Young Warriors (20 page)
4.
At last they were walking through the King's grove once more. Light from the flares set along the paths crept under the trees. Moonlight struggled in from above. Home! Their cottage was ahead of them, and a dark figure was pacing up and down by the door. But they were in a safe place. The darkness was friendly, and the figure was that of a friend. Roth clapped his hands high above his head in greeting.
“Him again!” said Cayley, moving away from Heriot a little, dancing and spinning from one patch of light to another. She knew this small landscape by heart.
“I called in on my way back,” said Roth. “You weren't here. I wondered . . .”
“Have they asked for me?” Heriot asked, looking suddenly anxious. “The King . . .?”
“No! I just thought about that cider you promised me,” said Roth. Heriot relaxed again, watching Cayley off to his right, gesturing at the air, then whirling away under the apple trees according to some inward music, striking out at the empty space around her as she leaped from shadow to shadow.
“What's he
doing
that for?” asked Roth, sounding irritated.
“It's his private game,” Heriot said. “He fills the air with enemies and fights them off. He's a child of the edge, rememberâmore a true man of Hoad than any of you lordsâso he's always on his guard.”
“The edge!” exclaimed Roth accusingly, suddenly solving a puzzle. “You've been wandering around on the edge. I can smell it on you.”
“You're just jealous,” said Heriot. “Walking around out there is too much for lords and princes. Too much for you! But meâI've just tested myself. It isn't too much for me. I've won through twice in the same day.”
But as he was boasting, there, in the very heart of his safe place, someone stepped out of the shadows behind him and struck him down.
The blow was like a flash of harsh light. There was not even a fraction of a moment of confrontation in which he might have made a magical connection. Orchard grass folded over him. Just for a moment, he smelled it and the earth it sprang from, and then he lost sight and sound and smellâ lost everything.
5.
Was it a day . . . an hour . . . a moment later? First there was the smell of the earth, then the touch of the grass, and then a voice calling his nameâhis own voice, summoning him back into the world. Ordinary sounds came back. Voicesâ other voicesâbroke in, cursing and crying out. That thudding! That clashing! Lying on his back, Heriot rolled his head right, then left, making a little cradle for it in the long grass as he stared up into the branches of the apple trees, thickly black against the moonlit sky. Someone screamed out. Feet kicked against his sprawling legs, and somewhere above him someone stumbled and cursed. And the world, coming back to him, brought a sudden realization. Hours earlier he had become aware of a threat against someone close to the King. Now he knew.
He
had been the target. He, the King's Magician, had been the threatened one. Heriot propped himself up, first on one elbow and then on the other. A theater opened up before him.
For there, between curtains of shadow and shafts of silver, Cayley leaped and fought, not one but two men, holding Death away from him. A third man was lying a little to his left, dead already, perhapsâcertainly no longer interested in any sort of battle. The two men charged in on Cayley from either side, but she spun away from them and they found themselves raising their daggers at one another, while Cayley, having slipped from their threat, became a threat of her own.
For the third time that day, Heriot saw light run a quick finger along a thrusting blade.
Three blades! Three! The fairy-talenumber. I'm living in a fairy tale. Things happen three times
in fairy tales and change on the third time.
One of the men dropped his knife, yelping and clapping his hands to his belly, while the other lunged at Cayley with a graceful certainty. But the street rat was already spinning away. The lunge missed. The man leaped back, then charged once more, shouting. Heriot recognized the voice, though he had never heard it raised in quite this way before.
“Roth!” he said aloud. “Hey, you! You're my friend!” But his voice was confused, and it cracked. Weary grief, with fear as a partner, filled him. Roth! A Dannorad man after all. First and last, a Dannorad man. Urging him to stay in a safe place so he could be found . . . to stand trustingly still so that he could be easily killed.
Roth's long dagger clashed against Cayley's sword. He tried to strike while she was off guard, but in the very act of countering the blow, Cayley slanted her sword blade so that Roth's blade slipped downward into the grass. Then she leaped away, moving, with a pure certainty, not backward but sideways.
The dance!
thought Heriot.
The dance!
