Authors: Peter V. Brett
Erny blinked. 'You're always complaining I'm not brave enough. Now you want me to hide when people need my help''
'You'll prove nothing to me by getting yourself killed,' Elona said. 'You haven't sat a horse in years.'
'She has a point, Da,' Leesha said.
'Stay out of this,' Erny said. 'The town may hop at your word, but I'm still your father.'
'There's no time for this,' the Painted Man said. 'Are you coming or not''
'Not,' Elona said firmly.
'Coming,' Erny said, pulling his arm from her grasp and following the other men out.
'That idiot!' Elona shrieked as the door slammed shut. Everyone else glanced at one another.
'Take as long back here as you like,' Smitt said, 'I need to get out front.' He, Stefny, and Jona quickly filed out of the room, leaving Leesha alone with her fuming mother.
'He'll be all right, Mum,' Leesha said. 'There's nowhere in all the world safer than traveling with Rojer and the Painted Man.'
'He's a frail man!' Elona said. 'He can't ride with young men, and he 'll catch his death of cold! He's never been the same after the flux took him last year.'
'Why, Mother,' Leesha said, surprised, 'it sounds like you truly care.'
'Don't take that tone with me,' Elona snapped. 'Of course I care. He's my husband. If you knew what it was like to be married almost thirty years, you wouldn't say such things.'
Leesha wanted to snap back, to shout out all the horrible things her mother had done to her father over the years, not the least of which being her repeated infidelity with Gared's father, Steave, but the sincerity in her mother's voice checked her.
'You're right, Mum, I'm sorry,' she said.
Elona blinked. 'I'm right' Did you just say I was right''
'I did.' Leesha smiled.
Elona opened her arms. 'Hug me now, child, while it lasts.' Leesha laughed and embraced her tightly.
'He'll be fine,' Leesha said, as much for herself as her mother.
Elona nodded. 'You're right, of course. He may look a terror, but no demon can stand up to your tattooed friend.'
'Both of us right in one night, and Da not here to witness,' Leesha said.
'He'll never believe it,' Elona agreed. She dabbed at her eyes with a kerchief, and Leesha pretended not to notice.
'So was that the same Marick you used to shine on'' Elona asked. 'The one you ran off to Angiers with''
'I never shined on him, Mother,' Leesha said.
Elona scoffed. 'Sell that tampweed tale to someone who doesn't know you. The whole town knew you wanted him, even if you were too prudish to act on it. And why not' He's handsome as a wolf, and a Messenger on top. That's man enough for any woman. Why do you think he used to make Gared so jealous''
'Everything made Gared jealous, Mum,' Leesha said.
Elona nodded. 'He's just like his father: simple men, ruled by their passions.' She smiled wistfully, and Leesha knew she was thinking of Steave, her first love, who had died the year previous when flux took Cutter's Hollow and the wards failed.
'The Marick I saw when we were alone on the road wasn't much different,' Leesha said.
'And you used Gatherer's tricks to keep him off you,' Elona guessed, 'instead of taking it as the perfect opportunity to have a romp with no one the wiser.' It was true enough; Leesha had secretly drugged Marick into impotence to prevent his taking advantage of her on the road.
'Like you would have'' Leesha asked, unable to keep the bite from her tone.
'Yes,' Elona said, 'and why not' Skirts lift up for a reason. Women have needs down below, just as men. Don't lie to yourself and pretend otherwise.'
'I know that, Mum,' Leesha said.
'You know it,' Elona agreed, 'and yet still you sew your petticoats shut, and think denying yourself somehow makes you heroic. How can you treat every body in the Hollow when you don't understand the needs of your own''
Leesha said nothing. Her mother had a most unsettling way of reading her thoughts.
'You should go up and talk to Marick while your other suitors are out of town,' Elona said. 'He's had years and tragedy to season him, and come out a hero. The folk outside can't stop singing his praises. Perhaps he 'll be more to your liking now.'
