Chapter 6 #2
“Mistress Slate used to say that just the same way,” Edmund said wretchedly.
“She was very cutting about it. I don’t believe in it anymore.
It’s one more stupid thing the order does.
I traveled with her for weeks and my bowels didn’t turn to water and …
and … well, I don’t know if my seed shriveled up, but… ”
“We must simply hope for the best,” said the Dervish weakly.
Oh Many-Armed One, why do I keep saying these things? Surely twenty-seven was too old to be reduced to babbling foolishness by a pretty face.
Though it’s not just the face. It’s the way he says it. He’d practically purred the phrase “That’s a shame.” It had sounded like flirting, but that was impossible. Unthinkable. Surely.
Unless he was one of those people who flirted with everyone, young, old, male, female, both, or neither? That would make sense. Edmund had known people like that.
That was much easier to get his head around.
His embarrassment receded. So did his blush.
The thought of his old friend Slate helped.
He had been an unmitigated ass to her and she had forgiven him and taught him better.
The memory of how awful he’d been at nineteen was also embarrassing, but it was less likely to make him blush and more likely to make him embark on a campaign for the rights of women.
He cleared his throat. “At any rate, I will write to Ashes and ask if she has need of an assistant. I’m not a trained artificer, but I do know my way around an index.” He realized that he’d been talking about himself for quite a long time. “So what about you?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know an index from a hole in the ground.”
“No, I mean, how did you go from watching sheep to being able to fight multiple men at once?”
“Ah.” The Dervish shrugged. “Not that interesting a story. I was one of my father’s many bastard sons.
Once I was old enough to hold a sword, they took me off sheep watch and started training me as a guard for my father’s legitimate children.
” He paused for a moment, as if there was an odd taste in his mouth.
“The word’s doing an odd thing again. Bastard wants to be a curse? ”
“It’s often used as one, yes.” Edmund reached for his notebook, feeling like this was worth writing down.
“Odd. In my homeland, it’s a normal thing. The first wife’s children are the heirs. You can’t take another wife until you have children by the first one.”
“It’s usually the opposite here,” Edmund said.
He was aware that he was writing without looking at the page, which made his handwriting worse than usual, but he suspected that trying to focus on the words would make his headache achieve a new level of greatness.
“Male rulers will put away their wives if they don’t have children, and try to find a woman who can.
But they usually only have one wife at a time. ”
“Yeah, I saw that fairly often as a mercenary. It always seemed rather unwise. The children who aren’t your heirs are the strength of your clan. I did a few things here and there, ended up as a mercenary, but Father’s Brother taught me most of what I know about fighting.”
Edmund suspected that did a few things here and there was handwaving a great deal, but if the Dervish didn’t want to talk about it, he certainly didn’t want to pry. “You’re very impressive.”
“So I’ve been told…” the Dervish said archly.
“No! I mean, with the sword—” Many-Armed One, why do You keep doing this to me? “I meant— Wait. Where’s Sweetness?”
“Huh?” The Dervish blinked at Edmund, then turned to point. “She’s right…”
He stopped.
He gazed at the mule-shaped absence.
“Um,” said the Dervish. “She was right here.”
“Did you tie her?”
“Of course I tied her! The rope’s right…”
He stopped.
He gazed at the rope, which had been chewed through.
“Um,” said the Dervish.
“Oh no. Sweetness! Sweetness!” Edmund got to his feet even though it clearly pained him, and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Sweetness!”
A distinct lack of mule came running. Edmund limped to the saddlebags, pulled out the feed bag, and shook it, calling, “I have oats for good mules who come back!”
No response.
“We have to find her,” Edmund said, clutching at a tree. “She might get eaten by wolves!”
“I pity the wolves,” the Dervish muttered. “Stay here. I will go look for your ancestors-be-damned mule.”
Quite frankly, the Dervish didn’t care if he never saw the blighted animal again, but obviously Edmund was attached to her.
While the sword’s magic did not require him to comply with his wielder’s requests, he really should have checked the mule’s tether at some point, so it was his fault she was out.
Father’s Brother would have risen from the dust of the grave to look disapprovingly at him if he didn’t try to find her.
