If Crows Know Best (Mage of Merced Book 1) Page 7

  I prepared to set out early with Wieser and the crow, with my walking staff now decorated with a shed black feather from my winged lookout.

  “Your bird needs a name,” Morie informed me.

  I drank the last mouthful of my morning tisane, blessedly still hot. “Maybe you’d like to pick his name. You did fine with Murr and Iggle. They like their names. Wieser, too.”

  Morie gave the crow an assessing look, returned in kind. “His name is Gargle,” she pronounced.

  When I snorted, she said, “It’s that noise he makes. Murr says “murr” when I pet him.”

  “What does Iggle say?” I teased, but Gargle seemed to suit the bird. He came when called by name, though not to put too fine a point on it, he had made a habit of accompanying me anyway on my forays. I did like a name better than calling him “the crow.”

  Gargle, Wieser and I took our leave, and I realized as I walked into the misty morning that both my animal aids were solid black. Although, I had never been one to believe in omens, as a rule.

  The woods were full of the usual bird calls and squirrel chatter, and it struck me then that the forest where we holed up in our cave had been unnaturally quiet since our arrival. I would have to talk to Annora about it when I returned.

  I became more cautious as I drew close to the pass overlook, though I neither heard nor saw any person, on foot or mounted. When I peered over the edge, keeping my head in shadow to avoid being backlit, I seized Wieser’s ruff in shock—below us lay earth churned and pocked by countless hooves. When had so many mounted troops passed? Had they swept through on their way to the village and to Bale Harbour? Or were they now encamped in our orchard? Wagons could not have negotiated the steep pass, only pack trains could have done. Plenty of supplies and men could be reflected in the ravaged dirt, certainly.

  Where are all those horses and their riders now?

  “Gargle, can you fly where I tell you, to look for soldiers? You’d be less likely to get shot at than Wieser, I think.” He turned his head to look at me with one beady eye. “How would you tell me where you found them, though? There’s that to surmount. I’d go look myself—” He leapt and pecked my foot. “That even hurts through the boot, you know.” I rubbed the spot. “What am I going to do if I find them, anyway? Better we get back safely to the cave and lay low. The food’s replenished. We can hold out there.” I grasped my stick, and had at least the presence of mind not to stand up in plain view on the ridge. I kept low to hitch back into the cover of boughs behind me, and thus lay out of sight when I heard a voice a scant few trees over say, “I swear I heard someone talking just now,” in Keltanese.

  Gods, was that what the peck had been for? And Wieser, just as frozen as I, had given me no signal of a man nearby. Or, I had not looked at her as I chatted about the pass. Out loud. To animals. I gritted my teeth and called myself every kind of fool, though silently now.

  Gargle commenced his gurgling, muttering sound and flapped toward the voice. And scald me if he didn’t sound sort of like a person, at least enough that a second voice said, “There’s your talker, I think.” I heard Gargle shake his feathers and click his beak, then mount to the sky, cawing raucously.

  The first voice laughed and said, “Maybe it’s one of the mages transformed. I heard they can change into beasts and go about. I wish they would go back where they came from. In truth, they make me feel queer whenever they’re close by. As if someone’s at my shoulder, but never there when I turn to look.”

  “Ah, you’re queer enough, whether mages are nearby or not,” said the other. “Come, back on the loop.”

  I heard fading sounds of them departing the cliff.

  I lay in the cool boughs and blessed Gargle, and all the gods in turn, and Wieser for not barking, and my da for making me learn Keltanese. Time passed, my heart began to slow and my guts to untwist. It was a long while before I could move, though. Wieser lay beside me, while Gargle returned to perch above us, and devour a weasel carcass he brought back with him. If he’d have wanted, I’d have cooked it for him.

  CHAPTER 11

  “Some number of enemy troops have come through the pass,” I said as soon as I entered our cave. “I heard two on patrol but saw no one else on my way back.”

  Annora looked up from combing Morie’s hair. “You heard them?”

