Yes, Tobin understood Vruud’s determination to escape. But that didn’t mean the storyteller’s nebulous plan to observe the next battle—“so I can make the bravery of the Morovda camp a legend for the ages”—and thus get them closer to the border before they made a run for it, would work.
“Because even if your chief . . . Morovda, was it? Even if he agrees to let you ride with the Duri, and take your servant along with you, we can’t simply start running from your side of the battlefield to the Realm’s. Because first the Duri will shoot us full of arrows, and then the Realm knights will take us for attacking warriors and kill us before we can identify ourselves.”
They were traveling down the dusty road to Vruud’s home camp when he brought up the subject. The open road was the only place Tobin could be certain no one could overhear them.
“It’s not perfect,” Vruud conceded. “But we’d only have to cross a few hundred yards, in the midst of the chaos of battle, instead of twenty miles of open territory with every patrol on the alert. And when the time nears, something might occur to give us an opportunity.”
Tobin was dubious about that, but he had to admit that Vruud’s mad scheme had worked so far. His steps still began to drag as they mounted the rise and the Morovda camp appeared below them. After spending the last few weeks touring Duri camps, Tobin realized how small and isolated it was. Morovda had quarreled with a couple of other chiefs on the Heron Clan council and had chosen to set his camp apart from the others.
“Did I mention how many of the Duri got a good look at me?” Tobin said nervously. He was walking beside his “master” now and had to look up to see his face. The mule Vruud rode had been named Mouse, not only for his gray hide but because he was remarkably timid for a creature who was almost as tall as a horse.
“You’ve been around the Duri for weeks,” Vruud told him. “You know they never look at a chanduri’s face. And there’s no reason for anyone to look twice at a servant I hired from another camp.”
That was true. The Duri regarded the chanduri like a farmer regards livestock he knows will be slaughtered—he might treat them kindly, but he’d never allow himself to form an emotional attachment. And, like livestock, servants were traded from one clan to another.
Along with their daughters. The Duri were careful not to become too inbred, lest it weaken the warrior lines. In fact, Vruud told him, in some clans it was forbidden for a woman to marry a man of the camp in which she was born. In others it was frowned on, and young women were expected to go to men from another camp, but they weren’t exiled if they didn’t. In yet another clan all girls were fostered to different camps at the age of thirteen, and returned to their childhood homes only to visit.
The Realm was much bigger than the Duri army, and its population was scattered across a large area, but it had a common language, common customs and laws. Had the Seven Bright Gods given them this gift when the church was founded? If so, Tobin owed them more prayers than he usually offered.
Despite his nerves, and despite the fact that he recognized half a dozen of the Duri, when Tobin entered the Morovda camp and Vruud introduced him as “a servant I picked up from a Bear Clan camp to tend the mules,” no one looked at him twice.
He knew without asking that Bear would be one of the clans with a very different language base. Vruud might not be his friend, but Tobin never underestimated the man’s intelligence.
In a way, he thought, as another chanduri showed him the horse line and gave him instructions about where to go for grain, he was grateful to the storyteller for keeping their relationship on a remote, aid-traded-for-aid level. He would take the one-eyed man with him if he could, but Vruud wasn’t Tobin’s first consideration any more than Tobin was his. For once there was no younger brother, no Realm, no goblin children whose safety Tobin had to put before his own. This time it was simple—Tobin would save himself, and save Vruud only if it wouldn’t damage his own chances. Which meant that he might actually survive after all.
Acting as Vruud’s servant was trickier in the storyteller’s own camp, because Tobin was supposed to make himself useful to the camp as well as caring for his master. He helped the woman who cooked for Vruud, chopping vegetables and cleaning fish and fowl. He carried horse and mule dung to the midden and fetched water from the burned-out village’s well.
None of these tasks was mysterious to someone who’d been raised on a country estate, and Tobin had been traveling among the Duri camps long enough that he made few mistakes. He’d begun to think that Vruud was going to be right yet again . . . when he looked up from the pool where he was washing Vruud’s clothes and met the startled gaze of the woman who’d brought food and water to his cage.
