Ilbei Spadebreaker and the Harpy's Wild (14 page)

“He did. But he made it sound like he ain’t too sure what was wrote on it will do any good. He’s got some others he can try, but I expect he don’t figure they’ll do fer much neither. Worst is, we said we’d come back, and that’s a hard piece fer me to chew on, leavin off without so much as sendin word.”

“Well then, why don’t you take a few of the boys back and at least offer to bring that one feller and them two women back to Hast, where they can treat the sick one right. We can have the boats wait for you where that creek runs in.”

“Ain’t any faster goin down the creek to meet up than us just cuttin straight across to Hast,” Ilbei said. “But other than that, I was thinkin just the same. Them bandits may have run off, and they may not have, but we ought to at least make the offer of escort. Plus, that water ain’t no good fer em to be drinkin. If nothing more, we have to tell em that much, so as they don’t all die off. Question is clearin it through the major there.”

“Don’t clear it unless you want to be told you can’t. He already ordered us back. But did he say
how
you had to go?”

“He sent fer the boats.” Ilbei liked where Hams was steering the plan, but Ilbei was a firm believer in the essential nature of the chain of command.

“Aye, he did. But did he order you onto them? Way you told it, he ordered you back to Hast. Sending for the boats was more for convenience.”

The corners of Ilbei’s mouth twitched, first one, then the other, then both together, rising into a grin that cut through the tangle of his mustache and beard like ground beneath a plow. “Hams, you’re a genius as sure as you’re ugly as a bucket a’ guts. And right is right.”

“Aye, it is. Such is the good cut of a technicality.”

“Better than the bad ones, that’s sure. Suits conscience and duty the same. I’ll send most of em back with ya, though. Them boats leavin empty won’t do fer appearances.”

“You gonna take them boys you brung yesterday, then?”

“Yeah, they’ll do fine. Kaige will make fer a fine pack mule, and Meggins is a good sort in a fight, and a thinker too.”

“How ’bout young Jasper? Seems a bit jumpy to me.”

“He is, but he’s got his usefulness. Unless ya figure you’ll need him more on the way back. There was that ratty water nymph down there what near got us all killed.”

“We’ll have a whole boat crew with us, and we know about her now. You take the wizard. He needs the outdoor time anyway, shake the book dust off of him and grow himself a pair.”

Ilbei laughed and clapped Hams on the shoulder. “You’re not off the mark with that. Not by a hair.”

Chapter 12

F
or the sake of appearances, Ilbei and his little troop went through the motions with the rest of the camp, packing it up and heading downstream as if they were all on their way to meet the boats that would row them back to Hast. Once beyond the range of the major’s eyes and ears—the major having stayed behind with assurances that Locke Verity would be his companion until a boat returned to take him back to Twee—Ilbei and his squad were free to turn toward Camp Chaparral. The plan was simple and just as Ilbei and Hams planned it: check in on the sick woman and her kind keeper, Mags; put the patient in Jasper’s care; and then head up Harpy Creek to where the one miner was. They would offer him their protection, then head for Hast in compliance with the major’s command. Ilbei bade Hams goodbye a measure down the Softwater, promising they’d only be two days at most behind him. With that, they were underway.

The day brewing was to be as hot as the one before, and the journey was only made marginally easier by the fact that they’d been there before. Despite the heat, they made decent time, and as they came over the ridge that looked down on the five buildings of the camp, the sun was barely blazing noon.

“I wish their water wasn’t full of harpy rot,” Meggins said after a draught of warm water from his waterskin. “If mine gets any hotter, it will just be steam.”

“They got company down there,” Ilbei observed as he, like Meggins and the rest, caught his breath after cresting the ridgeline. He sat on his heels, leaning against a rock and watching as a man came out of Mags’ modest business and began tying down the leather covers on a pair of panniers weighing down one of three packhorses. It was impossible to make out much detail about him given that he had his hood pulled up against the heat and that the heat itself rippled the air as it rose from the ground beneath his feet. “I bet that’s that feller what Mags was worried about, fearin he might be dead.”

