Bastion Read online

  He gestured that they should go up the stairs and into the wagon itself.

  It was bigger than Mags had expected. Inside it was all handsome varnished wood, which should be easy to keep clean. The middle part of the roof was both raised and bowed, with thin sheets of horn inset along the sides of the raised part, bringing in a lot of light and giving far more headroom than he would have expected. Not even Jakyr was going to have to stoop in here.

  “Two of your beds are there at the rear,” Ard went on from the door. Mags craned his head around to look. Sure enough, two beds had been built into the rear, one above the other, with the bottom one on the floor and a small cupboard built above the upper one. Both had little windows looking rearward, also with horn panels. “Those windows open for air, but if it’s snowing, you won’t want em open, obviously. Shutters on the outside to close up against bad weather. Shutters on all the windows except the mollicroft up here.” He tapped the narrow windows up in the roof. “Mollicroft windows open, see?” He demonstrated by unlatching one and opening it on a hinge at the bottom. “Two more of your beds are built on this side.” He slapped the right side, where Mags had already seen two very narrow bench-type beds, with cupboards over and under them. There were a series of horn windows here, too. “Plenty of room for four.”

  There was literally not a bit of space that wasn’t in use. Cupboards, some hardly big enough to hold a few knives or spoons, or maybe a mending kit, had been fitted in anyplace there was some useable space.

  “This side, as you can see, nearest the door, there’s a nice metal hearth and chimbley.” He slapped what looked like a tiny metal fireplace with a cast-iron pot in it, standing on three legs. “What you do is, you fill that there pot with coals, and she heats the wagon at night. Come morning, you make sure to dump that pot, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you. Also, more storage for your things.” The rest of that side was, indeed, cupboards. “And that’s your wagon. She can be fixed when she breaks by just about any blacksmith or wheelwright. But treat her right, and she shouldn’t break unless you have mortal bad luck.”

  Ard backed down the steps and off the wagon; the rest of them followed. This wasn’t going to be impossible, not by any means, but. . . .

  :But we had all better work on our temper-keeping skills,: Dallen chuckled. :And I suspect that unless it is bloody freezing cold, those tents are going to be getting some use.:

  • • •

  Amily looked up from her calculations. “Well,” she said, finally, “as far as I can tell, we’ll each have room for four standard packs worth of . . . stuff. Which is not a lot, but it’s two packs more than a solo Herald on Circuit has.” She raised her pen at Bear before he could say anything. “I allotted extra room for your herbs, Bear. Lena—I don’t know what to tell you—”

  “All I need is my small gittern,” she said firmly. “Maybe a flute. I’ll manage. A Bard on Journeyman’s round isn’t able to carry any more than a solo Herald.”

  “That’s more’n I’ll need, Amily, if you want one’a my packs’-worth for yourself,” Mags said generously.

  “I’d rather you took it and carried armor,” she replied seriously. “Just in case.” She sighed a little. “I’d hoped to bring some books, but . . . they’re heavy and bulky and I can’t think of any that would actually be useful under these circumstances.”

  “Well, if you do, we’ll find a way to get it in,” Mags promised. For his part, he hoped that they would be able to reach The Bastion before any serious weather came in. They were going to need a lot of fodder, with two horses and two Companions to feed all winter. There was no way that wagon could take even a fraction of it. They’d be hard pressed to carry enough to supplement grazing on the trip itself. They’d probably have to stop several times to buy more.

  :Rest easy,: Dallen replied to the thought. :The Bastion is being supplied for you by the Guard even as we speak. As you know, there are caves, plenty of good, dry places to store supplies for you and those of us that eat hay.: There was a suggestion of a heavy sigh. :But, alas, there is no good way to store pocket pies.:

  Mags laughed silently. :Guess you’ll have to suffer with plain old apples.:

  :The horror,: Dallen mourned.

  • • •

  There was a slight change of plans before it was all said and done.

  There seemed to be no reason why Mags and Jakyr should not leave first. They were going to have to circle back once they thought they had left a sufficiently confusing trail, and that was going to take time. Jakyr, as always, was eager to leave the Collegia as soon as possible, and Mags didn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t indulge his mentor.

