Crucible (34 page)

Although poisoning her captors would be very much a plan of desperation. There was no common cooking pot to contaminate, and for her plan to succeed, she would have to somehow get the poison into half, or more than half, of the 50-odd men in this camp. And, of course, if people started sickening and dying
en mass,
she would be the first person they suspected.

She pulled the corners of the shawl up and tied them, making a bag holding her treasures, and headed back to her camp. When Jak turned up . . . suspiciously soon after she settled down by her fire . . . she was peeling the wood-sorrel roots and cutting them up into her cook pot. He threw a squirrel down next to her. This time it was the whole beast, neither skinned nor gutted. He stalked off before she could say thanks.

In fact, this suited her rather well. The butcherbird would appreciate what she didn't want. When he felt the touch of her mind on his, he flew to her without needing any coaxing.

She handed him a small square of green fabric cut from a ruined shirt, and made it clear to him where he was to leave it, and how. He seemed puzzled at first, but the promise of meat convinced him that although this made no sense, it did not matter to
him.
She did
not
watch him fly off with it; she could see through his eyes where he was going better than with her own. And when he reached his
destination, a thorn-tree right near where the game trail the bandits had taken her on met the road, he did what butcherbirds did with their prey of insects, mice, and even the occasional smaller bird. He impaled it on a thorn, making sure it was secure before flying back to her.

For the rest of the afternoon, while she cleaned, skinned, and cooked her squirrel with the sorrel roots and made a sort of salad out of the fiddleheads, plantain leaves, and sorrel leaves, the butcherbird flew between points on the game trail, impaling little scraps of Healer-Green fabric where a sharp eye could spot them, and returning for his reward. By the time her dinner was done, he was stuffed, his nestlings were stuffed, and even his mate was stuffed, and the first part of her plan was complete.

• • •

The next three days were identical: treating the men in the morning, being thrown some small piece of game by Jak at noon, and gathering plants until dusk. And, of course, sending out her little helper with scraps of cloth and stuffing him and his family with meat scraps.

On the third day, she finally worked out how to at least try to warn her rescuers of their danger. She had the little fellow build a sort of cairn out of fifty-seven stones, with a sprig of deadly nightshade and another scrap of green cloth at the top, weighted by two black stones. This she had him build at the start of the game trail, just beneath the first scrap of thorn-impaled cloth. She could only hope that whoever the tracker was, he would spot it.

So far, no one among the band had caught sight of her trail. Then again, no one was
looking
for it either. Maybe they might have been, had she gone in the direction of their exit route to the main road, but she scrupulously kept away from that direction.

She kept her ears open, too. As the men got used to her presence, they got careless about what they said, particularly as
she
kept her mouth shut and her head down and spoke only to give them directions about what they
were to do next about their injuries or illnesses. It had occurred to her that, although these bandits were doing well enough
now,
with their individual tents and shelters and each one cooking for himself, once the weather started to turn, they would be in sad shape. And when the winter came in full force, many of them would likely die. None of them seemed to have any winter clothing, or much in the way of bedding. They weren't making any sort of effort to store food that
she
could see. Once winter came, not only would they find game grown scarce, but by that time they would have hunted out the immediate area around the camp and would have to go much farther to find anything. So, they would be underclothed, underfed, and with little more than tiny fires, a few blankets, and a bit of canvas or a rough lean-to between them and the blizzards.

But the truth was, she was fairly certain they had no intention of putting themselves in that position. Or at least that the Cap'n and his right-hand man, Jak, had no such intentions.

And, sure enough, by listening carefully, she picked up enough to piece together what their plan for winter actually was.

She was treating one man for an infected animal-bite while two more waited. As she cleaned out the wound and he cursed and growled, the other two took up a conversation they must have left off earlier.

“So what's the odds now?”

“It's looking like One Tree over Klovera and Red Stick,” said the second.

The first snorted. “I'm in for Klovera,” he replied.

The second looked at his companion with surprise. “Jak's all but moved into One Tree,” he said.

“But One Tree ain't got enough housin' for all of us. Somebody's gonna be sleepin' in sheds. Cap'n knows better than that.” The man hawked and spat into some weeds. “Klovera's biggest. We'll move on there.”

By that point Vixen had finished bandaging her current victim and had given him strict instructions. He got to his feet, and the two waiting abruptly cut off their discussion as the first man sat down on the stump in front of her.

Although Vixen didn't go over the Border, she thought she recognized those three names as villages outside of the protection of Valdemar and its Guard. And it didn't take a genius to figure out what the two men had been talking about. The Cap'n intended to take one of them over for his men before winter came. If the villagers were
lucky,
he'd just show up with his force, armed to the teeth, and “suggest” they should “allow” the troop to move in to protect them. And the result of that was fairly predictable; she might have been getting off lucky because the Cap'n had ordered she be left unmolested—but he'd give no such orders about the women of the village. It wouldn't be long before the original inhabitants had been reduced to one of two states: enslaved or dead.

And if they weren't lucky, well, the Cap'n would likely fall on them in the middle of the night and slaughter them all.

From there, of course, he could commence raiding back over the Border in Valdemar if he chose. There would be nothing to stop him.

Bugger,
she thought, checking and rebandaging the half-healed arm wound she'd been treating on the first man.
Now there's more at stake than just me.

• • •

On the afternoon of the fourth day—the seventh day of her captivity, and the first one on which she thought she might be looked for—things changed.

Before she got a chance to gather her shawl and head for the forest, Jak turned up again. “Get up and come with me,” he ordered, no friendlier after a week than he had been on the first day of her captivity. At least this time he didn't seize her by the elbow and haul her along.

