A Wizard and a Warlord

13

It was the massed fear of fifty people mixed with images of fire and blood, and throughout and above it reverberated shouted threats and gloating insults, brutal men exulting in the fear and pain they inspired.

“The young people,” Alea gasped, “the new village…”

“Malachi found them.” Gar straightened and turned back. “We must help them!” He strode away down the road.

Alea hurried to catch up.

They had only gone a mile when they saw a plume of smoke rising out of the distant mountain forest. Alea caught Gar’s arm with a cry of despair. In her mind, the image of fire consumed all others and terror drowned all emotions but pain.

“I can’t wait,” Gar snapped. “See if the villagers can lend you a horse.”

A loud report sounded next to her, like a stick breaking, only much louder. Alea turned to ask what he meant, but he was gone. She stared in fright for a moment, then felt anger rising. He had kept some mental power secret, hadn’t told her of it! She would make his ears ring for that.

First, though, she had to reach him—and had to go to the new village as fast as she possibly could. She started running.

They loaned her a horse—all of their horses, in fact, as well as their carts and. themselves, leaving only a few adults behind to care for the children. The riders galloped up the mountain road, sweeping Alea with them, leaving the slower carts and the people afoot to come as best they could. Even so, it was almost noon before they rode into the charred timbers that had been a village only a night before.

Alea stared around her at the emptiness of the smoking ashes, sick foreboding filling her. “Where is everyone?”

“Taken,” Shuba said, his mouth a grim line. “Stolen. Kidnapped, the men to be used as living shields against the arrows of the next village General Malachi means to take, and the women for … slavery.”

He didn’t have to tell Alea what that meant. She knew, and fury filled her. “Out upon this foul bandit! We might come in time to free the young ones!”

Then they heard the moan coming from the smoking ruins and the cursing that answered it. Alea slipped down from her saddle and ran around a heap of charred wood to find a jumble of timbers and Gar so smeared with ashes and soot that she wouldn’t have known him if it hadn’t been for his height, straining against the weight of a huge blackened timber.

Alea stared only a second, then whirled to the village men. “Help him! Throw those beams aside! Find whoever calls!” She turned back and ran to help Gar. The men were beside her on the instant, throwing timbers aside and using sticks to lever away those that were still smoking. In a hollow beneath them, they found a young man, dried blood caked on brow, shoulder, and tunic, covered with ashes but still alive. “Bless you, neighbors!” he groaned. “Are any … any of the others …?”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Shuba said grimly, and led a party away to search while Alea knelt beside the youth to do what she could for his burns and wounds.

An hour later, they had scattered all the charred timbers and were covered with soot—but they had found two girls and four boys whom the raiders must have thought too badly wounded to survive. They weren’t far wrong—Alea and Gar worked frantically, she with her hands, he with his mind, closing slashed blood vessels, regrowing nerve tissue and burned skin. Gar prodded the bodies into making more blood as Alea trickled water past parched lips and over swollen tongues. The two worst injured died in their arms and Alea began to feel a sullen hatred toward General Malachi and his men.

So did three of the survivors; the fourth, a young man, only gazed off into space, his face empty. Alea focused her mind on his thoughts and shuddered when she found only a smooth, featureless blank. His mind had retreated into a corner of his brain and buried itself in memories of childhood, disconnected entirely from his body.

The two other young men and the young woman swore vengeance even as they groaned from the pain of their wounds.

“He has taken Felice!” one of the boys grated, then ground his teeth against the pain. When the spasm passed, he panted, “They mowed down Ethera and Genald, Hror and Venducci! They drove the rest like cattle—I saw blood from their swords, saw one strike Theria backhanded when she dared to rebuke him!”

“They fought like beasts,” the young woman said with deadly calm. “They laid about them with their clubs and knives and didn’t care whom they struck, or where. They threw torches into the longhouses and struck our friends down as they ran out to escape the flames.”

“There was nothing of fairness or rightness in the way they fought,” growled the other young man. “They kicked crotches and struck from behind—and this against people on foot when they were mounted! They are brutes, not men!”

“You gave as well as you could, Crel,” the young woman said, a little life coming into her voice. “I saw you standing over Eralie with your quarterstaff until that brute struck you down from behind.”

“Eralie!” the lad groaned, burying his face in his hands. “I’ll be revenged on them for this, I swear it!”