  There was a good reason for this haste, of course, at least as far as the Herald was concerned. Jakyr was avoiding someone.

  In fact, for as long as Mags had known Herald Jakyr, he had been avoiding that same someone.

  Strangely enough, it was not another Herald.

  • • •

  “That will be the new Healers’ Collegium,” Jakyr said, pointing toward one of the unfinished structures, “And that will be the new Bardic. I hope to blazes they’re done by this time next year. Meanwhile, we have all of you younglings crammed into the one building. Damn and blast Healers and Bards to perdition anyway!” He ran his hand through his hair in the first demonstration of irritability that Mags had seen from him. “Couldn’t they just have waited—” He broke off, and looked over at Mags with a rueful expression. “Never mind me, lad. I go off on a rant about this—”

  “Aye, you do, Jak, and on any excuse whatsoever.” They both turned their heads at the sound of the voice, which had been pitched to carry. There was a woman approaching, sauntering slowly toward them with her arms crossed over her chest. She looked about the same age as Herald Jakyr but was dressed all in red, with a hooded coat rather than a cloak. “And I’m certain-sure he’ll hear it all enough times to be sick of it. Is this the new lad that Dallen called for help in fetching?” She nodded at Mags, and a graying blond curl escaped from her hood at her temple.

  Jakyr’s expression went very stony. “Aye, Lita, it is. Now if you don’t mind I’ve—”

  “You’ve got to take him off to Caelen, and then you have urgent business to be off on,” she interrupted him, with just a touch of waspishness. “Which was precisely what you always have. Lots of urgent business taking you elsewhere, and none of it keeping you here. Which is why you are in that saddle, and your bed is narrow and cold. Nah, be off you with on your urgent business!” she continued, as Jakyr’s expression went from stony to stunned. “I’ll take the boy to Caelen. You fair can’t wait to shake the last of Haven dust from your feet, so be about it. It’d be a sad day when a Bard can’t extend a bit of courtesy to a new Trainee.”

  As Jakyr sat there, looking very much as if he could not make up his mind between going or staying, she added, “You think I’ll eat him? You think the leader of the Bardic Circle can’t be trusted to take one Trainee from here to Caelen’s office?”

  That made up Jakyr’s mind for him. “Thanks, Lita,” he managed, as if he were strangling on the words. “I really do have—”

  “Urgent business, aye, I know,” the woman sighed. “Go, and wind at your back. I’ll not wish you ill, no matter what our differences.”

  There was no other word to describe Jakyr’s abrupt departure but “fled.” And when he was out of sight—which happened so quickly that Mags suspected he had deliberately chosen the route that would put buildings and trees between them the soonest—the woman looked at Dallen. “Well met, Dallen,” she said, reaching out and giving the Companion a friendly pat on the neck. “So you finally got you a Chosen?”

  Dallen nodded. She smiled, then looked up at Mags. “And what would your name be, then, lad?”

  “Mags.” He stared down at her, feeling rather dumbfounded. Whatever had just happened here left him entirely in the dark.

  “Don’t mind Jak. He and I have some history betwixt us.” She sighed. “N
ot always good history, especially toward the parting end of it. And now I can’t help myself; whenever I see him, I goad him.” She shook her head. “Come along, we’ll turn Dallen over to his minders and get you into the hands of yours.” She turned and headed up a stone-bordered, well swept path, without looking back to see if he was going to come along.

  • • •

  Lita wasn’t just any Bard. Lita was the Dean of Bardic Collegium and the head of the Bardic Circle. And the “history” wasn’t just a bit of a quarrel.

  Mags knew now that Lita and Jakyr had been a couple at one point. He also knew that Jakyr had all but fled the relationship. Lita clearly did not understand why, and since Jakyr made it a point to never get past mere friendship with anyone, not even fellow Heralds, it appeared no one else knew, either. Maybe Nikolas knew, since he knew just about everything else that had to do with life up on the Hill, but if so, he had never told anyone.

