Penric’s Mission by Lois McMaster Bujold
Arisaydia would fight to the death before allowing himself to be captured again, Pen suspected, and where would that leave Nikys? Fallen into the hands of some remnant of enraged men, out for revenge for their dead and wounded? Unless the twins should decide to travel together one last time. It seemed a horribly plausible nightmare either way.
Pen swallowed, swung back down the side of the building, collected his case and sack, and slipped through to the next street, not that Skirose had many streets to choose from. He loped west, parallel to but out of sight from the military road. Sneaking up opposite the small livery through someone’s scanty grove of olive trees, he spotted two of Velka’s men coming back already, marching double-time with their news.
He swore under his breath, waited until they’d angled out of sight, and darted across the road to the stable.
The stable boy rose in far too much alarm to be greeting a potential customer. Pen made one futile attempt to motion him to hush, then, as he turned, yelling and starting to run, tweaked the nerves in his legs and, as soon as possible, his throat. The lad recoiled in terror as Pen rolled him to the side of the aisle, whispering, “Sorry—sorry! It will wear off in a bit.” He hoped. He hadn’t as much time to prepare his strike as with the soldiers in the villa.
Only one horse was left, a rangy bay gelding turning restlessly in a box stall. Looks good, said Des. Its legs are even longer than yours.
It also had a spine like a sawblade; ten minutes of bareback trotting would slice a rider up the fork. Pen searched feverishly for a saddle and bridle, and saddlebags, into which he stuffed his case and sack. Back in the stall, he discovered the reason for the beast’s lonely state was that it was a biter. And a kicker. And generally uncooperative. At its second yellow-teethed snap, Des gave it a good sting on the nose, mysterious to it since the human it was trying to savage hadn’t touched it, and again at the third. It stopped trying after that.
Fitting the bit into its mouth involved ear-wrestling and a near-loss of valuable sorcerous fingers. Pen rechecked the girth—aye, it was a blower, too—and prudently mounted while still in the stall. He let Des undo the latch and swing open the door, and concentrated on keeping the animal’s head up on a short rein, and his head down instead of smacked into the door lintel, as it pronged out into the light of the afternoon.
He fought it out onto the road, where it was at least pleased to convert vertical into horizontal motion. Only a sketchy illusion of wolves, a fragment of geas learned from his shaman friend, allowed Pen to force the turn—more of a shy—onto the south road. At that point, he could crouch in his stirrups and let the blighted beast run itself out of piss and vinegar.
It took five miles. Pen, gasping for breath, was impressed. Bastard’s blessing, are you?
The gallop fell to a bounding trot almost as hard to sit, then a blowing walk. The road followed the winding valley as it rose toward the hill passes. Between patches of tangled woodland, little farmsteads clung to the creek. At one, a woman was out working in a vegetable garden, and Pen dared to stop and beg a drink of water and word of any prior passers-by. She scowled at him in alarm but then, at her second glance, smiled unwilled. The water was forthcoming, but no news; she’d been working inside earlier. Pen cast her a blessing, which made her blink, but then wave back.
He watered the horse when the creek crossed the road, after an argument about whether it was going to try to flop down and roll him off among the rocks. He was only sorry he couldn’t give it to Arisaydia. The two deserved each other.
XIV
Adelis, Nikys thought, was champing at the bit far more than their sluggish horses. Pressing their guide for more speed had only won them grudging brisk trots. He was excessively tender toward his employer’s beasts, she thought, till they arrived well-timed to stop at what proved a cousin’s farmhouse, and an offer of a purchased meal. Adelis whispered, in a furious undervoice more than half serious, that it would be faster to run the man through and steal his horses after all, but yielded to a chance for food that they only did not have thanks to leaving Master—Learned—whatever-he-was Penric behind.
The broad, smiling cousin set them out a lunch at a shady table by the stream, in what would have been an idyllic setting and interlude under any other circumstances. As it was, it gave Nikys her first private chance to pick up their argument from back at the livery.
