Sword of Ice and Other Tales of Valdemar v(-100

by Mercedes Lackey

  That had been several candlemarks ago, and now both he and Ranyart were weary from the chase—and the armsmen had given chase for a while before he lost them near the Westmark Hills. He was glad he had been alone this time, claiming to be a simple minstrel who wished only to entertain with song in exchange for a warm fire and a good meal; not only had his being alone enabled him to flee quickly without having to make excuses to anyone in whose company he might have been seen, but had such a disaster occurred while he was with a troupe, the other members would now be suffering for his actions.

  And isn't that always the way, Father, he thought. Whenever the rich find they've been bested by one of a "lower" heritage, they vent their wrath on others whom they deem undeserving of mercy, or kindness or understanding, let alone a chance to prove their innocence— and forget about individual worth; in the eyes of the rich, we are all the same: valueless fodder, so much human flotsam for them to treat with as much disregard or contempt as they please. I remember the way Lord Withen Ashkevron of Forst Reach treated you after those damned Herald-mages from Haven showed him what a Gifted one could do with metalworking. I remember how the bastards all laughed at you, and you were a good enough man to pretend you didn't hear the laughter or see the smirks. But did any of the gentry, any of the courtiers ever bring their trade to you again after that? No. Gods, how they killed your spirit. Half my life you've been dead, and I miss you no less now than I did on the day Mother and I had to watch the gravediggers toss your body in that foul, disgraceful hole. Damn them! Damn then all!

  The young man's name was Olias, a thief who secretly possessed a meager measure of both the Bardic and Heraldic Gifts. Often in his travels, when both money and food were running low, he would insinuate himself into the good graces of various traveling minstrel troupes, enchanting them with his storytelling and enviable abilities on the lute, rebec, and cornemuse (his fiddle- and pipe and tabor-playing, though not offensive to the untrained ear, left something to be desired in his opinion); inevitably, the leader of the troupe would invite him to travel and perform with them, which Olias was more than pleased to do, accompanying them from city to village to hamlet and hollow, playing for lords and ladies and peasants alike. Since he never wished to endanger the members of the troupes (who were always kind to him, despite their typically desperate circumstances), he took care to ensure his thievery would appear to be the act of someone with whom the victim was familiar. It seemed that every merchant and nobleman possessed their fair share of enemies, and it was surprisingly easy to discover who among them was the most envied or despised—as well as the names of those who harbored resentment—and thus lay the groundwork for his deception. Sometimes it was as simple as placing a few stolen coins outside the doorstep of his chosen scapegoat (always another member of the gentry or a successful tradesman, never one of the poor), making it appear that they, in their haste, had dropped some of their ill-gotten treasure as they ran from the sight of their crime; occasionally he would have to resort to more complex methods of duplicity in order to avert suspicion from himself or the other players—employing his mild Gift of Thought-sending to plant misgivings in others' minds—but the effect was always the same: None had ever accused him or any member of his temporary troupe of the robberies.

  For Olias—lonely, angry, bitter, and distrustful—it was a good life.

  Good enough.

  The road he now found himself traveling was little more than a rutted tract of hard-packed dirt meandering through a skeletal tunnel of near-barren tree branches. This Harvest had been an usually cold one, and the trees, sensing this, chose to slumber earlier than many of the people in Valdemar were accustomed to. Tendrils of mist snaked from between the trees and lay across the road like a blanket of living snow, shifting, curling, reaching upward to ensnarl Ranyart's legs for only a moment before dissolving into nothingness. Overhead, the moonlight straggled through the branches, creating diffuse columns of foggy light that to Olias' frayed nerves became fingers of foggy light from a giant ghostly hand that at any moment would fist together and crush him. He was aware, as if in deep nightmare, of shadows following along from either side of the road—silent, misshapen things, spiriting along with the mist for furlongs until he snapped his head toward them. Then they would disappear in slow degrees, mocking his anxiety, melting back into the darker, unexplored areas of the night-silent forest. These shadows called to mind far too many campfire tales and old wives' stories of the outKingdom and the Pelagirs, with its uncanny creatures—which was not all that far from here.

