Under the Vale and Other Tales of Valdemar Read online

  The moon had just risen when Gonwyn snapped awake.

  :How many, Rath?: He sent, struggling to make the sending.

  :Some thirty, Chosen. They are close and coming this way.:

  “Danilla?” he whispered.

  “I’ve heard from Enara,” she replied. “Can we get out?”

  :They’re astride our path out,: Rath answered to him. :There is another body moving east of us, where I think the draw comes up.:

  “Damn,” said Gonwyn. “Good water, good campsite, escape route . . . we might be camping on one of their rally points.”

  “What do we do?” Danilla asked.

  He ran the options, all bad. “We hide. Wait them out. Rath, show us the draw.”

  They quickly mounted and made for the narrow watercourse. It looked intermittent and fell in a sharp vee, barely wide enough for the two Companions. The vee fell out of the moonlight, and while there was no concealment, they might just be safe in the shadow. They had just settled in and froze as the first group of Tedrels poured in.

  Gonwyn quickly assessed them. They looked whipped. Many bore light wounds, but they were still armed. In the moonlight he saw Tedrels with crossbows, spears, and some better equipped with swords, shields, and some armor. A second group followed in better order, their leader haranguing them in the pidgin tongue that passed for the Tedrel language.

  Few carried more than their war gear. They took out what food they had, some better provisioned than others. The stronger took from the weaker where they could, and the main body split into fragments as they moved to camp in mutual distrust.

  One largish group made directly for the draw where Gonwyn and the others hid. He heard the soft creak, as Danilla drew her light bow from its case and strung it. There was a soft tap as she nocked an arrow.

  He drew his sword from its saddle scabbard. The weapon slid free in his hand, a shorter blade than most, thicker and double edged. The sword was an infantry weapon, honed for killing, with none of the daintiness of the cavalry saber. He held it back against his leg, where it was least likely to reflect some stray bit of moonlight.

  “If it comes to it,” he whispered, “stay in the draw. I will draw them away, and we will link up later.”

  “I will NOT,” she whispered back. “I am a Herald, and I will fight.”

  There was no point to an argument, and the Tedrels were too close.

  The group stopped to camp, barely thirty feet from the draw. There was some argument, then one began to desultorily make a pile for a fire. The others spread out to gnaw on what food they had. One made directly for the draw. Gonwyn heard the soft, collective inhalation from the group in the draw as the Tedrel came to the mouth of the vee, adjusted his crude cloth armor, and began to relieve himself.

  Gonwyn held himself ready, a bare dozen feet from the Tedrel. He could visualize the Tedrel standing there, staring into the darkness, seeing white shapes begin to resolve against the deeper black until . . .

  The man’s mouth opened in a soundless O.

  :NOW!:

  Rath launched herself, powerful withers throwing them a body’s length forward. Gonwyn whipped the sword across the man’s face, slashing brutally as he passed. The Tedrel screamed as Rath exploded into the moonlight.

  Rath broke left, staying in the well-spread trees, in order to make a harder crossbow shot. The Companion took the distance to the sprawled Tedrels in a couple of strides, riding a second down and whirling between two thick oaks. Gonwyn pressed low against her flank, more for protection from low branches than from the Tedrel. He held the blade flat back against his boot, his left hand wrapped around the saddle-bow.

  Rath whipped around the larger oak, changing direction to throw off the crossbowman who stumbled toward them. Gonwyn needed no force, only aim to slash the blade outward, taking the crossbowman in the throat. Rath took another, shattering his spine with a single kick as the man tried to flee back. Four dead in as many seconds. As Rath dodged back between the pair of trees, Gonwyn killed another with a stab backed by half a ton of charging equine. Five, quickly now.

  Time slowed for Gonwyn. He felt the simple fierce joy, the power that coursed through him as his enemies seemed to slow and his senses sped. He felt the man to his right grasp the claw from his belt to load his crossbow. Gonwyn killed him with a leaning slash that took his throat. Another Tedrel bent to grab his spear, and Rath, in the same parlous state, smashed his chest with a kick that stove in his ribs. Other Tedrels, armed with spears and crossbows, emerged from behind trees as the Companion stormed among them. Gonwyn slipped from Rath’s back, and in perfect dance passed under her legs to stab a spearman as she lashed out with her rear hooves to dash out another’s brains.