And amazingly, for less than a second, the image of a bright, sunlit orchard imposed itself over the dark one as Cayley danced and spun. Something that felt like a beetle ran down Heriot's temple and curved toward his chin as he sat up. Blood. This place he had believed to be homeâthat friend he had believed to be a comfortable companionâboth were as treacherous as anything out on the edge of the city. Worse, for he had trusted both the place and the man. Now the second injured man tried to lift himself, cursing and groaning. Roth swung at Cayley again. Reaching into himself, Heriot tried to lock into that connection he had used twice already that day: once without meaning to, the second time to determine just what he was able to do with it.
“Stagger!” he commanded. “Stagger and fall!” The point of connection was there, but dazed as he was, he could not quite connect.
Roth, however, must have felt the worm turn in his head, for he shot a sideways glance at Heriot, sitting under the apple trees, and then made for him, blade raised.
“Magician!” he screamed, as if it were a term of abuse.
But Cayley leaped beside him. Her sword-thrust slid under Roth's ribsâsank beyond his ribs. Heriot flung himself to one side as Roth tumbled forward, thrashing wildly. There, in the long orchard grass that only that afternoon had seemed so pure and innocent, Roth kicked and twitched, drummed the ground with his feet, and at last grew still.
How long had it taken? It felt like forever. It felt instantaneous. Another beetle of blood ran down the side of Heriot's face as he and Cayley faced one another.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
But Heriot did not answer herâat least he did not answer her question. “You
are
a warrior,” he said. His voice had the curious astonished resignation of someone confronting inevitability. “Cayley. Yes! You really are a warrior. A hidden warrior.
The
Hidden Warrior, perhaps. The one that springs from the very stuff of Hoad.”
It was a truth that seemed at that moment like an ultimate truthâlike the truth that binds the earth to the sun and holds the sun to its place among the stars. Then Heriot looked down at Roth and understood that a sort of friendship had truly existed between them, but it had not been strong enough to resist the assertion of another, deeper identity. Heriot saw that Roth's wish to be the hero of his own first country, set out like a poem in Roth's fading self, had overcome everything else. Heriot's own death would have been Roth's ultimate assertion that he was a Dannorad man. Staring down at his friend, all Heriot could feel was anguish.
“He was my friend!” he exclaimed. “My friend! But perhaps, in the end, magicians just don't have friends.”
“Hey! Look at me,” said Cayley, falling on her knees beside him. Heriot stared at her.
“My sword,” she said. “I take it in my hand and I feel I'm dancing with a true partner. I've told you that. I feel the blow of it and the flow of it. But hey! You're melted into that very blade. You dance with meâstrike with me, true as the ring of steel.”
Heriot sighed. “I'm coming back into myself,” he said. He even smiled a little. He struggled to his feet. “Roth! He seemed like a friend. Butânever mind! Not right now! Let me lean on you.”
“Lean as heavily as you like,” said Cayley. “I can be strong for you. Hey! Magician! Warrior! Two-edged! None of them will be able to stand against us.”
“Side by side, back to back against the worldâthat's us,” Heriot agreed. “Two warriors! We'll take them by surprise, one day soon. But you're the hidden one! I'm the one out there, gesturing and saying, âLook at me.' ”
“You do run on,” said Cayley. “Someone comes at you to kill you and you keep on talking.”
Heriot nodded. “I'm propped up by words. Now let's get the guards. I'll weep a bit later onâthink it all through. And then I'll sit down and have a drink of cider, perhaps.” And, Heriot's hand on Cayley's shoulder, they set off through the moonlit midnight orchard, moving deeper and deeper into their overlapping fairy tales, vigilant and wary, for there were no safe places for the Magician and the Warrior.
MARGARET MAHY
MARGARET MAHY has been writing since the age of seven and is one of New Zealand's best-known writers of children's books. When she was a child, she envied boys for the adventurous roles they were allowed to play: cowboys and soldiers (for she grew up during World War II). She loved reading adventure stories, especially
King Solomon's Mines,
and wanted to live a daring life. The boys down the road were not supposed to play with her, as their father thought it would turn them into “sissies.” (Margaret thinks that she actually played tougher games than they did!) As to the characters Heriot and Cayley in “Hidden Warriors,” they come from a longer story that very well may become a book someday.
