Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

The rain wasn’t why she was groaning. Oh, no. These sort of conditions were to be expected when traveling in the autumn. No, no, no. She was groaning because of why they were out here in the literal middle of nowhere.

Four moons into a planned circuit of twelve, they had been met by a series of increasingly frantic—and thus, increasingly incoherent—messages from a tiny hamlet on the edge of the Pelagir Hills about spirits “stalking” the place.

Now, in the first place, this little village—Bastion’s Stone, it was called—wasn’t even in Valdemar. So far as Elyn was concerned, they could go hire themselves a priestly exorcist or petition whoever (or whatever, there was no telling out there) they paid their taxes to—they had no claim on help from Heralds. In the second place, dispelling ghosts, assuming these were ghosts, assuming such things even existed, was not what Heralds did. In the third place, this was right off their circuit, and answering the call would take them away from people who actually had a right to expect Heralds and their help.

But the four youngsters were all over the idea, to the point that, when Elyn pointed all those things out and flatly vetoed the excursion, they sent back to Haven and the Heralds of the Council for permission to deviate from the circuit and to answer a call outside the Border.

And much to Elyn’s disgust and their elation, the answer that came back was, “Yes.”

Of course, this was ever so much more exciting than the endless round of petty disputes they had been called on to settle and the sad little band of pathetic “bandits” they’d chased down. Thus far, the circuit had been so entirely uneventful that the most they’d had to worry about had been the weather and the wild animals.

But that’s what it’s supposed to be like, Elyn thought resentfully. Most of the time, anyway. Property disputes, and ugly domestic quarrels, and minor criminals. And that’s important. We can be the impartial outside voice that settles things so that they stay settled. We are the ones who go away, so people don’t have to be angry with the neighbor that made the decision that they don’t like. We ride in on our pure white Companions, in our pure white uniforms, and people know that they can trust us to be impartial, because we haven’t taken a bribe, we aren’t friends with anyone, and we owe no one there anything. And if we didn’t do that, there would be no justice. That ought to be exciting enough for anyone. We can’t all be Herald Vanyels.

But of course, everyone wanted to be Herald Vanyel. Well, all but the part about dying horribly. Everyone wanted the happy noble bits, not the agony, or drudgework, or the dying. But the glorious heroic stuff? Sign them up!

“We’ve got the shelter done, Elyn!” Rod called from the other side of the wagon. “We had to sort of improvise, though!”

Kill me now, she thought again, steeling herself. Rod and his ‘’improvisations” were going to drive her not-so-quietly mad. Oh, they generally worked, but they looked so precarious she could never see how and never quite trust them.

Ducking her head against the rain, which was coming down harder now, she made her way around the end of the wagon to where the four were supposed to have pitched the canvas half-tent.

Well, it wasn’t a half-tent anymore, and it hadn’t been pitched. Instead, it was a sort of improvised slanted roof, tied up to various tree branches. To keep the branches from tossing in the wind, they had been anchored with the ropes and stakes that should have been used to pitch the tent. And instead of a straightforward flat or slanted surface, the canvas had been tied into a sort of sloping, flattish V-shape, so that all the rain that fell on it ran into a channel in the center and that in turn poured into the canvas water-trough they carried to serve the horses and Companions.

“We already filled our water barrel,” Rod said, beaming with pride. “Rigging it like this gives twice the rain shelter too! If it gets any colder, we can put a fire at this end and the slanting roof will carry the smoke away instead of trapping it.”

“Good work,” she said, torn between relief that he hadn’t tried anything more complicated and a kind of surprised pride that he’d come up with something so useful.