“Well, that’s good news,” Jasper said. “Perhaps he’s brought back a doctor to help the sick woman. If we can discover what the disease is actually called, my next set of scrolls will be more useful to anyone else who might suffer similarly. I realize it is customary for the uneducated to slap whatever word they want onto whatever set of symptoms comes along, but healing is a discipline. In fact, forty years ago, there was an epidemic that swept through Pompost and Norvingtown that the locals were calling black-eyed fever, but it turned out not to be that at all, and instead they discovered it really was a malady called—”

“Jasper, by the gods, ya make more noise than a dragged bag of pans. If’n I have to hear a whole ’nother sermon on black-eyed fever—and after just survivin that hour-long racket on extract of prickly pear—I fear I may have to kill one of us, me or you. Not sure which yet, but I’m thinkin it’s most like to be you.”

“Please make it him, Sarge,” Meggins said. “I’ll carry your gear to Hast if you do it now.”

“Sermon? What sermon?” Jasper asked, ignoring Meggins entirely. “A sermon requires a topic of religious nature, or at very least a moral one. I certainly made no claims about prickly pear in the context of morality or faith. Not even as academic discourse pertaining to religion, morality or deities, why, I—”

Meggins came up behind Jasper and placed his hand over his mouth, gently, but firmly, silencing him. “Sarge is right. You talk too much. Put a cork in that yawning saucebox of yours before I hold you down and Sarge beats the wind out of you. Maybe Kaige can pull your head off after.”

Jasper looked indignant, sending a silent plea to Kaige with his eyes. Kaige shrugged. “I don’t mind listening to you so much,” he said. “I won’t pull your head off, neither. Though, Sarge got the final say-so.”

Jasper rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he said. Although given that he spoke it through the filter of Meggins’ filthy hand, it sounded more like
airee aw
, which suited Ilbei fine.

They climbed down the slope, weaving through the manzanita brush, and once again made their way into the tiny imposter of a town. “Miss Mags,” Ilbei called as they came even with the first of the shacks, the very same in which the madwoman with the craze had been anesthetized. “It’s Sergeant Spadebreaker come back to speak with ya, if’n ya happen to be around.”

The man with the packhorses checked the cinch on the saddle of his lead horse but didn’t look up at them when Ilbei called. Ilbei saw his head move enough to allow a sideways glance from beneath his cowl, but the fellow made no motion to acknowledge them.

“Sergeant,” said Mags, coming out of the building that served as tavern and supply depot. “I’m glad you came. Though it’s a sad reason that I’m happiest to see you, I confess.”

“Why’s that?” Ilbei asked.

“Candalin didn’t make it through the night. The medicine wore off in the evening, after you left. It burned off really quickly this time. I dosed her twice more overnight, but when I woke up late this morning, she was gone into Mercy’s arms. More’s the better for it, I suppose.”

“I’d hoped she’d hold up long enough fer Jasper here.” Ilbei shrugged backward, a gesture intended toward the mage.

“Yes. I did too. But her time came.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Well, that was kind of you to come back, Sergeant. You and your men.” She looked to them, each in turn, the four of them standing there covered in dust, foxtails and cockleburs, the latter of which stuck to them nearly everywhere. “Thank you all,” she said. “You have good hearts. The world needs more of them.”

“So, bein as we’re too late for Candalin,” Ilbei said, meaning to draw the conversation into an arena of action for which he and his men were better suited, “what was that ‘sad reason’ you was speakin of? Whatever it is, just say the word. We’ll see to it if’n we can.”

“The soil here is hard and rocky,” she replied. “And I don’t want to see her … well, you know, picked at by the scavengers. I know it’s an imposition, but if you and your men could help me get her buried properly, it would likely save me two or three days’ work.”

“It’s no imposition at all. It’s only right to see to that sort of thing. Mercy don’t take kindly to leavin good folks fer jackals, coyotes and buzzards.” He was careful not to mention the two skeletons they’d found up the creek only just the day before.

