The Hob's Bargain

Chapter 4

FOUR
Crouched in the gathering shadows, the hob held very still as he watched over the party. He'd always avoided the traditional task of following well-meaning folk whenever he could - his talents and interests lay in tormenting the wicked. But here he was. No wine to sour, or horses to loose, just the soft sounds of the humans' voices to drive away the loneliness. He hunkered down further and let the warmth of their camp wash over him.
Kith jumped to his feet, startling me. "Come on, then," he said. "We've got some time now. Why don't you get your knife, and I'll see what I can teach you."
Grateful for a chance to put the last few revelations behind me, I took Daryn's knife from my borrowed saddlebags and scurried back to present it nervously to Kith. I'd spent a good bit of time yesterday sharpening it, but Kith was particular about things like that.
He took it and turned it over in his hand. "Good thing it's got an edge on it. I'm not much of a hand at sharpening things anymore." He grinned at me unexpectedly. "Father's been putting the edge on my stuff, but it's not like doing it yourself."
I smiled back. "I'd guess not."
"Right." He gave me back my knife and watched how I held it His frown made me shift my grip several times, but the disapproving expression didn't change.
"The first thing to remember is that the knife is sharp," he said.
I rolled my eyes. "And I haven't been butchering pigs and cattle since I was old enough to crawl."
He smiled, and, drawing his own knife, he continued talking. "It can cut you as easily as it will cut your opponent: keep it away from your fingers. The second thing to remember is that you can do a lot of damage with it by just holding it in your hand and punching."
He closed his hand into a fist and demonstrated with an imaginary opponent. He moved with swift efficiency, and his imaginary foe's instant death was obvious.
"For now, forget you even have a knife," he advised. "It will take care of itself - at least until you have more experience. You're at a disadvantage because you're a woman. A man will back off from another man with a knife, but he'll not do the same for a woman." He watched me try to imitate his move several times. I couldn't tell if I'd done anything right or not. Probably not.
"Put that away for now," he said, in sudden decision. "We'll practice with something else."
When I got back from storing the knife, Kith was waiting with three sticks a little longer than his forearm. They were green wood, and very nearly equal in diameter.
He motioned for me to follow him to a flat area a little way from camp, then handed me two of the sticks and tucked the third under his arm.
He adjusted my grip, then took up his own stick with a clever little toss. "The sticks will teach you the moves without either of us chancing a cut. The additional benefit is that the sticks are a decent weapon in their own right. Around here, there are always sticks of some sort."
Then he proceeded to teach me how to fight - at least that's what he said he was doing. I thought he was beating me with his stick. Shows what I know.
By the time he said "Enough," I was so tired that I stumbled while walking back to the fire. I knew if I just sat down, I was going to have some really stiff muscles in the morning. Maybe if I walked it out, they'd only be very stiff.
"I'll get some more firewood," I said, turning away from the fire. "What we have won't last the night."
"Best do that, I think," Kith said. "Wandel and I'll see about dinner."
"I thought the woman should do the cooking," said Wandel, teasing but still half-serious. He hadn't eaten what I could cook over an open fire.
"We'll cook," replied Kith, who had.
As soon as I was out of sight, I stopped to tie my boots. I could hear them talking... about me. A well brought-up person would have left.
"She startled me when she spoke to your elders," commented Wandel. "I've never seen her as a forceful sort of person. She's always in the back of the room, never speaking unless someone asks her something."
"Not talking when the men talk," agreed Kith. Was that sarcasm I heard in his voice? "Like a good little village woman." Yes, it was sarcasm.
"I've seen your village women. Most of them don't act like that." Wandel half-laughed, no doubt picturing Melly or the smith's wife.
"Hmm," grunted Kith. "Let's say her father's idea of a good village woman. Or her mother's. I'd guess it goes back to when Quilliar died - her brother."
"When you killed him," said Wandel. It surprised me that he knew that; he hadn't been in the village then.
"He was my best friend," replied Kith obliquely.
"I wondered about that." The harper grunted, and I pictured him tossing a chunk of wood into the fire. "From what I know of Moresh's berserkers, I wouldn't have thought you could act against orders."
"Neither did Nahag, or else I'd have been executed in Quill's place."
"So you think Aren's been trying to hide what she is so she doesn't get singled out by the bloodmage or the villagers?"
Yes, I thought, it had been hide or die.
"Hide from herself most of all, I think. It is hard to accept being different, hard to have people avoid looking at you, and still believe in yourself."
Yes, you'd know about that, wouldn't you Kith? I thought.
His voice changed a bit, becoming almost playful. "I do know that every time I saw her playing the grateful, submissive wife to that arrogant pup she married - "
Arrogant? I tried the word on Daryn. It didn't fit.
"I wanted to shake her. I kept waiting for her to wake up and put him in his place the way she always did Quill and me when we ganged up on her."
Perhaps it was Kith's voice that told me. It was just a shade louder than it needed to be. Perhaps it was the "arrogant"  -  Kith had liked Daryn as well as the next man. Kith knew I was listening.
"Daryn was just nicer than you two were," I said.
"If you'd waited on us hand and foot, we'd have been nicer, too," called Kith without pause. I heard Wandel's snort of surprise.
I laughed and set off, pushing the moment of self-examination behind me. When I'd traveled a bit, I stripped off my clothes and washed off the trail sweat in the shallow water of the stream. I used my tunic to wipe off, then dressed again. I pulled the tunic over my shirt, disregarding the dampness. It would dry before I got back to camp.
