Ilbei Spadebreaker and the Harpy's Wild

by John Daulton

  “I never said I won’t pursue ya,” Ilbei said. “I told ya right out, I’m gonna come and drag ya straight back to Her Majesty’s justice where ya belong. There’s a price fer bein a no-good murderin thief, killin folks what ain’t done nothin to nobody ’cept try to hammer a livin out from under a rock.”

  Ergo the Skewer looked up at his man behind Kaige and signaled something with his eyes, but from his angle on it, Ilbei couldn’t make out what. He looked up at Kaige, hoping for a sign, but the big fellow looked like he was only barely on his feet, his eyes crossing and uncrossing. The man holding his sword was nodding when Ilbei looked.

  “Now don’t try nothin stupid,” Ilbei said. “I can smell the stupid comin right off the both of ya.”

  “Sergeant, please. You insult me. We both know—” He fired his crossbow and, in the same movement, dove back behind the embankment. Fortunately, Ilbei heard the catch in his voice and jerked to the side in time to watch the long projectile whistle past like silver lightning. It only just missed hitting the horse. In the next instant, less time than it took to blink, Meggins’ arrow slid through the weeds and deflected high and out into the brush on the other side of the creek, the Skewer’s trick affording him the protection of the bank, if only by half a moment.

  Kaige cried out right after and came rolling down the hill, his own sword stuck half a hand deep into his lower back for the first flop before being knocked out as he rolled. The man who’d done it ran back over the crest of the hill toward the shack. The man who’d been under Ilbei’s boot scrambled to his feet.

  Ilbei nailed the man’s legs together with one swing of his pickaxe, the blade entering through the left knee from the outside, exiting the inside, and then arcing in the other knee from the back. The curve of the pickaxe blade tore the right kneecap loose and pushed it through the skin. The small bone dangled against his shin, hanging on a bit of tissue like a cork tied to a bit of leather cord. The man screamed in agony as he fell, and Ilbei left him to leak and wail. He ran up the hill for Kaige.

  Kaige rolled to a stop halfway down the hill, collecting dirt and weeds in his wound, which had started to bleed. Meggins ran past him over the hill and disappeared.

  Ilbei rolled Kaige onto his back and looked into his eyes, fearing it was already too late, but Kaige was actually revived some by the pain and the fall.

  “I think I let them get away, Sarge,” Kaige told him. “Two of them boys jumped right out and whomped me in the head.”

  “Ya got bigger problems than yer thick head, boy,” Ilbei said. “They done stuck ya in the back.”

  “Oh,” he said, reaching back to feel for the wound. “Is that what that is?”

  Ilbei looked down the hill to where Mags had cut herself loose on the screaming man’s longsword and was now shaking Jasper fully back to consciousness.

  “Hurry,” Ilbei called down to her. “Hurry, hurry.”

  “He’s coming around,” Mags called up. “Just keep pressure on the wound.”

  “I’m keepin damn pressure on it. What do ya think I’m doin over here, pickin daisies?” He looked back up to where Meggins had disappeared, but there was no sign of the soldier yet. “Damn him if he gets hisself killed,” he spat.

  “Oh, I ain’t killed, Sarge,” Kaige said, smiling up at him as if he were lying at the bottom of a keg of ale. “I had worse than this before.”

  “I know ya have, son. So just pipe down, and we’ll have Jasper over here to fix ya up.”

  “Where’s Meggins? They didn’t get him after they rung my gong, did they? He back yet?”

  “No, they didn’t get him,” Ilbei said, taking advantage of the gap in Kaige’s memory.

  “Where’s he at, then? You need to tell him next time to wait up for me. He’s too damned fast. He ran right past them hiding in the brush. When I finally come through, whack, they ambushed me in the skull.”

  “Well, ya can tell him yerself,” Ilbei said, looking back and forth between the rising Jasper and the last-known location of the still-missing Meggins. “Soon as he gets here.”

  “Where’d he go to?”

  “He’s off bein a gods-be-damned hero,” Ilbei said, feeling as he did that he’d sort of let that slip. But he let the thought go as he saw that Jasper was finally up, collecting his scrolls. Mags helped him, and a moment later, they came up the slope, with Mags supporting the mage sturdily.

