A Wizard and a Warlord

12

The call came in the middle of the night; the messenger was a twelve-year-old girl who was pale with fright. “Please, mum, an’ it please you, would you come to Agneli? She’s most horrible took with the baby, mum!”

Gar started up from his pallet by the fire. “I can…”

“No you can’t,” Alea said firmly. “In a village like this, birthing is for women only—unless something is drastically wrong.”

“But I am a physician…,” the old man’s voice croaked.

“Then heal yourself,” Alea snapped. “If we need a cesarean, I’ll send for you.”

“Are you sure…”

“Don’t worry, I gleaned a great deal from Herkimer’s memory,” Alea assured him. “Midwifery was the first topic I searched.”

“It was?” Gar stared.

“Of course,” Alea said. “I had to make sure your man-made computer hadn’t ignored women, didn’t I? Go back to sleep, my friend.”

Gar smiled, obviously warmed by the term “friend.” Alea gave him another smile, then turned and went. Agneli screamed as Alea came in; her impulse was to turn and go, but she knew the young woman hadn’t even seen her. Instead, she marched straight up to the bedside and asked, “How long has she been in labor?”

“Since dusk.” Her mother looked up, face drawn and haggard. She sat beside Agneli, mopping her brow with a cool cloth.

“That is not so long.” Alea sat beside Agneli.

“No, but the babe is nearly to the birth canal, yet keeps pulling back.”

“I don’t blame her,” Alea said with a wry smile. “If I had so warm and safe a place to live, I doubt I would choose to leave it.” She put her hands on Agneli’s belly and gazed off into space.

The mother started to say something, but one of the other women touched her hand. “Shh! She reads the child.”

The mother stared in awe, then closed her mouth. Alea listened to the baby’s mind. There were no words, of course, only raw emotions—fear and, as Agneli screamed with the strength of the contraction, the feeling of something pinching, of fainting…

The spasm passed and Agneli went limp, gasping. Alea’s gaze focused on the mother. “The child is coming feet first with the umbilical cord between its legs. Worst, it is pinched between the babe’s hip and the mother’s bone. Whenever she moves toward the canal, it pinches closed, and the child cannot breathe.”

“The child will suffocate!” the mother exclaimed. “The child will not come out either, if we cannot free that cord,” Alea said.

“But how?” the mother whispered, eyes huge.

“I need a wooden wand,” Alea said, “two feet long, with a notch on the end.”

One of the women went out. While she was gone, Alea held Agneli’s hand and helped soothe her through the contractions. Between them, she thought, Gar.

Aye?

He couldn’t have been asleep—he must have been waiting. You have heard?

Would I eavesdrop?

Stop being silly! The umbilical cord is caught between the baby’s legs and the inner rim of the pelvis. Can you loosen it with telekinesis?

I think so, Gar answered; then his thoughts blurred. The neighbor came back in with a peeled willow wand half an inch thick with a small fork on the end, carefully smoothed. “I carved with haste. Will it do?”

“Admirably,” Alea said. “Boil it for three minutes.” The woman turned away to the kettle. “How shall I know three minutes?”

“One hundred eighty beats of your pulse.”

A few minutes later, Alea was pretending to probe with the wand while she listened to the baby’s mind, one hand on the mother’s belly. She felt the baby move farther back inside, and its thoughts cleared as oxygen flooded its blood. Then it descended again.

Success, Gar’s voice said inside her head.

Alea withdrew the wand. “Pray to the goddess.” Agneli stiffened, crying out.

“I see the feet!” a woman cried.

“And the child still breathes,” Alea said triumphantly.

“Praise the Goddess!” the mother said fervently. Alea surprised herself by muttering a quick prayer of thanks to Freya. Then she thought, Thank you, Gar. There were no words in return, only a quiet feeling of satisfaction and pride. Well, at least he had used his powers to a good purpose.

Time blurred then, seeming both far too long and all too short—but at last Alea held a fully formed, beautiful female child in her hands. Its mouth opened, gaped, then let out a thin wail of protest.

Alea smiled. “May your complaint be in vain, little one—and may your life be wonderful.”

One of the other women cut and tied the cord, then took the child from her to wash. Alea said, “Who shall tell the father?”

An embarrassed silence fell and no one would meet her eyes.

“What?” Alea frowned. “Does he not acknowledge his responsibility?”

“They have not bonded,” the mother said, “and Agneli has not told us his name.”

The tension in the room was sudden and great. The same thought burned in everyone’s mind—that she had been seduced by someone else’s husbandman.

Then the neighbor laid the baby on Agneli’s breast and said gently, “The child is come, Agneli, and needs her father’s protection. Will you not now tell us his name?”

“It … it was Shuba,” Agneli caressed the baby at her breast with a faint but growing smile.

The tension released, to be replaced by a new and grim one. “He must provide for the child,” said the neighbor.

But Shuba refused. There in the dawn light, Agneli’s mother held out the child to him, but he turned away. “Agneli refused to bond with me and told me she had fallen in love with someone else. Let him feed her and her child!”

A soft murmur ran though the villagers—not surprise, but recognition. Alea wondered if the young woman had been too obvious in showing her attraction to the other boy.

