Mastiff: The Legend of Beka Cooper #3, page 24
“She’d dig if he was buried here, wouldn’t she?” Master Farmer asked.
I nodded.
“We still have to make sure.” Tunstall had caught up with us. “Cooper, fetch the digging equipment. It’s on the horse with the black socks.”
“No need,” Master Farmer said. “Don’t make me talk to you about artistry again.” He strode toward the pile of tumbled earth as Pounce yawned.
Tunstall rolled his eyes at me. “He has artistry,” he repeated. “Because that’s what it takes to blow things up. And cook his arm.”
“He’s good at keeping bugs off,” I reminded my partner as we followed our mage to the grave. “And I’ve gotten that fond of his tea.”
“You interfere in my dreadful concentration,” Master Farmer said without turning around. He made his voice boom like the Players did in their performances. “You lack the proper respect for the wonders to unfold!”
I sighed. I am beginning to think that Lord Gershom has saddled us with the silliest mage in the Eastern Lands. Not the stupidest, not that by far. Only the silliest. I looked at him, his body still now as he eyed the turned earth. Funny. I hadn’t noticed before that he’s got such broad shoulders.
Master Farmer reached out with his unburned left hand, holding it palm up. “I learned this from Cassine,” he said absently. “It’s a housecleaning spell that I made bigger.” Instantly the tumbled earth of the grave began to quiver, then to shake. The protection sign disappeared into the moving grains of soil. Master Farmer beckoned with his outstretched hand and the earth rose, clods and single grains falling off to the sides.
Higher came a block of dirt, five feet deep, five feet wide, seven feet long, as close as I could measure, the earth falling off onto the sides of the grave. Achoo ran between my legs and quivered there. Tunstall gripped his belt with white-knuckled hands. As the dirt fell away two pairs of bare feet were visible to us.
Master Farmer raised his free hand and pulled it down from the one he’d already extended. The rest of the dirt separated from the dead and settled on one side of the hole. With the other hand, he beckoned the dead forward. When they were but a foot away, he gently let them settle on the grass.
He waved his hand slowly, from side to side, and the wind blew the remaining earth from the naked bodies. There were three, a mot my age with a swaddled babe laid on her breast, and at her side a brown-haired girl child near the age of our prince. The worms and beetles had been at them already. They were black and swollen with rot, their scant ragged clothes cutting into their flesh.
Glittering blue fire dripped from Master Farmer’s hand. When it touched the dead, there was a flash so bright my eyesight was filled with spots. Achoo whimpered, and I heard Tunstall cursing in Hurdik.
Master Farmer only said, “A rather good mage has been at work here. Interesting.”
“Interesting?” Tunstall asked. He sounded vexed.
“If it had been dangerous, I would have spoken out,” Master Farmer told him. “You get too excited over big flashes, Tunstall. Mages rely on that to make you think they have more power than you.” He set his pack on the ground, took the corked jar I had returned to him, and opened the jar with a whisper. He tapped a quantity of powder into his left hand. I knelt beside him and picked up the wide cork, gesturing for him to give me the jar. For a moment he blinked, as if he’d forgotten I was there, or as if he’d never considered that a second pair of hands might be useful. Then he passed me the jar.
As I corked it, Master Farmer walked alongside the dead, letting the wind blow the powder from his hand over the three abandoned corpses. It settled, glittering like tiny stars.
He said nothing, only looked at them, his eyes thoughtful and kind under their heavy lids. Plainly he’d forgotten Pounce, Tunstall, Achoo, and me. All his attention was on the dead. He still kept his hand outstretched, though motionless, as if he used it to welcome something that was to come forth. The sparkles on the swollen, rotting corpses twinkled and seemed to move, until they rose as a blanket. In midair they halted and faded, leaving in their wake the seeming of the dead as they must have looked the moment they were put in the ground.
Master Farmer lowered his hand. “I’ll say they’ve been dead four days. That’s given the stage of rot and bloat, and the work of the beetles and worms, all compared to their living bodies,” he said quietly. “The babe must have been scarcely three days old when she died. See the cleft in the upper lip goes all the way up into the nose? She may not have been able to nurse. A decent healer could have fixed it.”
