The Sentinel Mage

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE





JAUMÉ WASN’T THE only one heading west any more. There were other people on the road. They passed him on horseback and in wagons, grim-faced and urgent. He learned to step to the side of the road when he heard the sound of hooves. He learned not to ask for food.

The rumble of wheels came from behind him. “Out of the way, boy!” A stone shied at him.

Jaumé scurried aside.

A wagon passed, drawn by oxen. On the driver’s bench were a man and a woman, two children. The woman clutched the children tightly to her. She turned her head and looked at him as they passed.

The wagon was piled with belongings, with food. Jaumé watched it disappear around the next bend. Hunger gnawed in his belly. The apples he’d stolen from an orchard yesterday were gone, eaten.

Two miles further on was a village. It was about the size of Girond, twenty or thirty cottages with whitewashed walls and thatched roofs, built around a cobbled market square with a well at its centre.

The village was silent, empty.

Jaumé explored cautiously. He saw hens pecking between the cobblestones in the marketplace, a slinking dog. The windows of the empty cottages seemed to stare at him. He knew the curse wasn’t here, knew it was miles behind him, days behind him, and yet hair pricked on the nape of his neck. He shivered.

Like Girond, the village had an inn. It had been looted. The door swung open in the breeze, banging against the whitewashed wall. Jaumé hurried past.

He chose a cottage at random, peering in the windows. Only his face looked back at him.

His stomach rumbled, loud in the silence. Jaumé took a deep breath and opened the cottage door.

He checked the kitchen first. The larder had been hastily emptied. Dried beans rolled beneath his feet. A sack of flour lay where it had been dropped, split open, flour coating the floor.

Whoever had emptied the larder hadn’t been thorough. Hanging in the darkest corner was half a leg of cured ham.

Jaumé scrambled up on a shelf and unhooked the ham. His mouth watered as he jumped down, his feet sending up a puff of flour. He bit into the ham, sinking his teeth into salty, stringy flesh, and hurried out into the kitchen, chewing.

It was no longer empty. A man stood between him and the open door.

Jaumé halted, his mouth full, the ham clutched to his chest.

The man wore muddy boots and had a rucksack slung over his shoulder. A week’s worth of stubble covered the lower half of his face. A forager, like himself.

The man’s gaze fastened on the leg of ham. His expression became sharp, intent. “Give it to me,” he said.

Jaumé shook his head and shrank back, tightening his grip on the ham.

The man reached into his pocket. He pulled out a knife. “Give me the ham.”

Terror locked Jaumé’s muscles. He didn’t move as the man walked towards him, couldn’t move. He stared at the knife, too afraid to chew, too afraid to swallow, almost too afraid to breathe.

The man jerked the ham from his grasp. “Get out of here, boy.”

His muscles unlocked. Jaumé ran for the door, stumbling over the step, his mouth still full of half-chewed ham. Once the village was out of sight he fell to his knees and spat out the ham, gagging, gulping for breath.

When he’d stopped shaking, he picked the ham out of the dirt and ate it.





CLOUDS GATHERED IN the sky as the afternoon progressed. It began to drizzle. Jaumé trudged through the mud, shivering, huddling to the side of the road when wagons and horse riders passed.

In the early evening, he came to a lane leading to a farmhouse. No smoke came from the. chimney. To one side of the house, sheets were pegged to a washing line. Two of them dragged on the ground, muddy.

Jaumé hesitated, and then walked cautiously down the rutted lane. No dogs barked warning at him, no one answered his knock on the kitchen door.

He pushed it open and entered warily. The kitchen was empty, the ashes in the fireplace cold. He tiptoed into the larder. His feet left wet, muddy prints on the floor. The shelves were bare apart from a scattering of peppercorns and cloves.

Outside, a basin of muddy water and potato peelings sat beside the kitchen doorstep. Jaumé crouched on the step and groped in the water, catching a handful of peelings. He chewed them, fishing in the water for more. His fingers touched something sharp, something cold.

Jaumé stopped chewing. He tipped the water out of the basin. In the bottom, amid the peelings, lay a knife.

He picked it up and wiped it carefully on his shirt and put it in his pocket.

In the henhouse, Jaumé found five eggs. He ate them, sucking the contents greedily from the shells. Next, he looked in the shadowy barn. He could see where the farm wagon had stood, where the horses had been stabled.

He found an empty waterskin hanging on a peg, and a thin blanket that smelled of horses. He took them both, filling the waterskin at the well. And then he set off west again, the blanket wrapped around his shoulders, the waterskin slung over one arm, the knife in his pocket.