Toward sunset of the second day they left the road and turned north to Bison Hill, a mound in the midst of the prairie covered with elder and cottonwood and used by travelers as a campsite – and by bandits as a handy place to find travelers – since time immemorial. Deer grazed in the woods, as did the small swift antelope of the plains.
He worked his way up to the knoll through stream cuts and bison wallows and under cover of the long prairie grass, making a mental note to speak to Janus about changing the clothing of the Guards from their traditional black to the colors of the earth. From a thicket of wild grapes some distance back he watched Hethya and one of the three black warriors – clones, Gil had called them, meaning identical people who were presumably common to her world – unload the donkeys while Bektis built a fire at the edge of the shelter of the trees.
Only an idiot or a Wise One would build a fire in such a place, where anyone could take advantage of the cover to come up on them, even as the Icefalcon was doing. But he supposed that with the advantage of wizardry it was possible to remain comfortably out of the wind and not worry about who or what might be deeper in the woods. Any of the Talking Stars People would have camped some distance from the knoll, where they could see in all directions, even had they had a Wise One in their company.
There was never a guarantee that some other war band wouldn’t include a shaman more Wise than one’s own.
“I can help you,” said Tir, as Hethya lifted him down from the donkey. “I promise I won’t run away.” He spoke matter-of-factly, but with a friendliness in his voice that told the Icefalcon that this woman must have used him kindly over the past day and a half. Indeed, the woman’s face was not cruel, and by the way she patted Tir on the shoulder, and the closeness between them as they stood, it was clear that she was used to children and liked them.
She glanced now over at Bektis, who was ordering the warriors about placing the blankets. It was the closest the Icefalcon had been to them – less than a hundred feet – and he studied the weapon of crystal and gold on the sorcerer’s hand with wary interest. A device of similar workmanship around Bektis’ neck, a high collar fitted up close under the ears, was visible only briefly when the wizard pushed down the furred hood of his coat and tried to untangle his beard.
“I think best not, sweeting,” Hethya said in a voice so low the Icefalcon had to guess at some of the words. “But thank you; ’tis kind of you thinking of it.” She ruffled his hair again. “Sit you down there under the tree a bit. We’ll be having supper soon, and I’ll untie you to eat. Are you tired?”
Tir shook his head, though he looked beaten with weariness. He followed her, his hands still bound behind his back – the Icefalcon could see where his wrists were bandaged under the thongs – while she unshipped a little nest of cook pots. “Does Oale Niu just tell you things?” he asked her as she worked. “Or do you see things, or smell them sometimes, and … and remember? Or think you remember but you don’t know what it is?”
“Like what, honey? Here, you, Akula,” she called out, and all three of the guards turned their heads. “One of you go fetch me water from the spring, would you?”
The men stared at her, scorn in their faces, for in the Alketch men do not take orders from women. Bektis snapped, “Do as she says,” and all started off in search of the boiled-leather pail that had hung, filled neatly with potatoes, on the second donkey’s pack saddle. Watching their aimless movements, it occurred to the Icefalcon that none of them were very bright.
“Like this.” Tir nodded toward the rolling wonderment of green beyond the scrim of birches. They had left the great slunch beds behind them, and for the most part the land was as it had been since the world’s dawn: long grass bright with spring, widely dispersed clumps of rabbitbrush, the dark lines of treetops marking stream cuts sometimes sixty feet below the level of the surrounding plain. “It smells like something … One of those other people was here once.” “Those other people” was how the boy thought about his ancestors, those memories of ancient days.
“Only it was in the winter, I think,” went on Tir softly. “Everything was brown. Did Oale Niu come here?”
“She did that.” Hethya settled back on her hunkers, and her voice changed again, slowed and deepened, as she said, “I was here. Twelve of us rode down from the flanks of Anthir mountain. The mages ringed our camp with a circle of flames to keep the Dark Ones at bay.”
Tir frowned. Even from this distance, the Icefalcon saw in the set of his shoulders, the stance of his compact body, the memory of distant things. “He was here with his daddy,” he said, so softly the Icefalcon almost could not make out the words. “His daddy knew the way. The road was that way, north toward the mountains, by those little hills.”
Two of the warriors came back with water; Bektis gave them very exact instructions about mounting guard on the camp, things that to the Icefalcon seemed obvious. The Icefalcon slipped back among the trees, carefully picking hard and sheltered ground, and crawled snake-wise on his belly through the grass to the bison wallow that he knew from other days lay just south of the road. Bandits – or more likely the Empty Lakes People, whose spirit wands he had seen twice in these lands – would be along in the morning.
And they were.
The Empty Lakes People didn’t attack until nearly noon, but the Icefalcon was aware of them when they came up the coulee to the northwest as a redstart and a raven flew out of the trees. They waited there for a time, for the party in the grove to pack up and move on.
When Bektis and his group didn’t pack up, but rather collected more firewood and water, like people who planned to remain where they were for the day, the Empty Lakes People – being the Empty Lakes People – decided that the thing to do was attack rather than make a closer observation of the grove, in which case they’d have seen that there was a Wise One in the party and thought again about the idea.
Or maybe not. These were the Empty Lakes People, after all.
In any case they attacked, with predictable results. The Icefalcon heard a cry from the wooded hill, and Hethya’s scream. The woman always seemed to be screaming. A man broke cover on the eastern side of the hill and ran across the road with his deer-hide jacket in flames. He fell in the long grass. Another warrior rode full-tilt out of the grove on a dun-colored mare that reared in sudden terror at something it saw but the Icefalcon didn’t.
Illusion. There were amulets against such spookery on the mare’s bridle but clearly Bektis’ powers were greater than the amulets’ maker – and since the Dark Ones’ systematic destruction of mages, many of the talismans had outlived their effectiveness years ago. One of the black warriors pelted from the trees and grappled briefly with the warrior, dragging her down from her horse. She cried out in terror and pain, and struck at something – again illusory – in which moment the black man plunged his sword into the woman’s chest. She fell, coughing blood. A war-dog, probably hers, raced from the trees, coat blazing, crying and yipping in pain.
In the grove other shapes were running around or struggling in the trampled underbrush of wild grape and snakeweed. More barking, war-dogs terrified and confused by enchantment. Fire flashed, or perhaps only the illusion of fire.
Tir, very sensibly, climbed a tree. The Icefalcon saw the boy’s bright blue jacket sleeves among the limbs of the cottonwood under which Bektis had built last night’s fire.