Chapter thirteen
The next morning, the odd three-member team slept late. They were enjoying their last few hours of respite; they packed up their belongings and headed down for a delicious breakfast of cheesy egg and sausage pies with kava. They bought travel-ready food from this inn and made sure to compliment the innkeeper on his fine establishment; they wanted to recommend it to Tremane, and even Valdemaran travelers, they were so pleased with the service and quality. They loaded up the horses after Saria did some final Healing work on Maleh, and judging her sound to ride they took the road toward their next destination.
They had another sennight before they reached the guardpost on the Hardornen border; they were not hurrying, since they had to take the time to put tags on a few more inns and confuse their trail as much as possible, but they didn't need any further delays, either. They were starting to get word that the skirmishes on the border had resumed, and while they were still just feints at a real attack, everyone expected all-out war by Midsummer. Midsummer was four moons away; they had a little more than a moon of travel before they arrived at the Empire palace, which left them maybe one or two moons before war broke out. If that timetable guess was accurate, anyway; no one knew for certain, of course. It was not as if someone could just walk up to the Emperor and ask when, or even if, he intended to actually declare war.
They camped for the night after they left the inn. Ruk and Saria used their warming spell on the tents that they had used as mercenaries; it was still cold enough, especially at night, that they needed more warmth to make sleeping comfortable. They cooked dinner for themselves again and while Whitestar made a delicious meal out of the pheasant and wild pig the birds had caught, they all missed the stew from the inn. They decided that should they be successful in this venture, they would make it a point to return to that inn and stay for several days. They all hoped that they would be able to do just that.
The next morning, they encountered their first band of bandits. Ruk was expecting to run into bandits, the closer they got to the skirmish areas; people who had lost everything in a skirmish often turned to banditry for lack of any other way to support themselves, but more likely people who already operated as criminals found the atmosphere of fearful people irresistible. People rarely traveled in these zones, because of the danger; but those without any choice were often carrying valuable cargo, and if they weren't obviously traveling with armed guard they were usually not very bright and gave it up easily.
This party, however, was not as unarmed as it appeared.
The first band of bandits consisted of a ragged band of about ten individuals, and if they hadn't been armed and trying to kill Ruk and Saria, they would have been pitiable and not targets for violence. But they were, in fact, armed; mostly with bows, though, not swords. Their leader had a cheap and rusty sword, but the rest didn't have anything but bows and knives. The first sign of the attack, in fact, was an arrow that narrowly missed Ruk's face and caught Saria in the shoulder; Saria yelped as Ruk Fetched out the arrow. Saria Healed her own arm enough to stop the bleeding as they both looked towards the direction of the attack just in time to see a full volley of arrows coming their way; Ruk had her swords drawn, and sliced most of them right out of the air. Saria hit the rest of them and the 'battle' was on.
By the time the bandits had the next volley ready, Sera, Ryki and Syen dove out of the sky to snatch some of them and Ruk diverted the rest, but caught one in the thigh. She sheathed the swords and broke off the arrow shaft; she would deal with the head later. For now, it appeared that the battle would be fought at a distance and pulled her bow; unfortunately, she only had the small hunting bow and whittled arrows that were effective against rabbits and fowl, but not people. She fired off a few shots that would do little more than distract the bandits; they had packed for a close hand-to-hand battle, not a distance fight with some bandits. No matter. She and Saria pulled their throwing knives and threw them; between them, they disabled half of the troupe. Syen took out the leader by breaking his arm, making his rusty sword irrelevant; Ryki and Sera left deep enough gashes in the backs of a couple more that they were rendered harmless. Lyek, for his part, did not have a surfeit of throwing knives but he used what he had to disable the last two.
"Good job, Lyek," said Ruk. "Now let's tie them up and we'll haul them along with us to the next town to be tried."
"How are we going to haul them all when we're on horseback and they're not?" asked Saria. "We're going to lose more time, and we're likely to get hit by bandits on a fairly daily basis from here out. This is ridiculous."
"I haven't quite figured that out yet," said Ruk. "You Heal them of the most threatening wounds, Lyek and I will work on something."
"What's your idea?" said Lyek.
"We need a wagon," said Ruk.
"But we're in the middle of nowhere, where are we going to get a wagon?" Lyek asked.
"Excellent question," said Ruk wryly. "I'm going to make one."
"What?" said Lyek. "Make a wagon?! That will take days!"
"Quiet, youngling, and watch me work!" joked Ruk.
She proceeded to use her Mage Gift in a way she never had before. She had used it mostly in battle, and here she applied that experience to the trees; she used some well-placed fireballs to 'chop' a tree down. She then used lightning bolts to split the tree into boards, after cutting off enough roughly round pieces from the trunk to make wheels. This wagon did not need a roof, but it did need walls; short ones, anyway. So she split enough boards to serve as walls as well. This was precise work, and required a great deal of focus; and in a different way than she had ever used it before. She would need some willowbark tea this evening for sure. She wasn't quite sure how to attach the boards to each other, either, or how to create a harness for the horses to pull. She took a break for a second.
"Lyesa," she asked. "I know it's rather humiliating, but I'm hoping you'll agree anyway. In order to pull this wagon, it would be easiest if we had four horses, instead of three, since we'll be riding you as well. The equipment can be loaded into the wagon, but would you consider being harnessed to pull with the three horses?"
Lyesa flattened her ears, but considered the possibility.