  “Talking. Near the pass.” And they heard me too, though Gargle saved me, and I’m not telling you about that. “They were certainly from Keltane, so our only option is to stay secreted here, and wait out whatever is coming.”

  “Oh, I’d give a lot to know if our troops were on the way to meet them!” said Virda.

  “It doesn’t matter to us now whether Keltane takes the harbour or is forced back over the border. Our only need is to keep out of the way and avoid any kind of soldier.”

  “You couldn’t tell how many came through?” Annora asked.

  “I wouldn’t know how to tell—the ground was badly torn up from many horses passing, but how many? I’d only be guessing.”

  “If we only had a way to get word to Fieldmaster Behring or his fellows—”

  “Annora, are you mad? What we want to do is keep out of it.” I gaped at her, amazed at her sudden flight of wit.

  “He certainly seemed in need of information when he stopped by us.”

  “I’ll not argue that, but he hardly needs vague information from refugees in hiding, does he? How would we find him, anyway? He was off to hunt for Da, probably bound for parts west when he left us.”

  “Any of our troops, then. He said some thought this pass would be the enemy route. Should we not confirm that they’ve come?”

  “No! Any message would have to go down the mountain through the enemy troops, don’t you see? Our troops will find out soon enough, when they trip over them.”

  She sat staring toward the cave entrance. “What if I could have a message carried out to them? Putting none of us at risk?”

  “Not Wieser, or Gargle, either.”

  “No, I was thinking of a little hawk that’s been coming every day. She might carry, but where to send her?”

  “Strap a note to her leg and send her to the biggest gossip in the village,” I suggested, mocking her gravity.

  “You said Virda was the biggest gossip,” Morie said.

  “I never, and Virda doesn’t live in the village, and furthermore, I was not serious!” Could I feel more put upon—burdened as I was with keeping the lot of them from being killed? Wasn’t that enough to be getting on with, or did I have to run the Mercedian defense as well?

  I threw up my hands. “Do whatever you can manage without bringing harm to any here. I have my own duty to carry out. If you see this as your duty, then you do it without involving me.”

  I watched with lingering aggravation as Annora and Virda sat close to the lantern and composed a message they wrote on a scrap of paper. This scrap they rolled tightly and secured with a thin length of leather, leaving the ends free. Presumably this would be tied to the hawk’s leg, pursuant to my joke proposal of delivery method. Where would Annora direct the bird to deliver it, though? I had given up wondering how she would direct it. I did note her sorting through her leather pouch of herbs, and taking a sprig she found there to crush into a paste with some dried meat. This she patted into a small ball with the addition of flour and water, and laid to dry by the tiny fire we dared. Murr had to be shooed away from it, as well as Gargle. Annora guarded it vigilantly until it dried enough for her to wrap in a piece of cloth.

  I woke to see her release the messenger hawk in the dawn light. I could not keep myself from asking where she had sent it.

  “To the chapel apostate in Bale Harbour. I fed the bird a bit of the holly I picked there on my wedding day, and saved for luck. The apostate may think she is a messenger from the gods, and so look close enough to see the note. I hope.”

  It made as much sense as anything else that was happening. Although I thought the lisping apostate was more likely to hide in the
chapel cellar than go out and look for soldiers and deliver our message, none of us had been put at risk in sending it. “I hope so, as well. I’m sorry you had to sacrifice your memento. Perhaps good will come of it.”

  She rewarded me with a smile so bright, I had to look away. I felt the worse for having shouted at her the night before.

  ###

  We kept to the cave, and smelled smoke on the wind every day for three days. I had dream visions of burned fields and a smoking rubble that had been my home, waking at night sweating in the chill air. I would have tried to send Gargle to ride the air above our place to reconnoiter, but how would he communicate what he saw? If I had been a mage, maybe I could have flown with him by magic, and seen through his eyes. Virda said she had been told they could do such things across the sea. I envied the foreigners’ power, because I felt powerless and small. I wished for someone else to be the boss of our party, or for Da to stride in and say, “Well done, Judian. I’ll take us all home now.”

