The woman, navigating the right-hand boat, wore armor crafted from small, shield-shaped bits of leather that made her look like a pine cone. A dark-leather hat with a broad brim shielded her eyes from the sun, so it was impossible to read her expression.
Too bad they weren’t stupid enough to wear plate on the river, thought Eynon.
He didn’t like the look of these new arrivals and liked their intent even less when he heard them whisper. His ears sharpened by the listening spell, Eynon caught every word the steersman on the left told his crew.
“Board and subdue, my lads,” said the steersman. “We’ll claim boat, crew and cargo.” He paused and spat into the river, then continued. “The lad and girl should earn us a recruiting bounty, so try to leave them in one piece. Those barrels should fetch us a good price at the Rhuthro Keep’s kitchens, too, if they hold what I think they do.”
His crew muttered their agreement, excited by the prospect of a prosperous bit of piracy.
“Careful,” whispered Merry. “They’ve got to be some of those freelance recruiters for the earl’s army Taffy warned us about.”
“They’re thieves, plain and simple,” said Eynon. “I’ll load my crossbow”
“Don’t forget kidnappers,” said Merry. “It’s the only honest way to refer to them.”
“What do we do?” asked Eynon.
“We fight,” said Merry. “We have the advantage—they’d prefer not to kill us, and we’ll kill them if we must.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Eynon. “And I don’t like the odds.”
“We’ll deal with them one at a time,” said Merry. “If they let you. You take the boat on the left.”
“Right,” said Eynon.
Merry rolled her eyes and began her own preparations. She didn’t say, “No, I said left,” but he could tell that was what she was thinking.
Eynon wished he could joke in dangerous situations, but he was too worried. He removed a quarrel from the stock of his small crossbow and armed the weapon. Then he put the sharp shard next to him on the thwart. The attackers would probably attempt to board at the bow instead of scaling the raised stern or trying to climb over the cider barrels. He hoped Merry had a plan for dealing with the boat on the right, because Eynon expected to be fully occupied with its opposite number.
He stood with his crossbow at the ready as the prow of the left-hand boat came even with his position. The man in the prow had a week’s ragged beard and a jagged scar from his ear to his chin. He held a halberd with a spear point and a wicked hook, ready to give Eynon scars of his own. Scar-man stabbed at Eynon to keep him back, then started to board. Trembling, Eynon shot him in the belly, but the quarrel only went in a few inches.
Blast, thought Eynon.
His attacker’s gambeson must include a layer of hardened leather squares. Still, the man’s eyes went wide. He screamed in pain and dropped his halberd to clutch his stomach. Eynon smiled—at least some of the quarrel must have entered flesh.
The scarred man bent over and Eynon assumed he was no longer a threat, but he came up from the bottom of his boat with a short sword in one hand and a grapnel in the other. Eynon tried to load another quarrel, but he fumbled the weapon. Crossbow and quarrel fell by his feet. Taking advantage of Eynon’s confusion, his attacker set the grapnel into the side of Eynon’s boat and lunged with his sword point. Eynon fell back and landed in the center of the bow thwart. As the attacker swung the flat of his blade toward Eynon’s head, Eynon instinctively picked up the shard and used it to block the blow.
Both of them were shocked when the far end of the short sword clattered down to join Eynon’s crossbow. Pressing his advantage, Eynon swung the shard back and forth in front of him. The man with the scar retreated and tripped over the linked gunwales of the two boats, falling back into his own.
Eynon stepped forward and brought the shard down on the eel boat with as much force as he could manage. It felt like splitting a particularly challenging piece of cord wood back in the Coombe. The shard struck a few inches behind the narrow attacking vessel’s pointed prow, cutting all the way through the thin wood. The small section remained attached to Eynon and Merry’s boat by the grapnel.
Scar-man scrambled to his knees and quickly moved amidships, away from Eynon, but the damage was done. The left-hand attacking boat started taking on water and began to sink.
