The Reluctant Guardian: Homeward V Read online

  “Of course I do.” He seemed surprised by the question. “My people are travelers. We must be able to communicate.”

  For some reason, instead of making her feel safe and relieved, this annoyed her—but perhaps the annoyance was aimed at herself. He’d known how to speak Belaskian all along, and he could have been teaching her by the campfire at night. She’d been a fool not to think of this sooner.

  “I’m coming with you,” she said, hands on her hips, “so you might as well lead on.”

  Without waiting for an answer, she reached inside her bodice and pulled out the pouch, gripping it tightly. He scowled, but then started off down the clean, cobbled street. The thought of finally reaching the coast, and soon, was a relief, but she felt she ought to tell him one thing.

  “Mind you,” she said, “I’ve ridden a mule or two in my day, but I’ve never been up on a horse.”

  “We’ll find you a gentle mount.” He glanced down at her. “With a broad back.”

  Bieja cast a narrow-eyed glare up at Milôs. Then again, he was probably right.

  A few moments later, they walked inside the open doors of a wooden building near the outskirts of town, and Bieja breathed in the scent of sweet hay. Harnesses, bridles, and pitchforks lined the walls, and directly ahead, she could see a row of stables.

  “Hallo?” Milôs called out.

  Apparently, people used the same greeting anywhere. A stocky man in a leather apron and oversized canvas shirt came out of a stall and looked Milôs up and down before glancing at Bieja. When he spoke, the words ran together like some guttural music… so very different than Droevinkan. Milôs responded in kind, and Bieja couldn’t follow a word of what they said.

  She didn’t like that, but the stable master turned and headed toward the back stalls, gesturing to the second from the end. Milôs cocked his head, studying a tall light gray gelding and a stocky mare. Bieja liked the look of the dark brown mare with gentle eyes and a white blaze down her nose. And she didn’t need to speak Belaskian to know when Milôs set to haggling with the stable master.

  “How much does he want?” she finally interrupted.

  “Five silver pennies a piece,” Milôs answered. “More than I like, but he says he can make change for a sovereign.”

  “Five a piece?” Bieja snapped. “That could buy six mules back home! Talk him down.”

  When he stalled, she huffed and faced down the stable master herself. “No,” she said in Droevinkan, shaking her head furiously. “Too much!”

  The stocky man appeared unimpressed and only raised one eyebrow as he crossed his thick arms.

  “Things cost more here,” Milôs explained in a low voice, “and these are good horses. You have plenty of money, and it’s even coin of this realm. There’s no bank or money-changer here, and we may not find many who can change out a sovereign in this small place.”

  When she pursed her mouth, thinking hard, Milôs added. “The sooner I get you to the coast, the sooner I can look for my family. Take the offer.”

  “Oh, very well,” she grumbled. “But if any innkeeper here wants more than a penny, we’re sleeping outside!”

  · · · · ·

  As they road west through Belaski, Bieja badgered Milôs almost every waking moment to teach her enough of the local language that she might get by on her own. Sometimes his patience wore thin, but he seemed to know which words or phrases would be most useful to her. In spite of the different sounds of the Belaskian, some terms were nearly the same as in Droevinkan. And traveling under an open blue sky instead of a dank, dripping forest was a relief she’d never imagined before.

  But, as she’d never ridden a horse in her life, much less for entire days, her backside and thighs soon grew more sore than she could’ve imagined as well. Still, she didn’t complain. Milôs had been right, and they made good time. The mare was gentle, and Bieja took to calling her “Mistress Brownie.”

  Milôs asked directions at several villages along the way, and then one afternoon he sniffed the air and turned in his saddle, as he’d been leading the way. There was a glint in his dark eyes.

  “Bieja, hand me your reins and close your eyes,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Just do it. There is a surprise ahead.” For reasons she later never really understood, she did as he asked, and he began leading Mistress Brownie ahead.

  “Keep them closed,” Milôs insisted.

  Feeling a fresh breeze on her face, she almost disobeyed him.

  Then he said, “All right. Open your eyes.”

  She did.

  Stretched out before her, as far as the eye could see was a body of blue-gray water. Foaming waves crashed against a sandy shore. Tall, tan grass waved in the breeze.

  She stared. “Oh, Milôs.”

  He smiled that rare smile of his, making him look so young. “I suspected you’d never seen it.”

  They dismounted and walked into the sand. She couldn’t take her gaze off the endless water. For once, he didn’t seem in a hurry to press her onward.

  · · · · ·

  Two days later, in the mid-afternoon, they rode into a large port town with shops, taverns, countless dwellings, another open-air market, and at least two wooden structures toward the shore side that were bigger than any Bieja had seen in her life.

