Page 42 of Into the West

Well, that was one question the entire convoy was going to face eventually.

All of that sorting, reclaiming, and rearranging was accomplished while the main convoy continued to move forward at an unaltered pace.

He himself did not oversee this, but he had his proxies in the form of the Dolls, who were doing a lot of the work of culling out the things going back to the main group. The Dolls, of course, did not respond to begging, threatening, cajoling, or any other attempts at interference, and they were much stronger than humans. Now, they had never used this strength against humans, and it was possible that the spells locking the vrondi into those wood and cloth bodies prevented them from doing so. But Hayworth didn’t know that. Fortunately, as it turned out, Hayworth’s people were wary of them, and the Dolls didn’t have to display their strength—just their complete indifference to anything the humans said to them.

Kordas did briefly wonder about the people who remained with Hayworth as he settled in next to Isla the next morning to go over her notes, having enjoyed a very different breakfast meal than his household cook usually prepared, courtesy of Hayworth’s former chief cook. Kordas would have been suspicious of poisoning were it not for the cook’s near-endless, truthful vitriol about Hayworth’s whims. “He wouldn’t let me cook,” the man growled. “Not really cook. Can you imagine being able to do magic, and then being told, ‘No, you’ll only use magic to make little pies, because no one but me gets little pies’? That’s what he was like.” The cook had made a savory boiled pudding with oatmeal and meat scraps. A good thick slice of it, along with a sort of “bread” made of mashed tuber, mixed with flour and a little butter then fried, sat in front of Kordas now.

This was new to him, but absolutely delicious.

It was now far too cold in the mornings to eat outside, so he’d had their shares brought to them in the barge. He didn’t often exploit his rank, but since he was also conferring with Isla at the same time they were eating, he felt it justified.

And he was really not looking forward to leaving the warmth of the barge for the raw wind and a trip on Arial’s back. She and the other smooth-coated horses in his herds had all been growing very furry coats over the last few sennights, and he sincerely hoped this wasn’t a portent of a terrible winter to come.

“I hope you aren’t having second thoughts about Lord Hayworth,” Isla said, when he had been quiet for a while.

“Not really.” But his tone was as uncertain as his feelings. Not that he thought he’d done the wrong thing; he was just concerned that he’d punished the innocent along with the troublemaker.

She reached out and took the ledger away from him. “They’re upstream from that village, which will make it a lot easier for people who decide they’ve made the wrong choice to get away from the group and see if they can’t talk the villagers into taking them in. And right now, if all my information from the Dolls is correct, he’s lost most of his little army. They are currently figuring out which households will take them. I made it clear we’d take any that weren’t otherwise claimed. They all figured out the obvious: winter is soon, and even if we find a place to settle before then, it will be years, even decades, before money in the form of gold, silver, and copper has any value to us. So any ideas he had about squashing the villagers in Imperial fashion are not going to happen. So if he does the humble but smart thing, and travels back upstream to ask them nicely if he can move in, he and his people will be fine. They can haul their barges out of the water and into the village and live in them quite comfortably.”

What sounded like a riot broke out right outside their windows.

Shouts of anger, the squeals of pigs hurt or terrified, and a strange cry, like someone tearing canvas.

He leapt to his feet, grabbing his crossbows and the quiver, and ran outside without a coat, just in time to see a strange, black, winged shape struggling into the air just off the bow of his barge with a young pig in its claws.

The pig screamed in agony; blood ran down from the wounds where the creature’s claws pierced its fuzzy hide. He fumbled a bolt in place, aiming and firing.

And he screamed, in frustration, as something about the thing’s feathers made the bolt bounce harmlessly off it. It craned its head around on its long, snake-like neck and hissed at him, then sadistically bit the pig, making it squeal, all the while pumping its huge black wings in a labored effort to get away.

There were more strange creatures in the sky, swooping and feinting down on young pigs and young sheep, although so far only this bastard had gotten prey. The animals on the bank milled around in a panic, all sense lost under the attacks of these things they had never seen before, blundering against the barge, making it rock and throwing his aim off.

A toddler is the size of a pig—

“Pelias!” someone shouted, and threw a fishing net to someone on the next barge, someone he recognized as one of the Valdemar mages, a gangly young teenager. What—he thought, and then instantly understood, as if by alchemy, as the same person yelled “Kordas!” and threw one at him.

He caught it, wadded it up like a ball, and flung it as hard as he could at the creature making off with the struggling pig. It was all instinct at this level—a whirl of mage energy to keep it in ball shape, a tailwind of more energy to send it farther than he himself could possibly throw. And at the very last moment, as it sailed just over the creature’s head and into its flight path, an explosion of energy to splay the net out to its fullest.

With a surprised wheeze that sounded like a whistle, the thing flew right into the net. The net obliged without Kordas’s help to foul and entrap the creature’s wings.

And with a croak and a horrible squeal, creature, pig, and net plummeted to the ground. Men with spears swarmed it. Enemy dispatched, Kordas turned to see how Pelias was doing.

Pelias had already imitated his master, and a second, unlucky monster landed among the pigs, which set on it with squeals of rage, trampling it and snapping at it. In no time at all it was as dead as the one Kordas had taken down.

All up and down the line nets flew into the air. Anywhere there was a mage nearby, the creatures were knocked out of the sky and set upon with spear, axe, sword, and hoof.

And before he could get his breath and look for another net, it was over.

Another of those tearing-canvas screams came from somewhere above, and the creatures abruptly cut off their attacks and headed for the low-hanging, gray clouds filling the sky from horizon to horizon. In a moment, except for the panicked animals and the last, futile struggles of the ones that had been brought down, it was as if there had never been an attack at all.

“Rose, please relay my orders to bring every carcass of those things to the mage’s barge,” he croaked, suddenly aware that his heart pounded hard enough to break a rib, and he was wet with fear-sweat, and very, very cold. “Tell the Five Old Men I want them there too.” He turned back to the door of the barge, intending only to get his coat and leave.

But Isla stopped him. “Finish your breakfast,” she said firmly. “We do not ever waste food on this journey. Every mother with picky children is making that a commandment, and I am commanding you.”

His gorge rose. A natural reaction after terror, of course, but—

“I can’t eat,” he said, wondering if he looked as green as he felt.

“Sit down. Drink your tea. Tell me afterward if you can’t. It’s going to take people some time to collect those bodies and deliver them to the Old Farts, and you know it. You can take the time.”