We gather some provisions, stuff the sheriff has stashed in the office for such occasions, and we rush out the south gate and down the road right away. The night is cool and there’s little traffic on the road at this hour. Caedi has a lantern, but we keep it unlit so we don’t wreck our night vision. There’s enough light  because the moon is up and full, and though I’m pretty sure it’s our eighth day in this world, I’ve never really looked at it. I guess I just expected it to be like the one I was used to. It’s not. It’s big and gold.

“Is it always that color?” I say to Caedi.

She sees where I’m looking. “What?” she says. “The moon? Oh yes. Sometimes a little more gold, sometimes a bit less. I’ve heard it described as a rotting orange or a tarnished brass doorknob. I’ve always thought of it as a polished golden plate, plain but beautiful, and the darker or lighter places on it are the reflections or whoever is looking at it.”

Wendy says, “Maybe the whole thing is a mirror that way.”

Caedi looks at her.

Wendy says, “You see what you want to see in it. Something disgusting or tired and worn or… beautiful.”

“Emerson and Thoreau had similar ideas,” I say. “Those are famous writers and philosophers from Earth. They said that you bring who you are into nature, seeing sad things where you’re sad, happy things when you are happy. Your mirror shows you plain and beautiful, though? That’s contradictory. It’s a way of reducing the fullness of what you feel when you look at it. A simple golden disk of a plate needs no further decoration. It’s beautiful in and of itself. I—.” But it's too quiet and I shut up.

Caedi is blushing. I can tell that even in the dim light of the moon.

Wendy is smiling at me, her eyes shining and I’m not sure why. I mean, I guess that was corny. Or, oh shit, that whole thing could be taken to mean that I was describing Caedi as beautiful. She is, yeah, but I was talking about the moon. And there’s that whole ‘plain’ business in there which makes it awkward. Maybe that’s not a blush? Maybe that’s shame and embarrassment. Dammit.

“I don’t mean to lecture,” I say, trying to dig myself out. “Some things are just beautiful. I know that sometimes somebody sees something beautiful and feels like they have to apologize for it. I've never understood why. Like maybe we aren't worthy of it? That it shows us weak or something?" I’m blushing myself now but I have to make this right. “Nothing can be plain and beautiful but they can be the simple, most perfect expression of itself, the truth of itself, which makes whatever it is, whoever it is, uniquely beautiful. And a wonder.”

The women are staring at me with too much light in their eyes. We’ve stopped walking. I don’t know what’s happening. What’s going on.

I say, “I’ll, uh, go scout ahead like we did that other time.” Then I run off without further ado, lugging my spear, feeling like a ridiculous, clueless coward.

I hear them laugh once when I’m fifty yards away. I’m pretty sure I hear a giggle not long after that but by then I’m too far from them to be certain. I go a little farther down the road than is strictly necessary and take a bit longer getting back. Nobody says anything. I tell them the road is clear. They both look at me like I’m their special little boy.

“I, uh…. I’m just gonna, like, yo-yo back and forth, scouting, until we find them,” I say. “You know?”

Wendy snickers and nods.

Caedi smiles and says, “Whatever you think best, Mark.”

When I get back again, they’re talking about Sinda.

“She’s a patsy,” says Wendy. “Teeg or whoever is muddying the waters, buying some time. Confusing things.”

“That makes it worse,” says Caedi. “If Sinda is found guilty she could be put to death. She didn’t murder anyone but people think she did. The real murderer could get away with it and it’s all my fault.”

“No,” I say. “It isn’t.”

“I asked her to find out about the kobolds,” says Caedi.

“Going around asking people about some bandits,” I say. “Is that a capital offense?”

“No, but—.”

“Is that a fair and reasonable response? Setting Sinda up to kill or be killed?”

“No.”

“You’re trying to claim responsibility for a psychopath’s choices,” I say.

“What’s a psychopath?” asks Caedi.

“A person who’s devoid of all empathy for others,” says Wendy. “For a psycho, other people exist as obstacles or servants. They could kiss you or kill you and feel the same about either, pretty much.”

“Oh. Oh my.”

“You know,” says Wendy, eyes twinkling at me. “Like someone who’ll lecture you on your own beauty to your face.”

“What?” I say. “That wasn’t—. I didn’t—."

They're laughing at me, so I pretend I have a watch on and 'look' at it. "Oh, look at the time," I say. "Better make my rounds.” And I run off back up the road, my face burning.

 

 

I figure we’re about two hours from Bull’s Tavern when I see the ruins of the caravan, big black shadows, motionless in the dark. I hurry back to fetch the others.

Five wagons in the train are stopped, the uneasy horses shake and twitch in their traces, dark shapes litter the ground.

The driver of the first wagon died with three arrows in his chest. He’s slumped on his bench, the reins still in his grip. The guard beside him is covered in blood. A large wound in his neck indicates where he bled out. His sword is still in its sheath, both men dead before they knew they were in any danger. It would've stopped the wagons behind, making them easier prey. Guards lay to the right and left, haphazard on the ground, festooned with arrows. Whatever was in the wagon is gone.

