Battle Magic (28 page)

Briar opened his eyes to full daylight. He found himself at the back of their group with the pack animals and their crossbow-wielding guards. The rest of their numbers trotted ahead. Briar twisted frantically, looking for Rosethorn. That was when he discovered someone had tied him to the saddle.

“You’re back with us,” Jimut said cheerfully. He rode between Briar and an attendant who led a train of supply mules. The reins to Briar’s horse were in his hand. “You
are
back?” His furry eyebrows inched up toward his hairline.

“I never left!” Briar retorted, annoyed by the question. Then he looked at the sun. It was almost noon. “Did I?”

“Your eyes were closed. You didn’t move. Forgive me,” Jimut said, bowing as Briar yanked at the long scarf that secured him in the saddle. “I didn’t want
Nanshur
Rosethorn angry if you fell off.” He edged his own mount over to Briar and traded Briar’s reins for the scarf once Briar untied the knot.

“I … was in a mage trance,” Briar announced, trying to recover his dignity. “Don’t your
nanshurs
have trances?”

“Weeelll, yes,” the older man drawled. “But usually they shake rattles and hum and chant for a long time first to give us warning.”

“Mine caught up with me fast,” Briar replied, thinking quickly. “I had no time to warn anyone.” He looked ahead. “Shouldn’t we be riding up there if I’m to help guard the warriors?”

Jimut looked at his friend, shrugged, and led the way as Briar nudged his own horse into a trot. They picked up the pace to a gallop. A few of the warriors they passed called out jokes to Jimut, suggesting that it was nice of him to join them. Jimut only turned his beaky nose up haughtily.

“I’m sorry,” Briar called. “You should have roused me.”

“I tried!” Jimut replied. “It didn’t work!”

“I don’t normally sleep like that,” Briar said as they slowed. “I really don’t.”

“Whatever
Nanshur
Rosethorn carries, it must be as strong as the great river Kanpoja — the Thundering Water,” Jimut explained. “You can hear her in Kombanpur from miles away. She comes to us from here in Gyongxe. The hero Ajit Robi fought the Drimbakang demons to set Kanpoja free. He cut a path for the goddess through the mountains, and she leaped from Gyongxe into Kombanpur. All of our great rivers are born from her.”

Briar looked at the tumbling band of the Snow Serpent. “
This
river is the Kanpoja?”

Jimut shook his head. “Farther west. Along the Drimbakang Zugu and through the Drimbakang Lho. Maybe we will see it, where the goddess’s temple stands.” He sighed. “I have always wanted to see it.”

He and Jimut had just caught up with Rosethorn, Parahan, and the others when they reached a bridge across the Snow Serpent. Here Rosethorn, Briar, Jimut, Souda, the Gyongxin Captain Lango, and two companies of warriors turned off the
road and crossed the bridge. A large village several miles up this road had to be evacuated. Parahan rode on to collect people on the south side of the road and ensure they reached safety, while the other Gyongxin captain, Jha, left them to do the same errand on the north side of the road.

At the village, the officials were not impressed with the warning carried by Souda and Captain Lango. They did not like the arrival of two hundred-odd soldiers at their gates, half of them southern foreigners. They did not believe that the Yanjingyi emperor had declared war on Gyongxe. Yes, the headman said, messengers had come from that fortress to the east, but messengers were excitable. They would claim a caravan was an enemy army. The headman said his village wall would hold off any invisible army.

Finally Rosethorn had heard enough. She rode forward to Souda’s side. “Excuse me, Your Highness,” she told Souda, her voice carrying to the villagers, “but if they don’t want to leave this place, they don’t have to. If they want to trust their safety to logs that have been eaten hollow by insects, let them. Surely there are other people around these parts who will be grateful for the warning.”

