If Crows Know Best (Mage of Merced Book 1) (22 page)

“This is strong, and enspelled to knot tightly and resist fraying or cutting. If you use this to secure them, they will be kept out of the action for some hours. Maybe even a full day.”

Wils played it out between his hands. “Enough for how many men?”

“Six at least. Judian will have to lend you his knife to cut it, though.”

Both of them turned to me. I reached into my boot and grudgingly withdrew my knife in its sheath. “You’d better return it as you found it.”

Annora shook her head. “No, you have to give it willingly, Judian, or trouble will follow. You can let another wield it if you lend it with the proper intention, but the kavsprit magic can come back on those who are greedy or act with malice.”

“It’s not malice to attack men and steal a wagon?”

“It’s not malice to tie men up instead of kill them,” she said.

I held out my knife to Wils. “I loan you this gladly so it keeps you from being haunted the rest of your days by doing murder.”

“I accept it and will remember who I borrowed it from,” he said with equal solemnity. “But you understand,” he said to Annora, “I’ll do what I have to do.”

She handed him cloth for gags from her cook-box. “I know.”

All of us were wound up too tight to sleep that night. I lay awake and reviewed horse-lore in my mind for hours.
We’re coming to help you, Da
I thought over and over. I was still awake at dawn when Wils came to get me.

Annora dressed in the trousers she had packed, with a hooded cloak to cover her hair, since a shawl and trousers didn’t do together. She handed me a skin of water, and more of the nuts and fruit to carry up with us to our perch. Beckta, Perk and Miskin shouldered quivers and swords, while Joren and Wils checked knives and crossbows were ready to hand. I set Wieser to guard our wagon and hobbled team, and signaled Gargle to come with me. Clock hopped up and down on the wagon roof. “You wait,” I told him. “We’ll have a message for you to carry back later, if all goes as planned.”

Annora and I clambered up the rocks to overlook the road. The sun grew warm before long, and black flies began to plague us without mercy.

“Eat a few of these, can’t you?” I said to Gargle, as I waved them away from my head. He watched them buzz for a bit. “Wieser would try, if I asked her.”

He looked at the flies, considering, then shrugged his wings and hunkered on the rock. As if to say, “All right for some, not worth
my
time.” Too much trouble to catch, perhaps, for a lazy bird.

Six wagons we didn’t want rumbled through by midafternoon. Then Annora pointed—it was the red wagon mounting the rise. I dispatched Gargle, who flew down into the hollow where Wils and the others waited, cawing as loud as I’d ever heard him.

Annora and I had agreed she would stop the guards’ horses, while I concentrated on the team. That way, mine were harnessed together so if I got one to stop, the other would stop perforce. I licked dry lips and tried to bring my mind to bear.

The guards’ horses took several increasingly stiff-legged strides before halting altogether. Their riders sawed at the reins and cursed. When struck on their hindquarters with quirts, the two mounts laid back their ears and twitched tails in fury, but did not pick up their hooves.

My team slowed as if distracted by deep thought, and did not quicken to the driver’s clucking and waving the whip above their heads. But they did not stop. I cursed under my breath and redoubled my effort. If I could not halt my pair, the wagon would be too far away for Wils and the men to attack the driver and both guards all at once. I could not be the cause of failure, of failing Da … and as my doubt in myself grew, the team below stepped livelier again.

Blast all!
I covered my eyes, and drained my mind of any vision except the sorrel and gray standing as if carved of stone. I called on all the gods to make my mind’s eye true on the road beneath us. With a deep breath, I drew my hands away from my face, and dared to look. The pair stood still, gazing placidly around while mouthing their bits. The driver rose and cracked his whip, but they ignored him utterly.

