Karavans (30 page)

And so the settlement had lost one-tenth of its population, one-tenth of its dwelling places. Had so many not met in the place by the trees and put up tents, there would have been no culling. It was folly to allow so many to live as though this were now their home. Many meant to move on with the karavans, and many did, but too many had remained.

They brought it on themselves
, Brodhi reflected.
Surely they had learned enough of Hecari since the province was overrun
.

And yet he stood amid the wreckage of lives, of hopes, of dreams, and realized that even in the time he had spent among humans, he had as yet arrived at no understanding of them.

ON ORDERS FROM Jorda, Ilona had done with her wagon and team as everyone else with theirs: taken it off the road some distance away. Though they were not left in the tight formation of a single-file karavan on the move, neither were they halted so far away from one another that anyone was at risk. Teams were unhitched and hobbled or picketed for the night, allowed to graze to heart’s content on lush plains grass. The usual noise of children playing, women singing over their cookfires, and men trading tales and laughter over pipes was absent; the Hecari visit and resultant killings affected everyone, muting moods and actions.

Though Jorda had sought the advice of the other two karavan diviners, Melior and Branca, Ilona was not surprised
when a small trickle of people one by one approached her wagon and diffidently asked if she would read their hands. The change in destination had upset everyone’s plans, and now they required reassurance that Jorda’s decision to return to the settlement was wise for their needs.

Outdoors beside the wagon, Ilona unrolled and spread her rug, set her low table upon it, hung lighted pierced-tin lanterns upon their hooks and set a modest fire for tea. She gathered together blessing-sticks, cards, and polished stones and lay them out upon the table in pleasing patterns. Though most came to her specifically for hand-reading, others, accustomed to different rituals, found it disconcerting that a woman might simply look into their hands and see their futures without the support of sticks, stones, bones, crystals, cards, and other such implements. Ilona told them true, but relied only on her own gift; the other items, for her, were merely props.

Three women, two men. She served tea to each, studied work-worn, sometimes blistered palms, told them what she saw in relation to Jorda’s decision, and bade them sleep without worry. When the third woman, the final client, departed, Ilona set an elbow against the table and rested her brow in a spread-fingered hand, closing her eyes. She needed more tea—perhaps of willow bark, as her head had begun to ache. It took her that way sometimes, when clients were deeply worried or distraught. Certainly those of the karavan were both, following the experience with the Hecari, and with the news that they must turn back and wait another season before departing. It would be difficult; they had packed for the move, planned for the journey to take them to a destination where they would begin anew the very moment they arrived. Now they must wait again, must plan for a season in the tent settlement, where Hecari had already struck and might do so again.

Yes. Willow bark tea. Ilona rose, shook out her split skirts, tended the lanterns to make sure they wouldn’t upset and spill flaming oil, then climbed up the folding steps into her wagon. A grateful client, a man who worked
in wood, had paid her years before in kind, not in coin; she knelt on the floorboards next to her cot and silently thanked the man again for being so clever as to build beneath the cot a cabinet of multiple small drawers. It allowed her to organize and store various herbs, teas, spices, and oddments without taking up the precious storage space she needed for other things.

She had opened one of the shallow drawers and taken up the soft muslin bag in which the loose willow bark tea was kept when she heard a creaking step and felt the shifting of the wagon as someone mounted the steps. Still kneeling, bag in hand, she turned to see a man hesitating on the second step, head bowed to miss the lighted lantern dangling from the doorframe. Like every man in the karavan, he wore dusty, stained, and aging tunic and loose trews, belted at the waist with worn leather. His hair was brown and curly, eyes dark. Stubble shadowed his jaw.

He wanted something. Something urgent. She read no hand to discern that.

Ilona was weary and her head ached. It was with great effort she hung onto her patience and offered professional courtesy. “If you wish your hand read, please sit down at the table outside. There is tea, if you care for it. I’ll join you in a moment.”

He held out one closed hand. She noted his fingers were thick and scarred. “Can you look at this? It’s a charm.” His light voice was hesitant, yet she sensed something else underneath the tone, something tensile as wire. “I bought it from a priest who said it would rob my wife’s mother of speech for a day, only a day, so I might have a little peace— only a
day
,” he repeated earnestly, as if realizing that another might view such a goal as cruel. “She nags, you see … I just can’t please her.” His expression was shamefaced as he looked down at his closed hand. “Maybe I was wrong … I can see where you might think it’s wrong … but all I want is
one day
of peace. Is that so bad a thing to wish?”

Ilona supposed not. “But why bring it to me?”

His mouth jerked. “It isn’t working.”

She was amused and sympathetic, but also puzzled—and
she smelled spirits on his breath. Possibly that was why his wife’s mother nagged him. “What do you expect me to do? I read hands. I don’t make charms.”

“Could you just look at it? There’s a word that invokes it—maybe I’m not pronouncing it right. Here—see?” He opened his hand. Ilona saw three speckled feathers tied together with crimson thread around a sprig of some desiccated, unknown plant. “Maybe you can say the word the right way.” He moistened his lips, eyes wide and fixed, and pronounced the word with great care.

Ilona could not so much as gasp as a painful tightness seized her throat. She dropped the bag of willow bark tea and closed her hands on her throat, mouth opening to cry out. But nothing issued. No sound at all, not even a shout or a whisper.

“There,” the man said brightly, “it’s working after all.” He smiled, and in his eyes Ilona saw something more than intensity: the kindling of a predatory lust.

She lunged backward, scrabbling for a weapon of any sort, be it knife or mug or pot. But he was swifter than he appeared. He leaped up and into the wagon; she heard the clank of the lantern falling outside as he dragged the door closed behind him. He caught her, fingers digging into her shoulders. The astringency of spirits upon his breath assailed her face. The lust in his eyes now was ferocious.

