The Hob's Bargain

A dark-skinned hand, twisted with hoary years, held a brush that he carefully dipped in a clay pot of dark ink… a sense of mischief, for hiding the message would allow them to torment the wicked without warning them off.

Foul weather, I thought—or maybe it was that long ago artist—mud and rust and broken swords. I looked at Wandel, but he was still examining the rock. I don't think he would have noticed if I had fallen on my back and foamed at the mouth.

"Unless they were known by another name," he said, "I've only heard of hobs in two contexts. The first one is the name of this mountain. When I first came here… oh, thirty years ago now, I thought it was named for a man, like Faran's Ridge. The headman before Merewich, Ivn, said not. Said that the mountain was supposed to belong to a hob. No one in Fallbrook, Auberg, or Beresford knew exactly what a hob was, except that it was a wildling and relatively benevolent, and it owned this mountain, or belonged to it. The other is in an old song that I heard far south of here—I'll sing it for you after we make camp."

The hob sat in the shadows and watched them leave. Loneliness and fear ate at him, a loner by choice who had prided himself on his daring and courage.

The last, he thought. I am the last one left. The thought left ashes of sorrow in his mouth, and he lowered his head and wept for his people, who had only a mountain to remember them.

When we finally got back to where the horses waited, Kith had them ready to go. He led the Lass to Wandel.

"Mount and ride," he said, biting off the words.

It was hard to tell if he was still twitchy from the same unease that had gripped him earlier, or if there was something else worrying him. I hurried to Duck and, after a quick check to see if Kith had tightened the cinch (he had), I mounted, falling back into my usual place behind Wandel.

The area was relatively level, one of the shoulders of the mountain, almost a hanging valley except that the far side fell rather than rising in a peak. Kith led us into the grassy land at a brisk trot. Despite the rest, the horses were too tired to move quickly for long. As soon as we were on open ground, he slowed his horse and waved us forward.

I could see a slight tic by his eye. Torch was collected and ready to sprint, though Kith was holding the reins loosely.

"Sorry," he said. "I thought I saw something up above us. Might have been an animal… but it didn't smell right."

"Didn't smell right," I said neutrally.

"If you're on the trail for very long, you learn to use your nose as well as your ears and eyes," replied Kith a shade too easily.

I happened to glance at Wandel at just that moment. He looked sad.

"Better to be safe than sorry," the harper said after a moment. "With the magic free, things could change, no knowing how quickly. Old Merewich and our lass here" — I assumed from the context that he was talking about me and not his horse—"sound pretty certain that it will be sooner rather than later."

Kith met the harper's eyes and said, "Yes, well, I've learned to trust… my instincts."

I saw something pass between the two men that left Kith cold-eyed and stone-faced while the sorrow on the harper's face remained unchanged. I wondered what it was that I had missed. There would be time to extract it from them after we set up camp.

Kith fussed around for a while before he let us dismount at the place he'd originally planned on, a flat, rockless stretch of ground not far from a stream but a little farther from the wooded area. I couldn't tell if it was the place where we'd camped the time we'd come here. If it wasn't, it was very similar.

He'd reluctantly decided it was better to keep an eye out than to try to find cover where we'd not be seen. Muttering something about being so leery that his mother's womb wouldn't feel safe to him for a day or so, he stomped into the trees to find wood for a fire.

We hadn't brought tents, but Wandel and I laid down oiled cloth before we put out the bedrolls, and each of us had another piece to lay on top of ourselves if the rain held by the gathering afternoon clouds fell.

Having laid out my own bedroll, I took Kith's off Torch's back. War-trained he might be, but he knew me well enough not to object to my fiddling—I'd helped train him. I patted his hip as I left.

Now, I thought, try it first while you have Wandel alone. If Kith decided not to talk about something, it was almost impossible to get it out of him. The harper, on the other hand, liked to talk. "Why does Kith's woodsmanship cause you to exchange sorrowful glances?"