  As that didn’t happen, I kept on directing the portioning of food, the use of boughs to blur our footprints stream-side, and all the other details to keep us from attracting notice. I consoled myself that at least it seemed to be working. Whatever was happening farther down the mountain, we saw no one, and no one found us.

  On the fourth day after Annora’s messenger flew, we woke to heavy snow all about our haven. It came to Wieser’s belly, and she had to bound through the drifts. Murr had never seen snow, and shook each paw as he lifted it from the cold wet. He was still light enough that he did not sink into the depths, but ventured only far enough to do his business and then scampered back into the cave and licked his feet with a passion. The snow had washed the smoke scent from the air, and the clear sharp breeze made me feel fresh despite the dismal filthy state of my clothes. Soon the enemy will find us by our reek, I thought.

  Virda set about filling any kind of container we could spare with snow, to let it melt in the cave. This to supplement the jugs I filled so cautiously in dark of night at the spring.

  Morie was yawning and putting on her cloak for a trip to the bushes with Annora. “I need my boots,” she complained, as the boots she wore in the farmyard had not been brought along.

  “I’ll carry you, if you like,” I said from where I stood in the entrance.

  “You are not allowed to come with. You’re a boy!”

  I laughed to see her instantly scandalized, fists on her small hips. “As if I haven’t taken you to the bushes a thousand and more times.”

  “We didn’t have enough girls, then, and now we do.”

  “Yah, I think now we have girls aplenty.”

  “Judian,” Annora said at my shoulder, “how long before you think we can return to the house? Food is running low again, even with the hares that Wieser brings.”

  I turned to her, frowning. “Better if I go see what I can scare up, while the rest of you stay here. It’s possible the war has passed us by, yet equally possible we’re still on the fringe of it raging. How to know?”

  “Oh, I understand you think it all through. I just don’t know if I can face another day of you gone and no way of knowing what’s happening to you. If you didn’t come back … it would be too awful to bear.” Though she spoke softly, I didn’t want Morie to hear, and shushed her.

  “Wieser and I can travel silent and quick, and Gargle keeps watch above. I can’t think how to make it safer, except if I could be invisible or turned into an animal like the mages.” She looked so worried, brows drawn down over green eyes. “At need, I’ll call wild boars to eat some soldiers,” I said with a grin, and was gifted with her smile. Morie trundled up in her bundle of cloak and scarf, and held up her arms. Annora, still smiling, bent to gather Morie up and carry her to the brush.

  “Never think of setting out before we get back,” she called over her shoulder, but still quietly, as we took no chances of being overheard. Sound carries in the mountains, even though it’s difficult to tell where a noise comes from, distorted as by fog. Wils had taught me that, as we played at hiding and finding one another among the tallest trees. Where is he now, I wondered. Is he coming home to his bride?

  CHAPTER 12

  In the end, I went no further than the middle cave, where I gathered everything remaining and carried it up the mountain. We could not go there to stay without restocking. I replenished the offering to the kavsprit, though, so they would look favorably on us if necessity drove our party there.

  More snow fell that night, as if once the sky opened itself to winter, all the snow that had been like a held breath tumbled down to smother the world. It could be deep enough now to keep more troops from crossing the border through the pass. I wished I knew how to magic an avalanche, to seal the border for certain sure.

  Virda’s cough came on during the night, and by the next morning she turned clammy and shaking. Annora cocooned her by the measly fire I allowed, and fed her hot broth. Her fever rose high that night, and we tucked Wieser up with Morie while Annora and I took it in turns to sit beside Virda and try to get her to drink. She sipped gamely, and slept in snatches. As Virda snored softly in the early hours after midnight, Annora came and sat beside me. “Judian, we must take her down. Living out in the weather like this, she’ll only get worse.”

  “There’s no more you can do for her here?”

  “She must have a warm fire and dry bed. More substantial food, and I know you’ve done your best. We just must go back home.”

