The Hob's Bargain

Chapter 10

TEN
I wiggled onto my stomach to get away from the raiders' camp. The earth guardian's shaper, who wore the body of an old, old man with none of the infirmities such a body should have, wiggled with me. I wasn't sure if the earth guardian sent him to watch over us, or to keep the shaper out of trouble.
The hob moved much more quietly than either of us, his gray coloring and brown clothes blending into the early morning light so well, that he almost disappeared in the grasses without magic.
The raiders had chosen to hide their camp in the trees, reasoning that if we couldn't find it, we wouldn't be sneaking up on them from the forest. Even so, they would keep a heavy guard on that side of the camp because the trees afforded an attacking enemy good cover.
We'd sneaked up on them from the field side because they wouldn't be looking for trouble from there, and because we had the hob's ability to hide in plain sight. I'd decided to count sleepers for Koret, so we'd have a better idea of the number of raiders. There were fewer than I'd expected.
We were almost safe when it started to rain again, making the mud...
... soft under my fingers. Hunger was hard in my belly. I looked across the field of sleeping men and smiled in anticipation of the blood that would flow. I heard a snigger beside me and turned to hush that one. If they didn't hear us until we were upon them, there would be better eating. On the other hand, fighting was good, too. I remembered the feeling of bone breaking beneath my fingers and the feeling was good.
Caefawn's hand was hard over my mouth and his body covered mine, holding it still. I struggled underneath him, but he was amazingly strong. None of the bits of training Koret and Kith had given me had any effect at all.
Behind the hold of his hand I screamed in frustration, and a little in the age-old fear of a fish caught in a net. If he didn't let me up to warn them, the raiders whose camp we'd been spying on were going to end up dinner (or breakfast) for the hillgrims.
I resorted to an old trick I'd learned when Quilliar used to cover my mouth. Caefawn's hand was locked under my chin, but I managed to stick out my tongue anyway. His hand tasted of mud and rotting leaves, but my resolve was rewarded when he pulled it away in instinctive revulsion. The mud removed the last lingering taste of remembered blood, but I wasn't sure it was really an improvement.
I spit out a piece of grass and grunted, "Get off me."
He rolled off. I gathered my legs under me, and sprinted back to the camp we'd just left. We'd almost made it back to the trees, and the first stretch of field I ran over had been turned by Daryn's plow, but hadn't been harrowed to smoothness. Plow horses didn't have much trouble with the ground, but people did. I fell twice, but used the momentum to roll again to my feet.
"Ware, to arms, to arms," I bellowed. If I was grinning, it was because I was imagining the expression on Caefawn's face. He must think I'd lost my mind. Only shock could have stopped him from catching me. "Attack coming from the hills! Hillgrims!" Not that anyone in the camp would know what a hillgrim was, but the name sounded nasty enough to carry its own warning.
As I pelted across the smooth part of the field, heading toward the rise where their camp was, it occurred to me that running into a camp of nervous raiders who thought I was the enemy wasn't a bright idea. I was armed only with a knife; the crossbow was hanging under a tree on the other side of the field. It would be hard enough to crawl through the muck, and I hadn't wanted to do it with my crossbow because the harness that held it to my back wasn't tight enough to hold it steady while I crawled. I'd have to fix that, but for tonight I'd left it on a tree.
I had time, running across the field, to wonder why I was so worried about hillgrims munching on a few raiders.
"Beware, hillgrims," bellowed a deeper voice just behind me.
It wasn't the hob, so it must have been the shaper. I glanced to my right and was treated to the sight of a hundred-year-old man running like a deer. He grinned at me happily. I didn't see Caefawn.
The men were on their feet and armed as I topped the rise. Most of them were looking at me - the moon was still old enough so they could see me in its light - so I pointed frantically behind them.
"The west, the west!" I screamed.
But from the swearing beginning on the hill side of their camp, I suspected that my cries wouldn't be necessary much longer. There was a howling battle cry, and most of the men turned from me and ran to face the real threat.
Unfortunately, two of them remained. One of them was staring at the old man, who grabbed a stout stick from the woodpile and jumped over an empty cooking pot half as high as he was, all the while howling madly, "Hillgrims! Hillgrims! Fun to kill hillgrims!"
The other took a step closer to me, sword at the ready. "You?"
It was Quilliar. The other Quilliar.
I nodded. When he didn't strike immediately, I headed for the woodpile, too.
Quilliar was still waiting when I turned, his sword blocking the other man, who apparently had recovered enough from the sight of the shaper to decide I was a threat.