“No, she doesn’t.” She said this loudly, pointedly, and she turned toward the man down the lane from them, who was swinging into his saddle as she spoke. “She finds it to be the most offensive thing a
man
could do.” Her emphasis on the word
man
made Ilbei cringe, like watching some poor fellow take a swift kick to the crotch. Still, Ilbei reckoned if Mags hadn’t been as well mannered as she was, she might have said worse. Frankly, he was surprised she didn’t spit right after she’d said her piece, as it seemed by her expression that she wanted to.

The man glanced back over his shoulder, keeping his hood pulled low enough to shield his face, but he didn’t look long before heeling his horse and getting underway.

“Ya mean to say that feller refused to help ya give yer friend a proper send-off?”

“He did.”

“And ya asked him to? Direct, so as he understood?”

“I did.”

Ilbei growled low in his throat. “I’ll be dipped in frostberry sauce and fed to fire ants before I’ll suffer a man like that to go on without a proper talkin to.” He threw down the pack he’d been carrying and tossed his steel hat with its sergeant stripes on top of it. He set off down the dusty lane between the buildings, his bowlegs stomping and his elbows out as he went, rolling up his sleeves. “You there, feller on the horse, come on back here, as I’ll have a word with ya.”

The man made no move to stop, nor did he turn back to look. Instead, he kicked his horse into a trot. Immediate speed, however, was impeded by reluctance on the part of the three pack animals he had in tow.

Ilbei saw that the man’s intent was to flee, so he set off running after him, swearing for all his worth. “I said ya need to come on back here, son, as I have need to speak to ya.” Speed was not Ilbei’s strong suit, but his bowed legs pumped for all they were worth, eating up ground. The man yanked at the lead rope, trying to work the packhorses into at least a trot.

Ilbei caught up to the rearmost packhorse right away, and he got past the lead one a few strides after, near enough that he almost could have touched the rump of the rider’s animal. But his approach startled the packhorses, and they sidled and leapt sideways and away. Ilbei pressed on after, reaching for the mounted man.

“Stop this instant, ya whoreson dog,” Ilbei spat, but the rider whipped his mount furiously and yanked violently on the lead rope, shouting them all to speed. The pack string was drawn back toward Ilbei, and the lead animal knocked him a step sideways. The rider’s horse bolted out of Ilbei’s reach.

Ilbei knew he couldn’t catch up, that he was going to lose them all, so he veered toward the pack string and leapt between the second packhorse and the third, throwing his shoulder bodily into the animal’s chest and driving it to a stop. It reared up, terrified, yanking the lead rope out of the retreating man’s hand. Ilbei ducked beneath the churning, iron-shod hooves and snatched the rope for himself as it slid across the dirt. “Easy now,” he soothed. “Sorry there, girl. I didn’t mean nothin fer ya personal in that.”

A span of moments passed as Ilbei worked to quiet the mare, but soon enough she settled and warmed to Ilbei’s practiced hand. He stroked her on the neck, and when he was confident he had her under control, he turned, expecting to see the rider coming back for her. But he was not. In fact, the dust cloud the man churned up as he got away suggested he’d gotten his remaining pack animals up to speed and never once considered turning them around to retrieve the third. Ilbei wondered if he even knew he’d lost a horse. It was hard to imagine that he did not.

Nonetheless, Ilbei watched him go, his head tilted in the way of the curious and the pink patch of his bald spot slowly heating in the sun. “Didn’t see that comin,” he admitted to the mare. “And here ya seem like such a sweet girl.” He patted the horse on her wide, soft jaw and led her back to where his men and Mags were. Kaige, having unloaded his burden and started off to help, met Ilbei halfway with a wide grin.

“I told you Sarge could handle himself,” Meggins said, as Kaige and Ilbei rejoined the rest in the middle of what served as Camp Chaparral’s only street. Both soldiers were grinning at Ilbei unabashedly, their eyes beaming with admiration. Jasper had yet to close his mouth, but for once there were no words coming out. It was clear he’d never seen such a thing.

Ilbei handed the rope to Kaige and directed him to take the horse around to the shade side of the tavern and relieve it of its packs. “I expect that feller will be back once he figures out a third of his load is gone.”