“Slavers don’t heal newborns,” Tunstall said, his voice a quiet rumble from his chest. “Only if they’re old enough to work.”
“I know,” Master Farmer replied. “I know. The woman is the mother. The spell does not tell me if she had childbed fever. If the infant is only three days old, it could be the mother was ill with it, but the fever did not kill her.”
There was a dark slash under the mot’s left ear. Master Farmer was placed wrong to see it. I pointed it out to him. There was no sign of a knife. If she had done it to herself, they’d have buried it with her, a suicide’s knife being unlucky. Of course, how would a slave have gotten her ticklers on a blade?
Master Farmer turned his attention to the third corpse. The brown-haired little girl was unmarked save for a dark stripe all the way around her throat. “Strangled,” I said. “Not a rope, or it’d be more scratched up. Whip mark, it looks like.”
“Can we get a better look at the backs?” Tunstall asked. “If they’re branded, it will be on the blade of the shoulder.”
Master Farmer rubbed his lower lip with his thumbs. “I thought only the owners brand, not the slavers.”
“The sellers brand if it’s a special item they might be carrying around for a time,” Tunstall explained, his voice flat. “They use special ointment in the healing and when the item’s bought, the slaver just says the word and his brand’s gone.”
Scowling, Master Farmer reached over the dead. Sparkles fell from his fingers. In a slow and creepy fashion, both the mot and the gixie turned to the right, like they was turning over in bed. The babe stayed on the mot’s chest. My tripes surged. I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep my breakfast from coming up. I don’t know why. Surely I’ve seen worse in the last four years. Yet there was sommat dreadful in those open-eyed bodies moving, sommat I wished I could un-see.
Tunstall stepped forward, his baton in his hand, and pointed to the back of the mot’s shoulder. It showed no mark. The gixie, though, was fresh branded when she went to the Black God. The flesh around it was red and puffy, new-burnt.
I moved closer. That brand, I’d seen it before.
Master Farmer and Tunstall stepped closer, too. Tunstall brought a piece of parchment from his belt purse. He’d put my drawing of the brass token there. We all compared it to the tattoo. They were the same.
“We need to get word to Gershom that we’re on the right track,” Master Farmer said quietly. “Perhaps he can get other Hunters into Frasrlund. They can come down the Great Road North. We might catch the enemy between us.”
“How do you intend to get word to him?” Tunstall asked. “Split one of us off? I think any of us who rides away will be picked up sooner than I can say Ma’s name. A couple of coins will have any farmer or ferryman talking of Dogs Hunting in company with a lady knight.”
Master Farmer shook his head and went to his pack. Crouching, he opened it out, removing box after box. At last he produced a small dish and a little box of ebony wood, closed and locked with silver. “Water, one of you?” he asked, sitting on the grass. He sat cross-legged and accepted Tunstall’s water flask. He poured a little bit of water into the dish and returned the flask, then set the dish aside. “I may be a little odd after this,” he warned us.
“What’s ‘a little odd’?” I asked.
“Cassine made this powder to extend my hearing and speaking range,” he explained. “Also to ensure that only the person I intend to hear me does so, while anyone who tries to overhear me or find me does not.” He wet a finger, opened the box, and touched his fingertip to the odd, purplish dust inside. Instantly his finger began to glow. Master Farmer closed the box and touched his now-glowing finger to the end of his tongue and both eyelids. They too glowed. He shut his mouth and eyes, grimacing as he did. Then he held out the box, obviously wanting one of us to take it. Tunstall shook his head and made the Sign against evil on his chest. I accepted it. Once the box was in my hand, I closed the tiny locks and set it in Master Farmer’s pack. I hoped that’s what Master Farmer wanted me to do, because I make it a rule never to eat things that glow. After I returned the box to his pack, I loaded the rest of his things into it.
When I turned back to the men, Tunstall had moved further up on the trail. Achoo stood behind him. Next to me Master Farmer held the small dish in both hands. He looked into it with his glowing eyes. “Come on,” he whispered. “Ironwood, Orielle, one of you, hear me. One of you must be able to hear. You’re both supposed to have—”
“Who are you?” Tunstall and I jumped. The voice came from the dead child, but it was that of a grown mot. “Mage! Identify yourself! Why have you pried at my work?”