"Why did you warn us?" Quilliar asked.
Why indeed? Because I trusted Caefawn's judgment, I'd come to accept that the village might need them to survive. Acceptance was a long way from risking my life to save them. They'd killed my family. When I thought of it, I knew I would kill the raiders I'd killed again if I were given the chance. Why fight for them, then? The answer, when it came, bothered me. I shoved it to the side and gave them a simple answer they could accept.
"Have you ever seen a hillgrim?" I asked, an arm-long stick in each hand. "If you had, you wouldn't ask me. Besides, I suspect our village and your company are going to need each other once the wild fully recovers. The hob tells me that goblins and trolls are hard to fight."
He weighed my answer, then turned to the other man. "She's with us. At least for now."
He was right. I would welcome the chance to die for the village because I didn't believe they'd ever let me live with them. A sort of variation upon the adolescent theme of "I'll die, and then they'll be sorry." I would always be alone.
I heard the shaper's howl again and, involuntarily, I grinned. I wasn't alone. I had the earth spirit's guard and the hob.
I started toward the sounds of battle, more because I was distracted by my thoughts than because I was eager to fight. Because something had occurred to me.
I had never really been alone. Why had I thought that Quill and I were the only ones hiding what we were?
Fallbrook and Beresford both were thick with magic. There wasn't a family in either village who didn't have a near relative taken by the bloodmages in the last three generations. I could even make a fair stab at guessing who the village mageborn were: the ones who hated me the most. I'd felt so alone after Quilliar died. It hadn't occurred to me that I wasn't.
I darted around a tent and found a raider struggling with a hillgrim on his back. He'd dropped his sword and was trying to pry it off, but the 'grim had locked its jaws in the thick leather of a gaudy protective collar the raider wore around his throat.
My weapons were too stout to do what I intended, so I grabbed a pair of wooden tent spikes set nearby. Stepping behind them both, I slid my chosen weapons between them. I braced the free end of each stick against the raider's leather-armored back and used the leverage to force the hillgrim to break its hold or let my sticks crush its throat.
It released the raider, reached behind, and grabbed me across the shoulder, wedging its claws in the soft flesh under my arm.
A crossbow bolt took the 'grim through the skull, about two fingerspans from my nose, with a dull sound. With such a close-up view, I could tell it was from my bow.
"Thanks, Caefawn," I murmured, shaking free of the dead hillgrim.
Trust the hob to do the most useful thing and grab my crossbow. No doubt he was perched high in one of the trees, killing hillgrims much more efficiently than any of us on the ground.
"Thanks, brother," said the man, whose back was bleeding from the scratches the hillgrim had made.
He picked up his sword. He turned to me, and his jaw dropped. I tapped him on the head with a spike. Gently.
"Close your mouth and watch your front," I said, nodding at the hillgrim darting under someone's legs to attack him. Then, remembering the odd stillness that had held me when the hillgrim had attacked me on the Hob, I added, "Don't meet their eyes."
As I left the raider to aid another man with a similar problem, I called a belated "You're welcome."
This time I didn't try subtlety, I just jabbed one end of my right spike into the hillgrim's ear with the weight of my body behind it. The end of the spike was sharp and slid easily for a few inches. I pulled my knife and used the handle to hammer the spike in deeply enough to kill the hillgrim. I had to pry the creature's jaw open to free the raider, who'd fallen to his face, crying for help from the One God. A true believer, I thought. There were no more unoccupied hillgrims in the immediate area, so I took a good look at the raider's wound.
"The One God was with you today," I announced briskly. "The 'grim got a mouthful of your leather armor, but not even a bit of flesh."
He turned over, a lad even younger than Quilliar. The bridge of his nose was freckled. He looked at me for a moment, then took my hand when I offered it, and got to his feet.
Without a word we both turned back to the fight.
It didn't take me long to realize that I was able to help the other fighters because anytime a wildling started for me, it was felled with a crossbow bolt. Caefawn was good; no, better than good, because I was good and he was better.
I caught occasional views of the shaper in his old man's body as he put his club to good use. More often I heard him, cackling like a demented fiend and singing nonsense songs in a high, carrying voice. Even to me, who knew what he was, it was uncanny. It didn't seem to bother the hillgrims, but it was fair spooking the raiders.
"We need to get out now," said Caefawn quietly in my ear. "Move slowly, and don't look anyone in the eye. The hillgrims are retreating and the raiders will notice you before long, so it's time to go. As long as no one thinks to look for you, he won't see you."
