Valdemar 11 - [Owl Mage 03] - Owlknight Read online

  Shandi had been silent through all of this—and now her body began to shake again as she clung to her sister. “How could you know—how did you guess—” she sobbed weakly.

  “Because I’m your sister and your best friend, and I love you,” was the simplest answer she could give—and must have been the best. Shandi completely dissolved in tears—and now, so did Keisha, tears that flowed down her cheeks silently, without the kind of painful knot she got in her throat when she was fighting to hold them back. But Keisha’s were tears of happiness mixed with relief, for now, at last, she knew that Shandi was never going to wall her out again.

  It was well past midnight when Shandi had talked herself out; by then, Keisha was cold and stiff, but she wouldn’t have moved to save her soul.

  “—and the worst was when Kel said that the first Heralds wouldn’t have been so cowardly,” Shandi said, in a voice made hoarse with talking and crying. “He was right, I knew he was right—I wanted to sink into the ground, but I knew if I showed anything, they’d all think that the only reason I was against Darian was because I was afraid! And it’s not, it’s not, I swear it!”

  “If you hadn’t spoken up, I’m not sure any of the rest of us would have said anything,” Keisha told her truthfully. “I mean, after all, we may each have our own private agendas, but at the heart of it, this is Darian’s personal quest we’re helping with. With his parents asking for help—how could his best friends let him down?”

  Only now did Karles take the few steps needed to move to Shandi’s side and gently rub his warm, soft nose against her shoulder—and Keisha’s hands. Shandi reached up and patted his neck. “Karles—tried to help me, but—”

  :I am not an Empath,: Karles said simply, surprising Keisha once again by speaking to her as well as to Shandi. :I cannot shield her from her own fear, when I am just as afraid—I cannot even shield her from mine! This is not Valdemar, and I am ... out of my element.:

  “We all are, to some degree or other,” Keisha told both of them. “Never doubt it.”

  :But Valdemar is home, and I have never been away from it!: The plaintive note in Karles’ mind-voice came as a second shock; all her life she had been raised to think that Companions were near-invulnerable and infallible—

  :We are different, with a few powers, yes, and more experience, but hardly infallible.: Karles sighed heavily, and nuzzled Shandi once more. :Shandi and I are two halves of a whole; we complement and complete one another. That is the way of Herald and Companion. We are still as prone to weakness and mistakes as any other soul. If being Companion and Chosen made us infallible, think how many disasters in Valdemar’s history could have been avoided!:

  “Good point,” Keisha replied, but kept her thought of and how nice of you to have finally admitted that! carefully under shields. “Shandi, do take it from an older and more experienced Empath—and not just your big sister—that you are doing yourself no good by keeping those walls up, inside and out. You need to do a certain amount of shielding, but not to the point that you feel nothing from us, and let nothing of your own emotion show! We need to know how you feel about things as much as you need to know how we feel, otherwise we cannot work with each other. Out here in the wild unknown, that could cost a life, maybe even mine.” Keisha smiled again and kissed her sister’s forehead gently. “Neither of us would want that, yes? Now let’s get some sleep, and see what matters look like in the morning.”

  Is Darian thinking clearly? Is he so caught up in trying to impress his parents, to give them anything they need,

  that he’s not able to be objective? No doubt, Shandi was already thinking those things, without Keisha’s experience with Darian to bolster her faith in him.

  And Steelmind needs to know more of how you feel than all the rest of us put together, she thought, but also under shield, as Shandi got stiffly to her feet and gave her sister a hand up. It wasn’t her place to give Shandi any advice about romance, and she wasn’t sure that Shandi would take it, even if it was her place. Maybe Shandi and Karles hadn’t seen it as clearly as Keisha had, as a result of how much they had tried to wall themselves off from their own emotions and others’, but day by day there was much more in Steelmind’s attitudes toward Shandi than a passing interest in a fellow traveler.

  I’ve been lucky enough to find Darian. Maybe the best gift I can give to my sister is getting her to open up enough to see that Steelmind is right next to her. And, just maybe, when he sees she will open up to him now, Steelmind will open his arms to her. We are farther away from home than any of us ever imagined we’d be, and all we have is each other.

