Battle Magic (19 page)

Yet again they camped outside a caravansary. The beggar was the only other person there to use the well and fire pits set up in the shelter of the wall. Briar started supper and Evvy saw to the animals while Rosethorn went in search of him. By the time Briar had a thick, hearty soup bubbling over the fire, Rosethorn returned triumphant, the beggar in her wake.

Briar looked at them. “What, you aren’t towing him by the ear?”

Evvy frowned. “Howcome you always do that to us and not to him?”

Parahan gave Briar and Evvy a sheepish look and a wave. His big satchel had lost its cover of rags and revealed itself as a couple of packs. These he put by the fire, as well as his staff, before he went to the well with an empty bucket. Once he filled it, he began to wash. The wig came off; the eye coverings came out. Rosethorn sent Evvy over with a cloth and a jar of soap. By the time Parahan joined them, all that remained of the beggar was his robes. He sat downwind of them to correct for the scent of his clothing.

“I don’t understand,” Evvy complained, once they had eaten enough hot food to be pleasant to one another. “Why are you going the same way we are?”

“It’s simple enough,” Parahan told them. “A man has to eat. I haven’t a copper to my name, and if I try to go home, I doubt that I’ll get there. I imagine my uncle has his spies out looking for me
by now, or he will soon. Weishu will pay him to get me back this time, to show the Yanjingyi nobles that no one can thwart the emperor and get away with it.”

Evvy shuddered. “If it looks like the emperor will get you, kill yourself first.”

Parahan nodded. “I have seen what he’s done to others. Trust me, if I know I cannot escape, I will not let myself fall into Weishu’s hands a second time.”

“And the eating part?” Briar prodded.

Parahan shrugged. “Gyongxe will be hiring fighters soon. The temples have plenty of money and treasure from pilgrims. I’ve seen the list of the jewelry my family has sent to the temples so the priests in Gyongxe will pray for my ancestors. They can afford me. I may be rusty, but I used to be considered a good warrior. It would have been even nicer if I could lead troops, but I’ll take what I can get. They won’t know I used to be a general.” He grinned at Rosethorn. “Maybe you’ll put in a good word for me if I don’t make it to the temples dedicated to my own gods?” Less cheerfully he added, “I imagine I’ll be able to give you a demonstration of my skills at the border.”

“What do you mean?” Evvy had been about to serve herself another bowl of soup. She sat back down instead. “What about the border?”

“He’s planning a war with Gyongxe,” Parahan replied. “You don’t think he’s left the border with the remaining eastern pass wide open, do you?” He looked at Rosethorn. “What I don’t understand is why you people are here. Why didn’t you just send some magical message to Gyongxe and go home as you planned?”

“Just because we have magic doesn’t mean we can fly,” Evvy told him scornfully. “And even if we could talk through plants or stones, there’s no one in Gyongxe who could hear us!”

Rosethorn raised a finger in admonishment. “That we know of.”

Evvy rolled her eyes. “Yes, teacher. I have to be precise, teacher. That we
know
of. And even if we could, Rosethorn swore vows, so she has to go to help, and we’ll be
yujinon
dung if we’ll let her go without us.”

“Do I want to know what
yujinons
are?” Parahan asked, chuckling.

“No,” Briar assured him. “Not with it being night and all.”

The big man looked at Rosethorn. “You shouldn’t have brought them.”

She rubbed her temple with her fingers. “You have my permission to send them back.”

Parahan looked at Briar and Evvy, taking a breath to speak. He hesitated when he saw the blazing light in their eyes and the hard set of their mouths. “You saw only one of Weishu’s armies.”

“The God-King is our friend,” Evvy said. “Dokyi is our friend. Rosethorn is going, which means we are going.”

Parahan sighed. “Then we should sleep. It’s always better to go to war if you’ve had proper sleep.”

