"They deck her like a bride," Geoffrey said, "but why would a bride be weeping?"
"Because she is being constrained to marry a man she does not love," Quicksilver told him, "but I do not think this one goes to a wedding." She clucked to her horse, and it moved up close to the weeping girl.
The women looked up with alarm.
"Why do you weep, maiden?" Quicksilver demanded. The girl looked up, startled, then gasped in alarm. A woman seated astride a horse with bare legs and bare arms was shocking, even if the scabbard across her back was empty.
"She has cause enough." One of the older women wrapped her arms protectively around the girl. "Let the poor child be."
"Why, so I shall, if others do. Who seeks to torment her?"
"She must go to warm the bed of Maul, the chief of the bandits who beset us, if you must know! He is a crude man, and rough, and takes pleasure in cruelty."
The girl burst into tears, wailing hopelessly.
"You must be a stranger, or you would know of this," a granny said. "Ride warily, mistress, or Maul shall come for you, too."
"I hope that he does!" Quicksilver hissed.
"Do not think your man shall save you from him." Another beldame scowled from Geoffrey to Quicksilver and back. "He is twice your size, young man, and has fifty like him at his back."
Geoffrey nodded judiciously. "The odds are not too uneven, then."
"Aye," Quicksilver snapped, "if you give me back my sword!"
"Here it is, and gladly." Geoffrey took her sword from its lashings and handed it back to her, hilt first. "Now the odds are uneven again."
"Beware, cocksure youth." The granny frowned. "Pride goeth before the fall."
"That it does, and Maul shall surely fall." Geoffrey turned to Quicksilver. "Shall we hunt him, or bait him?"
"Bait him?" Quicksilver looked up in delight. "Why, what an excellent idea!" She dismounted and tossed him the reins. "Let us go inside your hut, Grandmother! Maul shall come for his tidbit today, shall he not?"
"Aye." The granny stared at her, taken aback. "Well, he shall find her, but not this poor lass!"
Hope sprang in the girl's eyes, but the beldame wailed, "He shall see 'tis not Phoebe at a glance! He shall wreak his vengeance on our whole village!"
"When he has seen my face, do you truly think he' will cavil?" Quicksilver shooed them toward the doorway, completely unaware of how conceited she had sounded. "Come, let us prepare him a nuptial surprise!" She turned back in the doorway and told Geoffrey, "You might see to feeding those poor starving babes whiles I dress."
Geoffrey started a scathing retort, but she disappeared into the hut. He shrugged and looked about him. She was right, after all—the children should be fed. A few more hours would make no great difference, but he could not abide to see suffering when he could prevent it.
As he rode around the village green, though, the mothers snatched their babes indoors, leaving only the old and the infirm to sit out in the sun. And infirm they were—a dozen of all ages sat listlessly, spooning thin gruel with hands covered with sores. A nasty suspicion began, and Geoffrey drew up beside one rail-thin middle-aged man whose skin hung on him like a garment suddenly become too large. "Have you no food other than grain, goodman?"
The man looked up, too weary for surprise. "Nay, sir, and no great store of that."
That explained the sores, then, and the lethargy. "Surely you could make your porridge strong enough to eat, not drink!"
"Mayhap," the man said, "though we must make it last till the harvest. Still, I would I dared chew."
"'Dared'? Why do you not?"
"For fear my teeth might fall out, sir. They seem loose in my head."
"Belike they are," Geoffrey said, and turned away brusquely, hiding his distress at what he saw. It was clearly vitamin deficiency, and apparently the outlaws had taken all food but a small stock of grain for six months or more—long enough for the symptoms to show. Aunriddy was not yet starving, but it was nonetheless dying of malnutrition.
Still, what could he do? Teleport in some tomatoes and dried meat and vegetables and fruit, yes, but how could he tend the illnesses they had now, while he waited for them to heal? He seemed to remember Fess saying something about that in the biology class he had so steadfastly ignored—he had only paid attention to the business about beriberi and scurvy when Fess had pointed out that they were apt to weaken an army besieging a castle. Of healing he knew nothing, except for the rough meatball surgery that might prove necessary on the battlefield—and this did not look like a case of need for cauterizing wounds.
Well, if he knew nothing about healing, he knew one who did. He called up a mental image of his sister and concentrated on her while he thought, long and hard in the family encoded mode, Cordelia! Your aid, I pray!
Cordelia's answer was instant. What ails you, brother? Not I myself, Geoffrey answered, but a whole village that is suffering from vitamin deficiencies. Babes and aged alike have running sores and live in lethargy.
There was a pause; this was not what Cordelia expected when one of her brothers called for help. I shall finish this potion that I brew, then, and bring what medicines I may. What is the cause? Know they no better than to eat naught but grain?
They do, Geoffrey assured her, but they are beset by bandits, who take all other food they grow.
Why, the lice and poltroons! Cordelia answered, seething. Know you no cure for a plague of wolves, brother? I do, he assured her, and we set a wolf-trap even now. 'We'? Cordelia demanded. Who is 'we'?
Geoffrey almost answered her, then remembered that any picture of Quicksilver he thought of was bound to have his feelings attached—and he wasn't quite ready for his sister to know about those, just yet. The bandit chieftain whom I was sent to hobble, he told Cordelia. I shall speak of her when you come.
'Her'? Cordelia thought. A bandit chieftain, and a woman? This I must see! Where are you, brother?
In a village called Aunriddy, Geoffrey answered, and visualized a map of Gramarye that zoomed in on the Duchy of Loguire, with Aunriddy marked by a large red "X."
I shall fly to you, Cordelia assured him. Expect me within the hour. Her thought-stream ended.
Geoffrey frowned. Within the hour? From Runnymede to Loguire, in no more time than that? It was two days' hard riding! Even flying, it should have taken her the better part of a day. How could she manage an hour?
Time enough to ask when she came. In the meantime, there were hungry children to feed. Geoffrey rode to the center of the common, frowning. He murmured softly, sure no one would overhear. "'Tis a pretty problem, Fess. I must conjure up food enough to heal them, but not so much that the bandits will see it and seize it—and thrash each man and woman till they are sure hidden stocks have been yielded up."
"Then bring only as much as they can hide," Fess answered.
Geoffrey nodded. "Sound advice. Let us turn to it, then."
He dismounted and reached inside his tunic to the inner pocket that served him as a purse. He tossed a heap of pennies onto the ground, then stared at them and thought about oranges. It took quite a bit of concentration, of course—he wasn't really turning the pennies into oranges. Rather, he was teleporting the fruit from places where it was, to a place where it wasn't—here—then teleporting a penny back to the source of the oranges, one penny for five, which had been a little more than the going rate the last time he had noticed. He did not want any merchant or farmer to go bankrupt due to his errand of mercy. More to the point, he was a knight, and determined not to rob the commoners. The rich were another matter, but only if they had obtained their wealth by stealing from the poor.