As she expected, he took her to the Cap'n's tent. The Cap'n was sitting in front of it, having managed somehow to get himself into what passed for a chair—a sort of stool with a back hacked out of one of the pieces of tree trunk that served so many purposes in this camp.

Since he was sitting, she decided she was going to do the same. She picked a bit of turf, folded her legs under her, and sat down cross-legged. The Cap'n looked amused. Jak did not. What neither of them noticed—she hoped—was that there was a stout piece of wood right behind her. Just in case.

“Bakken says you poisoned him!” Jak evidently was not going to waste any time dancing around.

“I don't know which one Bakken is, and how, exactly, am I supposed to have poisoned him?” she asked, calmly. “More to the point, why would I bother?” She heaved an exaggerated sigh. “What does he say is wrong with him?”

“He's covered all over with blisters and red spots, and his skin itches fit to claw off!” Jak said in tones of deep accusation.

She
tsked
sadly. “That's not poisoning, that's what happens when you go blundering into a patch of itching oak,” she told him. “I suppose they don't have that growing where you're from.”

Now, so far, she had only said as much as she had to, feigning fear of both of them. So she might have left it at that, except. . . .

Since she was, more often than not riding circuit alone out here in the near-wilderness, she had trained herself to be acutely aware of wildlife sounds wherever she was. And in the general direction of the game path leading to this camp, the birds had gone very quiet.

Now, that
might
have been because a large party of these bandits had gone out and were coming back. But she didn't think so.

“Itching oak is a vine,” she continued. “It grows on tree trunks. There are three scalloped leaves to each stem, and
at this time of the year many of the leaves are a reddish green. That's the easiest way to tell it.” While she spoke, she was searching for the mind of a bird, any bird, in the direction of that quiet. “You just ask him if he blundered through something like that. And get his clothing off him and wash it. He should wash all over, too. Anything that touched a leaf will have the poison on it, and the only way to get it off is to wash with good strong soap.”

She found a bird. And looking through its eyes, a glimpse of a blue uniform was all she needed. The Guard was out there, and from the fact that they were skulking through the brush, they'd read her warning and thought they had enough men to take the camp. They were close enough that they
must
have taken out the sentries. Now she had to stall to make sure the Cap'n and Jak didn't notice anything until it was too late.

Jak glowered at her as the Cap'n smirked. “I have things to treat the rash,
if
the silly man will let me, since he thinks I somehow poisoned him,” she continued, doing her best to keep their attention on her. “But if he won't, the only things I can suggest are to wash himself and his clothing to keep the rash from spreading. Milk and vinegar are the only things that help that he would recognize, and I haven't seen either a cow or a cider press in this camp. I'm only an herb-Healer, I told you. I can't work miracles, and I can't do
anything
if he won't let me help him.”

She was babbling now, and she just hoped they would put it down to nerves at the way Jak kept glaring at her. Surreptitiously, she began moving her hand toward that stick. “It won't kill him, as long as he doesn't scratch himself and get the scratches infected, he'll just have a bad sennight or so,” she continued, as the Cap'n shook his head a little. Clearly this Bakken was not a favorite of his.

Never had she wished more for human Mindspeech. She wanted to warn whoever was in charge not to be all noble and give these dogs the chance to surrender.
She'd
seen how the men looked at her when they thought she wouldn't notice. If it hadn't been for their orders and possibly the knowledge that raping her would pretty much guarantee she'd
never
take care of their illnesses and injuries again, she'd have been the plaything of the entire camp. And they were planning on taking over an entire village. They didn't deserve a warning—

“If you can
get
milk, or vinegar, vinegar would be best, and he can—” she continued when shouts erupted from every direction. The Cap'n and Jak started—and in that moment of hesitation, she grabbed the stout branch behind her, stood up and swung it with all her might at the Cap'n's head.

It connected with a satisfying
crack,
hitting him so hard she nearly lost her grip on the stick. He went down without a sound, and she whirled and ran. She didn't pay any attention to her direction; from the sound of things, the Guard had surrounded the entire camp, and there would be blue uniforms no matter which way she went. Her Greens should identify her immediately and keep her safe.

She got about twenty feet when she was hit from behind in a tackle and tumbled to the ground. Hysterical with the fear she had not allowed herself to feel all this time, she writhed in her captor's grip and flailed at him with the stick until he caught it and yanked it away from her.

It was Jak, of course, and his face was a mask of fury. He reared back and hit her in the jaw with a closed fist, and she saw stars.

Trying to see through the dazzle, she realized that he was getting ready to hit her again. And would probably beat her to death before anyone could reach her.

. . . never, ever, anger a Healer . . .

She set his brain on fire.

Figuratively, of course. She had treated enough people who had fits to know what their minds “felt” like in
the middle of a seizure. It was very much as if their brains were on fire, a sort of lightning coursing through their heads. And that was what she did to him.

His back arched so far that it looked as if his head were going to touch his heels, and he fell over sideways, convulsing.

She pulled her legs out from under him, scrambled to her feet, and ran.

• • •

“. . . and they were going to take over a village on the other side of the Border,” she finished, as Guard Captain Lence Danners took notes. “And that's all I can tell you. I never figured out where they had come from or why they were so disciplined, I'm afraid.”

She was holding a cold cloth to her sore jaw . . . ironically, the one person a Healer
couldn't
Heal was herself. She was going to have to resort to her own herbal remedies for the bruising and the headache.

“We'll get that out of them, never fear,” Lence said, sanding the pages to dry them. He looked up, his mouth set in a wry smile. “Given Healer Vixen's reputation, I'm surprised you aren't railing at me for not coming to the rescue sooner.”