Renegade's Magic
Yet as Soldier’s Boy’s ragtag force formed up to be quick-walked by the Great Ones down to the forest edge, I could not help but see the hand of the balancer in all of this. Could hatred and determination be a counterweight to organization and experience? I suddenly understood something about the old god of death and why he was also the god of balances. One could always make two things balance by moving the fulcrum. I had the sudden uneasy notion that I was the fulcrum that had been moved.
Soldier’s Boy bid Olikea farewell. All of the feeders except Dasie’s guards would remain here with Kinrove and Jodoli. From now on, the warriors under the leadership of Dasie and Soldier’s Boy would go on alone. Again, the few horses we had were led rather than ridden. I had never seen Dasie mounted on her cart horse. It pleased me to think she would be a poor equestrian.
For the first time since Dasie had entered our lives, she was without her iron bearer. Kinrove and Jodoli had refused to even attempt to quick-walk anyone carrying iron, saying that even to have that metal nearby disrupted their magic severely. I do not know if she feared Soldier’s Boy might seize the opportunity for revenge or not. Like Soldier’s Boy, she had left her new feeders behind, but her two original feeders, attired now as warriors, walked to either side of her. The bronze swords they carried looked every bit as deadly as iron, and the men who carried them appeared confident and competent, for they needed to worry only about their swordsmanship, not about any accidental discomfort or injury to their Great One. Behind her, a warrior led the hulking horse she would ride into battle. For now, he functioned as a pack beast, laden with pitch torches.
Night came swiftly. The last bit of our journey we made in darkness. It was unnerving to be magically moved forward through a landscape that became, with every few steps, darker and colder. When we reached the forest of the ancestor trees that bordered on the end of the King’s Road, our unnatural journey abruptly halted. In the dark and the cold, the men and the dozen or so horses suddenly milled, speaking in low voices as they located one another in the dark. Dasie had planned well. She unloaded torches, and as her magic woke each one to flame, they were passed around.
After he had made his circuit, he came back to his own fireside. The warriors from his kin-clan were there. He wasted a few long moments wishing that he had begun to cultivate them earlier and truly make them his own. He smiled at them and asked if they had any concerns, but could scarcely focus on their responses. In a few hours, his life might depend on them, and he barely knew them or any of the men in his command. He was no better, I let him know, than the distant officers I’d served under at Gettys. I was merciless as I gouged at his self-confidence and his ability to command. As I did so, I wondered if he had done the same to me during my long days as my father’s slave and prisoner. Had he been part of my inability to tear myself free and find a new life for myself? Even the idea that such was a possibility fanned my wrath to flames. I felt no compunction at all as I undermined his self-worth with every doubt I could imagine, with every recrimination from the past that I could unearth. I reminded him, over and over, that he’d been lazy and neglected his strength and fitness, that he’d wasted opportunities to win his men’s loyalty, to teach them discipline, to make them understand the necessity of drill and swift obedience.