Bastion (32 page)

Mags caught a glorious aroma and peered into the light around the kitchen. There was a tray of pocket pies warming on the top of the stove, which was a very welcome sight indeed. Mags suddenly realized he was absolutely famished.

From the way Dallen and Jermayan were head down in the grain buckets, they were famished too. Not surprising considering how fast and hard they had run.

He took off his cloak, shook it out vigorously and tossed it over a storage chest to dry, then sank down on the rugs nearest the fire. Jakyr did the same opposite him, and he wondered if he looked as dull-tired as his mentor did. Amily brought him a warmed pie and a mug of hot tea, and he murmured thanks. Lita did the same for Jakyr, and to Mags’ shock, all Jakyr said was, “Bless you.”

But he couldn’t dwell on that when he was ready to eat his own hand. He bit into the pie, and either it was the equal of those godly pies at that inn Jakyr had first taken him to, or else hunger made it seem so. He ate it down to the last crumb, just as Amily brought him another with an understanding grin. Only after he had finished a third did it feel as if the gnawing monster in his belly had been appeased, and he leaned back into the cushion and put an arm around Amily and let the heat from the fire soak into him.

“I think we are going to be here for a while,” Lita said into the silence. “There was a weather-witch back at the town who said we were about to get snowed in hard, here in The Bastion, with several storms, one after the other. I wish I’d paid more attention to her.”

“Well, why didn’t you?” Lena asked. Then proving it was a completely rhetorical question, continued, “You didn’t, because the mayor said she never predicted anything but terrible weather for The Bastion.”

“I should have asked if, when she predicted terrible weather, the weather actually came,” Lita replied with a shrug. “But I suppose if they never came out to The Bastion, they’d never know for sure. If we can’t break through at the entrance, we’re going to have to slowly dig our way out or wait until we get a thaw.”

“This might be the reason why this Circuit is so hard to run,” Jakyr observed wearily. “If Heralds get snowed in that often, they aren’t going to see the villages as often as they should, and we got what—” he waved a tired hand “—we got. Unruly, surly, and resentful.”

“It’s as good a theory as any,” Lita agreed. “I’m thinking this Circuit should be divided into smaller ones. And I need to get more Bards out here. There’s nothing to persuade people that they need Heralds quite like flinging the Vanyel cycle at them until they are sick of hearing it.”

Jakyr gave her an odd look. “What?” she asked, defensively. “I don’t hate Heralds. I like Mags. I like Caelen. I even like Marion.”

Jakyr rolled his eyes a little, but he managed not to make a sharp retort. Instead, he turned to Mags. “This might give you an opportunity to see if there is any sign left at all of your parents,” he said. “Our friend Milles marked the two caves that had been the bandit treasury and the area where the captives were kept. They are quite clearly picked out on the map. You probably won’t find anything, but you never know.”

They had had so many other things to worry about that the possibility of looking for some piece of his past had entirely slipped his mind. But if they were going to be snowed in here for a while, that was as good a task as any. “I think that’s a good idea, Mags,” Amily agreed, nodding slightly. “That’s why Caelen sent you out here in the first place. At least even if you don’t find anything, you won’t be tormented by wondering if you
might
have if you’d just looked.”

He smiled, and hugged her. “Well then, reckon I will,” he said. “But not till the storm clears. We don’t need nobody lost in it.”

“No, we don’t,” Lita agreed. “It was a near enough thing with you two as it was.”

•   •   •

Bear had kindly gone around to everyone’s bed and left a hot stone in each to warm them before sleep. Jakyr went to bed first, complaining about old bones and storms. Lita yawned hugely and left shortly after. Lena and Bear cleaned up the little there was to clean from a dinner of pocket pies, and slipped off to the caravan. That left Mags and Amily alone.

“How come,” he said aloud, “it was Dallen doin’ all the work, but I feel like I was doin’ the running?”

She groaned a little. “Because you were, sort of, you just don’t think about it anymore. Remember when you first learned to ride, how sore you were? Riding uses an awful lot of muscles, love, and just because you know how to ride and you don’t hurt anymore, that doesn’t mean you aren’t still using them.” She made a face. “That’s what happens when you play at being a Healer’s assistant. After a while you stop playing, and you realize you
are
a Healer’s assistant.”

