Renegade's Magic

Soldier’s Boy remained strangely calm. At a gesture from him, Likari set down the platter of meat that he had been offering to him. Soldier’s Boy leaned close to the lad. “Bring to me now what you bought for me at the market.” As he ran off to obey, Soldier’s Boy drew himself up straight, as if to be sure that all eyes were on him. When he spoke, his voice was soft. I knew the trick. The others leaned toward him silently, straining to hear what he would say.

“I know the start of it will please you, Dasie. For it begins with killing. It must,” he said. His voice was so gentle, it almost hid the razor’s edge of his words.

“No!” I shouted inside him. I suddenly knew what was coming. Why had Epiny ever spoken such prophetic words? He paid me no heed.

“It begins with killing,” he repeated. “But not with magic. No. And not with iron. Our magic will not work in their fort. And whatever iron we might use against them, they would use triple that against us. And with experience, which we do not have. We must use a force that fears neither magic nor iron.” He looked around at his audience, as if to be sure he had them. With exquisite timing, Likari had arrived. His arms were filled by a doeskin-wrapped bundle. Soldier’s Boy let the boy continue to hold it as he folded back a corner of it and drew out one of the basket arrows. He held it up. “We will use fire. We cage it in this arrow. And we will use ice. We will attack them in the winter, with the fire that their iron cannot stop. And the fire will expose them to the cold that iron cannot fight. Magic will take us there, and magic will bear us away.

“But that will only be the beginning.”

He had them now. He smiled at them as he gave the arrow back to Likari. He saw there were only a dozen in the boy’s bundle, but kept his disappointment from showing as he turned back to his audience.

“Kinrove has always been right about one thing. Killing alone will not drive them away. And you have been right about another thing, Dasie. We must bring war to them in terms they understand.” He smiled, first at the one Great One and then at the other, and I admired how he drew them closer with his acknowledgment of them. “The intruders must know, without mistake, that the deaths come from us. And we must not kill ALL of them. Some few must be allowed to survive. Perhaps only one, if he is the right one. Someone of rank, of power, among them.”

Outrage returned to Dasie’s face. He ignored it. “That one becomes our messenger. We send him back to his king, with our ultimatum. A treaty. We offer not to kill them if they abide by the rules we give them.”

“And what rules would those be?” Dasie demanded.

“That,” Soldier’s Boy said quietly, “we will determine. Certainly one rule would be that no one might cut any tree that we say must be protected. But it might be better, perhaps, to say that they may not even venture into those parts of the forest.”

“And they will leave their wooden fort forever and never come back!” Dasie added with satisfaction.

Soldier’s Boy shrugged slightly. “We could say such a thing to them. But if we did, it would make them less likely to abide by our treaty. And it might foster discontent among the People.”

“Discontent? To know that we were finally safe from the intruders? To know that our lives could resume peace and order?”

Soldier’s Boy smiled unpleasantly. “To know that the trade goods that so profit us each autumn would no longer flow through our hands.” He reached out casually and set his hand on the back of Olikea’s neck, as if in a caress. “Let alone to bedeck ourselves.” About Olikea’s neck were several strands of bright glass beads that I had given her. Strange, I thought, that Soldier’s Boy noticed her ornaments when I myself scarcely gave them a second glance.

Dasie refuted him with disdain. “We had trade with the West long before we had Gettys like a scab on the land. Long before they tried to cut a way into our forest, we had trade.”

“And we welcomed it!” Soldier’s Boy agreed affably. “But after we massacre every Gernian and tell them they must never build a home near Gettys again, nor enter our forest, how many traders do you think will come to us? What do we have that they must get from us and only us? For what will they risk their lives?”

Dasie was silent and sullen, pondering this. Then she burst out with “They have nothing that we need! Nothing. Better to drive them from the land and make ourselves free of their evil and greed.”

“It is true that they have nothing that we need.” Soldier’s Boy put the slightest emphasis on the word. “I am sure that no one here carries a flint-and-steel for fire-making. No one here has tools of iron in his home lodge. A few wear beads and gewgaws, garments or fabrics from the west. But you are right, Dasie. We do not need them for ourselves. All the garments that my feeder brought with her to the Trading Place she quickly traded away to those other traders who came from across the salt water. They seemed to think they needed what she had brought. She made many excellent trades with them, for things that she thought that she needed. But I am sure you are right. Once we have left behind the trade goods of the intruders, we will find other trade goods, of our own making, and trade just as profitably as ever with those who come from across the salt water. They will not ask us, ‘Where is the bright cloth that we came so far to obtain?’ Doubtless they will be happy to trade only for furs.”