Battle Magic

rough diameter. With no target, the thick stems had formed large curls around one another. Even in the flickering firelight the thorns could be seen. Some were four inches long. Others were two inches long and two inches thick at the base, curled rather than straight like the longer ones.

Parahan, fascinated, got up and started to walk toward the plant.

“Don’t do that,” Rosethorn said as the vines rustled. “They’re still awake.”

Parahan stopped. The vines settled. “You could kill a man with that,” he said, his voice cracking.

“We don’t carry them for toys,” Briar replied. “Don’t be so upset. I only let a couple of the seeds grow.”

“Want to see what I have?” Evvy asked eagerly.

“No,” Parahan said suddenly. “No, I don’t think I do.”

“But you think I’m a kid!” Evvy protested, using Briar’s slang for child. “You don’t think I can help protect us!” Rocks rose from the ground and began to whirl around Parahan’s head.

“Evumeimei,” Rosethorn said dangerously.

“Sorry, Parahan,” Evvy apologized. The stones fell to the ground. “But — you did know we’re mages.”

“I’m not sure I thought about what you three do in terms of war,” he admitted. Sitting on his heels by the fire, he grinned. “We may have an easier time getting past the border than I thought.”

Rosethorn served out the tea. “What do you expect once we’re there?” she asked as she warmed her hands on her cup.

“It’s a small post, from what I learned,” Parahan explained. “If things were normal, we might expect caravans coming through southern Gyongxe in another month, but not this early. Figure no traffic coming from the Gyongxe side. There’s a village that supports the border post on the Yanjing side. They keep perhaps five guards on duty at a time. We’re going to have to fight if they’ve received word to stop anyone from crossing. If they’ve gotten word about you leaving the caravan, or about me, we’ll really have to fight.”

“We might scare them into running,” Evvy said cheerfully, giving Ria a scratch.

Parahan grunted. “We might, though if they’re imperial regulars, not locals recruited to stand still and look tough, they won’t scare.” He looked at the staff on the ground beside him. “I wish I had a sword to go with this thing.”

Rosethorn looked at him in horror. “You mean to take on armed guards with a staff?”

He wiped his bowl with the bread that Briar had made. “But I have three mages at my back.” He stood and stretched as they stared up at him. Then he bent double at the waist and grabbed his ankles, bouncing a little without bending at the knees. Turning halfway, he put his right leg out in front of him as if he were lunging, and did so until his right leg was at a right angle and his left was stretched all the way out. After he had done that a number of times, he switched his front leg to the left. Rosethorn and Evvy began to clean up, while Briar tried to do similar stretches.

Finally Parahan picked up his staff and pulled one end of it off to reveal a long, slender, double-edged blade. “Not much as a throwing weapon,” he told Briar as he began to spin it in both hands, “but I could jab fish if I was in the woods with no supper on my way south. I tried to stay off the roads, at least till I got to Kushi. When I finally got tired of fish, I tried the beggar disguise. That hurt as much as it helped.”

“I wondered how you did that,” Evvy said, on her way to fetch dung for the fire. “Once I had to go through this tunnel that wasn’t quite high enough for me in Prince’s Heights, where I used to live. It was really long. When I came out I had a terrible ache in my back and my neck.”

“I still do,” Parahan admitted. He got the spear twirling over his head. Stepping well away from Briar, he spun it rapidly down along one side of his body, then up, over, and along the other. As the firelight sparked off the blade, it gave him the appearance of wings.

He did other exercises while Rosethorn and Briar prepared more thorn balls and Evvy more disks of flint and quartz. Off and on they would look up to see him kicking and punching into the air, spinning to kick at the side, or to lash out with a fist so fast it was a blur. Finally he came over to the fire with one of his packs and settled in to sharpen his belt knife.

Rosethorn gave him the cup of tea that was steeping beside her. “This should help those aching muscles,” she explained.

As night fell, Briar drew the line of ponies and mules closer to their camp. Evvy gathered her pack with her extra gate stones and created the enclosure where all of them would sleep. At first, Parahan balked at the thought of sleeping as part of a pile with the others.

Briar waited until Rosethorn went off into the dark to explain about her lungs, and how she needed all the warmth they could give now that they were in colder lands. “We did it sometimes on our way to Gyongxe, when sleeping alone didn’t keep us warm enough. She’d start coughing otherwise,” he explained.

When she returned, and Parahan and Evvy had gone in separate directions for the last errands of the night, Briar had to cajole Rosethorn into sleeping at the center of the huddle that would include Evvy, the cats, Parahan, and himself. At first Rosethorn insisted on taking an outside position with Parahan.

The big man, overhearing as he returned, said flatly, “We need every one of us at their best in the morning, woman. You may sleep on the outside and freeze tomorrow night, if we’re alive and free.”

Rosethorn stared at Parahan for a long, worrisome moment, and then placed her bedroll on the ground. Parahan proceeded to bank the fire. Briar wondered if he ought to say he would pray for the man in the fight to come, or something of the sort. In the end, he simply put his own bedroll next to Rosethorn’s and crawled into it. Evvy chose Rosethorn’s free side and Parahan Briar’s. Rosethorn went to sprinkle her herb circle around the camp, including the ponies and mules. It was something she’d done several times on their way east: create a kind of magical curtain that hid them from any predator, human or animal, that might come by. Once the circle was finished, she murmured her spell over it, and returned to wriggle into her bedroll. Only then did the cats fit themselves into every comfortable spot that they could find.

Briar was drifting off when Parahan said, “Why don’t we take the border at night? If we muffle all our clanking things, we might just sneak past. They’ll expect us during the day. We could avoid a fight completely.”

Briar yawned. “We can’t do it.”

When Parahan spoke, he sounded peeved. “I may only be a simple soldier, not an educated nanshur, but I’m sure if you do it in small words, you can explain it to me in a way I can understand. Why should we not try the strategically far more sensible move of attempting the border crossing by night?”

Briar growled. He was tired and he was worried about the border just like everyone else. “We’re plant mages, oh strategist.”

“Stop it, you two,” Evvy complained.

“Plants require sunlight. Surely even simple soldiers know that,” Briar went on, ignoring Evvy. Parahan might be a prince, and a warrior, but he wasn’t going to bully them into trying something when Rosethorn was not at her best. He also didn’t need to know Rosethorn’s secrets.

It was Rosethorn, of course, who ruined it by telling the truth. “He’s only half lying, Parahan,” she said. “I don’t see as well in the dark as I used to. I was … ill, six years ago. It’s why I speak as I do, and why I have trouble catching my breath the higher we go, and why my night vision is limited.”

“She died,” Evvy said with relish. “Briar and his sisters went to the Deadlands and brought her back, only she left part of her speech and her breath and her sight there as a promise to the White Jade God that she would return.”

Parahan’s voice was shaky when he spoke again. “That’s a story, isn’t it?”

“It is not,” Rosethorn said. “I nearly died of the Blue Pox. We leave in the morning. Now go to sleep.”

That was the end of the night’s conversation. They settled between the banked fire and the picketed mules and ponies, warm with their blankets, cats, and one another. Their night was so undisturbed that Parahan’s only complaint in the morning was that Monster snored.

The road was empty. None of them was happy with that, though they found no other signs of trouble. Eagles and buzzards soared overhead searching for a meal. In the distance they saw a herd of goats moving on a looming hillside.

As the hours passed, the lands ahead on their side of the river began to flatten. By mid-morning they