Now Agneli’s father stepped forward. “They never lay together. The child is yours.”

“I will not bond with a woman who loves me not!”

“No one says that you should,” the father said quietly, “and all the village will support the child if we must. But you should give the greatest part of that support.”

“If she were in love with me, I would.” Shuba glanced at the baby, and for a moment longing filled his face.

Then he turned away. “I will not pay for a child raised by another man!”

Shuba’s father stepped up beside him. “It is not justice that he do so.”

Agneli’s father’s face hardened; his hands balled into fists. “It is not justice that Shuba fail to provide for the child he has begotten.”

The village was silent and tense. Then another man stepped up beside Shuba’s father. “He offered and was refused. It is not just.”

A fourth man stepped up beside Agneli’s father. “It is just and proper to support your own child.” One by one, the men of the village lined up on one side or the other. The women began to protest and their pleas grew to demands, louder and louder. The men held silence, their faces hard.

Gar stood leaning on his staff, tense as a bowstring. Alea spared an angry glare for him. Did he think they were going to invent a government on the spur of the moment?

There was a sudden commotion at the back of the crowd. The women parted and the sage strolled in, turning from side to side as he passed between the two lines of men, smiling at each. He came in silence, but the tension of the people lessened visibly.

At the center of the lines, the sage sat down on the ground and looked up at the antagonists. “Good day to you all, my friends.”

Muttered greetings from shamed faces answered him.

“You are well come, O Sage,” Shuba’s father said. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Why, to the Scarlet Company, my friend,” the sage said.

Gar stiffened so suddenly that Alea half expected him to break in two.

“When I came out to greet the sun,” the sage said, “there was a trouble sign scratched in the dust before my door and the character for your village next to it.”

“How did they know so quickly?” one man muttered. “They know everything, of course!” another man hissed. “Be still! I want to hear the sage!”

“What is the cause of the trouble?” the sage asked. Shuba’s father sat on his heels beside the man. “My son got Agneli with child—but she refused to bond, for she fell in love with another man who did not love her. The babe was born this night past and Agneli finally named the father, but Shuba refuses to acknowledge the child.”

“What he begot, he should husband!” Agneli’s father insisted, sitting beside the sage.

One by one, the men sat down in a circle. The women heaved sighs of relief.

“The custom is that the village rears a child whose mother breaks the bond with the father,” the sage said thoughtfully.

“That is so, O Sage,” Shuba said, “but I have not had the pleasure of living with Agneli for even one day!”

“You had the pleasure of sleeping with her for a night,” one of the other young men said darkly.

“I did not!” Shuba turned to him. “I lay with her for an hour, no more! She would not stay to fill my arms in the night or to greet the sun with me!”

The men all murmured together. “It is true what he says.”

“Aye—fornicating is only a part of the pleasure of lovemaking.”

“The smallest part, in some ways.”

“It is such great pleasure to wake and find the woman in your arms.”

Alea’s opinion of this culture’s men soared. She locked gazes with Gar, who was looking impressed, too. “And do you wish to deny yourself the pleasure of talking with the child when she is three?” the sage asked.

Shuba started to answer, then hesitated.

“When she is eight,” the sage asked, “will she come to show you the treasure of a nestling who has fallen? Or will she turn away from you as you now turn away from her?”

“I will not sleep in the same house as she,” Shuba protested, but his face already showed regret.

“That you will not,” the sage agreed, “but few of us can have everything we wish, or gain as much joy from it as we expect. It is better to take what happiness we can, to delight in the little pleasures of life while we wait for the greater.”

Shuba glanced at the baby with longing but still protested, “Even if I do not acknowledge her, I shall contribute to her rearing as much as any man in this village.”

“So you shall,” said the sage, “but no more. Why then should she bring you her joys and woes to share more than to any other man?”

Shuba bowed his head, scowling at the ground. All the men were silent.

“The true conflict, then, is between yourself and yourself,” the sage said gently. “Which do you wish more—the love of a child or vengeance for a slight?” Shuba still scowled.

“Men are born with empty hearts,” the sage said. “We fill them with love and joy, hate and pain, as we grow. The first pair makes the heart limber and light, the second makes it hard and heavy. Will you spend your life with a jewel in your chest, or a lump of lead?”

Slowly and reluctantly, Shuba lifted his head, then nodded. “The babe is mine.”

As they pulled on their packs, Alea said softly, “It seems there isn’t always a need for a judge and a court.”

“Isn’t there?” Gar looked her straight in the eye. “I thought I saw both back there.”

“I saw only a teacher guiding people in living,” Alea said sharply.

“Which is what a judge should perhaps be.”

“But rarely is! And what of his bailiffs, his guards? Where were they?”

“Ah—the police.” Gar nodded. “No one saw them, did they? But they were there nonetheless. Someone told the Scarlet Company, and they told the sage.”

“The Scarlet Company is a bailiff?”

“A sentry, at least,” Gar said.

Then they had to drop the issue because Shuba and his parents came up to them with half the village behind them. He held out cupped hands to Alea. “I thank you, lady, for the life of my child.”

