“Let’s move them inside,” Tejohn said, “so we can start another and go back to our task.”
As Javien moved toward the nearest soldier, he said, “I’ve covered them with a cloth.”
Tejohn was grateful for that in ways he couldn’t express. Together, they carried the bodies inside, then took from them anything of value, which turned out to be seven iron-bladed knives; they didn’t have a speck between them. While the priest poured oil around the main room, Tejohn carried armload after armload of firewood inside.
Someone had worked very hard to chop all that wood. It felt like a crime to waste all that effort.
Night had fallen by the time Javien cast his little fire spell at the doorway of the house. The flames spread quickly. They stood partway down the hill and watched the house burn. Tejohn thought he ought to say something to the young priest, but nothing seemed appropriate. Javien appeared to be utterly composed, as though his role of beacon protected him from self-doubt.
For himself, Tejohn held his spear and shield close. He needed them now in a way he wouldn’t have been able to articulate if someone had asked. They were like a connection to his old self, the one that had never become a king’s shield, a servant, a captive in the dungeons of Ussmajil, or an executioner.
They returned to the farmhouse on the high hill where they had spied on the grunts. It was still empty. Tejohn filled two bowls with water while Javien lit the hearth. Then they washed very, very thoroughly.
As usual for late summer, the larder was not well stocked, but they managed to find small meals. Neither ate much. The roof leaked a little but they were glad for a dry corner. Tejohn lay in the darkness and wished he could be far away with his wife and children, living somewhere in the east. He’d sent them away almost three months ago, and he’d expected to be with them again by now. He longed to see his children again.
But there was nothing he could do about it. Even if everything went perfectly, he would not see them again for a long, long time.
In the dark, when they were supposed to be sleeping, Tejohn could hear the priest weeping quietly. For once in his life, his hand did not fall to his knife. For once, he knew there was no reason to fear a scholar’s tears.
In the morning, Tejohn used a bit of rainwater mixed with wood ash to clean the waterfall insignia off his new shield; he wasn’t a king’s spear and had no interest in impersonating one. Then they scavenged everything they could from the larder--including half a dozen stale sourcakes--and returned to the road. It was still raining. The house and barn they had burnt had already been reduced to charred foundations, but the wheat field was mostly untouched.
The old soldier and the young priest continued on their way, heading toward the west.
Chapter 21
Javien insisted they hurry. He wanted to travel light, sleep as little as possible, and waste no time with talk. Tejohn understood and agreed. The sooner they accomplished their task, the sooner they could turn the war against the grunts around. Maybe then they would feel like heroes instead of butchers.
If they were lucky. If they managed to make their way to Tempest Pass alive, and if the spell was there, and if Ghoron Italga--once the heir to the throne of Peradain and now little more than a scholar hermit--was willing to teach it to them.
That was a lot of “ifs” to contend with. The only certainties they had were that they had just committed murder and that no one on the road was going to welcome them.
At the first village they came to, they faced a local militia with a line of spears and three archers. Not only were strangers not welcome there—even beacons wearing their red robes—but half the militia followed them eastward on the road, and away from Salt Pass, to make sure they didn’t try to circle around and approach the village from the north or south.
Of course, once they were alone again, Tejohn and Javien did circle around, but they kept well clear of the village. They found a little stream they could follow and, feet wet for an entire day, tramped northward among the rocks.
Near the end of the day, a farmer spotted them and, with grudging politeness, asked them to get out of the stream. He pointed with his bill toward a deer path, promising it would lead them to a ferry.
Tejohn had the feeling the farmer wouldn’t have been so polite had they been unarmed.
Javien was quite disturbed to hear that they would need a ferry. His maps suggested there were no large rivers or lakes nearby, but it turned out there were. The next morning, the path emptied onto a road and they saw a lovely little freshwater lake. It was too small for most maps but long enough that it would have taken a day to pass around it.
The ferrywoman demanded double her usual fare. No one was crossing southward these days, she said, and who would pay for her trip back home?
Tejohn told her he would pay her two sourcakes for the crossing, and she agreed so readily, he realized she would probably have taken half of one. As she hauled on the rope to pull the ferry raft across, she informed them that her cousin out west wouldn’t even come near the lakeshore until his passengers had stripped to their skin to prove they had no bite marks, patches of blue fur, or bare eyeballs poking through their chests. Rumor had it that the grunts could look out of a person’s palm, or back, or bum, and see who nearby was worth the eating.
The road they were on would take them to the pass they wanted, she assured them, although why they would want to venture so close to dangerous lands, she couldn’t imagine. Best head for home and keep well away from the Bendertuks to the west. Rumor and better than rumor said their troops were running wild on the border, killing anyone who so much as looked at them funny. Tyr Finstel’s spears and bows were all to the south, driving away grunts, so Tyr Bendertuk was having his way with the Finshto common folk.
On the far shore, Tejohn handed over the two cakes, then promised to keep away from the border. He also warned her that Tyr Finstel had crowned himself King Shunzik, and she ought to take care to call him that, just in case.
“That news itself is almost worth the price of the crossing,” she said, although she didn’t hand back the food. Instead, she took the tiniest pinch from one and ate it as if it was the first meal she’d tasted all day.
