The Sleeping King (23 page)

A tall woman with brown hair came out of the back room and introduced herself as Sister Denia. Rosana burst out, “Have any spirits come here in the past day looking for a field resurrection?”

The healer frowned. “Not in the past day. We had a farmer come in three days ago. Died of an ague. Resurrected successfully and went on his way back home.”

“Nobody from Hickory Hollow?” Will demanded. “Nobody at all?”

“No. Has something happened out that way?” Denia asked.

Rosana answered before he could, “A Heart caravan was attacked on the Ring Road by orcs. Brother Angelo was killed. Both our guards were killed, too. The orcs left me for dead.”

“Orcs?” Denia exclaimed. “They have not been active since the insurrection—what, fifteen years or more ago? The notion of an orc attack is absurd. And no, no Heart members have come in. Like I said. Just the farmer.”

Rosana bristled. “It's not absurd. I saw the orcs with my own eyes.”

“Well then. I suppose we must send word of this to Dupree right away. Oh, dear. I haven't the spare personnel, not to mention guards, right now to send a messenger. The brothers and guardians are out collecting donations so we can produce a batch of potions…,” the woman trailed off muttering to herself.

Rosana spoke up quickly. “We will take the news to the Heart in Dupree for you. Will, here, can be my guard.”

Denia gave him an assessing look. “Can you fight?”

Startled, he replied, “I guess so. But—” But he was no professional soldier, and he certainly could not defend Rosana against another orc attack.

Rosana, predictably, cut him off before he could say all of that. “I cannot touch him with my blade when we spar, and I am an accomplished sword fighter.”

No, she wasn't
. He opened his mouth to say so, but the toe of her boot whipped out and connected sharply with his shin. Her long skirt mostly covered the blow from view, however.

He swallowed a yelp as Denia nodded. “Well then, that's settled. You two shall take word of this attack to Dupree. There is stew in the kitchen. I just made a fresh batch. Let me go into the office and write a note.…” She left the common room, muttering to herself about the contents of the letter.

“What was that for?” he complained, rubbing his shin.

“You need go to Dupree to see if your family and friends resurrected there, yes?”

“Well, yes.”

“This way you can travel under a Heart writ, and maybe, just maybe, arrive in one piece.”

Ahh. Clever, that.

“Stay here. I'm going to go insist that the
Kaer
pay for your service. Then you and I will collect food and water skins and leave for Dupree.”

She left the common room, and he headed for the kitchen and a bowl of stew to ease his growling belly. By the time Rosana and the adept returned to the common room, he had filled both his pack and Rosana's with supplies for their journey from the cupboards in the kitchen.

While Rosana gulped down a bowl of stew and a hunk of bread, Denia instructed, “Head for the dock down by the river. That letter will gain you quick passage to Dupree. Look for a barge named the
Tough Knut
. The captain's a friend of the Heart, a Kelnor called Rhone Ironknot. By river is the quickest route from here to the capital. I counted out enough silver for your passages. Save the rest for food and lodging.”

Rosana nodded and patted her belt, where a small leather pouch hung at her waist. Will recognized the chink of coins as it moved. He waited until they had been let out of the magic ward around the Heart building to mutter, “You should tuck that inside your skirt. Cutpurses will spot yon pouch a mile away.”

Rosana's right hand moved in a blur and of a sudden something exceedingly sharp pricked at his ribs. “A cutpurse will find himself gutted fast if he tries for my purse,”

He took a careful step backward, away from her dagger.

She murmured, “Have you never heard it is bad for one's health to attempt to separate a gypsy from his gold?”

“I have not, but I see the wisdom in the words,” he replied a bit grumpily. He rubbed the sore spot where her blade had poked him and headed for the town's postern gate and the docks beyond. She might be easy on the eye, but the gypsy was as prickly as a thornwood tree.

They spotted a big, vaguely military-looking barge near the end of the dock. It was worn, but looked relatively water worthy.

Rhone Ironknot was typical of the Kelnor dwarves found throughout the colony's hills; his long beard was twined with beads and this morn's breakfast. He waved off the letter Rosana held out to him and smiled widely at the pretty gypsy. “Yes, yes, welcome aboard, Healer. You, too, lad. You look like you could pull your weight in a pinch. Forest bred, are ye?”

