A Wizard in a Feud

5

It passed, and her lips thinned in anger, but she had to admit it worked beautifully. The clansfolk were swinging wildly and connecting with nothing. The dizziness didn’t seem to have passed for them; woodsfolk who had been silent minutes before went crashing through the underbrush calling for their enemies to stand still, which of course they didn’t; they too plunged about, flailing with their rifles and shouting in anger.

Alea wanted to ask Gar something, but she was too confused to remember what. She reached out for his mind but found only disorientation there, too. In a panic, she could only think to go to him—why, she couldn’t say, she only knew that it was important. She stood up and staggered away, following the feel of his thoughts, swirling though they might be. She blundered into thorns and even splashed through a brook before she saw it was there, but somehow recognized a bog in time to go around it. Tree trunks reeled past her; she knew what they were, but didn’t understand why they kept trying to get into her way. All the while, she felt Gar’s thoughts coming nearer, though, and that was all that mattered.

The dizzy spell began to recede as he came in sight. Relief made her want to clutch at him, but made her indignant, too, so by the time she came to him, she only said, “Why didn’t you warn me you were going to do that?”

Gar only blinked at her, bemused. “You mean it wasn’t your doing. ”

Alea felt a chill spread through her vitals. “I wouldn’t know how.”

Gar gazed off into space, frowning in thought. “I suppose I could figure out a way, but I didn’t.” He turned back to her, brow furrowed. “But if we didn’t—who did?”

Alea stared up at him, nonplussed. Then she reached out for the thoughts of the clansfolk. Gar realized what she was doing and searched, too.

“Whatever did it, it seems to have worked wonderfully. The Belinkuns and the Farlands are all going home, and no one died.”

“A few casualties, though,” Gar said. “We’ll have to make sure Joram doesn’t lose that leg.”

“Sukey’s arm should heal, though.” Alea frowned. “I’ll have to make sure it’s bound.” She turned toward the Farlands’ thoughts. “We’d better join them—we have work to do.”

“Yes, and we’ll have to find some way to reach the Belinkuns.” Gar fell in beside her.

“Still,” Alea said, “I wonder what could have caused that disorientation.”

“It might have been the earthquake,” Gar conjectured. Alea stared at him, then swung around to confront him. “What earthquake?”

“A small localized one,” Gar hedged. “It only hit where Martha’s band was fighting. Made all the shots go wide, though.”

“How convenient,” Alea said drily. “Tell me—how do you cause an earthquake?”

They wended homeward, discussing ways and means of neutralizing clan fights, forgetting about their sudden confusion for the time being.

Deep in the forest, Evanescent’s cat-smile widened.

Isaac’s band hadn’t gone very far from the wood; they were milling about, discussing something with more emotion than sense. Isaac looked up, saw her coming and cried, “There you are! Thank Heaven! We couldn’t find you and thought the Belinkuns had captured you.”

“I’m sorry to worry you.” Alea joined them. “You told me to stay well back, so I climbed a tree. I thought I should wait until the Belinkuns were gone before I came down.”

“That you should, but we were worried nonetheless.” Isaac turned to his band. “No need to follow the Belinkuns now. They’ll not come too quickly to our borders again. Home we go.”

With a shock, Alea realized they’d been arguing about whether or not to follow the Belinkuns, thinking they had kidnapped her. No wonder they hadn’t gone very far.

“A moment,” Alea said, and went over to the litter where Joram lay, jaw clenched, a length of bloodstained cloth tied about his thigh. With her thoughts, she reached inside the wound to explore, then asked, “Has he been tended?”

“All that we can do in the field,” one of the women answered, “a poultice and a bandage. Back at the house, we’ll have that bullet out with the long forceps and cauterize the wound.”

Alea nodded, but she didn’t like the sound of such primitive treatment. As they walked back toward the house, part of her mind was knitting muscle fibers inside Joram’s wound, pushing the bullet closer and closer to the surface. By the time they took the bandage off, it should be only an inch deep.

The rest of her mind, though, was engaged in conversation. Walking beside the litter, she fell back to the woman who had spoken of the bandage. “I’m Alea.”

“Don’t I know it!” the other answered. “I’m Susanah.”

“It must gall you to heal folk only to have them go out and argue with bullets again.”

Susanah grimaced and answered low, “You wonder why you do it sometimes. Of course, there’s delight when they recover, but there’s dismay when next they march out—not that there’s much choice.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if there were,” Alea said with a sigh. “Wouldn’t it just,” Susanah said grimly. “At least Joram’s the only one hurt bad in our band today, and no one died.” She frowned. “Wonder why the powder failed?”

