The Mages' Winter of Death: The Healers of Glastamear: Volume Two (5 page)

Michael explained, “The governor and high priest of Southport have wagons of food on the way here. They should get here within ten days and this should help till then.”

“Those damn priests seem to have plenty, but it is death to get anywhere near the temple walls. People in Broken Arrow would burn it down with them in it, if it had been constructed of wood. Curse them in Perry’s name. While they hide, we die.”

The armor Kevin showed Michael was relatively lightweight, but it was made from well-hardened leather with a chainmail cuirass. Kevin adjusted it so that it fit perfectly and as with the other armor, he replaced the royal purple plume in the helmet with a black one. The helmet was a Ki Eagle design that would cover Michael’s face completely. Michael paid the armor’s asking price knowing that he had already discounted it by half when compared to his previous purchases.

Carrying the armor in a leather bag, Michael climbed to a nearby rooftop, transformed into an eagle, and flew back to his camp before morning.

Chapter 5

Gertrude of Snowport was one of the healers that Michael had rescued at Snow Troll Fiord that past autumn, and she had volunteered to be one of the apothecary wagon drivers in order to secretly use her healing spells to cure refugees. She also planned to stay in Broken Arrow permanently and open an apothecary shop to provide cures. As each of the refugees from north of the roadblock entered the reception area, she handed them a dose of a harmless bitter concoction. If they actually needed a cure, she secretly cast
clear lungs
. By mid morning the whole group of nearly five hundred refugees had been processed and boarded passenger wagons to be transported to a refugee camp near Wellington Plantation.

Rather than waiting at the pass, Michael had decided to ride to Marigold Meadows and see how the town fared. In general, the farther south a town, the later the white pneumonia reached it because the plague began in the extreme north of Glastamear.

They had to pass through one of the King’s travel restriction roadblocks, but Michael showed the soldiers the governor’s letter and they were allowed to pass. The soldiers warned them that gangs of brigands had been actively robbing travelers in the area. Some were believed to be deserters from the Hearthshire garrison who wore guard armor and were well armed with crossbows and swords.

Michael was hopeful that the pleasant town of Marigold Meadows where he had spent four days on his trip south would be in good shape. What they found when they reached the town was hundreds of refugees camped outside the stockade walls. The town gates were barred, and archers guarded the walls from catwalks at regular intervals.

Michael rode to the gates and called up to the guards. “A wagon caravan of supplies sent by the Southport governor and high priest will be here by tonight. Ask your mayor to come to the walls to discuss our entrance into town.”

The guard made an obscene gesture and yelled, “This is some trick to let the plague into the city. Be gone or I’ll test the strength of your armor with my bow. Strangers are not welcome here, and no refugees are allowed inside.”

“Get the mayor, or I’ll test the strength of your flimsy wooden gates with my sword.”

The Oxbow brothers armed their crossbows, and that act seemed to get the townsman’s attention. After another even more obscene gesture and a shouted obscenity that would require impossible flexibility, the archer left and returned with a man with a familiar face. It was the innkeeper Ivan, proprietor of the nicest inn in the town, the Safehold Saga where Michael had stayed on his previous visit.

“Hello, what do you want of us,” Ivan called down. “I’m the acting mayor since old Nicholas died last week.”

“Ivan of the Safehold Inn, I’m Michael Son-of-William. I stayed four days with you in the wheat harvest month. The governor and high priest of Southport have sent a wagon caravan of food and supplies north to help the citizens of southern Briarton and Hearthshire Provinces. It will be here by nightfall. We have two apothecary wagons that carry a cure for the white pneumonia. I ask only that you open the gates.” Michael took off his helmet so Ivan would recognize him.

“Well met, Michael Son-of-William. I believe you, but I will need to ask our priest. It was he who ordered the gates barred against the tide of refugees.”

Ivan sent one of the archers to get the local priest. Marigold Meadows was so small that the local priest was not a fire mage since Michael could see no sign of manna among the inhabitants of the town.

Soon the local priest in a rather threadbare brown robe stood above the gate and said, “High Priest Simon is known to be a virtuous and generous man. I believe he would send aid in our distress. We will open the gates.”

