The Warded Man

The man nodded and sat in thought a moment. Then he stood suddenly, producing a large knife. Rojer shrank back, but the man just stepped back out of the circle. A wood demon hissed at him, but the Warded Man hissed right back, and the demon shied away.

He returned soon after with a supple length of wood, shearing the bark with his wicked blade. “How long was it?” he asked.

“E-eighteen inches,” Rojer stuttered.

The Warded Man nodded, cutting the branch to the appropriate length and walking over to Twilight Dancer. The stallion did not react as he cut a length of hair from its tail. He notched the wood and tied the horsehair flat and thick on one side. He knelt next to Rojer, bending the branch. “Tell me when the tension is right,” he said, and Rojer laid the fingers of his crippled hand on the hair. When he was satisfied, the Warded Man tied the other end and handed it to him.

Rojer beamed at the gift, treating it with resin before taking up his fiddle. He put the instrument to his chin and gave it a few strokes with the new bow. It wasn’t ideal, but he grew more confident, pausing to tune once more before beginning to play.

His skillful fingers filled the air with a haunting melody that took Leesha’s thoughts to Cutter’s Hollow, wondering at its fate. Vika’s letter was almost a week gone. What would she find when she arrived? Perhaps the flux had passed with no more loss, and this desperate ordeal had been for nothing.

Or perhaps they needed her more than ever.

The music affected the Warded Man as well, she noticed, for his hands stopped their careful work, and he stared off into the night. Shadows draped his face, obscuring the tattoos, and she saw in his sad countenance that he had been comely once. What pain had driven him to this existence, scarring himself and shunning his own kind for the company of corelings? She found herself aching to heal him, though he showed no hurt.

Suddenly, the man shook his head as if to clear it, startling Leesha from her reverie. He pointed off into the darkness. “Look,” he whispered. “They’re dancing.”

Leesha looked out in amazement, for indeed, the corelings had ceased to test the wards, had ceased even to hiss and shriek. They circled the camp, swaying in time to the music. Flame demons leapt and twirled, sending ribbons of fire spiraling away from their knotted limbs, and wind demons looped and dove through the air. Wood demons had crept from the cover of the forest, but they ignored the flame demons, drawn to the melody.

The Warded Man looked at Rojer. “How are you doing that?” he asked, his voice awed.

Rojer smiled. “The corelings, they have an ear for music,” he said. He rose to his feet, walking to the edge of the circle. The demons clustered there, watching him intently. He began to walk the circle’s perimeter, and they followed, mesmerized. He stopped and swayed from side to side as he continued to play, and the corelings mirrored his movements almost exactly.

“I didn’t believe you,” Leesha apologized quietly. “You really can charm them.”

“And that’s not all,” Rojer boasted. With a twist and a series of sharp strokes of the bow, he turned the melody sour; once pure notes ringing out discordant and tainted. Suddenly, the corelings were shrieking again, covering their ears with their talons and scrambling away from Rojer. They drew back further and further as the musical assault continued, vanishing into the shadows beyond the firelight. “They haven’t gone far,” Rojer said. “As soon as I stop, they’ll be back.”

“What else can you do?” the Warded Man asked quietly.

Rojer smiled, as content to perform for an audience of two as he was for a cheering crowd. He softened his music again, the chaotic notes smoothly flowing back into the haunting melody. The corelings reappeared, drawn to the music once more.

“Watch this,” Rojer instructed, and changed the sound again, the notes rising high and grating, causing even Leesha and the Warded Man to grit their teeth and lean away.

The reaction of the corelings was more pronounced. They grew enraged, shrieking and roaring as they threw themselves at the barrier with abandon. Again and again the wards flared and threw them back, but the demons did not relent, smashing themselves against the wardnet in an insane attempt to reach Rojer and silence him forever.

Two rock demons joined the throng, shoving past the others and hammering at the wards as yet more added to the press. The Warded Man rose silently behind Rojer and lifted his bow.

The string hummed, and one of the heavy, thick-headed arrows exploded into the chest of the nearest rock demon like a bolt of lightning, brightening the area for a moment. Again and again the Warded Man fired into the horde, his hands a blur. The warded bolts blasted the corelings back, and the few that rose again were quickly torn to pieces by their fellows.

Rojer and Leesha stood horrified at the slaughter. The Jongleur’s bow slipped from the fiddle’s strings, hanging forgotten in his limp hand as he watched the Warded Man work.

The demons were screaming still, but it was pain and fear now, their desire to attack the wards vanished with the music. Still the Warded Man fired, again and again until his arrows were all gone. He grabbed a spear, throwing it and striking a fleeing wood demon in the back.

There was chaos now, the few remaining corelings desperate to escape. The Warded Man stripped off his robe, ready to leap from the circle to kill demons with his bare hands.

“No, please!” Leesha cried, throwing herself at him. “They’re running!”

“You would spare them?” the Warded Man roared, glaring at her, his face terrible with wrath. She fell back in fear, but she kept her eyes locked on his.

“Please,” she begged. “Don’t go out there.”

Leesha feared he might strike her, but he only stared at her, his breath heaving. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, he calmed and took up his robe, covering his wards once more.

“Was that necessary?” she asked, breaking the silence.

“The circle wasn’t designed to forbid so many corelings at once,” the Warded Man said, his voice again a cold monotone. “I don’t know that it would have held.”