Tejohn and Javien watched her haul herself back across the water. “It’ll be better in the fall,” Tejohn said. “There will be less hunger once the harvest comes in.”
“Assuming anyone is here to eat it.”
We’ll make sure of that, he wanted to answer, but it seemed like a hollow promise.
Javien changed back into his red robes, looking in dismay at Tejohn’s gray. The priests’ red was supposed to ease their passage across borders; they could not reach the pass without crossing into Bendertuk lands.
Once he had put on his red, as he called it, the young priest became much more talkative. He suddenly had a hundred questions about the grunts. Did they mate or did they only spread by biting? Were they male and female? Did men transform into male grunts, or was there no correlation?
The priest seemed to have an alarmingly nonchalant attitude about changing gender. Certain swamp animals in the Redmudd homeland were known to switch from male to female, he claimed, and there was no reason he shouldn’t expect to see it in more complex creatures, especially magical ones. Tejohn admitted that he hadn’t thought to check and hoped that would be the end of the conversation.
Javien also wondered what they did in environments where they took over. How did they find balance? Even if they transformed humans only and not lower animals--something he was not convinced of yet--their appetites would turn their habitats into wastelands.
“That makes sense,” Tejohn interrupted. “Say that someone wanted to conquer the Evening People; they would unleash The Blessing in their homeland and let the curse spread until the land was emptied. The grunts would transform or devour everything, then die off themselves. How long do you think that would take? Two generations? Three? It’s war by proxy. The grunts do the fighting and then vanish, leaving open land for the t
aking.”
“That would be an ingenious plan,” Javien said.
“It’s dishonorable,” Tejohn said sourly. “It reeks of cowardice. The only real question is this: did the power behind the grunts intend for their attack to spill over into Kal-Maddum, or was that an accident?”
“Either way, if their magic is that potent, I wouldn’t want to face them.”
Tejohn grunted in response. If their enemy, whoever it was, didn’t have the courage to march out to face those they intended to conquer, they deserved a spear to the guts. The best way to deal with a scholar--or wizard, or whatever these things were--was with a piece of sharp metal, expertly applied.
Near the end of that day, they crossed the top of a hill and came upon a little girl squatting at the side of the road. She held out her hand, mutely begging. She looked to be no more than eleven, and half starved.
“I’m sorry, little one,” Javien said. “We have a long way to go and little enough for ourselves.”
“Nonsense,” Tejohn said. He crouched beside her and unwrapped a sourcake. She reached for it, but there was some reluctance in it. “Of course. You don’t want this.” He withdrew the cake and broke a piece of meatbread from the heel of the loaf. The girl waited for him to offer it, then snatched it from his hand.
“My...friend,” Javien said, rightfully cautious about using honorifics. “We don’t have enough for ourselves, let alone every hungry child we find by the side of the road. The Way is full of hardship as well as comfort.”
“Yes, it is,” Tejohn answered. “However, the road will sometimes have a lookout. Is there safe passage, little one?” He took out the smallest of the iron knives he’d taken from the bodies at the farmhouse.
The blade was short and slender, the wooden handle cracked, but the girl’s eyes lit up when he held it out to her. She laid her hand on it, but Tejohn didn’t let go. “Is there a safe path?”
She nodded at him, then led them partway down the hill they’d just climbed. Pulling aside a branch, she revealed a deer path into the woods. It didn’t look promising, but the girl made a motion like a swimming fish and smiled at them.
“Left, right, then left?” Tejohn asked. She nodded, looking around as if fearful she might be caught. He gave her the knife and watched her run to the top of the hill.
The deer path was so narrow, he had to sling his shield onto his back. The priest followed him into the trees. “Bandits?”
“Common enough,” Tejohn said. “In the summer months before harvest, some folk will ease their hardship by crouching by the side of the road, bow in hand. They’re usually reasonably polite about it, but sometimes you meet someone with a taste for killing.”
“I’d rather avoid that, if I could.”
“And I’d rather not have our food and weapons stolen.”
The path led through swampy lowland, and they had not emerged from the thickets when the sun went down. They slept in trees without a fire and, in the morning, emerged onto the road near a village wall. There were no Bendertuk soldiers in sight, but they were questioned vigorously at the gate before they were allowed inside. The beacon was a portly fellow who talked quite a bit about the bad harvest of the previous year. He also asked a few vague questions about how the two visitors had come to town. When he found they had not taken the road, he scowled as though he’d lost a business opportunity.
Javien hated the man from the first and raged about him for half the day once they returned to the road.
The next village was too small to have a beacon of their own, but the people there were happy to feed and house them once Javien agreed to marry one couple and divorce two others, asking only for donations of meatbread in payment. Both men heard endless complaining about the cost of the local beacons’ services, even when they didn’t have to travel.
The next village had grown beyond its walls and offered sleeping arrangements inside its growing temple. The village after that had been sacked and burned to the ground by Bendertuk spears. The village after that refused to allow them through the gates. The village after that was in mourning.
And so it continued, for day after day, as they approached the mountains of the Southern Barrier.
