Redoubt: Book Four of the Collegium Chronicles (A Valdemar Novel)

by Mercedes Lackey

One man was curled up on his side, a lump under a blanket. The other sat with his back to Mags, poking at the fire with a stick.

  It was startlingly quiet. Overhead, the stars were spread across the sky like a dusting of heavy pollen, or seeds spilled from a giant basket onto the black earth, too many and too thick to count.

  With infinite care, Mags tried to move his right index finger.

  It moved!

  He almost cried all over again.

  He tried all the fingers, one at a time, then tried the left hand, and moved on to his foot. He could move! But he wasn’t going to press his luck by trying to move his arms or legs. That might alert his captor, and that was the very last thing he wanted to do right now. Now he knew approximately how long it would take for the drug to wear off, and—

  Before he could finish that thought, the man at the fire straightened and tossed the stick he had been using to poke at the fire into the coals. Then he reached over and shook his fellow awake.

  Time for the second watch, then.

  But it seemed that it was time for more than that, as the first one reached down and picked up something next to him, and as Mags hastily closed his eyes again, he recognized with dismay the shape of the waterskin.

  —no—he thought.

  But his captors had their own plans. And there was no help for it.

  All he could do was, as before, try to drink as little as possible. And then wait for the dreams to carry him away again, and cling to his knowledge of who and what he was as he was tossed around like a leaf on a storm wind, and with about as much control over his fate.

  9

  They had stopped giving him the drug in his food, and now it was only in his water. He must have convinced them that he was weakening, and that they didn’t have to drug him so heavily anymore.

  Or, maybe, they were running low, and they were trying to stretch out what they had.

  The point was that his moments of clarity were longer, and he was able to move now at the end of them. In fact, he was in his curled position, secretly flexing his muscles to exercise them, when the wagon stopped.

  He froze, not daring to move at all, lest he be heard.

  “Where are you going, and what are you carrying?” asked a harsh voice that sent chills of fear all down his spine. Fear, because even though he understood the language, it was not one that he wanted to hear.

  This was Karsite.

  “That is none of your concern,” replied one of the now-familiar male voices, heavily accented and thick with arrogance. It was an arrogance that Mags remembered only too well from the so-called “merchant-princes.” “Behold this seal, dog, and know the will of your masters. We are to go where we will and answer only to them.”

  There was a long pause. Then, “It appears real,” the first man said, grudgingly.

  “That is because it is real, hound,” the second replied, voice laden with contempt. “Go back to your meddling in the lives of the small and weak. We have important work to do and no time to waste satisfying your pitiful curiosity.”

  Well . . . this was worse than he thought. As he listened to the sounds of a fairly large troop of men marching away, he felt his heart plummeting. If he’d had any doubt before, it was erased now; these were the same sorts of assassins who had been systematically trying to destroy Valdemar at the behest of Karse. They must still be holding to their contract with Karse to have a token that enabled them to be rude to the captain of a troop of Karsite regulars with impunity. So not only was he somewhere on the Karsite side of the Border, he was in the hands of people who could order Karsite soldiers around.

  So very bad. Really, the only thing worse would be to be in the middle of being tortured for information.

  Which . . . could happen at any point.

  Because right now, for whatever reason, they were taking care of him. But if they lost the protection of that token—or if they insulted someone badly enough that he decided to ignore it—the Karsites would find him.

  At least I’m not wearing Grays. And at least there’s nothing on me that says I’m from Valdemar . . .

  Not that such thin protection would last long if they were all tossed into a Karsite prison, because eventually the drug would wear off, and they’d start to question him, and if his story didn’t match that of his captors . . . or they noticed his accent . . .

  He started to sweat.

  Maybe if that happens, I’d better pretend to be insane.

  * * *

  Mags could not look up at the canvas throw over his head without craning his head to the side in a way that got painful before very long, but then, there wasn’t much to see, just the cloth lit from behind by whatever light was coming in through the canvas cover of the wagon. The two men babbled at each other in urgent voices as the wagon swayed and rolled over uneven ground, and the bed slanted first one way and then another. He’d thought the road they were on was rough, but now he knew he had been quite mistaken. Mags was pretty sure what they were doing, and it was exactly what he would do under the same circumstances. They might have sounded arrogant when they addressed the captain of that Karsite troop, but he reckoned now that they were not as sure of their status in Karse as they had pretended to be. So they had left the main road and taken to something less traveled.

  That wasn’t their only problem. He could hear thunder in the distance. They were about to get hit by a storm, and they were on what was a very bad road. That could spell a lot of trouble.

  Evidently that occurred to them, too. They stopped the wagon as a peal of thunder growled for a very long time, and the light inside the wagon faded so much that he could barely make out the shapes of the things penning him in. This was going to be bad, and they knew it. But they hadn’t pulled off the road, so they weren’t stopping—which might, or might not, be a good plan. He didn’t know a lot about driving wagons, but he did know that trying to drive horses in a storm was going to give them an enormous amount of trouble. He figured they weren’t going to take any chances on him waking up during the storm, so they were going to drug him now.