Will was startled. “How did you know?”

“Yon dagger, of course. Style's straight out of the Wylde Wood. West end of the wood if me eyes don' mistake me. Been seein' those leather-wrapped grips a few years on, now. Like to meet me the bloke makin' them blades. Lay odds, I would, 'e's soldier trained. Them blades got fine balance fer a fightin' hand.”

A lifetime of his father's paranoia stilled Will's tongue against announcing that his own father had made the blades. Particularly in light of the recent revelations regarding Ty and his hidden past.

Rosana leaped across the gap between the dock and barge as lightly as a fawn. Will made the jump a fair sight less gracefully. The vessel dipped a little under his weight and his stomach gave a heave as he stumbled in search of his balance.

Wondering if he would regret his decision to travel with her, he followed Rosana aft on the roomy barge. They waited for an hour while the kelnor and his men finished loading barrels onto the vessel. Then Ironknot shouted at them to find a perch and stay out of the way of the pole men.

Will and Rosana settled atop short casks marked with crudely painted nails as dockhands cast off and threw the heavy lines over to their craft. The barge crawled away from the dock at first. But then the current caught its blunt prow and swung it downstream. Choppy, open water in the middle of the river sent them nodding and bobbing like a pheasant on the hunt for a mate.

Will groaned as the queasy sensation intensified in his gut, and Rosana laughed without a shred of pity. “Landlubber!”

He scowled at her balefully. He was already regretting his choice of traveling companion. Deeply.

 

CHAPTER

11

Raina spent the next day helping Mag with the chores, collecting and drying medicinal herbs and teaching Mag their uses. And, to everyone's vast delight, Raina gathered cooking herbs and showed Mag how to make her stews savory and tasty. For her part, Mag showed Raina that pregnant women were by no means helpless creatures. Far from it. Although Mag tired easily and her back ached, she was still capable of plenty of vigorous activity and, in fact, seemed the healthier for it.

Raina had grown up assuming that, because they lived so close to the land, the spirits of the common peasants would somehow be strengthened by the link. But, she was surprised to discover that the exact opposite was apparently the case. It was not the land that drained them, but rather their families. It was as if a piece of both Arv's and Mag's spirits had left them and entered each of their surviving children. Raina wondered in between lifting, carrying, cooking, and cleaning if this phenomenon explained why common people so often failed to resurrect.

As interesting and exhausting as sampling the life of peasants was, Raina's thoughts were mostly elsewhere. Her initial fury had dimmed, leaving behind a vague sense of guilt. Her mother's rage at being disobeyed aside, Charlotte must be worried sick about her. And Raina had no doubt her father was furious. He was an intelligent man, and based on her comments to him just before Kadir had shown up at the barn, he would figure out that he'd been tricked by Charlotte and the mages. Her mother would have some explaining to do, and Raina wasn't the least bit sympathetic. Her mother deserved to answer for her actions.

Raina only felt bad that her father would be hurt and angry at being deceived. He would blame himself for her flight as well. He was responsible for the security of the castle and all those within it. Knowing his rigid knight's sense of honor, she realized he would deem himself to have failed her. And Justin, so much like her father in temperament, would react the exact same way.

Ahh, Justin.
The mere thought of him was enough to bring tears to her eyes. They had been inseparable for nearly their entire lives. Although their duties had pulled them more apart in recent years, she'd always known he was close by, always ready to take care of her, to make her laugh or make her hurts go away. Being away from him like this felt as if part of her had been torn out, leaving a gaping wound that would not heal. When the fire had burned low and Mag, Arv, and the children lay snoring in their blankets, she had allowed herself to cry for him, sobbing silently into the crook of her elbow.

He would be distraught that he hadn't taken her seriously when she came to him for help. He would kick himself for not following her, for not stopping her from running away or at least making her take him with her. Reluctantly, she admitted to herself that maybe a tiny part of her feelings of anger and betrayal was aimed at him for those very reasons.