Chapter 22
The room was not the most lavish Cazia had ever seen, but it was a huge step up from the last few months. There was a frame stretched with soft boq skins that served as a bed, and a row of chests and wicker baskets that held clothes and other essentials. It reminded her of the belongings they’d found in the ruined camp out in the Sweeps. Great Way, that seemed so long ago.
Goherzma--apparently, that was his name, as unlikely as that sounded--stayed in the corridor. Cazia heard heavy footsteps approach, then a conversation in Toal, then the footsteps retreated. The girls crouched silently in the room, keeping well back from the windows.
The door shut again, and the man returned. He slid his sword into a sheath in a wicker basket by the entryway, and looked over the three girls.
He bowed again, more deeply this time, and Ivy stood up straight. The two of them exchanged a fair bit of chatter. Cazia couldn’t follow it, but the man gave her a single dark look, which she didn’t like at all.
He was older than she’d first thought, possibly forty or more. He had the arms and shoulders of a fighting man, but there was a doughy layer around his middle that suggested retirement, promotion, or soft duty. His face and hands were unscarred.
“The princess,” Kinz whispered, “is telling him how we were made prisoner here and how we have been treated. Apparently, her cousin is inside the fort.”
“Probably enjoying that feast,” Cazia said. She spoke in a normal tone, which made the swordsman look sharply at her again. Let him. She was not a thief or a spy and she would not whisper like one.
Kinz stopped whispering but she did not speak at normal volume, either. “They are discussing the wisdom of summoning him immediately or waiting for him to return on his own. If the alarm does not stop, he might be quartered in the hall for the night. Now Ivy is telling the man to fetch her cousin right away. She does not want to wait.”
Kinz stopped translating when the servant made his reply, his tone full of warning. After an uncomfortable delay, Kinz said, “He--”
“That’s all right,” Cazia said, laying her uninjured hand on Kinz’s so she wouldn’t have to translate something rude. They had put their conflicts behind them. “I know what he said.” She couldn’t expect a soldier to be happy to host a Peradaini, even in times like these.
“Do not rest on the bed,” Ivy said in Peradaini. “It is my cousin’s and it would give the wrong impression. That bench by the window would be better if you keep out of sight. Anyway, I have told Goherzma your names and that you are my friends, not my girls. In a moment, he will fetch my cousin and then we will not have to climb down the south wall or any other. We will be able to walk through the gate in the broad daylight with full bellies. And there is a bath in the other room; would you mind if I go first?”
“Of course not,” Cazia said. Could she let her injured hand touch bath water?
“I already had the summer bath,” Kinz said, “when we jumped in the river.”
The princess laughed happily as if she were joking, then drew back a tapestry to reveal a short passage into another room. Ivy lit a second candle and went in. Kinz shifted as though she wanted to follow. “Should we accompany her?”
Cazia moved to the bench and sat. Her hand had never hurt so badly, even when the injury was fresh. All it took was the movement of running and the pressure of her quickened heartbeat to set it throbbing. “They would assume we were her girls.” Kinz nodded and sat beside her.
Left alone with the Ergoll servant, Cazia and Kinz fell silent, watching him take a few things from a travel pack and distribute it among a few baskets. He was silent, almost sullen, but it wasn’t until they heard Ivy’s happy splashing from the next room that he spoke to them.
By her expression, Kinz did not recognize the word, bu
t Cazia did. The serving man pointed to the basket beside him and snapped his fingers. It was a gesture of command, one that would not have been used by anyone short of a chief of servants, and even then only if he were very unhappy with a servant’s work.
Cazia stood. The man glanced at her, then looked back at his task. Cazia walked toward him, not the basket he’d pointed to, and said “man” in Ergoll, just as Ivy had taught her. He glanced at her in surprise.
She slapped his face.
Doughy middle or not, he still had a fighting man’s reflexes; her fingers barely grazed his cheek, but it must have stung.
His eyes suddenly went wild, and he did just what she expected: he slapped her back. Cazia turned her face with the blow to lessen the impact. Great Way, he was strong. If he’d taken her by surprise, he might have broken her cheekbone.
Still, the pain in her face was not nearly equal to the pain in her hand. “Tell him something for me,” Cazia said. “Compliment him on the softness of his hands. Tell him that being slapped by him is like gently resting my head on a soft cushion of down.”
Kinz hesitated. “Are you certain? If he makes the alarm, we could be thrown in chains. Or hanged.”
“I’m sure. If we don’t make a stand here, we will be scrubbing floors and washing Ivy’s underclothes for the rest of our lives. I’d rather be hanged.”
Kinz translated, and all the apprehension had vanished from her voice and expression. The man seemed surprised and a little impressed by her boldness, but when he began to respond, Cazia slapped him again.
This time, his reflexes failed him and the blow took him full on the cheek. Kinz began speaking again without prompting, and from her tone, Cazia could tell she knew not to try to console the man or ease the hurt to his pride.
Goherzma looked chagrined, glanced at the doorway where Ivy had gone, then let out a deep sigh. He bowed to them both, said something in a low voice, and went out the door. When he was gone, Cazia tried to bar it with her one good hand, but Kinz had to help.
The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way Page 22