Master Farmer gave no reply. I stayed where I was, trying not to shiver my way out of my boots.
“Answer me, fool!” ordered the female mage. “Did you think we would not lay a trap for prying idiots? Speak, or I will stop your heart dead!”
Master Farmer looked at the child and opened his mouth. Blue-green fire shot out of it to collide with a gout of pale yellow fire that roared up from the bodies. “Did you think I would not be ready? Tell me your name!” he cried, though his mouth didn’t move. The unseen mage howled in rage. The two magics clashed and vanished. The dead were burned to the bone.
Master Farmer’s eyes still glowed. He emptied the water dish with a trembling hand and set it aside. He straightened one leg at a time as if he’d forgotten how they worked. Then, as slowly as my granny Fern, he began to get to his feet. I watched him fumble, trying to brace his hands on the earth or to lever himself upright with one leg. I glanced at Tunstall. He had fetched a good luck charm from his pocket and was praying over it as he petted the shaking Achoo with his free hand.
He’ll be all right, Pounce said. Until that moment I’d forgotten he was with us. He’s not at his best with big magics, remember. This was quite big.
“Why didn’t you do something?” I asked.
When Pounce glared at me, I said it along with him, “Because you’re not allowed.”
Why ask me foolish questions, then, if you know what I will say? Pounce wanted to know.
“Because I want to be surprised,” I snapped. Then I looked at Master Farmer, who still sat on the grass. I scolded myself, saying that a servant of the god of death ought to be made of stronger stuff than I was showing, until I finally found the sack to go to the mage. Carefully, not knowing if I was courting a lightning bolt or some such nasty thing, I got both hands under one of his arms and braced one of his outstretched legs with my feet. He looked at me blindly, startled, his eyes alight. He said something, but it was in no language I knew.
“It’s all right,” I said, talking to him as I had to my brothers and sisters when they were sick. “We’ll get you on your feet if you can manage it. My, that trull was a nasty bit of slum stew, wasn’t she? Arm around my shoulders—good lad!”
Tunstall got over his bit of religion and came to aid us. Together we helped Master Farmer up and slid him into his shoulder pack. I have to say, that man is one weighty piece of beef.
We were about to try for the road when Master Farmer mumbled, “A little rest and I can bury the bones again.” His eyes were shimmering only now. I could see the irises through the odd blue-green veil.
“I’d like a bit more warning, next time,” Tunstall said gruffly, looking at the ground. “I was certain Morni the Mad had you.”
That explained his fit of strangeness. Morni was the hill people’s war goddess and mad as a rabid cat. I wouldn’t want to be near her, either.
“Sorry,” Master Farmer mumbled. “You don’t usually find that much power in a hidden grave.”
“A trap,” Tunstall said. “She knew you were coming.”
“She wasn’t the only one. There were two magics in that, very strong ones. Very strong,” he repeated, rubbing his eyes.
I pulled Farmer’s hand away. “Stop that,” I said. “It’s not good to rub your eyes.”
Tunstall gave me the oddest look. I glared at him. “It isn’t. Don’t I tell you the same?”
“You do,” he said seriously. “After you’d known me two years.”
“The other mage didn’t speak at all.” Master Farmer was looking at his hand, as if he wondered why I held his wrist. I let it go. “There were two. I tried to put a hook into one of them, but I wasn’t prepared to work that kind of magic.” He glanced at me, then Tunstall, then Pounce. “It needs preparation, see. And a brazier, and at least two things I’d left in my bag, not thinking I’d need them.” The muscles flexed in his cheeks. “I will if we meet again. There’s a replacement for the brazier, if I work that ahead of time.” He stood with his weight more on his own feet now. His eyes were his own again. He still shook a bit, but mostly he looked like the Master Farmer I was used to. I slid out from under his arm. He stayed upright.
