by John Daulton
“Sergeant,” said Mags, coming out of the building that served as tavern and supply depot. “I’m glad you came. Though it’s a sad reason that I’m happiest to see you, I confess.”
“Why’s that?” Ilbei asked.
“Candalin didn’t make it through the night. The medicine wore off in the evening, after you left. It burned off really quickly this time. I dosed her twice more overnight, but when I woke up late this morning, she was gone into Mercy’s arms. More’s the better for it, I suppose.”
“I’d hoped she’d hold up long enough fer Jasper here.” Ilbei shrugged backward, a gesture intended toward the mage.
“Yes. I did too. But her time came.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Well, that was kind of you to come back, Sergeant. You and your men.” She looked to them, each in turn, the four of them standing there covered in dust, foxtails and cockleburs, the latter of which stuck to them nearly everywhere. “Thank you all,” she said. “You have good hearts. The world needs more of them.”
“So, bein as we’re too late for Candalin,” Ilbei said, meaning to draw the conversation into an arena of action for which he and his men were better suited, “what was that ‘sad reason’ you was speakin of? Whatever it is, just say the word. We’ll see to it if’n we can.”
“The soil here is hard and rocky,” she replied. “And I don’t want to see her … well, you know, picked at by the scavengers. I know it’s an imposition, but if you and your men could help me get her buried properly, it would likely save me two or three days’ work.”
“It’s no imposition at all. It’s only right to see to that sort of thing. Mercy don’t take kindly to leavin good folks fer jackals, coyotes and buzzards.” He was careful not to mention the two skeletons they’d found up the creek only just the day before.
“No, she doesn’t.” She said this loudly, pointedly, and she turned toward the man down the lane from them, who was swinging into his saddle as she spoke. “She finds it to be the most offensive thing a man could do.” Her emphasis on the word man made Ilbei cringe, like watching some poor fellow take a swift kick to the crotch. Still, Ilbei reckoned if Mags hadn’t been as well mannered as she was, she might have said worse. Frankly, he was surprised she didn’t spit right after she’d said her piece, as it seemed by her expression that she wanted to.
The man glanced back over his shoulder, keeping his hood pulled low enough to shield his face, but he didn’t look long before heeling his horse and getting underway.
“Ya mean to say that feller refused to help ya give yer friend a proper send-off?”
“He did.”
“And ya asked him to? Direct, so as he understood?”
“I did.”
Ilbei growled low in his throat. “I’ll be dipped in frostberry sauce and fed to fire ants before I’ll suffer a man like that to go on without a proper talkin to.” He threw down the pack he’d been carrying and tossed his steel hat with its sergeant stripes on top of it. He set off down the dusty lane between the buildings, his bowlegs stomping and his elbows out as he went, rolling up his sleeves. “You there, feller on the horse, come on back here, as I’ll have a word with ya.”
The man made no move to stop, nor did he turn back to look. Instead, he kicked his horse into a trot. Immediate speed, however, was impeded by reluctance on the part of the three pack animals he had in tow.
Ilbei saw that the man’s intent was to flee, so he set off running after him, swearing for all his worth. “I said ya need to come on back here, son, as I have need to speak to ya.” Speed was not Ilbei’s strong suit, but his bowed legs pumped for all they were worth, eating up ground. The man yanked at the lead rope, trying to work the packhorses into at least a trot.
Ilbei caught up to the rearmost packhorse right away, and he got past the lead one a few strides after, near enough that he almost could have touched the rump of the rider’s animal. But his approach startled the packhorses, and they sidled and leapt sideways and away. Ilbei pressed on after, reaching for the mounted man.
“Stop this instant, ya whoreson dog,” Ilbei spat, but the rider whipped his mount furiously and yanked violently on the lead rope, shouting them all to speed. The pack string was drawn back toward Ilbei, and the lead animal knocked him a step sideways. The rider’s horse bolted out of Ilbei’s reach.