“Maybe there’s a god of gunpowder,” Alea quipped, “and he didn’t like your fighting today.”

Susanah looked up, staring. “You don’t really think so, do you?”

Alea didn’t, actually, but she felt a ghost of inspiration and followed up the thought. She shrugged her shoulders and said the vaguest thing she could. “Who knows about gods?”

Susanah looked away, muttering, “I always thought they were just stories, never real. Everyone does.”

But Alea read in her a deep, almost desperate desire for something to believe in, and chose her words carefully. “You never can tell. There’s no proof the gods exist, but there’s no proof they don’t, either.”

“Grandma Em says you don’t have to talk about gods to explain how everything started,” Susanah answered, “that the Cosmic Egg hatched, and everything grew out of it as chicks grow into hens.”

“It seems hard to believe,” Alea said, “but there’s a lot we don’t understand.”

“A great lot,” Susanah muttered.

“Still, just because you can explain the world without the gods—well, that’s not proving they don’t exist, is it?”

Susanah turned to frown at her. “How’s that?”

“We can prove that the world exists without me,” Alea said. “In fact, up until yesterday you didn’t even know I was alive. But that didn’t prove I wasn’t, did it?”

Susanah turned away, glowering.

“Gunpowder, now,” Alea went on. “That’s something men invented. There wouldn’t be a god for it.”

“Well, no,” Susanah said, “but Morrigan, she’s the goddess of war. Gunpowder would be hers, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose,” Alea said, “but I think she’d be happy with fighting, not wanting to stop it.”

“Not if we did it wrong,” Susanah said. “Besides, there’s oak and ash and rowan in that forest. They were sacred to the old gods, weren’t they?”

“I-I really don’t know,” Alea stammered. Then inspiration struck again. “You’d have to ask a Druid.”

“If there are any left,” Susanah said with a sour smile.

Alea moved about among the clansfolk, chatting with one, listening to several others, and was amazed at what she heard. Only a few of the young ones were really eager for another battle, and Alea wondered if they would have been so fiery if they had been hit by a bullet. She looked into some of their minds and saw that they had been, and they now burned for revenge.

That same vengeful fire smoldered in several of the older ones too, for they’d seen loved ones killed in battle. One of the older men lectured a handful of his juniors. “There’s no choice, you know, no way to deal with Belinkuns except by rifle. They’re snakes, they’ll turn on you as soon as you try to make peace. They’ll bite the hand of friendship, for they’ll take it as a sign of weakness.”

But to Alea, his words rang hollow, for deep within him, beneath the layers of bitterness and hatred, she read a longing for a world in which neighbors could be friends.

The two band met at the house. Old folk and children embraced sons, daughters, and parents with cries of delight. Susanah was amazed how shallow Joram’s wound was, and Alea managed to catch Gar alone outside when they went to wash their hands in the trough.

“For a culture based on war,” she said, “there are a surprising number of people here who don’t want to fight.”

“I know what you mean,” he said. “I talked with a few on the way home and listened to a few more…”

“What they said, or what they didn’t say?”

“Yes. No one is actually willing to come right out and say they want the feud to stop—they’re afraid of their relatives thinking them cowards or, worse, even traitors.”

“So the feud goes on because all the people who want it to stop don’t dare speak up,” Alea said grimly.

“It seems so. Everyone over the age of thirty wants to stop the feud, even the ones who talk tough, but no one can figure out how to do it.”

“I found a few who weren’t willing to let it go,” Alea said slowly. “They’re too bitter about friends and loved ones killed in the fighting—or absolutely convinced there’s no way the Belinkuns would ever honor a treaty.”

“That’s sad to hear,” Gar said with a grimace.

“I do have to say they’re the bravest fighters I’ve ever seen,” Alea said slowly.

Gar heard what she didn’t say—that the clansfolk were braver than her own people, who had fought giants and dwarves out of sheer bigotry. It took little enough courage to fight those who were smaller than yourself, and not much more to fight giants when you outnumbered them so thoroughly. “They aren’t all as brave as they seem, but they don’t let their fear show, they’ve been raised that way.”

“You mean some of them really are afraid of the fighting?” Alea asked.

“When they’ve seen fathers and aunts die in combat, yes. There are more of them who are simply disgusted with the pointlessness of it.”

“Fear, disgust, outrage—and the list goes on,” Alea mused. “How many don’t want war?”

“Most of them, judging by what I hear,” Gar said. “The women are sick of seeing husbands, sons, and lovers die. Even the ones who burn for revenge are disgusted with the carnage.”

