The Hob's Bargain(53)

Merewich wiggled his eyebrows. "I wouldn't have put it so bluntly myself, sir, but I suppose you've the right of it."

Caefawn nodded. "Well, then, I think I have a bargain for you." He flexed his hands on his thighs. "As I have demonstrated, I can help you with the bandits. I know a fair bit more than you about the returning wildlings." He smiled briefly, at some secret thought. "I can even help with the harvest. If I do these things, I require a gift in return."

"What is that?" asked Merewich.

The hob's face didn't change, but I heard a hint of bitterness in his tone. As if he liked what he was going to say even less than he expected them to. "The sacrifice of one of your women of childbearing years."

Dead silence fell.

Shock held me still. Clearly I remembered our conversation about the villagers - and about eating things. I wondered if he had been sounding me out for the position of sacrifice. Just how much did I owe these people? Gram would have said everything. I owed them because I was born as I was, with the power to see what could happen. I didn't need the sight to tell me this was the village's best chance for survival. Without the sacrifice the hob asked for, the village would die: I'd seen that last night in Koret's eyes.

"A sacrifice we cannot make," said Merewich finally. "Our village would never survive it. Our priest could never sanction it. The changes we've faced are already driving many of us to extremes, pulling the village apart. My own wife does nothing anymore except rock in her chair and stare at the wall. If I allowed this, the village would destroy itself before winter or raider could do so."

"Not if I'm the one you sacrifice," I said. Stupid, I thought, to die for the people who want you dead. Stupid woman. But if the villagers' dislike of me would aid their survival now, I was willing. "Few would regard my death as - "

"Death?" hissed the hob in surprise, ears flaring wide with a rattle of beads as he turned to look at me.

I looked from his dumbfounded face to Merewich's shocked countenance. I sat down where I was and began to laugh, though there was little enough humor in it. I don't know why I hadn't figured it out. He'd said he was the last one, the last of the mountain's children - and she, the mountain, was insisting he do something about it. He felt like a sacrifice to her cause, and so he asked us for another. "I take it you don't mean to burn me or cut out my heart as a tribute to the mountain?"

The hob bounced to his feet and sputtered.

Koret nodded his head gravely, though a dimple showed through his beard if you knew where to look for it. "I knew a man who traded from one island to the next. Spoke ten or twelve languages fluently. Managed to buy a pig when he thought he was bargaining for timber. Last I saw him, that pig was nigh on to a hundredweight and running his ship."

"Of childbearing years," said Cantier. "Looking for a wife."

"I could agree to a wife," said Merewich thoughtfully.

The hob sank back to his former seat and buried his face briefly in his hands. His shoulders shook. When he raised his head he said, eyes bright with merriment, "I see I have brought a moment of great import down to mere farce. I'm lucky I didn't end up with a hundred-pound pig. Well, enough. Time to make the bargain more clear."

He paused, and I sensed there was magic being wrought. "One year from today we will meet again. If you all agree I have helped the village survive, you will present me with a woman of childbearing years to wife. Think on it long and hard, gentlemen, before you agree. Death might seem worse, but mating with a creature outside of your race is no light thing."

"I agree," replied Merewich. "But something of this import requires the consent of us all. Koret?"

"Agreed."

Only Cantier, the wily old fisherman, shook his head. "Nay, can't see it, myself. Not without knowing who it is that will agree to wed him. My father always said never agree to a bargain that doesn't have the particulars worked out." He looked at me while he spoke.

I couldn't decline, not after having agreed to death. It would certainly be an insult if I did. The same reasons that made me an ideal candidate for death applied for marriage as well.

"I'll do it," I said. It was my doing that had brought us to this point, after all. I had found the hob and enlisted his aid. How I felt didn't matter.

"Willingly?" prodded Cantier.

I looked at Caefawn, who looked back at me. "Don't push it," I said. Caefawn grinned, his fangs gleaming in the bright sunlight.

"All right, then," said Cantier sourly. "I agree."

As he spoke, something happened. We all felt it.

"The bargain is struck." The hob sounded as enthusiastic as I felt: that is, of course, not at all.


EIGHT

Three days later, I woke up in the attic of the unoccupied house I'd been sleeping in since Kith told me to move camp until things in town quieted down. I think he believed I had moved farther away, but the deserted house on the east side of town suited me just fine. It had been deemed unfit to live in, but it worked for me.

I'd been dreaming of red-eyed demons chasing me through a forest. The reason the demons bore a striking resemblance to the hob was obvious, even to someone who was not a priest trained in dream interpretation. However, I could find no reason for the hob to be lying at my feet.