“You like it?” he asked.

“Like isn’t the right word, really,” she said after a long moment of thought. “Some of it is pretty horrid. Wounds and things are nasty. People sicking up in buckets is nasty. But I feel useful. I suppose I would rather be doing something that wasn’t so nasty but I like feeling useful.”

“You’re braver’n I am,” he said honestly. “I allus hated helping Bear out. It’s strange, but I can kill an animal and butcher it, no problem. I can kill a man if I have to, and it’ll make me sick to do it, but I can do it. But when I gotta change a dressing on a wound, or worse, a burn—” he shuddered. “Just makes me go all collywobbles inside. I think Healers are the bravest people ever.”

She chuckled. “I don’t think Bear would argue about that. He gets quite cross when some great big man rears back and acts like a coddled highborn confronting a mouse when Bear starts to tell him how he’ll have to take care of his own wound or nurse a sick child. And he laughs when they faint at the sight of their own blood.”

Mags laughed aloud. “Not to their faces, I hope.”

“He’s been tempted.” She snuggled into his shoulder and sighed. “It’s nice here. I don’t want to get up. But the longer we stay here, the colder that stone in our bed gets.”

Our
bed. He loved the sound of that. “Well, then,” he said. “Let’s go get it out and take its place.”

•   •   •

The blizzard lasted three days, just like the one that had snowed Haven in completely, all those years ago. He wondered how bad it was over at the villages they had left. Had they gotten snowed in this hard? The Guard was going to be mighty busy cleaning roads, that was for certain sure. He hoped that the worst of it was falling here, in The Bastion. He wouldn’t wish this on small villages. He hoped people had managed to get their herds into shelter before it hit, because three days in the snow without food would probably kill most cattle, sheep, and horses. And when the storm was over, it would be hideously hard work to get out to them, even in shelter, and get food to them.

It snowed them in hard. Because there was very little wind to speak of in the valley, there were no insanely tall drifts, but the snow in the entrance was fully waist deep. There would be no getting out of the cave without a lot of work. Mags had been afraid that Jakyr and Lita would be so restless and irritated by being confined together like this that they would start actual fights by the middle of the first day of the blizzard itself.

But strangely, they didn’t. They stayed out of each other’s way. Jakyr went into a food frenzy, making trail bread, smoking most of the venison, and making the rest into meat pies that he set near the entrance to freeze. That seemed eminently sensible to Mags; it meant that they’d have pies waiting when they returned from a village, and if they were tired, all they would have to do would be to put one on the top of the stove to thaw and warm. And trail bread kept nearly forever in this weather; it wasn’t his preferred meal—it wasn’t
anybody’s
preferred meal—but it was a good deal better than making porridge out of the Companions’ oats if they were forced to use another ill-prepared Waystation.

There was no point in trying to shovel any paths through the stuff or even clear it from the entrance until it finally stopped. It would just pile back up. So mostly, they all rested, and the cave was strangely quiet and peaceful. Oh, he and Bear had a couple of silly snow fights right in the entrance, and coming back into the warmth of the living area was heaven. The steam bath was in near constant use, and Jakyr had even introduced Mags and Bear to a curious custom of using it, then running full-tilt through the cave—in nothing but a breechcloth—to throw oneself into the snow, then running back to it again. He said that people did this up north. Bear was not a fan of the practice at all. Mags found it invigorating, but he wasn’t a fan of running mostly naked through the caves while the ladies laughed at them.

As for the ladies, Lita was in the throes of composition, and so was Lena. They washed clothing, hanging it from the caravan, which imparted a nice scent to the air. They all read and slept. Or in Mags and Amily’s case—and likely Bear and Lena’s—“slept.”

And on the fourth day there was sunshine.

Mags was the first one out, because as usual he woke before anyone else, and went to poke at the mound of snow, expecting to discover that it was heavy and wet. Instead, he came back to where the rest were gathering to get breakfast to report some good news. “Sun’s out, and snow’s deep, but it ain’t too hard to clear away,” he said. “Stuff’s pretty dry and fluffy.” He accepted a plate of hotcakes and bacon and tucked in.

