Chapter 7
“Sweetness has been kidnapped?”
“I’m sure they’ll take very good care of her,” the Dervish lied. “They looked like men with a fine sense of animal husbandry.”
“But we have to get her back!”
“Do we, though? Really?”
Edmund stared at him as if he’d suggested leaving the mule tied up outside a dragon’s den. “Yes! Of course! What if they’re mean to her?”
“What if they kill us?”
The scholar paused. “Um. Is that likely? I mean, you fought off three men and it didn’t seem difficult for you?”
The Dervish stared at the sky again. It had not changed significantly since the last time.
“While I’m flattered by your estimation of my skill, there’s a big difference between fighting three very startled men with hatchets who use them like they’re trying to chop wood and a man with a staff and a pet archer. ”
“Oh.” Edmund frowned. “Then we’ll have to negotiate. I have a little money, perhaps I can buy her back.”
“Or perhaps they can take the money and keep the mule. They’re clearly not law-abiding citizens.”
The scholar bit his lip. After a moment, he began to move around the campsite, packing things into saddlebags.
“Now what are you doing?” asked the Dervish.
“I have to go after her,” Edmund said, neatly rolling up the blanket. “Maybe I can sneak into the stable after dark and get her free.”
The Dervish groaned. Edmund did not strike him as the sneaky type. Though perhaps if no one asks him about barnacle pigeons, he’ll be fine.
He watched the scholar slowly break camp.
The sword’s magic did not compel him to assist, and Edmund obviously knew what he was doing, even if he had to stop now and again to catch his breath.
The sight of the man’s bruised but determined face, just starting to fade from magnificent violet to apple green, woke a pang of guilt in the Dervish’s chest, which was ruthlessly squelched.
I’d only be speeding up the rate at which he got himself killed. Over a mule. And I will be obligated to fight those men to save him, so I’ll probably get killed right along with him, assuming there’s more than just the two. And then when I wake up, the next wielder will be a local mule thief.
Actually, when he put it like that, it would probably be best for everyone if he could just rescue the damned mule.
The Dervish made one last stab at sanity. “Can’t we just go buy another mule?”
“If we start walking back the way I came, it will take at least two days to get to the inn where someone might have a mount for sale. More likely we’d have to go south from there into a more civilized area.
” Edmund’s shoulders slumped. “I thought I could save some coins going east. There’s a river between here and Archenhold, which we’ll have to cross eventually anyway, but up here, there’s about a dozen tributaries that are all very fast and the tolls are outrageous.
But if you go east far enough, the river spreads out and slows down and you can find ferrymen who will take you across for a couple of coppers.
But instead of saving money, I lost poor Sweetness. ”
The Dervish had a sudden horrible feeling that Edmund was about to cry. “I’m sure you could find another mule you liked just as much,” he said with false heartiness. “We just have to go back to this inn.”
Edmund gazed glumly at the saddlebags. “It might take more than two days. We’ll have to carry the books.”
“You may have to carry the books,” said the Dervish. “I just have to stop you from dying. I am not a beast of burden.”
A trace of hurt crossed Edmund’s face, though he tried to hide it. The Dervish didn’t exactly feel a pang of remorse, but he felt something. Half a pang, perhaps. A panglet.
He opened his mouth to ask if they couldn’t just leave the books, thought of Edmund contemplating dying to translate a single page, and closed his mouth again.
Nobody who spoke as passionately about lost knowledge as Edmund was going to leave the books to rot in the woods.
He looked at the saddlebags. They looked heavy and awkward and not comfortable for anyone who wasn’t shaped like a mule.
He wasn’t actually sure that the two of them would be able to carry the whole load between them.
Even if we can, it probably wouldn’t be good for someone with bruised ribs.
Edmund hefted the first set of saddlebags and staggered, then began trying to arrange them over his shoulders in some manner that would allow him to pick up the second set without falling over. The Dervish watched until it wasn’t funny anymore, then got up and took the saddlebags from him.
Your job is to get him to this Archon’s Glory place, so you can meet this scholar who might be able to break the curse, which you are absolutely not going to think about. It’s going to take a lot longer if he insists on dragging those things back the way you came.
Ancestors, I can’t believe I’m going to all this trouble over a goddamn mule.
