The Soul Weaver

CHAPTER 5

Paulo left Verdillon a day ahead of us. He had proposed shyly that if Tennice were to stake him to a few silver pieces, he could come up with a fair-sized string of horses from Valloreans desperate to sell their stock before it was confiscated by the Leiran army. Taking the horses to Montevial would not only be a benefit to our neighbors and an excellent ruse, but could make us a tidy profit as well. Though we lived modestly, Tennice’s resources were not unlimited.

Gerick and I rode in Verdillon’s old pony trap, a mode of travel slower than riding our own mounts, but more suited to our roles. I wore a widow’s headcloth and an old-fashioned velvet gown that I’d dragged out of Tennice’s attic. We found Gerick a rakish green cap to hide the color of his hair and outfitted him in threadbare finery suitable for an impoverished youth of gentle family looking to impress someone in the capital. Gerick and I laughed at ourselves when we donned our disguises, and enjoyed our first day on the road as if it were a holiday.

The town of Prydina, where we were to meet Paulo, had grown up at the meeting of the main north-south route through Valleor and the road that crossed the Cerran Brae, the range of low peaks and sharp ridges that defined the Vallorean border with Leire. Prydina boasted a sizable marketplace, an even larger illicit trade in untaxed Leiran goods, and a full complement of pickpockets, thieves, and beggars.

We took a room on the outskirts of town at a modest inn called the Fire Goat, a suitably respectable accommodation for an impoverished gentlewoman, her son, and his fencing master. Once the cart was unhitched and unloaded, Gerick and I sat down to supper in the inn’s common room. Radele did not join us. He seemed uneasy with the press of people, saying he’d prefer to watch the horse, the cart, and the inn from outside.

Despite a long day’s traveling from Verdillon, Gerick was not inclined to go upstairs once we’d finished eating. “We’ve not been anywhere in all these years,” he said, leaning across the scrubbed pine table after the barmaid took away our plates. “Don’t you want to hear some news of the world?”

He was right. Gerick and I rarely ventured beyond Verdillon’s walls and never to a town of any size. Tennice often rode into Yurevan, always returning with much to say of the newest books at his favorite bookseller’s or who was teaching philosophy at the University, but little of politics or gossip. Nothing like the news one could get in the common room of a crossroads inn.

I ordered us each a tankard of the local ale. As the daylight faded outside the smoke-grimed windows of the Fire Goat, a potboy threw a fresh log on the smoky fire, poking and fussing until it was crackling. The dancing flames revealed all sorts of folk: a ruddy, broad-faced man with a curling red beard, a solitary woman, pinched and pale, with darting black eyes and bad teeth, a heavy-set man, careworn and gray, who slumped over his supper at a table beside three noisy companions. Some eighteen or twenty patrons crowded the little room, and as the ale flowed from the landlord’s barrel, the talk grew louder and less cautious.

From the sound of it, Evard had made little progress in his attempts to bring Iskeran under Leire’s heel alongside Valleor and Kerotea. The Valloreans in the room, always distinguishable by their fair coloring and somber garb, smiled behind their hands at the stories of the Leiran king’s setbacks. A threadbare merchant pronounced unsettling rumors from Montevial of spies and executions and an entire slum quarter of the city that had been burned by a mob. Other travelers nodded their heads, confirming that the capital city of Leire was an uncomfortable place these days.

A bony man, a tinker by trade, told a harrowing and unlikely story of getting caught in a bog and being rescued by a pack of wild dogs. The fantastic tale left the company hungry for more stories.

“Come, let’s each offer a tale or a song,” said the pale woman with bad teeth. “The company will buy a tankard for the one as tells the best.”

A Vallorean tax-clerk, one of the poorly paid local functionaries reviled as traitorous tools of the cruel Leiran governor, volunteered for the competition. He redeemed his unsavory profession for the evening with a hilarious tale of two Leiran tax collectors being chased all over northern Valleor by an outlaw named ‘Red Eye.’ The pale woman had the landlord refill the man’s mug, not waiting for the voting at the end of the evening.

One rawboned farmer, his unshaven face pitted with pockmarks, kept the company in high hilarity with his tale of a Leiran merchant who had been left naked in a tree with two wolves tied to its bole while his entire stock of cloth and leather was divided among the starving populace of a Vallorean village. The company roared with delight.

Gerick listened intently to every word. While the barmaid passed another round and the listeners shouted raucously for the next story, he murmured, half to himself, “Why didn’t the villagers kill the merchant? It was stupid to let him go.” He might have been speaking of strategy in a game of draughts.

“Perhaps they didn’t think the cloth was worth a man’s life,” I said, “even a stupid man’s.”