  Mags certainly couldn’t figure it out, although he’d been more than a little hurt when Jakyr, the first person to ever be kind to him since he was a toddler, had done his level best to deflect any attempt Mags had made to make a connection with him.

  Only when Mags had demonstrated over the years that he really had no intention of trying to put Jakyr in the position of being a surrogate father did the Herald finally relax.

  Mags had to wonder, though, if this wasn’t the real reason why Jakyr hadn’t mentored anyone before. The Herald didn’t want ties to anyone except his Companion, yet there was no question that you could not avoid such things developing when you lived so closely with someone over the course of a year or more.

  At least he didn’t seem reluctant now. Maybe he figured that with Amily along, Mags would not be making any emotional attachments to him.

  No fear there.

  It took only a couple of days to get everything ready. Jakyr had advised them every step of the way. Traditionally, Mags had been told, Heralds and their charges left in the gray light of early dawn.

  Jakyr, clearly, was not the sort to hold with tradition.

  “We’ll leave when we leave,” he told Mags the night before. “Get a good night’s sleep and a good bath and breakfast in the morning. I’ll inspect your packs, and when I figure we are ready, we’ll go.” He had made a face. “I don’t like leaving or arriving when people expect me to. The only people who need to know my comings and goings are Nikolas and . . . well, Nikolas.”

  So Mags did exactly as he had been advised. He and Amily spent all evening together, as if they were not going to see each other for a very long while, and whenever someone commiserated with them about the coming absence, he pulled a long face, and Amily looked as if she was about to burst into tears.

  In reality, she was fighting to keep from giggling.

  But they trailed about tragically, exactly as anyone would expect for a couple about to be separated against their will. They picked at their food in public—and had a celebratory picnic in his room with goodies Lydia had sent down from the Palace kitchens in the hopes of tempting his appetite and comforting him. It was very kind of Lydia, who had absolutely no idea that this was not exactly what it appeared to be, and they enjoyed the unexpected feast greatly.

  There was no one about to be impressed with how doleful he was in the morning, so he enjoyed his usual hearty breakfast after a good bath—because no telling when he would next get one, breakfast or bath—got his packs, and went into the stable proper to await Jakyr. It was just chilly enough that he preferred to wait in the stable itself, over by Dallen’s stall. The stablehands had already begun firing up the ovens that stood at either end of the stable, ovens that warmed the huge masses of brick of which they were made, and thus kept the entire stable warm without the danger of fire.

  Mags loved the stable; he’d always loved living here instead of up at the Collegium. His fellow Trainees were a noisy lot; here it was always calm, with nothing more than the occasional stamp of a hoof or a whicker or mutter as the Companions conversed wordlessly among themselves. The air always smelled of clean horse and straw, scents that meant comfort to him. In winter, it was warm, and in summer, when all the windows were open to a prevailing breeze, it was almost never too hot. But most of all, it was peaceful.

  As the Herald approached, Mags had plenty of time to watch him, because he wasn’t hurrying his steps. Jakyr had aged a bit in the last several years, but not so much that he’d lost any of his somewhat rough-hewn good looks. The few times that Mags had seen him around others—ladies in particular—women didn’t seem to find him ugly, but he never responded to overtures with anything but cool politeness.

  And it wasn’t because he preferred men to women, either.

  Dallen had once remarked that Jakyr preferred “company that he paid for.” Mags hadn’t understood that at the time, but he did now, after seeing Jakyr going nonchalantly into one of the better and more ethical brothels down in Haven, one where the ladies plied a trade and paid their taxes just like any other business. And where they had ample protection from those who might take that as a license for something other than the services advertised.

  Mags had no issues with brothels of that sort, and he doubted anyone else did, either, except priests of sects that held congress without marriage to be a sin.

  But it was highly unusual for a Herald to make use of their services, and it probably never ceased to surprise the ladies there. It was the easiest thing in the world for a Herald to find even a casual partner without having to pay for it—Heralds were almost as popular in that regard as Bards.