“Eynon!” shouted Merry. “Duck!”
He bent to pick up his crossbow and lost quarrel when he felt a rush of air above his back. It registered in his peripheral vision that a second man, from the boat on the right, was swinging a halberd at where Eynon’s heart would have been. Driven by instinct, Eynon stretched out his left arm and tried to hold off his new attacker with the point and edge of the curved shard. The shard intersected with the ashwood shaft of the halberd, cutting off its head. The axe-shaped halberd blade joined the front end of scar-man’s sword at Eynon’s feet.
“Get back!” Eynon shouted.
His opponent closed instead. He shoved the lower half of the halberd’s staff into Eynon’s solar plexus, knocking him back onto the bow thwart where Eynon bounced and sat, momentarily stunned. The shard fell from his grasp. Then the second man pressed his advantage, taking up a short sword and raising it to deliver a stunning blow. Eynon felt a surge of energy flow through him. He reached over his head and blocked the sword with the small triangle of prow from the left-hand vessel.
The thin wood shattered, but Eynon held on to two longer pieces of the prow and threw them at the second man’s head. His attacker stepped back, giving Eynon time to pick up his staff. He got to his knees and rotated his staff through ninety degrees of arc, striking the swordsman on the side of his head with a crisp thwack. The man collapsed forward and didn’t look like he’d be getting up soon.
“Eynon!” shouted Merry again.
Eynon turned and saw Merry holding off two swordsmen with her steering oar. One attacker was short and wide, the other tall with long hair. Eynon retrieved his crossbow and quarrel and carefully cocked and loaded the weapon. Then he took a deep breath, aimed, and let fly. The bolt hit the short, wide swordsman on the left an inch above the knee. Merry used her steering oar to slap the injured and off-balance man over the side and into the stern of the right-hand attacking boat. The remaining swordsman redoubled his attack.
I’ve got to load another quarrel, thought Eynon—but the crossbow’s stock was empty and he didn’t know where Merry had stored the extra ammunition. He grabbed his staff and clambered up and over the four cider barrels until he was close to Merry and the long-haired swordsman. She was losing her end of the fight. Her steering oar had a dozen chips cut from it where it had interposed between her body and the swordsman’s blade.
Eynon stood balanced on top of the last barrel and extended his staff to try to tangle the remaining swordsman’s legs, but he was a yard too far away to accomplish his goal. The swordsman feinted low, then came in high and smacked Merry’s left temple with the flat of his blade. She fell like a stone. Eynon leapt off the top of the barrel, aiming his staff at the man’s back, but he misjudged the distance and landed on his face in the narrow space between the last barrel and the raised stern.
The swordsman jumped down beside Eynon—his boots inches from Eynon’s eyes. In the next moments, Eynon expected to feel a sword blow that would either end his life or his consciousness. He raised his head an inch or two and tried to clear his brain. A few feet away, in the darkness under the raised deck, he saw a pair of reflective copper eyes. A small, wiry gray shape with a black mask shot out from its hiding place and dug its claws and teeth into the exposed flesh of the swordsman’s leg above his boot.
The long-haired swordsman screamed and hopped on one foot, trying to break the creature’s hold.
Eynon reclaimed his wits, rolled over, and found his
staff by feel. He gripped it from the bottom and thrust the top of his staff up beneath his opponent’s gambeson, connecting with the soft spot under the swordsman’s breastbone. Blood trickled out. The point of the quarrel embedded in Eynon’s staff must have ripped flesh.
The man fell back and landed on the deck like a sack of grain. Eynon’s opponent was paralyzed. He wheezed like a covered pot full of water too long on the hearth.
The little beast disengaged his claws and shifted to sit on Eynon’s stomach. Eynon stood and carefully cradled his rescuer in his arms before placing it on the boat’s raised stern. The animal was a young raconette—probably the one he’d seen in the woods an hour earlier.