I walked for a while without collecting any wood. The way back would be soon enough - no sense carrying it any farther than I had to. The late afternoon had the peculiar yellow tint that happens only in the spring when the afternoon clouds gather threateningly in the sky. The shadows were deep, but where the light touched down, the colors were dazzling.
For the first time since Daryn died, I felt at peace. I knew Moresh wouldn't be back to kill Kith. Time would heal him. With aid from Auberg, the raiders would be driven away.
I stopped in a small clearing and decided that if I went any farther, Kith and Wandel were likely to come looking for me. I turned around and stopped abruptly. Standing on a downed tree, only a horse length from me, was a... well, a creature.
I felt no fear, only a surprised kind of delight. If he had been standing on the ground, he would have come up to my shoulder. The wildling was a fragile-seeming thing, his feyness blending into the odd light as if he, not I, really belonged to this world. His arms and legs were slender, almost spindly. The bones of his ribs and shoulders were clearly visible, though his belly was round.
He had the proportions of a child, his head too large for his small body. His skin was the warm brown of stained oak. If there were claws on the ends of his fingers, those fingers were long and slender like those of a great lady.
He wore only a pair of roughly made hide shoes and a loincloth. His pale, ash-gray hair was braided in complex patterns with colorful beads woven here and there.
His eyes were large, even in the oversized, inhumanly round face. Wide gray irises gave a strange beauty to something that might have been grotesque. His mouth balanced his eyes, being wider than any I'd seen on a human face. As I watched, a smile lit his eyes and touched the corner of his mouth.
"Hob?" I asked softly, half raising my hand to him.
His smiled widened, exposing the sharp, interlocking teeth of a predator. Before the significance of that registered, he launched himself at me. His arms closed with viselike strength on my shoulders as his head darted for my throat.
Somehow I managed to get the arm I'd been lifting between his face and my neck. His jaws locked on my arm with vicious force. I heard the crack of bone, shock momentarily protecting me from the pain. I noticed that the corners of his mouth were still tilted up in a smile.
He smelled of musty leaves and damp earth. I tried to dislodge him, but for all his lack of size he was much stronger than I was. I'd left my knife back at camp, and there were no sticks within reach.
He wrenched his head, twisting my forearm to an impossible angle. I remember hearing a loud ringing in my ears - then nothing.
They told me later it was Wandel who found me. Kith had come across the creature's spoor and was tracking it when he heard the harper's shrill whistles. By the time I woke up, my head was propped on Wandel's leg and he was mopping my face with a wet cloth. I was quiet for a moment, more out of sheer surprise than anything else. I hadn't expected to wake up at all.
When a cold drop of water hit my ear, I batted at Wandel with my unhurt arm and struggled to sit up. Upright, I was lightheaded and dizzy.
"Who'd you meet out here, Aren?" called Kith from somewhere a fair distance to my right.
I opened my eyes, but it was nearing dark and my vision kept trying to black out, so it took me a while to find Kith. He was kneeling beside something a short distance away. After a moment I decided it was a dead body.
"Don't know," I croaked, closing my eyes again. "What's it look like?"
"This looks like some malformed human child with teeth like a shark," he replied. "But you met something else, too. No way you could break its neck like this. Whatever did this is stronger than I am - came near to ripping the head off while he was about it."
"Whoever it was, they bandaged her arm," added Wandel.
I'd been trying to ignore my arm. I had a clear memory of bone showing through flesh. I looked down and saw that someone had wrapped it with strips of my tunic. It still looked like an arm ought to, and I didn't think it should. It also hurt.
Kith swore softly. I raised my eyes from my arm and watched him pace back and forth, stopping here and there to examine the ground. My vision was better, but I was still dizzy.
"Look at the bruises. He snapped that thing's neck with one hand," Kith muttered. "Then he used a stick to pry its jaw open. He tossed it from here"  -  he stood, as far as I could tell, where the creature had attacked me - "to there." He pointed to where the body lay, some distance away. "Now it's not huge, but it weighs a good seventy or eighty pounds, and I don't know a man alive who could toss it that far - not even a magicked one like me." He said some more, but I started seeing black again and only caught something about soft-soled boots.
"A Beresforder?" guessed Wandel. "Some of those mountain folk are big enough to take a bear and toss it into the next valley. But then why didn't he stay to meet us?"
"Not a Beresforder," refuted Kith. "I don't think a human could do this. Certainly no one I know from Beresford." He went on mumbling to himself about wildlings, but I was paying more attention to my arm than to what he said.
After a moment Kith stopped speaking and knelt beside me. "How badly are you hurt?"
"I don't know," I replied, breathing through my nose like a winded horse. "I'm afraid to look."
"So someone killed that thing and dressed Aren's wounds," said Wandel, sounding fascinated - but then it wasn't his arm he was talking about. "I wonder who he was and why he didn't stay."
Kith shook his head. "I think we ought to get back to camp. Where there is one of those things, there might be more. If you'll help me get her over my shoulder, I'll carry her, and you can collect the wood we'll need on the way back."
"It'll be easier if I carry..." began Wandel. I had my eyes closed again, and I didn't get them open fast enough to see what caused him to stop talking.
"I can walk," I offered, squinting up at Kith.
Maybe the look that Wandel had gotten was similar to the one I received. It shut me up, too.
With considerable help from Wandel, I managed to get to my feet. Kith shoved his left shoulder into my midriff and heaved me up. The sudden change in position put me out faster than a candle in water.
When I awoke, a familiar tunic was bouncing around under my face.
"I can walk," I said groggily.
"No," Kith replied firmly. "From the amount of blood you left behind, I'm surprised you awoke before morning. If I set you down and you pass out, it'll be twice the work to get you back up. We're not far from camp, Pest. Just keep quiet 'til we get there."