His hand on my shoulder, he guided me around the battlefield. I wished he'd move his fingers so they weren't pressed to the wound the first 'grim had given me, but I didn't want to say anything to break his spell.
The hob's grip kept me to a slow walk until we reached the cover of the trees. Then he pulled us to a run. Exhaustion from the fighting caught up with me too soon, but the raiders wouldn't be searching through these woods for a while. At least not until they'd counted their dead and wounded.
I sat down on a rock that looked smooth enough to be more comfortable than the wet, pine needle-covered ground.
"What's wrong with your arm?" asked Caefawn after studying me a while.
He didn't give me a chance to answer, just pulled aside my shirt. Ignoring my yelps, the hob took a look at the cuts under my arm.
"Sore," he determined, "but not serious."
He took a little flask from one of the bags he wore around his waist. I could smell the alcohol before it hit my skin, and I whined as softly as I could when it hit.
"This is like a cat scratch," he said. "It'll feel better once it's cleaned off."
I muttered something uncomplimentary, and he laughed.
"Mischief," he said obscurely, then chided me. "Next time you want to alert a camp of armed men, do me a favor and think of a safer way. I suppose we also need to do something about those visions. If I hadn't been there, you'd have had the whole of them upon you before you could defend yourself."
The euphoria of the run came back to me as the pain of my cuts faded. I grinned at him. "Good thing you were there." I gave him a speculative look. "I thought you couldn't do that invisible trick from this side of the river."
"You mean when I got you out of it? We weren't invisible, just camouflaged. In the heat of a battle, there's more than enough confusion to make it as effective as invisibility. If someone had been looking for you, they'd have seen us."
Having caught my wind, I stood up and started back toward the village. It was going on to full daylight, and I needed to get some sleep. "I wonder what the raiders will make of my warning them."
He sniggered. "I hadn't figured on you. If Rook is smart, your village won't have any more serious problems from the raiders."
I raised my eyebrows at him. "Who?"
"Remember the two raiders who listened to you speak that first day?"
He gave speak the same emphasis that I gave the sight. Perhaps it hadn't been the White Beast's presence that encouraged the raiders to listen.
"Yes."
"The older one is Rook, second in command. I've been talking to him quite a bit. The raiders have been having some problems. Something's been getting into their stores. Horses are going lame for no reason. Their leader's getting a reputation for bad luck."
I laughed. "Rook will be better?"
"He's come to see the error of their ways," replied the hob. "It should work."
He sounded a little tentative, but I'd come to believe in his infallibility. The hob had changed the villagers' luck. Smiling, I looked down upon my cottage from the slopes above it. We'd come up with a way to appease the earth spirit; the raiders would join us and help; Fallbrook would grow and thrive. With the luck of the hob on our side, what else could happen?
"Why are we going all the way up here?" I asked from Duck's back as we trotted up the path to the Hob. It was light out, but the rain made it less pleasant than it might have been. I yawned; I hadn't gotten much sleep after coming back from fighting the raiders. Caefawn had awakened me before the sun had risen well past the top of the mountains.
The hob looked at me as if I were an idiot. "Didn't you ask me to teach you how to keep the visions from overwhelming you?"
I considered it. "I think that was your idea."
"Do I know anything about how visions work?" he asked, then continued without giving me a chance to say anything. "Of course not. No self-respecting hob would ever dream of having visions."
I pulled off my wet hat and hit him with it lightly. "No hob would ever dream of being self-respecting," I returned roundly as I set the hat back on my head. "If he found he was in danger of it, he'd have to do something drastic."
He laughed. "True, lady. All too true. Well, then, I ask you, how am I to help you control your visions?"
"I thought that was what I should ask you," I said, yawning again. "Seeing as you're so determined to teach me."
"True, but you didn't know to ask it, did you?" He gave me a flirtatious glance before turning his attention back to where he was running.
If he was going to play with words, I could, too. "Then why are you asking me to answer it?" I ducked under a low-hanging branch.
"Because I am not a respectable hob."
I laughed. "Enough, already. Why are we going to the Hob?"
"Because I think I know how to help you - but I need the mountain to show you."
We took a different path up the mountain than I had ever taken. But then, I'd been on the Hob only a handful of times. The rain stopped falling, leaving behind the fresh scent of a newly washed world. The sun began wanning the wetness from my rough wool cloak.
