A Wizard in a Feud

4

An alarm for us, too!” Isaac shoved back his chair as he rose. “There’s Belinkuns coming through them woods!” Then he remembered the courtesies and turned to Grandma Em. “Shall we go against them?”

“Do,” Grandma said, “but only send twenty rifles. Leave a dozen here and have the other ten scout the rest of the boundaries. It’s not like the Belinkuns to let themselves be seen so easy.”

“Diversion!” Martha snapped. “They’re trying to draw us away while their main body attacks somewhere else! You take the twenty, Isaac, and I’ll go scout with the ten!”

“Sound the alarm,” Isaac told the young man, who nodded and hurried away.

Word had run by itself through the keeping room, though. All the clansfolk were up and running for their weapons except for a few Grandma Em’s age, who sat and swore because they were too old to do more than hug the little ones who stared, wide-eyed and frightened, as their parents and big brothers and big sisters rushed about, snatching up weapons and hats and bolting for the door. In minutes they were gone, leaving only the old and the young. Even the bigger children exclaimed in anger and pleaded with their seniors to be allowed to go out and join the fight.

“Don’t even speak of it, Allie,” one old woman told a ten-year-old. “You know you’re not big enough to tote more than a carbine.”

“But I’m a dead shot with it!” The little girl thrust her jaw out pugnaciously. “I can bring down a squirrel at a hundred yards!”

“So you can, and that’ll suit us right fine when you’re fourteen,” said the old man sitting next to her. “Wait till you’re old enough to carry a rifle, though.”

“That’ll be forever!”

Alea stared at them, shaken.

“What ails you, friend?” Grandma Em asked. “Never seen one so keen?”

“Not that young, no.” Alea pushed back her chair and rose. “If you don’t mind, Miz Farland, I’ll go out and join the rifles.”

“Yes, I think we should.” Gar rose, too. “After all, you’ve given us hospitality.”

Grandma Em frowned. “Can you shoot?”

“Of course.” Alea didn’t mention that she’d never used a gun that fired bullets, only raw bursts of energy.

The old woman considered the issue, frowning, then pronounced her judgment. “ ‘Tain’t fitten for guests to take sides, and poor hospitality if we let you go into danger.”

“We can’t just sit here idle while people may be dying!” Gar objected.

Grandma Em smiled. “You sound like that eager little one there.”

“I’m a bit older than ten,” Alea said tartly.

Grandma Em relented. “Well, that’s so. Go and watch, then, and maybe help with the wounded if the shooting moves past them. But don’t let yourself get into the line of fire, you hear?”

“We hear,” Alea said, “and we promise. Come on, Gar.”

She rushed for the doorway; he was only a step behind her.

Grandma Em smiled after them, nodding her head slowly, and if the gleam in her eye was shrewd, who was there to notice?

As soon as they were out in the yard with people rushing past too quickly to listen, Alea said, “I’ll scan the other boundaries. You sound out the main force of Belinkuns.”

Gar nodded, his eyes losing focus. Alea turned away with a shudder; it seemed as though the man became a mindless body. Of course, she went into the same sort of trance herself, listening for the Belinkuns’ thoughts, but that didn’t matter—she didn’t have to watch it.

There they were, a score of Belinkuns slipping through the northern field, bowing low so that the ears of maize above their heads would hide them. But Alea listened for other thoughts, other minds. She sensed the sharp wordless impulses of hungry creatures, the unvoiced delight of those who had found some food, but strongest and most clearly of all, the feelings of excitement and zeal from the humans who stole through the northwest woods, following the gully of the stream that made the land unfarmable, their thoughts keen with the hunter’s delight, exultant with the anticipation of victory. She counted the different thought signatures, personalities as clearly different as their faces, then said to Gar, low voiced, “They’re in the northwest woods.”

Gar’s eyes refocused; he nodded. “What do we do about them, though?”

With distress, Alea realized that she had already felt the impulse to call to Martha and tell her where her enemy lay. “Competition comes naturally to our species,” Gar told her. “Yes, but do I so quickly identify with one clan?”

Gar shrugged. “We’ve spent a few hours with them. They’re real to us now, but we don’t know the others at all.”

“We’re here to make peace,” Alea said grimly, “not to help one clan wipe out the other.”

Gar nodded. “Besides, they’d just pick a fight with the clan across the Belinkuns’ boundary, and you’d have another feud going. Better if you go with the reserves and I go with Isaac’s party, and we both try to scare off the others with as little bloodshed as possible.”

Alea felt her back go up. “Why do I get the reserves?”

“Good question,” Gar said. “You go with Isaac’s party and I’ll go with Martha’s. Good hunting.”