  Darian woke up all at once, with the disorienting impression that Kuari was trying to dance a jig on the roof of the log house. Then what Kuari was trying to tell him penetrated his muddled mind, and a moment later he leaped from bed and was pulling on his clothes in grim haste, as Keisha stirred groggily beside him.

  “What?” she managed, raising a face half-covered with sleep-tousled hair.

  “We’ve got to alert the village,” he told her, for there was no time to tell this gently. “Kuari’s seen something. I think there’s something bad—a tribal army coming straight for us.”

  :Kel!: he blasted into the gryphon’s dreaming mind. :Kel, wake up!:

  :?: The reply was foggy and inarticulate. :Food sleep preen mate fight what?:

  :Up! Alarm! Enemies!: He kept his reply simple; it took a moment for Kel’s mind to get working. A moment later, Kel’s war cry ripped through the village, shocking everyone within hearing distance awake.

  In another moment, Hashi’s howl started all the dogs in the village up, which ensured that no one slept. Darian left Keisha struggling to organize herself while he headed for the door to get the village mobilized. He was already outside before his parents, reacting to the unholy cacophony, pushed their way out of their sleeping cubicle. Keisha could explain to them; he had to get the rest of the village alert so defenses were in place before the enemy arrived.

  Steelmind and Shandi burst out of the door of the log house they were guesting in shortly after he stumbled into the ghostly mist that swirled around the log houses, a mist that clung damply to him in the half-light of predawn. Steelmind whistled shrilly for his bird, and Karles pounded through the mist to Shandi’s side. She seized her saddle from the bench beside the door and swung it up onto his back as he skidded to a halt beside her. Hywel and Wintersky were next out the door, and the dyheli were all close on the heels of Karles, snorting and stamping with agitation.

  Then the northerners began piling out of their houses, all sleepy, all confused, all babbling. Darian tried shouting his warnings, but his voice was lost in the general confusion and he despaired of making himself heard.

  Then Kel put a stop to the noise by diving down out of the trees and braking with huge sweeps of his wings to land beside Darian, just as Hashi broke off his howl of alert and the dogs followed his lead. The wind of Kel’s wings cleared the mist; his sudden appearance silenced everyone, with shock and alarm, for no one here was used to a gryphon’s dramatic entrances. Darian took full advantage of the sudden silence.

  “Our birds just alerted us, Wolverine is on the way, in force,” he called out. “Whatever defensive plan you’ve got, you’d better put it in motion now. We’ve got until dawn before they get here, and dawn’s not far off.”

  There was no more confusion; the men quickly sorted themselves into defensive groups and headed for the stored weapons; boys and some of the women went for hunting bows and arrows, while the rest began dragging tied bundles of thorny brush into a defensive barricade around the perimeter of the village.

  Shandi pulled herself into the saddle and trotted Karles over to Darian. “What do you want us to do?” she asked; her voice trembled a little, and she was dead-white, but she seemed steady enough. In fact, Darian was just as glad to see her finally showing a little fear; it made him less worried that she would try to do something comprised of equal parts of bravery and foolishness.<
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  “Stand by,” he told her. “You’re the only cavalry we’ve got; I just hope Wolverine doesn’t have any riders. One person can do a lot if she’s the only one on horseback.”

  Karles stamped a hoof loudly.

  “Or on whatever,” Darian added.

  Hywel had grabbed a boar-spear and picked out a group of Raven warriors to stand with on his own; that was perfect. He knew how to fight alongside these people, in their style; Darian dismissed him from his mind. Steelmind and Wintersky retrieved their bows and every arrow they owned, then sent their birds out after Kuari. Kel lumbered back up into the air to perch on the rooftree of one of the log houses.

  How long do we have? he wondered, and joined his mind to Kuari’s. Through Kuari’s eyes he looked down on the approaching throngs of warriors and recognized one of the slopes they had passed yesterday.

  His stomach lurched. Not long enough.