“He’ll come back and kill them. That one” - he pointed to the farmer who had told the tale - “that one will lead the soldiers back to the village. Then they’ll all be dead.”

His conviction sent a shiver racing up my back. Sometimes Gerick seemed like a quiet, reserved boy of sixteen, and sometimes… I was relieved when the talk turned back to weather, crops, and the experiences of two hunters who had gotten themselves lost in the mountains over the winter, surviving by holing up in a bandit cave.

When pressed to contribute my own traveler’s tale to the evening’s entertainment, I told the story of my father pretending to fall ill after he’d taken Tomas and me on a ride into the wild hills near Comigor. Papa had wanted to see us find our own way back home safely while he was there to protect us. It made a good story, but short and simple enough that I could suppress my Leiran accent and keep us unremarked.

The warmth of the smoky room, the long day, and the week’s hectic preparations soon laid their tally on my eyelids. But each time I proposed retiring, Gerick would say, “Not yet. The fellow in the corner is going to sing again,” or “I want to hear more of the tinker’s stories of Vanesta.” After several rounds of this, and his failure to look me in the eye as he made his excuse, I began to suspect the reason for his reluctance.

I laid a hand on his arm. “If the dreams come, I’ll be right there. No one will hear you.”

He flushed and kept his eyes on the company. “Everyone in Prydina will hear me. And my watchdog will come running to make sure I’ve not fouled my bed… or Dar’Nethi honor… or whatever it is he’s expecting me to corrupt.”

“Maybe you won’t dream tonight.” No use trying to reconcile him to Radele’s attentions.

“Please, just one more tale. Then we’ll go up.” The skin around Gerick’s eyes was taut and smudged. When had he last slept more than two hours at a stretch? If I could just convince him to talk to me about the things that were really important…

The hour grew late. The grizzled innkeeper propped his massive chin on his hand, and the potboy snoozed in the corner, allowing half the lamps to go out untended. A tired serving maid lugged yet another round of ale to the table of four men. Two were itinerant farriers looking for work among the travelers. The third was the scrawny tinker who apparently arranged to have humorous adventures wherever he went, and the fourth was the heavyset, gray-bearded man who’d been drinking steadily all evening and saying very little. When the bearded man reached for another tankard, the tinker laid a hand on his hairy arm. “You’re single-minded in your cups this night, friend. We’ve all shared our travels until our tongues are parched and our heads empty. I think it’s your turn to tell us a tale.”

“You don’t want to hear no tale of mine.”

“And why not?”

“It’s not the tale as comfortable folks like to hear.”

The few stragglers scattered about the room urged him on. “Tell it, goodman. The company must judge the tale. Naught’s comfortable about stories of outlaws, nor naked merchants, nor tax collectors.”

“Come, friend,” said the tinker, “if you gift us with an uncomfortable tale, why then we’ll buy another round to smooth our spirits and tell yet another to finish the night.”

When the bearded man began, the words fell from his tongue reluctantly, as if it was only their ponderous weight that caused them to be spoken at all. His voice was a rumbling bass, speaking the soft slurring dialect of northern Valleor, a rugged land of rocky green hills, cold blue lakes, and bitter, hungry winters…

“I run sheep near Lach Vristal. I started twenty year ago with a breeding pair earned as my indenture price. My full twelve year I worked from dark freezing morning to dark freezing midnight for to earn my freedom and my sheep. When my debt was paid, I found me a lay and built a hold for the sheep and me.

“I got me a wife from Vristal town, and in five springs I had two sons and a daughter living, and only one babe buried. My eldest Hugh come a fine sheepman and works shoulder to shoulder with me. My daughter took all of us in hand since she was ten when her mam died of lung fever, and she’s never missed a day’s cooking nor spinning nor churning.

“My Tom, though, is a wild boy, born with only one hand. His mam spoilt him young. He spends his days running the hills and playing his whistle what he made from tonguegrass. Oh, he’ll help as he will with shearing and herding, but his heart ain’t in his work, only in his music and the hills. I told him that when he come to manhood, he’d see how he’d have to work twice as hard as a whole man just to feed himself.

“Twas on one night just gone Tom come late to the hold, and the moon was in his eyes. ’Pap,‘ he said, ’I’ve seen a road that goes no place you’ve ever been.‘

“There’s a deal of roads I’ve never been,’ says I, ‘but not inside three days’ walking. If a sheep can find its way there, I’ve been on it.’

“No, Pap. This road goes into a new land. The sky is purple and black and filled with lightning, and the stars are green, but the land is not. It’s a broken place, Pap, and I’ve got to go there so to see what it may be.’