“I still think we were wrong to leave Learned Penric behind. If not tactically, although that too, morally. What if something happens to him?”
Adelis made an exasperated noise through his chewing. “He’s a sorcerer. And a spy. He’ll land on his feet. Like a cat.”
“That’s not actually true of cats.” Or sorcerers? “And last time, he landed in a bottle dungeon.”
“If it’s true he was tossed into one, it’s also true he escaped. Which is… let’s just say unprecedented. He can make his way back to Adria faster and safer without us. That he’s an Adriac agent is the one part of his jumble of tales that I certainly believe to be real.”
Nikys swallowed watered wine and drummed her fingers on the boards. “I watched him, and talked to him a little, during those first days when you were too lost in pain and syrup of poppies to track much. Whatever else was going through his mind, he cared passionately about what he was trying to do for your eyes.”
“Which says only that the man had a conscience, which I will not argue about, and that it was guilty. Whether because what he told us was true, or for some other secret up his sleeve, I can’t guess. That he was still trying to the last to persuade me to Adria, after all our disasters, that he expended such heroic effort on healing me, suggests that his duke must want me far more than seems reasonable, and I have to wonder why. Nikys, we had only his word for his whole fantastical story. He only claimed to be a Temple sorcerer, and all the rest. We don’t know.”
“All his actions so far were not proof enough for you?”
Adelis shook his head. “I swear, you swallowed down everything the man said without choking because, what, you liked his blue eyes?”
“You don’t deny he’s a sorcerer, you can’t deny he’s an extraordinary physician—what he told me in the temple last night—”
“He told,” Adelis put in. “Again.”
She waved this off. “Well, that was in confidence anyway. As for the other… he thinks better of people than he should. Better than is safe for him. That says more learned divine than spy to me. He thinks differently.”
“He and his invisible twelve-headed demon, yes, very differently.” A wry grimace as he leaned back.
She still boggled trying to imagine what must be going on inside Learned Penric’s overcrowded head. All the time. Whatever else was happening, his mind had to be very, very full. The wonder was not that he was mad but that he wasn’t.
“Anyway, we can move faster now,” said Adelis.
“Not at present,” Nikys noted.
“Aye.” He shoved the rest of his bread in his mouth and rose, still chewing. “I’ll go prod that groom. And see if I can secure a water bottle. And some food. We’ll want them, going over these hills.” He went off into the old stone farmhouse.
Nikys thought her greatest want was going to be human, and demonic. Would she ever see the strange sorcerer again? Would he really be all right, as Adelis insisted? His last time—first time, she also gathered—wandering about Cedonia on his own had included some horrifying turns. She hadn’t felt this sick with helpless worry since, well, Kymis. And then Adelis, until Penric had appeared. And now Penric. Her chain of alarming men was getting longer, but no better.
Would there ever be any way to find out if he’d made it home safely? She didn’t know a soul in Lodi, had barely met a few Adriac merchants. She supposed one such might carry a letter, but to whom?
But wait, Learned Penric was a Temple-man. If he truly was all he’d said, an inquiry sent in care of the archdivine of Adria might well find him. The ill-fates of recent letters to and from Adria were da
There, a plan. Better than crying limply under a persimmon tree any day. As Adelis emerged from the farmhouse, more-or-less strong-arming the groom, she rubbed her eyes and hurried to the horses.
XV
As the light leveled toward evening, the woods dwindled to scrub, the farmsteads gave way to shepherd’s huts, and the road narrowed to a winding, stony track. At a bend, Pen encountered a rider leading two saddled horses back the other way.
The rider stopped to stare in surprise. “Five gods, man, someone rented you Pighead? And you’re still atop?”
That alone was enough to identify the man as the small livery’s groom-and-guide. “Is that its name? Very fitting. We’ve had some debates along the way, but I’ve won so far. Tell me, were you escorting a man and his wife, traveling? Where did they go?”