Margaret writes in a range of styles for differing age groups, including picture books, broadly comic stories for younger readers, and complex novels for older readers. She has won the Carnegie Medal of the British Library Association twice, the IBBY Honour Book Award, and the
Observer
Teenage Fiction Award, as well as many more prizes in her native New Zealand, including the Esther Glen Award four times and the AIM Book Award ( Junior). In February 1993 she was awarded New Zealand's highest honor, the Order of New Zealand, which is only ever held by twenty people alive at any one time!
Margaret lives on the South Island of New Zealand. When she is at home, she spends lots of time writing, ordering the cats and dogs around (not very successfully), and fussing over her granddaughters.
EMERGING LEGACY
Doranna Durgin
KELYN KNEW SHE WAS the clumsy one.
Even if she hadn't noticed it herselfâwith all the tripping, stumbling, dropping things, and running into overhangs and low branches she'd doneâthe others in her hunting pack weren't about to let her forget. How unfortunate that the words “Clumsy Kelyn” rolled off their tongues so easily.
All the same, she was still alive. They couldn't say that about Sigre, whose favorite craggy perch Kelyn now occupied, her feet dangling comfortably over the edge of a drop so deep that she found herself looking down on the distant treetops below. She took a generous bite of the dried plum she'd brought with her to this quiet moment and spat the pit out into the misty morning air.
She lost sight of it long before it reached the treesâ though last week, she'd had no problem watching Sigre all the way down. Or hearing her, a fading scream that turned to echoes before Sigre disappeared into the pines below.
There were some who said it should have been Kelyn. Sigre had always been light of foot, always graceful on the ledges and narrow, dangerous trails of these high, craggy mountains. She'd always been their trailblazer, taking them to new places in the thin air, finding them new hunting grounds.
Kelyn missed herâbut the scattered community at the base of the mountain range would miss Kelyn even more. Kelyn's was the pack that had brought in the most meat from their summer hunting, providing the old and the young with plenty. This packâyoung adults in training under the harshest of teachers, the high Keturan wildernessâprovided for their own families and more, and at the end of each summer they descended to the harsh rolling terrain a little more seasoned, a little more capable. A little more prepared to survive this difficult climate with its lushly coated rock cats and other predatory dangers.
Or crumbling rock edges.
Kelyn stood, as careful as she ever was, intensely aware of her awkward nature and her need to compensate. When she kept her wits about her, she seldom had trouble. It was only when she let her mind wander . .
She stepped back from the edge to join the others. Even so, had she not heard her pack-mate Mungo's approach, his “Kelyn! Be careful!” might just have startled her into a scary step or two. She turned on him with a glare, but wiry Iden came up from behind to put himself between them. Behind Iden came the others. Trailing Gwawlâas usualâwas little Frykla, still uncertain in her first year with the pack.
Though not so uncertain that she didn't give Mungo a good hard glare. “Kelyn saw nightfox sign this morning,” she told Mungo, who scowled under the scrutiny, tugging his rough-edged leather vest as though it had twisted out of place. “It would make me proud to bring down nightfox pelts for trading in my first year. But I don't suppose it'll happen if you make her so mad she doesn't show us the spot!”
“I can find my own nightfox dens.” Mungo tried for dignity, but it was hard to carry off. He looked to be growing into a stout frame, but for now he was the only one of them left with the precious fat of a well-fed child and it made him appear even younger than Frykla. “You all fuss over nothing. Kelyn's father is the great Thainn, remember? Surely with such a mighty hunter's blood in her veins, she heard me coming.”
“I did hear you coming,” Kelyn said coldly, picking up her staffâReman ironwood, bound with leather and weighted on both ends. It had come from her mother and served her well as a defensive weapon, especially as she was not allowed a long blade. “I begin to understand why my father always hunted alone. And maybe even why he left.”
He'd left Ketura
before
she was bornâbefore she was even conceived. Kelyn's mother had met him in Rema, and never expected him to stay with her. Shortly after Kelyn's conception, her mother had traveled to Ketura to raise her child in her father's lands.
Any child of Thainn's, her mother had reasoned, was bound to get into more than her fair share of trouble. She wanted Kelyn hardened by this harsh land . . . trained by it. Challenged by it.
Of course, her mother had never had any reason to expect Thainn's child to be a clumsy one. Or an awkward one, with features that fought each other for attention. Or the one whose opinion faced casual dismissal, as the pack often equated clumsiness with inability.
Because she didn't like the direction her thoughts had taken, Kelyn gave the pack a good hard glare. And then, with some assurance, she stepped off in the direction of the nightfox den.
