Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

“I know that,” she said. “There’s odd magic coming out of a town called Shepherd’s Ford. It’s in the middle of Osgard Valley, where a good number of equestrian-minded nobles have their summer estates. We’re to go, investigate, and pretend we’re interested in the riding school in Shepherd’s Ford, while we find and eradicate the Mage or Mages who have been disturbing the balance of powers in the region.”

Egil finished savoring the last bite of his roast lamb—it had been excellent; he would be sure to compliment the cook—and sat back, as relaxed as Bronwen patently was not. She sat stiffly upright, like a student who had finished a recitation but not yet received the teacher’s response.

“Well,” Egil said. “It seems you’re much more fully informed than I am. I only know that we’re to investigate the riding school. There are Mages, too, you say?”

Her skin was very fair, and a blush showed on it like a flag. “There must be,” she said. “What else can it be?”

“Now that is a very good question,” said Egil. “Can it be something other than Mages?”

“Do you know what I hated about your classes?” she said. “You never would give a straight answer. Everything was questions in answer to questions and ‘Do you think ... ?’ and ‘What else can it be?’ Did you even know what the answers were?”

“Not everything has an easy answer,” Egil said. “This may be one that does, but we can’t know that until we’ve seen it for ourselves.”

She pushed her half-eaten bowl of soup away so hard it splashed on the table, barely missing her sleeve. “See? That’s what I hate. I need answers. Not more stupid questions.”

“The only stupid question is—”

“—the one that isn’t asked.” She glared at the puddle of soup in front of her. “Do you hate me as much as I hate you?”

She really was young, Egil thought. That kept him from letting her hear the first answer that came to mind. The second might not please her, either, but it was honest enough. “I don’t hate you. There’s a reason why we’ve been sent on this mission. We’re expected to work together and learn from each other. There’s nothing that says we also have to like one another.”

To his surprise, she did not fling herself away from the table and run off to her room in a temper as she would have done when she was his student. Apparently she had grown up a little, though she was still very much a child.

It was the child who muttered, “Good, because I can’t stand you.” But the older Bronwen, the one who had earned her Whites, added grudgingly, “We can work together. Rohanan says we have to—he’s in complete terror of Cynara.”

:True,: Cynara said from her vantage point in Egil’s mind. The smile had curved his lips before he thought to stop it. Again to his surprise, he saw a similar one on Bronwen’s. Her Companion must have said much the same.

They did not have to like each other. But they could share a moment of mutual amusement, Herald to Herald.

That was the last such moment they shared between the inn and the valley. Three days of riding in beautiful weather stretched to five as they turned off the South Trade Road and ran headlong into a siege of summer storms. Wind and lightning and torrential rains turned the roads and tracks to mire and made riding a misery, but Egil was oddly reluctant to find an inn or a farmhouse and wait it out. The worse the weather was, the more restless he became.

That, Bronwen declared early and often, was ridiculous. This was perfectly ordinary, early summer weather, a bit ill-timed but in no way unusual.

Egil could hardly disagree. Every Herald knew by now what hostile Magecraft looked like, and this had none of the signs. And yet there was that itch in the region of his tailbone, which nothing but riding onward could scratch.

Cynara had no objections to offer. She said nothing at all of praise or complaint. When the rain soaked her white coat until the black skin showed through, or the little stream she had begun to cross swelled suddenly into a chest-deep torrent, or the smooth road ahead turned out to be a sucking quagmire, she lowered her head and set her ears and slogged silently on.

So did Rohanan. Bronwen was by no means silent, but she did not turn back, either. She had the stubbornness that a Herald needed, the devotion to duty that could take her to the borders of death if need be.

Egil had not thought he was that devoted. For years it had been his secret shame. But in the wind and the rain and the occasional and increasingly rare moments of sun, he found he had no desire to turn back. The Queen needed him. Therefore, he would do as he was ordered.

By the sixth day, Egil had begun to wonder how many weeks it would take them to reach Shepherd’s Ford. The town must be flooded, if the weather there was anything like what it was here. Every stream they met was brimming over the banks, and while no bridges were out as yet, water was lapping over the highest of them.