He made a circle of the campsite, expanding outward.
He did not see the mule. He did, however, see a line of hoofprints in the remains of a snowdrift, which gave him a place to start.
Over the next half hour, he confirmed to himself beyond all doubt that he was not a tracker.
There were people who could look at an expanse of pine-needle-covered ground and say, “Ah, this scuff here and that bent leaf there indicate that four people came this way; one was tall, two were short, one of them was wearing a gray cloak, and the one in the lead had skipped breakfast.” The Dervish had actually worked with people like that in the past. He would have given a great deal to have one with him now.
As it was, he blundered along, looking for the bits of snow that lay in shade and thus hadn’t melted yet, and hoping that the mule had stepped in one. So far as he could tell, she’d been roaming through the area, probably looking for anything edible.
“And here,” the Dervish said, “we see a set of twigs that have been stripped of bark, indicating the presence of a hungry mule. Or a deer. Or a rabbit. Or maybe some insect that they have out here that I’ve never heard of.”
He followed this hypothetical trail and found nothing.
The accursed beast had not had the decency to travel in a straight line.
He cast about for a moment, then began a widening circle again.
So long as he never got much more than a quarter of a mile from Edmund as the crow flew, the sword wouldn’t yank him back.
Hopefully. The exact range was a bit vague.
The Dervish had no idea what he was going to do about that if Edmund did take up a post as a scribe or a librarian or, god forbid, an artificer.
His innate restlessness would have him climbing the walls within a week.
Charming as Edmund was—and the way he’d blushed over his confession of celibacy had been frankly adorable—the Dervish had already had one wielder who required him to stand in one place and look decorative, and it had nearly driven him out of his mind.
Not that Edmund would make me stand in one place, but I’d still probably wear a groove in the floor pacing.
Being a mercenary had actually served him very well.
There was a great deal of waiting at times, yes, but there was also always something to do.
And the troop traveled constantly, from one action to the next, so even if they were stuck waiting for the enemy to make a move, as happened regularly, at least the scenery changed on a regular basis.
It seemed unlikely that he could convince Edmund to become a mercenary.
Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe the curse will be broken by then and I can wish Edmund farewell and go do … something. Anything. Anywhere.
The Dervish told himself firmly to stop thinking about that and focus on finding the horrible mule.
He was nearly back to the road when he heard the clop of hooves and relaxed. “Sweetness,” he said, coming around the tree, “what are you doing way out … here…”
Edmund’s mule was indeed on the road. So were two men, one of whom had her by the halter. Both of them stopped to look at him.
“Ah,” said the Dervish, with his most winning smile. “I see you gentlemen have found my mule.”
The larger of the two men looked him up and down, clearly unimpressed. He was better dressed than the bandits had been, though his outfit had the look of good clothes inexpertly mended. He held a long staff in the hand that wasn’t holding Sweetness’s halter.
“You’ve made a mistake, friend,” the man said, in a distinctly unfriendly tone. “This is our mule.”
The Dervish considered this. There were only two of them, and he was almost certainly faster than either one.
Had they been bandits carrying hatchets and cudgels, like the ones that had assaulted Edmund, he wouldn’t have hesitated.
Even a swordsman wouldn’t have worried him.
The Dervish would put himself against most swordsmen, trusting his speed to overcome the difference in reach.
But a staff was something else again. The Dervish would probably still win, but it would require the kind of dramatic feint-and-dive-and-roll move that could go wrong very, very easily, particularly when he’d be diving into kicking range of a mule.
And there was also the matter of the staff-wielder’s companion, who …
Had an arrow aimed at him, actually. Hmm. One of those nasty bladed numbers meant to punch a hole in a deer and bleed it out.
“Quite right,” the Dervish said, holding his hands up and retreating into the bushes. “My mistake. That’s your mule.”
He heard a contemptuous snort from the large man and then the clopping of hooves as they continued. He noted with annoyance that Sweetness was apparently happy to walk somewhere with mule thieves.
Typical. Entirely goddamn typical.
The Dervish sighed and went back to inform Edmund that his mule no longer belonged to him.