“And the men have stopped seeing the point of it,” Alea said. “When they’ve been fighting half their lives, they begin to ask why, and what happened to their ancestors stops seeming important. The past is dead.”

“But the living become vital,” Gar said, “as they should.”

A strident clanging rolled out through the evening air. Looking up, they saw one of the clansfolk running an iron rod around the inside of a metal triangle hung from a pole.

“I wondered what that was for,” Alea said.

“Dinner call,” Gar interpreted, “and a celebration of life after nearing death. Let’s join them.”

“Let’s,” Alea agreed. “What do you suppose confused us all, anyway?”

They left the next morning, with anxious well-wishing from the clansfolk. As they hiked out of earshot, Alea said, “That was very informative, but how much can we learn going from farmstead to farmstead this way?”

Gar looked down at her with barely concealed concern. “You’re not thinking of going off on your own, are you?”

“Why not?” she asked, bristling. “I can take care of myself!”

“I don’t doubt that,” Gar said quickly, “but two are always safer than one.”

“Oh, so you don’t think I can cope with whatever comes along?”

“No, no! There’s scarcely anything that could hurt you, with the skills you’ve learned.”

“Then what are you worried about?” Alea demanded. “ ‘Scarcely’ could happen entirely too often,” Gar explained. “What’s the matter?” Alea jibed. “Don’t you trust your own teaching?”

“Now that you mention it,” Gar said, “no.”

“Then trust my learning!” Alea snapped. “I can read other people’s thoughts now, at least well enough to find out if anyone with a rifle is lurking in the underbrush—and if they try attacking me with a knife or a stick, I can counter them with my staff.”

“How many is ‘them’?” Gar asked with a jaundiced eye. “I’m up to three at once, you’ve said so yourself!”

“Unless they know tricks you don’t.”

“Which means their knowing tricks you don’t! Or have you been holding out on me?”

“You’ve been making excellent progress…”

“So you haven’t been telling me everything!”

“Well, I can’t teach you all at once,” Gar protested. “It takes years.”

“It’s been years!”

“Only two of them. Mind you, you’re still able to cope with nine out of ten dangers you’re apt to meet…”

“Then what are you worried about?”

“Number ten.”

Alea felt a warm glow, hearing that he was worried about her. It added heat to her arguments. “You want me to be safe? I’ll pose as a peddler! These people ought to honor traders—they’re so starved for things they can’t grow or make themselves! You should outfit yourself as a packman, too!”

“Good idea.” Gar nodded. Alea stared at him, stunned.

“It would give you a chance to hide a few hand grenades and a blaster among your trade goods,” Gar explained.

That brought Alea out of her stupor. “We want less mayhem on this planet, not more! Show these people a grenade and they’ll start cobbling them up themselves!”

“Well, all right, but they couldn’t make blasters…”

“So you want them to discover research? Aren’t there better ways to motivate them?”

It went on for a while longer, and all in all, she found it a highly satisfying argument. When Gar called up to Herkimer to drop two packs of trade goods during the night, though, that made her victory seem too easy. Alea developed a suspicion that Gar had been enjoying their verbal sparring as much as she had—either enjoying it or suffering from a vastly misplaced sense of chivalry. She had heard him argue much more strongly than that. As they settled down for the night, she reflected smugly that he definitely did care about her, even if it wasn’t the passionate regard she craved.

She went stiff at the thought, staring unseeing at the night around them. What was she thinking? Passion? She certainly didn’t want that!

They were on the road again as the sun rose and separated at the first fork.

“Be careful, now,” Gar said anxiously.

“You be careful, too,” Alea retorted, then turned back to him, frowning. “Wait a minute! All through this, you haven’t said a word about your own safety!”

“Well, of course not.”

“Oh, you’re sure of being able to handle a small army all by yourself, are you?” Alea’s eyes blazed.

“It’s not that,” Gar protested. “It’s just that if I get hurt, it doesn’t matter.”

Alea stared at him, frozen for a second. Then she threw her arms around him and pressed her cheek against his chest. “It matters to me. It matters most horribly to me! Make sure you listen for thoughts on the road and duck away from them before they can hurt you!” She tilted her face up, gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, said, “Take care of yourself!” and turned to stalk away down the left-hand road, face flaming.

Gar stared at the back of her head, at the rich chestnut fall of her hair beneath the broad-brimmed hat, and pressed a hand to his cheek, bemused. When she had gone out of sight, he turned slowly away and started down the right-hand fork.

He had gone perhaps a hundred yards before he heard the double click of a rifle being cocked.

Gar dove off the road and into the underbrush as the gun blasted.