  Unhooking his armed crossbow from its saddle-catch (were some of those shadows moving even closer!), the young man wiped the sweat from out of his eyes, then leaned forward and whispered in Ranyart's ear. "I can't speak for you, old friend, but I don't much care for this stretch of road. I know that you're tired, but I promise you that if you'll just quicken your pace and get us the hell out of here, the small bag of sugar I have in my pouch is yours."

  In answer, Ranyart broke from his amble into a trot, then a gallop, and soon they passed through a clearing to emerge on a more inviting expanse of road where the trees and mist and shadows were at a comforting distance, and the moonlight shone all around, crisp and cold and clean, forming no phantom fingers.

  But there was in the air a strong stench of burned wood and straw, of fire-scorched stone and something more; an odd, thick, sickly-sweet aroma that—though it was not so mighty as to overpower the other smells— seemed to be inexorably entwined with all the others.

  Ranyart chuffed, shaking his foam-streaked head.

  "I know," replied the young man, wrinkling his nose. "But we're both too tired to go any farther tonight, and there is a mild wind blowing against us; at least that makes the stink less offensive. We'll stop here until dawn and hope that the wind continues to blow in our favor."

  Beneath him, the muscles in Ranyart's back rippled, as if the horse were shrugging its reluctant consent.

  "Good. Then it's settled."

  They made camp quickly, Olias taking care to find a nearby stream so Ranyart could quench his thirst, then turning his attention to building a fire and killing a pair of squirrels for this night's meal. He arranged his ground-bedding under an imposing old sorrow tree (thus called because its like, rare in these parts, was usually found in the distant Forest of Sorrows), then lay the crossbow within easy reach before attaching his dagger sheath to his uninjured ankle. As a further precaution, he slipped a small stonecarver's blade beneath his sorry excuse for a pillow, then removed the sugar from his pouch and gave it to Ranyart, almost smiling as he watched his horse devour the brilliant-white chunks.

  When Ranyart had finished, he stared at Olias as if. to ask, Is that all?

  "I'm afraid there's none left, old friend. You'd think after all these years, you would have learned a little moderation."

  Ranyart snorted once, loudly, then threw back his head as if quite insulted, and stalked off to the side of the road where he settled himself for the night.

  "I'll remember this when you come begging for your morning oats."

  Ranyart snorted again, but this time less indignantly— perhaps even with a touch of humility.

  "You'll not charm me," said Olias. "I've known you far too long to—"

  The rest of it died in his throat when he heard the sound of approaching hoofbeats, coming hard and fast from somewhere down the ghostly road he'd left behind not half a candlemark ago.

  The back of Olias' neck prickled and his heart pounded against his rib cage. Somehow, the armsmen had found his trail.

  "Hell to Havens!" he hissed, throwing aside his blanket and grabbing up his crossbow, then rolling quickly to the right where a small, downward-sloped patch of land created a furrow just big enough for a man to hide himself. It was only after he was in position that he realized the sound was that of a single horse, carrying a single rider (a sound he'd trained himself to recognize). Perhaps one of the armsmen, in an attempt to prove himself to the others, h
ad stubbornly pursued him this far.

  Olias looked at the crossbow in his grip, and at the deadly, sharp, shiny silver tip of the arrow.

  No. He wouldn't hurt this armsman, not in a way that could either kill him or cripple him for life.

  He held his breath, listening to the near-frantic hoof-beats getting closer, and was wrenched from his concentration when the campfire hissed, then snapped loudly, spitting sparks upward, a few of which danced out into the center of the road, all but announcing his presence.

  A careless fool's mistake, not dousing the flames.

  No time to worry about that now.