Of the rest of the trip back I have a hazy memory of watching the back of Kith's calves gray in and out of my shaky vision. I really only recovered consciousness when the steady jolt of Kith's shoulder in my stomach stopped, and I started to slip off.
He muttered a word I'd never heard him use before and made an attempt to forestall my fall. I ended up on my blankets beside the small fire pit. My arm throbbed, my rump ached where it had landed on a rock, my head hurt; but overall, I decided, I would survive.
He left me and fumbled a bit through my saddlebags until he came up with my extra sweater, which he dropped over my head. The additional warmth was welcome - with the sun down, it was a lot colder. The warm tunic I'd worn into the woods was less warm when it was missing the bottom third of its length.
"Kith..." I began, feeling much better right side up, but he stopped me with a gesture.
"Rest a bit, Pest. We need to wait for Wandel, and I need to catch my breath." He settled down beside me and handed me a small flask. "Take a drink of this."
I don't know what I expected - some sort of alcohol, I suppose, even though I knew Kith didn't drink strong spirits. What I sipped wasn't alcohol, but some kind of herb-laden apple cider. That and the stew they'd concocted for dinner had me feeling almost myself by the time Wandel made it back to camp with his load of firewood.
The men ate and I half-dozed by the fire. I should have gotten up and washed my bowl, but it was too much effort. When he was done eating, Kith took my bowl with him to the stream. Maybe I'd have to make sure I was wounded every time I traveled. It sure got me out of a lot of work.
When Kith returned, he sat cross-legged next to me, on the other side of the fire from Wandel. "Now tell me what happened."
I sighed. "You already know most of it. I looked up, and there he was, the creature you found dead. I was so busy wondering what he was, that his attack took me completely by surprise." I thought a moment. There was something odd about the fascination I'd felt for him, but it was too hard to describe, so I let it go. "He was aiming for my throat, but I got my hand in front. He bit it and shook his head like a dog killing a rat, and that's all I remember."
"You don't remember anything about the..." Kith's voice trailed off for a moment. "About whatever it was that killed that thing?"
I shook my head. "I don't even know how badly I'm hurt. I could have sworn it nearly tore my - well, at least it did a lot more damage than it looks like." I snatched Kith's knife from his boot sheath and slid it under the strips of cloth that wrapped my arm.
It was a mess. On either side was a deep slice that ran the length of my forearm, but the splinters of bone weren't there. It hurt when I closed my hand and started bleeding sluggishly - all right, it hurt more when I closed my hand, but that was all.
I'd butchered enough animals to know there was a lot more odd about my arm than the fact I knew the bones had been broken. For one thing, there should have been more blood. There were arteries close to the surface that should have been severed with cuts that deep. Without a pressure bandage, blood should be pouring out.
"When it bit down," I said distinctly, as much to convince myself as anyone else, "it broke my arm; I heard the bones go. When it twisted its head, my arm bent here." I didn't quite touch the wound just below my elbow.
Kith held my arm still and examined it. When he was through, he shook his head. "I can't tell that the bone's ever been broken - and right here it should have cut through an artery"  -  he ran his fingers over one of the cuts - "and again here. I'd say he can work magic I've never seen a bloodmage do."
"Not that they would feel inspired to help anyone," I said. Kith smiled at me tiredly.
Wandel opened a pouch on his belt and took out a tin before rounding the fire to my side. He took the bandaging I'd cut off and spread a layer of salve from the container on part of it.
"Put this back around your arm," he said, fitting the bandage back around the wound.
With my assistance, he tore another strip from my poor tunic and used it to hold the bandaging in place. "From all appearances, your wounds have already been cleaned - so there's no use putting you through it again tonight. I have some brandy in my bags, and I'll clean it again in the morning. Bite wounds are always difficult to get to heal if you don't keep them clean."
When he was finished with me, I stretched out on my blanket, staring up into the night sky. "Wandel," I asked, "do you think that thing that rescued me was a hob? Like the runes we found?"
Wandel took up his harp and plucked a string delicately. "I don't know. I told you, I only know a song about them." He began to play a sprightly tune on his harp, one of the kind that's difficult not to hum along with. By the third verse I was singing with the chorus. Kith didn't join in.
The gist of the song was that there was a rich farmer who owed his success to the hob living in his barn. The farmer, due to his wealth, found himself a wife from a well-to-do town family. They lived happily enough until the hob surprised her in the barn. They disliked each other on sight; she tried to rid the barn of the hob, and the hob tried to rid the fanner of his wife. The wife was clever, but the hob was more clever still: everything she tried to do to him, he turned back on her. At last the fanner stepped in, kept the hob, and got rid of his wife. With the help of the hob he found a farm-bred wife who put out milk and bread every night for the fey folk, and they all lived happily ever after.
The most interesting feature of the song, as far as I was concerned, was the detailed description of the hob: a little man with skin like old oak, eyes blue as the sky, and a head too big for its body. It sounded like my attacker, but...
"So," said Wandel, finishing the last chord with a flourish, "the creature who attacked you could have been a hob."
"No," I said, suddenly remembering something. "I named the wildling that, just before it attacked me. Then after... someone - I remembered the dark gray skin and red eyes of my vision yesterday and a tone of dry disgust - "someone said, "That's not a hob, Lady."
My arm was stiff and sore the next morning. When Wandel offered to saddle Duck as well as Torch and the Lass, I let him do it and helped Kith pack camp - or at least watched while Kith did all the work, offering unsolicited advice until he threatened to toss his shovelful of dirt on me rather than the fire pit.