Duck enjoyed the sun, snorting and curveting as no responsible farm horse ever would. The hob was certainly having an effect on my horse - on me, too, for that matter. By all rights I should have been fretting and stewing about how we were going to appease the earth spirit and keep the villagers from assassinating me on sight, or I should have been examining my possibly upcoming nuptials and chewing my nails. Instead, I was chasing after the hob and enjoying it. His boundless energy and enthusiasm, coupled with the warm sun, made worry impossible.
The path we took wasn't well suited for a horse. Duck and I jumped over several piles of trees, and slipped and slid around a boulder too big to jump. The faint trail we followed didn't climb up the mountain, but meandered here and there around her sides.
We topped a rise into a small meadow flanked by steep mountainsides. On the far side of the meadow was a tight growth of brush and trees. I sat back, and Duck halted with a snort and toss of his head, mouthing the bit and making it jingle musically.
"Faker," I accused him. "I didn't even pull the reins."
Duck snorted and took advantage of the loose reins to drop his head and snitch a mouthful of grass.
"Well trained horses don't eat with a bit in their mouths," I informed him. He ignored me, so I turned my attention to Caefawn. "This is as far as Duck can go. There's no way for him to get through that mess of trees, and the sides of the mountain are too steep for him to climb."
The hob nodded, "If you wait for me here, I'll get what we came for. It'll take me but a minute." He strode across the meadow, then stopped. "We'll be here a while after that, so you might as well unsaddle Duck." He continued toward the greenery, keeping to a brisk walk for a few strides then breaking into a run - as if unable to contain himself another moment.
I slid off Duck's back and, following Caefawn's advice, unsaddled him. After a moment's thought, I took off his bridle. We'd become close comrades over the past few months. I didn't think that he'd run off; the grass here was long and full of clover. I'd probably have a hard time getting him to leave it.
I lay across a large, flat boulder. If I bent just right, I could avoid most of the sharp places. The grass was too wet to be comfortable. I closed my eyes, just for a while. I dozed, dreaming of a motherly woman who patted my hand and told me, oddly enough, that I was most pleasing. I couldn't quite work up the energy to ask pleasing to whom or for what.
"Sleeping again?" asked the hob.
He was sitting beside me and, like Duck, he had a strand of grass sticking out of his mouth.
"I usually do, if I'm up all night fighting hillgrims." I rolled to my feet. "What is that?"
He held a body length of cedar in his hands, twisted and knotted as cedar tends to be, though the end effect was a straight line. Long, stringy bits of bark dangled from it, and there were twigs of greenery here and there.
"Cedar," he said, as if I didn't know.
"And what's it for?" I persisted with obvious patience.
"For an anchor, my sweet. Cedar's hold is as strong as its scent."
He broke off the remaining leaves, then drew one of his claws down the side of the limb to break the surface of the bark. He peeled the bark off in long strips, wet with the yellow tissue that protected the inner wood. When he was finished, he held a gaudy staff of wood striped pale and red, with knots and twists aplenty.
"Take this," he said, handing the staff to me.
It was heavier than I expected. If it had all been stretched straight, it would have been half again as long, which explained the extra weight.
"Now what?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "when you were telling me about your visions, I thought of a kite in the wind - tugged here and there, willy-nilly. It occurred to me that you needed a string to tie you to yourself, so when the wind blows, it cannot pull you too far without your consent."
"It looks more like a staff than a string to me," I said, tongue in cheek.
He snorted. "Feckless lass. It's a serious business. I've seen you when the visions take you - you've no defenses. If that ghost had come when you were looking at some ancient ancestor of mine as he carved a silly warning in the rock, you'd be haunting my mountain even now."
"You're calling me feckless?" I said with mock incredulity.
He showed his fangs. "I'm not the one who ran into a camp of armed enemy, my sweet. The cedar might not help at all, I don't know. But you can try."
So I sat on the ground with the staff across my legs, holding it with both hands. Caefawn folded his legs nimbly, one across the other, and faced me, tail twitching like an anxious cat's.
"Call the vision," he said.
While he was tutoring me in spirit-speaking, I'd realized summoning a vision wasn't all that different from calling spirits. Some of the most powerful approached me, and the others might come to my beckoning. I hadn't applied it to my visions yet, but this was as good a time as any to try.
What I really wanted to know was what was happening with the raiders - but whatever it was that kept me from seeing them was still in effect. So I received something different.
Music drifted from his strings, called by skillful fingers. Wandel hummed a bit with the music, absorbed in the chords he summoned. He stopped abruptly and shook his head. He played four or five notes over several times, varying the last note until he was satisfied.