“I beat my boy, then, for I thought he’d been at the drink in Vristal town, and no matter what you’ve seen me put down this night, we don’t favor hard drink in my hold. But when I beat him, Tom didn’t say naught, nor argue, nor cry out as he might on another day, but only looked at me quiet with the moon in his eyes.

“The next night Tom come home late again. ‘Pap,’ he says, ‘I’ll take you to the road. The one-eyed man says I belong in that land and not here, but I want you to see it before I go. Mayhap you’ll believe me and not think me unfit to be your son.’

“Have you gone and tangled yourself with a jongler?’ I said. ‘Jonglers are thieves and gamblers and liars.’

“He’s no jongler, Pap. He’s a bent man, no taller than your waist, but a beard down to his belt. He’s got only one eye what’s purple in the center of it, and a growed-together flap of skin where the other eye should be.’

“You’ve been at the drink again, Tom,’ says I. ‘I’ve got to beat it out of you.’

“I understand, Pap,’ was all he said, and he took his beating so like a man, I lost the heart to strike him and dropped the cane after only five strokes.

“You’ll go out no more these nights,’ I said. ‘You’ll work till you drop, so’s you can’t go drinkin’.‘

“Got to go, Pap. Got to see what’s down that road where the sky’s purple and black.’

“I tied him to his bed with double knots at his arms and his legs, but he was gone at sunrise, the ropes wound neat and laid on his mat. His brother and me followed his tracks till we found his things: his spare shirt, his knife, all but his whistle that he’d made for himself. They was all laid neat in a pile on a flat rock, and no footprint led away from that place. That was eighteen day ago. We’ve found naught of him since then. I’ve come here looking for jonglers, especially a one-eyed man what’s bent and no taller than my waist. I’m afeared for my Tom, as I think he’s been taken to evil purpose. He’d not been in the drink. I see it now. Some jongler put these tales in his head, for my Tom’s a good boy, as is only come seventeen. And that’s my tale, so if you have a need, pour ale atop it, as that’s what I intend to do.”

The silence was deep. Only the pop and hiss of the hearth fire convinced me I hadn’t suddenly lost all hearing. The story itself carried little weight with me. To lose a son young, whether to disease or drink or to the ever-present Leirans who snatched boys to serve in the army was common among the poor of the Four Realms. And to blame the child’s fate on fairies or monsters was the usual practice. But I felt the father’s grief vividly. Until those years in Zhev’Na when I had watched the Lords stealing Gerick’s soul, I had thought seeing one’s newborn infant dead the most grievous of sorrows. But far worse was losing a child nearing adulthood, seeing life’s fullest promise dashed so bitterly.

In selfish relief, I reached for Gerick’s hand that lay on the scuffed table. His fingers were stone-cold. I glanced up quickly. His skin was chalky, his eyes huge and dark. “Gerick, what is it?”

“Nothing,” he whispered, pulling his hand from mine and averting his eyes. “Nothing. It’s just a story.”

Though the old man was a mesmerizing storyteller, the tale of a drunken sheepherder’s son paled in comparison with Gerick’s own strange adventures. “I think the boy ran away,” I said. “There was violence between him and his father. Perhaps this tale is the man’s way to explain it. What do you think?”

Gerick shrugged, color rushing back into his cheeks.

“I suppose I’d run away if I was beaten like that or tied to my bed. Can we go up now?”

I laid down a coin for the landlord, and we climbed the stairs, leaving the laggards draining their mugs and mumbling about getting home before the sun came up.

Sleep would not come. The rope bed and its straw-filled pallet seemed to develop a new lump or sag wherever I settled. I drifted in and out of dreams and worries and plans that seemed important, yet were indistinguishable by morning. Every time my eyes flicked open, I saw Gerick sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, wide awake. His elbows were propped on his drawn-up knees, his hands clasped and pressed to his mouth.

When I woke from my last fitful nap, just after sunrise, Gerick was not in the room. I gathered up our last pack and hurried downstairs to find him. The Fire Goat’s common room was bustling with every sort of person, from tradesmen to officials with ruffled silk doublets and gold neck-chains.

“Two for Vanesta. Anyone here bound for Vanesta?”

“Party of six for Fensbridge, looking for a strong swordsman.”

The shouts came from every corner of the room. Concern about the bandits who plagued the mountain roads prompted travelers journeying any distance to join with other groups for mutual protection. Evard’s soldiers were off fighting the war in Iskeran or hunting down those who failed to pay their taxes and tributes to support the interminable conflict. None were left to keep the roads safe from highwaymen, and the number of highwaymen increased every day that men got more desperate to feed themselves and their families. Local officials like Graeme Rowan were outmanned, their territories too large to patrol in a year of trying.

“Two women for Yurevan. To accompany a family or larger mixed party. No ruffians. No peasants.”