He strode away, leaving Alea looking after him, wondering if she had won a point or been manipulated.

Then she sighed, shrugged, and went off to join Isaac’s force.

The Farlands were grinning and boastful as they set out. “ ‘Bout time we got some action again!”

“You said it, Rilla! I been getting so rusty I can fairly hear my joints creak!”

“Ain’t had nothing to shoot at that stood a chance of shooting back in way too long,” one of the young men averred. “My aim’s likely off by most of an inch now!”

“An inch!” a young woman hooted. “Ezra, if you can shoot within a foot of your mark today, I’ll call it spring fever!”

But the farther they went from the house, the fewer the boasts became, until they crossed the fence into the pasture before the woods, and the whole force fell silent. Alea glanced from side to side and saw tense and glowering faces, jaw muscles bunched, eyes narrowing with remembered injuries.

Then they were in among the trees. Even in their thick-soled boots, the Farlands made almost no noise as they faded out of sight to either side with little more sound than the wind.

Alea swallowed hard and tried to imitate them, slipping from bush to bush, keeping a sharp eye open for twigs that might snap and give her away, but Isaac suddenly appeared beside her, whispering, “Best you stay here, ma’am. Anybody can tell where you are just from the noise.”

Alea stared at him, then whispered back, “What noise?”

“Cloth against leaves, for one,” Isaac answered, “and a dozen others too small to single out. Just wait for us here. We’ll tell you when there’s need of you.”

Then he was gone and Alea sat on her heels, simmering. To vindicate herself, she opened her mind, tracing Isaac’s progress from stump to trunk to bush—but she had to admit she would never have heard him with her ears.

Then she opened her mind forward and sensed the Belinkuns waiting in ambush.

Gar stayed well to the rear, but his height allowed him to keep Martha’s white-flecked red hair, peeking from below the brown brim of her hat, in sight. As they neared the northeastern boundary, a low fieldstone wall, he could feel the Belinkuns tensing as they saw her, feel the keenness of their anticipation, knew that one or two were already leveling barrels and centering her in their sights—but he couldn’t for the life of him see them, or even guess where they were hiding. The field had been mowed a few days before and was a long rise of stubble. True, a stream bed meandered through it and there were ditches to either side, but surely Martha and her troop were quick to see that.

Then a bird warbled and Martha sank to her knees, suddenly disappearing from view. So did her dozen clansfolk.

Gar blinked, astounded. If he hadn’t been able to follow them by their thoughts, he wouldn’t have known how they did it, but with telepathy, he realized that Martha had made the birdcry herself, that it had been the signal, and that hearing it, everyone had found a hiding place, be it so little as a fold in the ground or a clump of weeds. Looking down from his seven-foot height, he could see them but only because he was behind them and knew where to look.

Then he realized that the only person left visible was himself—and that he was very visible indeed.

He threw himself to the ground as a rifle cracked in front of him. He heard the ball cut the air where he had been standing. A Farland rifle answered it, then two more, then three. The Belinkuns answered with a whole fusillade, but the bullets whizzed overhead, hurting no one, for everyone was down. That wouldn’t last. Gar could already hear both clans thinking that the only way they would be able to stop the others was by taking the risk of rising up long enough to spot an enemy and squeeze off a shot, then drop down again—but they also knew the risk, and knew that they might die. Memories reeled by at the association and Gar saw that every one of them had seen relatives killed in just such a fashion.

Nonetheless, their resolve hardened, each and every one, to take exactly that risk. To them, it was worth their lives to protect their loved ones from their villainous neighbors.

It wasn’t worth it to Gar. He could see that the Belinkuns were just as good as the Farlands—no better, perhaps, struggling against their own human load of vices and weaknesses, but no worse, either. Gar couldn’t see letting them die because of a centuries-old crime—but how could he stop them?

Distract them, of course.

They were all lying on the earth. What would they think if it began to move? Or if the sticks and leaves around them began to burn?

Too showy and too slow. So much for earth and fire. Gar decided on air and wood. He stared at the trunks, picking out the dead trees that were still standing, or fallen but caught by the branches of their neighbors. The smallest was a foot and a half thick, but they blurred as his attention focused on the air high above. He set up waves, like a cook stirring soup with a spoon, but stirring faster and faster.

One or two of the clansfolk looked up, startled, as the wind began to moan through the branches above. The sky had been clear when they came into the forest, and was still clear when leaves blew aside enough to show a patch of blue. Where was the breeze coming from?

The wind was whirling nicely now, making a gyre, a spinning funnel of air. Gar used it as a spear, hurling it downward. The narrow end plunged, tearing leaves off their stems and spinning them into itself. Gar could see it now, a green whorl that he used to strike one of the leaning trees, to tear it loose from its neighbor’s fork …

The Belinkuns looked up, startled, hearing wood groan above.