Whereupon she stumbled over nothing, twisted around her own leg, and hit the rocky ground hard.
Stupid!
she chided herself, wrapping her arms around the wrenched leg. If there was one thing she'd learned, it was that she among them all could never
not pay attention.
Never be distracted by emotions or events or daydreams.
“Kelyn!” Frykla crouched by her side. “That looked bad.”
“I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone fly in so many directions at once,” Iden observed, but unlike Mungo he spoke kindly.
Kelyn untangled herself, pushed herself to her feet with help from the staff, and tested the leg. She'd given it a good twist, all rightâbut she thought she could walk out of it in a few days. And besides, she had the staff. “It'll heal,” she told Frykla, who still hesitated by her side. “I don't know if I can get up to the den . . . but I can take you close enough.” More than once Kelyn had admired the nightfoxes' ability to nimbly ascend the sheer rock faces to their precariously placed dens. Today she wouldn't even try to emulate them.
Not that it mattered. This one was for Frykla.
Kelyn waited at the bottom of the abruptly thrusting rock face, pulling her fur-lined vest more closely around herself and applying herself to scraping the generous layer of edible lichen from the base of the rock.
Soup tonight!
Perfect to ward off the year-round chill of the high air. Her leg pained her, but not as much as it might have; she favored it only because she knew better than to overstrain it. She'd likely find it bruised and battered beneath the loose leather of her leggings and snug loincloth, and looked forward to the hot spring in their favorite camp spot.
When the sun reached overhead, she heard the faint echoes of victorious shouting, and she smiled to herself. They might mock her lack of grace, they might ignore her concerns on the trail, but not one among them had a better eye for nightfox sign. Not long afterward, the members of the little hunting pack made their way down the back side of the thrusting rock and surrounded Kelyn with their ebullience and slightly breathless victory. They'd also discovered valuable choi buttons, which they could leave to cure for another month and then harvest for sale to outsiders.
In quick order, they skinned the two nightfoxes they'd snagged and left the bodies arranged on the flattest rock they could find in tribute to the rock cat that lived in this area. Kelyn joined them as they started down, a descent of several hours to their closest established camp. They chattered about their success as Frykla, flushed and happy, recounted the harrowing climb to the den several times over. Satisfied enough with her part in the valuable acquisition, Kelyn concentrated on navigating the rough terrain.
Perhaps that's why she was the first to hesitateâthe first to think something wasn't quite right. She held up a hand and the others instantly stoppedâbut a moment of group inspection revealed no sound or sight out of place. Mungo was the first to shift impatiently, and Kelyn knew whyâjust around this stand of stunted trees, through the narrow opening in two looming sentry rocks, their favorite camp waited. The hot springs inside their low scoop of a cave called to Kelyn and her aching leg, and her stomach hungered for the gnarled tubers waiting to supplement the lichen. The others were no less tired, no less ready to settle in for the evening.
So even though she didn't yet know what little
wrongness
in their surroundings had caught her attention, the others gave a shrug and moved onward. Their habitual dismissiveness of her skills took over, and one by one they slipped through the gap in the sentry rocks to throw themselves to the ground around the banked coals of the fire.
Or so Kelyn thought, hearing the sounds within. Until she actually took her turn through the sentry rocks and discovered her pack mates sprawled on the hard-packed dirt and stone of the area, dazed and surrounded and some of them even pinned downâall by rough, dark men in unfamiliar clothing. The discovery startled her so much that she stumbled and fell, saving the men the effort of taking her down.
Men, here? After us?
Shock and fear coursed along her spine; her heart hammered in her chest, lending her a burst of energy that came too late to do her any good.
One of the four men gave a short laugh at Kelyn's fall, and said something to the others in a harsh, unfamiliar language. They all relaxed slightly.
They know we're all here.
And that they'd accomplished this capture without a fight.
But why come here at all? The small band had nothing of value but the recently acquired nightfox pelts and the small collection of less significant pelts and dried meat. They had nothing but . . .
Themselves.
Kelyn lifted her head to look at them with revulsion, and the man who'd spoken gave her a nasty-toothed grin. “Figuring it out, are you?” he asked in her own language, sitting on Mungo's rump as though it were a pillowed throne. Mungo himself was still dazed, or the man's impudent self-confidence would have been ill rewarded. “
You're
our prize. All of you.”