"Come back now, Aren."
When I had visions, it seemed like my body became less real than the sights or sounds that passed through my mind. This time was no exception, but the cedar staff held substance my body did not. Even as I thought about it, I broke free of the vision.
"It worked," I said, smiling. Both Caefawn's prop and my new technique. It wouldn't save me from falling off Duck when a vision struck (which I'd done once), but at least I could avoid lying around waiting for marauding hillgrims (or whatever new creepy-crawly appeared next) to find me.
He matched my smile with one of his own. "Good. Cedar's pull is not all that strong. Once you understand how it works, you can do without it. No sense getting dependent on props. Try it again."
I tried the raiders' camp again, but instead of focusing on the raiders, I tried to picture Rook's face. I hadn't tried an individual before, and this time the sight started to come to my call. The sensation of pressure against my temples was almost too strong to bear. It wasn't exactly painful, but extremely uncomfortable. I kept my eyes open, mostly to see if I could.
Caefawn's face faded to blackness, but nothing replaced it but the strong smell of meat cooking over an open fire.
"So what are we going to do now?" The voice belonged to Rook's Quilliar.
"I don't know." Rook's voice was unhurried. "I suppose - it's time to come back now."
His voice slid into Caefawn's deeper tones.
This time it was easier to pull back to myself. Maybe because the vision wasn't as strong, but I felt as if I were controlling it rather than the other way around.
"Good," said Caefawn, as my eyes refocused on his face.
I grinned in triumph. Not only was I learning to control my vision, but I'd gotten past whatever it was that guarded the raiders. Before I could tell him, though, the sight caught me up in an implacable grip. The strength of its hold made my attempts to avoid it seem like the fluttering of a chick just hatched. The smell of cedar faded to nothing.
When the hob was trying to get me to find the earth spirit, I'd had the sensation of soaring over the ground. Now I felt a sensation very similar. I could see...
... the two of us staring at one another, the hob's tail wrapped around my wrist and his hands at my shoulders before I was pulled away. The Hob - the mountain version - lay beneath me and I floated over her ridges and past them to Silvertooth's broken body, which was covered with new growth of grass and thorn. Something grabbed me, and my speed increased until the ridges below me became a blur. Then it stopped. I couldn't be certain where I was, for the trails and ridges were no longer familiar. But the man... I knew the man.
He rode a dark horse and wore a bloodred cloak Behind him trotted three men dressed in black, Kith's old uniform, on horses tired and wet. Rain poured down as the sky wept. Lightning flashed and the wind turned branches into whips that beat and slashed at those who dared ride through the weather.
For an instant, then again as lightning scrawled across the sky, I could see the rocky outcrop topping the crest of the mountain they rode around. One of the horses stumbled over nothing. His rider called something - I could hear his voice but not his words. The front rider stopped his horse and listened. Lightning flashed, and his white face stood out in bas-relief. Mad eyes in a face that might have come from any family in Fallbrook - though his features were oddly misshapen, melting from the fire beneath. Gray threaded through his mahogany hair, the contrast more vivid because of the additional darkness the rain lent to the rest of his hair.
The bloodmage shook his head and goaded his horse on with sharpened spurs.
"Come on back, love," said the hob.
It was his voice this time, not the staff, that anchored me and drew me back. The smell of green cedar sharp in my nose, I turned to Caefawn.
Fear and rage fought for ascendency. The fear was for Kith, for I knew of nothing else that would have brought the bloodmage here. He had come to kill his creation. Buried underneath was another fear. Too many people who didn't like me knew what I was. The bloodmage would find out and demand my death, as was his king-and god-given right - the price of that long-ago binding of the wildlings.
Fear shortened my breath and caused my limbs to tremble, but it was the rage that won.
My lips drew away from my teeth, hating the raiders had been too difficult. Their Quilliar was no more evil than my Quilliar had been, though it had taken the hob, death, and the duplication of my brother's name to show me that. Their Quilliar had been a sheepherder; Rook (so my vision of him had told me), a lord far more able and kind than Moresh. In a different world they would have been men just like my father and husband, perhaps better men. My parents' death, my husband's death were the fault of some cosmic madness that haunted men of war - deaths I might have been able to stop.
My brother's death, though, belonged to the bloodmage. As the disaster that had descended upon Fallbrook belonged to the bloodmages, all of them. Without them there would have been no unraveling of the binding. No war. No mercenaries-turned-bandits. So I gave Moresh's mage the guilt for all of the deaths of this spring and summer, for every evil thing that had befallen me and mine.