“I don’t know how,” the other young man swore, “but I’ll find a way to cut their throats and break their heads!”

“I’ll hold them while you cut, Borg,” Crel said, then bleated with the pain of his wounds. “I’ll see them burn as they burned us!”

“There has to be a way to hurt them,” the young woman said with the intensity of hatred, “and when I find it, I’ll watch each of them die screaming—or at least their general!”

Alea started to tell them that trying to revenge would only destroy them but caught herself and pressed her lips shut at the last second. Later they might respond to such an idea—months later. Right now, though, they needed whatever purpose they could find to give them the will to live.

Shuba and his neighbors took the young people home to nurse while they waited for the priestess to come to heal them, and to tell their own villagers of the horror they had seen. Alea and Gar watched them go. Shaken to her core, Alea mourned their former hosts. “Those cheerful, openhearted, generous young people we saw only two days ago, with everything to live for and every minute an adventure—they’re as burned out as their village now, grim and filled with bitterness!”

“Crel’s wrong when he called them animals,” Gar said grimly. “Wolves and bears only kill bodies, but these monsters have maimed their souls!”

“If the Scarlet Company is so good at stopping bullies,” Alea said bitterly, “what are they waiting for?”

“Good question,” Gar said. “Let’s find them and ask.”

They found a town instead—a real, genuine town, or at least a village large enough to qualify as one. Actually, it looked more like a collection of villages than an actual town.

“You’d better bury that charcoal robe and take a bath before you go in there,” Alea warned.

Gar looked down at his doctor’s robe, the hem ragged and charred. “You’re right—I must look like a fugitive from a coal mine.” He turned back to her. “I’m sorry to burden you so long with such a sight. I hadn’t realized.”

“No, you wouldn’t, would you?” Alea asked. “You had others’ suffering to worry about—and so had I. But you might have told me you could vanish from my side and appear miles away.”

“Ah—that.” Gar had the grace to look embarrassed. “Yes, well, I was going to lead up to that when you’d developed your telepathic talent to the point at which we could tell if you were also telekinetic.”

“I would have appreciated knowing a little sooner,” Alea said with irony. “How many other secrets are you hiding?”

“About my general powers, none,” Gar said. “About what I can do with them, quite a few. I’ll tell you about them as you develop your skills.”

“I think I’d better know about them now.”

“As you wish,” Gar said, “but we’d better find a stream first.”

They found a brook, and while he bathed Alea took out the peddler’s clothing she had stored in her pack when he’d decided to disguise himself as a halfwit. She was tempted to peek while he bathed but told herself it was silly—she’d seen his whole body when he was in his idiot guise except for what the loincloth covered, and she certainly didn’t want to see that! Still, the thought sent a shiver running deeply into her. She did her best to ignore its destination.

When Gar came up, amazingly clean, she turned her back to let him dress and asked, “What else can you do with these ‘basic powers’ of yours?”

“Heal burns, as you’ve seen,” Gar told her. “It’s telekinesis really, just moving things on a very small level—and you can perceive them with an aspect of telepathy, though you have to know what’s inside the body first. Also, it’s good for making explosions or stopping them, changing the nature of a substance—say, lead into gold, though that sets up dangerous radiation—and for setting fires or dousing them.”

“So that’s how you walked through a burning village and only singed your robe!”

“Ran, actually, from one suffering person to another. I had to knock out a few soldiers in order to save the villagers, but none of them saw me coming.”

“You really had time to worry about whether or not the soldiers would remember you?”

“More a matter of trying to make sure they didn’t gang up on me,” Gar said, “so I didn’t scruple to strike from behind. Good thing, too, if we don’t want a total manhunt after me.”

“Would that really bother you?”

Gar cocked his head, thinking it over. “I wouldn’t mind it a bit, if we could persuade a few hundred villagers to set up an ambush for Malachi and his bandits. Since we can’t, though, I’d just as soon not attract too much of their attention.”

“Neither would I.” Alea shuddered at the thought. “Are you done dressing yet?”

“Yes,” Gar said. “Good thought about the peddler’s clothing—we must be far enough away from Malachi’s camp so that I won’t be recognized now. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Alea turned to face him. “Let’s go to town.”

