The Warded Man

If it was you out there … or your mam … Arlen remembered him saying. But for all his promises, it seemed that nothing could make Jeph Bales fight.

The night passed with interminable slowness; there was no hope of sleep. Raindrops drummed a steady beat on the trough, spattering them with the remains of the slop that clung to the inside. The mud they lay in was cold, and stank of pig droppings. Silvy shivered in her delirium, and Arlen clutched her tightly, willing what little heat he had into her. His own hands and feet were numb.

Despair crept over him, and he wept into his mother’s shoulder. But she groaned and patted his hand, and that simple, instinctive gesture pulled him free of the terror and disillusionment and pain.

He had fought a demon, and lived. He stood in a yard full of them, and survived. Corelings might be immortal, but they could be outmaneuvered. They could be outsped.

And as the rock demon had shown when it swept the other coreling out of the way, they could be hurt.

But what difference did it make in a world where men like Jeph wouldn’t stand up to the corelings, not even for their own families? What hope did any of them have?

He stared at the blackness around him for hours, but in his mind’s eye all he saw was his father’s face, staring at them from the safety of the wards.

The rain tapered off before dawn. Arlen used the break in the weather as a chance to lift the trough, but he immediately regretted it as the collected heat the wood had stored was lost. He pulled it down again, but stole peeks until the sky began to brighten.

Most of the corelings had faded away by the time it was light enough to see, but a few stragglers remained as the sky went from indigo to lavender. He lifted the trough and clambered to his feet, trying vainly to brush off the slime and muck that clung to him.

His arm was stiff, and stung when he flexed it. He looked down and saw that the skin was bright red where the firespit had struck. The night in the mud did one good thing, he thought, knowing his and his mother’s burns would have been far worse had they not been packed in the cold muck all night.

As the last flame demons in the yard began to turn insubstantial, Arlen strode from the pen, heading for the barn.

“Arlen, no!” a cry came from the porch. Arlen looked up, and saw Jeph there, wrapped in a blanket, keeping watch from the safety of the porch wards. “It’s not full dawn yet! Wait!”

Arlen ignored him, walking to the barn and opening the doors. Missy looked thoroughly unhappy, still hitched to the cart, but she would make it to Town Square.

A hand grabbed his arm as he led the horse out. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Jeph demanded. “You mind me, boy!”

Arlen tore his arm away, refusing to look his father in the eye. “Mam needs to see Coline Trigg,” he said.

“She’s alive?” Jeph asked incredulously, his head snapping over to where the woman lay in the mud.

“No thanks to you,” Arlen said. “I’m taking her to Town Square.”

“We’re taking her,” Jeph corrected, rushing over to lift his wife and carry her to the cart. Leaving Norine to tend the animals and seek out poor Marea’s remains, they headed off down the road to town.

Silvy was bathed in sweat, and while her burns seemed no worse than Arlen’s, the deep lines the flame demons’ talons had dug still oozed blood, the flesh an ugly swollen red.

“Arlen, I …” Jeph began as they rode, reaching a shaking hand toward his son. Arlen drew back, looking away, and Jeph recoiled as if burned.

Arlen knew his father was ashamed. It was just as Ragen had said. Maybe Jeph even hated himself, as Cholie had. Still, Arlen could find no sympathy. His mother had paid the price for Jeph’s cowardice.

They rode the rest of the way in silence.

Coline Trigg’s two-story house, in Town Square, was one of the largest in the Brook, and filled with beds. In addition to her family upstairs, Coline always had at least one person in the sickbeds on the ground floor.

Coline was a short woman with a large nose and no chin. She was not yet thirty, but six children had made her thick around the middle. Her clothes always smelled of burnt weeds, and her cures usually involved some type of foul-tasting tea. The people of Tibbet’s Brook made fun of that tea, but every one of them drank it gratefully when they took a chill.

The Herb Gatherer took one look at Silvy and had Arlen and his father bring her right inside. She asked no questions, which was just as well, as neither Arlen nor Jeph knew what they would say if she did. As she cut at each wound, squeezing out a sickly brown pus, the air filled with a rotten stench. She cleaned the drained wounds with water and ground herbs, then sewed them shut. Jeph turned green, and brought his hand to his mouth suddenly.

“Out of here with that!” Coline barked, sending Jeph from the room with a pointed finger. As Jeph scurried out of the house, she looked to Arlen.

“You, too?” she demanded. Arlen shook his head. Coline stared at him a moment, then nodded in approval. “You’re braver than your father,” she said. “Fetch the mortar and pestle. I’m going to teach you to make a balm for burns.”

Never taking her eyes from her work, Coline talked Arlen through the countless jars and pouches in her pharmacy, directing him to each ingredient and explaining how to mix them. She kept to her grisly work as Arlen applied the balm to his mother’s burns.

Finally, when Silvy’s wounds were all tended, she turned to inspect Arlen. He protested at first, but the balm did its work, and only as the coolness spread along his arms did he realize how much his burns had stung.

“Will she be all right?” Arlen asked, looking at his mother. She seemed to be breathing normally, but the flesh around her wounds was an ugly color, and that stench of rot was still thick in the air.

“I don’t know,” Coline said. She wasn’t one to honey her words. “I’ve never seen anyone with wounds so severe. Usually, if the corelings get that close …”

“They kill you,” Jeph said from the doorway. “They would have killed Silvy, too, if not for Arlen.” He stepped into the room, his eyes down. “Arlen taught me something last night, Coline,” Jeph said. “He taught me fear is our enemy, more than the corelings ever were.”

Jeph put his hands on his son’s shoulders and looked into his eyes. “I won’t fail you again,” he promised. Arlen nodded and looked away. He wanted to believe it was so, but his thoughts kept returning to the sight of his father on the porch, frozen with terror.