Frykla gave him a startled look. “What?”
“Slavers?” Gwawl twisted beneath the man who had his knee on the small of his back, trying to see how the rest of them fared.
“Here?”
Iden pulled against the rough ropes that already bound his wrists and ankles together.
In the lowlands, yes. Slavers and reivers bothâpeople who preyed on the misfortune and weakness of others. But here in the craggy reaches of the Keturan mountains, surrounded by the unfamiliar dangers of climate and predator? Neither was forgivingâthe very reason they forged the young hunting packs into strong, capable warriors, independent but respectful of community.
Strong, capable . . .
“You came here just for us,” Kelyn said, her voice low with the horror of it. The man who'd tied Iden moved on to another, whipping another short length of coarse rope from his belt with the speed of long practice.
The man rubbed his nose. It didn't help; the nose remained dirty and ugly. “Not you in particular. Just whichever of you was up here this year.” He pointed at her, then gestured at the fire circle. “Come in here.”
Kelyn thought about running. If she flung herself back through the narrow aisle between the sentry rocks, they'd never catch herâand they probably wouldn't leave the others behind to even try. She could make it to safety, but their village community would feel the loss of the others for years, if it even survived. Life here was too precarious, too close to the edge.
She couldn't face it. Say good-bye to her friends, never to know how they fared? Break the news to their families?
With care, Kelyn got to her feet, closing her hand around the staff to bring it up with her. The men instantly came to alert, and the one who sat on Mungo's rump gave the barely conscious boy a severe cuff and sprang to his feet, a short spear to hand. “Leave that!”
She gave her staff a surprised glance. She'd reached for it out of entrenched habit; she rarely went anywhere without it. It served her on the rocky paths and it served her as a weapon. She wielded it with more grace than anything else in her life. She depended on it. And now she gave the man a deeply puzzled look. “It's just my mother's old walking stick. I hurt my leg.”
Frykla lifted her head and gave Kelyn a startled look.
Just
a walking stick?
And then she glanced quickly away, trying to hide her reaction, to cover it with scorn. “She's a clumsy oaf, that's what.”
Just as startled, Gwawl opened his mouthâbut Frykla widened her eyes at him, the best unspoken warning she could give him.
The dirty-faced slaver frowned. “What?”
Iden gave a sudden curse and began fighting his ropes, flipping around like a snared rabbit.
Distraction.
The man who'd tied him grinned, exposing just how few teeth he had, and moved on to tie Frykla. One man still sat on Gwawl, his fingers twisted in Gwawl's dreadlocked hair and a thick-bladed knife at the back of his neck. Another stood by with his arms crossed, watching Iden's futile struggles in dark amusement.
Kelyn took advantage of the moment to move to the center of the rock-enclosed site, limping heavily, using the staff for support as obviously as she could without overdoing it.
Perhaps she overdid it after all, for as Iden's timely struggles ceased, the man who seemed to be their leader said, “You don't look like you can keep up with us.”
The man standing by Iden said something short and sharp in whatever harsh language they called their own, and the leader raised an eyebrow at Kelynâthough it was hard to see it through his brushy hair. “He wants to kill you. He thinks you'll slow us down and die along the way.”
Kelyn's hand tightened around the staff just as her skin prickled all the way down her spine. She hadn't consideredâ
“She's not badly hurt,” Frykla said in a low voice, one that already had a cringe in it. “She can keep up. And she'll heal fast.”
The man snorted. “One would almost think you wanted to be slaves.”
“I'm not ready to die,” Kelyn told him, blunt . . . and preparing herself to run. The skin between her shoulder blades twitched, anticipating the impact of that short spear.
“Your kind, preferring slavery to death?” The man snorted again. “You're just foolish enough to think you can escape.” At Kelyn's sullen glare, he shrugged. “It serves me well enough if you choose to think so. Just don't be so foolish to think you can escape from
me.
It's never happened. It never will. Now sit down.” He pointed, choosing a spot where Kelyn could reach none of her friends, or even so much as exchange a discreet word. Then he gestured at one of the men, who dug into the satchel at his side and produced a folded packet. Kelyn eyed it warily as she took her seat, making sure she leaned heavily on the staff.
