A Time of War. Katharine Kerr
‘Everyone be different.’
Round noon they came to an enormous meadow, ringed with rotting tree stumps, which gave credence to their theory that the mysterious horseherders had cleared some of this land. After they’d unloaded the stock and let them roll, and Meer had prayed, they unpacked a scant dinner and settled down to eat. Although they still had a good amount of cheese, hard tack and jerky left, they’d used up half of their supplies, and Jahdo was beginning to worry about what they’d eat on the way home. Meer, of course, was convinced that the gods would provide for them when the time came.
Jahdo had just finished his meal when he heard a strange sound, a rasping bird-call, up in the sky.
‘What’s that?’ Meer said. ‘Sounds like a hawk.’
Jahdo looked up.
‘It is, truly.’
Far above them, silhouetted against wispy clouds, the bird was circling the meadow. From the backward sweep of its wings and its colour, dark grey on its back, a very pale grey on its belly, Jahdo could tell that it was a falcon of some variety or other. Even though it soared high, he could see its slender grey legs and the mottling on its breast so clearly that, he realized suddenly, it had to be enormous. As he stared up, the bird suddenly flapped and flew, just as if it knew he watched. Yet he thought little of it at first. Toward evening the falcon, if indeed it were the same bird, reappeared to hover above them as they made their camp. Again, when Jahdo stood for a better look, it flew abruptly away.
On the next day Jahdo kept watch for it, and sure enough, in the middle of the morning it reappeared, flying in lazy circles and holding its place even when he stopped walking to scrutinize it. With a call to Meer to hold for a moment, he shaded his eyes and studied the bird, which seemed to be flying lower than it had the day before.
‘Meer, here’s an odd thing! Way above us there’s a falcon, circling round, like, but it’s the biggest falcon I’ve ever seen. It’s way too big for a peregrine, which is sort of what it does look like.’
‘How big, lad? This could be important.’
‘Well, huge, actually.’ He paused, trying to gauge distances and size. ‘You know, I’d swear it were as big as a pony, but that can’t be right. It’s all the clouds and stuff, I guess, making it hard to see. I mean, not even eagles do grow so big.’
Meer howled, a cry of sheer terror, and flung both hands in front of his sightless eyes. With a flap and a screech, the falcon flew away.
‘It be gone now,’ Jahdo said. ‘What be so wrong?’
‘Bad geas, lad, bad bad geas! Don’t you understand? There’s only one thing a bird that large could be!’
‘But there can’t be a bird that large. That’s what I did try to say.’
‘Hah! You don’t understand, then. I should have known you didn’t, when you didn’t sound afraid. A mazrak, lad, that’s what it must be. The most unclean magician of all, a shapechanger, a foul thing, using a coward’s magic.’
‘Huh? You mean someone who can turn themselves into a bird?’
‘Just that. If a mazrak’s spying upon us, then things are dark indeed.’
Jahdo quite simply didn’t know what to say. While they’d been travelling, Meer had been teaching him lore, just as he’d promised. The bard’s tales had introduced him to an entirely new world, one where the gods moved among men and demons fought them, where spirits roamed the earth and caused mischief, where magic was a necessary part of life, as well, to fend all these presences off or to bend the weaker ones to your will. Automatically Jahdo’s hand went to his throat to touch the thong-full of talismans that hung there. He would have laughed all the tales away if he hadn’t seen with his own eyes the being called Evandar disappear. As it was, he was prepared to believe almost anything.
‘Well, it were an awful huge hawk,’ he said.
‘Of course it was. Mazrakir can’t shrink themselves or such-like. They can only change the flesh they have into another form. It’s only logical that their totem animal, the one they change into, I mean, would be about the same size they are.’
‘There be other ones than birds?’
‘Some are bears, some wolves, some horses. All kinds of animals, depending on the nature of the mazrak.’ Meer turned his head and spat on the ground for luck. ‘But it’s bad geas to even talk about such things. Let’s move on, lad. And we’d best travel ready to duck into the forest, where spying hawks can’t follow or see.’
‘All right. And can we sleep in the woods, too?’
‘We’d best do just that, indeed.’
The very next morning Jahdo became a believer in the power of mazrakir to bring bad luck. Just at dawn he woke, sitting bolt upright and straining to hear again the sound that had wakened him. From far above it came again, the shriek of a raven, and a huge one, judging from how loud it squawked. In his blankets nearby, Meer rolled over and sat up.
‘Jahdo, what?’
Jahdo rose to a kneel, peering through the tree-leaves overhead. He could just see a black shape flapping off, a bird as large as a wolfhound at the least, thwacking the air with huge wings.
‘It be another one,’ he burst out. ‘Meer, another mazrak.’
Meer whimpered under his breath.
‘It be gone now,’ Jahdo went on. ‘I hope it doesn’t come back.’
‘Never have I echoed a hope so fervently!’ Meer considered for a moment, then pushed his blankets back with a huge yawn. ‘I’m tempted to try travelling through the forest edge, out of sight, like, but the footing will be too hard on the horses. Besides, if we lose the river, we’re doomed.’
‘Well, I was kind of thinking the same thing, about the river, I mean.’
‘We will pray to the thirteen gods who protect travellers before we set out today. But first, let’s lead the horses to their drink, and break our own night’s fast.’
After the horses were watered and tethered out on the grassy bank to graze, Jahdo knelt by the gear, took out a few small pieces of flatbread and some chewy dried apples, a scant handful each for him and Meer, and laid them on a clean rock while he repacked the saddlebags to balance. Behind him Meer was strolling back and forth, singing under his breath and rehearsing phrasing, as he always did with a particularly important prayer. All at once the bard fell silent. Jahdo slewed round to find him standing frozen, his mouth slack, his head tilted as if he listened for some tiny sound.
‘What is it?’ Jahdo got to his feet. ‘What be wrong?’
Meer tossed back his head and howled. Never had Jahdo heard such a sound, a vast vibrating ululation of grief, all the world’s mourning, or so it seemed, gathered and rolled into this long long wail, wavering and shrieking up and down the bard’s entire register.
‘Meer!’ Jahdo ran to him and grabbed his arm. ‘Meer! Tell me. What be so wrong?’
Another howl answered him, then another, long cascading waves of grief and agony, while Jahdo shook his arm and begged and shouted and in the end, wept aloud in sheer frustration. The sound of his tears cut through the bard’s rapt anguish.
‘Forgive me, lad,’ Meer gasped. ‘But my brother, my brother! I think he’s dead.’
‘What?’ Shock wiped the tears away. ‘Dead? When? I mean, how can you know?’
‘Just now, and the brother bond told me.’
Meer shook the boy’s hand away and stalked into the forest. Jahdo hesitated, then decided that Meer would need to be alone, at least for a while. He wiped his face on a dirty sleeve, then picked up the food again, packing Meer’s share away, eating his own while he squinted up at the sun. Not even half of the day’s first watch had passed since the mazrak’s