They followed the road down to a broad river; the town had grown up where two streams joined with a road, and people unloaded barges into wagons and vice versa. They wandered through the streets for an hour or more amid the familiar bustle of a busy trade town—apprentices wheeling loads on barrows, teamsters driving loaded wagons, merchants haggling happily and loudly. No one seemed to take any particular notice of them; what was another peddler more or less in this busy place?

They found a market where people traded rutabagas for iron ingots, wool for cloth, and amber for spices. There were inns, frequented by merchants and farmers, where guests paid with anything from ounces of metal to piglets on the hoof. They found streets filled with craftsmen—blacksmiths and silversmiths and carpenters and tradesmen of all kinds who would accept almost any kind of goods for their services.

They didn’t find a government.

When they stopped for lunch at a food stall in a small park, Alea had to fight valiantly to keep from saying, “I told you so.” Instead, she offered, “That street with tradesmen—the blacksmith did seem to be some kind of leader.”

“Yes, the other people deferred to his opinion, and that one man did come to discuss the problem with his son,” Gar agreed, “but that’s a far cry from actually giving orders and making sure they’re obeyed.”

“Does a government have to compel people?” Alea asked.

“If it doesn’t, it’s just a debating society.”

Alea thought that one over for a minute, then asked, “What if a debating society decides what people should do and comes with their fists if anybody refuses?”

“That’s a government,” Gar admitted.

“Then we’ve seen that happening in every village we’ve visited. It just hasn’t been formal and official.”

“Yes, neighbors deciding what everyone in the village should do about a given situation,” Gar agreed. “They use disapproval and the silent treatment instead of fists, but that’s enough enforcement for me to be willing to call it a form of government.”

“Then why are you still looking?”

“Because it’s only happening village by village,” Gar explained. “Who coordinates all the villages? Who makes sure there’s a full warehouse in case there’s a bad harvest? Who patrols the roadway to guard against bandits? Nobody!”

“But every village has a granary,” Alea retorted, “and the people seem to have survived the lean years.” Her lips tightened at the memory of the youth village. “I admit it would be very nice to have someone put down General Malachi and his bandits—but everyone seems to be sure the Scarlet Company will take care of him.”

“I don’t call a band of assassins a government,” Gar grunted. “Mind you, the history books do tell about some assassin bosses who have become warlords, then eventually kings, but no one has ever mentioned the Scarlet Company doing any such thing.”

“At least the local chapter here should be well funded,” Alea said. “I’ve seen a collection box in every plaza.”

“How do they manage the collecting?” Gar wondered. “Do the boxes have hollow posts emptying into a network of underground tunnels?”

“I think everyone’s afraid to look and even more afraid to tell,” Alea said. “Besides, emptying the boxes at two o’clock in the morning would give you quite a bit of privacy.”

“The members of the Scarlet Company would have to be very devoted to get up in the middle of every night.” Gar frowned. “Unless they were awake at that time anyway.”

“Who would be conscious at two o’clock in the morning?” Alea protested.

“Priests and priestesses in around-the-clock vigil.” Gar stood and took up his staff again. “Let’s go find a temple.”

He chose the biggest temple, of course, which was really a toss-up—there were two the same size at the top of the hill around which the town had grown. The locals not having coins, he tossed a shoe; it landed sole-up, so he went into the left-hand temple. Alea sighed with martyred patience and followed.

The interior was a cavern, its roof soaring up above a line of small windows into shadow. At the far side, a twenty-foot-tall statue of a man sat in an ornate marble chair. His face was handsome, grave, and kindly beneath a well-trimmed jawline beard. He wore draped robes and held a curious scepter topped by an onion-shaped bulb with an elongated point. He was old enough to be a father but young enough to be a lover.

“So this is the god.” Gar stood frowning up, as though measuring himself against the statue.

“I suppose men have to have something to pray to, just as women do,” Alea said, somewhat waspishly, “since they’re lacking in imagination.”

“Not lacking in memory, though.” Gar pointed at the scepter. “That’s a lightning rod.”

Alea. stared, then recognized the shape from the entry on Herkimer’s screen.

“Other gods throw lightning,” Gar said. “This one diverts it, shields you from it. He’s a protector.”

“Protectors can become tyrants,” Alea said.

“Not here, it seems.” Gar rested his chin on his folded hands atop his staff and gazed up at the statue, brooding. “He doesn’t hold a shield, either—he’s prepared to protect his people from natural disasters, not from one another.”

Then he’d better learn, Alea thought, but said instead, “Perhaps he leaves that to the goddess.”

