Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Prophecy, page 17
Leandra kept her eyes on Cymric’s, while rubbing gently along the side of his neck with one hand. Cymric felt his throat relax enough to let out a long “huh.” Leandra dropped her hand to his chest, and she patted him gently. “Thanks. A lot.” She kept her eyes on him.
Cymric felt a full smile stretch across his face, but he dropped his eyes, feeling a little embarrassed. He bent down to pick up the calendar, and Leandra picked up his staff. They walked around the puddles, heading for the ork’s makeshift tent.
Enough for tonight, thought Cymric. Tomorrow their fight with Ristul would begin in earnest.
20
Cymric awoke from a deep sleep, cold under his blanket. Early light of day washed the color from his arm—which was wrapped around Leandra. Shock woke him completely, but his arm suddenly felt like lead. Move too quickly and Leandra would wake up. Not move in time and Leandra would wake up with his arm around her. Sunlight gleamed off the pile of Leandra’s chainmail, next to her padded shift and pants. That means she’s not wearing much more than a blanket.
Cymric no longer felt so cold. His face felt flushed, and he was almost afraid to breathe. Swallowing silently, he made his decision. He lifted his arm stiff and straight, as if it were a dock crane on the Aras Sea. He swung the arm over his side, rolling onto his back as he flopped the arm to the ground.
Grandmother ork sat watching him, her smile making the warts on her face bunch up with those next to her eyes. The two littlest orks leaned against grandmother, both looking at Cymric with wide eyes, their tongues flicking against short tusks. The bigger child, the one with long, dark hair, looked up at grandmother ork, who nodded. The child grinned, then scampered over to Cymric on her hands and knees.
“Good mohning, mizzer vizard,” she said. Her dwarven was a little off, but the shine in her eyes told Cymric how proud she was.
Cymric managed what he hoped was a smile, considering the time of morning. “Good morning. What is your name?”
The ork girl thought for a while, her lips forming silent words. She broke into a huge smile, her upper lip clearing her tusks. “Leeba!”
“Arak croz visard ved alio Leeba,” said grandmother. The girl looked back at grandmother, gave Cymric one more smile, then rushed to bury herself in grandmother’s breast. From the safety of grandmother, Leeba took an occasional shy glance at Cymric. Grandmother chuckled. “Leeba’s a good girl, smart like her mother. I’m teaching her dwarven, so she can earn her living as her parents before her.”
“She will be fortunate if she can someday speak as well as you do.”
“She already does. Just not yet in dwarven.” Grandmother’s wide smile could not conceal all of her distaste for dwarfs. Cymric thought it best to grunt noncommittally, then stretch and scratch his head as if just now fully waking. He sat up, looking for his robe. It lay wadded into a ball, compressed under the indentation of his head. Taking it by the shoulders, Cymric shook it out as best he could. Then he tried to modestly shimmy into his robe while still covered with his blanket.
Leeba’s giggle told him how futile was the effort, but Grandmother rapped one of the girl’s tusks with a sharp nail. Pouting, Leeba jutted her lower lip to cover her tusk. Seeing Leeba punished made the little ork boy giggle, until he too was silenced by a sharp look from grandmother. Her look became kinder when she turned back to Cymric. “The rest of the family is out repairing a provisioner’s wagon that rattled on by before dawn. Earn some decent food to thank you for saving us from the robbers.”
Cymric blinked once to remember the story he had told them, then squinted with a thin smile that he hoped expressed grim satisfaction. No giggles; he must have been close.
Grandmother looked at him, tilting her head slowly to the left and behind her. “There are some covered waste-holes just over the ridge of that hill. The lime hasn’t been replaced for some time, but there you are.”
Cymric followed the line of her nod, then trudged up the hill. Flies buzzed around the warped, stained covers over the three waste-holes. The covers did little to contain the odors of the pits, which had rough wood pieces marking the proper foot positions for each one. As he uncovered the nearest hole, the stench of rotting garbage and human waste rose quickly in the morning air. Cymric’s eyes teared, and his nose protested. The wandering life does have its inconveniences, he thought ruefully.
