The Hob's Bargain(21)

"Better to be safe than sorry," the harper said after a moment. "With the magic free, things could change, no knowing how quickly. Old Merewich and our lass here"  -  I assumed from the context that he was talking about me and not his horse - "sound pretty certain that it will be sooner rather than later."

Kith met the harper's eyes and said, "Yes, well, I've learned to trust... my instincts."

I saw something pass between the two men that left Kith cold-eyed and stone-faced while the sorrow on the harper's face remained unchanged. I wondered what it was that I had missed. There would be time to extract it from them after we set up camp.

Kith fussed around for a while before he let us dismount at the place he'd originally planned on, a flat, rockless stretch of ground not far from a stream but a little farther from the wooded area. I couldn't tell if it was the place where we'd camped the time we'd come here. If it wasn't, it was very similar.

He'd reluctantly decided it was better to keep an eye out than to try to find cover where we'd not be seen. Muttering something about being so leery that his mother's womb wouldn't feel safe to him for a day or so, he stomped into the trees to find wood for a fire.

We hadn't brought tents, but Wandel and I laid down oiled cloth before we put out the bedrolls, and each of us had another piece to lay on top of ourselves if the rain held by the gathering afternoon clouds fell.

Having laid out my own bedroll, I took Kith's off Torch's back. War-trained he might be, but he knew me well enough not to object to my fiddling - I'd helped train him. I patted his hip as I left.

Now, I thought, try it first while you have Wandel alone. If Kith decided not to talk about something, it was almost impossible to get it out of him. The harper, on the other hand, liked to talk. "Why does Kith's woodsmanship cause you to exchange sorrowful glances?"

He looked up from digging the fire pit and waggled his eyebrows at me. "Ask Kith. It's his story, not mine. I'd not last long as a bard if I were to tell other people's secrets to anyone who thought to ask, now would I?"


"Ha," I said. "You'd tell the world what your best friend wore to sleep if you thought it made a good enough story."

"Tell her," said Kith flatly.

I started, not having heard him come back. He dropped a large pile of wood an arm's length from the fire pit and unfolded one of the smaller oilskins with a snap. He tucked it carefully around the pile.

He was all I had left of my brother... of my family, really, though we were not blood kin (at least not close kin). I wouldn't have hurt him for the world. This had all started as mere curiosity. As I looked at Kith, I realized that this was not a little secret, and Kith was already hurt by it.

I turned back to Wandel. "Tell me."

"After we finish camp," he said.

I took the dirt Wandel removed from the fire pit and mounded it in a circle around the pit, a further barrier against the flames spreading to the surrounding grass.

Wandel stacked the grass-sod he'd cut and set it near the pile of wood. When we left in the morning, we'd shovel the dirt back in the hole and cover it with the sod - after a season the place would look as if we'd never been there. Kith unsaddled the horses, hobbled them, and let them free to graze.

I washed the dirt from my hands at the stream. By the time I returned, the men were seated at the edge of the fire pit. Wandel struck flint to steel a few times, setting the small pile of tinder alight. Then he fanned and fed the growing flames. When at last the fire blazed merrily, the harper took up his harp and sat cross-legged on the end of his blankets.

He fingered the strings lightly, then set the harp aside, politely waiting for his audience to settle itself. I sat rather gingerly at the end of my bedroll. Duck was too wide in the barrel to be an easy mount. Once Kith, too, was sitting on his bed for the night, the harper began.

"Lord Moresh inherited his bloodmage from his uncle, his mother's brother. Moresh's uncle was the king's high marshal before the king had him beheaded for unnamed crimes. He stood off the whole of the king's army at a crofter's hut with nothing but fifteen bodyguards - bodyguards that his bloodmage had created for him. They all died there, along with fourscore of the king's men. If he could have, the king would have killed the bloodmage as well, but without a specified charge against the marshal he could not nullify his will. Jealousy is not a charge that can be lodged in the court, so the bloodmage went to Moresh"  -  Wandel looked at Kith - "where he continued to make warriors for Moresh's use."

"Never too many, you understand, because the king limited the number he allowed Moresh, not wanting Moresh to gain too much power. The berserkers are scouts and Moresh's personal guard. One of the old marshal's men told me they can track like a hound and hear a bee sneeze in the next room. They fight as the old legends say berserkers did, not bleeding from their wounds until after the battle is over. Those who are maimed or sorely wounded are killed." He looked at Kith. "Since Moresh can have only a few of them, he wants them whole."

Kith laughed without amusement. "Moresh owed my father a life." He looked at me. "Remember, it was my father who found our lord's heir when the boy got lost in the fog. So he sent me home last fall. Before the war turned so bloody, Moresh planned on being here for spring planting. Three months, he said, a fair payment for his son."