Wils and the others burst from cover. First they dragged the two soldiers from their mounts, before either could draw a weapon. Perk hauled the driver down by the belt while Joren climbed the other side of the wagon and swung into the seat. When he took up the reins, I released the team, which startled and drew the wagon forward as if they woke from a daydream, with much head shaking. Annora kept the outriders’ mounts standing still while their struggling riders were carried into the bushes. Some minutes of muffled shouting ensued, before Beckta and Miskin emerged dressed in the Keltanese tunics. I saw they had appropriated their boots as well. The gods were smiling on us so far, as everything seemed to fit well enough. Both men mounted the standing horses, Miskin smoothing his rumpled sleeves, and Annora released the two to follow after the wagon.

It wasn’t until our crew paced well up out of the hollow that another wagon crested the rise.

We had done it!

Annora and I clasped hands wordlessly, and she gave no sign of awareness that I had struggled so hard to do my task. I decided not to say how near a thing it had been, and we began our climb down the rocks. Gargle appeared in front of me, and received a congratulatory hunk of cheese from my pocket. Much tastier than flies, it appeared from his eager pounce.

Wils and Perk had the three men trussed with the enspelled cord and gagged. They lay in the shade under the brush, well down the hill from the road. The soldiers glared, but the driver looked resigned to his fate. I saw Wils and Perk had kerchiefs tied over their faces to disguise their features, and thought belatedly that Annora and I should have done the same. Of course, it had just now occurred to me that I should have practiced stopping horses
while
someone else was trying to get them to go; it was indeed the gods’ pleasure that everything had gone as well as it had. A near thing, truly.

After they dragged the soldiers farther down the slope, and separated them by greater distance, Annora and I pulled the driver to a spot by a seep so he could wet his gag and not go entirely thirsty. He blinked and nodded thanks, as I took it.

We gathered the weapons, and Beckta’s and Miskin’s clothes and boots, and set out for our wagon and team. Not until we were some distance from the scene of our triumph did Wils clap Perk on the back and vent a quiet “well done!” my way. He kissed Annora on the cheek, and whistled tunelessly as we walked on. And that was Wils when something suited him, well and good.

Wieser greeted us with extravagant wagging, and we soon had the team harnessed and set off to follow the hijacked wagon to the tunnel mouth. Annora sent Clock with a message for Virda about life on the road, with subtext of our success.

Dusk was falling when we arrived at the valley floor. Wils made quick work of steering us to the far side, where we found Joren, Beckta and Miskin busily shifting the sacks of oats into the tunnel. We fell in with them at once, Wils organizing a line of us to pass the bags along all the faster. As soon as the wagon was emptied, Joren rolled up and tied the canvas cargo cover, mounted the seat with a lantern, and made for the river midvalley.

Wils and Annora wanted to take our wagon to hide it where the trees were thickest, as the slope rose to the pass. First, we had to unload the arrows we had brought from the Keltanese stockpile by home. As we shuttled these into the tunnel, I began in earnest to chew on Wils’s ear about being allowed to go up to the fort with Miskin, Perk and Beckta.

“I can find out what Da wants to do. I can be more use carrying some of the oats up and seeing what’s going on within than I would be out here with you. I’ll come and report to you—”

“Enough and more! I should have sent you to help Joren make it look like the cargo was sent downriver. Still, you
are
underfoot here, I imagine,” Wils continued, with a sidelong look at Annora.

She looked to me to be on my side, when she said, “Wils, he hasn’t seen his da for so long …”

“See you do not annoy everyone into distraction, eh?”

“You mean I can go? I’ll never forget this.” I felt my smile stretch wide.

“I’ll wager none of us will. Try not to set the place on fire, or topple the ancient stones on all the fort’s men. Be a credit to Da,” Wils admonished. I was scarcely listening by then.

I shouldered my as-yet-unused crossbow, and called Wieser from lookout to join me. “Shall Gargle wait with you, to be dispatched to bring Joren and the wagon back?” I said, and saw Wils stood holding my sheathed obsidian knife out to me. That made me think of the spirits, and I added, “Have you left any offering for the kavsprit in this cave? I can give them some oats. Give me some of the nuts, as well.”