They entered the town using the
fever search
spell to determine how widespread the coughing sickness was in the town. Ivan and the priest Edward both had fevers indicating they were in the earliest stages of the pneumonia. Michael secretly healed both and Ivan led them to his inn.

“I fear my wife and son are both infected. They have terrible coughs.”

Michael replied, “I have several samples of a drug that has worked in Southport. I believe we can heal them. Once you come down with the fever and survive, you don’t ever catch it again.”

The priest said, “Michael, I’d like to come along and see if this cure works. We’ve buried fourteen in town already, and at least a dozen others are infected. What is this cure?” His brown robe indicated that Edward was the lowest rank of priest, addressed as Goodman.

“I’m sorry Goodman Edward, I don’t know the formula. I just bought a few doses from Gertrude the apothecary. She should be here before nightfall. It seems to always work. There have been very few deaths in the whole of Southport Province.”

Ivan led them to his private quarters on the first floor of the spacious but empty inn. Michael saw that both Ivan’s wife and son were in the final stages of the disease and would probably not have lived more than a day or two. After he administered the cure, both felt much better immediately.

Goodman Edward explained, “Since the healers are gone, Blessed Perry has sent us a cure to prove that we don’t need those murdering healers. Thank you Michael, you have given us hope and renewed our faith in the power of prayer.”

Michael was annoyed, but he couldn’t say too much without getting a very negative reaction. He also realized that Goodman Edward was probably a sincere believer who had no idea that senior priests were all fire mages. They were the direct descendants of the Bagger chieftain who had been given fire magic by Firebreath the Red Dragon two thousand years earlier. Goodman Edward had swallowed the whole ridiculous claim that the Healers’ Guild had conspired to murder Great King Justin and his family, the excuse given by King Richard the Vengeful for the condemnation of all healer mages in Glastamear. Michael had to wonder how many otherwise good men still believed that canard.

Goodman Edward could never rise from the level of small town Perry’s shrine attendant because he would never be able to perform the supposed miracle of Bringing Forth Perry’s Fire done weekly at every Temple. There needed to be a way of keeping the good and tossing out the bad as Glastamear underwent change, but true revolutions were not a thing anyone could really control. Like the ambush lions of the Great North Forest, revolution was a dangerous and frenzied beast that no one had ever successfully tamed.

“Maybe that is true Goodman Edward, but herbalists and apothecaries have always been in Glastamear. It’s not a miracle when their potions work.”

“Ah always the merchant. It’s money and not faith that direct you my son, but we thank you all the same. May Sacred Perry bless you, good sir.” The priest followed with the holy sign of Perry, and Michael was forced to respond with the expected “Thank you Goodman Edward.”

Ivan had been attending to his son Peter. He stood and hugged Michael. “His lungs are better already. I think you cured him. Please stay in the best room in the inn while you’re here. We’ve had no overnight customers because of the gates being closed, but you and your friends from Southport may take any rooms you like for free.”

“I would prefer to pay the same as on my last visit. I will not take advantage of a fellow merchant in these dire times.”

Michael and the Oxbow brothers tended to their own horses and moved their gear into two adjoining rooms on the top floor. Since Ivan’s wife had been sick, the inn offered no food. They ate a meal of dried cod and raw turnips and then walked about the town looking for others with fevers. Jacob, Roger, and Michael performed many secret cures, while Peter and Gregory stayed on guard checking to make certain that no one noticed their spells.

Since their public execution attempt was made in the largest nearby town, the Oxbow brothers might be easily recognized by anyone who attended the failed execution that Michael had foiled in front of over a thousand witnesses. At the time Michael had cast the naiad spell
transparency
and was not himself visible, but all of them stayed in full armor with their helmets on to avoid recognition.

By the time they finished walking around the town, no one who was out in public was untreated. Michael spoke with several villagers about the news that wagons of food would be there by nightfall. Several people had kind things to say about Goodman Edward who had tended the sick and buried the dead. He had also convinced villagers to donate food to those who had none, and to keep order in the town.