  Pushing forward on his knees and biting down on his lower lip to fight against the screaming pain of his wounded ankle, Olias scrabbled on his belly like an insect up toward the campsite and grabbed the quiver, slinging it over his shoulder and its strap across his chest, then Sent a silent call to Ranyart, who was at his side in moments, bending low the bulk of his massive body so Olias could snatch a coil of rope from one of the saddle hooks. Craning to see if the rider was yet in sight, Olias quickly disarmed the crossbow, slipping the silver-tipped arrow into the quiver and removing a grapnel arrow in its stead. Tying one end of the rope to its stem, he loaded the grapnel arrow into the crossbow and rearmed the firing mechanism. That done, he took a deep breath, rolled twice to the left, came up on his elbows, aimed at a large stone near the base of a tree across the road, and fired.

  The grapnel caught solidly, and from the middle of the road it would be well-nigh impossible to see it unless one were specifically looking for such a thing, which the armsman most likely would not be, for—gods willing— he must be as tired as those he was pursuing.

  Olias wound the remainder of the rope around his right wrist, making certain that the portion lying across the road was flat in the dirt and would not be seen until rider and horse were right on top of it, and by then it would be too late.

  Slipping back down into the cramped furrow, Olias held his breath as the hoofbeats grew louder, closer, somewhat less fierce and slightly slower than before; he wondered why the armsman wasn't digging heels into the horse, forcing speed.

  Still, it was running swiftly enough that the rope, when he yanked it taut, should trip the horse and cause it to throw its rider without permanently harming either of them.

  The horse's hooves clattered against some stones embedded in the hard-packed ground as it bolted from the forest and neared the campsite. Olias grasped the rope with both hands now, winding it once around his left wrist and threading it through his grip, then rose to his knees and readied himself to pull—

  —when the horse, nearly upon the trap, stopped dead hi its tracks, hooves sparking against stones, one front leg in the air and bent at the knee—an almost absurd image, as if some wizard had frozen the beast in mid-motion—then slowly, mist jetting from its nostrils, began cantering backward.

  The armsman had spotted the trap. Damn!

  Disentwining his wrists from the rope as quickly as he was able, Olias pulled another silver-tipped arrow from the quiver and armed the crossbow, then struggled to his feet (Gods, the pain in his ankle was agonizing!) and limped into the road, taking aim at the rider.

  "Let me see your hands, armsman, and may the gods help you if—"

  For the second time that night, the words died in his throat.

  The boy who sat upon the horse was no armsman; he barely looked human. Even from this distance it was obvious to Olias that the boy had been the victim of a brutal beating. Most of his face and chest was covered in blood and wounds, his lower lip looked to have been half-sliced away by a knife's blade, and one side of his face was so horribly swollen that neither his eye nor part of his nose could be seen.

  Olias snapped the crossbow to his side, pointing the arrow toward the ground, and moved slowly forward, one hand extended in a gesture of peace so as not to alarm the horse.

  It was only as he came up beside the gray mare that he saw the rest.

  "Gods," he whispered. "Who did this to you, boy?"

  The rider made no reply.

  Not only had the boy been beaten, not only had he been cut and thrashed and (judging by some of the marks across his exposed stomach) whipped until nearly dead, but someone had burned him, as well. Clumps of ugly, flame-seared hair—looking more like pig's-bed straw than anything that should be part of a human being's body—hung limply from the boy's head, made all the more hideous by the contrast of its color against that of the sickening, glistening, crimson-raw sections where his scalp had been either sheared, pulled, or burned away from his skull.

  Olias swallowed. Twice. Hard and loudly.

  Over the years since his father's death, Olias had worked feverishly toward hardening himself against others' pain and misfortune. None had offered any comfort or sympathy to Father in his time of need—nor to himself or his mother after Father's death—so he vowed that none, no matter how pathetic, dire, or horrifying their circumstances, would ever touch him that deeply again.

  The next thought he blamed on weariness, for this boy whom he had mistaken for an armsman nearly reached into his core to wrest some small measure of tenderness... but Olias, well-practiced in this particular art of self-defense, was able to quash the moment of vulnerability by concentrating on the skill that had gone into securing the boy to his horse.

