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Chapter Twenty-Nine

Oskar

Bharash and Selene had managed to escape, but not before injuring several of the Bonecrushers.

This particular area of the woods had turned into an infirmary, with Iaz, the clan’s lone healer, rushing to and fro among the wounded—the stabbed, the spiked, and, in the case of those who were unfortunate enough to have been in the way of the dragonblood’s breath attack, the frostbitten.

Oskar felt absolutely terrible, in a way that had nothing to do with his own ailments.

Iaz had cleaned and bandaged the dagger wound in his shoulder before leaving Guinevere to take care of the claw marks across his ribs, and he spoke gravely to her as he sat shirtless on the forest floor, the upper half of his body slightly reclined against a large slab of rock.

“We can’t stay with them, Guinevere.”

“I know,” she replied in a soft voice.

The day before, the Bonecrushers had insisted that Oskar and Guinevere join their caravan, as they were all headed in the same direction anyway.

But that was no longer feasible. With two of the mercenaries dead, there was every possibility that the surviving ones would call for reinforcements and grow increasingly more desperate and ruthless as the Menagerie Coast drew nearer.

All the members of Clan Bonecrusher were packed into the two wagons, their children included.

The worst-case scenario was untenable, its cost too dear. This wasn’t their fight.

Guinevere uncorked the fresh bottle of the homemade grog that Iaz had pressed into her hand earlier. She glanced at it and then at Oskar’s exposed torso, gnawing on her bottom lip with trepidation. “Are…are you ready?”

Oskar nodded, fighting back a tender grin. His poor darling. There was no reason for her to be so nervous. It was only going to be a temporary sting, and he’d experienced much worse.

She splashed the brew over the gouges along his ribs. “Fuck!” he yelped, the burning pain making him see double. “Just kill me!”

“Well, no one wants that,” she chided as she set the bottle down and prepared the bandages.

“This is only a wild guess, you understand, but Bharash and Selene might beg to differ.”

“I couldn’t give a fig about their opinions.”

“That might be the meanest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

Guinevere seemed oddly pleased by his remark.

She was still a little flushed from adrenaline, her eyes the color of dusk.

There were grass stains on her skirt and twigs in her silver hair, and the katari’s blood had dried in specks on her face.

Her beauty had taken on a wilder aspect.

It was as though she were in bloom, out here in the autumn woodlands.

It took a couple of tries for her to successfully wind the bandages around his rib cage, after which they headed back to the campsite, where a few Bonecrushers had stayed behind to watch over the clan’s belongings and had already been informed by a runner of what had transpired.

“You’d been gone quite a while,” Nan told Oskar and Guinevere, “so I sent a search party out. We thought you’d run afoul of a bear, maybe. We certainly weren’t expecting to tangle with the Spider’s Web this morn.”

“That’s their name?” Oskar struggled not to roll his eyes. “A little too on the nose for my tastes.”

“They’re a mid-level group,” said Nan. “The kind you hire if you can’t afford the Ceaseless Reach or the Order of Darkness.”

“Now those, ” said Oskar, “are proper mercenary names.”

“We’re getting off topic,” Nan said firmly. “What I want to know is why my kinsmen ended up fighting them today.”

After silently listening to Oskar and Guinevere’s faltering confession, the Bonecrusher matriarch waved off their apologies for lying in the same manner she’d waved off their gratitude for the clan’s assistance the previous afternoon.

“Travelers help one another,” she intoned.

“Of course, if one of us dies, we will come after you and the Spider’s Web with the vengeance of a thousand axes, but I don’t think we need to worry about that. Us Bonecrushers are as tough as nails.”

“Still,” said Guinevere, a slight tremble to her bottom lip, “we shall take our leave of you at once. It’s not safe to continue on together.”

The elderly woman gave a reluctant nod. Oskar thought about what it took to transport an entire clan from one end of Wildemount to the other, keeping everyone alive as they followed you and the seasons and the trade winds.

There had to be limits to compassion. He couldn’t fault the matriarch in the least.

By the time Oskar had pulled on a fresh tunic and finished strapping all the luggage to Pudding, the rest of the clan had drifted back to camp, some with noticeable limps.

They cheerfully thanked Oskar and Guinevere for the “cracking good battle,” and farewells were warmly exchanged.

Oskar had just helped Guinevere onto Vindicator’s saddle when Nan shuffled over and pressed something into his palm.

It was a pendant. A translucent milky-white moonstone that was marbled with swirls of blue and pink, attached to a length of thin black leather.

“That is a Vigilance Stone,” said Nan. “The clans in the Cyrios Mountains trade us moonstones, and Zugri infuses them with detection spells in her spare time. We do not sell these; they are for use within the clan, or gifted to those we consider friends. The moonstones glow when they are within thirty feet of those carrying evil in their hearts. Rodregg wears one of these pendants, and that’s how the search party knew where to amass even though the illusion spell hid you from sight. ”

Oskar went through the motions of putting the pendant on.

