Mastiff (31 page)

Master Farmer gave no reply. I stayed where I was, trying not to shiver my way out of my boots.

“Answer me, fool!” ordered the female mage. “Did you think we would not lay a trap for prying idiots? Speak, or I will stop your heart dead!”

Master Farmer looked at the child and opened his mouth. Blue-green fire shot out of it to collide with a gout of pale yellow fire that roared up from the bodies. “Did you think I would not be ready? Tell me
your
name!” he cried, though his mouth didn’t move. The unseen mage howled in rage. The two magics clashed and vanished. The dead were burned to the bone.

Master Farmer’s eyes still glowed. He emptied the water dish with a trembling hand and set it aside. He straightened one leg at a time as if he’d forgotten how they worked. Then, as slowly as my granny Fern, he began to get to his feet. I watched him fumble, trying to brace his hands on the earth or to lever himself upright with one leg. I glanced at Tunstall. He had fetched a good luck charm from his pocket and was praying over it as he petted the shaking Achoo with his free hand.

He’ll be all right
, Pounce said. Until that moment I’d forgotten he was with us.
He’s not at his best with big magics, remember. This was
quite
big
.

“Why didn’t you do something?” I asked.

When Pounce glared at me, I said it along with him, “Because you’re not allowed.”

Why ask me foolish questions, then, if you know what I will say?
Pounce wanted to know.

“Because I want to be surprised,” I snapped. Then I looked at Master Farmer, who still sat on the grass. I scolded myself, saying that a servant of the god of death ought to be made of stronger stuff than I was showing, until I finally found the sack to go to the mage. Carefully, not knowing if I was courting a lightning bolt or some such nasty thing, I got both hands under one of his arms and braced one of his outstretched legs with my feet. He looked at me blindly, startled, his eyes alight. He said something, but it was in no language I knew.

“It’s all right,” I said, talking to him as I had to my brothers and sisters when they were sick. “We’ll get you on your feet if you can manage it. My, that trull was a nasty bit of slum stew, wasn’t she? Arm around my shoulders—good lad!”

Tunstall got over his bit of religion and came to aid us. Together we helped Master Farmer up and slid him into his shoulder pack. I have to say, that man is one weighty piece of beef.

We were about to try for the road when Master Farmer mumbled, “A little rest and I can bury the bones again.” His eyes were shimmering only now. I could see the irises through the odd blue-green veil.

“I’d like a bit more warning, next time,” Tunstall said gruffly, looking at the ground. “I was certain Morni the Mad had you.”

That explained
his
fit of strangeness. Morni was the hill people’s war goddess and mad as a rabid cat. I wouldn’t want to be near her, either.

“Sorry,” Master Farmer mumbled. “You don’t usually find that much power in a hidden grave.”

“A trap,” Tunstall said. “She knew you were coming.”

“She wasn’t the only one. There were two magics in that, very strong ones.
Very
strong,” he repeated, rubbing his eyes.

I pulled Farmer’s hand away. “Stop that,” I said. “It’s not good to rub your eyes.”

Tunstall gave me the oddest look. I glared at him. “It isn’t. Don’t I tell you the same?”

“You do,” he said seriously. “After you’d known me two years.”

“The other mage didn’t speak at all.” Master Farmer was looking at his hand, as if he wondered why I held his wrist. I let it go. “There were two. I tried to put a hook into one of them, but I wasn’t prepared to work that kind of magic.” He glanced at me, then Tunstall, then Pounce. “It needs preparation, see. And a brazier, and at least two things I’d left in my bag, not thinking I’d need them.” The muscles flexed in his cheeks. “I will if we meet again. There’s a replacement for the brazier, if I work that ahead of time.” He stood with his weight more on his own feet now. His eyes were his own again. He still shook a bit, but mostly he looked like the Master Farmer I was used to. I slid out from under his arm. He stayed upright.

With a nod, I stepped away from them. “A moment,” I said quietly. I went to the piles of burned bones. I had no fear of the mages biting at me. It was plain they’d fled Master Farmer, and him but one man. I wondered if he’d noticed that yet.

“Black God take you gentle,” I whispered to the poor corpses. “Let his messengers guide you to the Peaceful Realms, where you’ll forget what happened here.”