He took stock of himself and realized he was whole, except for a collection of bruises that would probably grow over the next few hours. Eynon climbed up on the raised stern deck and felt the pulse at Merry’s neck. It was strong. A knot the size of a duck’s egg was rising on her temple, but her breathing was steady. He straightened her limbs, put the cushion from her steersman’s seat under her head and smiled as the resourceful raconette settled on her chest, tucking its fluffy ringed tail around its body.
Below, he saw the second swordsman stirring. The long-haired man had regained his breath and was kneeling in a small pool of water. Eynon looked at the man, then Merry, then back at the man. He reached down with his staff and whacked the long-haired man on his left temple, none to gently, thinking Merry would be sure to approve. The man fell forward, still kneeling.
Eynon climbed down to stand beside his dazed opponent and dragged him to the side. Then he levered the man over the edge and tipped him into the attackers’ remaining boat. The woman in pinecone armor at the stern pushed her hat back and stared at him.
“Who are you?” she asked. “We were going about the crown’s business and you…”
“Be quiet,” snapped Eynon. He clambered up on the stern deck and looked down at her, his staff in his hand. A blue glow pulsed under the neck of his tunic.
“Don’t hurt me, good wizard,” said the woman. Her steering oar shook in her hands.
“Begone!” shouted Eynon. “Or I’ll burn your boat to the waterline.”
“Yes, good wizard.”
The short, wide swordsman had removed the crossbow quarrel from his leg and wrapped his wound with a sleeve ripped from his undertunic. He took the oars and slowly rowed the thieves and kidnappers’ narrow boat upstream while the woman at the steering oar exhorted him to stroke faster. Eynon watched them pick up their comrades, who were clinging to the overturned hull of the other boat. Once they were pulled from the water, he turned around to focus on more important matters.
Eynon confirmed that Merry’s pulse and breathing were still good, then took the notched steering oar and slowly guided their boat to a quiet, sheltered spot masked by a short, rocky peninsula. It had been a miracle the river was straight and largely rock free for their most-recent travels, though perhaps that had been one of the reasons their attackers had selected this stretch for their ambush.
With trembling hands, Eynon tied up the boat, then went below. He found a yellow and green towel in one of Madollyn’s baskets and dipped it in the river, rolling the fabric into a wide, flat tube. That task completed, he returned to the stern and placed his makeshift cold compress on Merry’s bruised head. Her eyes fluttered open when the cool towel touched her skin.
“Did we win?” she asked. Her voice sounded like peach skin.
“Yes, dear lady,” said Eynon. “They’re gone.” He rested his palm on her cheek. “You’re safe.”
“I’m glad,” said Merry. Her eyes closed.
Eynon found Merry’s blankets and bedroll under the stern deck and made sure she was comfortable as she slept on the deck before him. The little raconette—a male, he confirmed—shifted from Merry’s chest to Eynon’s shoulder. The brave beast weighed no more than a six-month-old kitten, but his claws and teeth were sharp and his front paws looked like hands. Eynon decided to feed him more apple, then discovered the small scamp had already discovered their store of them and was halfway through his second.
With his new helper chittering away, Eynon inspected the steering oar and decided it needed reinforcement. He moved over the cider barrels to the bow and returned with his pack, the shard, and one and a half halberds. He used the shard to cut the head off the undamaged halberd and found a coil of rope underneath the stern deck. He used the rope to lash the pieces of halberd to the steering oar and was proud of his work, glad that his grandfather had taught him his knots.
Eynon found the extra quarrels in the storage area while he’d been looking for the rope. Merry had packed them in a wooden box next to a small crockery urn full of dried cherries. He brought the box and the urn on deck and replenished the supply of bolts in his small crossbow’s stock. He left the box by the steersman’s seat in case he ran into more trouble and had to reload quickly. He ate a few dried cherries, for energy. Their tart sweetness bit his tongue.