Late that afternoon, the first of the wagons arrived, and almost every villager came out to see them. Those who had been camping outside the stockade were allowed in, and there was a general celebration because the two apothecary wagons had come with a cure. Michael saw that control of the food supplies was given to Goodman Edward and acting Mayor Ivan. The caravan planned to stay only two nights before moving on to the much larger problems of the city of Broken Arrow. Michael planned to take the fifteen wagons intended for the eastern part of the province and leave for Swamp Ford the following morning.

Michael saw a number of familiar faces in the crowd of refugees, and asked one stranger from Hearthshire Town, who was with his wife and four kids, what had happened in that city to cause so many to flee south. The man he questioned was an innkeeper from the poorest neighborhood of the city that had once had about forty thousand residences inside the walls and a similar number in the province that surrounded it.

Howard the innkeeper explained what depopulated Hearthshire Town. “The mayor and high priest thought the way to prevent the plague was for everyone to stay in their own home, to not even go to the market to shop. They barred the city gates after buying all the grain they could from the surrounding countryside. A measure was delivered to every household with the number of barrels based on the number of residents. All of us thought what an excellent idea our leaders had. May Perry curse their souls to never be reincarnated!”

“It was a bad idea?” Michael asked.

“Several of the carters who delivered the free grain were already infected, and they spread the sickness as they traveled every street to every home in the city. Within a week, two in ten of the city’s population were coughing and hacking in their homes. There were no healers to help and more than half of those infected died.”

Michael could guess the answer, but he asked anyway. “What happened to the priests and knight protectors? Did they help the citizens?”

“They locked themselves into the walled temple compound. Of course, there were so many of them, that all of the carters delivered at least one load to the temple. When my family and I fled, the priests and knight protectors were still in the temple compound, but so many had died that they dropped the bodies over the walls hoping the locals would take the corpses to the cemetery outside of the city. They would not have done that unless things inside were horrible. Rumor was that one of the bodies was the High Priest of the Great Temple of Hearthshire himself. If true, that is just. He hired the sick carters who killed so many of us. Sometime during the worst of times before we fled, a crowd broke into the governor’s compound and hung him from the town water tower, but I swear that I have no direct knowledge of that.”

“So what of Hearthshire Town now?” Michael asked.

“Not every carter had the white pneumonia, so some houses are still healthy but shut off from the outside world. They probably have food for another month. Maybe your kind governor would send food there next.”

“It’s possible. I’ll ask him after this trip is over.” Michael considered the suffering provincial capital his home province. He had to do something to help them.

Michael and the Oxbow brothers returned to the inn where Michael saw the cohort commander in charge of the military escort sitting in the common room. The commander was a stern experienced military man of middle age, but he had shown great respect to the much younger Michael as the governor’s appointed representative on the mission.

Michael explained his desire to leave the following morning, and the Commander commented, “We have rumors of gangs of brigands in the swamps. I wish I could send more than ten men with you, but restoring order in Broken Arrow might be a difficult task from what the refugees have told us. You and your four well-armed and armored guards plus ten ordinary soldiers should be enough to keep you and the food shipments safe. Go with Father God’s blessing. I’ll see you off tomorrow morning an hour after sunrise, and I’ll let the drivers and soldiers know that you have a schedule to keep.”

Michael was a newlywed, and that afternoon he cast the spell to become an eagle and flew home to spend time with Diana. It was a romantic evening but a very short visit. After their intimate time together, they had a brief chance to talk before he needed to return to Marigold Meadows. He provided all the details of his trip, and asked her to begin purchasing additional supplies that he could take to Hearthshire Town on a second wagon caravan.

Diana commented, “They know that you’re a healer in Hearthshire Town. It is sensible that you send someone else with those supplies.”

“Of course you’re correct, but it’s something that I feel is my duty to do personally. I lived with those townspeople for years and want to help. I promise that I’ll be careful and keep my face covered all the time I’m in the city. There is a wonderful library in the house of my mentor, William. I want to take many of those books to Rock Point to use in training apprentice healers. It will take the pressure from my own hand on the ancient lock to enter the house and someone with knowledge of healing to choose those books.”