Her expression left no doubt that she’d recognized him, astonishment giving way to fear. She opened her mouth and drew in a breath to scream.
“Please,” said Tobin. “Please don’t.”
She couldn’t understand him, but she didn’t scream. By sheer chance they were the only ones working at the series of shallow, stone-lined pools the chanduri had created to do their washing. The woman dropped the bundle of cloth she carried and backed away, one step, then another.
It was barely possible that Tobin could leap to his feet and knock her unconscious, but then what? Run, with every Duri in camp on his trail? Even if he could bring himself to kill her, his masquerade would never survive a murder investigation—particularly in a camp where he was the only stranger.
Tobin slowly pulled the amulet from under his shirt and held it out to her, his palm open, his posture as unthreatening as he could make it with every nerve in his body shrieking for action.
She stopped backing away and watched him warily, but she hadn’t turned to run. She wasn’t screaming.
“Please,” Tobin repeated, trying to summon a reassuring smile. “I’m sure we can reach some understanding.”
He wasn’t sure, but since she couldn’t understand what he said, it didn’t matter. Vruud had told him a chanduri was expected to learn the language of a new camp, and surrender the amulet he’d no right to wear, within a year of his arrival. He’d started to give Tobin lessons, but Tobin didn’t plan to stay for the summer, much less a year, and he hadn’t paid attention. Now he wished he had.
“Vruud took you in,” the woman said thoughtfully. “He’s hiding you. He must have been the one who got you out of that cage. You didn’t find the cracked bar by accident.”
“I hope you didn’t get in trouble for it,” Tobin said.
She grimaced incomprehension and looked with distaste at the amulet he held out. “I don’t want to come that close to you.”
The only words of this camp’s Heron Clan language Tobin had learned so far were “no,” “yes,” and “I don’t speak Marshok.” For a miracle, one of those phrases fit the situation.
“I don’t speak Marshok,” Tobin said in that tongue.
Humor ghosted over her tense face. “You certainly don’t.”
He lifted the amulet once more, in silent plea. Even if he could promise her safety, with all the eloquence that panic and the amulet could lend him, there was no reason for her to trust his word. Except . . .
“Vruud,” said Tobin urgently. “Vruud, yes?”
She snorted. “You mean that Vruud spared you, so I should too? That arrogant old weasel would do anything that . . .” Her voice trailed off. She stared at Tobin in furious speculation. “Anything that served his own purpose. What could you do for Vruud?”
Tobin lifted the amulet once more. “Yes?”
She cast the amulet a look of loathing that gave Tobin some hope, then stalked forward and laid her hand on it.
“Talk,” she commanded.
He had only to close his hand and yank her down as he raised his left fist. And then what?
Tobin seated himself cross-legged, so he was even less threatening, and told her what had passed between him and the one-eyed storyteller after he’d freed Tobin from the cage. Tobin tried to keep back some of the details, like Vruud’s whole escape plan, but she saw the gaps in his story and refused to let him gloss over them.
“You talk, Softer. Or I’ll talk to the others.”
In the end, it was a relief to reveal all of it, including his doubts. “Because you’re right,” Tobin concluded. “Vruud’s only looking out for himself. I don’t even know how much of what he told me is true.”
He’d picked up some confirmation listening to the chanduri in other camps—but since they couldn’t understand him unless they were touching his amulet, it was hard to casually bring the conversation around to the hunt for the missing Softer, the nature of blood magic, or any of the things about which Tobin desperately needed assurance.
“Oh, he told the truth,” the woman said now. “If you wear that blood trust outside one of the camps, the patrols will sense magic moving alone, just as they’d sense a spirit or some other magical creature. They’d track you down with ease. But I’m not sure his plan to accompany the Duri into battle so he can make a story about them will work. Nine-tenths of his tales are lies anyway. Why shouldn’t this one be? And why would he need his servant there?”
“He didn’t say he was certain it would work,” Tobin admitted. “But it was the best idea he had. He’s really only interested in his own escape. If he didn’t know that he’ll need me when he reaches my side of the lines, I’d still be in that cage. He made no pretense of anything else.”
“Maybe I can think of something better,” the woman said. “Since I’ll be going with you.”