Once it hung from his neck, the barest downward tug the only indication of an added weight, that was when the significance of the gift truly sank in, along with the realization that perhaps compassion could be endless, after all.

He peered down at Nan and said, sincerely, “Thank you.”

This time, the Bonecrusher matriarch didn’t wave off his thanks. Instead, she reached out to pat his wrist. “It’s not too late to actually elope with her, you know.”

“Goodbye,” Oskar said flatly, turning away.

Nan’s creaky, wheezing laughter rang out behind him. “May we meet again.”

Once he and Guinevere had left the Bonecrusher encampment far behind them, Oskar began to consider the Amber Road.

Apart from their party, the wide strip of well-trodden, yellowish dirt was completely deserted today. The steady clip-clop of the two horses’ hooves echoed in the still air. Gray clouds lurked on the horizon, hiding the next bastion of civilization—Alfield—from view.

All the empty space fed into Oskar’s lingering wariness from that morning’s ambush. He had the Vigilance Stone to serve as warning, but what good was a detection spell at a range of thirty feet out here in the open?

He made a decision. He steered Vindicator left. Out of the road and into the forest.

“You are absolutely certain that it’s safer this way?” Guinevere asked anxiously a few minutes later. They’d dismounted, as the trees grew too close together and the ground was too steep and entangled for riding. Oskar was holding on to Vindicator’s reins while Guinevere managed Pudding.

“The Web’s magician is dead,” said Oskar, “so they can’t lead us astray with illusions anymore. On their end, it would be easier to keep watch for us on the Amber Road than to track us here in the thick of the woods.”

She nodded at once. He wanted to tell her once again to quit trusting people so quickly, but not as much as he wanted to fold her trust into a pocket in his heart and spend the rest of his life proving himself worthy of it.

They traveled on foot for miles and miles, passing dense palaces of bramble and abandoned shacks that they raided for additional supplies, splashing through streams and crossing crude wooden bridges stretched atop rushing rivers, guiding the horses around towers of deadfall.

When night fell, so, too, did another fierce rain, and they sought shelter in a cave large enough to accommodate the horses after Oskar had checked it thoroughly for bears or big cats.

He doubted that the Vigilance Stone could detect predatory animals that were, after all, only following their natural instincts and knew nothing of good and evil.

Elaras the treehugger would have been proud of him.

Oskar built a fire using wood chunks obtained from the last abandoned shack they’d passed.

While Guinevere warmed up in its feeble glow, he fed the horses and then plucked and skinned the partridge that he’d caught earlier.

He cooked it on a spit over the fire, and he and Guinevere ate it with their hands, washing it down with rainwater collected in flasks that they’d set outside.

Afterward, they curled up together by the cave wall, keeping each other warm under one of the Bonecrushers’ fabulously cozy blankets.

Guinevere had gotten progressively quieter over the last several hours, and it wasn’t due to exhaustion—an exhausted Guinevere was even more talkative, as Oskar had learned.

No, something had begun weighing on her mind as the day drew to a close, and he waited patiently to find out what it was.

“Oskar.” She wouldn’t look at him, her cheek pillowed against his shirtfront.

Her voice was a softly wounded thing amidst the melody of the pouring rain that wove all around them like a second blanket.

“I…I really want to learn how to control my magic. It frustrates me so much, that I could have saved you earlier—”

“You did save me,” he cut in, holding her tighter. “You broke the illusion spell by tripping over that magician—”

“Not on purpose—”

“Saved me all the same,” he insisted. “And, before that, you stepped in front of me before I got skewered and my head bashed in. Which, by the way,” he added, his own words unearthing a skein of anger along with the chilling memory, “you are not allowed to do that ever again.”

“You just said you would have gotten skewered and your head bashed in otherwise.”

“That doesn’t matter. Always help yourself first, Guinevere.”

“No,” she mumbled even as she burrowed deeper into him.

“Travelers help one another. That’s what Nan told us.

We are travelers together, Oskar, and I will help you in any way that I can.

So I—I will practice more. I will use what Elaras taught me back in Labenda.

And perhaps one day I can be of as much aid to you as you have been to me. ”

Oskar was torn. On one hand, a vengeful wildfire spirit would certainly come in handy during battle.

But the convenience of Teinidh would never justify the cost to Guinevere.

She was a gentle, genuinely kindhearted girl.

He had no wish for her to end up like him, hardened and embittered by what it took to survive in this world.

“For what it’s worth…” Oskar lifted Guinevere’s dainty wrist to his lips and kissed the back of her hand.

“Your magic is not an abomination, despite what your folks say. I would love for you to wield it without shame. But it has to be on your terms. If you don’t feel ready, then don’t force yourself.

Just believe in my ability to keep you safe, because I won’t ever let you down in that regard. ”

She was silent for a while, considering his words.

Then she wrapped her arms around his waist until they were as close as two people could be in their clothes.

He rubbed her back soothingly, and he truly meant it when he said, “Whatever you decide, everything’s going to be fine, and you’re going to be brilliant, Gwen. You always are.”