There was some inconsistency in my logic - I knew it even then - but anger clouded my thoughts, and it felt good. I gathered my righteous rage around me like a warm blanket. There was someone to blame for this. I'd thought the bloodmage dead, safe from my wrath. I felt the fury pounding in my blood as if Quilliar's death were just yesterday.
"Aren!" Caefawn peered worriedly into my face. "Aren, what did you see?"
I tamped the rage down gently for later use and said, "Moresh's bloodmage is coming back. I saw him on the old road that runs around the back of Faran's Ridge, near Mole Rock." Caefawn frowned, coming to his feet and pulling me to mine. "He's come for Kith - to kill him."
"When?"
"Moresh gave him three months. Until last spring planting. When the mountain fell, when Moresh died, I thought that would be an end to it."
Caefawn shook his head. "Not yesterday; there was no lightning storm on the ridge yesterday. Not today either, or at least not this morning, although it might rain on the ridge between now and nightfall." He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. After a moment he opened them and shook his head. "The mountain says there won't be such a storm today. Maybe tomorrow."
"Which puts him at the village tomorrow, or possibly the day after." I hugged myself tightly, though I wasn't cold.
Time was giving me perspective, and I felt the rage seeping away. Moresh's bloodmage was no more responsible for my situation than the raiders were. He'd once been a victim, too: I'd never heard of anyone apprenticing to the bloodmages happily. Remembering the relief I'd felt giving him all the guilt and fear that were mine, it was easier to understand the villagers who hated me.
Rage or not, the bloodmage had to be stopped. Though it would have been nice to have more time to prepare, it really didn't matter. I knew what Kith would do - nothing. He'd believed all along that he was living on borrowed time, and he didn't seem very willing to fight for more. Albrin would fight - but he was not yet in shape to be any help. Koret was a trained fighter, but he knew nothing of magic. In any case, the village needed Koret in order to survive; I couldn't risk getting him killed. No more than I would risk Caefawn in a battle that was not his.
There was no one to fight the mage except me.
"So how do I fight a bloodmage?" I asked him.
I noticed for the first time that the hob's ears were pinned back against his skull, though his smile was easy enough. "That's a very good question, but you're asking the wrong person. You forget what the bloodmages did to my people. I was there - and didn't fight very well." His hand flexed on his staff. He continued softly, "I don't remember it, but I dream of it every night."
"You couldn't have done anything," I said, his pain drawing me out of my preoccupation with the bloodmage. "You were wounded so badly your people gave you to the mountain because they could not help you. What could you have done that your people did not? From the stories I've heard about the binding, the magic was worked far from here, far from the Hob. There were no battles to be fought. It's said they sacrificed a dragon to power the spell. If the mountain couldn't fight it, there was nothing you could do."
"Whatever happened, it is long since over," he agreed bitterly. Bitterness was not something I would have credited the hob with, though he had cause for it.
I didn't want to hurt him further and risk bringing back memories that the mountain had seen fit to take. However, still less did I want to face the bloodmage without any idea of how to oppose him. So I rephrased my question.
"Have you battled anything with magic?"
"Yes," he said curtly. "Though when it was and what it was I don't know. Detailed advice wouldn't help you anyway. Your powers are not my own, but they are not the bloodmage's either. Use that against him."
"Use what?" I asked, losing my own battle with bitterness. "Visions? Shall I ask him to meet me in the night so I can call up ghosts? Ghosts he can doubtless use better than I can - death dealer that he is."
He spread his hands apart in a gesture of surrender. "I have nothing more to offer you. I'm not certain there is a way to vanquish such a one, but I'll help as I can."
"No," I said. I didn't want to risk the hob, not just because he was the key to the village's survival, but because I didn't want to risk losing him as I'd lost so many people I loved. I stared at him, and admitted to myself that I loved him.
Caefawn rose to his feet, shaking out his cloak. He said mildly, "I swore to help the village survive. If I think that its chances are better with Kith alive and willing to fight, it's no one's business but my own. Come, I'll escort you far enough so that you can find your own way back. Then I need to look into a few things."
I wasn't sleepy at all on the ride back. If the mage wasn't enough, there were the berserkers who followed him. One-armed, Kith'd been able to stand off the raiders for the better part of a day. What could he have done had he been whole?