  Jasper knelt down beside Kaige, whose blood was now running in a stream several finger-widths wide in the dirt between Ilbei’s knees, and looked him over. He fished through his satchel and pulled out a scroll.

  “Can ya read them things proper, what with yer brain been rattled recently?” Ilbei asked. “Hard to say which of ya got struck the worse.”

  “I can read it,” Jasper said. Then he turned and vomited in the weeds. “I think.”

  Ilbei shook his head, and guilt filled him. He’d nearly led his men to disaster taking on the Skewer. And Meggins was still up there chasing them.

  “Keep an eye on em both,” Ilbei said, directing the statement to Mags, as Jasper was more firmly settled and unfurling a scroll. “I’ll be right back.” And with that he ran off in pursuit of Meggins.

  By the time he returned, Meggins in tow, the bandits had gotten away. The one Ilbei had pickaxed through the legs was dead, and Mags and Kaige were pulling the miner out of the water respectfully. Kaige appeared to be as healthy as an ox. It seemed stab wounds and blunt head blows were just the sorts of things Jasper’s army-issue healing scrolls were intended for. With Kaige up and as merry as a man just risen from a nap, Jasper had gone to where the miner had finally split open his boulder, his last act before being murdered. There was a hole where the bandits had been digging in the gravel there, and the wizard sat waist deep in the water, scooping out gravel with his hands.

  “What in the name of wet idiots is he doin?” Ilbei asked as he stepped in to help Kaige and Mags carry the miner up to higher ground.

  Before anyone could answer, Jasper called out, “I’ve got it. He was right!” He held up his hand triumphantly. In it, a bright chunk of gold, as big as his fist, gleamed wetly in the sun.

  Chapter 15

  Jasper ran the chunk of gold over to Ilbei, breathless as a boy who’s caught his first fish. Though the distance was short, he was panting by the time he got there. “Placer gold, just like I knew it would be. He was right to think it was down there.”

  “Makes his murder all the worse. Her Majesty’s laws are hard on men what kill fer greed. Won’t go well fer Ergo the Skewer and those what got off with him.”

  “All the more reason to get after them,” Meggins said.

  Kaige straightened and put both hands in the small of his own back, stretching it, as if still trying to confirm that his wound was healed. He looked down at the man lying at their feet. “He needs to be buried. We can’t leave him here.”

  Ilbei nodded. “We’ll see it done. It’s only right. And after, we’ll get back to Hast and fetch some more men. With only us, and havin Mags along, it ain’t prudent to keep goin up there. They know the country, and we don’t, and that gives em more advantage than they need. We’ll have the whole mountainside brimmin with folks what want to do fer us.”

  “Mags knows the country,” Meggins said. “Don’t you?”

  Mags looked to Ilbei, who scowled, his tatty mustache bristling around his mouth. “I do,” she said anyway. Honesty required she admit that it was true.

  “Well, we still ain’t goin, fer all them other reasons I gave. We come close enough to gettin both Jasper and Kaige brained—not that either make much use of em—so I’m sayin we go back.”

  “Since when did you go all soft and motherly, Sarge?” Meggins asked. “We already cut the Skewer’s numbers to less than half. You told us the miners said there were only eight. Well, now there are three. And they know we’re not to be messed with.”

  “We ain’t goin on without orders. The mission’s changed, and that’s the end of it.” He
looked briefly to Jasper, who was still holding the gold reverently, then to Mags. “Mags, this dead feller got any folks anywhere what we could send that to?”

  “I believe he’s got a sister who lives in Norvingtown or somewhere nearby on the gulf of Dae. I don’t know her name, but his was Scaver, and his father was a tanner out there. We can find her.”

  Ilbei nodded, as relieved that she had that information as she appeared to be that he had asked. He turned back to Jasper. “I expect ya got somethin in that bag of tricks of yers to get word to Major Cavendis about the murderous nature of them criminals movin that way. He ought not to take so lightly to the woods alone knowin what we know. Them criminals is just as happy to cut down Her Majesty’s men as butcher a man workin hisself a stretch of stream, and an officer covered with gold and silver baubles would make a nice prize.” He shook his head ruefully as he said it, lamenting what had become of humanity, a race that supposed itself to be the most civilized on Prosperion.