Ilona tried again to find something that might buy her a moment to gain ground, but a flailing arm merely jammed itself against her cot cabinet. She mouthed profanities an upright woman shouldn’t know, but still nothing issued from her mouth.

With one hard shove the man slammed her down onto the floorboards.

Ilona blessed her split skirts as he struggled one-handed with the fabric. Her headache flared into conflagration from the impact; she had put away the pallet and mat she’d slept on when Rhuan was recuperating in her cot. There was no softness beneath her, only hard wood. And something that jammed into the back of her right shoulder.

“My wife’s mother wants to unman me, I think,” he told her, breathing heavily as he stripped her of belt. “All her jabber about me not being good enough. Do you think a man can
do
for his wife when he can’t escape her mother’s nagging tongue? So I found me someone to make this charm I could use on her …but then I saw
you
, you see. Living alone, with no man. And it’s not like you’re an upright woman with a husband to provide …but better than the Sisters, who want coin to couple.” Frustrated by the split skirts, he yanked hard at the fabric until it tore. “There won’t be another chance before we go back to the settlement.” He saw what she knew was panic in her eyes. “Now, you won’t be able to speak for a day or more—and the charm won’t
ever
let you speak of what we’ve done; that’s what the priest said—but you’ll be all right.” He grinned. “And so will I.”

She fought as best she could, but there was no scream able to break free of her throat. He had pinned her between the under-cot cabinet and the chests lining the other side of the wagon’s interior. His weight and the insistence of his knees, his hands, kept her on the floorboards.

His mouth was close to hers. Spirits-laden breath gusted against her face. “A man can’t
do
for his wife properly when her mother keeps saying he’s not good enough, now, can he?”

T
HERE WERE THINGS to be done besides sit in the wagon and cry. Audrun set her hair to rights, drew in a deep breath, and pulled back the privacy flap. Outside her children awaited her, uncharacteristically subdued. And so in a hard-won casual manner she assigned tasks to each of them to keep their hands busy and their minds on something other than Hecari cut down in front of their eyes.

“I’ll unpack what we need from the wagon,” she told them, “while you go out for wood and any wild herbs and tubers you can find. See those trees there?” She pointed to a grove within shouting distance, shadowed black against the sunset. “You may go that far, but no farther. And do what Gillan and Ellica tell you.” She looked at her eldest, saw the mutiny in their eyes, but knew they would do as told. Ellica and Gillan were only fifteen and sixteen, respectively, but that did not make them stupid or insensitive to her moods. “Your father and I will set up camp, and after we’ve eaten we’ll have a family discussion.”

Torvic and Megritte were both glad enough to go running off toward the trees—Audrun didn’t doubt they would do more playing than gathering wood and herbs— but Ellica and Gillan did not immediately follow.

“Mam—” Ellica began.

Audrun cut her off. “Go with the young ones, Elli.”

“But—”

She summoned a firm, unyielding tone. “Go.”

Ellica left, cheeks flaring red. But Gillan lingered. It pierced her heart to see the worry in his eyes. “Will you be all right?”

Audrun didn’t dissemble, didn’t dismiss. He knew enough to look beneath her even tone to the tension beneath. “Your father is with me.” She flicked a glance at Torvic, Megritte, and Ellica as they headed toward the trees. “I’m well, Gillan. Go on.”

She turned back into the wagon as Gillan followed the others, blessing the Mother of Moons for allowing her to retain self-control before the children. It was a simple enough task to start retrieving from the wagon such things as were needed in camp, including iron pots, tin plates, pewter mugs, the iron tripod from which would depend the stewpot to heat its contents over the fire, foodstuffs and tea makings.

She knelt beside the modest fire ring Davyn had built with the rocks, wood, and coals they carried at all times, laying out the items she needed for starting supper. First the tea, for Davyn and herself; it was a ritual she hoped would calm her.

As she worked, Audrun kept an eye on her husband. His wounded arm had stiffened, but fresh blood no longer stained the cloth wrapped around his bicep. That it pained him, she knew, being privy through experience to her husband’s moods and expressions. But he let none of it interfere with his own activities as he lay and lighted a fire, unhitched and hobbled the oxen.

She filled the loosely woven tea cloth with leaves. Her hands shook as she did so, and she spilled a drift of the costly leaves. Audrun made an inarticulate sound of dismay, then attempted to knot the tea cloth. The unsteadiness of her hands made the simple task difficult.

She recalled other hands, the hands of a warrior, of an enemy, touching her.

She recalled how his throat had gushed blood.

She recalled that not only Hecari had died, but Rhuan. Who had promised to protect them.

And so he had. But she had not envisioned, had not spent a moment on wondering or imagining
how
he would do that, nor that it would require such butchery.

As darts flew and warclubs were raised, a man forestalled Hecari butchery with a measure of his own.

Hecari hands had touched her. Owned her, if only for a moment.

“Audrun.” Davyn came up to the fire. He knelt on one knee, put hands upon taut shoulders, then pulled her into his embrace. For a long moment he hugged her in silence.

She could not even control the shaking in her voice. “You might have died, Davyn. Or one of the children, or
all
of them—”

He set thick fingers gently over her mouth. “I know. I know. But let it go, Audrun. It’s past. It’s done. We’re all of us safe.”

She took a measure of comfort in his nearness, in the familiar scent of his body, in the strong arms around her. But she could not let it be. Could not accept that it was past, and done. “He made me ill. He made me want to vomit. When he touched me …” She shuddered, recalling that touch, but recalling also the disjointed images of the guide leaping from his horse and drawing his knife, of him slashing the Hecari’s throat from ear to ear.