  “This is it,” Milôs said. “This is Miiska.”

  A knot formed suddenly in Bieja’s stomach. Leesil had made it plain that he and Magiere wouldn’t be here yet. They had their own journey to complete and would return when they could. She knew no one in this strange, foreign port town.

  Milôs raised his hand to stop a young man walking down the main path and asked him a question. Bieja picked out the words “Where” and “Sea Lion.” The young man pointed toward the town’s far end and a little towards the shore side with a polite answer, but Bieja didn’t even try and listen.

  The knot in her stomach just kept tightening.

  Milôs led the way on his gelding, and Bieja clucked to Mistress Brownie to follow. Almost too soon, he stopped and waved a hand at a newish-looking building of two floors with a sign hanging over the door.

  “This is it,” he said.

  She frowned. “You sure? It looks… too new, like it was built a year or two ago.”

  Magiere hadn’t said anything about buying a new tavern.

  He nodded. “The sign says the ʻSea Lion.ʼ This has to be it… you’re home.”

  As he said this, a rush of emotion hit her, a hard awareness that she would never have made it alive to the Droevinkan border without him, and even if by some miracle she had, she certainly wouldn’t have been able to find this place, not knowing the language and not being able to ask for a single direction.

  Perhaps he just honored the “life for a life” custom of his people, but she wanted to do something more for him.

  Climbing off Mistress Brownie, “Get down.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Just get down.”

  He dismounted with a confused expression. “I thought this was what you wanted?”

  She said nothing to that and reaching inside her dress to pull out the pouch of coins. Most of what Leesil had given her was still there, as they hadn’t been able to spend much before reaching Belaski.

  “Take this,” she said, “For the journey back. Maybe you owed me a debt, but your family didn’t. I owe them this—and my thanks—for the loan of you.”

  He looked at the pouch and took a step back, shaking his head. “No. You have no idea what you’re going to find here or what life will be like. You may not be happy… you might need that money for my mother calls a ‘nest egg’. I will not take all that you have and leave you in a strange place.”

  Her eyes began to sting, but she damn well wasn’t going to start bawling.

  “I was supposed to be saved by you,” he went on. “After my time among the Äntes, I had… changed… seeing everyone but my own kind as not worth the air they breathed. You… you made m
e see the world as I used to.” He glanced away. “I can make my way back easily enough, but I would like to keep the gelding, at least to get through Belaski.”

  “Of course,” Bieja answered gruffly. She didn’t know what else to say.

  He tied both horses to a rail, and his gaze turned to the tavern’s door. “We should go in.”

  “You’re coming?” she asked in surprise.

  “Yes, I want to make… I want to make sure.”

  Her eyes still stinging, Bieja followed him toward the door.

  · · · · ·

  Karlin Boigiesque stood inside the Sea Lion—amid an array of mismatched tables and chairs—with his arms crossed, engaged in a familiar argument with a stooped, aging man.

  “Caleb, there’s nothing wrong with the bread I baked this morning,” he insisted.

  “I’m just saying… if you bake it in the morning, it’s already hard by evening, and I don’t like serving that my patrons.”

  Karlin sighed. Though he was one of few bakers in town—and never short on business—he was fond of the old tavern caretaker left to tend the place by its owners.

  Old Caleb was half a head taller than him, with straight ashen hair pulled back at the neck of his plain muslin shirt, which was always as clean as the well-swept floor. His face was wrinkled but smooth of expression around steady, dark brown eyes. Karlin, on the other hand, was stocky, muscular, bald, and wore a flour-covered apron nearly everywhere he went.

  “I’m not firing up the ovens in the late afternoon just for you,” he shot back. “Bakers bake in the morning! If you think my bread is too hard by time you open for business, take your patronage to someone else.”

  It was a hollow threat, and they both knew it. Magiere had made arrangements with Karlin before she’d left, and neither Caleb nor Karlin would do anything to go against her wishes. Just then, the tavern’s front door opened, and both men turned to look.

  The place wouldn’t be opened for a short while yet, and normally, Caleb had no compunction against turning people away until he was ready for business. But Caleb’s gaze locked on the stranger who stepped in the door.

  Karlin went still and silent as well. Though he was easy-going by nature, something about the newcomer put him on guard.

  The man in the doorway was dusky-skinned and broad-shouldered. His hair and eyes were black, and his clothing was tattered, as if he’d been on a long journey. His face bore a thick white scar, and he wore a silver ring in one ear.

  His only weapon appeared to be a dagger on his hip.

  But none of these things bothered Karlin. He dealt with rough, scarred sailors almost every day of his life. No, there was something else.