Tobin’s jaw dropped. He’d been about to propose that the storyteller would pay lots of money to keep her quiet.
“Vruud will never agree to that,” Tobin told her. “He’s going to be furious that I told you about this at all. He’d never jeopardize his chance by taking someone else with us. If he didn’t need me to keep him alive when he reaches the Realm, he wouldn’t take me!”
“And you think Vruud’s the only one prepared to be ruthless?”
Her expressive face was closed now, but Tobin could see thoughts moving behind it.
“My mother was slain to make a few dozen of those amulets, just three years ago,” the woman said. “That’s why I didn’t want to touch it. I’ve no way to know, but it might be her very blood and death that we’re using to talk right now.”
“It’s the only way I can speak to you,” said Tobin apologetically. “But my own people, our church, declared them unholy when they found out how they were made. They forbid anyone to use them, except in cases of dire necessity.”
“Like going to spy on the enemy?” she asked.
“Spies are one of the exceptions,” Tobin admitted. “But I didn’t come to spy. I really am here by accident.”
How had Makenna managed to get past the magic drain and create the gate they’d shoved him through? Had she made others? Had she too been captured, and were she and Regg and Onny, all his goblin friends, being held in some other camp’s captive cage?
If they were, there was nothing Tobin could do about it. His job was to get himself and Vruud to safety . . . and perhaps one other?
“I don’t know if Vruud will agree,” Tobin said honestly. “I don’t even know how I can get myself to our lines, much less you and Vruud. But if you don’t tell the Duri about me, I’m willing to try.”
“What about Vruud?” the woman asked. “Will he try as well?”
“What choice does he have? If you open your mouth, it condemns him too.”
“It would be many years,” she said slowly, “before I need to fear the knife myself. If I ever did. Most of the chanduri die of age or illness, just as we used to.”
Used to?
Had there been a time when the Duri didn’t practice their sacrifices? What had changed?
“But in those years I stayed alive, how many of my friends, my loved ones, would I see screaming their way to death?” the woman finished. “I want out, young . . . I can’t call you Softer, not if we’re working together.”
“Vruud does,” said Tobin. “But I’d guessed it was an insult.”
“Only mildly contemptuous,” she told him. “Not much worse than chan. But I don’t want to insult my partner. What’s your name?”
“It’s Tobin.” Ridiculously, his eyes stung. “What’s yours?”
“Hesida. Now let’s wash our clothes, and see if we can come up with a more sensible plan for getting three people who have no business on a battlefield right up to the enemy lines.”
But hard as they thought, no plan emerged. The best advice Hesida had was for Tobin to get himself taken along as one of the grooms who tended the Duris’ remounts. It was a better excuse for him to approach a battlefield than any he’d have as Vruud’s servant. Perhaps she could get herself included as one of the chanduri who prepared food in the lulls between battles?
It sounded incredibly tenuous to Tobin, and as he’d predicted, Vruud was furious to learn that someone else had been added to their escape plan. Though as Tobin pointed out, they had no choice. Their lives depended on Hesida’s silence.
Vruud pointed out in turn that every person they added doubled the chance that their escape would fail. Getting himself and Tobin across a battlefield would be hard enough. Adding a woman, adding anyone, could easily end in catastrophe.
Tobin knew that the storyteller was right, but he’d promised. He had to try.
Tobin began working more with the grooms who tended the Duris’ horses, helping lead them down to the stream when he watered Vruud’s mules, currying their coats and cleaning their hooves. Within a few days he was tacking them up for the Duri who went on patrol and taking care of them when the patrols returned.
He no longer feared the Duri would recognize him. Even if they remembered the escaped Softer’s features, they now knew him too well as Vruud’s servant for any other identity to occur to them. And they really didn’t look at the faces of their chanduri servants.
Nor did they pay attention to what they said in their presence. Tobin kept his head down, and his expression blank, but a careless comment that “the new battle tactics will crumple up those Softer knights like paper” set his ears twitching.
What new battle tactics?
Of course, the talk then turned to a wrestling match between them and a nearby camp, and there was no further discussion of the things Tobin wanted to hear.