  He rushed two on foot. The rightmost raised a battered sword. Gonwyn lopped his sword hand at the wrist, whirled to stab the left-side Tedrel, who was still raising his short spear, and disabled the first with single backhanded slash to the face. He sprang back up and remounted, in perfect choreography as Rath turned again to strike out with forehooves.

  A single odd image stood out afterward to Gonwyn . . . the dropped-pot sound as the Companion’s iron-hard hooves shattered a skull and destroyed a life.

  The moment frozen flashed into action again. Another crossbowman emerged ahead, fumbling to bring the weapon to bear. Gonwyn hurled his sword. It struck hilt first, smashing the man’s nose and knocking him backward. Gonwyn drew his saddle-ax, a wicked single blade with a reverse spike.

  He chopped down on another Tedrel, killing the last standing in this group with the spike, driven deep into his shoulder along the neck. Rath charged forward to where the man lay screaming as he clutched his face. Rath trampled him. Gonwyn leaned down, both palms brushing the dirt as he recovered his sword and rolled back into his saddle.

  He turned the blowing mare toward the next group, dropping the bloody ax back into its sheath. A second quick grab, this time at a small shield leaning against a tree. He pulled it free and armed himself with it as Rath danced back, using the trees as cover against crossbows. Rath gathered herself to charge again as Gonwyn finished his arming.

  He glanced quickly to the right and saw Danilla just emerging from the draw, with bow in hand. A string of dead or dying Tedrals lay behind him. One he had missed scrambled from between two trees and fled across the open area of the valley floor.

  Danilla whipped her bow up, tracked him, and coolly released. The arrow glowed red and burst into flame as it crossed halfway to the Tedrel. It caught the man in the back as he fled. He fell to his knees, the fire spreading across him as he burned and screamed. Danilla’s second arrow took him as he writhed on the ground, ending his life.

  There was a moment’s perfect silence, then Danilla’s shout of exultation.

  And Rath charged. Together, they slew, as Danilla rode about the fringes burning down those who escaped iron hoof and wicked blade.

  It was done when the last Tedrel lay dead. Gonwyn, spattered with blood and exhausted, slumped as he waited for Danilla to join him. Rath stood, her legs splayed out, blowing heavily. Somewhere in the fight the stitches had broken open, but that was of little concern.

  Dannila and Enara rode slowly to them. She looked around the carnage. Over thirty Tedrals had entered the campsite. None survived.

  “I think you do have a Talent, Gonwyn,” she said in voice that shook only a little, “and may the gods have mercy on you.”

  Heart’s Peril

  Kate Paulk

  Ree stretched and sighed, feeling comfortable and lazy on the roof of the barn belonging to the farm where he’d lived for the last ten years. His family farm, in a way. Certainly the place where his family lived.

  With the summer sun warm against his back, the warm roof shingles beneath him and the air full of the scent of growing things and farm animals, it was difficult to concentrate on something as painstaking as checking the barn roof for rotting shingles, much less the careful effort needed for replacing them.

  His ratt
ail twitched in his breeches, and his claws wanted to relax all the way out. But he must work. It had to be done before winter came, and Ree was the best person to do it—a hobgoblin who was part rat and part cat as well as part human, he had better balance than humans, and keener eyesight. That the wild part of him longed to take a nap right here or to head out, exploring the cool shade of the forest, was something he’d grown used to over the years.

  The forest was dangerous, a place where the animal hobgoblins had taken over from more normal predators. It was also as familiar to Ree as the farm he called home. In the years since he’d come here, he’d watched the forest slowly return to a kind of balance after the hellish Change-winter and the magic circles: the same magic circles that had changed him from a human street rat to the hobgoblin he was.

