He held out a bottle, which she took without thinking. She drank before she thought better of it, then realized what she was tasting. It was Master Franciscus’s apple ale, something he rarely gave to anyone who didn’t meet his approval. She didn’t suppose the mage had intimidated his way into possession of it. The alemaster was a man possessing not only admirable calm but a quartet of well-used knives continually residing in his boots and his belt. Perhaps gold had been exchanged, along with a sizeable number of compliments.
She had one last drink on the off chance it might be her last, then handed the bottle back. Her companion set the bottle on her side of the fire, rummaged about in his pack, then handed her a bundle of cloth. She realized almost immediately that what she was holding in her hands was a heavy cloak. She looked at him in surprise.
“What’s this?”
“What it looks like.” He rose. “I’ll go scout for a bit. You should sleep.”
She maintained a neutral expression with effort. Sleep? With him watching over her? Was he daft? The rumors that swirled about the man were terrible and endless—and that was saying quite a bit considering the general character of Shettlestoune’s inhabitants. She wouldn’t have been surprised to listen to him weave any number of dastardly spells over her and laugh whilst he did so.
Then again, the man had endured her fist under his jaw and offered not even so much as a peep of a spell as retribution.
“I appreciate the suggestion,” she managed, “but I don’t need to.”
He stood there for a moment or two, then shrugged, turned, and melted into the shadows of the trees.
She couldn’t hear him moving, though that said nothing.
She took her knife out of her belt and drove it into the hard ground before her. No sense in not being prepared. The fire flickered softly against the wooden handle, which was cheering and unsettling at the same time. A complete stranger—and a very dangerous one, at that—had done something for her comfort without asking anything in return.
Astonishing.
She could scarce wrap her mind around it, so she pushed aside the gratitude she felt for a man who could have killed her with nothing more than a word and concentrated on the plans she had decided on during her first night of flight. Once she had rested for a bit, she would continue on over the hill to Bruaih, seek out the mage there, then bribe him to see to Daniel for her. Even if she had to stay a bit in town and work to earn enough to pay the mage his fee, she would do it without complaint. And once the mage was hired and Daniel seen to, her responsibility to the world would be discharged, and she could seek out her own very ordinary, unremarkable future.
She steadfastly refused to think about how far out of reach that future had become.
She rubbed her eyes suddenly. She yawned for good measure, then forced herself to stand up and shake off her weariness. She found her skirt and pulled it down over her head again, keeping her knife free of the waistband. She paced for a moment or two, stroked Castân soft ears and had a remarkably equine-sounding snort as her reward, then returned to the fire where she soon found herself sitting. She plumped the feed bag next to her not because she was going to use it as a pillow anytime soon but because she wanted to make sure it was still there, empty save for Lord Higgleton’s coins. She perhaps should have sewn them into the hem of her apron. Her mother had done that with regularity, citing not only the security of having her gold close to her, but the added benefit of being able to take the apron off and use it as a weapon.
Her mother, Sarah could admit, had been a very resourceful woman, if not necessarily a nurturing one.
She looked briefly for the mage, but saw no sign of him. Perhaps he needed a bit of exercise to keep his creaking knees from giving way. She was still curious about why he’d followed her, but if there was one thing she had learned over the course of her five-and-twenty years of life, it was not to ask mages too many questions. Perhaps he was restless. Perhaps he always carried extra food and gear for potential guests at his fire. Perhaps she had gone too long without sleep and was now conjuring things up out of her imagination that couldn’t possibly find home in reality.
She sat for as long as she could, then found that she could no longer keep her eyes open. If she didn’t at least lean over and close her eyes briefly, she was going to either be ill or pitch forward senseless into the fire.
She laid her head down and closed her eyes.
Just for a moment.
She woke at some point during the night, or at least she thought she woke. She opened her eyes and saw the mage sitting cross-legged across the fire from her, holding his hands to the blaze. His stillness likely should have frightened her witless given that he was a mage and they were generally at their most dangerous when silently thinking deep, disturbing thoughts, but somehow the sight was surprisingly soothing.
“Why did you come?” she thought she might have said.
He was long in answering. “Duty.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” she said with a sigh.
At least she thought she’d said as much. She wasn’t as cold as she had been and that alarmed her until she realized she wasn’t warm because she was freezing to death, she was warm because she was covered in his cloak.
She sighed again, then fell back into dreaming.
The sound of a loud slap woke her.
She opened her eyes and looked up to find a creature from the blackest pit of her worst dreams standing over her. She looked at his gnarled hands reaching down toward her and realized suddenly that she was not dreaming. The creature flinched. Sarah noticed that where there had been only a single arrow shaft protruding from his chest, now there were the well-worn wooden handles of two terrible hunting knives. The creature straightened, plucked thoughtfully at the knives for a moment or two, then threw back his head and howled.
His complaints were interrupted by three more loud thuds. The three arrows joining the knives seemed only to irritate the monstrous troll more, not deter him. Before she could make any more sense of that than the monster seemed to be trying to, she was hauled up to her feet and pulled through the remains of the fire. She found herself standing behind the mage as he cast aside his bow and drew his sword.