I pushed through the smoky, crowded room toward the door, fending off a disheveled man who smelled of wine and leered broadly at me, saying he’d take me wherever I wanted to go. I pulled my widow’s cap down lower and escaped into the yard, searching for Gerick.

The muddy yard was packed with horses, wagons, baggage, and even more people, generally of poorer aspect than those inside. A familiar lanky form moved down a string of eight or ten horses, offering each a private word along with a handful of grain from a canvas bag slung over his shoulder. I would have sworn each beast looked more cheerful after Paulo had stroked its neck and whispered in its ear. One of the string was Gerick’s gray gelding, Jasyr, and another was my chestnut mare, Kelty, brought along not to sell, but to be available if Gerick and I should choose to ride.

Across the yard by the fence, Radele was helping a young woman load several heavy boxes into a wagon. He shared a laugh with her, then tugged his soft-brimmed hat down low over his face and slouched against our cart. The rugged little pony was harnessed and ready. I waved to get Radele’s attention. He saluted and tipped his head toward a far corner next to the stable, where Gerick was engaged in earnest conversation with the despondent storyteller from the night before. My fists and stomach unclenched.

As I hurried across the courtyard through the people tying baggage onto carts and ponies and bawling mules, a burly drover leaped onto a heavily laden wagon, whistled loudly, and yelled, “Moving out for Montevial! We wait for nobody.”

Radele gave me a hand into the pony trap, then swung gracefully into his saddle, nudged his mount forward, and accosted the drover. Gesturing toward my cart, he dropped a few coins into the drover’s hand as I had instructed. The drover signaled me to take up the position just behind the lead wagons, and then, with a loud bellow, he headed his own wagon out the gates.

Gerick’s seat was still empty. But Radele rode directly across the path of the wagon next to me, causing the driver to pull up sharply and curse when he couldn’t squeeze in ahead of me. The young Dar’Nethi gave me a grin and a flourish of his hat. I reciprocated.

Just as I thought I might have to forfeit Radele’s advantage and relinquish my desirable place near the head of the caravan, Gerick sprinted across the yard and leaped into the seat beside me. “Sorry,” he said, as I snapped the reins, and we rolled through the gates of the innyard.

Once we were past the town walls, most of the sizable party stretched out behind us on the road. “So,” I said, keeping my eyes on the road, “has he news of his one-eyed jongler?”

Gerick shifted beside me on the thinly padded seat. “No. I just - I just wanted to tell him I hope he finds his son. I said that I knew someone who’d been stolen away like his boy and had come home again, so that he shouldn’t give up looking.”

“Any price he has to pay is worth it.”

But when I turned to smile at Gerick, his thoughts were very far away, and when I asked what troubled him so about the man’s story, he averted his eyes and sat up straight. “Nothing.” The set of his face told me not to bother asking more.

Our road wound through the green foothills of the Cerran Brae, sweeping gently upward toward the Leiran border. Some forty people comprised our party. The three principal drovers were Leiran, and six Leiran soldiers, two mounted and four on foot, guarded their three heavy wagons - some Vallorean province’s tax levies of money and grain.

Just behind us rode a pair of hunters leading five pack mules heavily loaded with skins to sell in Montevial’s market, and a vintner’s party hauling a valuable cargo of Vallorean wine to a Leiran baron. The vintner’s men had most likely been delighted to hear that a tax-levy shipment was in their party. Either the soldiers and the gruesome penalties for interfering with a tax levy would scare off any bandits, or the bandits would be so intent on the chests of gold and silver buried under the grain sacks that the wine might escape their notice.

Behind the vintner’s men rode a delegation of four Vallorean magistrates hoping to gain tax preferences for their towns, a standoffish Leiran man, his wife and two grown sons, and a belligerent Leiran stonemason and his assistant who had been participating in the continuing effort to remove the names and likenesses of Vallorean royalty from the public buildings in Vanesta. The party was filled out with local people traveling to Leire in search of work or missing relatives. Paulo and his string of horses had been relegated so far to the rear, I couldn’t even see them.

Scarcely able to keep up with the rest of us were a gaunt Vallorean and his family. The man carried a small boy on his shoulders and pulled a wheeled sledge by a rope tied around his broad chest. His wife carried an infant lashed to her back with straps of cloth, while three other children, none more than ten, trudged along beside their pitifully few household belongings, helping steady the sledge over rough places in the road.

At our first rest stop of the morning, I learned from his weary wife that the man was a master smith. Smiths were prized in every land, but the Leiran governor of Valleor had recently decreed that no Vallorean craftsman could practice his own trade until he had apprenticed to a Leiran master. As we prepared to resume our journey after the horses were rested and watered, I offered to let the children take turns riding in the trap with Gerick and me. When the smith heard my Leiran accent, he bluntly and unequivocally refused.