They offered to rearrange things in the morning so that Parahan could ride, but he was far too tall for the ponies, and he protested that his dignity forbade his entering Gyongxe on mule-back. With his packs redistributed to the mules, his stride was long enough that they were able to keep pace with one another without
losing too much time. They left before dawn so none of those who had seen any of them the day before would suspect that the tall man walking alongside Rosethorn was the same bent beggar they had passed during their own journeys.

The four also improved their pace simply because there were ever fewer travelers. By the time the sun dropped behind the looming mountains and the evening cold set in, they were alone.

There was no caravansary when they decided to make camp, only swaths of ground left bare by those who had stopped in the same places before them. Considerate travelers had left piled wood and stacks of dried dung for campfires. Rosethorn chose a spot with its own stream, well situated against a stony cliff that protected them from the wind. Even with summer on the way, the Drimbakang Lho got cold at night.

Parahan disposed of his stinking rags. From one of his packs he produced the same general sort of tunic and breeches they wore. He hadn’t been able to get boots that would fit him, he said, so he donned long socks and sturdy leather shoes from the same pack. Evvy set the gate stones and released the “chickens.” Once they were out of their “crates,” the cats took on their normal appearances. Parahan, caring for the ponies and mules after his change of clothes and a cold wash, shook his head in amazement. “And these are
Trader
spells?” he asked.

Evvy scowled at him. “They’ll cook you and eat you if you tell,” she said, repeating an old lie about Trader habits.

“I’m old and stringy,” the man replied. “Don’t be cranky, Evvy. I thought you liked me.”

“That was before you got us into this mess,” she grumbled.

“The gods would have found another path for us to enter this
mess,” Rosethorn said as she stirred the pot. “Can’t you tell fate when it bites you?”

“No,” Evvy and Parahan said at the same time.

“She has to talk like that,” Briar said. He was mixing and baking flatbread on a heated rock. “She took religious vows and everything.”

Once they were seated with their meal, Parahan sighed. “Warm feet. I had forgotten what warm feet were like. Now, I need to ask, how are you three fixed if it comes to a fight?” The three looked at him. “Evvy, stay back with the animals. Rosethorn —”

“What part of ‘mage’ did you not understand?” Briar reached into the sling on the ground next to him. Taking out a seed ball, he flipped it to the edge of the firelight closest to the road. It burst, immediately sinking roots into the ground. The vines shot up and out, sprouting their long thorns as they grew, spreading around the ground where they struck. By the time they stopped they were three feet in height and covered a circle of three feet in rough diameter. With no target, the thick stems had formed large curls around one another. Even in the flickering firelight the thorns could be seen. Some were four inches long. Others were two inches long and two inches thick at the base, curled rather than straight like the longer ones.

Parahan, fascinated, got up and started to walk toward the plant.

“Don’t do that,” Rosethorn said as the vines rustled. “They’re still awake.”

Parahan stopped. The vines settled. “You could kill a man with that,” he said, his voice cracking.

“We don’t carry them for toys,” Briar replied. “Don’t be so upset. I only let a couple of the seeds grow.”

“Want to see what I have?” Evvy asked eagerly.

“No,” Parahan said suddenly. “No, I don’t think I do.”

“But you think I’m a kid!” Evvy protested, using Briar’s slang for child. “You don’t think I can help protect us!” Rocks rose from the ground and began to whirl around Parahan’s head.

“Evumeimei,” Rosethorn said dangerously.

“Sorry, Parahan,” Evvy apologized. The stones fell to the ground. “But — you
did
know we’re mages.”

“I’m not sure I thought about what you three do in terms of war,” he admitted. Sitting on his heels by the fire, he grinned. “We may have an easier time getting past the border than I thought.”

Rosethorn served out the tea. “What do you expect once we’re there?” she asked as she warmed her hands on her cup.

“It’s a small post, from what I learned,” Parahan explained. “If things were normal, we might expect caravans coming through southern Gyongxe in another month, but not this early. Figure no traffic coming from the Gyongxe side. There’s a village that supports the border post on the Yanjing side. They keep perhaps five guards on duty at a time. We’re going to have to fight if they’ve received word to stop anyone from crossing. If they’ve gotten word about you leaving the caravan, or about me, we’ll
really
have to fight.”