  His hands had been bound tightly together at the wrists and the bindings tied to the pommel of the saddle; there were no stirrup irons but the stirrup leathers had been left in place, used to tie the boy's calves to the saddle itself; he was belted thrice, two times at the waist—once to the pommel, once to the high cantle, using rings on the saddle meant for that purpose—and a third time around his neck. It was this last that threatened to move something buried deep in Olias' heart, for the opposite end of the leather strap had been split in two and each of the ends tied to the boy's ankles, as if he were a hog being bound for slaughter.

  Olias leaned closer, sniffing the leather.

  Beneath the coppery scent of blood and the charred aroma of flames and smoke, the scent of drenched hide drying was unmistakable. Whoever had bound the boy to this horse had soaked the leather straps, knowing damned well that as it dried it would shrink, tightening itself around the boy's neck and slowly crushing his throat.

  Why didn't you just kill him? thought Olias. What did this boy—barely a boy, more child than boy—what did he do that was so unspeakable as to warrant this kind of sick-making punishment, this . . . torture?

  Olias was still lost along such paths of thought when the boy turned his head downward—as much as the strap would allow him to—and opened his undamaged eye, which was so startlingly silver Olias felt a moment of awe tinged with fear.

  "Ffrind-iau?" choked the boy. "Caredig ffrind-iau?"

  Olias puzzled over the words. He'd traveled far

  through Valdemar, and had (or so he thought) encountered all of its various languages—after all, Valdemar was a patchwork quilt of a dozen different peoples escaping from a dozen different unbearable situations, and each of them had their own unique tongue which naturally would undergo changes as the various clans began to intermingle, but this boy was speaking in a language Olias had never heard before. It might have been some kind of primitive hybrid of Tayledras—Hawkbrother tongue (some of the inflections were similar)—but he doubted it; Hawkbrother tongue didn't have so many guttural clicks, nor was it nearly as musical as this boy's language. Under other circumstances, he probably wouldn't have cared at all.

  But despite his defenses, despite his not understanding the words themselves, Olias Felt the pain and loneliness and fear in the boy's plea.

  He unsheathed his dagger and set about cutting the straps, then lifted the boy (who was much, much larger than he first appeared) from off the horse—and nearly collapsed to the ground when the extra weight caused the bones in his wounded ankle to snap.

  :Ranyart!: Olias Called, trying to balance himself on his other leg.

  Ra
nyart ran up beside him. Olias managed to drape the boy over Ranyart's saddle, then guided both horses over to the campsite where he promptly collapsed to the ground, clutching at his broken ankle and snarling with pain.

  The boy lifted his head, then pushed himself up and slid slowly from Ranyart's back and stumbled over to Olias.

  "Poen?" he asked, gently placing one of his scarred and bloody hands on Olias's ankle "Cymorth poen?"

  "Don't touch it!" shouted Olias, throwing back his head and wincing. "Gods, please . . . please don't! I—"

  The boy closed his good eye, then tightened his grip. A strange bluish glow appeared under the boy's hand, quickly spilling outward to encircle Olias' ankle. And before he could further protest or strike out at the boy,

  Olias felt the broken bones and tendons instantly, painlessly mend themselves. Moments later the boy helped him to his feet and Olias was dumbstruck; the ankle was fine. The boy had healed him.

  Looking up, he watched as the boy set to work on his own wounds, the same bluish light emanating from his hands as he touched first his head, then face, lip, throat, chest, and legs, finally grasping each wrist in turn to remove the bruises and strap burns. Each time his hands brushed over a different area, more of his body glowed with a shimmering soft blue light until, for a moment at the end, he was encased in a spectral luminance; but in an instant the light dissolved into his flesh and he stood there, just a boy, far too large for his age but looking healthy and unharmed . . . and least outwardly. Only time would tell how much damage had been done to the boy's mind and spirit by whatever filthy, sadistic cowards had unleashed their brutality on him.