By the time Wandel had tied the small shovel behind Torch's saddle, I was starting to feel better. Mounting was awkward, and Kith gave me a sympathetic glance.
"Well, at least it doesn't hurt you when you do this," I groused as I found my stirrups.
"Yours will pass," he replied softly.
"You're not going to make me feel guilty when I feel so bad are you?" I whined.
He laughed. "Let's go."
After the first few miles, my arm subsided to a dull ache that I could ignore. I noticed Kith wasn't nearly as nervous today, and I wondered if the thing that had attacked me had been following us. With it gone, there would be nothing to set off his magicked senses. Maybe, I thought, but it was more likely that the day had relaxed him as much as it had me. It was hard to worry about wildlings with sharp teeth with the sun shining on your back.
It was warmer today than yesterday, and the scents of the early spring wildflowers were almost erotic in their fullness. The horses were feeling it, too; the Lass had managed to bite poor old Duck twice. He, for his part, seemed to take a masochistic interest in her. He kept trying to sneak closer to her when I wasn't paying attention. If he hadn't been a gelding, I would have thought he was courting the mare. Even Torch, the old campaigner, was dancing a bit more than usual.
It was late afternoon when we started down the slopes of the Hob into the valley where Auberg lay, about the same time that we'd made camp yesterday. From our vantage point, the town didn't look nearly as large as I remembered it - but it had been several years since I'd been there. As we started down the side of the mountain, I saw the bones of a winter-killed wolf stretched under the green foliage of a wild lilac. The climate was warmer here than it was in Fallbrook, and the lilacs were in full bloom.
The pastureland crept up the sides of the foothills of the Hob, and soon we were traveling along a shepherds' track between the rock walls that fenced the pastures. Generations of farmers had combed the rocks from the land and used them for fences and buildings, leaving behind land well-fenced and less rocky. Land that once had been poor had become, over centuries of management, rich and fertile.
The grass in the pastures here were already three times as long as the grasses in Fallbrook's fields. Even the pastures that had been recently grazed were longer than...
Torch halted, giving the Lass time to aim a nip at his rump - though even she wasn't so bold as to actually bite him.
"What's wrong?" asked Wandel before I could.
"You tell me," answered Kith, his gaze drifting around the valley spread below us.
I followed his gaze, looking for something - but there was nothing to be seen.
"Faran's breath!" I swore, standing in my stirrups for a better view. There was nothing to be seen.
"Where are the cattle?" asked Wandel. "These are cattle fields, you can see where they've grazed - but they're all gone."
"No sheep either," added Kith softly. "Nor any people. We should be able to see the men in the fields and the people going in and out of town. Look down by that little croft. There's laundry hung to dry and half of it swept loose from the pins."
I knew the others were thinking raiders. It was possible the group harassing Fallbrook was part of a larger raiding party or even an enemy army - but a feeling that chilled me down to the bone told me the answer was worse than an army. A feeling and the memory of a vision of men dissolving into ash didn't allow for so mundane an answer.
The quick glimpse I'd had of the wolf bones became more sinister. I didn't say anything, though, merely sent Duck after the other two horses as they headed down the trail to Auberg. What could I have said?
We passed the croft with the hanging laundry first. There were a few chickens in the yard: small and scrawny, half-grown chicks. The men rode past the trail to the house but, on impulse, I turned in. Kith and Wandel stopped to wait for me.
The grass was knee-deep, so it wasn't until something crunched under Duck's feet that I realized there were bones scattered here and there throughout the yard. I dismounted and kicked some of them out from under the grass.
They were clean as if someone had boiled the flesh from them - chicken mostly, though some of them might have been goose. Nearer the clothesline I saw the bones of a dog. A basket sat nearby, half full of washing.
I led Duck around the fluttering clothes. A brightly striped kerchief was still wrapped around the skull of the woman who had been hanging laundry.
Not raiders, I thought. There was no sign the woman had met an untimely end by ax or knife. It might have been a plague that killed her. There were some that swept through towns, killing entire populations. Most of those were mageborn, but some of the natural diseases could do it, too.
If this were a plague, we shouldn't go into town. If this were plague, it couldn't have happened very long ago. The bones were yellowish, almost greasy looking, with dark spots on the long bones of her arm. Newly stripped bones that had lain there for no more than a month.
I'd seen an army turned to bone, then ash: it hadn't been a plague. But what madman would have loosed such a spell here? Auberg was no threat to anyone.
I sat beside the skeleton and touched her wrist gently. The bones were dry against my fingers. I wondered what the unknown mage who'd stripped the land of magic bindings had done with the power he'd acquired. Duck touched the top of my head with his nose, worried about my unaccustomed place at his feet.
I closed my eyes and tried to see what had happened to the woman. I tried to put aside all of my speculations. For a long time, nothing came to me. Visions all the time when I didn't want them, but they were harder to call on purpose. My right leg started to go to sleep.
I heard hoofbeats approaching. Kith and Wandel must have gotten tired of waiting. I opened my eyes and turned to look...
A bloodmage clad in black and red with arcane symbols climbing his sleeves stood alone in a gray tower that looked out over the city. Some of the runes worked into his clothing I knew from Gram - calls for health and well-being.
The man turned, letting his face touch the lamplight.
It was the face of a man eaten from inside by his magic. I knew what it was because Moresh's mage was showing signs of it. Father said it was because bloodmagic made the bones go soft. What this man's original features might have been was impossible to tell.
"I told you that we would lose this fight, my lord," he said. His voice was only a harsh whisper, but it carried power.
Someone made an answer, inaudible - but the effect on the mage was electrifying. "I have done all I could. Do you accuse me of treachery?" He listened, then replied even more softly. "A truce? What would he take in return for truce when he knows we have already lost?"
