A Time of Exile. Katharine Kerr

the morrow leaving took far longer than Aderyn wanted. Although the village’s few possessions were easily packed onto bovine and human backs, the goats had to be rounded up. Finally a ragged group of refugees, about eight families with some twenty children among them, the cows, the herd of goats, and six little brown dogs to keep the stock in line, went to the holy spring and made one last sacrifice of cheese to the god while Aderyn kept a fretful watch on the path behind them. By the time they moved out of the valley, it was well after noon, and the smaller children were already tired and crying from the smell of trouble in the air. Aderyn piled the littlest ones into his saddle and walked, leading the horse. Wargal and a young man, Ibretin, fell in beside him. On Ibretin’s cheek was the brand that marked him as a lord’s property.

      ‘If you think they’ll catch us, O Wise One,’ Ibretin said to Aderyn, ‘I’ll go back and let them kill me. If they find us they’ll take the whole tribe back with them.’

      ‘There’s no need for that yet,’ Wargal snapped.

      ‘There never will be if I can help it,’ Aderyn said. ‘I’d be twice cursed before I’ll let a man be killed for taking the freedom that the gods gave him. I think my magic might make us harder to find.’

      Both men smiled, reassured by Aderyn’s lie. Although he could control his aura well enough to pass unnoticed and thus practically invisible, Aderyn couldn’t make an entire village disappear.

      For two days they went north, keeping to the rolling hills and making a bare twelve miles a day. The more Aderyn opened his mind to the omens, the more clearly he knew that they were being pursued. On the third night, he scried into a campfire and saw the ruins of the old village, burnt to the ground. Only a lord’s warband would have destroyed it, and that warband would have to be blind to miss the trail of so many goats and people. He left the campfire and went to look for Ibretin, who was taking his turn at watching the goats out in the pasture.

      ‘You’ve called me Wise One. Do you truly think I have magic?’

      ‘I can only hope so. Wargal thinks so.’

      It was too dark under the starry sky to see Ibretin’s face. Aderyn raised his hand and made the blue light gather in his fingers like a cool-burning torch. Ibretin gasped aloud and stepped back.

      ‘Now you know instead of hoping. Listen, the men chasing you are close by. Sooner or later, they’ll catch us. You offered to die to save your friends. How about helping me with a little scheme instead?’

      At dawn on the morrow, while Wargal rounded up the villagers and got them moving north, Aderyn and Ibretin headed south. Although Aderyn rode, he had Ibretin walk, leading his pack-mule as if they’d been travelling together for some time as servant and master. About an hour’s ride brought them to the inevitable warband. They were just breaking their night’s camp, the horses saddled and ready to ride, the men standing idly around waiting for their lord’s orders. The lord himself, a tall young man in blue and grey plaid brigga, with oak leaves embroidered as a blazon on his shirt, was kicking dirt over a dying campfire. When Aderyn and Ibretin came up, the men shouted, running to gather round them. Aderyn could see Ibretin shaking in terror.

      ‘Oh, here,’ a man called out. ‘This pedlar’s found our flown chicken! Lord Degedd will reward you for this, my friend.’

      ‘Indeed?’ Aderyn said. ‘Well, I’m not sure I want a reward.’

      With a signal to Ibretin to stay well back, Aderyn swung down from his horse just as Degedd came pushing his way through his men. Aderyn made a bow to him, which the lord acknowledged with a brief nod.

      I’ve indeed found your runaway bondsman, but I want to buy him from you, my lord. He’s a useful man with a mule, and I need a servant.’

      Caught utterly off-guard, Degedd stared for a moment, then blinked and rubbed his chin with his hand.

      ‘I’m not sure I want to sell. I’d rather have the fun of taking the skin off his cursed back.’

      ‘That would be a most unwise pleasure.’

      ‘And who are you to tell me what to do?’

      Since Aderyn was not very tall, the lord towered over him with six feet of solid muscle. Aderyn set his hands on his hips and looked up at him.

      ‘Your men called me a pedlar, but I’m nothing of the sort. I’m a herbman, travelling in your country, and one who knows the laws of the gods. Do you care to question me further?’

      ‘I do. I don’t give a pig’s fart whether you’re a learned man or not, and anyway, for all I know, you lie.’

      ‘Then let me give you a sample of my learning. Enslaving free men to work your land is an impious thing. The gods have decreed that only criminals and debtors shall be bondsmen. That law held for a thousand years, back in the Homeland, and it held for hundreds here, until greedy men like you chose to break it.’

      When his men began muttering, shame-faced among themselves at the truth of the herbman’s words, the lord’s face turned purple with rage. He drew his sword, the steel glittering in the sun.

      ‘Hold your ugly lying tongue, and give me back that bondsman! Be on your way or die right here, you scholarly swine!’

      With a gentle smile, Aderyn raised his hand and called upon the spirits of fire. They came, bursting into manifestation with a roar and crackle of bright flame on the sword blade. Howling, Degedd struggled to hold on to the hilt, then cursed and flung the flesh-branding metal to the ground. Aderyn turned the flames to illusions and swung around, scattering bright but harmless blue fire into the warband. Yelling, shoving each other, they fell back and ran away to let their lord face Aderyn alone.

      ‘Now then, I’ll give you two copper pieces for him. That’s a generous price, my lord.’

      His face dead-white, Degedd tried to speak, failed, then simply nodded his agreement. Aderyn untied his coin pouch and counted the coppers into the lord’s broad but shaking left hand, as the right seemed to pain him.

      ‘Your chamberlain will doubtless think you’ve made a fine bargain. And of course if you and your men return straight to your lands, there’s no need for anyone to ever hear this tale.’

      Degedd forced out a tight sour smile. Doubtless he didn’t care to be mocked in every tavern in Eldidd by the story of how one herbman had bested him on the road, especially since no one would believe that the herbman had done it with magic. With a cheery wave, Aderyn mounted his horse and rode away, with Ibretin and the mule hurrying after. About a mile on, they looked back to see Lord Degedd and his warband trotting fast – away back south. Aderyn tested the dweomer warnings and felt that, indeed, all danger was over. At that he laughed aloud.

      ‘If nothing else,’ he told Ibretin. ‘That was the best jest I’ve had in a long time.’

      Ibretin tried to smile but burst into tears instead. He wept all the way back.

      That night there was as much of a celebration in the camp as their meagre provisions would allow. Aderyn sat at the biggest fire with Wargal and his wife while the rest of the villagers squatted close by and stared at him as if he were a god.

      ‘We have to let the goats rest a day, or they’ll stop giving milk,’ Wargal said, ‘Is that safe, Wise One?’

      ‘Oh, I think so. But you’d best travel a long way north before you find a place to settle down.’

      ‘We intend to. We were hoping you’d come with us.’

      ‘I will for a while, but my destiny lies in the west, and I have to go where my magic tells me.’

      After three more days of slow straggling marching, the luck of Wargal’s tribe turned for the better. One afternoon they crested a high hill to see huts of their own kind spread out along a stream, prosperous fields, and pastures full of goats. When they came up to the village, the folk ran to meet them. There were only seven huts in the village, but land enough for many families. After a hasty tribal council, their headman,