The Hob's Bargain(62)

"I could have stopped you," Caefawn said. "Now, while you're just learning." Could have killed me, I thought.

"You didn't have to," I replied, getting to my feet like an old woman.

Stiff and sore, as though I'd been fighting rather than sitting in a garden, I tottered forward and kissed the hob's cheek. The surface was smoother than the skin my imagination had endowed him with. It was a relief to know I wouldn't have survived to do the things the ghost had offered to me.

The shaper hooted and blew raspberries, but the hob smiled as sweetly as if he read my thoughts.

When I took my patrol the next night, the hob came with me. Though "with" might be the wrong word. He'd run ahead and jump out from behind trees, laughing when I jumped and swore at him.

"No need to swear so quietly," he advised merrily. "The raiders are mostly in camp today. There's a small party by Wedding Pass, but they'll not cross our path."

I stopped short. "If there's no danger, why are we patrolling?"

He looked at me seriously for a moment. "Wouldn't do to get dependent on me. The bargain's for the survival of the village, remember. They need to be ready. Even when the raiders are taken care of, there are hillgrims, trolls, and a dozen other such nasties. I understand that in the past you've been protected here." He gestured widely to indicate the valley. "Not having to worry about much but the occasional bandit or wolf. It will never be that way again." He strolled through the field, passing an arm over my shoulder and letting his tail settle around my hips. "There was a reason the mages felt they had to bind the magic. Most of the wizards of the time felt the same way you do about bloodmages, blood magic. But they agreed to it all the same."

"Why not leave the lands to the wildlings?" I said. "There were other places to go."

He shook his head. "The wild was growing, pushing mankind back. I don't know how it was other places." He gave me a wry smile, acknowledging his tie to the mountain. "But here mankind was dying."

I walked with him, thinking about what he'd said. But I was also thinking about the arm slung so casually across my shoulders. Being courted by a hob wasn't as different as it could have been. But it was different enough, for me. I grinned to myself as I bent to unhook his tail.

So I didn't tell Koret the hob knew where the raiders were most of the time. When I patrolled, Caefawn joined me as often as not. Sometimes the earth spirit's shaper came, too, never in the same shape twice but never again in the body of anyone I knew. When I wasn't patrolling, the hob continued my lessons. Sometimes I wasn't certain whether he was teaching me, teasing me, or courting me - often as not, it was all three.

"Come on, then, the raiders aren't going anywhere today," he said, pulling me proprietorially in the direction opposite from the one I should be going.

"And how do you know that?" I asked, though I fell in beside him willingly enough.

He grinned and twitched his tail with mischief. "A few of my acquaintances are having fun tonight. They'll do no harm - except to the raiders' pride, and you'll have more time to learn."

"Did you talk to your 'acquaintances' about the thefts in the village?"

"None of them admit to it, though that's no surety. If you could talk the people into leaving something out for the little folk, it might go better for them."

"Better for whom, the little folk, or the villagers?" I asked. "The widow Shona left a handful of cookies out last night, and this morning something had unwoven the better part of the blanket she was working and tracked blue dye all over the walls and ceiling."

The hob chuckled. "I'll look at it. Happen I'll recognize the footprints."

We crossed Fell Bridge. There was no guard there. The hob had advised against it, saying the raiders were unlikely to harm the crops before harvest, or to take any of Albrin's livestock out of the valley. What went missing could be retaken closer to a time it would be of use. Put up a few herdsmen with the animals to guard against predators and give them orders to run at the first sight of the raiders. Koret had agreed. The raiders seemed to have the same philosophy, for no one had seen them on the manor side of the river since the last attack.

"Where are we going?" I asked, climbing over a stone wall that divided one pasture from another.

"To the bogs," he said. "I'm hoping to find a few noeglins or maybe a will-o'-wisps. You'd like the will-o'-wisps: when they sing, the flowers bloom even at night."

We found a large rock to sit on by the edge of the Fell bogs. The air was damp and chilly despite its being summer. The bog smelled of rotting vegetation and sweet bogflower.

"It'd be easier to do this inside the marsh," Caefawn informed me. "But then we'd get wet and smell like a bog for days. We'll try for noeglins first. They're about as strong as ghosts, and guaranteed to fight you with anything in their power. They'll be good experience for you."

We sat for a while. His tail snuck around my waist. I pried it off and set it politely between us with a pat. I hadn't realized just how strong his tail was. If he hadn't let me, I'd never have gotten it off.

"Is the rock uncomfortable?"

I quit twitching my hips. "Quite. So how do I call a hooglin?"