“Oh, aye. I told them they’d never get over the pass before nightfall, better to find shelter and continue in the morning, but they were having none of my advice, so I suppose they deserve what they find. I took them as far up as the horses could get, where they insisted I leave them off.”
Pen was still on the right track, five gods be praised. “How much farther? I need to catch up to them.”
“Maybe a mile?”
Pen nodded relieved thanks. “Oh, I should warn you—there’s a troop of soldiers behind me that are conscripting horses for the army. If you don’t want to end up walking home, you’d probably best get your beasts off the road and find a place to hide them till they pass on.”
“Oh!” The man looked startled, but he swallowed down the lie. “Thanks!”
“Ah…” Pen’s conscience prodded him. If he could only ride a little farther anyway… “Do you want this one, to take back as well?”
The groom grinned. “Naw. Let the army enjoy him.”
They each hastened on, in opposite directions.
Indeed, after about a mile of scrambling over slippery scree, footing more suitable to a donkey than to a tired, nervy horse, the trail gave way to outright climbs over stair-like stones, narrowing to a scrubby defile. To Pen’s relief, he saw a flash of movement above: a pair of figures, one in a green cloak.
To his dismay, as he turned to look back down the valley before dismounting, he could just make out a troop of mounted soldiers, trotting relentlessly single file. He counted—yes, the whole thirteen. A flicker of white confirmed that Velka had brought his sorcerer. Pen sucked breath through his teeth. The horse, its head hanging in weariness, made one last halfhearted attempt to bite him as he dragged out his belongings from the saddlebags, unbridled it, and turned it loose.
He hoisted his burdens and began clambering up the slope. In a few minutes, Nikys glanced back, spotted him, and touched her brother’s sleeve. After a brief debate, they sat on boulders to await his arrival. They both looked nearly spent, but equally determined. Arisaydia still had the sword, naturally.
Penric heaved his way up to them, brandishing the sack. “You forgot your food,” he wheezed. “Among other things.”
Arisaydia glowered, but Nikys looked tentatively delighted, saying, “After Adelis—after we left you in Skirose, we thought you would certainly go back to Adria. You decided to join with us after all?”
Her smile at him, Pen decided, made up for that vile horse, if not quite for her brother. Not much question whose idea Pen’s abandonment had been. “Not exactly. But Velka and a troop arrived in town barely an hour after you’d left. By coach, just as you predicted.” He allowed Arisaydia a conceding nod, not received with any discernable gratitude. “They’re only a few miles behind us right now.”
Nikys’s breath drew in. Arisaydia’s expression turned a much cooler shade of grim.
By silent, mutual consent, they shelved their differences for later in the face of this news. Arisaydia surveyed the landscape, ending by looking up toward the narrowing defile. “Then we keep climbing. There might be a cave.”
“To hide in? He brought his own sorcerer. So maybe not,” Pen cautioned.
“Huh.” At least Arisaydia took in the warning without argument. “I admit, I don’t like putting myself in a bottle.”
“Neither do I,” Pen agreed, heartfelt.
“Climb, then.”
They did so. It took nearly all their breath, but Arisaydia spared what he could to ask after the numbers and condition of their pursuers, seeming peeved that Pen had no more detailed inventory of their arms.
“You took down, what, seven at the villa? That would leave six for me. It may be better to turn and face them here than letting them catch us later, at a worse vantage, even tireder, in the darkness.”
Pen didn’t care for Arisaydia’s arithmetic. Alone, he thought he might be able to bolt up the hill, turn and dodge, climb, vanish. Run away. But not the three of us. And so the tactician prevails. In a sense. He observed, voice flat in his concession, “Velka’s Temple-man is going to tie up a lot of my attention, once we get within range of each other. This isn’t going to be the kind of fight you think.”
Arisaydia’s red eyes narrowed. “Can you take him?”