Jeph went over to Silvy, gripping her clammy hand in his own. She was still sweating, and thrashed in her drugged sleep now and then.

“Will she die?” Jeph asked.

The Herb Gatherer blew out a long breath. “I’m a fair hand at setting bones,” she said, “and delivering children. I can chase a fever away and ward a chill. I can even cleanse a demon wound, if it’s still fresh.” She shook her head. “But this is demon fever. I’ve given her herbs to dull the pain and help her sleep, but you’ll need a better Gatherer than I to brew a cure.”

“Who else is there?” Jeph asked. “You’re all the Brook has.”

“The woman who taught me,” Coline said, “Old Mey Friman. She lives on the outskirts of Sunny Pasture, two days from here. If anyone can cure it, she can, but you’d best hurry. The fever will spread quickly, and if you take too long, even Old Mey won’t be able to help you.”

“How do we find her?” Jeph demanded.

“You can’t really get lost,” Coline said. “There’s only the one road. Just don’t turn at the fork where it goes through the woods, unless you want to spend weeks on the road to Miln. That Messenger left for the Pasture a few hours ago, but he had some stops in the Brook first. If you hurry, you might catch him. Messengers carry their own wards with them. If you find him, you’ll be able to keep moving right until dusk instead of stopping for succor. The Messenger could cut your trip in twain.”

“We’ll find him,” Jeph said, “whatever it takes.” His voice took on a determined edge, and Arlen began to hope.

A strange sense of longing pulled at Arlen as he watched Tibbet’s Brook recede into the distance from the back of the cart. For the first time, he was going to be more than a day’s travel from home. He was going to see another town! A week ago, an adventure like that was his greatest dream. But now all he dreamed was that things could go back to the way they were.

Back when the farm was safe.

Back when his mother was well.

Back when he didn’t know his father was a coward.

Coline had promised to send one of her boys up to the farm to let Norine know they would likely be gone a week or more, and to help tend the animals and check the wards while they were away. The neighbors would throw in, but Norine’s loss was too raw for her to face the nights alone.

The Herb Gatherer had also given them a crude map, carefully rolled and slipped into a protective hide tube. Paper was a rarity in the Brook, and not given away lightly. Arlen was fascinated by the map, and studied it for hours, even though he couldn’t read the few words labeling the places. Neither Arlen nor his father had letters.

The map marked the way to Sunny Pasture, and what lay along the road, but the distances were vague. There were farms marked along the way where they could beg succor, but there was no way to tell how far apart they were.

His mother slept fitfully, sodden with sweat. Sometimes she spoke or cried out, but her words made little sense. Arlen daubed her with wet cloth and made her drink the sharp tea as the Herb Gatherer had instructed him, but it seemed to do little good.

Late in the afternoon, they approached the house of Harl Tanner, a farmer who lived on the outskirts of the Brook. Harl’s farm was only a couple of hours past the Cluster by the Woods, but by the time Arlen and his father had gotten under way, it was midafternoon.

Arlen remembered seeing Harl and his three daughters at the summer solstice festival each year, though they had been absent since the corelings had taken Harl’s wife, two summers past. Harl had become a recluse, and his daughters with him. Even the tragedy in the Cluster had not brought them out.

Three-quarters of the Tanner fields were blackened and scorched; only those closest to the house were warded and sown. A gaunt milking cow chewed cud in the muddy yard, and ribs showed clearly on the goat tied up by the chicken coop.

The Tanners’ home was a single story of piled stones, held together with packed mud and clay. The larger stones were painted with faded wards. Arlen thought them clumsy, but they had lasted thus far, it seemed. The roof was uneven, with short, squat wardposts poking up through the rotting thatch. One side of the house connected to the small barn, its windows boarded and its door half off the hinges. Across the yard was the big barn, looking even worse. The wards might hold, but it looked ready to collapse on its own.

“I’ve never seen Harl’s place before,” Jeph said.

“Me neither,” Arlen lied. Few people apart from Messengers had reason to head up the road past the Cluster by the Woods, and those who lived up that way were sources of great speculation in Town Square. Arlen had snuck off to see Crazy Man Tanner’s farm more than once. It was the farthest he had ever been from home. Getting back before dusk had meant hours of running as fast as he could.

One time, a few months before, he almost didn’t make it. He had been trying to catch a glimpse of Harl’s eldest daughter, Ilain. The other boys said she had the biggest bubbies in the Brook, and he wanted to see for himself. He waited one day, and saw her come running out of the house, crying. She was beautiful in her sadness, and Arlen had wanted to go comfort her, even though she was eight summers older than him. He hadn’t been so bold, but he’d watched her longer than was wise, and almost paid a heavy price for it when the sun began to set.

A mangy dog began barking as they approached the farm, and a young girl came out onto the porch, watching them with sad eyes.

“We might have to succor here,” Jeph said.

“It’s still hours till dark,” Arlen said, shaking his head. “If we don’t catch Ragen by then, the map says there’s another farm up by where the road forks to the Free Cities.”

Jeph peered over Arlen’s shoulder at the map. “That’s a long way,” he said.

“Mam can’t wait,” Arlen said. “We won’t make it all the way today, but every hour is an hour closer to her cure.”

Jeph looked back at Silvy, bathed in sweat, then up at the sun, and nodded. They waved at the girl on the porch, but did not stop.

They covered a great distance in the next few hours, but found no sign of the Messenger or another farm. Jeph looked up at the orange sky.

“It will be full dark in less than two hours,” he said. “We have to turn back. If we hurry, we can make it back to Harl’s in time.”

“The farm could be right around that next bend,” Arlen argued. “We’ll find it.”

“We don’t know that,” Jeph said, spitting over the side of the cart. “The map ent clear. We turn back while we still can, and no arguing.”