Madness lit his face briefly, then he closed his eyes, rubbing one of the black runes with his left hand. When his eyes opened, there was something sane dwelling there, but his left hand still moved on the runes, which glittered with an eerie yellow light.
In the manner of a man overtired by work, he repeated himself, but the dangerous edge to his voice was gone. "What have you offered him?"
This time I could hear the other man. "I sent your son to him with a sealed message which he has read several hours since. I told him the boy was his to do with as he pleased - like you, he is a bloodmage. What strength would he get from a mage as powerful as your son? But perhaps the boy was able to defeat him as you never have? The rituals you go through take so much time - perhaps you can do something about him before your son dies? Perhaps the war is not so hopeless after all?"
The bloodmage closed his eyes again and moved his right hand, the left one still tracing the runes on his sleeve. When he opened his eyes, he appeared calm and his left hand dropped to his side - but there was nothing sane about him. "You are correct. There is something I can do to defeat him - I discovered it a month ago. Who could have told you? Ah, no matter. All the reason I had for not doing it is dead with my son. For your part in this you shall not die here."
The mage spread his hands and closed his eyes again. An aura surrounded him, growing gradually, making first him, then the room, and last the tower glow red with the power he called to him. It took a long time to gather and barely an instant to send on its way, taking with it the mage himself.
My vision fell away from the tower and the king who sat there alone. I traveled some great distance outside the city before so much as a blade of grass survived the bloodmage's wrath. Far from the city, empty battlefields were covered with bits and pieces of metal scattered here and there across fields of yellow flowers where butterflies danced...
The butterflies were rather abruptly obscured by Wandel's mustached face. I blinked at the harper stupidly for a bit while I slowly realized that Kith was standing beside me. My arm ached. When I looked down, fresh blood spotted the bandages.
"I'm fine," I said, surprised at how steady my voice was.
"What did you see?" asked Kith.
I stood up stiffly, then swung my uninjured arm to indicate the dress-clad bones. "She was killed by the same thing that killed all the cattle in the fields - I'll wager we could find their bones under all that grass. It killed everything here larger than these chickens. The king's bloodmage pulled the bindings from the land to destroy everything he could reach. And he reached as far as Auberg."
Alarm flooded Wandel's expression. "Why would he do that? The nearest fighting is close to thirty leagues from Auberg."
"He set the spell from the capital - at least I think that's where they were," I said. "I don't think anything closer to the king's castle than Fallbrook survived."
Kith whistled sharply, and Torch trotted over from his grazing. The one-armed warrior swung gracefully to his saddle, collecting his reins by using his hand and his teeth. "Let's see what remains of Auberg. We'll go home with a report, and then perhaps we can send a party from here back to Beresford over some of the old trails if the raiders give us time."
The streets of Auberg were silent, but I hadn't expected them to be otherwise. We rode around piles of cloth and bone lying here and there on the streets. At the well in the center of town, Wandel pulled his mare to a halt. He'd been uncharacteristically silent since I'd told them what I'd seen.
"This will get us nowhere. If Aren's right, and I have seen nothing to disprove it, no one who was here when the spell hit has survived. Since we're looking for refugees from Beresford who might have come here, we ought to try and find somewhere they'd gather. The innkeeper of the Pale Grouse was from Beresford, so I suggest we check there."
Kith nodded and turned Torch to the left. I had never stayed at either of Auberg's two inns, real inns with six or eight rooms for travelers. Auberg was at the northernmost point of the river that was navigable and had several trading fairs throughout the year. Father took - used to take - the surplus harvest to the fall market, and got more for it than if he'd sold it at the market in Fallbrook. But when we came, Father usually found a family who would take us in for a few measures of grain. I didn't even know where the Pale Grouse was. Kith and Wandel seemed to, though. After a short ride we came upon an inn. The bird painted on the sign might have been a grouse twenty years ago.
When I saw the horses in the paddock in front of the inn, I turned to say something to Kith, but held my tongue when I saw that he searched for a specific animal. Danci's horse was sired by the same stallion that had sired Torch, and shared their father's yellow coat. There were no duns in the small enclosure.
As we rode into the yard, several men came out of the inn and looked at us suspiciously. Their faces held the same despair that had begun growing in my heart since we rode down off the Hob.
"Who are you?" asked the smallest of the four men who blocked the way into the inn.
"We're from Fallbrook, looking for refugees out of Beresford," replied Kith slowly. "And you are?"
"Folks call me Ice. Don't know you," replied the man, narrowing his ice-blue eyes. "Been some strange goings-on here. Heard things walking the streets at night. Most of them things my grandfather used to tell us about when my grandmother wasn't around to stop him. How do we know you are who you say you are, and not some haunt looking for a way in?"
I hadn't expected to meet with such suspicion. I didn't know any of the faces I saw, and I knew any number of people from Beresford. I glanced at Wandel, and he shook his head - he didn't know any of them either. Kith, though, narrowed his eyes and nodded his head slowly.
"I see your point. I'm Albrin's son, Kith, and in the field there's a bay gelding I trained eleven summers gone for a man named Falkin from Beresford. If he's here, he'll vouch for me." He nodded toward Wandel. "This is Wandel Silver-Tongue. If there's some of you mountain folk who spend time in town in the late spring, they'll recognize him."
Ah, I thought, that's why I don't know any of them. There were several clans of trappers living in the mountains above Beresford. They were loners for the most part, staying to themselves except when they traded fur and meat for other goods in town. Obviously they'd been in a better position to survive the flooding than the townsfolk had been.
