Defeated, I turned and walked away in silence. They watched me go and then, no doubt, rode off down the lawless road. It was long after dark when I finally reached my house. My sister's sons were sitting huddled around the cold fireplace in the front room.
"Where is Naeli?" I asked stupidly, as if I didn't know. I guess part of me expected her to be there, to always be there.
"She went to find you," Stador, the eldest boy said. "She said you would help her…."
I don't remember the rest of that night, or much of the following days. There were the funerals, strangely bitter with no bodies to bury. And I apprenticed my sister's youngest boy to Besk. A month and a half later I enlisted in the Riders.
I thought it would be difficult to join. But it wasn't. There were always places falling vacant.
The trouble with Liskin, I discovered, was that you could shut him up, but he wouldn't stay shut. He kept wanting to talk: about whether we were riding fast enough, about whether we were riding too fast, about whether we should have hunted down the Bargainers tending the trap. The subject didn't matter; he just wanted to run his mouth. But, when you're riding through the woods during the lawless hours, you have to pay attention to what's happening around you. You can't do that with someone nattering in your ear all the time.
Finally, I had to rein in and tell him. I added, as an afterthought, that it was crazy to try to carry on a conversation in full armor on trotting horses.
Up till then he had been nodding (like, chastened). But this he wanted to argue about. "Oh, I don't know, Roble-"
"Bargain it, Liskin," I swore, then stopped. Over his shoulder I could see a flicker of red light filtering through the night-black branches of the forest.
"Stray!" I said, and pointed.
He turned to look and said, "Or another trap."
"Either way, there are bodies to bring out." I dismounted.
Liskin didn't. "Roble," he said, "it's against the Rules to go that far from the Road."
"Then don't," I replied. "But if there were any rules in these woods we wouldn't be here." I drew my sword and left the Road, plunging into the forest that had swallowed my sister and her child.
The light was a longish way from the Road. It took me endless moments to wend through the close-set tree trunks until I approached close enough to see that the light was from a campfire. Someone was sitting beside it.
You get an eye for spotting illusions after you've been in the Riders for awhile. The illusion-bait is always something you want to see, the thing that's too good to be true. It's the image in your mind most likely to kick you forward before you have a chance to think.
There are a lot of variations the Enemy could play on this method: traps baited with simulacra of your enemies; traps baited with images of people you don't recognize; traps baited with sleeping or otherwise defenseless Bargainers, and so on. But the Enemy never does this; maybe it can't. Maybe the Enemy, for all its immortality and power, is a little stupid.
So I knew that what I saw before me was real. Because I was not in the least impressed.
The stray was about average height. He had white skin, like a Coranian, but it had been burned on his face and hands. He looked like he spent a lot of time outdoors: all his clothing (as dark as a Rider's) was travel-worn and weather-stained, and his shoes had been mended more than once. He had crooked shoulders and dark unruly hair. All in alclass="underline" the sort of person you might expect to find at your back door, begging for a meal or a mug of beer. He was too unpleasant not to be real.
I looked the situation over carefully. Just because he wasn't an illusion, it didn't mean this wasn't a trap. Alev and I had found that out yesterday. And even if it wasn't a trap, Bargainers might have spotted the stray and staked him out, just as I had. Then, the stray himself might be dangerous (though he didn't look it).
I slowly made my way all around the campsite, assuring myself at every step that there were no Bargainers to compete with me for this stray. The stray himself didn't seem to notice me; he was intent on some carving he was doing with a long pointed knife.
Finally I stepped into the firelight. The stray looked up at me without surprise. I was wondering what language I should speak to him when he solved the problem by addressing me in a kind of Coranian.
"Do you speak for the singing wood?" he asked sleepily.
"No," I said, as clearly as I could. Obviously the vagrant was halfenchanted: his disturbingly pale gray eyes seemed to be glowing slightly. "I've come to take you out of the woods."
He shook his head. "I will stay here tonight and listen," he said sleepily. "And perhaps, tomorrow night, I will answer. If-"
"If you stay here tonight, you will die here tonight. I'm paid to prevent that. Come along with me and I'll take you to the nearest castle."
He shook his head again casually and said, "There is a great hunger in these woods, though. Felt it immediately. Something like it only once before. I fell asleep in the middle of a forest fire. I heard a deep golden voice calling to me. I passed from sleep to the rapture of vision, and tried to speak with it. But it knew nothing except hunger, an inhuman and utterly destructive hunger. Then I awoke and realized: I had been in talic stranj with the heart of the flames." He laughed fondly at the memory.
"Talic stranj, eh?" I said. "I know exactly what you mean. Happens to me all the damn time." This stray was probably crazy or a sorcerer or both. (They go together like shell brisket and earth-apples.) That meant that I would probably have to kill him to get him out. And I'd have to do it fast, before the Bargainers arrived. I covertly loosened my sword in its sheath.
He noticed, damn him. He was no longer as sleepy or as stupid as he had first seemed. We stayed that way for a moment, looking at each other, saying nothing.
When the Bargainers hit me from behind, the first thing that I thought was, Bargain it! It is a trap! That flashed through my mind as I fell like a stone, as if I were unconscious (though I wasn't). Three of them stayed to guard me, and the rest moved into the circle of firelight
I rolled to my feet (try it in full armor sometime; but I spent my off months exercising, not soaking up beer in the taverns) and drew my sword. I cut two of their throats before they were ready for me; the third turned to meet me, though, his club held high.
As we fought, I realized this wasn't a trap. The stray had a long sword with an odd flashing blade and was fighting the Bargainers as fiercely as I was. That was something. But there were so many of them!
I killed my third Bargainer easily enough. They're not usually armored and they don't carry weapons to kill, only a long club, like our truncheons, to knock people unconscious. (The Boneless One is said to prefer live victims.) They're best at stealth, and the Enemy helps them there. But right now stealth wasn't on the table; Bargainers were pouring out of the woods on several sides.
I ran into the clearing and was going to charge the Bargainers around the stray when someone called my name. I turned my head and saw what I most wanted to see: Alev limping toward me through the wood. "Roble!" he shouted. "Bargain it! It is a trap! Come this way!"
I took three steps without thinking. It was impossible not to. Then I did think. I turned back to the Bargainers and found several of them bearing down on me. I met the club of one with my truncheon and slashed wildly at another with my sword. Then they leapt back and encircled me, beginning a long, slow, carefully coordinated attack certain of victory. They had most of the night, and my attention was divided several ways. They had only to stay out of reach of my sword and wait for my inevitable mistake. I didn't need to glance back into the wood to know that Alev was not there, had never been there. His image had been a sending of the Enemy.
Over the shoulder of a Bargainer, I saw the stray do something pretty smart: he leaped up and caught hold of a branch with his left hand. Then he lifted himself into the tree as the Bargainers surrounding him swarmed in to grab him.