When he was done, he replaced the lid, then wandered further down the backslope of the hill. He faced the fresh morning breeze, which carried with it the scent of wet sweetgrass. The tall fennel had still to flower. Black-winged delks hopped along the ground, their blue-tipped beaks snatching up crickets and other insects. The birds kept a wary eye on Cymric, but none took to the air as he passed through their midst. The wizard walked through the fields, in general heading toward a patch of orange on an adjacent hill. Once at the base, he sprinted up to the flowers, the grass rustling and scraping off his robe.
Calendula carpeted the hill, the same flower stylized in the Ristular calendar. Cymric stopped, spun, then flopped onto the ground. He lay on his back, face warming in the sun. Talk to me, tell me what the next step should be. The flowers did not answer. Cymric lay back for some time, half-mulling over problems, half-enjoying the sunshine. He felt his skin soaking up the warmth of the sun, down into muscles sore from a fitful night’s sleep. As he steeped his body in sunlight, he let his dilemmas soak deep down into his mind. Some, such as how they might actually kill Ristul the Horror, seemed insoluable, given what he knew now. Cymric sorted through the problems, choosing one he thought needing solving today.
The calendar indicated that Leandra’s birthday was some time in the next two weeks. Marrek was perhaps eleven days by road, and the road was perhaps another two days away. That would get them there in time. But the orks had seen more Ristular on the road to Marrek. Trying to go around them would slow him and Leandra down. Once the dwarfs had warned the others, confronting them might be much more dangerous. The road looked like a bad choice.
The river would be quicker. It was three days away, and Marrek was perhaps six days downstream, less if they could find a boatman willing to risk the river at night. Pa-troling the river would be more difficult for the Ristular than patroling the road. But the river was water. The Ristular obviously had elemental water magic. So the river could also be a bad choice.
Then again, earth magic could help them patrol the road. Cymric pressed his head against the cool, damp ground. When his hair felt wet, he propped himself up on his elbows. He watched the bees busily working around the flowers. Their bulbous bodies dipped, flew, jerked to a stop, changed direction, hovered, alighted, circled, or buzzed in a straight line into the distance. Their movements were fascinating—and hard to predict. Now that makes sense.
Why not travel by both river and road? They had enough time. Anytime the Ristular spotted them they could switch to the other method of travel. Or go off-road for a day. Or backtrack for half a day. Anything to make their approach erratic and hard to predict. If the Ristular broadened their search, Cymric and Leandra could make a beeline for Marrek. Cymric thought they should start by heading for the river.
Cymric stretched, arms overhead, hands spread, legs extended, toes pointed. He yawned, sat up slowly. Solving a problem before breakfast was the sign of a good day. He walked briskly back to the camp.
He crested the last hill to the smell of fresh biscuits and seasoned sausage. Descending into the camp, he walked around a metal tub filled with water and set near the cart. The fire had been rebuilt several feet away from the tent. Leandra was sitting between Spat and Grandmother. Beside grandmother were the two youngest orks. Across from them sat the parents and a middle child, who delighted in stealing bites from her parents’ plates, ignoring her own. Spat had decided that the hand-long sausages were conveniently bite-sized, though the juices and bits of gristle on his tusks and chin suggested that his estimation was wrong. Leandra ate hearty bites. The grandmother cut the sausages into small pieces, feeding herself and the youngest. A drinking flask was in front of each person. The only sounds were knives against plates, childish giggles, and Spat’s loud chewing and swallowing.
The father gestured toward a pair of skillets by the fire, then reached down to a cloth beside him. A wobbly toss later, Cymric had a tin plate. A knife followed on a higher arc. Cymric speared two sausages and three burned biscuits, returned to sit by Leandra. As he sat down, the wizard brushed Spat. The ork glowered, which turned his eyebrows into a single, long line, but he did scoot over a few inches. Marta handed a flask to her food-stealer, who promptly brought it over to Cymric. Cymric thanked her in slow dwarven. The girl smiled.
“Good to see you could find the camp from way over on the other side of the hill,” Leandra said.
Cymric swallowed. “I was thinking about the road ahead.”