  His mind wandered into times long past, from the desperate days when he’d saved Jem’s life on the streets of Jacona and Jem, in turn, had saved Ree’s humanity and perhaps his life. If Ree had gone on the way he’d been, he’d soon have stopped knowing how to talk, and from there to forgetting he was human at all was but a step. When all you can do is run and hide, you start forgetting you’re not a small, hunted animal. And then . . .And then you start attacking humans, as animals do.

  His meeting with Jem had led them to leave Jacona and head out to the countryside in which they imagined they’d be safer. Which just went to show how young they’d been.

  As it turned out, it had been safer, but never in the way he expected. Jem had almost died of the coughing illness that winter, as they stayed out of towns where people would kill them. It was Jem’s illness that had forced Ree to come to the farm, to look for help. By blind luck, or perhaps blind destiny, they’d blundered into a farm that belonged to Jem’s grandfather. And here they’d been since. Ree and Jem and Jem’s grandfather, and later Amelie and Meren, Jem’s and Ree’s adopted children.

  No one asked embarrassing questions about Jem’s and Ree’s relationship. Or rather, the only one who asked was Garrad, Jem’s grandfather, and only to tease them. And got a great deal of laughter out of their embarrassment. And if the children called Jem Da and Ree Papa, no one thought there was anything wrong with that either.

  Anywhere else, their odd little family might be remarked, but the people of Three Rivers Valley had gotten to know the people at the farm for who they were–for their bravery and kindness and courage. Ree and Jem had helped the village too many times for anyone to remark two young men, much less a man and a hobgoblin, shouldn’t be raising children together, even if one of those children was also a hobgoblin. The village saw that they clearly could and were raising happy, sweet children out of waifs no one else wanted.

  Ree sighed again. Sometimes he thought the only reason they’d taken the children on was that they had no idea how hard it could be. They were good children, and Ree would miss them when they left for houses of their own, but it was like living with your heart in someone else’s body. He worried every time Amelie went to the village and was late returning. And his heart about stopped when Meren took a fall from a tree.

  With an effort, he focused on the work in front of him. That one looks like it’s starting to go. Ree bent closer to the shingle, close enough to sniff the wood. The scent of decay was faint, but there. It might not be obvious now, but in a month that shingle would be starting to crumble, and by the time winter set in, it would no longer be weatherproof.

  He sat beside the shingle and started prying the nails loose, taking care not to bend them too much. Good nails were expensive; it was better to reuse them if you could. Getting them straightened by the smith down in Three Rivers village cost less than new nails, but it was still a cost Ree preferred not to pay.

  He chuckled to himself. Like Jem, he’d learned farmer thrift from old Garrad, the owner of this farm and Jem’s grandfather. If he was going to be honest with himself, Ree had learned a lot more than thrift from the old man: Garrad had taught him the value of work, and to see himself as a man, not a street child and not a Change Circle freak.

  Everywhere he looked, Ree could see the result of his work and Jem’s. The ever-growing herd of cattle, goats, and donkeys, the fields they hired men to plough and harvest, the walls of the home fields, and even the prolific damncats. Oh, they were ordinary cats, but somehow the name had stuck for cats raised on this farm.

  Mostly, Ree suspected, because the Three Rivers folk were convinced he could talk to them and trained them. The things people would believe. Grown men and women, talking of training cats! It was the other way around: He observed them, recognized their calls and body language, and they knew he’d respond to something urgent.

  Well, except for Damncat, the gray-and-white troublemaker with a fondness for Ree’s shoulder. That cat was smarter than most and knew it, too.

  “Can I help, Papa?”

  Ree about jumped out of his fur. Meren might be all of four years old and part cat, but he could creep up on a body like nothing else on earth. Not that he meant to, it was just . . . Meren walked softly, especially when he discarded his shoes—which was most of the time—and he seemed to instinctively know to stay downwind.

  The boy giggled, his greeny-hazel eyes lit with mischief. He was an odd sight, with his white-blond curls and sparse tabby fur. Without the fur and the pointed ears, Meren could have been taken for human, but as it was he was as much a hobgoblin as Ree, although Meren had been born that way. The child of two hobgoblins who’d been killed by the villagers, he’d been taken in by Ree and Jem as a baby and raised to be more human than animal—unlike his parents, who’d gone to the animal.