“All right,” the Dervish said, with an enormous sigh. “Let’s hide the books for now and then go looking for your accurs … for Sweetness.”
The Dervish had been afraid that his nonexistent tracking skills would be needed again, but fortunately, that wasn’t the case.
They simply walked along the road until they saw a fire in the distance.
It was coming on evening by that point, which made things easier.
Then they stepped into the woods and the Dervish crept closer to the fire, after exhorting Edmund to stay put.
He circled through the woods, watching for sentries. Through the trees, he caught glimpses of orange light and tumbled stone. Some kind of ruin, he guessed, being used as a campsite.
And it could be anyone at all, including the local widows and orphans, and Edmund’s mule is ten miles down the road. Still, it paid to be cautious.
The ground sloped upward sharply on the far side of the ruin. The Dervish dropped low and crawled up the hillside until he could look down into the campsite.
If it was the local orphans, they had apparently been orphaned for quite some time.
Long enough to grow into disreputable-looking adults, anyway.
The Dervish counted at least seven. The ruin’s tumbled stone walls had been reinforced with crude log palisades, probably to keep out the wind more than intruders.
From the layout, he guessed it had been an old keep, or perhaps a church.
A long central hall remained partly intact, though it was missing the roof and had acquired openings that probably hadn’t been part of the original plan.
Partial roofs had been erected in the corners, made out of hides and what looked like pine branches.
Extremely flammable, the Dervish suspected, which might be useful.
Other than that, it had the look of a temporary camp that had become permanent.
The Dervish had stayed in camps like that, when a campaign ground to a halt because of weather or siege or a breakdown in negotiations that wasn’t quite broken-down enough to send in a mercenary company.
The men below looked fairly relaxed. Most of them were sitting around the fire, attending to small tasks or just sitting back. A small figure, not much bigger than a child, moved among them, handing out plates of food.
And there, hobbled in a corner, looking disgruntled as always, stood Sweetness.
Right. Maybe if he showed Edmund the situation, the scholar would give up on his mule. Maybe they could just hide the books and come back for them with a new mule. And if these bastards steal that one too, I’m giving up and lying down in a ditch to wait for death.
“A full bandit camp?” Edmund asked dubiously. “That seems odd out here. There’s just not enough traffic along this route to sustain them. Unless…”
“Unless…?”
Edmund shook his head. “Let me get a look at them.”
This was not as difficult as the Dervish had feared.
The scholar had clearly had some experience with trying to move stealthily, and more importantly, had experience in woods just like this.
The pair managed to sneak back up the hillside without making much more noise than, say, a loose mule wandering around.
“Oh no,” whispered Edmund, taking in their numbers. “What do we do?”
“We should give up on the mule.”
“But it’s Sweetness.” And then, reddening under the Dervish’s glare, “We’d still have to lug the books back.”
The Dervish heaved an enormous sigh. “I suppose I can either kill them or try to seduce them.”
Edmund gaped at him. “There’s at least seven of them!”
“Killing it is, then.”
“What?”
“I’m good but I’m not that good.”
Edmund’s mouth fell open but no sound came out.
Ancestors save me, he really is an innocent. Maybe not a virgin, but definitely an innocent.
He waited a moment to see if Edmund regained the power of speech, but apparently something had frozen up inside the scholar’s brain. “So are they bandits?” the Dervish asked finally, hoping to jar something loose.
As he had hoped, a direct question got things moving again. Edmund shook his head. “Sleeveless,” he whispered, “which is worse.”
The Dervish wasn’t sure he’d heard that correctly. “Sleeveless? What do you mean?”
“Well, about four hundred years ago, this valley was settled by two moieties—”
The Dervish stared at him. He can’t seriously mean to recite the entire history of the area.
“—called the Netweavers and the Half-Sleeve, who practiced exclusive cross-marriage—”
He does. Ancestors have mercy. “Perhaps,” the Dervish said, with marvelous patience, “you could skip to the end.”
Edmund’s lips moved silently as he thought. “Okay. About seven years ago—”
“Closer to the end.”
“A splinter faction broke away from the other inhabitants because they weren’t allowed to marry their fictive sisters.”
“They what?”
The other man gave him an exasperated look. “Well, you see, about four hundred years ago, this valley was settled by two moieties…”