“You mean the priestesses might lead the Scarlet Company?” Gar turned to frown at her. “A good thought. How can we test it?”

Alea stared back at him, caught flat-footed but thinking fast. “Find a priest,” she said. “You ask him questions—I’ll listen to what he doesn’t say.”

“Fair enough.” Gar looked up as a middle-aged man in the robes of a priest came out from behind the statue. He saw the companions and came toward them with a gentle, encouraging smile. “There is no ceremony here until evening, friends. Have you come because you are troubled in your hearts?”

“In my mind, rather, Reverend,” Gar said.

“Ah.” The priest nodded, still smiling, and gestured toward a small door at the side of the temple. “Come to a talking room, then, my friends.”

He turned away, not waiting for a response. Gar exchanged a glance with Alea, then shrugged and followed the priest. Alea went along, a little surprised that she was allowed to do so—at home, Odin’s priests would never have allowed a woman to set foot in his temple, let alone an inner chamber.

The room was perhaps eight feet by ten, the longer walls curving with the shape of the temple, whitewashed and hung with tapestries showing the god in his chariot, riding through a storm with lightning being sucked into his scepter. Another showed the temple with the sun rising behind it, and inside the sun the god in his chariot. A third showed a huge tree, its trunk in the shape of the god. Alea caught her breath; in this one form, the priests summed up three of Midgard’s gods.

The priest gestured to two hourglass-shaped chairs and sat in another across from them; at his side was a small table with a tall pitcher and two cups. “I must know first if this is a matter of the heart, for if it is, we should go to the goddess’s temple and ask a priestess to join us. Are you bonded, my friends? Or considering bonding?”

Not “son” or “daughter,” Alea noted just “friends.”

“No, Reverend,” she said, “we are only fellow travelers, road companions.” She felt a churning within her, the sort of apprehension that goes with speaking a lie, but pushed it out of her mind.

“It is wise not to travel alone, either on the roads or in life,” the priest acknowledged. “What troubles you, then, my friends?”

“The sages, Reverend,” Gar replied, and at the priest’s puzzled look, explained, “We’re from very far away, very far indeed, and have no such wise men where we come from.”

“I see,” the priest said slowly. “But what could trouble you about good and gentle people who only lead others into wisdom?”

“The ease with which they advise,” Gar said carefully, “and the people’s quickness to turn to them when they are in difficulty. You approve of them, then?”

“Approve?” the priest asked in astonishment. “It is not something for approval or disapproval—the sages simply are.”

“A force of nature?” Gar asked. “Still, when people are troubled, should they not come to a priest or priestess instead of to a sage?”

“Ah, I see your problem.” The priest’s face smoothed into a smile. “The great crises in their lives they bring to us, the emotional turmoil that knots them up so that they cannot go on with living—but lesser problems they take to their sages, and glad we are to have them do so.”

“The sages relieve you of some of the burden, then,.” Gar said slowly.

“There is that.” the priest acknowledged, “but it is more. We are priests; our concern is religion—worship of the god and goddess, and the ways in which the soul relates to them.”

“Not morality?” Gar frowned.

“A moral life is a continuing prayer,” the priest explained. “The sages, however, seek to understand all the other ways in which people should relate to the world, and to one another.”

Gar still frowned. “Surely they have some concern for the soul!”

“Surely they do,” the priest agreed, “and perhaps of a greater soul, a union of all souls—but only there do we begin to share concerns.”

“You are not jealous, then?” Gar asked. “You do not see them as rivals?”

The priest laughed gently. “Rivals? Oh no, my friend! We are not jealous at all, for we see the god and goddess as containing all souls that strive to do right, whereas the sages see that all souls unite to form a god.”

“You are content with this division?” Gar’s voice was carefully neutral.

“Quite content, for their wisdom differs from ours, and the people bring their everyday problems to the sages, but their eternal problems to us.”

“I see … I think,” Gar said. He gave Alea a perplexed glance, but she could only lift her shoulders in a tiny shrug. He turned back to the priest. “So the sages are not religious, only philosophers and counselors?”

“Counselors, yes—though rather cryptic ones.” The priest’s smile was amused.

“I see,” Gar said slowly. “In that case, Reverend, I have only one question left.”

“Ask, my friend.”

“Who empties the Scarlet Company’s collection boxes?”