“We don’t need it,” Seraph told him. “But sometimes a few runes or a ritual walk to establish a warding is quicker and more efficient than doing it by brute force.”
“Let’s give a closer look to the well,” Hennea said.
As they approached the well, Tier pulled his sword and dogged Seraph’s heels again. Hennea had a wolf at her side—Jes sometimes became one of any of a number of predators when the mood struck him.
It looked like any other well to Tier. A three-sided building, much like a smaller version of the smithy, protected the well from weather and dust. A stout mud-brick wall ringed the wellhead about waist high on Tier. Before they came quite to the well, Jes put his front paws on the lip of the well and growled.
“Good,” said Seraph. “It’s there.” She turned to Hennea. “I’ll do the fire; you can deal with the mistwight.”
Hennea usually held to her serene mildness under all circumstances, so the edge of fierceness that touched her smile surprised Tier.
“It’s always nice to have plans,” she said.
The wall of the well wasn’t high, but neither was Seraph. Tier lifted her from the ground to the top of the well wall with a hand on each hip. He steadied her until she was stable with one hand on the post that held up the roof.
She gave him a quick, distracted smile for his help, then looked into the dark hole. Perched flat-footed on the old wall, she had to dip her head a little to avoid hitting the roof.
She was magnificent.
Her moonlit-colored hair was caught up in an elaborate crown of braids that he’d seen other Traveler women wear. Until this past month, she’d always adopted the simpler styles of the Rederni. The braids suited her, he thought. She was wearing Traveler clothing, too: loose trousers and a long loose tunic that hit the bottoms of her knees.
Hennea was beautiful, but Seraph stirred him more than a woman who was merely beautiful ever could. She had such inner strength that he was sometimes surprised by how small she was. He’d once seen her back down a roomful of angry men with nothing more than the sharpness of her tongue.
Watching her as she quivered with eagerness, like a fine hunting hound awaiting the horn, he was struck with a sudden, wrenching understanding.
This was his wife, his Seraph, who’d given up everything she was to escape from the endless battle her people fought against things like the mistwight. She’d married him hoping that it would keep her out of battles just like this one. Oh, she said now that it was because she loved him—but he knew Seraph. If she had not dreaded returning to the duties of a Raven, she would never have accepted his offer of marriage.
He’d always felt that he’d helped to save her from something terrible, but she didn’t look like someone who needed rescuing.
She held her hands palm down over the well: tension flowed up her body from toes to fingertips, and the sharp, sparkling feeling that was magic brushed over his skin in an uneasy caress. With a hollow boom that shook the ground he stood upon, flame boiled suddenly out of the well in a searing wave of destruction. The roof caught fire first, then the walls of the sheltering building, the frail strands of weeds that surrounded the well house, followed an instant later by the post Seraph held on to.
Heedless of his damaged knees, Tier dove through the flames and caught Seraph around the waist, jerking her off the well and away from the fire. He had her on the ground and rolled her over twice before he realized that her clothes had not kindled and she was laughing.
He released her abruptly, but she sat up and kept her hands on him, brushing over his sleeves and quenching the smoldering fabric.
“I overdid it,” she said, with a grin he recognized as the expression of action-drunk joy that sometimes caught warriors in the height of battle. He’d never seen her look more lovely.
He’d never been so angry with her, either—she could have killed herself.
There was a sharp crack of sound behind them, and Tier jerked around to see Seraph’s flames whoosh out of existence as quickly as they had come, leaving the shed that protected the well blackened but unharmed.
As Hennea lowered her hands to her side after quenching the fire, something dark and smoking slipped over the rim of the well. It darted past Tier in an attempt to reach the nearby woodland; its pace so rapid he was left with scattered impressions of sparse wiry hair over wrinkled skin and sapphire eyes. The wolf who was Jes was only a little slower.
“The wight!” shouted Benroln.
An arrow intercepted the beast before Benroln finished the last syllable of its name. The thing rolled end over end several times, and Jes was upon it.
Dust and fur and darkness tangled until Tier couldn’t tell one creature from the other. But evidently Lehr had no such problem. A second arrow found flesh, then a third and fourth.
Jes separated himself, then shook his fur to rid it of dust and dried grass. The mistwight struggled weakly for a few seconds more, three of Lehr’s arrows stuck up from hip, neck, and rib. A fourth, broken off a handspan from the tip, protruded from its eye. Its ribs rose twice more and stilled.
Dead, it seemed to take up much less space than it had alive.
Seraph lay back down and laughed. She turned to Tier, and the smile slid from her eyes. “What’s wrong, Tier?”
He forced a smile and shook his head. She didn’t deserve his anger. It wasn’t her fault that she enjoyed the spice of danger—he knew the feeling himself, but it unsettled him to see it in his wife. Not just because she had risked her life, either.
“Nothing, love. Let me give you a hand up.”
This is what she had been born to do, he thought, as they strode back to the smith’s hut like a small triumphant army after Hennea disposed of the mistwight’s body with another bout of flame.
He could feel her outgrowing the home they’d forged together. He’d tried to ignore the changes in her since she and their sons had ridden to his rescue, but today had forced him to face them head-on. To save him, Seraph had taken up the mantle of her Order again.
He couldn’t see how she’d ever pull herself small enough to live on the farm and be nothing but a farmer’s wife again. Even if she tried to set her power aside a second time, he wasn’t certain if he could allow it, not remembering the joy on her face as the well lit with flames.
CHAPTER 2
“No wonder he was out in the middle of nowhere. If there were a good smith nearby, he’d starve to death,” said Benroln sourly as his sturdy bay kept pace with the little horse Tier rode. Brewydd had appropriated Skew for the ride back to the clan’s camp with Tier’s blessing. Lehr had had to carry the exhausted healer back to the horses, but the smith’s wounded would recover.
“The smith’s work is good enough by the local standards,” Tier told Benroln. “You can’t expect master-level bladecrafting from a man who makes mostly nails and plowshares. If you’d asked for a plow, doubtless you’d have been better pleased.”
“We have not the slightest need for a plow,” grumbled Benroln. “Or nails either. But either would have done us more good than three braces of ill-balanced, rough-handled knives.”
“Then your own smith can use the metal to make something more suitable,” soothed Tier. “You know as well as I that the real benefit you gained this day is that next time you—or any Traveler—comes by here, you will be welcomed and treated fairly.”
“Is Benroln still complaining?” Seraph came up to ride by Tier’s side. She gave Benroln a steady look. “If you’d really wanted a good bargain, you’d have driven it before we killed the mistwight and Brewydd healed his family. Afterward, you get what he gives and be grateful for it.”