The first stretch of the afternoon was a short steep pitch over a low ridge. The Vallorean family quickly fell behind. When I slapped the reins harder than necessary to convince our pony to make the climb, Gerick eyed me curiously. “What’s wrong?”

“There are more lost souls in the world than just the mad sheepherder’s son,” I said, relaxing my grip a little. “And I would dearly love to make Evard walk with them a while.”

“Is it true you almost married King Evard? No one ever mentioned that at Comigor.”

“Has Tennice been telling you stories?”

“Some. When I asked him why you looked like you were going to spit every time you said the king’s name, and how you always called him Evard and not King Evard, Tennice said you were going to be queen.”

As we rolled through the hazy afternoon, I told Gerick about the beginnings of Evard’s and Tomas’s friendship, and the understanding between the young King of Leire and my brother about me. And in order to explain how Tennice had used his knowledge of the law so I could choose for myself whom I wanted to marry, I had to tell him about my cousin Martin, Earl of Gault, and his magnificent country house called Windham, and how I’d met Karon there, falling in love with him before I’d known he was a sorcerer.

Gerick listened, but made no comment.

It felt good to be on the move. For all its beauty and comfort, Verdillon was only a temporary home. My home was with Karon, but I wasn’t at all sure where. The rose-colored palace in Avonar was D’Natheil’s place, not Karon’s… not my Karon’s. Despite what I’d said to Radele, I couldn’t envision myself living there, and that left me feeling rootless and more uncertain about the future than I had ever been. Yet my unease could be only a small portion of what Gerick must feel. That consideration gave me patience with his silence and his moods when I had patience for nothing else in the world.

The air grew cooler as we moved slowly upward, and for the first time in weeks no storm broke in the afternoon. A breeze rippled the leagues of grass to either side of the road like an emerald sea. Gerick took over driving the cart, and despite the constant jolting, I fell into a drowsy reminiscence of Windham. Telling Gerick about those days had made the memories incredibly vivid. I could almost hear Karon’s robust baritone harmonizing with Martin’s off-key bass on a particularly bawdy song at a Long Night fete. When I laughed aloud at the memory of it, I felt Gerick’s eyes on me. My skin grew hot. Certain that he would ask what amused me so, I tried to decide if telling him the words to the song would be at all proper for a mother to a youthful son.

But his question, when it came, was very odd. “Why do you wear your hair so short?” He was gazing at me with the strangest expression - part curiosity, part wonder, part terror - and had let the reins go slack. The cart was rolling to a stop.

“Here, you’d best keep us moving or the others will pull their wagons around, and we’ll have to eat dust.” I snatched the reins from his still hands and gave the pony a flick so that we started moving again.

He continued to stare at me, his question hanging in the air like an annoying bee.

“On the day they executed your father, they cut off all my hair,” I said at last, trying to shove aside the accompanying images of fire and horror. “It’s the Leiran custom for public penance. By the time it grew back again, I was living in circumstances that left me no leisure to take care of it. It was easier to keep it short.” I had never let it grow past my shoulders again.

“You wore it very long before they cut it.”

I couldn’t tell whether that was a statement or a question. “It had been cut off so short only once before, when I was six and Tomas stuck tar in it.”

Gerick didn’t laugh, nor did he ask any more questions that day. He pulled his cloak around his shoulders and rode in tight silence, jerking himself awake whenever his head nodded. Radele rode just behind us, his eyes fixed on Gerick’s back.

Eight days into our journey, our road crested the Cerran Brae. The climb, though not horribly steep, was long and steady, wandering alongside a marshy riverbank between enclosing ridges. Grumbling that the pleasant early days of the journey had left us laggard, the drovers pushed the party hard, as we would find no ground suitable for making camp until we reached the drier Leiran side of the pass. But the failing light forced them to call a halt soon after we’d crossed, rather than farther down the Leiran side as was usual.

We camped in a long, narrow meadow, hemmed in by steep ridges on two sides, and by the pass behind us. The little valley necked down tightly, the lower end of the road and a dribbling stream crowding between the encroaching ridges before passing into the thickly treed forest of Tennebar. Early summer was cold so high on the mountain, and a blustering wind funneled through the pass and the valley, setting shirts and cloaks billowing wildly.

“Pull up there in that hollow,” said Sanger, the principal drover, whose neck was as wide as his head. He sat his horse across the road while directing each of the groups of travelers to follow his wagons into the meadow. “The vintner and the trappers will set up between you and my wagons tonight.”

Gerick nodded and clucked to the pony, heading for the grassy depression the drover had indicated, just off the road. I wondered why the change in procedure. On other nights Sanger had allowed everyone to set up wherever they pleased.