Ilbei knew he couldn’t catch up, that he was going to lose them all, so he veered toward the pack string and leapt between the second packhorse and the third, throwing his shoulder bodily into the animal’s chest and driving it to a stop. It reared up, terrified, yanking the lead rope out of the retreating man’s hand. Ilbei ducked beneath the churning, iron-shod hooves and snatched the rope for himself as it slid across the dirt. “Easy now,” he soothed. “Sorry there, girl. I didn’t mean nothin fer ya personal in that.”
A span of moments passed as Ilbei worked to quiet the mare, but soon enough she settled and warmed to Ilbei’s practiced hand. He stroked her on the neck, and when he was confident he had her under control, he turned, expecting to see the rider coming back for her. But he was not. In fact, the dust cloud the man churned up as he got away suggested he’d gotten his remaining pack animals up to speed and never once considered turning them around to retrieve the third. Ilbei wondered if he even knew he’d lost a horse. It was hard to imagine that he did not.
Nonetheless, Ilbei watched him go, his head tilted in the way of the curious and the pink patch of his bald spot slowly heating in the sun. “Didn’t see that comin,” he admitted to the mare. “And here ya seem like such a sweet girl.” He patted the horse on her wide, soft jaw and led her back to where his men and Mags were. Kaige, having unloaded his burden and started off to help, met Ilbei halfway with a wide grin.
“I told you Sarge could handle himself,” Meggins said, as Kaige and Ilbei rejoined the rest in the middle of what served as Camp Chaparral’s only street. Both soldiers were grinning at Ilbei unabashedly, their eyes beaming with admiration. Jasper had yet to close his mouth, but for once there were no words coming out. It was clear he’d never seen such a thing.
Ilbei handed the rope to Kaige and directed him to take the horse around to the shade side of the tavern and relieve it of its packs. “I expect that feller will be back once he figures out a third of his load is gone.”
“He knows,” Mags said. “I watched him look back.”
“Then why didn’t he stop? Do ya know who he is?”
“I know him. It’s Gad Pander. He’s the one I told you about.”
“I thought he might be. He really that much a coward as to drop his load and leave behind a fine animal just fer fear of a whippin?”
“Apparently. To be honest, I’ve only seen him three times, so I hardly know him. He showed up the first time about a year ago and came through two or three times more, each time saying he was off fetching supplies for the lads at Fall Pools, as I think I mentioned yesterday. Last time was the first time he ever brought anything down that he’d dug out for himself, and even with a proud haul, he was hardly any friendlier than what you just saw.”
Ilbei ran his hand down the short length of his dirt-encrusted beard. He knew plenty enough of hill folks to know they often didn’t take to outsiders too well, so the man might have run off out of some kind of hermitting instinct. But that’s not all Ilbei understood about remote living. He was well familiar with how sparse the life these folks lived could be, and leaving behind a packload of supplies, not to mention the horse itself, was absolutely beyond reckoning. There wasn’t any way a man in his right mind would do such a thing, recluse or not. Which meant that, once again, something didn’t smell right out here.
Chapter 13
The work of digging Candalin’s grave was arduous, especially given the morning’s trek, and made worse by the heat that pounded down on them, so hot it seemed that the sun must be angry at them for something they had or hadn’t done. The stony soil made the first half span of the digging miserable, and after,
when they hit bedrock beneath, well, then the chore was little short of agony. But they split the work between the five of them, Mags too, who turned out to be tougher than her lean frame would suggest. She was certainly tougher than poor Jasper, who, when his turn came, cursed and whined the entire time, pecking at the hole with Ilbei’s pickaxe with all the determination of a wet hankie. Meggins and Kaige teased him about it of course, prancing about with their wrists bobbing limply in the air, but he didn’t care. All he could do was lament the pick’s “ridiculous weight” and curse “the simian absurdity of its barbaric design.” Occasionally he would bemoan the fact that he’d not brought an excavation spell, which would then turn to vitriol launched against the quartermaster back at the garrison, but only for short spans, and then he’d fall back to bemoaning the pickaxe again.