"And the woman?"
I answered for myself. "I was married to Daryn of Beresford less than a fortnight ago. He died at the hands of raiders the same day the mountains fell." I patted my horse's neck. "He left me Duck, here, and an obligation to his home village."
A tall, thin man with haunted eyes shook his head. "Be careful, brother mine, the wraith that knocked on my window last night bore the face of a man I knew. If my window weren't on the third floor with nothing for a man to climb up, I might have let him in."
"Ah, stuff and nonsense, Manta. If Kith died, he'd be a demon full-grown, and not some pathetic haunt reduced to aping the living!" scolded a voice I knew full well.
Danci pushed past the men as if they were cattle, though she didn't reach the shoulders of the smallest of them. "It's no use hiding that smile, Kith, I know you're glad to see me - and it's about time you got here."
If Kith smiled, I missed it. I swung off Duck's back, but before I could find somewhere to put him, one of the young men on the porch took the reins from me.
"I'll loose him with the others," he said, softly enough that he didn't interrupt any of the questions going on around us.
I caught his arm and shook my head. "No," I said before I knew I was going to. I projected my voice over the general conversations. "We have to leave before nightfall." A deepening dread was growing upon me, as it had the day Daryn had died.
Kith turned toward me. I shook my head again, ignoring the others. "I don't know why, but it's important."
It had something to do with the defeat clinging to the faces of all of the people in the inn yard, even Danci; the weariness that left the children creeping slowly out the inn door instead of running to see the strangers. Even the wariness of the men seemed to be unnatural. Then, again, I was still spooked from the vision of the king's bloodmage - and maybe from yesterday's attack.
Wandel grinned reassuringly. "We've learned to listen to Aren's hunches. If you don't have a pressing reason for staying, I would urge you to come with us to Fallbrook - though that might be jumping out of the pot into the pit. Fallbrook's been invaded by a band of raiders."
"If we're outside at night, the haunts will get us like they did Leheigh the first night we were here," said the man Danci had called Manta.
"My brother's right," agreed Ice, who seemed to be the leader. "At least something killed Leheigh, and what it left behind didn't look like the work of anything I've ever seen before. It's going to take more than a woman's hunch to make me travel at night."
Kith pursed his lips thoughtfully, but when he spoke, his voice was dangerously soft. "I'm going. If you're wise, you will come, too. Aren's got the sight, and she knows things that we cannot."
"Tier, go get Chatim and Falkin," commanded Danci briskly. "I'm going with Kith. Anyone who wants to come with us, can." No one argued with her. Not that I was surprised; I'd never been able to argue with her.
The young man who held Duck's reins gave them back to me and ran to do Danci's bidding.
Danci turned back to Kith. "They left to check out the other inn and to pick some vegetables. It may take a little while to find them. We've run low on supplies."
"Have you raided the houses for food?" Kith pointedly addressed Danci rather than the men.
"No one wanted to," she replied, a little sheepishly.
Kith nodded once. "Then the three of us"  -  he indicated Wandel, himself, and me - "will scavenge food for the ride back from the houses nearby while you pack."
Wandel looked at the disgruntled faces of the Beresforders and shook his head. "You two go scavenge - I think I'm needed here. I'll tell them why we're so quick to take Aren's suggestions."
I took the left-hand side of the road, leaving Duck ground-tied next to Torch and the Lass in front of the inn.
If it had been anyone else who suggested exploring the houses, I would have danced naked in the winter snow before I stepped foot inside any of the buildings in Auberg. But it had been Kith, and anything he could do, I could do - especially when the alternative was to watch all the Beresforders' faces while Wandel explained what kind of freak I was. Besides, after Manta objected to a woman going through the houses of the dead, I was left with no choice at all.
The first house wasn't bad. I located the larder immediately, just off the kitchen. I found a tablecloth and loaded it with what food would travel - cheese and unleavened bread mostly. After tying the bundle, I set it on the street in front of the house, where I could pick it up on the way back to the inn.
The next house was smaller than the first, made of stones set one on top of the other with no need of mortar to hold it together. As I stepped over the threshold, I came face to skull with the master of the hearth.
Except for the woman on the farm, I'd tried not to look at the heaps of bones we'd passed in Auberg. I hadn't let them be people, only piles of rubbish. But, even dead, this man wouldn't let me do that.
He must have been resting in front of the fire, for his remains were still settled in a chair before the blackened grating. His trousers were patched neatly, though without the ornamentation a woman would have given them. His shirt was made of fine cotton cloth and showed no such wear.
He'd been a big man, a hand or so larger than Daryn.
I couldn't repress the feeling that he watched me as I walked past him to the room beyond.
His larder was small, but stocked with the sorts of food a traveler would need: rice cakes, sweet oatcakes, and salted, dried beef. I took all I could carry in a tablecloth I'd brought from the first house. And all the time I stacked the food, I had the twitchy feeling that someone was observing me. Just before I tied the bundle together, I took an oatcake and a piece of the beef and set it aside.
I walked into the front room and set the bits of food I'd kept out on the floor before the dead man in the chair. Remembering what the Beresforders had said about the unrestful dead and stories learned at Gram's knee, I knelt before him as if he were a king on a throne.
"Good sir," I said, in as formal a manner as I could muster, "I take this food to ensure the safety of others, not for personal gain. Accept this offering as my good faith and hear my prayer for your rest. Be at peace."
If there had been someone with me, I wouldn't have done it, but it made me feel better. Coming to my feet, I brushed against something hanging on the stone wall. It fell to the floor with a clatter and a thunk.