She absently beat at the now-smoking hem of her skirt, but that seemed far less pressing than wondering if the monstrous troll who was fussing with the weapons sticking out of his chest would die of his wounds or manage to stumble around the fire and be about his unfinished business. Or at least she wondered that until she watched the mage make quick work of dispatching him with his sword. Why he hadn’t just felled the beast with a bit of magic, she couldn’t have said and she didn’t want to know. It was enough to watch the troll fall to the ground with a crash and not move again.
“Collect your gear,” the mage said without so much as a change in his breathing. “And your useless hound.”
Sarah admired his calm in the face of what seemed less a pleasant trip through ruffian-infested woods and now more of an involuntary stay in an unrelenting nightmare. She found she wasn’t nearly so nonchalant about it. She hastily smothered the final embers glowing on the edges of her skirt and his cloak, retrieved her knife that hadn’t served her one bloody bit, then snatched up her feed bag. She took a deep breath, then whistled very unsuccessfully for her hor—er, dog. Castân shuffled over, eyeing the fallen creature with suspicion and no small amount of alarm.
Sarah couldn’t have agreed more. She watched the mage stride around the fire and go to retrieve his weapons. He was almost too efficient at the task, which made her wonder how he’d become so. Perhaps he found something unsporting about taking game by magical means. Perhaps he hunted things for pleasure alone.
Perhaps she needed to find a safe place to land where she could lock the door and fall apart in peace.
She needed a decent bit of sleep, that was all. She nodded to herself at that as she watched the mage stomp out the remains of the fire and pick up his pack. He snatched up his bow and pulled i
t over his head and across his chest, then turned toward her.
“We’ll run.”
Sarah nodded. She had spent the whole of her life running to escape a variety of things, so the thought didn’t trouble her. She stumbled after the mage, leaving Castân to trot along behind her.
They ran for the rest of the night, walking only when she couldn’t run any longer. She suspected the mage, despite his advanced years, could have run all night without pause and still continued on far into the next day. She didn’t consider herself particularly weak, but she had to concede that after two days of flight and a terrifying awaking during the third night of her quest, she had finally reached her limit. Fortunately, at the very moment she opened her mouth to beg the man to stop, he slowed, then stopped and leaned over with his hands on his thighs.
She took the opportunity to fall to her knees in the snow and wheeze. She waited until the stars had stopped spinning in front of her eyes before she dug the heels of her hands into those eyes.
Hands were suddenly on her arms, dragging her to her feet. She hadn’t managed to gasp from the pain of her injured arm being touched before she found herself being jerked behind her companion and heard the sound of a sword sliding from its sheath. She opened her eyes in time to see something stumbling from the woods they had just left.
“Stop, if you have any sense,” the mage commanded.
The footsteps stopped immediately and a squeak was the only answer. Sarah peeked around his shoulder and found, to her surprise, that the beginnings of dawn revealed nothing more nefarious than Ned, looking very much worse for the wear. He looked at her in alarm, then drew himself up and brandished his own version of a hunting knife.
“Oy, you let her go,” he said, taking a firmer grip on his blade. “Don’t make me do something you’ll regret.”
The mage rested his sword point-down in the snow. “I wouldn’t dare.” He turned slightly. “Is he yours?”
Sarah nodded. “My mother’s farm boy, Ned.”
Ned leapt forward suddenly and pulled her over to stand next to him. He frowned, then put himself in front of her. Sarah would have smiled, but she was just too tired.
The mage resheathed his sword. Ned lowered his knife, which was likely a good thing considering how badly his hand was shaking. Sarah couldn’t blame him. The shadowy man standing five paces away was, she had to admit, terrifying. He didn’t look to be on the verge of casting any spells, however, so she wondered if she might manage a question or two. But first things first. She turned to Ned.
“I sent you home.”
“I went home, but me sire took me coins and tossed me into the barn to await the gypsies he’d sold me to.”
She could hardly believe it. Ned was another mouth to feed, true, but he was a hard worker. When he managed to remember what he’d been told to do, that was. And assuming he could manage the task. She sighed deeply. In truth, he was just short of helpless, though it wasn’t from a lack of intelligence or diligence. He was just a dreamy lad who would likely have been better suited to the life of an artist than a farmer.
It said something for his cleverness, though, that he had escaped his father’s clutches. Farmer Crodh’s barn was, rumor had it, an impenetrable fortress built for the express purpose of protecting his very rare and valuable milch cows from marauders who might want to liberate one or two of them and lead them astray. Nothing got free of that barn that Farmer Crodh hadn’t let out himself.
“I’m impressed,” Sarah said.
“There isn’t a place built I can’t escape,” Ned boasted. He hesitated, then looked at her. “It might be my only skill.”
Sarah didn’t want to agree, so she said nothing.
“You didn’t perchance bring anything to eat, did you?”
She shook her head. She wasn’t about to ask the mage for anything else. Ned would have to wait until Bruaih where she could buy breakfast for him. She glanced at her unwitting defender, then glanced at what was behind him.
And she caught her breath.
The sun had begun to rise, and she had the most remarkable view of farmland that was... lush. There wasn’t a clutch of sagebrush, or scrub oak, or stubby, spindly trees of other indeterminate make in sight.