  Although the man’s face was calm, there was a hint of savagery underneath it, a suggestion that right or wrong or the laws of men were nothing to him. He moved carefully, even gracefully, as he entered, but still somehow gave the impression he might rush the room without warning.

  “Can I help you?” Caleb asked. “We aren’t open for supper yet.”

  “Help?” said a gruff female voice behind the man. “No help us. I… help you.”

  Karlin’s wariness turned to confusion as a magnificent woman came through a door. Her purple gown was a bit tattered, but she was plump and strong looking, with gray-streaked black hair. Her face was pale—and familiar somehow—and she held herself like a queen overseeing her court for the first time.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  “Yes, yes,” she said in a thick Droevinkan accent as she pushed past her scarred companion and continued looking over the room. “Good.”

  Karlin came here nearly every day for one reason or another, but he looked around now, trying to see it as she did.

  From where she stood, the bar on her left was long and made of stout oak. Behind it was a curtained doorway that led to the household kitchen and stockroom, and at the bar’s far end was a narrow stairway that led up to the second floor and the living quarters.

  The hearth stood near the room’s center, its backside open like the front, so that patrons could circle around it or nestle close to either side for a little extra warmth in winter. Most of the tables and chairs had been purchased second hand, so nothing matched, but that only added to the place’s charm.

  Karlin finished his own survey of the room, and when his eyes came back around, the woman was watching him. He couldn’t help but smile at her. However, Caleb appeared far less impressed by two overly early patrons.

  “You can come back just before dark,” he said.

  “We need to find either someone called Caleb or someone called Karlin,” the dark-hair man said, still by the open door, and his accent was barely noticeable. Though his voice was soft, like his face, it carried an undercurrent of something wild.

  Karlin grew more intrigued. “Well… I’m Karlin, and that’s Caleb, so what’s this all about?”

  The woman pulled a piece of paper out of the neck of her dress and strode over to bar. Karlin had been a widow for some years, but he could not remember a woman ever affecting him like this before. Her presence seemed to fill the entire room.

  Caleb took the letter, scanned it, and he went slightly pale.

  “What?” Karlin asked in alarm.

  “She’s…” Caleb trailed off and, after a swallow, began again. “It’s a letter from Master Leesil in his own hand. He says this woman, Bieja… she’s Mistress Magiere’s aunt.”

  Karlin’s surprise was mirrored on old Caleb’s face.

  “She’s come to live here… and help run the place,” Caleb finished.

  Karlin found this quite a lot to take in, but it suddenly made sense. Of course this was Magiere’s aunt, for she had Magiere’s eyes—and ways.

  “Is she welcome here?” asked the man in the doorway.

  Karlin frowned in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “Is she welcome? Does she have a home here? You’ll let her stay, and you’ll look after her until her niece returns?”

  The woman called Bieja hardly appeared to need “looking after.” She ran her fingertips down the bar’s top, looked at them, and then scowled as she held one finger up in front of Cable’s face.

  Caleb’s jaw tightened, and the letter crinkled in his grip.

  Karlin wondered how much of the conversation she was following, but she appeared to speak at least some Belaskian already.

  “Yes, of course,” Karlin answered the man, without consulting Caleb. But there was no need. This woman was Magiere’s aunt. “Of course she has a home here.”

  Bieja walked with purpose toward the stairs and both Caleb and Karlin followed her with their eyes.

  “Bedrooms?” she asked, pointing up. “I… go… see.”

  This came out like an edict, but then she looked towards the front door and her expression changed to a mix of surprise and loss. Karlin glanced back quickly to find the open doorway empty.

  The scarred man was gone, and Bieja looked distressed by his sudden absence.

  “It’s all right,” Karlin said quickly. “You are home.”

  She turned back to him, studying his face with interest. Then she nodded once and repeated. “Home.”

  Other Works

  About “Pending” Works:

  This indicator within brackets is only used for works confirmed for release within six months following the release of this text. Where a more specific schedule has been set, this is usually mentioned instead.

  The Noble Dead Saga

  by Barb & J.C. Hendee

  Series/Phase 1

  Dhampir

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  Sister of the Dead

  Traitor to the Blood

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  Series/Phase 2

  In Shade and Shadow

  Through Stone and Sea

  Of Truth and Beasts

  Series/Phase 3

  Between Their Worlds

  The Dog in the Dark [Jan. 2012]
/>   […and more to come.]

  Tales from the world of

  the Noble Dead Saga

  by Barb and/or J.C. Hendee

  “Homeward”

  The Game Piece

  The Feral Path

  The Sapphire

  The Keepers

  The Reluctant Guardian

  “Bones of the Earth”

  Karras the Kitten

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