“You’ll be north picket on third watch,” the drover said to Radele as the trap jounced across the short, dry tufts of grass. “We’ll need your boy, as well. He’s not stepped up as yet, but we’re using everyone tonight. I’ve a bad feeling about this place. Too high. Too many notches in them rocks.”

“Third watch,” said Radele nodding. “I’ll try to persuade the boy… my student… to do his share.”

Gerick slapped the reins harder than required to move the pony along.

One by one, the traveling parties passed by us. By the time Paulo and his string of horses scuffed up the dust, following the vintner’s wagons and the trappers’ mule train toward the center of the camp as Sanger directed him, Gerick and Radele had unhitched the trap. While I unloaded our packs, Gerick rubbed down the pony, and Radele strolled over to the scraggly stand of pine across the road to hunt for firewood. He emerged a short time later dragging a dead sapling.

As I rummaged through our supplies, wishing I had something to cook that was more savory than the barley porridge we’d eaten for three nights running, Radele suddenly dropped his tree in the middle of the road and came racing across the meadow through the dusk, shouting, “Riders!” His tone left no question as to his opinion of the intentions of those approaching.

The word flew through the camp like leaves blown on the chilly gusts. Men shouted harsh commands and grabbed the halters of horses left to graze. Women snatched their pails from the spring and ran back to their parties. A few people like me stood stupidly peering at the road where nothing was visible as yet.

“Get back to the wagons, my lady,” said Radele, pelting into our grassy depression. “You’ll not be safe out here.”

From the back of our little cart he snatched a long canvas bundle that he threw to the ground at Gerick’s feet. “You’ve trained with the masters, eh? Time to put your skills to some decent use.”

At the same time, Sanger barreled up on his big sorrel. “What’s going on?”

“Riders on the lower road,” said Radele, already buckling the saddle girth under his bay. “At least twenty, coming fast enough they’re up to no good. If we get your soldiers and the vintner’s men down there where the road narrows, we can stop them before they come up this far.”

“How could you - ?”

“I’ve exceptional hearing,” snapped Radele.

Shouts and pointing fingers told me that the sudden rumbling in my belly was not growing anxiety, but the drumming of hoofbeats. Radele was in the saddle before I could blink. He drew his sword and motioned to three of the Vallorean magistrates and the stonemason and his assistant, who had ridden up behind Sanger. “Muster your riders!” shouted Radele. “These fellows and I will hold until you get there!” And he and the five travelers took off for the neck of the valley.

Sanger rode back toward the center of camp, but instead of dispatching riders to follow Radele, he shouted and waved at his soldiers, the vintner’s men, and the trappers to stay right where they were. Now I understood his placement of the camp. Sanger wanted his back to the solid cliffs on the southwest and his left flank protected by the little bogs and springs that dotted the heart of the meadow. And he wanted the most interesting prey such as wine casks and pelts - and their sturdy defenders - in between his levy wagons and any assault from the road. Parties like ours and the Valloreans and the Leiran man and wife were left on the outskirts of the camp. Expendable distractions.

For a moment Gerick stared at the bundle Radele had thrown at his feet, making no move to open it. Then, he snapped his head from me to Radele and his riders, streaking down the road, to Sanger and his soldiers, taking up their positions about the heart of the camp.

“Come on,” he said, touching my arm. “We need to find Paulo.” Before I could question or object or think of what else to do, he took off running for the flat grassy area near a spring where Paulo had hobbled his horses and left them to graze.

I followed. Paulo caught sight of us before we were halfway to the spring. My feet slowed when my boots squelched in a mud hole. My heart slowed when I saw Paulo leading Gerick’s Jasyr and his own Molly, already saddled. “Wait,” I said. “We need to consider - ”

“Take care of my mother,” said Gerick, grabbing my arm and shoving it into Paulo’s grasp, while snatching Jasyr’s bridle.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I said. I wasn’t used to being handed about by striplings.

“You and Paulo need to get behind the soldiers’ line.” Gerick was already in Jasyr’s saddle. “It’s the safest place. If the Dar’Nethi can’t hold the neck of the valley, then anyone outside that line is dead.”

Faint cries and a rising dust cloud from the eastern end of the road told us that the fight was engaged.

“We’d best warn the rest of the folk, then,” said Paulo.

“Just take care of my mother.”

A knot of terror caught in my throat as Gerick wheeled the gray and kicked him to a gallop across the meadow. But when he reached the road, he turned, not toward the battle raging at the lower end of the valley, but the opposite way, back toward the pass. My skin flushed with relief that my son was not riding into harm’s way, yet at the same time another, more uncomfortable, feeling swelled within me. What was he doing?