To fight the berserkers, the village only had two well-trained fighters. Two. And one of them wouldn't fight. I knew Kith - better now than before he'd left for war. He'd already accepted his death, distancing himself from people whenever possible. Not only because he'd been altered by magic into some kind of superior soldier, as I'd thought when he'd first returned, but because he knew he had only a short time to live. He wouldn't fight it, because deep inside he felt that he deserved nothing better. He'd been tainted with death magic, and the One God taught that such men were already dead.
Koret was good, but he had nowhere near Kith's proficiency. I'd seen them spar a time or two, and even I could tell the difference. He would stand little chance against the bloodmage's men.
There was Wandel. From what he and Kith had said, they both considered him able to fulfill the king's command to kill Kith if Moresh failed to do so. I thought about the harper, who was even now writing songs of thanks to the earth, and wondered how he'd stand up against a berserker.
Duck tripped over a small, downed tree hidden beneath a clump of grass. I noticed then that we were alone; Caefawn must have decided I could find my way down from here.
He would help, he'd said so - there was no reason to feel abandoned. A sudden thought caught me like a fist in my stomach. I remembered his ears pulled back against his head like a stallion whose territory was threatened. I sat back, and Duck stopped.
He wouldn't, I thought, not so far from the mountain, where his powers would be little better than nothing. But even as I thought it, I worried. The woods were his element, and even so far from the mountain he might feel confident. Three berserkers and a mage against a nob - would those odds worry the hob, who ate (if he could be believed) hillgrims for breakfast? Who'd greeted my suicidal run this morning with laughter and a "be smarter next time" speech?
I tried to convince myself I was wrong. But all I could see was the look in his eyes when he told me that he, of all people, would be of no use against a bloodmage. It wasn't just sorrow there, or anger. It was guilt.
Who better than I to understand that? By virtue of my sight, I'd been given guilt enough to fell an ox. Guilt for Daryn and my family. Guilt for surviving when they had not. How much more would the hob feel it? He was the last of his kind, the only one the mountain had saved.
I threw myself forward, and Duck, catching my sudden urgency, took off like a shot. He was traveling far too fast for the track, but I didn't care. I had the sick feeling I'd traded one person I loved for another. I didn't want to be responsible for anyone else's death, least of all Caefawn's. If I could get to town soon enough, perhaps I could arm the village - or at least the patrollers. If I could get enough people and run them up to Faran's Ridge, maybe Caefawn would stand a chance.
The track we followed turned onto a trail both Duck and I recognized, and he stretched out even more. Running downhill always felt like falling to me, with the horse frantically trying to get his feet down faster than his body.
The mountain shuddered under Duck's hooves, and we fell. Luckily the slope was shallow, and Duck scrambled to his feet almost before I quite knew we'd gone down. I could feel the mountain's rage, and knew my suppositions about the hob were correct. He'd told her where he was going, and she knew who'd told him about the bloodmage. She wasn't happy with me.
Fear sped Duck faster than any goad, and we jumped and dodged and wove like a shepherd's dog as Duck fled down the side of the mountain. Tree branches caught at the cedar staff, but I held it fast.
"I know," I shouted, though I wasn't certain the mountain would hear me. "I'm getting help."
Duck fell to his knees again as the solid footing shifted under him a second time. I steadied him as he scrambled to his feet, and he redoubled his speed. Great muscles trembled with his effort and his breath escaped in noisy gulps. If we did get off the mountain, there was a good chance he'd never run again.
The brief break from the rain was over, and the ground grew wet and slippery. The mountain sent rocks tumbling after us, some of them as big as Duck. One crashed into a nearby tree, knocking the old giant to the ground in front of us.
Given no choice in the matter. Duck bunched his hind legs underneath him and jumped with the power bred to drag an iron plow deep into the earth. I'd just enough warning to bury both hands in his mane and hang on.
It wasn't a graceful jump; he landed with both hind feet tangled in branches and went down for a third time. But those same branches cushioned our fall. I threw myself as far away from him as I could get, to give him room as he somehow scrambled up.
Duck stood there a moment, head hanging in exhaustion. His chest was foam-covered, and a good portion of the water dripping off his back was not rain. His knees were cut and scratched from his earlier falls, but only the skin was damaged, as far as I could tell.
The earth shook slightly one more time, but there were no more boulders or rocks. The sudden silence made me realize just how loud the earth had been. Now there was only the sound of the rain. A flash of lightning hit in the direction of Faran's Ridge.
"I thought you said there wouldn't be a thunderstorm tonight," I accused, but the mountain didn't answer.
The lightning meant there would be no time to get help. I didn't doubt the hob could make it to Faran's Ridge to confront the bloodmage, but it would take us mere humans a full day to get there.