A glance showed it to be a crossbow, oiled so dark it was black. I picked it up and took the quiver of arrows that hung next to the space where it had been. Then I nodded respectfully to the man who had owned them, and began to leave.
A chill touched my shoulder, stopping me where I was. I turned back to the skeleton who brooded in his chair, staring not, I saw finally, at the door but at the wall where the crossbow had hung. I, too, looked again. A black leather bag rested on the same peg the crossbow had hung on. I'd left it there. Now, after a careful look at the resting warrior, I lifted it down, too. Inside was an odd metal contraption, the same color as the crossbow - tarnished silver, I thought.
"For the crossbow?" I asked.
It almost surprised me that there was no answer. I took the bag with me. When I set the bag of food outside the door, I kept the crossbow and slung the quiver into its proper place across my shoulders. The leather bag I attached to my belt.
My last experience made me wary as I opened the door to the next house. Nothing greeted me but the faint scent of lemon verbena.
The first room was so prosaic it seemed to disallow a world in which a warrior could guard his domain after death. Ruffled curtains framed the windows covered only by a screen of creamy linen to keep out insects and dirt.
The next room was a bedroom, and I walked quickly through it. There were two doorways on the side of the room. I opened the first and walked into another bedroom, much smaller than the first. A cradle creaked back and forth as the breeze swept through the window where the protective screen had been torn loose.
Almost involuntarily, I stepped farther into the room and looked at the tiny bones lying clothed in a soft gown embroidered with yellow and orange flowers. A rose-colored quilt had been tucked lovingly around the baby. I tightened my hand around the crossbow until it hurt, but the pain didn't help.
A soft lullaby filled my head. The breeze died, but the cradle still rocked. I watched as a mother sang her babe to sleep. The dead woman looked up at me and smiled - a simple, uncomplicated smile - and raised a finger to her lips, protecting the sleep of a child who would never awaken.
I walked out of the house and shut the door gently behind me with a hand that shook. It hadn't felt like a vision.
Sweat gathered on the small of my back. I knew I should have gone on and searched for the larder, but it was beyond me. Perhaps Kith could have done it, but not even the power of old taunts was going to make me go into another house.
Kith came out of a house on the other side of the narrow lane, and looked at me. Something in my face must have shown how I felt, because he crossed the street and frowned.
"What?" he asked.
"Well," I answered, smiling grimly, "at least we know we don't have to search for babies left unattended. The one in there was only a few days old, and the spell took it as surely as it took larger creatures." I decided not to mention the ghost.
Kith closed his eyes briefly and nodded. "I have enough food for the journey if there aren't many more people than it appears. What you have should fill in the gaps." He gave me a look that told me what he had found hadn't been much better, then he chose to change the subject. Soldiers were probably good at avoiding unbearable things. "I see you found a crossbow."
I gave it to him, and he looked it over closely before returning it. "Steel bow," he said. "They're expensive. My own is a composite, easier to draw but less range. Most of the weapons like this belong to noblemen - Moresh has one. I wouldn't have thought a town this size would have a weapon of such quality. It's too bad we can't use it."
"What do you mean?"
He set the bow on the ground, holding onto the stock first, then bracing it against his shoulder. He ran a finger down the stock and showed me two black metal pegs, one on each side.
"This was meant for a goatsfoot. You'll not be able to draw it by hand."
"A what?" I asked, trying to picture how a goat's foot would help to draw a bow.
"Goatsfoot," he repeated. "It's a device that you hook under the string and over the pins." He fingered the pegs he'd shown me. They didn't look like pins to me. "Then you pull it back. The extra leverage allows you to draw the bow."
I opened the leather bag and pulled out the contraption it held. "Is this one?"
He took it from me. "That makes this bow a lot more useful." Kneeling, he pressed the toe of his boot to the bow, holding it steady as he showed me how the goats-foot cocked the bow.
The back of my neck crawled suddenly, and I glanced behind me. But the houses all stood empty.
The sun was low in the sky when we finally set out from Auberg. It had taken longer than I'd expected to collect the two men who were out. Then the Beresforders had a bunch of livestock - cattle, sheep, pigs, mules, and a few horses (including Danci's dun) - in a larger paddock behind the inn. At least Wandel had worked the magic of his charm on the Beresforders: there wasn't a grumble among them at the hurry. And everyone except Danci avoided me as if I had the pox.
Once we set out on the road, the animals gave us little trouble, seeming almost as relieved as I to leave Auberg's shadows behind them. By the time we reached the lower slopes of the Hob, the children began to play and laugh.
Danci deposited her youngest in Kith's lap without asking and rode her horse to me.
"I hadn't realized what it was doing to us, staying there among the dead," she said.
I watched Kith struggle to hold the squirming toddler in front of him and guide Torch at the same time. But, interestingly enough, he didn't try to give the boy back.
"It would be enough to give anyone the creeps," I agreed with a smile.
I'd noticed the lift in my own spirits when we rode out of the valley. Comparing the rascal who held Torch's reins while Kith held him with the mopey, whiny child at the inn, I thought it was more than just the silent town that held us in thrall.
"Gram always said death magic leaves its mark on the land."
"Death magic?" asked Danci softly.
I nodded. "I don't think Auberg is a healthy place to be."
The hob heard them before he saw them. Refugees, he thought, watching the ragtag bunch climb out of the shadow-shrouded valley. Looking past them, he wondered what had caused the fog of ill that grew thicker as it stretched away from the mountain. Bits and pieces still clung stubbornly to the party riding onto his mountain.
He was exhilarated from the chase he'd given the pack of grims - they wouldn't be coming back to his mountain anytime soon. He rather regretted that; truth be told, they made great sport. He wished there were another pack around - he was in the mood to play.
