Sun Wolf 2 - The Witches Of Wenshar (42 page)

Osgard stared into the fire, rubbing his big, sword-scarred hands over one another, as the Wolf remembered his own father used to do. Then he looked up again and grinned, a little embarrassed to admit it. “Jeryn is a clever little bastard, isn’t he?”

“It’s men like Jeryn,” Sun Wolf said, “who hire men like me. Let ’em be what they are, Osgard. They’re going to get hurt bad enough swimming against the stream as it is.”

The King sighed and rubbed his stubbly chin. “I know it,” he said quietly. Then, after a long pause, “Where should I send Tazey?”

She’d been willing, Sun Wolf remembered, to give up everything she wanted to please him. He remembered the fauve torchlight on her hair as she danced the war dance and the pride that had glowed so visibly from Osgard as he’d spoken of her—the sweetest daughter a man could want. Beside the nearby campfire, she and Jeryn sat huddled in their quilted jackets and head veils, their eyes bright as they talked to Starhawk, reunited for this last brief time.

“You could send her to Yirth of Mandrigyn,” he said at length. “She’s just about the only wizard I know qualified to teach.” He added, seeing her father’s face thicken at the thought of how far away Mandrigyn was, “But if Tazey prefers, I could stay here for awhile first, teach her what I know. It isn’t the teaching she’d get from Yirth, but it would tell her what to look for later. And it would give her more time here.”

“No.” Osgard sighed. “Tazey can’t stay here. And neither can you.” A half-burned log broke in the fire; he picked a branch from the slender bundle of wood they’d brought in from the far edge of the reg and pushed the fallen chunks back together. The spurting flame showed deep lines in his unshaven face—annoyance and shame.

“You don’t know the temper of the people in Pardle, Captain. They’re a superstitious bunch, when all’s said, and the mageborn have always had a foul reputation in Wenshar. I wouldn’t have cared if you’d been lynched on the way back, but when I heard Illyra’s men were out hunting your blood, I thought I’d better come and make sure Tazey got back all right. The miners and the Trinitarians being on one of their witch hunts is one thing, but Illyra . . . ”

Sun Wolf felt his face flush with anger. “I didn’t have a damn thing to do with the murders.”

The King held up his hand. “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “And I think you know it doesn’t matter.”

The cruel vulture-eyes of the Lady of the Dunes returned to Sun Wolf, and the keyed-up tension in the Hall, the night Nanciormis had staged his attack. And it was gold pieces to little green apples that Nanciormis had spread the story of his confession from the Fortress to the town. Anger surged like a core of heated iron in him, but he knew Osgard was right.

“I think you’d better ride on tonight.”

Osgard collected all the spare food and water from his troop of guards, and Jeryn and Tazey helped them load it on their horses. “We can hold off Illyra for a while,” the King said, as Sun Wolf finished tying the latigos that held the slender bundle of his possessions to his dapple gelding’s cantle. “But you’d better ride straight north and get across the Backbone as soon as you can.”

“Easy for him to say,” Sun Wolf growled, as the big monarch went striding off to give some direction or other to the little knot of dark-clothed guards. “You know every copper we have is still behind that brick in our cell in the empty quarter?”

Starhawk regarded him, amused, by the faint glow of the ball lightning that flickered over his head. “You want to risk meeting Illyra to go back for it?”

Sun Wolf grumbled an impious wish concerning Illyra’s future sex partners and tightened the gray’s cinches. He added, “I never should have promoted you from squad captain.”

“You always said a warrior had to be versatile.”

“I wasn’t talking about sweeping floors and feeding pigs from here to Farkash.”

“Chief?”
The bright flicker of magelight danced in the night; the black gravel of the reg crunched underfoot as Tazey and Jeryn came back from the baggage piles, carrying sacks. It was not lost on the Wolf that the guards looked askance at the soft light that surrounded the girl, and gave her wide berth. “These are all the Demonaries and books of magic that weren’t in the shirdane.”

Sun Wolf hefted the sack experimentally, then opened it and removed the three largest volumes. These he handed back to Tazey. At her inquiring look, he explained, “They’re too big to grab up in an emergency. I’m not going to have them destroyed by accident just because I want them with me on the road. Take them to Mandrigyn with you, along with the others. You and Yirth between you can work out translations of the shirdane ones.”

She nodded, hugging the books to her breast. Her mouth flinched a little, and she looked away; he saw the witchlight glisten in her eyes.

Gently, he reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “You’ll like Yirth,” he said softly. “She’s a good lady.” Then, grinning, he added, “You say hello to Sheera of Mandrigyn for me, too.”

“And be prepared to have her spit in your face if you do,” Starhawk added irreverently.

Jeryn, who had been doing something over by Sun Wolf’s horse, came back into the double ring of fox-fire light, and the Wolf could see in his face, too, the grief of parting.

Tazey asked hesitantly, “Will I meet you again?”

“Not if we keep getting thrown out of every kingdom we visit.”

Sun Wolf ignored his second-in-command. “One day, yes.” He hugged them both, the daughter and the son that he would never father, and felt Jeryn’s thin arms around his waist in a tight clutch and the sting of Tazey’s tears against his unshaven chin. Neither mercenary captains nor wandering wizards could afford to raise children. It was the first time he had been conscious of regret for what he had been or for what he was.

It was the first time he fully understood what it was he had given up.

The wan glow of Tazey’s witchlight was visible for a long distance across the reg as they rode away.

“It’s going to be hard for her,” Starhawk said after a time. “Hard for them both. But she never really wanted to be mageborn, you know. She really wanted to be what her father wanted her to be—a beautiful girl who dances well, rides anything with four legs, and eventually marries some handsome man and lives happily ever after. There was a time when she could have turned aside from what she has and gone back to lying to herself about it. She gave that up for us.”

“No.” Sun Wolf glanced back over his shoulder at that will-o’-the-wisp, a marsh light in the flat, black desert of stone. “You can never turn aside from it, nor lie to yourself about it. Not ever.”

The moonlight dusted her uncovered ivory hair as she moved her head. “Do you want to?”

He thought about Tazey and Jeryn again, their years of learning to be what they would be, years in which he could have no part. “Sometimes.”

His horse stumbled a little on the harsh gravel, making him curse as his cracked ribs pinched him, and something tied to the saddle horn jogged against his knee. Curious, knowing he had hung nothing there, he reached down and brought up a little wash-leather bag that jingled softly as he opened it and dumped its contents into his hand.

“Well, I’ll be go to hell.”

Starhawk drew her rangy bay mare closer, to look over his shoulder at the handful of silver gleaming softly in the dusky moonlight. “It has to have been Jeryn,” she said.

Sun Wolf laughed, with relief and triumph and delight. “Nine years old and already he knows you don’t turn your hired troops off without pay!”

“Yeah?”
Her eyebrows went up. “And how long do you think his daddy’s troops are going to cover our tracks against Illyra once they realize he’s gone through and rifled every pocket and saddlebag in the camp?”

Sun Wolf shuddered and shoved the money into the pocket of his sheepskin jacket. “Kid’s going to be hell on wheels when he takes over Wenshar,” he said. “Let’s ride.”

“And just think,” Starhawk mused as they nudged their horses into a canter, north to the distant, jagged line of the mountains under the sand-colored moon. “The next teacher you find may be even worse.”