The clatter of wings got my attention. I looked up. Three wood pigeons had taken to the air. They must have been in the nearby trees. Were they carrying the spirits of these poor folk? Seemingly neither mot nor gixie had any unfinished business for me. Like other slaves, mayhap they were eager to leave such a hard world.

I stood and nodded to Master Farmer. Hanging on to Tunstall’s arm, he raised the bones just enough to move them over to their grave. A mother putting her babes to bed could not have been more gentle as he settled them into the hole. Once they were down, he lifted his right hand and summoned the pile of earth that he’d set aside. It tumbled in swiftly until the grave was full again. At the very last, Master Farmer drew a sign for protection in the dirt. It shone with a steady, bright light. I didn’t believe any carrion eaters would be digging these folk up.

Tunstall asked, “Is all the barrier gone?”

Master Farmer nodded. “No one else will die here.”

Achoo, seeing that we were done with scary things, moved to a spot in the grass where a dead bird’s carcass lay in the middle of another path. Her tail was wagging again. She was sniffing, but not at the dead creature. She circled back to a spot that was spattered with brown drops—old piss—sniffed it, and returned to the dead bird. Then she ran a few feet down the path, halted, and danced.

“They didn’t take them back to the road by the path we used,” I said. “It’s a guess, but Achoo says her trail leads that way. I’ll wager that trail either picks up with the main road ahead, or leads to a village.”

Tunstall trotted back the way we’d come to get Lady Sabine and the horses.

Master Farmer sat on the grass once more. Achoo, thinking we faced another delay, whined miserably.

“Mudah,”
I called to her. “We humans need a bit more than our legs and our nose to go along with.” I crouched beside Master Farmer.

“I hate the waste of it, the waste of life that criminals leave behind,” he said wearily. He fumbled at his belt, trying to undo the ties that held his water flask. I slapped his hand away and freed it, then opened it for him. Master Farmer took it with a nod of thanks. “Each of us has power, a kind of magic,” he told me, speaking as if I were a scholar like him. “We spend it somehow as we live, in great and lesser ways. Those three never even had a chance to use theirs.” He drank from his water flask and tried to fix it on his belt, but his hands still shook too much.

I took the thing from his grip and secured it to his belt again, then fed Achoo some meat strips. I said nothing, I was thinking about his words. They made sense. That was one of my reasons for doing what I did. I want more folk to make sommat of their lives, instead of losing them to slavery or prison or murder. But I’d never thought of it this way, that we each had a fire of some kind. We could each make a difference.

Tunstall returned with my lady and the horses. As Master Farmer was dragging himself onto his mount, Lady Sabine asked, “How did these mages know you were looking at this? Surely they weren’t watching all this time?”

Master Farmer smiled as he hauled himself into the saddle. It was a cold smile, a schoolmaster’s smile. “They didn’t need to. If I’d laid this trap, I’d have set the barrier with a spell, a ‘bee.’ In the unlikely event a mage who was powerful enough to break the barrier came along, the bee would go instantly to the casting mage. She wouldn’t even need her partner to spring the trap, if she’s one of the two who’s riding with that slave train.”

I dug in one of the packhorse’s bags. The mage needed to eat something. I cut a chunk off a ham that was conveniently near the top of one pack and some off the cheese that was its neighbor, and shoved them into Master Farmer’s hand. Then I cut more for Tunstall so he wouldn’t whine that I favored the mage. When I held up my knife and looked at my lady, she shook her head and raised a hand in thanks. I put away the food and mounted my own horse. Pounce jumped up onto my lap while Achoo pranced and whined on the ground.

“
Maji
, Achoo,” I called. I rode first down the trail following her, giving Saucebox the nudge to trot a bit.

“There’s another bad thing,” I heard Master Farmer say. “She blocked me from reaching any mage close to Gershom. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get through down the road.”

If the other two said anything about that, I didn’t hear it. I made the Sign on my chest and prayed Master Farmer would reach my lord soon.

The trail led Achoo and the rest of us back to the main road after a couple of miles. Short of it, in a glade by a stream that followed the road for a good ways, we stopped to rest the horses and eat a proper late lunch.

“Let’s talk about our story again,” Lady Sabine suggested between bites. “We can back peasants down with talk of a Hunt and a wave of papers and seals, but that won’t work with nobles. At the level of magic we found back there, we’re going to find money. They won’t be impressed by our documents.”