Briar hadn’t thought the bug munching was that bad, but it was his and Rosethorn’s pattern to reinforce what the other said. He dismounted and walked to the wall beside the gate. With one hand he reached out to a log he guessed wouldn’t bring the gate down and pushed. No one had to know that he asked the weak wood at the base of the log to give way for him. The log groaned, and then toppled onto the ground outside. He shook his head,
tsk
ing to himself.

“When did you last replace these logs?” Rosethorn wanted to know.

“Magic!” the headman shouted, his face red-bronze with fury. “You used magic!”

Briar turned and looked at the man. “I can’t magic the kind of bug damage that got done to this log,” he said. “Rosethorn can’t, either. We’re plant mages, not bug mages. Look at this wood yourself.”

“We just came up the Snow Serpent Pass with the emperor’s warriors chasing us,” Rosethorn snapped. “We didn’t have time to spell your logs. Believe us or not, but ask your wives and children if they mean to wait here with you behind your rotten walls.”

“We come at the bidding of the God-King,” Captain Lango said last. “Why would we be foolish enough to use his name for a lie?”

The village leaders were finally convinced, and the soldiers set up camp outside the wall. Rosethorn vanished. Briar could tell she had walked outside the wall, probably to listen to whatever songs her burden was singing.

He found work helping a woman and her children pack. Jimut, seeing what he was up to, obtained a mule the fatherless family could use for their burdens. While Jimut helped to load the mule, Briar gathered piles of sticks and what twine was available and made carry-crates for the villagers’ birds and pets. If he didn’t have enough twine, he simply persuaded the sticks to grow through one another to make the joins he needed.

The afternoon was half over when he heard a crash from a hut and a child’s screams. He ran to see what was wrong.

Inside the hut, two women were bent over a wailing child who lay between several wooden boxes. The little boy clutched his left shin with both hands, shrieking. Blood leaked between his twined fingers.

Briar pulled off the sling he wore on his back. “Excuse me,” he called loudly to the women. “Please, I can help. I’m a
nanshur
. I use medicine.”

The women moved aside. Briar felt inside the sling for a roll of linen bandage and a potion he kept for bleeding wounds. He leaned close to the child’s face and yelled,
“Hah!”

The boy threw up his hands to protect his face. Instantly Briar gripped his leg. He felt it gently to see if it was broken — it did not seem to be. He used a touch of his power to tug a square of linen off the bandage roll. Carefully he pressed the cloth against the wound. After a short wait he took the cloth away for a quick look. The boy had cut himself from his knee halfway to his ankle, but the wound was a shallow one. Quickly Briar pressed the cloth to it again.

The older of the two women, assured that he knew what he was doing, got a wet cloth and set about cleaning the child’s bloody hands. The younger woman began to carry the fallen boxes outside.

When he heard steps approach, Briar looked up from his patient. A much older woman came over with a small kettle of steaming water and a bowl. “I think you will need this for your work?” she asked. “You are very good to come to the help of strangers.”

“I used to scream like that, too,” Briar said, grinning
at the child. “When it looks so bad you think the healer will cut your leg off, you get scared. It is just a very ugly scratch.”

“We should have watched him better,” said the woman who had cleaned the child’s hands. Now she had given him some kind of sweet. He was sucking on it and watching Briar’s every move. “There is so much to put in the wagon that we forgot.”

With the two women to help, Briar cleaned the wound, covered it with his medicine, and bandaged it. The only thanks he accepted was a couple of very good dumplings that he shared with Jimut. After that he settled by the well and continued to make carry-crates.

The soldiers and the villagers combined resources for a large meal after dark. Though everyone was friendly enough as they came together to eat, the villagers’ faces showed their worries. The scramble to pick what to take and what to leave continued long into the night. Briar was dozing over a half-finished crate when someone nudged him awake with a booted foot. He looked up at Souda.

“Bed,” she ordered with a friendly smile. “In the camp. Come on. I’m turning in, too.”

Saddest of all, he was so worn-out he could not think of anything witty to say to impress her as they walked out of the village and into camp. Jimut was waiting. He bowed to Souda and took Briar to his bedroll.