“I… won’t know till I see what he brings to the table. We won’t exactly be trying to kill each other. Jumping demon problem, there.” Among other theological concerns. Bastard’s teeth, what a mess.
At last Arisaydia stopped, glanced around, and said, “Here. We won’t do better.”
Pen copied his inspection. The steepest part of the trail zig-zagged down behind them, giving them a height advantage not unlike being atop a rampart. The scrubby slopes to either side allowed no cover for a man to advance and circle them in secret. The defile ahead might not be a good place to be pressed into if anyone did manage to get above them, but it wasn’t entirely out of the range of some rabbit-sprint retreat.
Reminding Pen a bit of the prudent sergeant, Arisaydia had them all sit down and share out bites of food from Pen’s sack, and mouthfuls of water from the leather bottle he carried, and when had he acquired it? He glanced at Pen’s case. “You dragged that all this way?”
“Its contents were expensive, and would be hard to replace. Good steel needles and scissors and scalpels. Clean gauze, the remains of my ointments… had some trouble getting them compounded correctly, you know.”
Nikys eyed it, and him. “I’d have thought you’d be glad to leave it behind.”
Yes, no, I don’t know, maybe sorry later… “Frugality is a hard habit to break.”
Looking thoughtful, Nikys bestirred herself and began gathering up a pile of throwing rocks. Adelis blinked, then went to assist her. Penric wished wanly for his good hunting bow, back in Adria, but joined the foragers.
He stopped when the first of Velka’s party, their horses slipping and snorting, cleared the last ridable turn below, looked up, and saw them. Shouts, excitement, bustling back and forth as the ten men and the sergeant dismounted, secured the horses, arrayed themselves and waited. Four of them were archers, Pen saw, even now stringing their short bows and looking up warily, awaiting orders. All their quivers bristled with arrows.
“That’s going to be a problem,” sighed Arisaydia, watching them.
“Not really,” murmured Pen. Nikys glanced at him sidelong and picked up a rock, turning it in her hands. She, too, seemed to be waiting for orders.
“Now I’m sorry you were drawn into our disaster,” she said quietly to Pen.
“Wasn’t you who did it. And I mean to share that regret around, if I can.”
Her little smile reminded him of that scary smirk of her brother’s. “Good.”
They were just out of bowshot, at least for men shooting uphill. The archers were also out of range for Pen’s sorcery, certainly of the finely tuned variety he hoped to use. Landslides remained an option, although there wasn’t a great deal of scree poised in just the right places.
More debate below among Velka, the sergeant, and the sorcerer. Then the man in the w
He looked everything a Temple sorcerer and learned divine should be. Tall, grave, mature, powerful, his beard trimmed neatly around his face, though he could have stood to take the scissors to his eyebrows as well; black eyes glared up from their bristling shadows. Both Arisaydia and Nikys stared down in muted alarm.
“This one’s my part, I guess,” sighed Pen, without enthusiasm. Des, are we ready?
Ooh, she cooed, what a cute little baby demon!
What?
The lad with the beard as well, but his demon is just a youth. Only two animals before him, and this is its first human incarnation. All it will know is what he knows.
“Bastard be praised,” breathed Pen, and tapped his lips twice with his thumb. Then twice again, because everyone here was going to need His luck to get through the next minutes alive. He stepped out a few paces from where his companions crouched, and let the approaching man get puffed closing their mutual range. He wondered what he looked like in turn. A tired, skinny, sunburned young man with hair escaping its knot—he blew a strand out of his mouth—wearing an odd assortment of castoffs, sweaty tunic, green jacket, mismatched riding trousers all over horse. Long feet unhappy from his hike in these falling-apart sandals, and he had to get some good boots soon.
“Hedge sorcerer!” the man stopped and shouted up. “I am Learned Kyrato of the Bastard’s Order in Patos, and in the god’s name I order you to surrender to me. Come peacefully, and no harm will come to you!”