She walked past her companions, feeling as if she’d opened her eyes for the first time. The mist that hung over the land in front of her, the beginnings of spring grasses, the rich earth of early ploughed fields ... It was enough to render her mute and still.
“Duck!”
She realized the mage wasn’t speaking to her only because when she turned around, he had his back to her. She watched as he pulled his knives free of their scabbard and flung them toward Ned.
Or over Ned, rather.
Her mouth fell open. It was one thing to see what she’d thought she’d seen the night before; it was another thing entirely to see a monster clearly in the growing light of dawn. The beast sported knife hafts in uncomfortable spots in his head, but still he fumbled for Ned, who was crouching in front of him, shrieking like a girl.
The mage drew his sword and heaved it. It found home in the troll’s chest and quivered there as the beast fell backward and landed with a crash. The mage walked past Ned, gave him a rather smart slap on the back of the head that, blessedly, silenced him, then retrieved his weapons and cleaned them. He resheathed them all, then squatted down by the creature and studied it for a moment. Sarah didn’t have the desire to get any closer to one of them than she had been already—twice.
“What an unpleasant-looking bugger,” Ned breathed after he’d scurried over to hide behind her, “and I was talking about the beastie.” He paused. “Though I could have been talking about the mage—”
“Ned!”
“But I’ve heard he’s terrible scarred, Mistress Sarah. And that he avoids magic for fear that if he uses any, he’ll undo the world.”
Sarah wasn’t one to give credence to tales told at the end of the evening down at the pub, but she couldn’t deny that while ancient the man might be and powerful he might be, in the light of day he was nothing short of frightening. Hooded, cloaked, bristling with all sorts of pointy things he obviously knew how to use very well. Perhaps that was why he kept his face covered. If his visage was as fierce as his reputation, it might just be too much for those he happened upon.
Daniel, for instance.
She was tempted anew to ask him if he’d changed his mind about aiding her or he’d merely decided on a bit of a journey for pleasure, but he straightened and turned toward her before she could. The picture he presented, along with what Ned had just told her about his magic, was intimidating in the extreme. If she’d been a more timid soul, she might have taken a step backward.
But if she did that, she knew she could never make that step up. Not that it mattered, perhaps, to anyone but her. After all, it wasn’t as if she had any intention of traveling much farther with the man facing her. Still, there was no sense in not at least presenting a picture of strength and confidence.
She stepped forward and folded her arms over her chest. It hid their shaking quite nicely, truth be told.
“I appreciate your aid in dispatching those ... things,” she began, “um ...”
“Ruith,” he supplied.
“Lord Ruith—”
“Nay,” he said mildly. “Just Ruith.”
“Very well, Ruith.I appreciate your aid last night and this morning. I’ll be happy to repay you for the bread and return your cloak—”
He shook his head. “There is no need.”
Sarah knew a good turn when she saw one and she wasn’t about to spurn it. Perhaps that was his way of apologizing for throwing her out of his house. She nodded, accepting his gift, then cleared her throat.
“I must carry on—”
“Aye, because her mother’s house fell down,” Ned interrupted.
Sarah elbowed Ned firmly in the ribs, then turned back to the mage, er, Ruith. “I must carry on with my quest.”
“Of co
urse,” he agreed. “I wouldn’t think anything else.”
She imagined he would—and had. “I’m going to Bruaih, for I need a mage to aid me in my particular bit of business.”
“Many kings have likewise auditioned their mages,” Ruith conceded, “so you are in good company.” He pulled his bow across his chest, then looked briefly over his shoulder. “I think we should be away quickly,” he said. “I’ll come with you to Bruaih, then wait for you to decide your course.”
She started to protest, then made the mistake of looking again at their very dead foe.
What if he wasn’t the last one of those sorts of lads?
She reconsidered her plan to leave the mage behind. The truth was, he was handy with a blade, even though he should have been leaning on a cane and waggling his fingers to subdue his enemies. But since he seemingly wasn’t, perhaps she would be a fool to refuse the companionship of his very sharp blades. Perhaps when the time came, she could simply put her foot down and remind him who was in charge. Perhaps she would hire instead the mage in Bruaih and have no need to remind him of anything at all.
“Very well, then,” she said carefully. “I thank you for your aid.”
He merely inclined his head. And waited.
An auspicious start, she supposed. She nodded briskly, then turned and wrapped Ruith of the mountain’s cloak more closely around the skirt she had stuck her head through. She marched on ahead, as if she were truly about some noble quest, and left her companions to follow. And she hoped she was going in the right direction.
She tried not to think about the fact that since she no longer had all her gold, the wizard of Bruaih might not be at all amenable to going off on a little explore. Or that since Daniel had all her gold in his greedy hands, he might have gone anywhere in the great, wide world, and she might not find him before he destroyed everything he could see. Or that her help included a horse masquerading as a dog, a lad whose only skill was escape, and an ancient mage who apparently preferred steel to spells and fought with the agility of a man a tenth his age. All led, of course, by she herself, who had no idea how she would ever manage the task laid before her.