  Dammit! Under cover of a storm, of course, would give him the best possible chance at escape. Even if they pulled off the road, he would have a chance of overpowering them and getting away.

  But there wasn’t anything he could do about it—except that, as they poured the drugged water into him, to let as much as he could dribble out one side of his mouth, counting on it being so dark they wouldn’t notice.

  Only one of them came around to the back and got in. By the little lurches the wagon was making, the horses were nervous and the driver didn’t dare leave them unattended. Mags let about half the water leak out of the side of his mouth, and evidently the man feeding it to him didn’t see it. He even held the last mouthful and spit it out once he’d been laid down again.

  But being stopped had meant that they hadn’t fed him the soup, either, so since his stomach was completely empty, the drug hit him fast. All he could take note of when he passed into a dream of being huddled with the other mine-kiddies in their pit under the barn floor during a thunderstorm was that he still hadn’t been curled back up in his cavity, and the fellow was doing a lot of moving things on the other side of the wagon.

  * * *

  This time, he came awake all at once, as an enormous boom nearby made the horses scream. The wagon lurched and swayed wildly. And he was in complete darkness.

  He didn’t panic, because for once, on waking, he knew exactly where he was. Except—he wasn’t curled up. He was stretched out, and he felt wood pinning him in on all sides. Not coffin-tight, but he hadn’t a lot of room to move, either, except at his head and his feet. The blanket had been laid over him. A moment later, as another bolt of lightning hit nearby with a simultaneous crash of thunder, the wagon rocked and bucked, and he felt boxes and bales hit the side of whatever it was he was in. If he’d been in his usual position, by now he probably would have had every bone in his body broken by stuff falling on him. He didn’t t
hink he was in a coffin, because why would they have a coffin with them? That would be just daft—no one transported bodies in coffins for very far except the very rich, who could afford to have the bodies of their loved ones preserved. A coffin in a common wagon would just attract attention. But they had probably unpacked some sort of equipment from this box and stuffed him in it to protect him, knowing what was going to happen as they continued down these terrible roads in a storm.

  I guess I’m worth quite a bit if they’re taking that kind of care of me.

  They might have thought the storm would blow itself out or that they could get to the other side of it, and by the time they realized how wrong they were, it was too late and too dark to stop.

  He couldn’t move—yet—but he sensed he had a fair amount of room in this thing, whatever it was. And if ever he was going to get a chance to escape . . . yes, he might be able to manage it, even now.

  As the wagon lurched and rolled, and rain sluiced over the top and sides, as lightning struck and thunder boomed, he worked his fingers and toes until life came back into his limbs. Once he could feel fingers and toes moving normally, he flexed his muscles until they all came back to life. Then he tried simply lifting the top of the box.

  No good. Something had it fastened down tight. He didn’t dare pound at it, not now, not when he was within an arm’s length of his captors. He tried to remember what he had seen of the wagon itself. It wasn’t much like a solid wooden gypsy or minstrel caravan or a prosperous trader’s wagon; it was more like a farmer’s wagon, except with a round, tentlike canvas top held up by hoops of wood over it all. Had there been a drop-down flap at the back? Or—could his luck be good enough that there was no back to it at all?

  He decided that it didn’t matter. His plan involved getting out the back, and that was what he was going to have to do, even if it meant smashing through whatever was blocking him.

  So, when the wagon was lurching and wallowing down a hill, he used his weight to slide the box he was in to the front of the wagon, and when it was going up, he did the same, only moving to the back. He hoped that he was shoving the rest of the cargo out of the way, but it was impossible to tell from inside. He was sliding farther each time. And his captors were too busy fighting their panicked horses to pay much attention to what was going on behind them.

  And then it happened.

  Another bolt of lightning smashed into the ground so near to them that he felt it, felt the shock, felt the hair stand up all over his body, smelled the sharp scent of the lightning itself and the scorched smell of the earth. Thunder hammered them. The horses screamed, and the wagon lurched forward into a downhill run that sent everything in the wagon bouncing and flying, including him and his box. He braced himself inside it, getting bone-bruising jounces as the box danced all over the floor of the wagon, but knowing from the impacts on the top that however bad it was in the box, it was much worse outside it.

  Fueled by hysterical strength, the horses lurched up the next hill. A huge bounce gave him the moment he needed, and he shifted as much of his weight to the foot of the box as he could. The box went skidding toward the back of the wagon. And this time . . . he felt it teeter on the edge, balancing there for one precarious moment.

  And then the wagon lurched again, and the box went flying into the storm and the night. It hit the ground, knocking all the breath out of him, then began rolling and bouncing down a steep slope.

  Desperately, he splayed out his limbs and braced himself inside.

  The slope was certainly steep enough, and he had enough momentum, that it just kept tumbling. The blanket they had wrapped him in tangled up around him and cushioned the blows a little, but not much. It felt as if he were being beaten; it was almost impossible to keep entirely braced.

  And then, sickeningly, he felt—falling. And the thought flashed through his mind that the end of the fall would be at the bottom of some horrible chasm.

  But the fall ended, quickly, in a splash.

  And water immediately started pouring in the seams of the box.