  Wolverine’s fighters would be within hearing distance in a few moments; he didn’t bother warning the rest, since they’d be catching the sounds of jingling harness and men trampling through brush in a moment. Wolverine was no longer making even a token attempt at slipping up unnoticed.

  And just how did they know they don’t have surprise on us?

  The answer to that was clear enough as the second rank came into Kuari’s view.

  Striding alongside a guard of muscular fighters dressed identically in leather tunics ornamented with an eclipsed sun instead of a tribal or personal totem was an all-too-familiar-looking figure. Darian’s nightmares were sometimes haunted by a similar, dark figure out of his past.

  The Shaman of the Eclipse. Mage and Shaman in one, this fellow was in his late twenties or early thirties, bearded, shaggy-haired, and fully as muscle-bound as his personal guards. Unlike the guards, he had only token armor; a helmet, shoulder plates, arm braces. He also wore robes of cloth, not a leather tunic; black cloth, with the corona of the eclipse painted in scarlet on the breast. He wore the same style medallion that the last such Shaman had worn—the Shaman who had led Blood Bear to attack and conquer Errold’s Grove.

  A Shaman you killed yourself, with a lot fewer weapons and no training, he reminded himself, as the sight of the man sent atavistic chills down his back. He tried not to think about how huge a part luck had played on that long-ago night.

  “Their mage is with them,” he told the others—which now included Keisha and his parents, who had joined Wintersky, Steelmind, and Shandi. “He must have followed my trail from the pass.” Too late now to chastise himself for using magic at all; he’d done what seemed right at the time.

  “They’re coming!” someone shouted from the barricade, and as the first scarlet hint of the sun silhouetted the mountains to the east, an unexpected breeze blew off the mist. The clearing in front of the village sprang up as if conjured from the fog—and there they were.

  Darian swallowed, his mouth gone dry. Even if every man, woman, and child of Raven took up a weapon, they would still be outnumbered two-to-one. The only slim advantage they had was that they were the defenders. Their opponents, though not as well-armed as Blood Bear had been when they descended upon Errold’s Grove, were still formidable; all of them were fit, tough, and looked to be seasoned warriors, armed with swords, knives, and throwing-spears, armored with hammered-metal helmets, shoulder- and breast-plates, with vambraces and greaves over their leather tunics and trews. Cold-eyed and wary, they didn’t seem impressed with the defenders.

  His heart went cold and sank into the bottom of his stomach. His chest went tight as the warriors of Wolverine lined themselves up before the defenses of Raven, making a loose formation of two ranks. The ones in the second rank had bows instead of javelins.

  Oh, gods. It’s not all Wolverine either....

  He should have expected this, but somehow it had never occurred to him that there would be fighters sporting the totem of Blood Bear allied with those of Wolverine. There they were—not the half-human, half-bestial things that their Shaman had created, but more than nasty-looking enough. And by the wicked snarls on their faces, they recognized the three Hawkbrothers, too—recognized them as coming from the same folk as the instrument of their defeat in the south, at any rate.

  I’ve got a very bad feeling about this.

  Shandi eased Karles over to Darian’s side, and nodded at the Blood Bear contingent, who made up nearly half of the left flank. “Is that who I think it is?” she asked, in a voice that cracked a little.

  “It is.” He didn’t take his eyes off the Shaman. If there was a single person commanding this force, it was this Shaman, and his control was absolute. After the fighters arrayed themselves in two ranks, they remained in place, and when one or two stirred restlessly, the Shaman quelled them with a single spearing glance.

  Only when all of his troops had settled into immobility did the Shaman send his gaze questing over the Raven defenders. When his eyes locked with Darian’s, it was clear enough who he had been looking for.

  Darian returned his gaze somberly, determined not to show a hint of weakness or fear. You want to start a staring contest? Be my guest. I’d rather we tried to stare each other down than started flinging arrows at each other. He tried to judge the level of the mage’s power without actually probing him, for a probe could be turned against him; the other man was probably doing the same.