Duck and I continued toward the village at a slow walk.
I didn't doubt that the bloodmage would reach Fallbrook. I knew it. If I let go of the staff I held, I would see it, too. The vision hovered just behind my eyes. I gripped the staff tighter and tried not to think.
I walked beside Duck all the way to the inn. There were a few people out in the rain. The smith's wife gathered her children together and hustled them into the smithy. I guess I must have looked pretty battered.
Duck picked up his pace for a few steps when he saw the inn, but he soon slowed again. He waited patiently as I stripped him of his tack and wiped him off with a knobby towel. I put him in his stall and measured him a bit of grain. His chest was wet with sweat and rain, but cool from the long walk. I wouldn't have to worry about giving him too much water.
"What's wrong?" Kith's voice didn't surprise me, even though I hadn't heard him come in.
I hooked the stall door and turned around. In the silence between us I played out what would happen if I told him.
He would tell the villagers that it was between him and the bloodmage. They would let him surrender himself. His father was too ill to protest; Merewich could not risk losing what control he had of the village; Koret would see it as Kith's choice.
If the village gave Kith to the bloodmage, the mage wouldn't harm the village. He would stay here; there was no other place for him to go. Me, he would kill, but he might be persuaded not to kill Kith because all of the reasons to kill him were gone. Though from what I knew and what Kith had said about him, that was not likely. Then what?
If the earth spirit had not believed me when I told him we were not allied with the bloodmages, he would have destroyed Fallbrook's food supply. What would he do when he discovered a bloodmage living here?
I had the means to defeat the mage. I had known it all along - I'm sure the hob did, too. But I wouldn't have done it for revenge or to save Kith's life. But for the village, I would do what I wouldn't for the man who was as close to me as my brother. In order to accomplish it, I'd need to confront the bloodmage alone. I looked into Kith's eyes and knew he wouldn't let me do that. So I lied.
"Nothing." No, that wouldn't do. It had to be obvious from Duck's condition that something had happened. So I added, "Pox-eaten hob. Went off to get himself killed." The tears in my voice were real.
Kith's body tightened with... eagerness, I thought. "Where?"
I widened my eyes at him. "What, and get you killed, too? Besides, he's right; it's his business." His chance to drive away the demons that rode him at night. I wish I thought he'd banish them. I knew something of what the hob could do, and what he could not. Three berserkers and a bloodmage, off the mountain, were too much even for him.
"I see," said Kith, relaxing a little.
If I closed my eyes, I knew I would see, too. So I reached over and grabbed the cedar staff I'd laid against the stable wall. Time enough for visions when I was alone.
Focusing on Kith had helped. I wiped the tears from my eyes, so I could see him. Before I brought my arm down, Kith caught me in an awkward hug that was over almost before it had begun.
It must have embarrassed him as much as it startled me, for he turned and took a few brisk steps toward the entrance. He stopped, then turned on his heel to face me. "Aren, I could love you no more dearly had you been my own sister."
"I love you, too, Kith," I replied, wondering why he'd chosen this moment for his revelation.
He nodded his head as if we'd been discussing the weather, and continued out the door.
As soon as he was gone, I sat outside Duck's stall and relaxed my mental hold on the cedar, though I left my hand on it. It hadn't helped the last time, when the sight was strong, but it couldn't hurt. The vision swept in like an unwelcome guest left knocking at the door too long.
The bloodmage rode into Fallbrook alone. The streets were deserted. The only sound was the breeze whispering past the chimes that hung from several doorways.
There was a tear in the mage's cloak that widened and narrowed with the rhythm of his horse's gait. The horse walked slowly. It looked as if it were held up only by the reins that the mage held in his left hand. His right hand held a handful of small wooden beads strung on a minuscule black chain.
It ended there, by no effort of my own. I was glad it had. I knew enough. He would ride into town in the late morning from the east. He must be coming over Fell Bridge. I didn't know why the streets were empty, but I knew why there was a howl of grief locked in my chest. The chain he'd held was the same one Caefawn wore in his ear. It was black with dried blood, hob's blood.
There in the shadows of the stable, I snarled with rage. I held that rage to my heart with all my will, for behind the anger were sorrow and fear. If I wasn't successful, the village would die.
I had the evening and night to gather my forces. I used the cedar staff and levered myself to my feet. Time enough for grief when it was over. For now I harnessed my rage. At the very least the bloodmage would know that he had been opposed. I owed that to Kith. To Caefawn.