  “I do have a scroll for it,” Jasper said. “It’s actually one I did the enchantment for myself.” He looked pleased. “What should I tell him?”

  “What I just told ya. Tell him Ergo the Skewer and at least two more are headin his way with a taste fer murder and gold. Make sure he knows the uniform of Her Majesty’s army don’t mean a heap of dragon dung to them fellers, and they’ll likely gut a major as easy as they would have done any one of us, and like they done that poor feller lyin there.”

  “What if he asks why we are here at all?”

  A portion of Ilbei’s beard and mustache slid up toward his right eye at that. “Don’t ya have some way of communicatin what ain’t two-way? Like a magic messenger pigeon or letter carrier, so as we don’t have to get no reply?”

  “The army would only pay for me to make two-way message scrolls. It’s what I was doing right before they dragged me off down here. The cost to make them is only marginally higher than making one-way reporting spells, so there’s really no reason not to, given that carrying both only takes more space. The mitigating reagent is silver, actually, and it amounts to only a seventeen percent difference, purely for that, not counting the others. Although I read once tha—”

  Ilbei cut him off before he could ramble off on a lengthy technical, magical and bureaucratic dissertation on the processes required for enchanting magic onto parchment. “Just get to it, son. We got half a day’s march ahead, and you’ll be a week in that story there.”

  Meggins made no attempt to hide his disappointment at the finality of Ilbei’s decision to go home. “But what about that old, nasty harpy in the stream? Aren’t we at least going to yank it out of there like you said? For the sake of the water supply?”

  “The whole point of makin the water better is so that nobody gets sick or killed,” Ilbei said. “I’m thinkin gettin one of them span-long crossbow bolts through the head will kill ya deader than any creek-born harpy craze. And quicker too.”

  “He will kill miners up at Fall Pools and Cedar Wood,” Meggins said, which made Ilbei frown. Meggins raised his eyebrows optimistically. “I’m just saying, leaving has its own set of risks. It’s not just the major we have to worry about.”

  “If we didn’t have this here woman along—” Ilbei turned back to her, “no offense—I’d be all right with pressin on. But we do, and I ain’t draggin her into another fight, as the last one might have done fer her as well as the rest of us.”

  Mags actually did look offended, and she thumped the butt of her reclaimed quarterstaff on the ground as if she were about to protest, but Meggins beat her to it by a blink. Or at least he tried to. “But they’re going to—”

  Ilbei silenced him with a glare, tipping his weight forward, his squat, burly body swelling with the familiar sort of breath that famously preceded a tirade or, worse, a straight-up beat down.

  “By Mercy’s light, the lot of ya. I said we’re gods-be-damned goin back, and that’s the end of it. Meggins, if’n ya make one more snivelin squeak, I’ll bust yer head so lumpy yer phrenologist will still be tellin the stories ten years from now. Ya hear?”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” Meggins said. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Just hungry for payback was all.”

  “Hey,” called Jasper from over by the horse. “There’s something wrong.”

  They turned as one to face him.

  “What’s wrong?” Ilbei asked. He moved to where he could glance down at the scroll the young magician held unfurled in his hands, as if somehow he, rather than Jasper, might be able to spot a problem with it.

  “The spell. It’s not working. The first line keeps dissolving back when I get to his name.”

  “Son, I don’t know what that means.”

  “The locus line, where I fix the object of the spell as written on the page to the image in my mind. They have to match for the smoke writing to work.”

  “Still meanin nothin, Jasper,” Ilbei said. “Pretend I don’t know nothin about magic and start again.”

  Jasper’s eyes rolled heavenward, the mind behind them seeking a way to properly simplify. “It’s not letting me start the spell because the object of the spell isn’t working. Like aiming a crossbow at a target that isn’t there.”

  “Like who isn’t there, the major?”

  “Yes. There’s no object to stick the spell to. It’s as if he does not exist.”

  “Well, that’s the most fool thing I heard come out of ya yet. ’Course he exists. We just spent a fair miserable stretch of days in his company.”