“My lady, come along with me.” Paulo yanked his quarterstaff from the straps that lashed it alongside Molly’s saddle, then whispered in the mare’s ear and slapped her flank, sending her back toward the open pasture. He whistled after her, and she whinnied cheerfully. Then he took my arm and tugged gently. “We’d best hurry.”

The two of us herded the Leiran man and wife, the fourth Vallorean magistrate - a gaping, big-bellied man - and the other Vallorean travelers toward Sanger and his levy wagons. The granite ramparts that flanked the meadows eerily amplified the clash of weapons, and the shouts and screams of men and horses from down the valley.

Though the soldiers and guards allowed us to pass through their line, they made no move to aid the panicked travelers. Those travelers unarmed or unfit we situated under the wagons, while setting the better equipped to stand in front of them. I refused to crouch underneath, but climbed atop the roped pyramid of vintner’s casks where I could see what was going on. My knife was in my hand.

I was a Leiran warrior’s daughter, and I had been taught that refusal to fight was cowardice. After Karon’s arrest, when he had invoked the principles of a lifetime and refused to harm another person to save his own life or the lives of his child or his friends, my instincts and upbringing had named him a coward. After long and painful years, I believed that I had come to terms with Karon’s convictions. But now it seemed that Gerick, too, had run away, leaving his companions to defend themselves.

As I tried to devise some other explanation - he’d detected some other threat or he was circling around to take the bandits by stealth - Radele and a single rider raced up the valley road, hotly pursued by at least twenty mounted raiders, whooping and yelling. The battle quickly engulfed us. The frenzied bandits on their squat ponies swarmed through the camp, raising a horrific din: thudding boots, pounding hooves, roars and screams of men, grunts and squeals of beasts, the clangor of weapons.

An ax-wielding man on a shaggy, thick-chested pony charged from the choking dust and noise straight toward our position, a ragged green scarf flapping about his head. Paulo stiffened and gripped his staff with both hands. I crouched low just behind him, clutching my knife. But before the outlaw could reach us, a passing soldier in pursuit of another bandit slashed at the charging beast’s legs with his greatsword. The pony squealed and skidded. The rider leaped free, twisting in the air, and crashed to the dirt just in front of Paulo.

But the now-vanished soldier had only postponed the assault, for the snarling bandit scrambled away from the fallen beast and leaped to his feet. With a blood-chilling cry, he raised his ax over Paulo’s head. Paulo lifted his staff and braced for the blow. Yet in a sudden onslaught of man and horse and flashing silver, the bandit pitched forward before he could strike, his face thudding into the ground as Radele severed his spine with a sweeping blow. Radele’s mount reared, and the Dar’Nethi raised his bloody sword in salute before vanishing again into the fray. The bandit’s green scarf had been torn away by the trampling hooves.

That was as close as Paulo and I came to harm. Paulo did not stir from my side, and though his staff remained ready, he did not have to wield it in my defense.

The raid faltered quickly. Radele seemed to be everywhere at once, appearing out of the gloom wherever the press was hardest, his fair hair gleaming, his blade shining silver in the torchlight, brighter by far than any other. One after another, he took the bandits down, while the drover and his stolid men held their line.

Night swallowed the ragged remnant of the bandit horde. As the fighters drew harsh breaths and the wounded moaned, travelers crawled slowly out from under the wagons and wandered off through the trampled grass, searching for their companions, picking up scattered belongings, lighting fires and torches. The soldiers invited Radele to join them at their fire, any disagreement about tactics seemingly soothed by victory.

“I’d be better occupied to scout the valley perimeter, I think,” said Radele, patting the neck of his panting horse. “And I need to cool this fellow down.”

I dressed the slashed hand of the stonemason as he wept for his dead assistant, his sister’s only son, while Paulo bandaged the arm of the fat Vallorean magistrate, who sat rigid with shock and uncertain how to proceed. His three companions had died at the neck of the valley. Only Radele and the stonemason had survived their venture. But everyone agreed that their efforts had weakened the bandits so they could be finished easily.

Sanger set up the watch and appointed parties to bury the dead: two Vallorean travelers and one of the vintner’s men in addition to the four lost with Radele. Nineteen dead bandits were left on the rocks for the wolves to find. Two prisoners were bound to the sides of the levy wagons and would remain there until we reached Montevial - if they stayed alive so long.

“Where’s the young Lord?” said Radele, slipping from his saddle as I set a pot over the hot little fire Paulo had built for me. Our own camp had remained relatively undisturbed in the raid. I had collected our few ripped and dirty blankets and dented pots scattered as the raiders fled.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“He had something needed doing,” said Paulo, giving a last poke to the coals and standing up. Though anxious to see to his stock, he had refused to leave me until Gerick or Radele returned. “He’ll be back.”

