The Spirit Stone. Katharine Kerr
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‘Tirro will be shipping out for Bardek,’ Wffyn said. ‘His father has a friend with a ship, you see, but he’d left harbour before this thing happened – the ship’s captain I mean, not the father. He’ll come back late in the summer and then make the last run over to winter in Bardek. Tirro will be going with him, and good riddance.’
‘I see,’ Nevyn said. ‘Exactly where is the ship going, do you know?’
‘Myleton.’
Nevyn nodded, as if merely acknowledging the information, but by then Gwairyc knew him well enough to see that something had troubled him. Later, when they were alone, he asked the old man about it.
‘Bardek is a very strange place,’ Nevyn said. ‘There are men there who share Tirro’s particular vice, and some of them are rich and even powerful. They pursue their prey in the shadows, because most Bardekians are decent folk, but at the same time, in the larger towns, there are brothels where they can satisfy their wretched cravings in safety.’
‘That’s loathsome!’
‘Indeed. So I was wondering if I could send a message to some friends of mine there, to suggest they tell the archons to keep an eye on this unfortunate cub. Alas, they live on Orystinna, nowhere near Myleton.’
‘A pity. This Orys-whatzit – it’s another island?’
‘It is. Most likely Tirro will alert the archons to his presence on his own, by doing some wretched thing too openly. He strikes me as more than a little dim-witted. I wish I could prevent it, but alas, like our good merchant, I can’t be everywhere at once.’
‘Indeed.’ Gwairyc shook his head in disgust. ‘Ye gods, if the lad was as hard up as all that, he could have gone after a sheep. It would have been cleaner.’
‘True spoken.’ Nevyn managed a twisted smile at the jest.
Gwairyc realized that for this moment at least he and his master, as he always thought of Nevyn, had found a common bond of sorts in their disgust. It would be a good time to bring up a matter very much on his mind.
‘There was somewhat else I wanted to ask you,’ Gwairyc said. ‘About these bandits, my lord. I can’t defend the caravan with my bare hands.’
‘Ah. You want your sword back, do you?’ Nevyn considered, but only briefly. ‘Very well. I’ll give it to you. Just don’t go drawing it on anyone but the bandits.’
‘I won’t, I swear it.’
The return of his sword raised Gwairyc’s spirits more than anything else could have, except perhaps the chance to kill a bandit or two with it. Unfortunately to his way of thinking, though not to anyone else’s, the ride through the mountains proved hot, tedious, and uneventful – except for a strange accident.
It happened on the steepest part of the road up to the main pass. In the sticky summer heat the caravan made slow progress that day and camped early when they found a reasonably flat area off to one side of the dusty trail. Lined with some sort of shrubby tree that Gwairyc couldn’t put a name to, a muddy rivulet ran nearby, flowing out of the forest cover and heading downhill. The hot day had exhausted everyone. The stock had to be tended and fed, exhaustion or no, but no one spoke more than they absolutely had to. With his share of the work done, one of the muleteers pulled off his boots, rolled up his trousers, and trotted off to soak his aching feet downstream from their drinking water. Gwairyc had just turned Nevyn’s mule into the general herd when he heard the man scream. Without thinking he drew his sword and ran just as a second agonized shriek rang out to guide him.
In the spotty shade the muleteer was lying sprawled with one leg held high in the air. It was such an odd posture that it took Gwairyc a moment to notice the blood sheeting down the muleteer’s leg. The fellow had stepped into a wire snare and tripped it. Now the thin wire was biting ever deeper into his unprotected ankle as he flailed his arms and screamed.
‘Hold still!’ Gwairyc put all his noble-born authority into his voice. ‘You’ll be hurt worse if you don’t.’
The fellow looked his way, sobbed once, and fainted. Gwairyc trotted over and considered the wire. He had no desire to blunt his blade by trying to cut it. His inspection showed that the thin strand forming the noose had been knotted repeatedly over a much thicker wire, reinforced with rope, that formed the long portion of the snare and anchored the whole contraption to a nearby sapling. By then another muleteer and Wffyn himself had come at the run. With a cascade of foul oaths the muleteer set to work untwisting the strands whilst the merchant supported the injured man’s leg.
‘I’ve never seen such a cursed strong snare,’ Wffyn remarked. ‘What was the hunter after, I wonder? A bear?’
‘That thing would never take a bear’s weight,’ Gwairyc said. ‘A deer? Not likely, either.’
‘Huh.’ Wffyn’s face was beginning to turn pale. He looked away from the muleteer’s blood-soaked leg. ‘Makes you wonder if that trap was set to catch a man. Guarding somewhat, like, close by here.’
‘It might be.’ Gwairyc sheathed his sword. ‘I’ll get Nevyn. Our friend here should thank the gods that the old man’s nearby.’
Indeed, whether it was the gods or luck, the fellow would have lost his foot and perhaps his life as well if it weren’t for Nevyn. Still, the process of getting the embedded wire out of the wound and the whole mess washed clean and stitched up was painful enough to watch, much less experience. The poor fellow would keep coming round only to faint again the moment Nevyn touched the leg. Gwairyc busied himself with heating water in an iron pot for steeping herbs while the rest of the caravan stayed strictly elsewhere. Only Tirro stuck close to them.
‘I could help,’ Tirro said. ‘I can look for firewood if you need to brew herbs.’
‘That’s not a bad idea,’ Gwairyc said. ‘Go to it, but be cursed careful where you put your feet.’
‘I will, sir.’
With a little bow of his head Tirro hurried off into the underbrush. In but a little space of time he came back with a good supply of dead branches. By then Nevyn had begun to stitch the wound. Tirro glanced at the muleteer’s leg and went decidedly pale.
‘Just feed some wood into the fire,’ Gwairyc said. ‘Don’t look.’
‘I won’t, sir.’ Tirro hunkered down by the fire.
The pot of water hung from a tripod. Tirro concentrated on breaking up branches and feeding bits into the fire underneath. He was doing well until the muleteer came round from a faint and began moaning. Tirro straightened up and looked at the leg just as Nevyn started pouring warm herb water over the wound, releasing a flood of clots and bits of skin. At that the lad turned dead-white and rushed away to vomit among the bushes.
By then Gwairyc could see even worse sights without feeling sick. Instead he merely felt shamed, as if he’d sunk even lower in the world by simply knowing enough herbcraft to act like the apprentice he nominally was. Still, once the muleteer was lying on a pad of blankets with his ankle wrapped in clean bandages, and his pain eased with one of Nevyn’s herbal mixtures, Gwairyc had to admit a certain admiration for the old man’s skill. When they were sitting by their own fire and eating a delayed dinner, Gwairyc told him so.
‘I wish we had chirurgeons like you with the army,’ Gwairyc said. ‘There must be naught that you can’t cure.’
‘My thanks, but I only wish that were true, lad. There’s many a foul illness that baffles my herbs, wasting diseases of the lungs, strange fevers from Bardek, and the like.’
‘I see. I’ve never been down on the southern coast, but I’ve heard about those fevers. Doesn’t make me want to go there.’
‘Well, even in Bardek the fevers are not what you’d call common.’ Nevyn paused, glancing away in thought. ‘Strange ills can strike a man down anywhere. In fact, my master in herbcraft told me once about a very strange disease that