  “Bored, are you?” Ree asked. Like Ree, Meren didn’t like being confined to the house. At least since the dire wolf had got through the fences two years back, he’d stopped trying to explore the forest on his own. Or— and Ree wasn’t entirely sure this wasn’t the case—stopped getting caught at it.

  Meren nodded. “Da and Melie are cooking, an’ Granddad said to get out from underfoot.” His thumb hovered near his mouth, ready to go in.

  Ree eased a nail out and set it beside the others. If Meren was upset, he sucked his thumb. It happened less as the little boy got older, but if something really bothered him . . .

  “Granddad got mad, didn’t he?” Ree collected the nails and handed them to his son—maybe not the son of his body, but Meren was his son, just as Amelie, an all-human orphan he and Jem had taken in, was his daughter. “Hold these for me, please? They’re valuable, and I don’t want to lose them.”

  That diverted the threatened thumb and gave Meren something to feel important about while Ree eased the shingle free.

  “Granddad gets mad lots.” Meren didn’t sound entirely sure of himself.

  Ree nodded. With his claws digging into the shingle, it was a lot easier to pull it loose without disturbing any of the others.

  “Can you keep a secret, a proper secret?”

  He had his suspicions about what Garrad had said to upset the little boy, but more to the point, he knew why. This last winter had been hard on the old man; he didn’t walk much now, and when he did, he truly needed the walking stick Jem had made him years ago.

  Meren sat straighter, trying to look taller and older than he was. “Yes, Papa.”

  “It hurts Granddad to move,” Ree said quietly.

  The shingle came free; he set it aside and reached into the pack on his back for a fresh one, started to ease it into place. “When Granddad is hurting, he gets grouchy.”

  Meren tilted his head to one side, chewing his bottom lip. “Then he wasn’t really mad at me?”

  “Nope. Granddad yells at everyone.” As Ree well knew, having been the recipient of Garrad’s temper more than a few times. “You know that.”

  The thumb—complete with nails clutched in that hand—threatened to enter Meren’s mouth again. “But . . . Granddad said I was . . .”

  Ree chuckled. “He told you to go play with the damncats because you’re just like them? He tells me that too,
when he’s grouchy. He tells Jem just about the same, too.” It was an exaggeration, but not much of one.

  “Not Melie, though.”

  “No, but Melie is never wild, is she?”

  “No,” Meren said, then paused and wrinkled his forehead. “On count of being a girl.”

  “Probably,” Ree conceded amiably, though it was more likely on account of Amelie having seen her whole family massacred when she was very young. “Could you pass me a nail, please?”

  Meren stared for a moment, then carefully took a nail and handed it to Ree. “Oh.”

  Ree wasn’t sure when it had become a weekly event to have Lenar and his family to dinner at the farm, but sometime between the time they’d adopted Meren and the time he’d saved Amelie from a dire wolf, it had started. And then by the time Meren was on his feet again after the dire wolf attack, it was simply accepted as something that happened like clockwork.

  Lenar might be the Lord here, but he was also Garrad’s son and Jem’s father. True, he’d lost track of Jem when Jem was just a baby, leaving poor Jem to grow up as a street urchin. But he’d not done it with intent, and he loved Jem in his own gruff way. Besides, the two were so alike in temper and look that they might rub wrong but couldn’t avoid loving each other. The three of them treasured their time together, even if it almost always–at least until this last year and Garrad’s illness–had ended in all of them shouting at each other at the top of their voices.

  On the first few visits Lenar’s wife, Loylla, had been uncomfortable, but now she either hid it or mostly forgot that this was a plain farm and not the kind of manor she’d spent her whole life in. She was a cheerful daughter-in-law to Garrad, and though she wasn’t so crass as to try to mother Jem, who was little younger than her, she behaved to Jem and Ree as an older sister might. Their little boy, a sturdy two-year-old, played happily with Meren whenever the family visited, and Lenar sometimes grumbled that the boy asked every day if he could go play “wif Mewen.”