“She’s right,” Master Farmer said. Even after ham and cheese by the burial ground, he’d eaten a big chunk of bread, cheese, and more ham as if he was starving. Now he eyed a meat pie that lay broken in its wrappings.

“Eat that,” Tunstall said. He lay on his back, staring at the sky and picking his teeth. “It won’t last forever. Our story. I’ve been thinking. A noble’s child’s been kidnapped, but he’s ten, see? That accounts for the four of us. They’d never send another noble and a mage out for a merchant, however rich. All we can say is the noble’s from the southeast, and there’s added trouble with Tusaine if we fail. We’ve been sworn to reveal no more, and our Birdies tell us that the kidnappers came this way.”

“We’ll be pressed for more,” my lady said. “If we run into any powerful nobles, they won’t settle for that.”

“Give it to them bit by bit. Hint it’s mayhap a fight between father and mother, the mother being from the northern mountains. The father’s from the south.” Tunstall dug at a back tooth with the pick. When she’d found out he had this habit, my lady had gotten him a set of ivory ones, all very nicely made. “And no, we’ll give no name, no mention of politics or rebel mages. It’s a straight kidnapping. Let anyone who’s so eager to know pester Lord Gershom for it themselves, if they want it so bad.”

I chuckled. My lord was famous for his response when folk came to bother him about things he considered to be none of their business. Anyone who knew him would decide life was better if they left my lord alone. Anyone who didn’t know of him beforehand would remember forever after.

Lady Sabine fingered the moon charm she wore about her neck. “It should do,” she said at last. “For all that the nobility dislikes Dogs, they know it looks bad if they pry too deep, the way the nation’s politics are these days.”

“I’d think a mention of Ferrets would back them off as well,” Farmer observed. He was sharing the broken meat pie with Pounce and Achoo.

“We don’t need farting Ferrets,” Tunstall said, his voice a rumble of vexation. “We’re worth fearing ourselves, right, Cooper?”

I was on my feet, restless and wanting to be on the move again. “Specially anyone that’s seen us work,” I said absently. Over the far ridge I saw a hint of what might be chimney smoke. It could be a farm, a charcoal burner’s hut, or the first outlier of a village or town. “It’s a fine story, Tunstall. You always make up good ones.” I could hear them stirring behind me, collecting their gear at last. “And if they don’t believe us, I can give them the ghost eyes, you can go all big and threatening, Farmer can do his cracknob simpleton, and my lady can don her nobleness. We’ll do all right.” They were laughing as I told Achoo to
maji
.

As we moved on the country widened out to show us farms and orchards. Lady Sabine and Farmer got into a discussion of apples, which my lady’s family was known for growing. Tunstall listened, mayhap for ideas for his tiny flowers. None of them took their eyes off of our surroundings. Anyone could be in the weeds, trees, or bushes, watching us or following.

As the others kept an eye open for trouble, I kept my hound in view. Achoo never wavered. The scent was plain.

A courier passed us by, riding south. Tunstall halted him and gave him our latest report to Lord Gershom, wrapped and sealed, with a gold coin to inspire the courier. Official messengers are made to sign all manner of vows, which meant they were safer than most when it came to their work. Also Tunstall, like me, writes everything in private Dog codes.

We met a goatherd with his flock and a carter with a load of chickens in crates. Further on we overtook huntsmen with braces of rabbits from their night’s traps. More and more houses lined the road, along with barns and outbuildings, some with walls built of wood or stone. Folk were much in evidence, hanging clothes to dry, spinning in the sun, hoeing, tending flocks, making butter. We could see herds everywhere, sheep, more goats, one of horses. There were small roads that led away from our road to local manors, perhaps, or villages.

On our second rest of the afternoon, Lady Sabine climbed a nearby hill to have a look at what lay ahead. “We’re coming up on a small river and village,” she said when she returned. “Queensgrace Castle is beyond.”

“If we’re lucky we’ll pass the castle by,” Tunstall said.

“I never depend on luck, my dear,” the lady said, rooting in one of her long packs. She produced what looked like a three-sectioned staff. She fitted the pieces one atop the other, twisting each until it clicked into place. The whole formed a staff of seven feet in length. From the same pack she brought out a banner and fixed it to the wood. It was her shield device, the green flame above the green hill on a field of black, with the green ring and the black ring to show she was a lady knight. It seemed as though someone had shot a couple of arrows through the banner. My lady looked it over, mumbling about wedging it in the stirrup.