and impaling the other. The third mounted guard was engaged in the difficult task of recapturing several loose horses. The archer of their group was trying to get a clear shot at two Abstainers mostly hidden within another of the village’s ruined buildings.

  The final guard had dismounted and was fighting on foot, sword to sword. The Abstainer slashed wildly at his enemy, matted hair and beard flying. The guard, a tall, strongly built young man with long golden hair worn braided down his back, evaded the stroke and eased left, all of his concentration on his opponent.

  As the swordsmen circled one another, one of the partially hidden Abstainers balanced a knife in his hand. Either the guard-archer did not see the threat, or he had no clear shot at his target. Jordy’s arrow was still nocked. He lifted his bow, aimed quickly, and fired. His arrow sped just in front of the Abstainer with the knife, who jerked back, startled. Able to see his target at last the guard-archer shot. The Abstainer cried out as he died, which distracted his companion with the sword, who fell in turn. The last Abstainer panicked and leapt out of his hiding place, only to be caught by another of the guard-archer’s well-placed shafts.

  “Captain!” one of the riders called. “Did you see that other arrow?”

  “It came from that direction.” The archer nocked another arrow and used it to point toward Jordy’s location.

  “Shooting at them or us?” their captain, the blond swordsman, asked quickly.

  “At them,” Jordy called. Nine suspicious pairs of eyes fixed on him as he stepped away from the wall, carefully showing his empty bow.

  The captain came toward him. “Name yourself.”

  “Jordy of Broadford. I heard the fighting from my wagon. I left it in the forest back there.” He indicated the southern road with a jerk of his head. “I’m surprised to find king’s guards so far from Edian.”

  At a sharp gesture from the captain the other guards lowered their weapons and moved away. The captain stopped a few feet in front of Jordy. “The king’s guard has always been responsible for the safety of the roads.”

  “I see you take your responsibilities seriously.”

  The younger man responded to the challenge in Jordy’s voice. “I do my duty.”

  Jordy gave a dismissive shrug. “Well, many are interpreting their vows oddly these days. Makes life uncertain for the rest of us.” He glanced significantly at the dead Abstainers being piled in the center of the square. “Not everyone knows how to recognize an unkept vow.”

  One of the traders came up as Jordy was speaking. He was a few years older than Jordy, lean and wiry with a weather-beaten face, pale hair, and shrewd blue eyes. “Did I hear you say you left a wagon down the road? Are you a merchant?”

  “A carter.”

  “Local?”

  “I was in Cross Cove in the spring for their first harvest. Since then I’ve been through Edian, Dundas, a few other places. At the moment I’m carrying wool from White Water.”

  A grin grew on the trader’s face during Jordy’s casual recitation. “Not local. My name is Loras. A goldsmith. Quite frankly, this is the farthest I’ve been from Edian in fifteen years.” He clapped the captain of the guards on the shoulder affectionately. “My eldest son needed a lure for his quarry.”

  “Dael,” the captain identified himself as he slammed his still-bloody sword back into its sheath. Jordy, watching the younger man, concluded it was best not to point out that this was no way to treat good steel.

  Loras looked around the square. “None of us will be traveling much farther this afternoon. Would you care to camp with us, carter Jordy?”

  Jordy braced his bow against his boot and unstrung it. “That might be interesting,” he agreed.

  Captain Dael pulled out of his father’s grasp and strode away from them without a backward glance.

  Chapter 12

  Killing was easy. It had always been easy for him. Dael didn’t know why, it just was. He hadn’t meant to make it his profession, but it was the only thing he was good at. It was the only thing he’d done since he was seventeen. He’d been told often enough that that wasn’t true, but he knew what he was. Captain of the guards or Abstainer—he could have been either. Did Abstainers feel sick when all the violence was over? He killed efficiently, with no qualms while he was in the fight. To be ruthless and efficient meant staying alive. Abstainers were supposed to be violent and ruthless for the joy of it. Dael felt no joy. In fact, he felt nothing during a fight. The horror at his own capacity for violence always came after the battle.

  He used to think he would go mad, until Greenmother Jenil instructed him to make a ritual of brooding. She’d told him to take himself somewhere away from the deaths, not to take his stone or bowl, but to immerse himself in the normal, to observe the world around him until he was ready to return to it, as a way of contemplating the necessity of what he did. He supposed it was true Dreamer wisdom. At least it worked well enough to keep him whole. His men had gotten used to his taking himself out of the way as soon as his work was done. They knew it to be to their own advantage. Certainly Captain Dael was not a friendly sort just after a battle. The last thing he had needed today was questioning from a suspicious carter. The stranger had been lucky not to have his head taken off. Perhaps if Loras hadn’t been there he might have.

  It seemed to Dael that the carter asked a lot of questions about who worked for whom. Guards guarded. Why should it matter to a traveling Keeper who kept the roads safe, as long as he was able to get his goods from one village to the next? He hadn’t appreciated being quizzed on his loyalties, even if the carter had just saved his life. Not when his nerves were beginning to shriek, covered as he was in other people’s blood, the echoes of their dying still ringing in his mind.

  Dael hurried off to save his sanity. Presently, just as Jenil had taught, he regained his interest in the world around him. He pulled out his sword and set about cleaning the blade. The setting sun tinted the lake a glowing orange that gradually faded to purple. Sounds from the woods and the voices of guards and trade
rs slowly changed from grating noise to pleasant reassurance.

  Dael left his people to their work of stacking the Abstainer bodies for cremation while he followed his father and their wagon to a campsite on the lake shore, upwind and well away from the village. Dael sat on a fallen tree trunk and concentrated on putting himself in order. The carter fetched his wagon into camp. With the wagon came a lad of about twelve who Jordy introduced to Loras as his son, Tob. The boy’d been left down the road, hiding in the loaded wagon, waiting for his father’s return. During the introductions, the carter threw a look of rebuke toward Dael, but a moment later Loras draped his lean arm across Jordy’s shoulder and turned him away, no doubt explaining that Dael needed some privacy to make himself civilized after a battle. At least Dael assumed that was the center of the conversation, because the next look he got from the carter had more sympathy in it.

  As camp was made and the evening meal began to cook, Dael watched the wiry-framed carter and his dark-haired boy as they moved purposely and efficiently about their work. He found he liked the obvious affection between the pair, restrained though it seemed to be on Jordy’s part. It reminded him of his own father’s treatment of his children, though Loras was more open with showing his love to Nocca, Ruudy, and Dael himself. Tob had a look of the horse people about him. It would seem this Jordy had a foreign wife and, upon reflection, Dael decided that the carter also had a Dherrican accent. A man who traveled and knew the world from several sides of the Shapers’ borders might very well be a questioning sort.

  Dael gradually relaxed. Calm and control covered his natural ferocity once more. He stood and went to rejoin the others. With the world back in place, he began to think that perhaps there might be a question or two he could ask the carter.

  Sunset was long past, but the fire burning in the abandoned village put its own reddish tint to the western sky. Abstainer bodies did not go into the ground. In life, Abstainers rejected the gods, as well as all that the gods expected of the Children. There was no reason to return their bodies to the source of life. Nocca and two of the other guards stayed to watch the cremation fire in the empty square. Little was left of the bodies, but the embers would not die down completely before dawn.