Radele’s gray tunic was splattered with blood, but his face was impassive as he looked around the campsite, his eyes settling on the canvas bundle that lay untouched beside the cart where he had thrown it. The young sorcerer picked up the bundle and unfolded the flaps of cloth, revealing a plain steel hilt protruding from a worn leather sheath. “I noticed he doesn’t wear a blade. Evidently my spare sword wasn’t suitable.”

Paulo bristled. “He don’t have to - ”

“That’s enough, Paulo,” I said sharply. I didn’t need them arguing. Not tonight. “We’ve a long journey still to go.”

Paulo snatched his quarterstaff from the ground and strode out of the camp.

Radele unsaddled his horse and rubbed him down before allowing him to graze, soothing him with soft words as he worked. When the horse was calmly crunching the dry grass alongside our unrattled pony, he joined me at the fire, a waterskin in his hand. He sat heavily on the ground, downed half the contents of his waterskin, and poured another good measure over his matted hair, rubbing his face and head vigorously.

“Will you eat something?” I had made up our barley porridge, but thrown in a precious lump of sugar, a handful of currents, and a thick glob of butter to make it more appetizing.

He flashed a grin. “I’ll eat my boots if there be naught else, but this smells far better.”

He took the bowl, devouring its contents before I’d set the pot back on the fire. As we talked of the dead and injured travelers and prospects for the journey ahead, he ate all that was left.

“You fought bravely tonight,” I said later, as I cleaned the pot and bowls and packed them away. “You’ll likely gain no glory in either world from this battle, but your Prince will hear of your deeds.”

Radele was cleaning his sword. “To be honest, my lady, for a Dar’Nethi to brawl with such as we met tonight takes little courage. The only enemies that measure a man are those that come out of Zhev’Na.” He ran his oily rag the length of his gleaming blade and did not look up.

Slowly the camp settled into exhausted quiet, the soft voices of men as they traded off the watch joining the shrieks of hunting birds and the distant howls of wolves. Though weary to the bone, I could not sleep. Sometime after the watch changed, I heard the creak of heavy-laden wheels and the slow scuff of boots on the hard road down from the pass. After a quiet exchange with the watch, the smith and his family moved to a patch of open ground a short distance from us. They must have dropped to the bare ground to sleep.

Blanket around my shoulders, I sat up and squinted into the darkness, hoping to see one more rider. Though I waited as long as I could hold my eyes open, he did not come.

When I woke to the drowsy bustle of breaking camp, Gerick was hitching the pony to the cart. Jasyr was nowhere in sight, back in Paulo’s string I guessed.

“So, you’re back,” I said, throwing my bundled blanket in the cart. “It’s jack and ale for breakfast.”

“Hmm.” He yanked at the buckles on the wither straps and girth. He didn’t look at me.

I kicked dirt over the glowing ashes of our fire, and then gathered up the rest of our belongings and tucked them under the seat, leaving the bag of dried meat and a flask of ale where Gerick could get them when he was ready. I didn’t know what to say to him. Fear, shame, and frustration had me ready to shake him until his teeth rattled. And so I decided that until I was in better control of my own feelings, I’d best avoid a confrontation. I climbed into the cart.

Radele hurried into camp from the direction of the stream, his hair dripping and face clean, wishing us a good morning as he swung himself into his saddle. For Gerick’s part, the Dar’Nethi might not have existed. My son jumped up beside me; I clucked to the pony, and we rolled out.

In the ensuing days, no matter how I tried to approach him, Gerick refused to speak of his actions on the night of the raid. Although concern for his well-being had quickly shouldered my personal disappointments aside, I could not avoid one simple fact. Gerick had run away, while men far less skilled at combat than he had died fighting to protect us all. He needed to acknowledge that truth someday. If he was to grow into a man of honor, he needed to think about it.

Radele’s polite deference remained unchanged. I could see that it rankled Gerick far worse than the scornful glances and resentful whispers from some of our traveling companions. One evening a few nights after the raid, when Radele had gone off to stand watch, I tried again. “We need to talk about it, Gerick. You’ve not spoken ten words these last three days. You’ve not looked me in the eye.”

His face flamed, and he threw his cup to the dirt. “It’s nobody’s business what I do or don’t do. Name me coward or devil, whatever you want. I don’t care. Just leave me alone!”

He strode into the darkness, leaving a huge angry hole in the night.

After a while, Paulo spoke up softly from across the fire. “He can’t fight, my lady. He just can’t. I think he’s afraid.”

But Paulo couldn’t, and Gerick wouldn’t, tell me what my son was afraid of.