  The flows of power around the Shaman told Darian quite a bit—more bad news, since the Shaman had accessed a ley-line four furlongs behind, which crossed the trail the army must have taken. It wasn’t the strongest line Darian had ever seen, nor the strongest in the area, but the fact that the mage was accessing it at all meant he was at least Darian’s equal. Higher than Apprentice and Journeyman. Master, at least. How experienced a Master? There was no telling, but Darian felt altogether too new and raw in his ranking at the moment. I am not ready for a contest of mage-against-mage—he thought, as he accessed another power line.

  But evidently the other was.

  With a brusque motion to his guard to stand their ground, the Shaman stepped forward from the rest. His voice, deep and mocking, with an underlying rasp, rang out across the clear ground between them. “Ho! Chief of Raven!”

  With a tightening of his jaw muscles, the Raven Chief answered, though he did not step forward in turn. “I see you, Shaman of Wolverine,” he called, raising his chin in a gesture of defiance. “What brings you to Raven at the season of fishing?”

  “A friendly visit.” the Shaman grinned, his teeth glinting whitely in the darkness of his beard. “You give us cold greeting.”

  Darian felt his skin crawling at the sight of that smile. The Shaman was very sure of himself.

  “Do friends come as armies, visiting with weapons in hand?” Raven Chief countered bravely. The Chief held his head high, his voice clear and steady. If he was worried, it wasn’t apparent.

  The Shaman did not reply directly to that; instead, he allowed his gaze to drift back to Darian, then return to the Chief. “You have strange visitors,” he said instead, with a heavy frown. “Visitors who bear a strange resemblance to folk who caused friends and allies of ours much grief, some few years ago.”

  “Ah?” The Chief tilted his head to one side. “That is odd; I had heard a different tale.” He scratched his head and feigned thinking hard. “There was something about an attempt to conquer the south-lands that was thwarted by the inhabitants there. Something about Blood Bear being routed by a few birds and a handful of dirt-diggers and children—”

  There was a roar of anger from the left, and the Shaman had to divert his attention to regaining command of his own forces, while the fighters of Raven roared with laughter. Somewhat forced laughter, perhaps, but it served its purpose, which was to make the Blood Bear fighters angry and difficult to control.

  Darian silently cheered for the Raven Chief; he was doing exactly the right thing, putting as much strain on the Shaman’s control of the troops as possible.

  When the Shaman had regai
ned the upper hand and returned to his negotiations, he had not lost a bit of his outwardly pleasant and half-amused demeanor. “That was ill-said, Chief of Raven,” he chided gently. “You have made our allies unhappy. I cannot answer for what they may do if you anger them a second time.”

  The Chief shrugged, as if it was a matter of complete indifference to him. “Whether you can keep any grip on your own warriors’ collars is not my problem, Shaman.”

  Darian hoped he could keep talking for the rest of the day—while they were exchanging barbed witticisms (or at least what passed for witticisms among the Northerners) there wasn’t any fighting going on. “Your allies are no friends to Raven,” he pointed out. “Why not send them on their way? Then, perhaps, we will consider offering you a warmer welcome.”

  “Oh, Chief, I do not believe I can do that,” the Shaman said silkily, shaking his head with mock-sadness. “Much as I would like to oblige you. I believe they have some business with these visitors of yours.”

  “I believe they do not. These visitors are related to Elders of my tribe and are traders; Blood Bear has no relatives here, and has never been interested in gaining goods by trade.” The Chief’s tone implied that the reason Blood Bear wasn’t interested in trade was because they preferred to steal.

  Raven-spirit, this Chief of yours is as clever as any of the feathered tribe, Darian thought. Darian saw what he was up to—he was trying to divide the forces. For some reason, the Shaman of Wolverine wasn’t ready to attack yet, and might not support Blood Bear if they did. It would be much easier to handle the enemy if they came at the defenses a piece at a time.

  “Really?” The Shaman’s arch tone betokened mock-astonishment. “You have some strange blood in Raven, then.”

  “No stranger than a tribe whose warriors once looked as much beast as man,” the Chief countered, grounding the butt of his spear for emphasis. He looked down his nose at the left flank, and the Blood Bear fighters stirred uncomfortably. “The blood in Raven is different, perhaps, but strong. The Raven is lord of the skies. Even the Eagle does not interfere with him.”