Дэйв Дункан - Magic Casement

“He said drivers, not sailors,” Lin muttered sleepily.

“Was it you who started that garbage?”

“No, it was you.” Lin rolled over and put his head on one arm.

Pity about Ollo… Rap very much wanted to drive a wagon again. Once was not enough. He could hardly sit at the drivers' table when he’d only run a team once, and never up the hill, only down.

The bodies around him had shifted and penned him in. He had no room to stretch out. He was too weary to go look for somewhere else. He leaned his arms on his knees and yawned. They were not going to start breaking in new drivers at this point in the year, not in the final sprint.

His head dropped forward and jerked him awake again. It was good to have more company—he had grown very tired of the same few herder faces. He wondered what Inos was doing. He told himself not to be foolish. He thought of the castle and the stablehands' quarters and the men and boys and girls he would meet again. Only one would be missing.

His head fell over once more, waking him again. He would have to find somewhere to stretch out… unless he could lie on his side and stay curled up…

Someone shook his shoulder. “Rap? You’re wanted.”

He sat up, confused and muzzy, uncertain where he was, then scrambled to his feet and lumbered after his guide, stumbling over bodies to the door. The air outside hit him like a bucketful of ice water; he gasped and pulled up his hood. The world was filled with streaming snow, a yellow glare in the light from the cottage. He hurried into the darkness after a rapidly disappearing back. The snow settled in his eyes and on his eyelashes and began plastering his parka.

He was led to a group planted around one of the fires, which was shooting flashes of light between their legs. The circle opened to admit him and he looked around the humped, anonymous figures, most holding hands out toward the blaze. A cauldron bubbled there, and steamed. Shivering and blinking, Rap recognized the tall Foronod at the far side and waited to hear why he was needed.

“Rap?” The factor was staring at him. They all were. “Could you follow the trail in this? On a horse?”

Rap turned and looked out into the night—nothing! Nothing at all. The snow had turned the night black, not white. He’d seen guiding done in other years—men with lanterns leading a wagon—but tonight a lantern would show nothing but endless snow rushing past. The air was solid with it, streaming insanely southward. Without a lantern there was nothing to be seen at all. Nothing!

Scared now, he turned back to face Foronod. “On foot, maybe.”

Foronod shook his head. “Too late. Tide’s coming.”

So that was it? Rap wanted to be a driver, or a man-at-arms. They wanted a sorcerer, a seer. A freak. A damnable freak! He’d pulled that fool stunt with the wagon, and now they thought he could work miracles. Once could be denied. Twice would be proof. And what they were asking him to do was much more than driving through water. In this weather a man would barely see the ground from horseback. His mother, they thought, had been a seer, so he must be. He opened his mouth to say “Why me?” and what he said was “Why?”

The factor’s head jerked and the pale blur of his face inside his hood seemed to stiffen. “Answer the question!”

Rap hesitated. He couldn’t answer the question. “I…why?”

“Boy!”

“I’m sorry, sir… I need to know. I don’t know why. I mean I don’t know why why …” Rap stuttered into unhappy silence.

“We need a guide.”

And again Rap’s mouth demanded “Why?” before he could stop it. He did not know why why was important, but it felt as if it should be.

The menacing silence was broken when a snow-dappled man standing next the factor said, “Tell him! If you’re going to trust him, then trust him!”

Rap did not know the voice and what little he could see of the face was unfamiliar. Foronod glanced at the intruder. “What do you know about it? Who the Evil are you, anyway?”

“I’m from the south,” the voice said. It was a gentleman’s voice. “A visitor. But I’ve met seers before. You must give him your trust or he can’t help you.”

Foronod shrugged grumpily and looked back at Rap. “All right. I’m scared that this is the big one. It may not be—it’s very early. But we have three loads of beef we absolutely must get across.”

Despite the bone-cracking chill of the wind, Rap’s head was still so clogged with sleep and weariness that it seemed to be running on one foot. The big one was the storm that closed the causeway for the winter, and it would blow for days. Slabs of sea ice and snowdrifts caked by frozen spray plugged the road—men and animals could cross afterward, but not wagons. He knew what three loads of salted beef meant, or he could guess. It would buy much time in the spring if the town was starving. Any risk was worth taking if this was the big one.

If it was not, then losing a wagon would cripple the supply train. That might be almost as bad—they needed every one. He might even lose all three if he trapped them in the path of the tide, and that would be catastrophe for Krasnegar. Foronod must be frantic if he was willing to take the gamble and trust the town to a boy—to a seer.

Trust him? Rap started to shiver.

A harder gust struck and the men staggered and leaned into it. Snow hissed in the fire and steamed.

Rap turned again and looked at the night. A lantern would be little help in this, hard enough even for the drivers to follow, useless to see where a horse was going. They were asking him if he could ride across with his eyes shut. He tried to remember that strange feeling when he’d brought the wagon through the water. There had been something there, something unusual, unwholesome. He did not want to admit he was a freak, but there had been something. Foronod must be desperate.

Trust yourself! Rap squared his shoulders. “I’ll try.”

“You and two to flank you?”

He hesitated and then nodded.

“Jua,” the factor said. “And… Binik. Go—”

“No,” Rap said. That did not feel right. “I want Lin. And…” He did not know why he wanted Lin, except that Lin had survived this sort of madness before, so he would not argue. And one other? He surprised himself as much as he surprised everyone else. He pointed at the stranger. “Him!”

Foronod growled and demanded, “Why him?”

The stranger said quietly, “Trust him!”

“You ever been across the causeway, master?”

“No.” The stranger sounded insanely unruffled. “That may be why he wants me. My ideas won’t interfere with his.”

Rap wondered if he merely wanted someone who believed in seers. He did not think he believed—not in himself as a seer. But there had been something.

Foronod shrugged. “Go ahead. It’s your neck, stranger. You’ve got an hour at the most, lad.”

“Lin’s sleeping where I was,” Rap said to the man who had brought him. “Bring him to the horses.” To Foronod: “Sir, I’ll need lanterns.” Then he nodded at the stranger. “Come and get a horse.”

He blundered off into the dark without waiting for any replies. He had never given orders to grown men before. Trust yourself! If you don’t, who will?

The stranger’s hand settled on Rap’s shoulder. The darkness was that thick.

The best thing Rap could do now was walk into an offal pit and break his leg. Then they would know, wouldn’t they? This was a test: find the corral. If he could not find that, then he could not find the causeway. He tried to remember where all the piles of hay and peat were, but he had not come this way when he arrived. He put a hand up to shield his eyes from the snow, but he could still see nothing.