“We might scare them into running,” Evvy said cheerfully, giving Ria a scratch.

Parahan grunted. “We might, though if they’re imperial regulars, not locals recruited to stand still and look tough, they won’t
scare.” He looked at the staff on the ground beside him. “I wish I had a sword to go with this thing.”

Rosethorn looked at him in horror. “You mean to take on armed guards with a
staff
?”

He wiped his bowl with the bread that Briar had made. “But I have three mages at my back.” He stood and stretched as they stared up at him. Then he bent double at the waist and grabbed his ankles, bouncing a little without bending at the knees. Turning halfway, he put his right leg out in front of him as if he were lunging, and did so until his right leg was at a right angle and his left was stretched all the way out. After he had done that a number of times, he switched his front leg to the left. Rosethorn and Evvy began to clean up, while Briar tried to do similar stretches.

Finally Parahan picked up his staff and pulled one end of it off to reveal a long, slender, double-edged blade. “Not much as a throwing weapon,” he told Briar as he began to spin it in both hands, “but I could jab fish if I was in the woods with no supper on my way south. I tried to stay off the roads, at least till I got to Kushi. When I finally got tired of fish, I tried the beggar disguise. That hurt as much as it helped.”

“I wondered how you did that,” Evvy said, on her way to fetch dung for the fire. “Once I had to go through this tunnel that wasn’t quite high enough for me in Prince’s Heights, where I used to live. It was really long. When I came out I had a terrible ache in my back and my neck.”

“I still do,” Parahan admitted. He got the spear twirling over his head. Stepping well away from Briar, he spun it rapidly down along one side of his body, then up, over, and along the other. As
the firelight sparked off the blade, it gave him the appearance of wings.

He did other exercises while Rosethorn and Briar prepared more thorn balls and Evvy more disks of flint and quartz. Off and on they would look up to see him kicking and punching into the air, spinning to kick at the side, or to lash out with a fist so fast it was a blur. Finally he came over to the fire with one of his packs and settled in to sharpen his belt knife.

Rosethorn gave him the cup of tea that was steeping beside her. “This should help those aching muscles,” she explained.

As night fell, Briar drew the line of ponies and mules closer to their camp. Evvy gathered her pack with her extra gate stones and created the enclosure where all of them would sleep. At first, Parahan balked at the thought of sleeping as part of a pile with the others.

Briar waited until Rosethorn went off into the dark to explain about her lungs, and how she needed all the warmth they could give now that they were in colder lands. “We did it sometimes on our way to Gyongxe, when sleeping alone didn’t keep us warm enough. She’d start coughing otherwise,” he explained.

When she returned, and Parahan and Evvy had gone in separate directions for the last errands of the night, Briar had to cajole Rosethorn into sleeping at the center of the huddle that would include Evvy, the cats, Parahan, and himself. At first Rosethorn insisted on taking an outside position with Parahan.

The big man, overhearing as he returned, said flatly, “We need every one of us at their best in the morning, woman. You may sleep on the outside and freeze tomorrow night, if we’re alive and free.”

Rosethorn stared at Parahan for a long, worrisome moment, and then placed her bedroll on the ground. Parahan proceeded to bank the fire. Briar wondered if he ought to say he would pray for the man in the fight to come, or something of the sort. In the end, he simply put his own bedroll next to Rosethorn’s and crawled into it. Evvy chose Rosethorn’s free side and Parahan Briar’s. Rosethorn went to sprinkle her herb circle around the camp, including the ponies and mules. It was something she’d done several times on their way east: create a kind of magical curtain that hid them from any predator, human or animal, that might come by. Once the circle was finished, she murmured her spell over it, and returned to wriggle into her bedroll. Only then did the cats fit themselves into every comfortable spot that they could find.