Water Witch (8 page)

Alaysha was relieved until she caught sight
of Drahl making a deliberate path toward her, his bear skin cloak sailing
behind him from the force of his stride. She had a feeling her father's morning
brew had been drunk of its liquid, leaving the bitter, psyche-strengthening
dregs of herbs behind.

She reached out to grab the girl's hand but
clutched at air instead. She wasn't gone exactly, just had wandered aimlessly
toward a tent smelling of cinnamon and oats. Probably scouting for fare easier
to get than Cook's stomach-fortifying roasted boar slabs.

Drahl stopped a few paces from her, staring
sidelong at the woman still wailing over her baby. "The great Yuri,
Conqueror of Hordes --"

"Leader of Thousands, yes, I know the
title," Alaysha said, sighing. "What does he want?"

"He wants the witch to stand before
him." Drahl wouldn't meet her eyes we spoke, but neither would he keep his
attention on the mourner.

"Has it to do with a sudden lack of
water?"

He did look at her then, and Alaysha could
almost taste the spit he would have sent her way if he'd had enough available
to do so.

"The witch should ask him," he
said.

"The witch will."

His lips worked for a while before they
settled into a hard line. Without another word, he turned his back and strode
off. Alaysha didn't need to follow him -- she knew exactly where her father's
camp was even if she'd never been allowed within a hundred horse strides of it.

Her power must have done more damage than
she'd thought. She tilted her head upward, to the gathering pinkness of the
dawn sky. There were clouds just overhead, thickly white and clumped like
clotted goat cream. Not enough water to make them heavy enough to let go, but
enough to fatten them. She believed the pitiful stream they'd settled next to
the night before was probably dry, and they'd have to journey nearly a day
before there was another river large enough to fulfill all the needs of camp.
Hopefully, there were a few pools along the way. The skins would need bloating
if they were to make it home alive.

Drahl left her a few paces from her
father's site. It was pitched so his tent was backed into the side of a verdant
hill, the more to shade him in the morning while he slept. On all other sides
there were smaller tents where his guard intermittently kept watch and slept.
His personal cook's tent, a short, flat-topped one made of bear skins, was in
the middle of the area, a fire crackling merrily, its flames licking upwards to
the rotisserie of sizzling hare. It would be cinnamoned and honeyed, that hare,
its belly stuffed with wild apples and dried cranberries from the last season.
Bodiccia, a tall, wiry woman whose prowess as a warrior was only outmatched by
her fame as a savoury cook, stood over the wrought iron, ladling herbed boar
fat over the back of the meat.

Alaysha's stomach grumbled.

The woman glanced up sharply, and the circlet
of men's teeth she'd stretched around her forearm jangled. Alaysha could make
out the weathered look of skin needing fluid. Though the woman was watching
her, Alaysha couldn't meet her eyes.

"My father asked for me."

Bodiccia said nothing, just set the bowl of
fat down and lifted a tankard to her lips, then made a great show of surprise
before she upended it over the grass.

Nothing spilled out.

Alaysha wanted to say it was fortunate the
food hadn't dried to leather, that it was lucky the honey she was using hadn't
crystallized beyond use -- that they were all damn lucky to still be alive. But
those were all the reasons she'd been ordered here in the first place, and they
all knew it -- and feared it -- and that fear brought anger, not relief. She
had no choice but to keep her tongue, and instead settled down onto a log on
the very edge of her father's camp, listening to the trembling song of the
flute player rousing him to audience.

Her mouth watered at the aromas, but she
did her best to seem unaffected while she waited. She'd rather not appear
vulnerable in any way to her father under the circumstances. The piper's notes
grew ever more grim, and Alaysha assumed the time for Yuri's appearance -- and
her own punishment -- was drawing close.

She watched the cook pull out a hammered
silver platter and lay the roasted hare on it, then circle it with roasted
eggs. Usually they would be boiled, but not this day. She topped the eggs with
roasted seeds and then set the plate down next to the tankard she'd upended
earlier. It seemed the lack of liquid would be as much part of her father's
repast as anything else -- and intentionally so. All the better to make him
angrier.

Well, his wrath wasn't quite so fearsome as
all that. Alaysha would just have to prepare herself for the chastisement as
best she could, and remind her father of the things she'd done for him.
Certainly, she'd lied about the identity of the village she'd finished, and
that meant they would be traveling and searching even longer for nothing, but it
also meant he might feel some wariness, thinking those he was hunting were
still out there somewhere. Until then, he needed his water witch.

She felt remarkably safe.

The tent flap was flung open and a slave
held it aloft so the great Yuri could stretch before he fully exited; Alaysha
could tell even from her distance he'd chosen to be bare chested, all the
better to display the muscled arms and huge girth of his torso. He had his
riding leggings on, the ones with sewn-in amethysts that protected him from
dishonesty. Around his head, he wore the Circlet of Conquest -- a self-designed
hammered bronze line that had three jagged points on the front.

He was obviously dressed for intimidation.

He strode forth with a wave of his hand to
Bodiccia. She neither bowed, nor knelt. Not this mighty woman. She was as much
a guard as any of the muscled men that shifted their way around camp. She
cooked for Yuri because she wanted to, and because she'd earned his complete
trust. She picked up the platter and passed it to the slave who carried it
towards Alaysha.

She wished she could stop the drool
collecting behind her teeth, and had to swallow repeatedly as the platter was
carried close enough she could reach out and burn her fingers on the sizzling
meat.

Her hand was already midair when the slave
dropped to his knees, placed the plate next to him on the ground, and then
lowered his palms to the moss.

