The Warded Man

“He had a reason for fluxing half your village?” the Warded Man asked.

“I don’t pretend to see the path,” Jona said calmly, “but I know it’s there all the same. One day, we’ll look back and wonder how we ever missed it.”

Darsy was squatting wearily by Vika’s side, trying to cool her feverish brow with a damp cloth, when Leesha entered the Holy House.

Leesha went straight to them, taking the cloth from Darsy. “Get some sleep,” she said, seeing the deep weariness in the woman’s eyes. “The sun will set soon, and we’ll all need our strength then. Go. Rest while you still can.”

Darsy shook her head. “I’ll rest when I’m cored,” she said. “Till then I’ll work.”

Leesha considered her a moment, then nodded. She reached into her apron and pulled out a dark, gummy substance wrapped in waxed paper. “Chew this,” she said. “You’ll feel cored tomorrow, but it will keep you alert through the night.”

Darsy nodded, taking the gum and popping it into her mouth while Leesha bent to examine Vika. She took a skin from around her shoulder, pulling the stopper. “Help her sit up a bit,” she said, and Darsy complied, lifting Vika so that Leesha could give her the potion. She coughed a bit out, but Darsy massaged her throat, helping her swallow until Leesha was satisfied.

Leesha rose to her feet and scanned the seemingly endless mass of prone bodies. She had triaged and dealt with the worst of the injured before heading out to Bruna’s hut, but there were plenty of hurts still in need of mending, bones to set and wounds to sew, not to mention forcing her potions down dozens of unconscious throats.

Given time, she was confident she could drive the flux off. Perhaps a few had progressed too far, and would remain sickly or pass, but most of her children would recover.

If they made it through the night.

She called the volunteers together, distributing medicine and instructing them on what to expect and do when the wounded from outside began to come.

Rojer watched Leesha and the others work, feeling cowardly as he tuned his fiddle. Inside, he knew the Warded Man was right: that he should work to his strengths, as Arrick had always said. But that did not make hiding behind stone walls while others stood fast feel any braver.

Not long ago, the thought of putting down his fiddle to pick up a tool had been abhorrent, but he had grown tired of hiding while others died for him.

If he lived to tell it, he imagined “The Battle of Cutter’s Hollow” would be a tale that outlived his children’s children. But what of his own part? Playing the fiddle from hiding was a deed hardly worth a line, let alone a verse.

CHAPTER 31

THE BATTLE OF CUTTER’S HOLLOW

332 AR

AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE SQUARE stood the cutters. Chopping trees and hauling lumber had left most of them thick of arm and broad of shoulder, but some, like Yon Gray, were well past their prime, and others, like Ren’s son Linder, had not yet grown into their full strength. They stood clustered in one of the portable circles, gripping the wet hafts of their axes as the sky darkened.

Behind the cutters, the Hollow’s three fattest cows had been staked in the center of the square. Having consumed Leesha’s drugged meal, they slumbered deeply on their feet.

Behind the cows was the largest circle. Those within could not match the raw muscle of the cutters, but they had greater numbers. Nearly half of them were women, some as young as fifteen. They stood grimly alongside their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. Merrem, Dug the butcher’s burly wife, held a warded cleaver, and looked well ready to use it.

Behind them lay the covered pit, and then the third circle, directly before the great doors of the Holy House, where Stefny and the others too old or frail to run about the muddy square stood fast with long spears.

Each one was armed with a warded weapon. Some, those with the shortest reach, also carried round bucklers made from barrel lids, painted with wards of forbiddance. The Warded Man had made only one of those, but the others had copied it well enough.

At the edge of the day pen’s fence, behind the wardposts, stood the artillery, children barely in their teens, armed with bows and slings. A few adults had been given one of the precious thundersticks, or one of Benn’s thin flasks, stuffed with a soaked rag. Young children held lanterns, hooded against the rain, to light the weapons. Those who had refused to fight huddled with the animals under the shelter behind them, which shielded Bruna’s festival flamework from the rain.

More than a few, like Ande, had gone back on their promise to fight, accepting the scorn of their fellows as they hid behind the wards. As the Warded Man rode through the square astride Twilight Dancer, he saw others looking toward the pen longingly, fear etched on their faces.

There were screams as the corelings rose, and many took a step backward, their resolve faltering. Terror threatened to defeat the Hollowers before the battle even began. A few tips from the Warded Man on where and how to strike were meager against the weight of a lifetime of fear.

The Warded Man noticed Benn shaking. One of his pant legs was soaked and clinging to his twitching thigh, and not from the rain. He dismounted and stood before the glassblower.

“Why are you out here, Benn?” he asked, raising his voice so others could hear.

“M-my d-daughters,” Benn said, nodding back toward the Holy House. It looked as if the spear he held was going to vibrate right out of his hands.

The Warded Man nodded. Most of the Hollowers were there to protect their loved ones lying helpless in the Holy House. If not, they would all be in the pen. He gestured to the corelings materializing in the square. “You fear them?” he asked, louder still.

“Y-yes,” Benn managed, tears mixing with the rain on his cheeks. A glance showed others nodding as well.

The Warded Man stripped off his robes. None of the people had seen him unclad before, and their eyes widened as they took in the wards tattooed over every inch of his body. “Watch,” he told Benn, but the command was meant for all.

He stepped from the circle, striding up to a seven-foot-tall wood demon that was just beginning to solidify. He looked back, meeting the eyes of as many Hollowers as he could. Seeing them watching intently, he shouted, “This is what you fear!”

Turning sharply, the Warded Man struck hard, smashing the flat of his hand against the coreling’s jaw, knocking the demon down in a flash of magic just as it became fully solid. The coreling shrieked in pain, but it recovered quickly, coiling on its tail to spring. The villagers stood openmouthed, their eyes locked on the scene, sure the Warded Man would be killed.

The wood demon lunged, but the Warded Man kicked off a sandal and spun, kicking up inside the coreling’s reach. His warded heel struck its armored chest with a thunderclap, and the demon was sent reeling again, its chest scorched and blackened.

A smaller wood demon launched itself at him as he stalked his prey, but the Warded Man caught its arm and twisted himself behind its back, jabbing his warded thumbs into its eyes. There was a smoking sizzle, and the coreling screamed, staggering away and clawing at its face.

As the blind coreling stumbled about, the Warded Man resumed his pursuit of the first demon, meeting its next attack head-on. He pivoted and turned the coreling’s momentum against it, latching on as it stumbled past him and wrapping his warded arms around its head. He squeezed, ignoring the demon’s futile attempts to dislodge him, and waited as the feedback built in intensity. Finally, with a burst of magic, the creature’s skull collapsed, and they fell to the mud.