  Now he began frantically kicking and pounding at the sides of the box; he had no idea which was the top, and all he could think of was drowning, trapped in this thing, as icy water soaked him, and his kicks and flailing blows splashed water about wildly.

  But then he felt the box settle, only half full of water.

  His relief was short-lived, however. A moment later, he felt it shift with the pressure of the water rushing around it, and he knew in a moment it could be swept into deeper water, where he would almost certainly drown. But with that brief respite of relief, he knew he had to concentrate his efforts on the one place where he could get the most impact from his blows.

  Not the sides of the box, but the foot.

  He wriggled until he got his arms stretched up and braced against the head of the box, and began to kick downward with all his strength.

  After his legs started to hurt, fear gave him new strength. And as the box shifted in the current again, he finally felt the wood give.

  More hysterical blows later, as the box shifted into slightly deeper water, and he was having trouble keeping his head above it, he felt the bottom pop out. He eeled out faster than he would have believed, somehow having the presence of mind to bring his blanket with him, and not a moment too soon. As he scrambled for the bank, he could see clearly in the nearly continuous flashes of lightning, the box ripped away from the rocks it had landed among and spun away into the darkness. He clutched the corner of the blanket between his teeth and scrabbled desperately with hands and feet through water that pulled at him, until he finally managed to fling himself onto the bank, panting and half-dead.

  All he wanted to do was lie there and not move. But he knew he didn’t dare. First, the water was rising; he could feel it climbing higher on his legs. Second, he thought he could hear shouting somewhere above. And third, he knew that if he did remain lying there, the wet and the cold would get him, and he would very probably die of the cold if the water didn’t carry him off first. Somehow he managed to get to his feet, wrap the blanket around himself, and stagger off along the shore of the raging stream.

  He had no real idea of what direction to go in. He had no idea where in Karse he was. He didn’t know where the wagon was, either, except that he was pretty sure he was still on the same side of the water as it was. All he could do was try to put as much distance between himself and his captors as he could.

  So he went upstream, away from where the box was spinning away on the current, because with luck, they would go in the opposite direction, assuming he was being carried away by the water.

  He staggered on long past the point of exhaustion, long past the time when his limbs burned with fatigue and his mind blurred. There was only the fight to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep that wool blanket clutched around himself. The only light he had to see by was the lightning, which showed no sign of abating.

  So as long as there was light to see by, he forced himself to move on, stumbling over fallen branches and rocks, finally grasping at tree trunks to help move himself along. His lungs burned, his sides ached, his legs and feet were a torment. The rain pounded his hair flat, and only the fact that the blanket was wool was keeping him from freezing to death. And even so, it was so heavy with the added weight of the water that it was a terrible temptation to let it fall off his shoulders and leave it behind.

  Finally, just when he thought he was going to just drop down where he stood—and in fact, was swaying with fatigue—a bolt of lightning revealed the entire face of the hill above him. And he thought he saw—

  Another bolt flashed across the sky as he peered at the spot.

  It looked like a sort of cave, under the roots of an enormous tree.

  It was the best he was going to get at this point.

  He staggered up the slope, groping toward the promise of shelter. When he finally reached it and clawed his way in through dangling roots and vines, he found a musty-sm
elling—but dry—den, full of blown-in leaves. There was also a sort of animal smell, but it was old, and at this point he would have happily shared the space with whatever creature had made it home. Or snakes. Or mice or bugs or any other thing. He didn’t so much crawl in as fall in, wind himself tightly in his precious blanket, and plummet into the first undrugged sleep he’d had since the ordeal started.

  * * *

  His belly woke him, growling like an unsated animal.

  He was sorry he was awake, once he opened his eyes and moved a little. Every muscle in his entire body was whimpering in protest when he moved the least little bit. His stomach felt as if it was gnawing on his backbone. It growled even as he thought that.

  Shut up, stomach.

  The first thing he wanted to do was to try and reach Dallen, but the moment he woke, he knew from the feeling in his head that his Mindspeech was still gone.

  And he couldn’t help it. Despair hit him like a rock, a despair so black and deep that it took him over like that storm. He cried, then. Cried until his nose was clogged, his eyes were sore, and his voice had turned into a hoarse croak. Was Dallen even alive? Dallen would have come rushing to his rescue the moment things fell apart, and these bastards had to know about Companions by now, what they were, how important they were. How a Companion would go through fire and hell itself to get to his Chosen. So had they waited? Had they stayed just long enough to ambush and murder?

  Gods, I swear by my life, if you let that happen, I will track you all down to your lofty homes and kill you.

  His thought actually wasn’t that coherent. It was more like a simple wail of anguish and the vague threat of mayhem in the heavens if Dallen was gone.

  That started the sobs all over again, until he was so exhausted by grief that all he could do was lie there and watch the sun move on the other side of the roots and vines. He wished in that moment that he had the strength to crawl to the water he could hear rushing by out there, fling himself in, and drown.

  It was his own exhaustion that saved him, but it was the stubborn will to live that had kept him going in the mine that dragged him out of his grief. A stubborn will to live that presented him with logic instead of emotion.