Gar couldn’t have that, couldn’t have just one side distracted. He made the whirlwind bounce back up, then strike again, but much closer to him, strike with far more force than its size owned, strike at a hollow tree in the middle of the Farlands.

The Belinkuns shouted in alarm and dodged backward out of the way as the skeleton of a forty-foot oak slammed down in their midst. Half of them were in plain sight and no doubt would have fallen to the Farlands’ guns—except that the Farlands were shouting in fear and anger as the hollow tree exploded in their midst. They ducked low as chunks of wood sprayed over their heads, then leaped to their feet and dashed away from the moaning, bobbing whirlwind-dashed until they remembered the human threat and turned, leveling their rifles at the first enemy they saw.

So much for wind and wood. Gar set his jaw and reached down into the ground, far below, feeling out the shape and form of the bedrock, finding the water deep below it and a fissure in the rock above. He widened the fissure just a little, molecules compacting against one another …

With a roar, the earth jolted just as the rifles blasted. Shots went wide; Farlands and Belinkuns fell, rifles flying from their hands. One or two scrambled to their knees and loosed a shot at the enemy, but the earth bucked again and their shots went wide. The clansfolk kept hold of their firearms, but fingers squeezed triggers by accident as they fell and stocks slammed into earth or wood, jarring the hammers into falling. The forest resounded with a fusillade of shots. Three people cried out with pain, one Belinkun and two Farlands wounded by stray shots, but none others.

For a moment, the forest lay quiet.

Then, howling, both clans shot to their feet and charged one another, not daring to take the time to reload lest their enemies catch them unarmed. Instead they swung their rifles like clubs, each long barrel suddenly serving as an iron quarterstaff.

Coming through the northwestern woods, the Belinkuns may have made noise enough, but now that they knew the Farlands were on their way, they went to ground so thoroughly that Alea knew she would never have seen them with her eyes. They waited crouched behind bushes and stumps and trunks with legs hardened against cramping by a lifetime’s training, caressing their rifles, checking the priming now and again to make sure it was still dry and ready. The Farlands were searching for just such an ambush with eyes long trained to forest shadows, but what would happen if they failed to find the Belinkuns?

Come to that, what would happen if they did?

More to both points, how could Alea give away their positions without bloodshed?

The gunpowder, of course. None of them would kill any of the others if the powder refused to fire.

There was moisture in the air under the leaves—moisture from the evening that had condensed into dew and evaporated again with the sun, but was still held in the green gloom. She could gather that moisture into miniscule droplets, make it condense out into the fine gunpowder in the priming pans—all of the priming pans, Farland and Belinkun alike, condense into moisture more and more, until the powder became thick as paste—and she had to do it quickly, before any one of the clansfolk found any of the others. Moisture gathered on her forehead, too—fine drops of sweat raised by her efforts.

Somewhere off among the leaves, a trigger clicked and flint clashed into a pan. Someone howled at the discovery of treachery and an answering click sounded, an answering clash. Then the woods erupted with banshee howls as Farland saw Belinkun, howls that drowned out the clacking of flint in pan, useless clacking, shedding sparks into powder that was far too wet to fire. Alea breathed a long, trembling sigh of relief.

Too soon, for people who carry flintlocks know well what to do if the enemy falls upon them before they can reload. Roaring with anger, Belinkuns leaped upon Farlands swinging their rifles by the barrels, stocks smashing down at skulls. Shrilling rage, the Farlands met the swings with flintlocks held by stock and barrel, and in minutes the two forces were smashing furiously at one another in quarterstaff play with long rifles instead of staves.

Hiding behind her bush, Alea shuddered and consoled herself with the thought that quarterstaves, even ones shod with iron, were far less lethal than rifles.

Then she heard Gar’s voice inside her head. I made their shots go wide, but they’re charging out to club one another to death.

Alea almost went limp with relief—she wasn’t alone. Mine, too. How can we stop them?

We need a vantage point first. Find a tall tree and persuade a bird to do your looking for you. To illustrate, Gar showed her the world from a bird’s-eye view. The bird in question was perched on a lower limb of a pine, to judge from the needles that framed the scene, and had an excellent view of the ragged lines of flailing fighters.

It was a good technique. Alea had never tried it before, but it only took a few seconds to find a crow with the right viewpoint and tap into its bird brain. It huddled against the trunk, frightened by the loud noises, but stayed frozen in place, afraid to attract attention, watching the fighters for any sign that they might decide to come its way.

Then, before either of them could do anything to stop the fighting, a wave of dizziness rocked her.