  “That is precisely my point, Sergeant. We did. The spell should work. But it doesn’t. Here, watch what happens to this first paragraph as I read. Do you see here, where I’ve filled in his name, this whole set of lines starting at the top?” He tilted the scroll so Ilbei could see, pointing to where he had written the major’s name in a space near the end of the third line. Beyond those two words, Ilbei didn’t recognize another one on the page. The whole thing was one great wall of indecipherability, the sort of thing that made him very glad he was a man who made his way in the world with his hands. He had no patience for all that chicken-scratch nonsense. “Now, just watch,” Jasper said. “These words at the top will disappear as I read, and then, when I get to his name, the whole thing comes back again—I wrote it that way because, well, if I am permitted a bit of vanity, because I can. This is the army after all, and death is quite possible, so I included that circular enchantment in the locus lines so as not to lose a valuable scroll in the event of this person or that person’s death, which of course makes targeting them impossible. Otherwise, this scroll, which cost Her Majesty a full half-crown, would already be used up. It’s really a very clever piece of magic, if I do say so myself. I found the return magic in an enchantment the dwarves used on their catapults, believe it or not. Such is the value of a little research, I should say. It seems they had the ability to—”

  “Jasper, sweet Mercy! I’d rather the gorgon turned my giblets to gravel than hear another word. Just show me what you’re meanin to show before my retirement years pass me by.”

  The insult set one of Jasper’s eyes to squinting, but, being outranked as he was, he began to read the scroll anyway, mumbling in the low, singsong voice of magic underway. Ilbei focused on the lines as directed, marveling at the words as they really did disappear, making it easy to follow, one word, then another, then the whole first line, as if it were all being slowly erased by an invisible finger pointing as Jasper read along. Ilbei had never seen a spell being read before. He’d seen scrolls used, of course, but never actually looked at the page as the enchanted magicks were being released. First went the top line, and then the second. The third line began to disappear as well, fading away toward where the major’s name was written in. And then the page was full again.

  Jasper looked up at him right after, his expression the sort seen most often upon the faces of hungover men. “You see,” he said, grimacing, and rubbing the side of his head.

  “Well, as you’re intent on makin a
fuss about it, seems clear it ain’t supposed to be that way. So what’s it mean?”

  “I think it means he’s dead.”

  “How can ya be sure? Maybe he’s just gone back to Twee.”

  “I can’t be sure,” Jasper said. “But the spell has no limits to range. That means, if the spell won’t go to him, then he’s not there for it to get to.”

  “So that’s it, then. He’s already done fer? Ain’t nothin else it could be?”

  “Well, since I haven’t spelled his name wrong, the only other thing would be if he wasn’t who he says he is.”

  “Like an imposter?”

  “Yes.”

  Ilbei scratched his head, his mouth wiggling beneath his mustache. “But wouldn’t there still be a Major Cavendis somewhere, if’n the man we know as him weren’t him? The what the spell ought to get to by rights?”

  “Well ….” Jasper had to think about that for a moment or two. “No, I shouldn’t think that would work. For one, he might have made the name up. But even if he hadn’t, it still wouldn’t work that way because the man I know as the major wouldn’t be the same man as the one attached to the name I wrote down. It’s the bringing together of language along with an idea. So, if he were an imposter, neither of them would suffice as the proper object of the spell.”

  “So then, ya either spelled it wrong or he’s dead?”

  “Well, he still might be an imposter, although he’s rather highborn to bother with such a thing. And he is a lord of South Mark, where Cavendis is a well-known family name. Meaning the most likely answer is that he is dead. Maybe the man who ran off yesterday got to him.”

  Ilbei harrumphed. “Or that odd rip of a hunter, Locke Verity.” Ilbei leaned forward to glance at the scroll again, which Jasper tipped for him to see. In truth, Ilbei knew he wouldn’t know any better than Jasper would how to spell the major’s name, if there were any irregularities as to how it ought to be done, but it looked right to him as it was. As much as he hadn’t liked the young lord, he’d hate to think he’d gone off and left the man to be butchered all alone. That could come with ramifications all its own. Still—and gods knew Cavendis had behaved oddly enough for a man acting the imposter of some kind—there was an ironic sort of hope that he wasn’t dead, despite the fact that Jasper sure looked confident that he was.