“You could have just asked me to stop playing,” Rojer said.

“Yes,” the Warded Man agreed, “I could have.”

“Then why didn’t you?” Leesha demanded.

The Warded Man didn’t answer. He strode out of the circle and began cutting his arrows from the demon corpses.

Leesha was fast asleep later that night when the Warded Man approached Rojer. The Jongleur, staring out at the fallen demons, gave a startled jump when the man squatted down next to him.

“You have power over the corelings,” he said.

Rojer shrugged. “So do you,” he said. “More than I ever will.”

“Can you teach me?” the Warded Man asked.

Rojer turned, meeting the man’s gimlet eyes. “Why?” he asked. “You kill demons by the score. What’s my trick compared to that?”

“I thought I knew my enemies,” the Warded Man said. “But you’ve shown me otherwise.”

“You think they may not be all bad, if they can enjoy music?” Rojer asked.

The Warded Man shook his head. “They are no patrons of art, Jongleur,” he said. “The moment you ceased to play, they would have killed you without hesitation.”

Rojer nodded, conceding the point. “Then why bother?” he asked. “Learning the fiddle is a lot of work to charm beasts you can just as easily kill.”

The Warded Man’s face hardened. “Will you teach me or not?” he asked.

“I will …” Rojer said, thinking it through, “but I want something in return.”

“I have plenty of money,” the Warded Man assured him.

Rojer waved his hand dismissively. “I can get money whenever I need it,” he said. “What I want is more valuable.”

The Warded Man said nothing.

“I want to travel with you,” Rojer said.

The Warded Man shook his head. “Out of the question,” he said.

“You don’t learn the fiddle overnight,” Rojer argued. “It’ll take weeks to become even passable, and you’ll need more skill than that to charm even the least discriminating coreling.”

“And what do you get out of it?” the Warded Man asked.

“Material for stories that will fill the duke’s amphitheater night after night,” Rojer said.

“What about her?” the Warded Man asked, nodding back toward Leesha. Rojer looked at the Herb Gatherer, her breast gently rising and falling as she slept, and the Warded Man did not miss the significance of that gaze.

“She asked me to escort her home, nothing more,” Rojer said at last.

“And if she asks you to stay?”

“She won’t,” Rojer said quietly.

“My road is no Marko Rover tale, boy,” the Warded Man said. “I’ve no time to be slowed by one who hides at night.”

“I have my fiddle now,” Rojer said with more bravery than he felt. “I’m not afraid.”

“You need more than courage,” the Warded Man said. “In the wild, you kill or be killed, and I don’t just mean demons.”

Rojer straightened, swallowing the lump in his throat. “Everyone who tries to protect me ends up dead,” he said. “It’s time I learned to protect myself.”

The Warded Man leaned back, considering the young Jongleur.

“Come with me,” he said at last, rising.

“Out of the circle?” Rojer asked.

“If you can’t do that, you’re no use to me,” the Warded Man said. When Rojer looked around doubtfully, he added, “Every coreling for miles heard what I did to their fellows. It’s doubtful we’ll see more tonight.”

“What about Leesha?” Rojer asked, rising slowly.

“Twilight Dancer will protect her, if need be,” the man said. “Come on.” He moved out of the circle and vanished into the night.

Rojer swore, but he grabbed his fiddle and followed the man down the road.

Rojer clutched his fiddle case tightly as they moved through the trees. He had made to take it out at first, but the Warded Man had waved for him to put it away.

“You’ll draw attention we don’t want,” he whispered.

“I thought you said we weren’t likely to see any corelings tonight,” Rojer hissed back, but the Warded Man ignored him, moving through the darkness as if it were broad day.

“Where are we going?” Rojer asked for what seemed the hundredth time.

They climbed a small rise, and the Warded Man lay flat, pointing downward.

“Look there,” he told Rojer. Below, Rojer could see three very familiar men and a horse sleeping within the tight confines of an even more familiar portable circle.

“The bandits,” Rojer breathed. A flood of emotions washed over him—fear, rage, and helplessness—and in his mind’s eye, he relived the ordeal they had put him and Leesha through. The mute stirred in his sleep, and Rojer felt a stab of panic.

“I’ve been tracking them since I found you,” the Warded Man said. “I spotted their fire while I was hunting tonight.”

“Why did you bring me here?” Rojer asked.

“I thought you might like a chance to get your circle back,” the Warded Man said.

Rojer looked back at him. “If we steal the circle while they’re sleeping, the corelings will kill them before they know what’s happening.”

“The demons are thin,” the Warded Man said. “They’ll have better odds than you did.”

“Even so, what makes you think I’d want to risk it?” Rojer asked.

“I watch,” the man said, “and I listen. I know what they did to you … and to Leesha.”

Rojer was quiet a long while. “There are three of them,” he said at last.

“This is the wild,” the Warded Man said. “If you want to live in safety, go back to the city.” He spat the last word like a curse.

But Rojer knew there was no safety in the city, either. Unbidden, he saw Jaycob crumple to the ground, and heard Jasin’s laughter. He could have sought justice after the attack, but he chose to flee, instead. He was forever fleeing, and letting others die in his stead. His hand searched for a talisman that was no longer there as he stared down at the fire.

“Was I wrong?” the Warded Man asked. “Shall we go back to our camp?”

Rojer swallowed. “As soon as I have what belongs to me,” he decided.