Katherine MacLean - The Kidnapping of Baroness 5

Illustration by Christopher Bing

Her hands were tired from a yesterday of setting broken bones and sewing wounds. Two young sentries had playfully wrestled each other over the edge of a castle parapet, and all their friends and relatives had hovered around while she worked, telling each other frightful predictions of lifelong crippling and assuring her that they had faith in her contracts with friendly spirits and the power of positive healing. They had not remarked that she was using the power of positive bone setting, gluing and sewing.

Occasionally she had remembered to mutter some molecular chemistry to sound mysterious, and once, uncovering some bad damage, she had muttered a genuine prayer directed to luck, fate, the Universal Spirit and the will to live.

Lady Witch let the reins go slack on the neck of her horse and rubbed her wrists. The morning sun seemed too bright. She was feeling a slight headache from the friendly party of celebration that had followed her success. No one feared her in Lord Randolph’s area of command. They knew that Lord Randolph and his towns had her affection.

She remembered Lord Randolph’s ruddy beaming face, and the pretty children of his wives, and envied them. She let her mind drift to plans to improve their genetic line.

Her horse ambled down the weedy green and brown of Route 111, avoiding holes and wagon ruts.

Her guard of four horse soldiers, three of them teenagers, one of them older, upright and handsome, drifted with her, while they sang an old song and tried to complete a memory of the new words someone had made up last night. Before dawn she had curled on a sofa and slept while the new song words were sung. The wandering choral harmony echoed on the edge of memory with a mood of foggy friendship and romance. Reluctantly she tried to plan a day of hard work in her laboratory and breeding farm, and began to brace herself to be stern and mysterious, to keep her workers terrified of her magic.

Their horses turned onto the familiar stunted sage bushes of the old unused turnpike extension and picked their way along a narrow horse trail beside deep ruts of wagon wheels. Crickets sang and blue jays cawed.

The wind shifted. Their horses snorted and then whinnied with nervous excitement. They had scented something unusual ahead.

Instantly quiet, Lady Witch and her party drew rein and looked along the road. The horse soldiers unslung bows and listened. There was no sound except the singing of birds and crickets and frogs. Cautiously the five moved onward and paused again. Ball-like horse droppings and many hoofprints led from Mountain Road, the route to Lady Witch’s land. The new tracks turned east toward the coast and Route 1. Their own horses snuffled and snorted, looking east, and then shifted their interest to nibbling clumps of long grass.

“Last night or early dawn before the ground dried,” muttered the oldest soldier. “But they could have left a detachment behind. Stay on guard.”

Lady Witch dismounted and let her horse munch grass while she looked at the tracks. Many small-hoofed horses, presumably carrying riders. Deep tracks indicated heavy wagons pulled laboriously by cattle. The horsemen had ridden in two bunches, before and behind the wagons.

Her escorts stayed on their horses, guarding her, their arrows nocked in their bows, scanning the trees for ambush. Their horses grazed quietly. “Let’s hope it is just a traveling show and trade,” she said and remounted.

The handsome, older soldier had also been studying the tracks. “If they’re not an honest trader circus, they had plenty of time to loot and swing over to Route 1 to get away south. I count about twenty ponies, two old plough horses, and three oxen.”

“I count three burros,” said a mercenary from the inland plains. “They could be a small part of a nomad army. Where I used to live, pony and burro tracks like this were from an army. They burned farms sometimes, and sometimes in fall took over an area, killed the men, made the women and children work for them and settled in for the winter.”

She imagined possible massacres. The oldest gave a command, and the soldiers galloped away, following the tracks. Lady Witch restrained her horse from following, and watched the horsemen call and point where more hoofprints came up from the old railroad trail and joined the first band. The strangers had been numerous.

Left alone, she felt nervous and watched the forest suspiciously. The older soldier returned, bringing the mercenary recruit who knew of nomads. They briskly traded horses, the officer giving up his own big stallion and trading their saddlebags. “Take the fast lane to Lord Randolph and report this.”

In the distance the other two horsemen stopped and waved and pointed north, then turned onto Route 1, following the tracks.

“The strangers went north on Route 1! Report that. Go!”

The young soldier put the stallion into a gallop.

“What weapons do you have, Lady?” The officer beside her was busy settling leather plates of armor around his arms and torso. The inlaid enamel insignia on his armor revealed that he was an officer in charge of recruitment and emergency supplies.

She was glad to have the most experienced one to guard her. Ahead there could be looters lingering in captured farms. She checked her saddlebag. “Only a medical kit, a hollow tool handle with some tools inside, and some magic.”

“Is any of your magic good in a fight?”

“I can curse them with infertility, make blinding flashes, and conjure up a smoke demon.”

“If they came from so far away they’ve never heard of you, it won’t scare them. Can your demon fight?”

“No. Sorry.”

“I respect your magic, Lady. You have great skill in healing. But if they have never heard of you and you look threatening, one arrow will do for you and your magic together. You should have carried armor.”

“I have enough to carry.” She felt a headache from lack of sleep, and her eyes strained, looking tor enemy motion among the trees.

He tapped his horse forward into Mountain Road, and they galloped southward over the late summer weeds. Black dirt and old asphalt showed through hoof marks, and the wide wheels of loaded wagons had pressed down the goldenrod and dry grass.

Apprehensively waiting to see the first farm along the way, Lady Witch imagined burnt ruins and corpses. When they rounded the bend she was glad to see the familiar shingled house unburned, and the old neighbor alive forking corn ears in a drying rack. She paused for a deep sigh of relief, then called to him. “We’re following tracks. See anything?”

The old man put down his pitchfork, squinting to see them. “Nope. 1 been up since sunup, me and my nephews. Nobody on the road.”

The soldier raised his voice. “Did you hear anything in the night, like a crowd going by, or wagons?”

The farmer came closer, interested. “Awful loud wind last night. Gusty. Roaring in the pines. If there had been anything, no way I could have heard it.”

“Are you missing anything?”

“Only missing my dog. Off hunting rabbits maybe.”

“Or killed to keep him from barking,” muttered the soldier.

They galloped away, and Lady Witch looked back and saw the farmer standing in the middle of the road, reading the clear story of hoofprints and wagon ruts. His stance showed worry. No old man and wife and two half-grown nephews could have withstood that pack if they had turned aside to loot.

Lady Witch tapped her heels into the sides of her horse, keeping him at a gallop. The cool fall wind went by her face as comfortably as if nothing could be wrong. The next farm looked untouched, and the metal-repairs man was out in his shed by the side of the road, two ends of a broken axle glowing in the forge. He waved and called, “See the tracks?”