Annora quickly put nutmeats in my hand, while Wils secured the other two horses’ reins to the back of our Traveller wagon. Beckta handed me the lantern, and allowed as how he could carry more if I held it instead of him. We ducked inside before lighting it, and I waved farewell in the last of the evening light to Wils and Annora boarding the wagon. Miskin grunted as he hoisted two bags of grain, one on each shoulder, while Beckta gathered armfuls of arrows with Perk. I managed one bag with the lantern, and we set off deeper into the tunnel. Wieser sniffed the air warily, and walked beside me.

I found a place by a seep for the kavsprit offering, and as I knelt to make the sign, could swear I felt my knife almost thrumming, restored to its spot in my boot. It vibrated like a plucked string. Perhaps it greeted the folk below the earth who treasured it before gifting it to me. I still had so much to learn about magic ways.

The passage was as Wils had described, natural in some places and bearing pick-marks and strewn rubble in others where men had enlarged the way. Miskin had to put down his sacks and drag them through after him at the snuggest areas. We would have to make many trips to shift the whole load to the fort. I should have brought along more lantern oil.

The lantern light picked out flashes of pyrite, quartz and mica, and a time or two I thought I saw reflected eyes in the darkness, small and green.

The air grew chill the deeper we walked into the mountain, and at times we had to clamber over water-slicked rock to gain the way higher. The fort sat overlooking the road through the pass, so we had to climb without pause the last half of our journey. All of us were winded when we reached the great cisterns in the cavern beneath the fort.

We surprised two guards on the far side of the cisterns, drowsing at their post, lulled by the sound of streaming water. They sprang to their feet as Miskin, Beckta and Perk laughed.

“You’d be sunk if we were enemy soldiers come calling,” Beckta snorted. That’s why, I realized, they had taken time to change back into their own clothes, and left the outrider guards’ tunics at the entrance. He freed a hand to grip the arm of the shorter of the two men, and nodded to the other.

“By the gods, it’s good to see you,” said the short, bandy-legged man. “Have you brought Wils and an army with you?”

Miskin put down his sacks. “No army yet, we’re working on that. We have brought you food and arrows, though.”

“Keltanese arrows, by the markings,” said the other man, bending to take a closer look at Beckta’s burden. “Wonder what they’ll think when we fire these at them?”

“My brother thought you might be running low, since once you shoot them, they’re gone for good.” I stepped up to set my bag with Miskin’s, and Wieser sat at my side. “There’s more oats and arrows at the mouth of the tunnel. I’m Judian Lebannen. Where’s my da?”

“Ahh, young Judian. Charged with the safety of the new bride and the little sister. Did you all fare well?”

“Well enough, but I need to find out what Da wants us to do now. Wils is waiting outside.”

“I’m Rews. Come on with me, we’ll find your da and get some men to carry up the rest of this welcome load,” said the short guard, taking up a tallow candle. They had been making do with only candles for light in the vast dark of the cavern, I saw, not lanterns.

He led me to the steps, and we left Perk, Beckta and Miskin with the other man, beginning their story of what had befallen them since they left the fort months ago.

I understood what Wils meant about the fort being built on the bedrock—we went up twisting stairs carved out of the walls. We climbed a long ways before the bare rock gave way to dressed stone blocks, and the stairs stretched further still.

“Who made this place?” I asked Rews.

He glanced back at me. “It was so long ago, who knows? The ancients built it, long before there was Merced or Keltane thought of. Stone meets stone, enduring on.” He laid a hand on one of the immense rough-hewn rocks as he passed. “We’ve all been grateful for the old ones’ craftsmanship, keeping us safe from the enemy.”

“Has there been any damage from the siege?”

“They have flung the biggest rocks they could load and it has not shifted a single stone. They keep us penned within but have left off trying to come in after us!” He sounded as cheerful as a farmer describing a soft soaking rain on newly planted fields.

When we emerged at length into a sunken kitchen, I was amazed to hear the sound of a feddle and flute coming from the courtyard a few steps above. A hearty male voice joined in, and the music swelled and ebbed. I had been expecting all to be in despair from their long isolation.