Yuri was close enough for Alaysha to hear
him bid another slave place the platter on the first's back.

Could she really be about to break her fast
with Yuri? After all these years? Perhaps it was a ploy. Maybe they'd found
number nineteen -- maybe even at her site -- and now Yuri would ply her with
false hospitality to get to the truth and how much she knew of it.

The second servant threw the end of a hemp
rope over one tree, and the other end over a second. Between the lines
stretched a woven seat that if pulled taut enough could create the perfect rest
for a weary warrior without him swinging undignified in the air. Yuri settled
into it and flicked a fringe of blond hair from his eyes. He pinned Alaysha to
her spot with them, only letting go long enough to push his fingers into the
hare's belly.

He scooped stuffing into his mouth and
chewed, never taking his eyes from hers. His hand found the rabbit's leg, tore
it from its socket and went greasily to his mouth. Time after time, he tore the
meat with his teeth, not once reaching for the tankard. Once, he paused long
enough to consider a roasted egg. His lean fingers lingered over it, pressed
into the seeds instead and went then into his mouth, scraping against his
bottom teeth. He smacked loudly, then plucked the egg from its spot and bit
into it.

Alaysha knew better than to speak. Best she
wait till he offered her some food.

The hare was nearly gone, the stuffing
spread over the plate messily, his chin shining from the honey and boar fat
when she realized he planned to eat the entire thing in front of her. Even
still, he had not once lifted the tankard from its spot next to the servant's
foot.

He burped once and held onto his stomach as
though he was obscenely full. He went even slower then, and Alaysha could see
the slave's thighs trembling. There was a rustling in the undergrowth close to
the cook's tent, but she didn't dare even look away from her father to see what
the noise was about.

Twice her stomach complained in such an
undignified manner it made Yuri grin through the mash of stuffing and eggs. He
made a great show of swallowing even as he managed to make it appear as though
he had no need of water or ale to wash down the meat -- it was enough that he
willed it move easily down his throat.

He left the last leg on the plate with an
egg next to it, and wiped his palm down his mouth and off his chin.

"You did not have my consent," he
said.

She knew what he was talking about.
"It wasn't intentional. Truly."

"There is no such thing. There is only
what I will."

She couldn't keep her eyes from the meat.
"I had a fright."

"You have been trained not to
fear."

"Yes."

"A witch is to feel nothing. You know
this."

"I know."

"You know and yet you allow yourself
to put us all at risk."

She couldn't even nod.

He made a derisive sound, one that sounded
somewhere between a cough and a snort. "Your nohma made you soft. It's
because of her failure that you're weak." He looked at her with an
expression of disdain.

Alaysha did her best to still the squirming
that wanted to take over her belly. "It's not her fault."

"Then it's yours."

"Yes."

"I let you live even knowing what you
were, and you repay me with danger in my own camp? You will never outlive this
shame."

She hung her head. "I know."

He sat quiet for a minute letting her feel
the weight of what had happened. She saw again the weeping woman, the small
babe. She had only to scan the area around her to see how the water had dried
up overnight so that no one could slake the thirst. She had only to notice the
tankard that still sat empty, next to the plate.

"You need to bring the rain."

"I know that too."

"Then why do you wait? Why do you do
nothing while your tribe suffers?"

"The rain comes of its own
power."

"That isn't true."

She knew she'd never convince him.

"What else can I do, Father?" She
held her hands out, supplicating. She was as powerless to her thirst as the
rest of them. More so, even. She'd had nothing to drink and less to eat, and
she was weak. A faint headache throbbed behind her eyes.

He leaned sideways, letting the weave of
his seat creak as it relaxed. He noticed the slave's trembling thighs and
lifted the platter from his back. "Take this to my night hound," he
told him. "She has only had a raw squirrel this morning."

He pushed the slave to his belly and kicked
him in the stomach until he got up and retrieved the plate.

Yuri regarded Alaysha coolly. "You
don't know everything, witch. You only know pieces, and even with those small
bits you would argue that you know better than me."

"Then tell me."

He regarded her with a queer expression.
"Why would I tell a tool where it came from, what it is to do, where I
choose to put it when I'm done?"

"Is that all I am?" She didn’t
believe it. He was just punishing her. He couldn't be so cold; she'd seen him
with his new favourite. He did love. He did.

"You are too sharp a blade to be of
any good to most men. My tribe would have me believe you're too sharp even for
your maker. Are you, Alaysha? Are you too sharp for even your maker to use
without danger?"

Encouraged by his use of her name, she
dared: "If a man is to wield a weapon, he must know it, Father."

He muttered something unintelligible in
answer and picked up the empty tankard. He shook it and peered inside
thoughtfully.

"If a blade could score the sky and
fill this vessel with rain, it might beg careful tempering."

He got up and passed her the tankard.
"Till then, we have much work to do. The village you ended was not the
village of our search and we need to regroup. While I travel to Sarum, you and
Drahl will continue the search. If he finds it, do nothing. I want to be sure
it is the correct village before we take it."

His attention was taken by a crackle of
twigs in the brushes nearby. "And take the vermin girl with you; I'm tired
of her stealing my hounds' food. The two of you will stay well away from Drahl
and his scouts at night. If you are to kill without intention, better it be
something of your own."

He turned from her with a lifted brow of
warning and started toward his tent.

She peered into the tankard as her father
disappeared beyond his tent flap, and ferret eased into view from behind a
tree. She was chewing on the hare's leg she'd obviously stolen from the hound's
dish. She offered Alaysha the half egg Yuri had left with her other hand.