Moving Water Read Online Free PDF Page B

“I beg your pardon, sir. I’ve not found you much of a camp.”
    He straightened. Slowly. With surprise I saw his left wrist was shaking under the sodden robe, then identified the note of exhaustion in his voice. But he said quite calmly, “Never mind, Alkir. I’ve guessed worse.” I might have known he would divine it all. “Owf!” he shook himself. “I haven’t seen a storm like that since Hethria. And it’s warmer there.”
    A wet bivouac is everyday to Phaxian veterans, but now I had horrid visions of reporting to the Lady that I had let her gift die of lung-fever from a night of Thangrian cold. “We’ll start a fire,” I said hastily, and he nodded as he slid to earth. “Good.” He glanced at the mare. “If this one takes a chill I’ll have explaining of my own to do.”
    The scouts had naturally found neither fuel nor shelter, and were sullenly ready for rebuke. I set them all to collect wet timber, and someone reluctantly ceded tinder and flint, but it was beyond a spark. The heap of sodden boughs sat dourly in our midst, and I could hear the internal grumblings.
    The ringleader muttered, “Oughta ride back to Mallerstang.” The stars shone coldly crystal, the ravine rumbled to the flood. A wet branch emptied down my neck. With cold fury I said, “A night out won’t kill you. Get the horses head to tail and make them lie. We’ll shelter behind them.”
    But a post-horse is not a warhorse. Never a one could we get down. We were still wrestling them when a crisp voice demanded, “What in the Four’s name are you doing with that fire?”
    â€œI’m sorry, sir.” I could not help my stiffness. “It’s a little difficult.”
    There was a growl around me, just under the level of punishable insolence. Someone said, louder, “No flint. ’N the wood’s all wet.” Unspoken behind it hung, And what’ll you do about that?
    I heard him give a quick sigh. “Stand away,” he ordered. In a much kinder tone, “Turn around, girl. Stand away, I said!”
    They obeyed that peremptory ring. He drew a breath that seemed endless. Then there was a vivid green flash, a crack, and the entire wood-heap burst into steaming, bubbling, green and blue-shot flame.
    â€œMake two or three more off it and we’ll get between,” he said into the hush. “The way Hethox nomads do. Much warmer. Well, man, what are you waiting for?”
    They fairly fled. Daring neither comment nor query, I busied myself with my horse, watching from an eye-corner as he used his turban to rough the mare’s wet hide. When four fires were alight we crowded men and beasts between them, and in time grew warmer. But not more comfortable.
    â€œLook,” he said, kicking a stick into the fire where he and the mare stood all alone. “That was an art. A, a mind-act. Wreviane. Fire-mastery. You can learn it. I did. If you have the aptitude, it’s no more mysterious than—than water-seeking. Don’t you have diviners over here?”
    Nobody replied, but I saw one or two make the horn sign with their offside hands.
    â€œIt isn’t witchcraft.” He was pleading, I had the sense, with far more than ten sulky frightened men, pleading a case he had lost before. “I am flesh and blood, just like you. I don’t eat babies, or call up demons. It’s just a skill. Would you rather have done without the fire?”
    When there was still no reply he turned away, clicking to the mare. She folded herself down in the mud, he scrambled in among her legs with a fine disregard for hooves, curled against her belly, and in ten breaths was asleep. Which, I reflected, as I sent off the first wood-party, had done his case no good at all.
    * * * * *

    In morning watch I snatched a doze against a leaky tree, and woke to full dawn: a limpid, piercing day, the sky freshly blue, the wet forest