:How far will we have to pull it?: she asked.
"The next village is a few candlemarks away, by wagon," Ruk replied. "We hadn't planned on stopping there, but we will have to do so if only to drop off these bandits."
:And what will we do the next time we encounter bandits?: Lyesa asked. It was an excellent question.
"I, um…..hadn't thought about that, yet," admitted Ruk. "I'm thinking, now that I've gone to the trouble of making this stupid thing, that it would have been easier to Fetch them to the nearest sheriff, but I don't have the energy for that now. Next time, though, that's what I'll do."
:Alright.: said Lyesa. :I will consent. But only this once.:
"Thank you," said Ruk sincerely.
While talking to Lyesa, she came up with an idea for 'nails'. She used the same lightning bolt energy she had used to split the wood into boards to make nails out of the rusty sword and some of the bandits' own arrow points. The wagon was ugly, but finished. She took the one deerhide they had kept and cut it into strips to use as the harness and proceeded to harness the three horses – and Lyesa – together and hooked them to the wagon. She also used some of the hide to tie the bandits hands and feet together and connected them all to a lead rope that she held onto from Kisten's back.
"Well, this certainly was creative," said Saria.
"But I have had better ideas in my life," said Ruk. The wagon worked, but it was certainly not as well built as one made by an actual wagon builder.
"Would you really have been able to Fetch them all to the village, though?" asked Lyek.
"Honestly, I'm not sure," said Ruk. "But it may have been equally possible to go to the village without them, and then build a Gate."
"Well," said Saria, "we're likely to have this problem again, so I suppose it's a good idea to know what won't work next time."
"And I've learned how to make furniture with Mage Gift," joked Ruk.
"Ugly furniture," said Saria.
"But functional," said Ruk.
"I'd hate to see how uncomfortable a chair might be," said Lyek.
"Quiet, youngling," said Ruk.
They proceeded to the village. It took a few more candlemarks than they had thought it might, mostly because the wagon did not roll as easily on its poorly made wheels as a well-built one would. They reminded themselves to have more respect for the wheelmakers from now on; not that they didn't respect them, but now they had a better idea of how hard it actually was. The sheriff did his best not to laugh at the quality of the wagon, but it was obvious he thought it was particularly poorly made.
"It's ok," Ruk told him. "You can laugh. You can also have it as firewood, if you like."
"I think I will," said the sheriff. "May as well use it to heat the room these fellas will be housed in rather than wood we actually had to pay for. Thanks for bringing them in."
They retrieved their packs and reloaded their mounts, now thankfully unburdened by the wagon, and resumed their travels.
"Next time I'll definitely at least attempt to Fetch them," said Ruk. "It has to be easier than that was."
:And much more dignified.: said Lyesa.
"Sorry, Lyesa," said Ruk. "If it makes you feel any better at all, Shin'a'in horses don't particularly like pulling wagons either, so while you disliked it in a completely different manner and for different reasons, none of you were having any fun."
:Hmph.: said Lyesa.
"This is going to make a great story to tell Jacqui when we get home," said Saria. "And Kiri, too."
"Yes, it would," said Ruk. "But we're never going to tell it, are we dear wife?"
"Oh, of course we are," said Saria. "We have to remain humble and down-to-earth. We can't give in to our enormous reputations and pretend all of our ideas are golden and perfect."
"Hmph," said Ruk. "Funny how it's only MY bad ideas that get publicized."
"My ideas ARE golden and perfect," joked Saria. "Also, your reputation is a bit bigger than mine."
"Maybe, but my head's smaller," joked Ruk.
"Appropriate," said Saria.
"You guys are joking, right?" asked Lyek. "Because neither one of you has a small head, or a small reputation!"
"Oh we're joking, alright," said Saria. "But it's true, not every idea we've ever had has been a good one. Just like not every idea you're going to have will be a good one. It's always a good thing to remember; you're a Herald. You're going to have a lot of power over people, a lot of influence. People will look at you for an example, and it's going to be easy to slip into thinking pretty highly of yourself."
"None of that is to say that you don't have reason to think highly of yourself, you're certainly worthy of it," said Ruk. "But always remember you're not infallible. You can make mistakes. You will make mistakes. And some of those mistakes will have enormous cost. Learn from them, so you can do better next time, and always remember to think through your ideas before just blindly believing they're good ones."
"Or I'll end up with a wagon good for nothing but firewood," said Lyek.
"Exactly," said Ruk.
"I know I'm young, I'm inexperienced and I've made enough mistakes to have earned your wrath on this trip – but I have been paying attention!" said Lyek.
"And you've done very well, learning from mistakes," said Ruk. "I wish I didn't have to be hard on you. I wouldn't, but the consequences for mistakes on a mission like this are severe, and we just don't have the time or the leisure to be gentle about it."
"I know," said Lyek. "Believe me, I don't want this mission to fail, either. First, I want to live. Second, I don't want my failure to result in either of your deaths. Third, I don't want the failure of our mission to result in the deaths of all the people who would die in a war with the Eastern Empire, or the fall of Valdemar altogether."
"That is thinking like a Herald," said Ruk.
"It's about time," joked Lyek.
"No," said Saria. "You've always thought like a Herald. Your mistakes were based in lack of experience and the fact that you also think like a teenage boy, which is fitting, since that's exactly what you are."
"I'm eighteen!" said Lyek indignantly.
"Exactly," said Ruk.