  I could not argue. I could not see Virda as a price to be paid for my peace of mind. “If she can walk down in the morning, we’ll all go to the first cave. I’ll scout the farm, and come back to bring her the rest of the way if all is clear.”

  Annora rose and began to pack up what we would carry along. When next she spelled me at Virda’s side, I replaced our remaining stores into their rock crevices at the high back of the cave. I did not neglect the kavsprit, and discovered when I placed the offering that the cave creatures had left one for us, as well. A gleaming shard of obsidian, sharper than any man-forged blade. A considerable boon, for the black stone was a rare thing in our land, and valuable. I doubled what I left for them, and thanked them aloud. I might have heard whispery high voices like wind in dry leaves, or I might have only fancied I did. I wrapped the obsidian in my leather glove, and packed it carefully in my gear.

  Virda walked slowly next morning, leaning heavily on my staff at first, and then on my shoulders as we neared the lowest cave. Her cough sounded deep in her chest and her breath came in wheezy gasps. I charged Annora with wiping out the footprints we left as we moved through the snow. And Morie—who for a change had seen fit not to complain of how much she had to carry while Annora worked and I helped Virda—led her from the entrance to lie down within. The floor was drier than the cave we had left, since no one had been tracking in snow for days. Wieser and I set out with Gargle, to make a cautious roundabout off the regular path.

  The thick snow obscured any evidence of horses and men who might have passed prior to its fall. The icy edge of the stream bore only deer tracks and bear paw prints next to the black water. Swollen clouds piled overhead, leaden gray; more snow in the offing. I walked slowly, having to bough-sweep my footprints away as I went, so no one could follow my tracks back to the cave. I had left my gear there with the women, but taken Da’s sword with me, though unwieldy. I was no swordsman, but better than Annora, surely. They’d be more likely to have a sword used against them than to defend themselves successfully with it, so I told myself as I snuck through the pines. When I paused below the last ridge, which I must climb to get a view of the road and the farm, I recalled discovering the fieldmaster and his men on that very stretch of road what seemed like an age ago.

  I crouched at the base of a wide trunk to catch my breath before starting up the rise. The wind stirred the branches above, and with a whumph snow buried me utterly. I sputtered as I fought my way to the surface, to hear Gargle cackling above me, bouncing on a branch. I ha
d learned my lesson previously, and made no remark aloud, but did offer a rude gesture in his direction. Crows always think they know best, indeed!

  I started to brush off, then thought better of it. A snow-covered figure in a gray cloak was less likely to be noted by any observer. Still, Gargle, I could have preferred less ice water down the back of my neck. I tossed some snow over Wieser’s black coat, which she tolerated with better grace than I might have. We climbed the slope.

  The road stretched past, an undisrupted expanse of white. No mud or wagon tracks marred its surface. I back tracked below the top of the ridge and moved to where I could overlook the house and barn.

  Snow covered the yard and orchard, pristine. But jutting up from the pure white, the charred beams of our barn leaned and tilted awkwardly where they weren’t collapsed altogether. I caught the scent of the wet burnt wood. The stones of the house still stood, the back garden and stoop covered in snow but without evidence of fire that I could see from where I cautiously peered from the trees. The house still bore its roof, the washhouse stood as before. But the chicken coop lay broken and scattered. The goat pen? I could see nothing but snow where it should be. Though I crouched a ways away, I could see no sign of folk about, no tracks in the snow leading to the pump, no smoke from the chimney, no footprints by the woodpile.

  “It could be worse,” I whispered to Wieser. Maybe it was worse under the snow. I decided I would bring Virda down, even so. When I turned to withdraw down the ridge, I came face to face with Dink, and only barely kept from shouting. He snuffled at me, looking with his liquid brown eyes. Hooves muffled by the snow, he had made no sound coming behind me. I sent a look Wieser’s way. “Just a shove with your nose would let me know something was up.” She wagged her tail at me, and touched noses with Dink. I sighed, and supposed Dink was no stranger to Wieser to trigger an alarm.