Lita sucked on her lower lip and took a sip of tea. “Well, there’s the question: Do we want to try to clear a way to the cleft and see how things are beyond it? With that wind, we might end up lucky, with the track drifted to either side but otherwise clear.”

“I’d still prefer to wait for something of a thaw,” replied Jakyr. “And don’t forget what that weather-witch said. Not just
a
storm but several storms. Maybe she’ll be right, maybe she won’t.”

Mags shrugged. “I’m gonna break a path to them two caves, anyway. If we’re stuck here, I wanta see what’s there. While I’m at it, I’m gonna break a path to the cleft when I’m done. Might as well. Less to clear even if it does snow again.”

Jakyr shrugged. “I’ll help until my old bones won’t let me, once I’m done with feeding you and cleaning up,” he offered. “No guarantee how long that will be. You are right, though, Mags. The more we clear to the cleft now, the less we’ll have to clear if there is a second storm.”

“I’ll give you a hand,” Lita offered, putting down her gittern and capping her ink. “I was born and raised in the country before I got sent to Bardic. I’m not afraid of a little snow. Not like some people city bred.”

Ah, there it is, that’s more like I expected.
Mags was almost relieved to hear Lita start sniping again. At least now he wasn’t waiting for something to erupt.

“Suit yourself,” Jakyr retorted. “It’s not as if you were doing anything useful in here. Just making us crazy by plunking the same notes over and over with minor variations.”

Lita stood up and actually looked as if she might hit him, her eyes flashed with such anger. Mags handed Lita her hooded coat and hurried her out before she could start anything.

While the storm had been raging, Mags and Bear had looked for anything like a shovel in the stored supplies. At first, they hadn’t found anything of the sort, but after staring at some inexplicable “broom handles” and something that looked like oversized shingles, they had suddenly realized that the two were meant to go together to form flat, broad-bladed wooden shovels. Perfect for shoveling snow. And also a lot easier to store in that form than as a single unit. It turned out that there were even holes bored in the right places, and bolts of the right diameter to hold the things together. If the shingle broke, you just unbolted it and bolted a new one in place. It would be easy to find someone to make you more shingles, too, if you broke all of them.

He and Bear had put four of the shovels together, figuring that it was unlikely more than four people would want to shovel at any one time.

Now he hurried Lita up to the entrance and gave her one of the four he and Bear had left there.

“I think we ought to clear the entire entrance, not just a path,” Lita said, considering the waist-deep snow that confronted them. “If it does start coming down hard again, we don’t want to find ourselves sealed in here.”

Mags didn’t think that was likely to happen, but he was no expert on snow. So the two of them worked until they were both losing feeling in their feet and getting chilled enough for their teeth to start chattering. By that point they had cleared the entire entrance and a good distance out past it. What was more, they had made bulwarks of the discarded snow to try to hold back drifts from the cleared space.

It was a perfectly gorgeous winter day, if you liked winter. The air was cold enough to keep the snow from melting and turning hard—but it was rather hard to breathe unless you wrapped your face in a scarf as Bear had done. It cut into the lungs like a knife. The sun would have been blinding, except that for most of the morning it was just behind the hills. But Lita had an answer for that; when it did poke over the hills, she went in and brought out straw summer hats, which they tied on their heads over the hoods to shade their eyes.

They came back in around luncheon, cloaks snow-caked, and ready to eat just about anything. Bear took their cloaks and went off with them. He came back with all of them beaten clean of the snow, and he spread them over a cushion to warm. “I beat the snow off in the steam bath,” he said with a shrug. “Not like it isn’t already wet in there.”

Jakyr handed them fresh meat pies and mugs of hot tea and went back to something he was working on without a word. Whatever it was involved harness straps and big, thin squares of wood. Lita didn’t ask him about it, but, then, she looked exhausted. She really had been working terribly hard.

When Mags was warmed up, he fetched his cloak and his shovel and went right back out again. He meant to cut a path to the nearer of the two caves that interested him—and maybe to the second one, if he could manage it. He reckoned that by sticking close to the cliff wall, he’d deal with slightly shallower snow. Lita was half asleep on the cushion, and he wasn’t about to ask her to come out and help again.