The Hob's Bargain

The next house was smaller than the first, made of stones set one on top of the other with no need of mortar to hold it together. As I stepped over the threshold, I came face to skull with the master of the hearth.

Except for the woman on the farm, I'd tried not to look at the heaps of bones we'd passed in Auberg. I hadn't let them be people, only piles of rubbish. But, even dead, this man wouldn't let me do that.

He must have been resting in front of the fire, for his remains were still settled in a chair before the blackened grating. His trousers were patched neatly, though without the ornamentation a woman would have given them. His shirt was made of fine cotton cloth and showed no such wear.

He'd been a big man, a hand or so larger than Daryn.

I couldn't repress the feeling that he watched me as I walked past him to the room beyond.

His larder was small, but stocked with the sorts of food a traveler would need: rice cakes, sweet oatcakes, and salted, dried beef. I took all I could carry in a tablecloth I'd brought from the first house. And all the time I stacked the food, I had the twitchy feeling that someone was observing me. Just before I tied the bundle together, I took an oatcake and a piece of the beef and set it aside.

I walked into the front room and set the bits of food I'd kept out on the floor before the dead man in the chair. Remembering what the Beresforders had said about the unrestful dead and stories learned at Gram's knee, I knelt before him as if he were a king on a throne.

"Good sir," I said, in as formal a ma

If there had been someone with me, I wouldn't have done it, but it made me feel better. Coming to my feet, I brushed against something hanging on the stone wall. It fell to the floor with a clatter and a thunk.

A glance showed it to be a crossbow, oiled so dark it was black. I picked it up and took the quiver of arrows that hung next to the space where it had been. Then I nodded respectfully to the man who had owned them, and began to leave.

A chill touched my shoulder, stopping me where I was. I turned back to the skeleton who brooded in his chair, staring not, I saw finally, at the door but at the wall where the crossbow had hung. I, too, looked again. A black leather bag rested on the same peg the crossbow had hung on. I'd left it there. Now, after a careful look at the resting warrior, I lifted it down, too. Inside was an odd metal contraption, the same color as the crossbow—tarnished silver, I thought.

"For the crossbow?" I asked.

It almost surprised me that there was no answer. I took the bag with me. When I set the bag of food outside the door, I kept the crossbow and slung the quiver into its proper place across my shoulders. The leather bag I attached to my belt.

My last experience made me wary as I opened the door to the next house. Nothing greeted me but the faint scent of lemon verbena.

The first room was so prosaic it seemed to disallow a world in which a warrior could guard his domain after death. Ruffled curtains framed the windows covered only by a screen of creamy linen to keep out insects and dirt.

The next room was a bedroom, and I walked quickly through it. There were two doorways on the side of the room. I opened the first and walked into another bedroom, much smaller than the first. A cradle creaked back and forth as the breeze swept through the window where the protective screen had been torn loose.

Almost involuntarily, I stepped farther into the room and looked at the tiny bones lying clothed in a soft gown embroidered with yellow and orange flowers. A rose-colored quilt had been tucked lovingly around the baby. I tightened my hand around the crossbow until it hurt, but the pain didn't help.

A soft lullaby filled my head. The breeze died, but the cradle still rocked. I watched as a mother sang her babe to sleep. The dead woman looked up at me and smiled—a simple, uncomplicated smile—and raised a finger to her lips, protecting the sleep of a child who would never awaken.

I walked out of the house and shut the door gently behind me with a hand that shook. It hadn't felt like a vision.

Sweat gathered on the small of my back. I knew I should have gone on and searched for the larder, but it was beyond me. Perhaps Kith could have done it, but not even the power of old taunts was going to make me go into another house.

Kith came out of a house on the other side of the narrow lane, and looked at me. Something in my face must have shown how I felt, because he crossed the street and frowned.

"What?" he asked.

"Well," I answered, smiling grimly, "at least we know we don't have to search for babies left unattended. The one in there was only a few days old, and the spell took it as surely as it took larger creatures." I decided not to mention the ghost.

Kith closed his eyes briefly and nodded. "I have enough food for the journey if there aren't many more people than it appears. What you have should fill in the gaps." He gave me a look that told me what he had found hadn't been much better, then he chose to change the subject. Soldiers were probably good at avoiding unbearable things. "I see you found a crossbow."

I gave it to him, and he looked it over closely before returning it. "Steel bow," he said. "They're expensive. My own is a composite, easier to draw but less range. Most of the weapons like this belong to noblemen—Moresh has one. I wouldn't have thought a town this size would have a weapon of such quality. It's too bad we can't use it."

"What do you mean?"

He set the bow on the ground, holding onto the stock first, then bracing it against his shoulder. He ran a finger down the stock and showed me two black metal pegs, one on each side.

"This was meant for a goatsfoot. You'll not be able to draw it by hand."

"A what?" I asked, trying to picture how a goat's foot would help to draw a bow.

"Goatsfoot," he repeated. "It's a device that you hook under the string and over the pins." He fingered the pegs he'd shown me. They didn't look like pins to me. "Then you pull it back. The extra leverage allows you to draw the bow."

I opened the leather bag and pulled out the contraption it held. "Is this one?"

He took it from me. "That makes this bow a lot more useful." Kneeling, he pressed the toe of his boot to the bow, holding it steady as he showed me how the goats-foot cocked the bow.

The back of my neck crawled suddenly, and I glanced behind me. But the houses all stood empty.

The sun was low in the sky when we finally set out from Auberg. It had taken longer than I'd expected to collect the two men who were out. Then the Beresforders had a bunch of livestock—cattle, sheep, pigs, mules, and a few horses (including Danci's dun)—in a larger paddock behind the i

Once we set out on the road, the animals gave us little trouble, seeming almost as relieved as I to leave Auberg's shadows behind them. By the time we reached the lower slopes of the Hob, the children began to play and laugh.

Danci deposited her youngest in Kith's lap without asking and rode her horse to me.

"I hadn't realized what it was doing to us, staying there among the dead," she said.

I watched Kith struggle to hold the squirming toddler in front of him and guide Torch at the same time. But, interestingly enough, he didn't try to give the boy back.

"It would be enough to give anyone the creeps," I agreed with a smile.

I'd noticed the lift in my own spirits when we rode out of the valley. Comparing the rascal who held Torch's reins while Kith held him with the mopey, whiny child at the i