Changing the World: All-New Tales of Valdemar

he spent so much time out on the road, but not even a full Healer, present when the accident happened, could have changed the outcome. With the branch in the wound, the charcoal burner died slowly. Pulled free, he’d bleed out instantly.

Looking up, Jors could see the new scar where the deadfall had finally separated from the tree. The charcoal burner had probably passed under it a hundred times, forgot it was up there if he’d even noticed it at all. It wasn’t easy to see a branch hung up in the high canopy—Jors had lost an uncle to a similar accident when he was eight. Could remember the tears on his father’s face as he carried his brother’s body back in through the palisade.

The charcoal burner was older than Jors expected, midthirties maybe, allowing for the rough edges of a hard life—although it couldn’t have helped that he’d been slowly dying since the branch had pinned him. When Jors knelt by his side, he opened startlingly blue eyes.

The knowledge of his imminent death was evident in the gaze he locked onto Jors’ face as he fought to drag air into ruined lungs. “Torbin?” he wheezed. “My son?”

“He’s fine.”

“Take . . . to sister. Rab . . . bit Hole.” A callused hand batted weakly at Jors’ knee, leaving smears of red- brown against the white. “Prom . . . ise.”

“My word as a Herald. I will put your son in your sister’s arms.”

He held Jors’ gaze for a long moment, then closed his eyes and sighed.

He didn’t breathe in again.

The only evidence of a woman inside the hut was a faded ribbon curled up on a rough shelf. Jors set it on the pile of the charcoal burner’s possessions, wrapped them in the more worn of the two blankets on the pallet, and tied the bundle off. Without a mule—and mules were more trouble than they were worth in the deep woods—he couldn’t carry much more than his own gear, but Torbin’s inheritance from his dead father and his missing mother was so tiny he didn’t feel right leaving any of it behind.

While Jors buried his father—the soft, deep loam making an unpleasant job significantly easier than it might have been—Torbin had fallen asleep curled up against Gervais’ side, still secured by the rope for safety’s sake. Herald and Companion both had agreed he was too young to get any sort of closure from seeing the body. Although given that their combined experience with small children could be inscribed on a bridle bell with plenty of room left over for the lyrics to Sun and Shadow, Jors could only hope they’d made the right decision.

As he stepped out of the hut, Torbin’s head popped up from under the other blanket. He blinked sleepily and screamed.

:He’s hungry.:

:How can you tell?:

:He sounds hungry.:

He sounded furious as far as Jors could tell. :What do I feed him?:

:The goat needs milking.:

He looked from the goat, who continued to chew on the last few bits of fodder, to his Companion. :How do you know?:

:She’s leaking.:

Jors had never milked a goat, but he’d been around, and he’d seen goats milked, and how hard could it be? After all, goats producing milk wanted to be milked.

Although he couldn’t prove that by this particular goat.

As Torbin’s screams increased in both volume and duration, Jors finally managed to tie the goat to a hook on the side of the hut and get the small pail he’d found hanging from the hook more or less in position under the leaking udder, but it wasn’t until Gervais moved close enough to catch the nanny’s gaze and hold it that he actually managed to get his hand around a teat.

:I’m beginning to think the Collegium needs to add a few more practical courses,: the Companion said thoughtfully as Jors decanted the frothy milk into a mug with a carved wooden spout.

:I’d have been willing to lose an hour of instruction in court etiquette,: Jors admitted, handing the mug to Torbin. He’d found the mug in the hut and had to unpack it from the blanket bundle.

The child clutched it with both hands, sat down on his bare bottom, and began to drink.

With Torbin occupied—and blessedly quiet—Jors dealt with the fire pit and released the livestock.

:Will they be safe?:

:I’d put that chicken up against a Change-lion.: Sucking at a bleeding, triangular wound pecked into his left thumb, Jors dug a travel biscuit from his saddle bags and handed it to Torbin just as the child put down the now empty mug and opened his mouth to scream. :I think I’m getting the hang of this.:

:We need to bring the goat with us.:

:We what?:

:We were a day from the settlement when we rose this morning, and it is now past midday. The child will need to be fed again before you can give him over to his aunt.:

:I was figuring I’d tuck him up in front of me and we’d concentrate on speed rather than . . . :

:Safety?:

Torbin’s possessions having been secured with his behind the high cantle, Jors took a moment to beat his head gently against the saddle. Gervais was right. Alone, he might risk a gallop in poor lighting along a rough track bracketed with branches ready to slam the unwary to the ground, but he couldn’t risk it while holding a child. If it were later in the day, he’d suggest they stay the night, but it was high summer, and he hated the thought of wasting the five, maybe six hours of daylight remaining. :If we move as quickly as possible and make no stops, we should get there before full dark. I really don’t want to camp while responsible for this child.:

:Agreed. Chosen? The child is leaking.:

Still gnawing happily on the travel biscuit, Torbin now sat in a spreading puddle.

There had been two square pieces of cotton spread out on bushes behind the hut. Jors hadn’t realized what they were for until it became obvious that, as practical as it was to allow Torbin to run half naked around the clearing—or more specially around the part of the clearing his lead line gave him access to—it was significantly less practical to have him up on the saddle in that condition. Releasing him from his harness, Jors carried the child over to the half full water barrel and scooped some of the sun-warmed water over his muddy bottom.

Torbin stared at him for a moment in shock, let loose a sound that would have shattered glass, had there been any glass in the immediate neighborhood, and made a run for it. Given the length of his legs, he was surprisingly fast.

Once caught, he objected, loudly, to having his bottom covered.

“This is ridiculous,” Jors muttered, holding the struggling child down with one hand and securing the folded cloth with the other. “I mean it’s not that I have an inflated idea of my own importance but there has got to be someone better qualified to do this than me.”

:You are the only one here.:

Torbin screamed, “Ossy!” again, and with both arms up and reaching for the Companion, he actually lay still long enough for Jors to tie off the last piece of rope.

:Chosen, that looks . . . :

“Yeah, I know. There must be a trick to it.” But as unusual as it looked, it seemed to be holding, so Jors lifted Torbin up into his arms, then tried not to drop him as one flailing foot caught him squarely in a delicate place.

Getting into the saddle while holding a squirming child away from further contact with that delicate—and bruised—place ranked right up there as one of the more difficult things Jors had ever accomplished.

Tucked securely between the Herald and the saddle horn, legs sticking straight out, Torbin bounced once and twisted around to look back behind them as Gervais moved out of the clearing.

Jors barely managed to catch him as he tried to fling himself from the saddle.

“Pa-Ah!”

Your papa is dead, but his last thought was of you, and I promised him I’d take you safely to