'I don't know'' Leesha said.
'Oh, go on!' Elona said. 'Take a plate of food up to his room and talk to him. It's not like you have to let him stick you this very night.' She smiled and winked. 'Though if you did, it'd be a better use of your night than fretting over problems that will remain come morning.'
Leesha laughed despite herself, and hugged her mother again.
Several times they passed scenes of slaughter; bodies, alone and in groups, torn apart by corelings when night fell upon them without succor.
The Painted Man cursed the sights, spurring Twilight Dancer on harder, not bothering to stop after the first. The others who followed him, even Gared and the Cutters, were inexperienced riders falling well behind his powerful stallion, but he didn't care. There were refugees on the road, driven out of their homes by Ahmann Jardir, the man he had been fool enough to call friend, and he needed to find and protect as many of them as he could before night fell.
But he would hold Jardir to account for every life lost. Corespawn him if he did not.
More than an hour of hard riding brought him to a large group of refugees. The sky was awash with color as the sun set, but the folk were still working on their wards. They had painted the magical symbols on wooden boards, but the area they needed to secure was irregularly shaped, and the net was out of alignment.
He galloped right to the edge of the wardnet, pulling Twilight Dancer up short and leaping down with his warding kit. People cried out at the sight of him, but he ignored them, inspecting their wards.
'It's him,' one Warder whispered to another. 'The Deliverer.' The Painted Man paid him no mind, focusing on the task at hand. Some of their wards he turned or twisted to align properly with others, but many he altered with charcoal, or turned the boards over and replaced entirely.
A crowd began to gather around him, folk clutching one another and whispering as they stared at his tattooed hands and tried to get a peek under his hood. None dared approach him, though, and his work went uninterrupted. When his companions finally caught up, Erny fumbled his way down off his horse to assist. Rojer and the others placed themselves protectively between him and the crowd.
'Deliverer!' a woman screamed at him. He glanced over to see her struggling vainly toward him against the pull of Gared's trunklike arms, her eyes alight with fanatical fire. He turned back to his work.
'Please!' the woman cried. 'My sister is still on the road!'
The Painted Man looked up sharply at that. 'Take over the warding,' he told Erny. 'Draft as many of their Warders as you need. I'll leave a couple of archers to buy you time to finish.' Erny gulped, but he nodded and called to the Rizonan Warders, who had been standing back with the rest of the refugees.
'Let her go,' the Painted Man told Gared when he reached the pair. Gared complied immediately, and the woman fell to her knees before him, clutching at his feet.
'Please, Deliverer,' she said. 'My sister is with child; too far along to sit a horse. She and our gray parents couldn't keep up with the group, so our husbands bade me take the children on ahead while they set a slower pace.'
'And they haven't caught up,' the Painted Man finished for her.
'It is nearly dark,' the woman said, weeping upon his feet and clutching at the hem of his robes. 'Please, Deliverer, save them.'
The Painted Man reached down to her, placing a hand on her chin and gently pulling her to her feet. 'I'm not the Deliverer,' he said. 'But I swear I'll save your family if I can.'
He turned to Gared. 'Pick two archers to stay with Erny while the wards here are completed,' he said. 'The rest of you are with me.' Gared nodded, and moments later they thundered out of the camp, riding even more frantically than before.
It was dark when they found them: five people, as the desperate woman had said. They stood in a tiny makeshift ward circle, surrounded by dozens of corelings. Flame demons spat fire and wind demons swooped down from the sky. There was even a rock demon, towering over the rest.
Each time the demons struck and the wardnet flared to life, Rojer could see the holes in the web; holes more than large enough for a demon to squeeze through.
The two young men stood by those holes, stabbing out with pitchforks to drive the demons back as an elderly couple tended to the obvious reason why they had fallen behind.
The young woman at the circle's center was giving birth.