Alea almost told him to thank Gar, too, but stopped herself just in time. “You are welcome, my friend. I share your joy.”

“May you always do so!” Shuba said. “To remind you of it, here is a gift of my own carving.”

He opened his hands, and Alea caught her breath in wonder. A small golden bird sat on his palm; its eyes were tiny rubies and its wings were edged in pure gems.

“I cannot accept so rich a gift for only a few hours’ labor,” she protested.

“For the life of my daughter, rather.” Shuba pressed it into her hands. “Take it, please, lady—and when you look upon it, breathe a small prayer for Agneli and myself.”

She looked into his eyes, saw the longing there, and realized that no matter whom Agneli fancied, Shuba still loved her. “I shall pray for you both,” she promised, “for all three.”

Now Shuba’s mother stepped up beside him. “Hide it well within your pack, lady, for General Malachi’s men still prowl the roads, and though they may call themselves soldiers, they are still every bit the bandits they were before his rise.”

“The sage told us that he has conquered yet another village,” one of the men said, frowning.

“So you know of this bandit captain,” Gar said in his rusty old voice.

“Know of him! I should say so!” said an old woman. “Why, the whole land between the big lake and the forest talks of nothing else!”

“Then you know he’s bossing around the people of three villages now?”

“Four, the last I heard,” a big man grunted. “Like to see him try his tricks here!”

“I wouldn’t.” The woman next to him shuddered. “You’re a strong man, my Corin, but you can’t stand against a hundred on horseback!”

“A hundred? Come, Phillida!” Corin scoffed. “Surely he doesn’t have so many!”

“That and more, if the tales I’ve heard are true,” Gar said in his gravelly voice. “Who made this Malachi a general, anyway?”

If he had been hoping to hear about a government that Malachi had been too proud to mention, he was sadly disappointed.

“He did that himself,” Phillida answered. “The tale tells that he was outlawed for bullying in his own village, but he proved a bigger bully than any knew, and soon he bullied all the bandits in the forest.”

“Then he came out of his woodlands,” an old man said, “came out with a hundred bandits at his back and started forcing the people of his village to obey him.”

“His bandits drove the villagers before them to take the blows of a second village,” another man said, “then conquered that village, then a third, and the Scarlet Company hasn’t stopped them yet.”

Gar bit his lip in an agony of curiosity. Alea saw and took pity on him. She told the villagers, “We’re from very far away. What is this Scarlet Company? We’ve been hearing about it for a month, but no one’s told us what it is.”

“You don’t have a Scarlet Company in your home?” The old woman stared at them. “Who holds your bullies in check, then?”

Remembering Midgard, Alea said bitterly, “No one—or at least, only bigger bullies.”

The people shuddered, looking at one another. “What a horrible place!” said the old man, and Phillida added, “No wonder you left there!”

“I only wonder that I didn’t leave it sooner.” Of course, Alea couldn’t have left her home planet until Gar invited her aboard his spaceship, but they didn’t need to know that. Reminder of obligation made her feel more prickly and she asked again. “So tell me what this Scarlet Company is.”

“Why, it’s a company of people who stop bullies from hurting peaceable people like us, of course,” said another man.

“Who are they?” Gar tried to hide the keenness of his interest. “Where can I find them?”

The whole crowd laughed at that, and one man said, “Why, everywhere and nowhere, peddler! No one’s ever seen a man or woman of the Scarlet Company—except the bosses whom they’ve killed, and those folk knew nothing of any others!”

“It’s secret, then?” Gar quavered.

“Secret as the stars in the daytime!” the old woman said. “You know they’re there, but you can’t ever see them. When the land grows dark, though, there they are to give you light and hope.”

“Lucky you are to have them,” Gar said.

“Aye, lucky unless you’ve tried to bully someone, or accused someone else falsely.” The old man looked at the others about him with a toothless grin; one or two flushed and looked away. “Me, I did that once. I was angry with a neighbor, so I marked a bit of bark against him and slipped it into the collection box on the common.” He shook his head ruefully, eyes gazing off into the past. “I found their reply on my doorstep and took it to the priest to read. They knew me for the liar I was and bade me give five jugs of ale to the next village feast.”

Gar frowned. “Who empties the collection boxes?”

“No one knows,” the old woman said. “No one’s ever seen—or if they have, they’ve been wise enough not to tell.”

“They guard their secret well,” Gar said with ill-disguised disgust.

“Very well,” the old man agreed, “and fools would we be to try to spy them out.”

They waved good-bye as they went down the road, then waved again—but as soon as they were out of the villagers’ hearing, Alea said, “Will you stop looking for the Scarlet Company now?”

“I make no promises,” Gar said, “but I certainly won’t stop looking for the government. I will say, though, that this is the first time in my life I’ve ever had to look for one. Usually the government comes looking for me.”

Suddenly, he bowed his head, clutching it with his right hand while he leaned on his staff with his left.

“What is it?” Alea cried. “Are you ill?”

“Thoughts,” Gar gasped, “panic…”

Alarmed, Alea turned her attention to the world of thought and the terror and pain almost drove her to her knees.