The Warded Man

Hand over hand, Arlen climbed the twenty-foot wall of the pit. He gave no thought to what lay behind, or what waited above. He focused only on the task at hand, ignoring the burning strain of his muscles, the tearing of his flesh. As he crested the edge of the pit, the Krasians backed away, their eyes wide. Many of them invoked Everam and touched their foreheads and hearts, while others drew wards in the air to protect them as if he were a demon himself.

His limbs like jelly, Arlen struggled to his feet. He looked at the First Warrior through blurry eyes. “If you want me dead,” he growled, “you’ll have to kill me yourself. There are no more corelings left in the Maze to do your work for you.”

Jardir took a step forward, but hesitated at a murmur of disapproval from some of his men. Arlen had proven himself a warrior. Killing him now would not be honorable.

Arlen was counting on that, but before the men had time to think it through, Jardir snapped forward, striking him on the temple with the butt of the warded spear.

Arlen was knocked to the ground, his head ringing and the world spinning, but he spat and put his hands under himself, pushing hard against the ground to regain his feet. He looked up, only to see Jardir moving again. He felt the metal spear strike his face, and knew no more.

CHAPTER 22

PLAY THE HAMLETS

329 AR

ROJER DANCED AS THEY WALKED, four brightly painted wooden balls orbiting his head. Juggling standing still was beyond him, but Rojer Halfgrip had a reputation to maintain, and so he had learned to work around the limitation, moving with fluid grace to keep his crippled hand in position to catch and throw.

Even at fourteen he was small, barely passing five feet, with carrot-red hair, green eyes, and a round face, fair and freckled. He ducked and stretched and turned full circles, his feet moving in tempo with the balls. His soft, split-toed boots were covered in dust from the road, and the cloud he kicked up hung around them, making every breath taste of dry dirt.

“Is it even worth it, if you can’t stay still?” Arrick asked irritably. “You look like an amateur, and your audiences won’t care for breathing dirt any more than I do.”

“I won’t be performing in the road,” Rojer said.

“In the hamlets you may,” Arrick disagreed, “there are no boardwalks there.”

Rojer missed a beat, and Arrick stopped as the boy frantically tried to recover. He regained control of the balls eventually, but Arrick still tsked.

“With no boardwalks, how do they stop demons rising inside the walls?” Rojer asked.

“No walls, either,” Arrick said. “Maintaining a net around even a small hamlet would take a dozen Warders. If a village has two and an apprentice, they count themselves lucky.”

Rojer swallowed back the taste of bile in his mouth, feeling faint. Screams over a decade old rang out in his head, and he stumbled, falling on his backside as balls rained down on him. He slapped his crippled hand against the dirt angrily.

“Best leave juggling to me and focus on other skills,” Arrick said. “If you spent half the time practicing singing as you do juggling, you might last three notes before your voice breaks.”

“You always said, ‘A Jongleur who can’t juggle is no Jongleur at all,’” Rojer said.

“Never mind what I said!” Arrick snapped. “Do you think Jasin ripping Goldentone juggles? You’ve got talent. Once we build your name, you’ll have apprentices to juggle for you.”

“Why would I want someone to do my tricks for me?” Rojer asked, picking up the balls and slipping them into the pouch at his waist. As he did, he caressed the reassuring lump of his talisman, tucked safely away in its secret pocket, drawing strength.

“Because petty tricks aren’t where the money is, boy,” Arrick said, drawing on his ever-present wineskin. “Jugglers make klats. Build a name, and you earn soft Milnese gold, like I used to.” He drank again, more deeply this time. “But to build a name, you have to play the hamlets.”

“Goldentone never played the hamlets,” Rojer said.

“Exactly my point!” Arrick shouted, gesticulating wildly. “His uncle might be able to pull strings in Angiers, but he has no sway in the hamlets. When we make your name, we’re going to bury him!”

“He’s no match for Sweetsong and Halfgrip,” Rojer said quickly, placing his master’s name first, though the buzz on the streets of Angiers of late had them reversed.

“Yes!” Arrick shouted, clicking his heels and dancing a quick jig.

Rojer had deflected Arrick’s irritation in time. His master had become increasingly prone to fits of rage over the last few years, drinking more and more as Rojer’s moon waxed and his own waned. His song was no longer so sweet, and he knew it.

“How far to Cricket Run?” Rojer asked.

“We should be there by lunchtime tomorrow,” Arrick said.

“I thought the hamlets could only be a day apart,” Rojer asked.

Arrick grunted. “The duke’s decree was that villages stand no farther apart than a man on a good horse might go in a day,” he said. “A fair bit farther than you get on foot.”

Rojer’s hopes fell. Arrick really meant to spend a night on the road with nothing between them and the corelings but Geral’s old portable circle, which hadn’t seen use in a decade.

But Angiers was no longer entirely safe for them. As their popularity grew, Master Jasin had taken a special interest in thwarting them. His apprentices had broken Arrick’s arm the year previous, and stolen the take more than once after a big show. Between that and Arrick’s drinking and whoring, he and Rojer rarely had two klats to click together. Perhaps the hamlets could indeed offer better fortune.

Making a name in the hamlets was a rite of passage for Jongleurs, and had seemed a grand adventure while they were safe in Angiers. Now Rojer looked at the sky and swallowed hard.

Rojer sat on a stone, sewing a bright patch onto his cloak. Like his other clothes, the original cloth had long since worn away, replaced a patch at a time until only the patches remained.

“Settup th’circle when yur done, boy,” Arrick said, wobbling a bit. His wineskin was nearly empty. Rojer looked at the setting sun and winced, moving quickly to comply.

The circle was small, only ten feet in diameter. Just big enough for two men to lie with a fire between them. Rojer put a stake at the center of the camp and used a five-foot string hooked to it to draw a smooth circle in the dirt. He laid the portable circle out along its perimeter, using a straightstick to insure that the warded plates lined up properly, but he was no Warder, and couldn’t be sure he had done it right.

When he was finished, Arrick stumbled over to inspect his work.

“Looksh right,” his master slurred, barely glancing at the circle. Rojer felt a chill on his spine and went over everything again to be sure, and a third time, to be positive. Still, he was uneasy as he built a fire and prepared supper, the sun dipping ever lower.

Rojer had never seen a demon. At least, not that he remembered clearly. The clawed hand that had burst through his parents’ door was etched forever in his mind, but the rest, even the coreling that had crippled him, was only a haze of smoke and teeth and horn.

His blood ran cold as the woods began to cast long shadows on the road. It wasn’t long before a ghostlike form rose up out of the ground not far from their fire. The wood demon was no bigger than an average man, with knobbed and barklike skin stretched hard over wiry sinew. The creature saw their fire and roared, throwing back its horned head and revealing rows of sharp teeth. It flexed its claws, limbering them for killing. Other shapes flitted on the edge of the firelight, slowly surrounding them.