Nonetheless, between them, they did get the hole dug and eventually laid the departed within. When they’d covered her up and Mags had found some pretty orange poppies to lay upon the grave, first Mags and then Ilbei said a few words over her.
By the time they were done, it was nightfall, and the five of them nearly collapsed into chairs inside Mags’ little store and tavern. Too tired to cook, they made a meal of deer jerky and goat cheese, which Mags supplied, and they drank a fine apple wine, which it turned out Mags made herself, a treat for which she’d become, or had been in the process of becoming, rather famous around Three Tents prior to the arrival of Ergo the Skewer.
After dinner, Ilbei took the low-burning stub of a candle off the table and went outside to check on the horse and have a few pulls off his pipe. He led the mare out to the edge of the cleared space around the buildings and tethered her to a twisting manzanita limb, where she could at least graze on the dry brown grass. He patted her on the rump as she probed for choicer morsels, but, finding none, she settled in to eat.
Mags was waiting at the back of the building as Ilbei returned, a washbasin filled with water still sloshing at her feet. “She’ll want this more than anything,” she said. Ilbei nodded and took up one side of the basin. Together, they carried it to the horse.
“This come out of the creek?” Ilbei asked as they set it down.
“It did,” she said. “I keep a few barrelsful inside.”
Ilbei grimaced. “I feel bad givin it to her. Knowin what we know.”
Mags tilted her head a little, and even in the faint pink light of a half moon, he could see curiosity flash in her eyes. “What do you know?”
“I’ll be. I reckon we didn’t tell ya about that harpy corpse we seen, did we?”
“No. Nobody said a thing.”
“Well, we did. Meggins in there seen a dead one up at the head of the stream, hung up in some rocks just inside the cave where the creek comes out. I expect that’s what done yer friend Candalin in. I’m sorry to have to give the news.” He let his gaze wander to the horse, who was indeed more interested in the water than the weeds around her hooves. “I suppose before we leave, we ought to go on up there again and pull that nasty thing out so as nobody else gets sick. Come to think of it, I wish I’d done it while we was still there. It had been a long day, though, and we had a stroke a’ bad luck gettin in and out, so I suppose the idea slipped past me at the time. We’ll get it, though.”
Mags nodded. “That would be the best thing. But, that’s not what made her sick.”
“I thought you folks didn’t know what made her sick.”
“We don’t, but it wasn’t water demons.”
“Water demons?”
“Yes, that’s how a harpy in the water might kill someone. They’ve got tiny demons like they’ve got mites and fleas.”
Ilbei twitched his jaw side to side a little at that, but tried not to let the odd statement run him off course. “Ya figure, now? I don’t know much about no demons, but that harpy up there’s been dead in that hole a long while, at least long enough to explain the crazy sickness ya said been creepin up on folks out here. Everyone knows them things is cursed with everythin foul there is, and I wouldn’t put it past em havin some kind of crazy disease.”
“Right. But the curse is the tiny demons. Which is why I purify our water,” she said. “I’ve got an alchemist’s system inside. We stir in alum powder and run it all through that big wine cask you saw inside. That cask is full of sand and gravel that cleans the water up well. Then we boil it for drinking, just to be sure no tiny water demons are in it still. They may be too small to see, but they aren’t too small to die.”
Ilbei looked at her as if she’d just started speaking the language of the elves. “Why would ya go and do all that fer? I ain’t never heard of no tiny water demons, and I been walkin Prosperion fer creepin up on a hundred and twenty years.”
“It’s just as I said: the process cleans and purges the water. It’s a trick I learned from a young magician I met when I first came out here. He was a clever man with more than a passing interest in alchemy, and he taught me how to do it. He said the healer priests at the big university in Crown City divined the nature of water sickness. They learned that there are tiny demons living in all sorts of things, and that sometimes they will make you sick to amuse themselves. He said water has them living in it much of the time, dead harpies or not. He said you can never be sure if they are there, especially out of doors.”