The raconette begged and Eynon gave him a few cherries, which he ate greedily on Eynon’s shoulder. Then Eynon returned to the storage area and brought a jug of everyday drinking cider and the rest of the honey cakes on deck, too.
It was time to get back on their way, though the day’s tone had shifted from innocent joy to near tragedy in the space of a few hours. Eynon’s head was whirling as he untied the boat and used the mended steering oar to guide them back out into the center of the current. He would stay the course to Tyford.
Merry was sleeping peacefully. Eynon hoped she would wake before nightfall.
Fercha
Only a mountain stood between Fercha and the river, but that mountain proved to be more of a challenge than she had expected. It was particularly steep and half its slope was covered in slippery talus. She had to use magic to bind the chips of rock together in places to find a firm footing and had to ascend in zigzagging switchbacks instead of moving directly upward.
Her spirits were not diminished by the physical challenge, however. She was confident she knew her exact location. The cluster of dark firs at the top of the mountain were the same stand of trees she knew well from her own trips on the Rhuthro. They weren’t far from her tower.
At this rate, it would take Fercha several hours to reach the top—and still more time to make her way down to the river and commandeer a boat. But she was getting closer. She could feel it.
Fercha frightened a batsnake as she made her way to the summit. As it slithered away, she wished it—and herself—good hunting.
Chapter 11
“Healing potions are no substitute for caution.”
— Ealdamon’s Epigrams
Changing course is hard, but going with the current is easy, thought Eynon from the steersman’s seat. He smiled when he realized that sounded like one of Ealdamon’s epigrams. The few times he had to shift direction to avoid obstacles made him glad his arms and shoulders were muscular from farm work. He smiled again when he realized the strength of Merry’s embraces yesterday and this morning likely owed a lot to the physical challenges of navigation.
Eynon kept to the center of the channel and scanned the water and shore for any potential signs of trouble. So far, all he’d seen were small holdings and at one point, a water-powered sawmill on the west bank. The east bank was no longer marsh. Instead, unbroken stands of hardwoods marched in random ranks from the shore of the river, covering the hills and mountains beyond with dense greenery.
The small holdings grew farther and farther apart until there was no sign of human habitation. Four boats hauling cargo upstream had passed them, hugging the west bank. Two were rowing, one was poling its way up a section of shallows, and one seemed to be moving upstream of its own accord, with what looked like a fisherman dangling bait in front of it. Eynon resolved to ask Merry for an explanation of the strange sight when she awoke.
Animals were unafraid of humans along this part of the river. Eynon saw four does and six fawns drinking on the shore upstream from a brown bear sow and her two cubs. A mother possum with more babies than Eynon could count clinging to her back was walking up a log leading from a stony beach to the wooded bank above. A raconette—probably a female from her larger size—was hanging upside down by her tail from a branch that extended over the river, a child’s short throw away from Eynon. The raconette on his shoulder waved to the inverted female with one of his human hand-like paws and she waved back solemnly.
There were no signs of more thieves or kidnappers or narrow black eel-boat raiders. Eynon maintained his watch with his crossbow and extra quarrels in easy reach. He realized that Merry must have had a very good view of the water ahead from her raised vantage point. She could see rocks and obstructions sooner from here than he could from the bow, but she hadn’t said a word. He was glad she’d given him a chance to feel useful on their journey.
“Hey,” said Merry.
“Hello,” said Eynon softly, pleased to hear her voice. “How’s your head?”
“Still attached, I think.”
She tentatively put two fingertips on her duck-egg bruise and winced.
“Stay quiet,” said Eynon. “We’re making good time downstream.”
Merry sat up slowly, but remained seated on the deck. She moved her gaze from side to side like every degree of motion hurt.
“We’re in the crown forest lands,” she said. “They run for ten miles or so. There ought to be a royal hunting lodge coming up soon on the left.”
“Should we stop there?” asked Eynon. “Would they have a hedge wizard who knows how to heal?”
The Congruent Apprentice (The Congruent Mage Series Book 1) Page 13