They left in the early morning. Captain Lango detailed two squads of warriors to keep the villagers moving. The rest of his company and all of Souda’s, together with Rosethorn and Briar,
returned to the main road. They halted that day only to rest the horses.

It was twilight when they reached the Temple of the Sun Queen’s Husbands. As a fortress, it made Fort Sambachu look like a collection of crates. Its walls, painted with blue and green many-armed men, were thick and lined with men and women armed with longbows. The walls were built in step fashion like those at Sambachu; so, too, was the temple itself, building up to a tower that gave a view of the road and plain. The heavy gates, each one painted with what Briar assumed was a husband who held weapons in every one of his eight hands, stood wide open to admit the villagers.

When Rosethorn approached the gates, her burden set up such a high, tooth-hurting screech that Briar covered his ears, almost falling off his horse. The ever-alert Jimut caught his reins just in time. The noise only stopped when Rosethorn turned her horse away from the gate.

She conferred with Souda and Captain Lango briefly, explaining that the magic in the temple’s walls and gates was uncomfortable with the magic she bore. In the end, only Captain Lango and his warriors accompanied the refugees inside for the night.

“Uncomfortable,” Briar muttered to Jimut, rubbing his aching jaws. “Uncomfortable, she says. I’ve heard two ships scraping against each other that didn’t make such a noise.”

“It’s not that the magics are fighting, or the temple is evil,” Rosethorn explained to Briar and their friends over roast goat, flatbread, and cheese. “Magic isn’t evil of itself, only the ends to which it’s put, like a dagger. But the shape their magic holds
doesn’t match mine.” She didn’t really mean her own green magic. Briar knew he could have walked through that gate if he had wanted to. It was Rosethorn’s burden that had put up the fuss.

“No,” said a voice just outside the light of their fire. A man of Rosethorn’s age in the long scarlet tunic worn by this temple’s priests walked closer to their group. “Our magics enclose us to protect us, with only the opening at the gate to allow other magics to enter, if they are small ones.” He looked at Rosethorn, then around the circle until he found Briar. “We would have been forced to ask both of you to remain outside. I have brought our chief priest’s apologies to you. Normally this is not such a problem, though your burden” — he nodded to Rosethorn — “is more than our spell walls can handle at any time. But there are so many small magics now. We already have two villages and their shamans, and there are always the midwives and healers.”

Rosethorn got to her feet and bowed. Briar did the same, though his sore body complained.

“We understand,” Rosethorn told the priest. “These are things that happen in times of upheaval.”

He bowed; she bowed, which meant Briar had to bow. Then she wandered off with the priest to talk magic. The others began to talk about fighting they had done before. Briar listened until he got so bored that he decided to go for a walk. It would stretch his legs and give his ears some blessed quiet.

He ambled down toward the river, waving to the sentries as he passed them. Once he reached it, he found the bank was lined with large boulders. He didn’t remember them from the ride in, but that was no surprise, as tired as he’d been. He slipped between the boulders and sat on the rocky verge, listening to the fast-moving
water and thinking of nothing else for a while. It was a relief to have some time to himself.

When he turned to climb uphill to camp, he saw images in softly glowing paint on the sides of the boulders that faced the water and the plain. Each stone showed a different figure: dragon, yak, many-armed god or goddess, snow cat.

Then he saw motion. First the painted eyes followed him, and then the painted faces.

He stopped in front of the largest stone. The picture on it was a nine-headed cobra. It was a very big nine-headed cobra, taller than Briar by twelve inches at least. The paint glowed a moon-pale white. Briar wouldn’t have liked the thing even if it had held still. Then the middle head of the nine, the one that bore an ornate crown, left the safe grounding of the rock and stretched forward until her flickering serpent tongue touched Briar’s nose. He thought he might howl like a herd dog. He was far too scared to move.