Leandra soaked up some of the sausage juices with a biscuit. “Our friends were kind enough to let me use their wash basin to bathe.” She nodded at Grandmother. “Gran knows a heat spell. Got the water plenty hot.” Then Leandra batted her eyes rapidly at Cymric. “Spat made sure I didn’t get cold. He brought me pitchers of hot water. Four times.”
Spat’s shoulders shook from his whispery laugh. Cymric looked over at the adolescent ork, then back at Leandra. On the way he caught Voig’s fatherly smirk. Oops.
Leandra tore off a piece of biscuit. “So I was just wondering what took you so long.” She tossed the piece into the air, caught it in her mouth without taking her eyes off of Cymric.
“I also took advantage of the sunshine,” Cymric said, “to soften muscles the night left stiff.” He tried to shrug away the vague sense of guilt beginning to coalesce; it didn’t work.
“I shouldn’t doubt you would be stiff,” Grandmother said as she slid sausage from her knife into the wide-open mouth of the youngest. “You had half your body exposed to the night air, holding l eandra as you were.”
Cymric felt his cheeks warm. “It wasn’t a conscious act, believe me,” he said.
“Gran thought the same thing.” Leandra cut the last of her sausage. “I threw your hand back a few times. But every time I did, you would start whimpering.” She took a bite of sausage, watching Cymric carefully.
Cymric felt his eyes bulge. From the strange warm pressure in his face, he knew he was blushing. “I did not!” he objected.
The two youngest children nodded solemnly. Spat laughed again, his whole upper body shaking in exaggerated mirth. Leandra made a slow, deliberate turn toward Spat. Her smile was not particularly pleasant. Spat convulsed somewhat less.
“Gran suggested I let you be so we could all get some sleep.”
Cymric drank from his flask, then took a long time to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, which allowed him to compose his expression. He was also trying to think of something to say.
Leandra flashed a tic-smile, then her expression softened. She brushed Cymric’s hand with her own. “Your face tells me what I needed to know.” She removed her hand, took the last piece of biscuit from her plate. “Eat up. We’ve got some traveling to do.” She popped the last piece, then drank the remains of her flask.
Cymric nodded. He paid a lot of attention to his sausage and biscuit, while Spat paid a lot of attention to him. The ork bent a sausage sideways into his mouth, then burst it with a savage bite. Bits of juice and sausage struck Cymric. The human looked over at the ork, met his gaze, then looked back to his own plate of food.
“Spat Kaerbreaker!” said Marta. “You apologize this instant.”
“Sahhy,” said Spat, with all the compassion of a crocodile. He swallowed, then grinned. Pieces of sinew and skin dangled from his tusks. Marta stood up, the green of her face growing darker with anger. She looked down at Voig, who seemed totally unconcerned. Spat rose languidly, facing his mother from the vantage point of one head higher. The other children became very quiet.
“Clean yourself up. We have company,” Marta said crisply.
Spat grunted. He started to tie down the flaps on the cart, ignoring his mother’s orders. Grandmother coughed. Marta looked over. Grandmother looked at Leandra. The three women exchanged a flurry of glances, the final glance being a long, questioning look from Marta to Leandra.
Leandra tapped her pommel, then nodded. She rose. She rotated her shoulders back, rolling her neck to limber it. One step put her two strides away from the rebellious ork. Leandra smiled widely. “Say, Spat—”
“Uhh?” Spat looked up with a lopsided smirk.
Cymric did not see Leandra’s sword clear her scabbard, but he heard it. He also sensed twin pulses of magic resonate like a gong one could feel but not hear. Sunlight glinted off the metal slashing past Spat’s face. The whish-whish of the blade created a spray of saliva and flying bits of something.
“I like a boy who listens to his mother.” Leandra’s sword snicked back into her scabbard. Wide-eyed, Spat reached a trembling hand to touch his lower lip. Two trickles of blood oozed from the base of his tusks, now clean. Cymric blinked slowly. Her sword is too big to do that without taking out half of Spat’s teeth. Leandra must have altered the nature of her sword through her magic. Perhaps it was the nature of the sword. Perhaps it was the nature of all swordmasters. Cymric thought it was something peculiar to the nature of Leandra. Cymric found hope for a large impossibility building from witnessing this small one. Perhaps there is something to this prophecy after all.