The Painted Man growled and kicked his stallion forward, leaping ahead of the others. He cast his robe aside, and it floated to the ground in his wake. Gared and the Cutters gave a cry and followed suit, freeing their warded axes as they galloped toward the fray.
The Painted Man rode Twilight Dancer right into the rock demon, the warded metal horns welded to the horse's barding crackling with power as they punched through the black carapace of the demon's abdomen. The Painted Man leapt from his horse as the demon was driven back, grabbing one of its horns to hold on to as he rode the coreling to the ground, punching it repeatedly in the throat with warded fists as it went down.
He was up in an instant, tackling a flame demon and tearing its lower jaw clean off. The Cutters caught up to him then, catching flame bursts on their warded shields and hacking at the demons as if they were sectioning lumber.
Wonda and the archers took a different tack, halting their horses several dozen yards back and sighting the wind demons that filled the sky. They came crashing down one after another, feathered shafts jutting from their leathery bodies.
Rojer slipped from his horse, leaving it with the archers, and took up his fiddle, playing even as he ran for the small circle. Much like Leesha's Cloaks of Unsight, his music made him effectively invisible to the corelings as he waded through their lines, but without the need for a slow pace. In moments he was inside the circle, and changed his tune to the jarring notes that would drive the demons away from the small family.
The young woman screamed as battle raged about them, black demon ichor flying free in the night air. Her parents were doing what they could to make her comfortable, but it was clear from their fumbling that they had no idea how to assist in the delivery.
'She needs help!' Rojer cried. 'We need to get her to an Herb Gatherer!'
The Painted Man broke away from the demons he was engaging and was at Rojer's side in an instant. He was clad only in a loincloth, covered in tattoos and demon ichor. The Rizonans backed away from him in fear, but the girl was too far gone to even notice.
'Get my herb pouch,' the Painted Man said, kneeling by the girl and examining her with a surprisingly gentle touch. 'Her water's broken and her contractions are close. There's no time to get her to a Gatherer.'
Rojer ran out to Twilight Dancer, but the stallion was in a wild rage, trampling a pair of flame demons into the snow and mud. Drawing his warded cloak about him, Rojer took up his fiddle again. As with the corelings, Rojer's special magic found resonance with the beast, and in short order the horse stood calmly while Rojer retrieved the precious herb pouch.
He brought the pouch to the Painted Man, who quickly began grinding herbs into powder and mixing them with water. The girl's family kept back, watching the scene in horror as the Cutters laid waste to demons all around them.
'Do you know what you're doing'' Rojer asked nervously, as the Painted Man brought his potion to the moaning woman's lips.
'I was apprenticed to an Herb Gatherer for six months as part of my Messenger training,' the Painted Man said. 'I've seen it done.'
'Seen'!' Rojer asked.
'Do you want to do it'' the Painted Man asked, looking at him. Rojer blanched and shook his head. 'Then just play your ripping fiddle and keep the demons back while I work.' Rojer nodded and put bow back to string.
Hours later, with the sounds of battle long faded, a shrill cry broke the night. Rojer looked at the screaming babe and smiled.
'There will be no denying it when people call you Deliverer now,' he said.
The Painted Man scowled at him, and Rojer laughed.
Leesha carried the steaming tray up the steps of Smitt's inn, her heart beating nervously. Twice before, she had considered giving herself to Marick, whom she could not deny was handsome and quick-witted. Both times, Marick's character had failed at the key moment, making Leesha feel that in his mind, her needs were second to his own, if he was considering them at all.
But her mother was right again. She often was, even as she used the insight to cut at people. Leesha was tired of being alone, and she knew in her heart that Arlen would never fill that place for her. Not for the first time, she wished she could see Rojer in that light, but it was impossible. She loved Rojer, but had no desire for him to share her bed. Marick had shown the people of Fort Rizon that he was a man who could be counted upon in times of need. Perhaps it was time to look beyond his past failings.