She tried through the next day to make suggestions here and there to ease her hosts' lot—a clever way to rig the well with pulleys to make hauling up buckets of water easier, a simple bellows to help start and stoke fires, hinging the hook in the side of the fireplace to swing heavy kettles of hot stew or boiling water more safely off the fire.

When he wasn't out hunting and bringing back a brace of rabbits or quail for supper, Cicero spent his time building furniture for the family. A real table and benches to go with it, and a clever rocking chair made of willow branches he soaked in water, bent into place, and then lashed into shape.

Raina figured out how much magic it took to heal a goat versus a cow, and how much to mend a child's cut finger. And she gained a deep respect for the dogged determination of these common people to simply survive. She'd had no idea how truly privileged a life she'd led before.

Grit lodged under her fingernails, she braided her hair to keep its greasy locks out of her sunburned face, and her white dress had faded to dull gray with ground-in dust and sweat. She was going to dream this night of a hot bath in a real bathtub.

But she got no chance. Only a few minutes after the household had settled down for the night, Cicero's low, charged voice came out of the hovel's darkness. “Someone approaches.”

In the glow of the banked fire, Raina spied him gliding to the door, sword in hand. Arv joined him in a moment carrying a wicked-looking axe.

“Douse the fire,” Cicero ordered.

Raina was the closest adult to the fireplace and she jumped up with alacrity to throw the bucket of water on the embers. A great, hissing cloud of steam rose up.

Mag gathered the children in a huddle in the corner and shushed their frightened whispers.

“They draw near,” Cicero reported under his breath. “Ready yourself, Arv.”

In the expectant silence, Raina finally heard what had alarmed her companion. Stomping feet, jingling armor, and the confident rattle of weapons. Lots of them. It sounded like a large party jogging in formation. A rhythmic grunting accompanied the pounding footsteps. “Huh … huh … huh … huh.”

Those are not humans incoming
. Covering her hands with her cloak, she drew magical energy to herself. She only knew healing spells, but she could keep Cicero and Arv alive in the doorway for a while, mayhap. She'd heard her father refer to the usefulness of backpack healers in combat before. A vague plan of standing at Cicero's and Arv's backs with a hand on each of them and pumping healing into them as they fought took shape in her head.

She crept in the blackness from her place by the fire over to join the men. She mostly felt Cicero's nod of acceptance of her unspoken offer to help.

The attackers were coming from the south moving fast to the north. It sounded as if they had just topped the rise a hundred yards or so beyond the hut. Not following a road then, but rather traveling like an arrow over whatever terrain presented itself.

“Huh … Huh … Huh … Huh.” The grunts grew distinct enough she could almost smell the fetid heat coming out of inhuman throats.

“Orcs,” Arv breathed.

Cicero spared the crofter a momentary, appalled stare and then went back to concentrating fiercely on the door and what his ears were telling him. “At least twenty of them,” he whispered.

“Huh. Huh. Huh. Huh.”

The sound became almost painful it was so loud and close. Cicero and Arv braced themselves for the assault, and in her terror Raina drew massive magical energy to herself, more than she'd ever pulled before. Much more. She even registered pulling spiritual energy to herself from each of the people in the hut, now.

“Huh … Huh … Huh … Huh.” The grunts were not quite as loud as they had been a moment ago.

“Huh … huh … huh … huh.” The orcs were definitely drawing away from the hut.

Arv and Cicero traded perplexed looks. Cicero murmured, “Do orcs often pass by crofters' huts without attacking?”

“Not as I've ever 'eard.”

“Unbar the door. Let me out,” Cicero bit out.

Arv wrestled the heavy bar from its iron sockets on either side of the door. Before the hefty oak had barely cleared the holders, Cicero had slipped outside and, as quiet and insubstantial as a shadow, disappeared into the night after the retreating orcs.

Raina helped Arv re-bar the door, and the family went to bed once more. This night they would risk no fire and sleep in a cold hut. She stretched out under Moto's cloak on a straw mat on the floor like everyone else. It made her hip bones and shoulders ache, but she didn't complain. These people had a hard life and teetered perpetually on the ragged edge of starvation or death. That reality was more starkly clear than ever to Raina after their near miss with the orcs. Sleep was slow in coming, and when she dreamed it was not of baths but of bloody battles.