Marta’s stunned expression led Cymric to believe Leandra’s action was not quite what she’d had in mind. Grandmother’s quiet “mmm” said just the opposite. Voig’s eyebrows rose, then settled as he nodded slowly, tongue on his left tusk. Three children stared in awe as Leandra walked over to Cymric, then tapped him on the shoulder. “Ready?”
Cymric took a last bite of food, then finished most of his flask. He quickly shouldered his pack and hefted his staff. Voig broke the tension with a booming laugh. He smiled while shaking Leandra’s hand. Cymric bowed to grandmother, then to Marta, flourishing his staff behind him and kissing the back of her hand. The girls squealed at that. Spat sulked. Leandra waited a few steps away.
Voig clasped Cymric’s arm, the cords of his muscles set in a firm but cordial grip. “Good luck traveling with that one.”
“My luck has held so far.”
Voig grinned, then dropped his voice. “My boy says Leandra does a bath proud—for a flat-tooth.”
“You will understand if I don’t pass on the comment,” said Cymric, letting go of Voig’s arm. Voig laughed again. Cymric walked over to Leandra, then paused to release a blast of flame from his staff. The children cheered and waved. The wizard and the swordmaster then walked from the camp.
When Cymric could no longer hear the child-orks, he moved a step closer to Leandra. “Had you thought at all about what you would say to Marta if you had just happened to miss and ended up carving up Spat’s face?”
Leandra set her face. “No. We’re now dueling the Ristular.” Her stride picked up a little.
Cymric let his tongue slide along his upper lip as he pondered her words. He waggled his staff as he looked at her. “Perhaps you would care to elaborate?”
Leandra’s tic-smile hung around longer than usual. “There is no point in thinking about the consequences of failure. We only live if we succeed.”
21
Cymric split open the pomegranate, following the cut Leandra had made. They were sitting at the edge of an impromptu market set up at the intersection of five trails. Farmers had gathered that morning at a campsite in the wedge between the northern and northeastern trails. Camping there were a group of Astendar pilgrims, nearly seventy strong. Though their purses were not heavy, they weren’t empty either. Once the market began, it quickly grew in size because almost every traveler stopped to peruse its wares. Now other peddlers had set up shop as well.
Cymric and Leandra had arrived in the middle of the afternoon, coming south from the ork campsite. Strolling around the market, Cymric estimated that seven hundred or so people had gathered. He knew that the warm weather and the serendipitous nature of the event had elevated spirits and loosened purse strings, but he forced himself to suppress his mercenary instincts. An Uzhbek woman had set up shop as a soothsayer with a patter that made Cymric wince. Astral vagaries indeed! Her clients devoured every word.
Searching about for Leandra, he turned around, only to spot four Ristular, their robes opened at the collar because of the heat. All were dwarfs, but the dwarven elementalist was not among them. The four were examining a human farmer’s stock of herbs. The shortest was haggling the price with the ruddy-faced farmer, whose arms flailed wildly in ritual indignation.
Cymric stopped to look at some candles at a nearby cart with a blue awning. Though his disinterest wasn’t feigned, the pudgy candle mistress took his nonchalance as an opening move. He tried to ignore her pitch, wanting to listen in on the dwarf and the farmer, whose bargaining was, fortunately, being carried out in full voice. They were haggling over the farmer’s entire stock of borage. Was that herb used to increase courage? Or was it only that its name sounded like courage?
Cymric left to find Leandra, vaguely surprised to discover he was walking away with three candles, his purse a few silvers lighter. The candle mistress gave him a satisfied smile and a friendly wave goodbye. Cymric nodded absently to her.
He found Leandra browsing for some fresh fruits and bread for a meal. When he told her about the Ristular, she hurried concluded her shopping. Now the two of them sat at the edge of the market, with five peddler-trolls between them and the rest of the market. The trolls were drinking heavily and dicing loudly, inspiring most passersby to either avert their eyes or glance warily at the trolls. No one paid much attention to the two quiet humans sitting a few paces away.