With a nod, I stepped away from them. “A moment,” I said quietly. I went to the piles of burned bones. I had no fear of the mages biting at me. It was plain they’d fled Master Farmer, and him but one man. I wondered if he’d noticed that yet.
“Black God take you gentle,” I whispered to the poor corpses. “Let his messengers guide you to the Peaceful Realms, where you’ll forget what happened here.”
The clatter of wings got my attention. I looked up. Three wood pigeons had taken to the air. They must have been in the nearby trees. Were they carrying the spirits of these poor folk? Seemingly neither mot nor gixie had any unfinished business for me. Like other slaves, mayhap they were eager to leave such a hard world.
I stood and nodded to Master Farmer. Hanging on to Tunstall’s arm, he raised the bones just enough to move them over to their grave. A mother putting her babes to bed could not have been more gentle as he settled them into the hole. Once they were down, he lifted his right hand and summoned the pile of earth that he’d set aside. It tumbled in swiftly until the grave was full again. At the very last, Master Farmer drew a sign for protection in the dirt. It shone with a steady, bright light. I didn’t believe any carrion eaters would be digging these folk up.
Tunstall asked, “Is all the barrier gone?”
Master Farmer nodded. “No one else will die here.”
Achoo, seeing that we were done with scary things, moved to a spot in the grass where a dead bird’s carcass lay in the middle of another path. Her tail was wagging again. She was sniffing, but not at the dead creature. She circled back to a spot that was spattered with brown drops—old piss—sniffed it, and returned to the dead bird. Then she ran a few feet down the path, halted, and danced.
“They didn’t take them back to the road by the path we used,” I said. “It’s a guess, but Achoo says her trail leads that way. I’ll wager that trail either picks up with the main road ahead, or leads to a village.”
Tunstall trotted back the way we’d come to get Lady Sabine and the horses.
Master Farmer sat on the grass once more. Achoo, thinking we faced another delay, whined miserably.
“Mudah,” I called to her. “We humans need a bit more than our legs and our nose to go along with.” I crouched beside Master Farmer.
“I hate the waste of it, the waste of life that criminals leave behind,” he said wearily. He fumbled at his belt, trying to undo the ties that held his water flask. I slapped his hand away and freed it, then opened it for him. Master Farmer took it with a nod of thanks. “Each of us has power, a kind of magic,” he told me, speaking as if I were a scholar like him. “We spend it somehow as we live, in great and lesser ways. Those three never even had a chance to use theirs.” He drank from his water flask and tried to fix it on his belt, but his hands still shook too much.
I took the thing from his grip and secured it to his belt again, then fed Achoo some meat strips. I said nothing, I was thinking about his words. They made sense. That was one of my reasons for doing what I did. I want more folk to make sommat of their lives, instead of losing them to slavery or prison or murder. But I’d never thought of it this way, that we each had a fire of some kind. We could each make a difference.
Tunstall returned with my lady and the horses. As Master Farmer was dragging himself onto his mount, Lady Sabine asked, “How did these mages know you were looking at this? Surely they weren’t watching all this time?”
Master Farmer smiled as he hauled himself into the saddle. It was a cold smile, a schoolmaster’s smile. “They didn’t need to. If I’d laid this trap, I’d have set the barrier with a spell, a ‘bee.’ In the unlikely event a mage who was powerful enough to break the barrier came along, the bee would go instantly to the casting mage. She wouldn’t even need her partner to spring the trap, if she’s one of the two who’s riding with that slave train.”
I dug in one of the packhorse’s bags. The mage needed to eat something. I cut a chunk off a ham that was conveniently near the top of one pack and some off the cheese that was its neighbor, and shoved them into Master Farmer’s hand. Then I cut more for Tunstall so he wouldn’t whine that I favored the mage. When I held up my knife and looked at my lady, she shook her head and raised a hand in thanks. I put away the food and mounted my own horse. Pounce jumped up onto my lap while Achoo pranced and whined on the ground.
“Maji, Achoo,” I called. I rode first down the trail following her, giving Saucebox the nudge to trot a bit.
“There’s another bad thing,” I heard Master Farmer say. “She blocked me from reaching any mage close to Gershom. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get through down the road.”