  But seeing Jakyr enter the House of Red Silk, Mags suddenly understood what Dallen had been saying. When the exchange was for money, it ended with money, and that was how Jakyr liked it. No ties. No promises. Nothing implied.

  It seemed a sad way to live, at least to Mags. But he had no intention of telling Jakyr that. Logically, Jakyr could have some excellent reasons for his standoffishness; where others looked at the life of a Herald, found it often short and violent, and chose to make ties to others, it could be that Jakyr found it needful to break them. Or, at least, never make them in the first place.

  So, as the Herald stopped at Dallen’s stall, borrowed a bit of thong from the saddlery supplies that Mags always kept there, and tied back his graying brown hair into a tail with it, Mags just kept his mouth shut on his thoughts and said instead, “Ready for inspection, Herald,” and sketched a comic salute, as if he were a Guardsman about to be inspected.

  Jakyr laughed. “All right. But I’m not about to unpack everything just so you have to pack it back up again, like a drill sergeant would. Tell me what’s in this one.” He poked the rightmost one with a white-booted toe, then looked up. His eyes gleamed with sardonic humor. “If you’ve done your job right, you’ll know down to the last leather scrap.”

  Mags had had some inkling that Jakyr would do something like this, since that seemed to be a common thread among the Trainees who had been taking the wilderness survival classes. So he did know, and he proceeded to recite. Jakyr’s eyebrow rose approvingly.

  “And this one?” he asked, poking the other. Mags obliged.

  “And the ones that are going off with the caravan?” he persisted.

  “Every spare uniform that isn’t in these, ’cept the special ones. Ink and paper, cause I reckon I can get goose quills anywhere. My clothes that ain’t uniforms, I got three changes. Armor, light armor, since ye said that heavy armor was gonna be worse’n no armor in the snow. Needles an’ thread. Harness-repair stuff. Saddlesoap. Extra blankets for Dallen. Went t’ Stablemaster an’ got his list of simple stuff for ailin’ horses, an’ he give me a little book t’ go with it an’ give t’Bear. You said we’d be stoppin’ at Waystations, so I got them smoke things that kill bugs. Extra soap, chilblain salve, that kinda thing. Second heavy cloak, light cloak for when it gets warm again. Extra fire-startin’ kit. Fishhooks an’ arrowheads. Couple more knives.” Oh, how many years of his life would he have paid to have had the ki
t, a knife, fishhooks, and arrowheads when he’d been trying to make his way back across Karsite territory! “All of Dallen’s hair what got combed out an’ I saved. That’s it.”

  “Oh, that’s right, I remember, you braid things from it. Good idea, we might be stuck somewhere because of weather, and you’ll need something to keep your hands busy.” Jakyr nodded with approval. “Is there any room in there?”

  “Aye, a bit. Not much. Reckon we can get ’em to ship us up more uniforms if we need ’em with Guard supplies and pick ’em up at the Post. In fact, I packed up some books an’ asked ’em to be shipped there for us to get later.”

  “Better to have a bit of room left,” Jakyr agreed. “We’re having women along, and they always overpack. And yes, excellent thinking, we can almost always have things sent with the supply trains to the Guardpost.”

  Mags shrugged. “Lena an’ Amily’re used to havin’ everything they want an’ need. Might be hard for ’em to pare down.”

  “Well, then. I think we’re ready,” Jakyr said with satisfaction. “I left my packs here last night. I’d planned for you to have to repack a little, but since you don’t need to after all, we can start right now, wander our way at a leisurely pace into the East, and come on a very nice inn I know in time for luncheon.” He made his way over to his Companion’s stall and started saddling him. Mags made a note of which set of saddle and harness Jakyr was using and did the same. This was a set he’d never used on Dallen before; it had only two bridle bells, rather than the full set of bells on bridle and barding on his formal gear, but those could be taken off easily and stowed. Jakyr did so now on his Companion, and Mags did the same. Otherwise, the gear was the same blue and white as the formal gear, rather than the utilitarian brown of the set that they used to practice everything from Kirball to the obstacle course.