bent his knees to help him.
Shouts of “Oi!” and “Halt!” rang out, and veins of purple smoke quested through the copse.
As Jeb took a fistful of reins, one of the tendrils brushed his temple. Cold flooded his brain, and feelers of wrongness split off from the main thread. He felt them twining about his thoughts, probing, pestering, cajoling. He recognized the attack straight away. The sorcerer was attempting coercion, probably the most intricate sorcery yet to arise from the nightmare realm of Qlippoth. Problem was, Jeb’s mother had been born with such power, and a whole lot more. Way Mortis told it, she’d been able to not just control someone’s mind; she took over the whole being, body and soul, and when she’d finished, discarded it like an old coat. If Jeb had learned anything in his time as a Maresman, it was that he was his mother’s son through and through. Mind attack like the one the stygian was throwing at him was the equivalent of taking a potato peeler to a sword fight. If he hadn’t hurt all over, he would’ve laughed as the sorcerous strands recoiled and snapped straight back into the stygian’s startled mind.
Somewhere beneath his scalp, Jeb felt the sorcerer scream in shock and rage. Closest he could come to describing it would’ve been running head first into an invisible wall. No, he realized with sudden clarity: it was like firing a shoddy flintlock and having it blow up in your face.
He kicked his heels into Tubal’s flanks, and they were off through the trees without a single glance back.
10
T UBAL CARRIED HIM deep into the foothills of the Gramble Range, north of Portis. It was far enough from Boss’s ranch for the guards not to pursue him on foot, and easily far enough for Jeb’s bruises to be hidden from Maisie. It also reduced the risk of running into Sweet before he was fully recovered. Next time they met, it was gonna be on Jeb’s terms, without the element of surprise. The only danger that left, besides rattlers and wolves, was if Boss decided to send trackers on horseback, or if the stygian, knowing a Maresman was on to him, stopped hiding and went on the offensive. Not too much Jeb could do about either possibility, given his physical condition. Times like this, you just had to be realistic. If there was a god, like the Wayists in New Jerusalem had been proclaiming since the demise of the Technocrat, now was when you’d trust yourself to his mercy. Course, god like that, with all those honorific titles, all that supposed goodness, weren’t likely to shed much mercy Jeb’s way, what with him being half a husk and all. That left chance, the way he saw it, the kind of thing that won you a game of seven-card, or kept you free of the pox when most everyone you knew was itching and scratching from it.
He stayed in the wilds three full days and nights, sheltering from the twin suns beneath a low overhang, and emerging in the evenings to stare up at Aethir’s moons. The howls of wolves kept him alert throughout the dark hours, but they were never more than watching eyes reflecting the yellow light of his fire. Rattlers, though, they were another thing. Once you knew how to root them out from abandoned burrows and clusters of rock, they made pretty good eating, save for the tip of the tail and the head.
Jeb had gleaned enough about medicine from the shabby healers in Malfen to gather wild herbs and flowers for a poultice to ease his bruising. What he didn’t need for that, he brewed up into a tisane using the tin cup from his saddlebags. If nothing else, it eased his thirst a darn sight more than the muddy water of the streams he found, but if he was pressed, he’d have to say it helped with the pain some, and sure thawed the tension from his limbs.
On the fourth day, he saddled up Tubal and took a long slow ride back to Boss’s ranch, this time stopping at the top of a low rise and surveying the land from a distance. He watched the better part of the afternoon and
Shouts of “Oi!” and “Halt!” rang out, and veins of purple smoke quested through the copse.
As Jeb took a fistful of reins, one of the tendrils brushed his temple. Cold flooded his brain, and feelers of wrongness split off from the main thread. He felt them twining about his thoughts, probing, pestering, cajoling. He recognized the attack straight away. The sorcerer was attempting coercion, probably the most intricate sorcery yet to arise from the nightmare realm of Qlippoth. Problem was, Jeb’s mother had been born with such power, and a whole lot more. Way Mortis told it, she’d been able to not just control someone’s mind; she took over the whole being, body and soul, and when she’d finished, discarded it like an old coat. If Jeb had learned anything in his time as a Maresman, it was that he was his mother’s son through and through. Mind attack like the one the stygian was throwing at him was the equivalent of taking a potato peeler to a sword fight. If he hadn’t hurt all over, he would’ve laughed as the sorcerous strands recoiled and snapped straight back into the stygian’s startled mind.
Somewhere beneath his scalp, Jeb felt the sorcerer scream in shock and rage. Closest he could come to describing it would’ve been running head first into an invisible wall. No, he realized with sudden clarity: it was like firing a shoddy flintlock and having it blow up in your face.
He kicked his heels into Tubal’s flanks, and they were off through the trees without a single glance back.
10
T UBAL CARRIED HIM deep into the foothills of the Gramble Range, north of Portis. It was far enough from Boss’s ranch for the guards not to pursue him on foot, and easily far enough for Jeb’s bruises to be hidden from Maisie. It also reduced the risk of running into Sweet before he was fully recovered. Next time they met, it was gonna be on Jeb’s terms, without the element of surprise. The only danger that left, besides rattlers and wolves, was if Boss decided to send trackers on horseback, or if the stygian, knowing a Maresman was on to him, stopped hiding and went on the offensive. Not too much Jeb could do about either possibility, given his physical condition. Times like this, you just had to be realistic. If there was a god, like the Wayists in New Jerusalem had been proclaiming since the demise of the Technocrat, now was when you’d trust yourself to his mercy. Course, god like that, with all those honorific titles, all that supposed goodness, weren’t likely to shed much mercy Jeb’s way, what with him being half a husk and all. That left chance, the way he saw it, the kind of thing that won you a game of seven-card, or kept you free of the pox when most everyone you knew was itching and scratching from it.
He stayed in the wilds three full days and nights, sheltering from the twin suns beneath a low overhang, and emerging in the evenings to stare up at Aethir’s moons. The howls of wolves kept him alert throughout the dark hours, but they were never more than watching eyes reflecting the yellow light of his fire. Rattlers, though, they were another thing. Once you knew how to root them out from abandoned burrows and clusters of rock, they made pretty good eating, save for the tip of the tail and the head.
Jeb had gleaned enough about medicine from the shabby healers in Malfen to gather wild herbs and flowers for a poultice to ease his bruising. What he didn’t need for that, he brewed up into a tisane using the tin cup from his saddlebags. If nothing else, it eased his thirst a darn sight more than the muddy water of the streams he found, but if he was pressed, he’d have to say it helped with the pain some, and sure thawed the tension from his limbs.
On the fourth day, he saddled up Tubal and took a long slow ride back to Boss’s ranch, this time stopping at the top of a low rise and surveying the land from a distance. He watched the better part of the afternoon and
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