Ilbei nodded, thinking it did ring at least marginally true to his experience, at least in a sense. “We seen somethin of the sort comin downriver from Hast,” he said. “Though what we seen sure weren’t tiny and invisible. Jasper says they call that type a potameide. He’s keen on books and readin like them fellers at the fancy school, so I suppose it’s likely true.”
“Well, there are demons that are big, too, at least so I’ve heard, but I’ve never seen one. I can only speak to the tiny types for my cask inside. I can tell you that since we started running water through it, folks stopped getting the squeezy bowels and hurling sickness like they used to. I suppose that’s why we never could attract a healer out here to stay. Nothing to do but patch up a broken leg or stitch up cuts from time to time. Somehow I ended up serving as camp nurse afterwards, not that I have any qualifications for it outside of that cask.”
“Well, seems ya got the kind heart fer it, least as I seen yesterday. There’s a great deal to be said fer that alone.” He drew a long pull on his pipe, the red glow brightening in its bowl for a time. He blew the smoke out slowly, watching it smear the stars for a time as it drifted away. “Sounds like that alchemist mage of yers did ya a fair turn teachin ya all that. He must have been a fine feller to take the time.”
She turned away from him as he said it, and her posture grew stiff.
“I take it that feller vexed ya then?”
“I was dumb and gullible. And he was bored. And mean.” She didn’t dwell on it overlong, however, and looked up, smiling. “As you say, I did learn a neat trick for making water pure, so it wasn’t an experience without value.”
“What was a Crown City–educated wizard and alchemist doin out here anyway? Not to say that yer company weren’t enough to bring a man across great distances, mind ya.”
“Sergeant Spadebreaker, you are sweet, but no, that wasn’t what brought him. He was inspecting the mines for an employer. He said he was looking for reagents, minerals, dusts and powders for use in alchemy. He said he’d been sent to arrange contracts for things like, well, alum for example. Honestly, I think he was really just looking for gold like all the rest.”
“Did he find any?”
She sighed and looked to the north, out across the scrub brush toward the stars clinging to the darkness above the Sandsea Desert. “No, not really. You’ve seen what comes out of these hills if you’ve been here more than a day: lead, copper, a little alum maybe—not much of any of it, mind you—and maybe an ounce of gold in a year for the man who stays at it long enough. Everybody thought they’d find a big strike, the mother lode, but never did. What few decent deposits there were got taken straight off, and then most everyone
moved on—the smart ones, anyway, leaving just a few copper-scraping loners to peck out an existence as they could. My … temporary suitor … stayed in the hills for a month or so, coming down to see me almost every night. He seemed genuinely interested in me at first, but he kept getting meaner and meaner as the days turned into weeks. I tried to understand at first—I knew many of the others were growing frustrated by the lack of gold. Many had given up everything to come out here. So I put up with more than I should have, made excuses for him. And he was … well, pretty rough, and I was starting to get really afraid of him. But then, by the grace of sweet Mercy, one day he stopped coming anymore. I found out later he’d gone home.”
“Why didn’t ya cut his throat, or have some of the boys around here do it fer ya?” Ilbei asked.
“He was a magician. What could any of the locals do, scant few as there even were back then? Most of them worked the Softwater claims. And I wouldn’t have wanted to put any of them in danger anyway. Besides, no permanent harm came of it. But I sure didn’t miss him when he was gone.” She sighed and looked out over the landscape, a quiet blanket of star-spotted darkness drawn up and tucked round the sleeping hills.
There wasn’t much Ilbei could say to something like that, so he stared out with her into the night. After a time, he relit his pipe and sent puffs of smoke climbing ambitiously toward the firmament again. He watched it rise and scatter in the warm breeze that had finally begun to blow down from the mountain, touched with a hint of pine despite having traveled all that way.
He offered her his pipe, which made her laugh, then shake her head no. After a time, she went inside.
In her absence, Ilbei looked for a place to sit and enjoy the night. He spotted the panniers Kaige had pulled off the packhorse and set against the wall. He went to the nearest and sat down, puffing pleasantly on his pipe for a while until the candle finally burned out and he couldn’t relight it anymore.