The second wagon is just as empty. The fighting here was more intense. There’s blood soaked into the road and indications where small bodies might’ve fallen, but there are no enemy corpses.

I wonder why none of us call out. We should. Somebody could be hiding in the bushes nearby, waiting for aid. Someone could be bleeding out right now in the back of a wagon farther down the line, but nobody does. It’s like we know.

The third wagon was where Captain Gray made her stand.

She’s on her knees, shoulder against the spoke of a wheel, her armor keeping her upright. Her eyes are open, staring, her expression determined, like she’s still fighting somewhere. The dirt of the road around her is muddy with blood. An arrow juts from her thigh. There are wounds on her face, her hands, her abdomen. Her sword, bloody to the hilt, rests loose in her grip. Three of her fingers are gone.

We all weep when we see her. She fought so hard.

There are dead guards under the wagon behind her, no doubt where she moved them after they’d been wounded to take cover from the arrows and wait for healing that never came.

Four more of her people lay around her. 

Only one of the bodies has any warmth to him. An elf with long blond hair, one eye gouged out, and an ugly gut wound.

Caedi grips his head hard and prays. Her hands glow and she tries until she shakes, but it’s too late. The man is gone. She sobs her frustration.

Wendy, standing behind her, places a hand on her shoulder and Caedi turns and cries into my wife’s chest. Wendy holds her and beckons to me. I join them. My wife and I smooth her hair.

“If we had been five minutes sooner,” says the healer.

“Don’t do that,” says Wendy. “We got here as soon as we could.”

“Hypa could have saved him.”

I tap her on the shoulder and Caedi turns to me, her eyes red, her nose pink. “I’ve been thinking about that,” I say.

“What?”

“Hypa,” I say. “Did I ever tell you anything about what she said in her letter to us?"

Caedi shakes her head.

"She said she'd done you a bit of a disservice," I say. "Her words."

Caedi shakes her head, denying.

"When I got back to where her place used to be," I say. "Her letter fell from nowhere, right past my nose. Hours after she’d gone. Could you do something like that?”

“No,” Caedi says. “But what does that have to do with—?”

“And that was the least of what she did. How do you make an entire house vanish like it had never been there?” I ask her.

“I don’t know, but—.”

“You have no idea?” I say. “You were her apprentice. You must’ve heard about some kind of priestly spell or prayer that could do that with a letter or a house?”

“No, I—.”

“Never even heard about somebody being able to do that?” I say. “How much power would you need for that? How close would you have to be to your goddess?”

“Mark, I don’t know.”

“Could you do that in a year? Ten?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I think Hypa is an order of magnitude more powerful than anybody else we’ve seen here,” I say. “And you compare yourself to her? You can’t bring someone back who’s five minutes dead? Could Hypa? She couldn’t save Master Percella.”

“No,” she says quietly. “She was very worried she wouldn’t be able to save you.”

“Do you see why I think you might be being unfair to yourself?” I say. “When your journeyman’s tasks are done and you become a full priestess, you might have an apprentice. What would you tell them if they expected too much power given to them too quickly? If they kept finding themselves lacking in comparison to you. That they weren’t good enough, weren’t as beautiful, or as kind?”

“That’s enough, Mark,” says Wendy. She’s glaring at me.

I’ve gone too far and I feel like shit.

Caedi is staring at me, her mouth hanging open.

“Sorry,” I say. I guess it's my night to dig myself into holes. I really need to do two things. First, shut up. Second, make it right. So I say, “I’m sorry. Hypa is awesome and beautiful. You are awesome and beautiful. So’s Wendy.” I shrug. “It’s like morning, noon, and night. Each is a beautiful time of day with their own charms and powers, and folks will always have their preferences, but it’s silly. Choosing one over the other risks subtracting from the others you didn't pick, right? Robbing you of fully experiencing the wonderfulness of each. Each is awesome in its very own way.” I look around. “Like you and Wendy. Like Captain Gray was, and each of these poor people.”

We all look around at the tragedy we’re standing in, smelling it, and I know there’s no way to keep it from getting inside us, changing us, making us sick and angry and sad. It's very quiet.

Caedi lights her lantern and calls over and over again as Wendy and I load the dead into the wagons. No one answers. There are no survivors.

Our healer helps us hitch the wagons together. We bring four horses forward and tie the rest behind the last in the train, and Caedi turns it all around and we head on back to Bull’s Tavern with it’s horrible cargo.

 

 

It’s very early in the morning when we reach Bull’s Tavern. Most of the town is dark, but a little light shines out from the gate and the upper windows of buildings here and there. Caedi gives the reins a little snap to get the horses moving a little faster, eager to get us inside.

Only everything stops instead. The horses aren’t moving, and I don’t mean that they’ve come to a halt. I mean they’re frozen. Caedi is too.

Wendy isn’t.

“What the fuck?” she says.

“Wendy? Mark?”

It’s Ms. Armstrong. She’s sitting behind her desk on the side of the road in a little clearing that wasn’t there before.

She says, “We need to talk.”