The big horse the woman called Aren rode saw him and whickered a greeting, though the one-armed man's dun gelding, who saw him as well, chose to ignore him. Aren looked hollow-eyed and tired.
As suddenly as that, he decided to give her something to think about that might take the shadows from her eyes. He skittered down the tree and wandered among the riders. The knowledge that either Aren or the warrior - both touched by magic - might detect him added to the fun.
Just yesterday he wouldn't have been able to hide himself from any of them in the bright light of day, but the mountain was waking up from its long sleep.
The hob rubbed the red gelding's chest and slapped him lightly on the haunch as he passed, sending him bouncing forward a few steps. Half-fey herself, the minstrel's white mare cast a merry glance and snorted at him. He grinned back. Mischief that mare was, much like himself.
Toward the back of the party, an aging herd dog limped soberly at the side of an old man on a mule. The old man kept up a constant reassuring murmur that belied the worry on his face. Worry he should, for the hob could see the shadow that clung to the dog's tail and hindquarters. The dark of the valley beyond had used the animal's age and infirmities to attach itself like a burr.
The hob stooped and ruffled the dog's fur, washing it free of shadow - and managed to clear a bit of the age-related problems as well. The dog whined his appreciation and rolled in the hob's embrace, licking his face with frantic gratitude. Dogs were like that.
"Here, now, Cary, what's up with you?" The man stopped his mule.
At the sound of his master's voice the dog threw himself out of the hob's care and leaped up to lick at the mounted man's hands before taking off to run a frantic circle around the entire group - for ail the world as if he'd not been a trained cattle dog for a decade. The hob laughed, and one of the two spotted milk cows answered him.
Grinning, the hob turned to see the one-armed one approach him as surely as if he could sec him. The child who rode in front of the grim warrior saw the hob quite clearly, of course. The babe clapped his hands and caroled encouragements so clearly that the hob's smile widened in answer. Here was a child after his own heart. He did a couple of back flips for his audience of one, then turned his attention to the soldier.
This close he could see the workings of the bloodmage the harper had spoken of yesterday while the hob spied upon them - though he couldn't tell how deeply the damage went. Whatever had been done to the man made him aware that the hob was there. The taint of the bloodmage made the hob more wary than he might otherwise have been. He'd never feared humans, but the bloodmages had taught him a bitter lesson in caution.
The one-armed man set the child with gentle firmness in the arms of a nearby rider. One of the cows, deciding this halt might last a while, began grazing. The bloodmage's warrior approached warily, drawing his iron sword - as if even cold iron could hurt a son of the mountain here.
Experimentally, the hob crouched, and the dun's ears followed his descent - a moment later the soldier's attention focused downward.
If a child of five or six hadn't begun to cry - soft, tired sounds of a soul pushed beyond enduring - the hob might have gotten caught up in the fun. Wariness only added spice to the play. But these were good folk, entitled to the mountain's protection. He darted silently to the sobbing girl, who was riding by herself on a pony led by a man who might have been her father.
The shadow upon her wasn't strong enough to do her harm; likely it would leave as soon as she'd spent a night on the mountain. Still, it was easy enough to banish it.
He couldn't resist a last dash through the middle of the group, tugging gently on the dun's tail as he swept by. If the war-bred gelding's feet were quicker than most - well, then he had only to dodge a little quicker yet. Aren's big horse stretched his nose out for a pat before he left.
"What in Faran's name is going on?" exclaimed one of the old men, the worry in his voice finding its echo in the shivers that crept up my spine. "I've never seen animals act like that."
Kith watched his horse's ears a moment, then sheathed his sword and said thoughtfully, "It must have been a wildling of some kind. It didn't smell of bloodmagic, but no natural creature runs about invisible. I don't think it did any harm."
The old herdsman had dismounted from his mule and was nabbing his dog, to the dog's great delight. After Kith spoke, he nodded. "The opposite, I would think. I haven't seen Cary look so well since he caught cold last winter. I was worried I'd have to put him down before we reached Fallbrook - now look at him."
To demonstrate, he threw his arm out and gave three sharp whistles. The black and white dog took off at a dead run, aiming for a pig that had taken advantage of the stop to ease away from the rest and root at the base of an old ash tree. The dog drove the protesting pig back with the bunch.
I watched, and felt something I'd taken from Auberg - fear, perhaps, but more atavistic than that - lose its fell grip on my shoulders. Melodramatic, but that's what it felt like.
"Shall we go on?" asked Ice. "Or do you think we should go back to Auberg?"
The old herdsman coughed and spat, then said, "Onward. Wish whatever it was had given me a bit of what he gave that old dog." He glanced around at the rest of us. "I'd almost forgotten it, but my great-aunt was from Fallbrook. When I was just a tadpole, she used to tell me stories of this mountain. Said that if you left a bit of food out for the wild folk, they'd keep the creepy-crawlies away."
He shrugged and started his mule in the direction we'd been headed. One by one the others followed him.
As he passed me, he doffed his cap. "It's good to remember there is magic that heals as well as the wraiths and whatnot we've been fighting for the past few days."
He meant me. When I smiled at him, he smiled back.
After the rest had gone on, Kith rode to my side. "It's still here," he said.
I nodded, watching Duck stare at an oak tree not too far from where we stood. "Do you think we should we be worried?"
Kith shrugged. "If it healed that dog, it stands to reason that it could have hurt any of us equally well. I suspect we're safe enough."
"But we'll leave some food out for it tonight," I said, thinking about the bit of meat and bread I'd left at the house in Auberg.
He squinted at the shadows under the oak. "I suspect we will."