military advice of a dumpy, bookish female who's half blind, no matter what uniform she was wearing. But riding Aleirian, I'm as fast as any Herald, faster than any other messenger, and once I'm within Mindspeech range of any other Herald, I can relay my information.'
:Another good answer. She's full of them, isn't she?:
:She's full of... something.: He sighed. She wasn't intimidated by him, not in the least, difficult creature that she was. She didn't care that he was Alberich of Karse, only half trusted even by the Heralds. 'I know all about you from Henrick. And from Geri as well, of course,' she'd said on meeting him, meaning Gerichen, once-Acolyte, now Priest; Geri, who'd become as much of a confidant as Alberich ever made of anyone. Simple sentences, but the way she'd said them had left him wondering just what it was that they'd told her. And later, he wondered what, and how much, she had written down, for she seemed to be always writing everything down in little notebooks. She always had one with her. When she wasn't writing things, she stared in a way that made him feel she was memorizing everything, so that she could write it down later.
:So how are you going to answer her?: Kantor prompted. :She has a good point; you're never going to make her into any kind of a fighter. You were just thinking that the first thing that anyone seeing her would go for is those lenses, and then what?:
Then she'd be blind, of course, and utterly helpless. No, she was right, very right, the best thing she could ever do if attacked would be to run away.
Could running be the answer, then?
:It should never be said that Herald Alberich refused to find a better way when one existed,: Kantor said. :Besides, if she can't fight, they won't send her to the front lines; they'll use her to replace a Herald who can fight and send him instead.:
'Put that away,' he said abruptly. 'You are right. I would be no kind of Weaponsmaster if I could not match the weapon to the student, not the student to the weapon. And escape might be the answer, however unlikely that weapon might be. Come into the salle, into the sitting room, and we will discuss this.'
He didn't miss her smile of triumph, not that it mattered. She wasn't going to get off as easily as she thought; there might not be fighting practice, but she was going to find herself training until she was in far better physical shape than she'd ever been in her life. There would be extra riding classes for one thing; if her Companion was going to be running, she had better be in shape to stick with him, no matter what he had to do to get away. And if she was going to count on being able to run away, Alberich was going to make her into a competitive foot racer, whether she liked it or not.
Some of that clumsiness, at least, can be trained away.
She followed him into his living quarters; Dethor wasn't there at the moment. One of the Healers was trying a new treatment for his swollen joints, a course of bee venom, for beekeepers swore that the stings of their charges kept the ailment away from them. By now, Dethor's bones were painful enough that he was more than willing to tolerate even the stings of angry bees in hopes of getting some relief.
As a reward for his cooperation, he'd get a massage with hot stones and a treatment for his hands of hot sand afterward, something that did give him consistent relief, even if it was only temporary.
Myste took one of the chairs in front of the window; Alberich sat opposite her. 'We need to think,' he told her. 'We need to find a way to make the things you can do into weapons. Running, for instance.' He pondered that for a while. 'I'll trade you saying for saying—in the hills in Karse there's a proverb, 'The hound that chases two hares catches neither.' If you are going to run—we need to contrive a way that you can create more than one thing for your pursuers to go after.'
'Dropping my packs—' she began.
'But what if there is something in your packs that you've been entrusted with?' he countered. 'What if it's in the winter, with no Waystations near? If you drop your packs, you won't have what you need to survive. It won't do you much good to escape from bandits only to freeze to death in a blizzard.' He brooded over the idea for a moment, then the answer came to him. 'I think we should add a bit of extra equipment specifically for you—packs and belt pouches that you're meant to throw away.'
'What?' she asked, 'Stuffed with straw or the like?'
He shook his head. 'No, not that, actually. If you drop worthless decoys, it won't be long before bandits and brigands all know that the packs you drop are worthless, and they'll ignore them and go for you again. No, that hare won't run—there will be just enough in the decoys to satisfy an ambusher without making it look as if you're an especially juicy target, and to make certain that attackers chase the packs, and not you. And the same for belt pouches; from now on, you'll be carrying at least two small extras, both full of coppers, and if someone attacks you, you'll throw them in opposite directions, one to either side of your line of flight.'
She was happy enough about the planning, but visibly unhappy when he brought her back outside and put her in front of the obstacle course. 'Run the course, then run it again,' he told her mercilessly. 'And keep running it until I tell you to stop. Running away isn't going to do you any good if you can't actually run any better than Dethor on a bad day.'
