Rune mage

Chapter 43: planning for a caravan

I watched a single rider approach from the direction our supply wagons usually came.

"Send Longslim," I told my sergeant. Longslim was our tallest fighter. He was one of the few who I had granted an unseen rune, which he could trigger by pressing his hand over the rune. Placing two part runes to be overlaid for activation had come to me on a night where sleep had ambushed me.

Sleep made for more ideas.

If I could only completely escape the nightmares. I might sleep more, if the dead didn't haunt me in my dreams.

Longslim could climb rock spires and trees and almost any high place. So I gave him runes to help him be a better scout.

He exited swiftly and approached the rider.

They spoke for a few moments and then Longslim returned to the fort with no alarm visible.

"Annual caravan is headed this way. The man here is the advance and is requesting their passage. He has the proper paperwork to allow him through the pass. He asks that any mage traps be cleared at least from the path, as they have mages in the caravan, as well as families including children. He offered himself as..." he paused. "He stated he would be our guest until the caravan passed without incident if we were concerned about their intentions. The word for it he used, I've never heard of it. I believe this is his second or third language."

"What is the word he used?" I asked. There had been a time I had studied languages in an attempt to learn more about my magic.

"It sounded like rotted potato, but garbled."

I nodded. "We do not need to hold him hostage as a goodwill token. Ask for two days of preparation, so that our mage traps can be powered down." I didn't need two days but it felt smart to make our exact abilities less clear. I paused, "would they be interested, do you think in spending a day here, perhaps entertaining sixty four men who have been lacking proper music? I could offer a mage torch or two in exchange."

He shrugged. "I will ask."

"Tell them we even have rooms if they wish to stay within the walls." I added as he walked back out.

It would remain to be decided by the caravan elders if they would stay, but they were at least willing to consider stopping. The advance man rode away and I returned to my work room.

"We cannot feed them," my sergeant said as he followed me. "We barely have what we need now."

"I am hoping to make trades," I said. I held up a mage torch, "This is easily enough created and has a built in design for collecting power. Movement makes it come on, and the light won't catch things on fire, so I assume it would be safe around children. I imagine their own supplies would be light... have you traveled in a caravan like that? Do they carry much by way of supplies?"

"If you recall the trip here from the school," the sergeant said, "that is about what a caravan would be like. There will be wagons of supplies, some guards but mostly performers and merchants. They make their living having things other people want to buy. I am not sure if they are headed home for the winter or if this is part of their circuit."

I looked at my desk with a blank expression. We didn't have much beyond some few personal coins, what use would it be? We did have the ability to trade. With fewer attacks lately my men had shown some useful hobbies, including the woodcarver's work. He had made a carved game set that had become quite popular.

"We have some men who can create items for trade. Let's see if we can get enough interest to trade for spices or foodstuffs we haven't had in a while," I said.

My sergeant knew a dismissal when he saw one. I was already deep in thought about the kinds of runes a caravan with families might benefit from.

Wellness of course, but also perhaps some fire suppression and leak protection. Likely they weren't in place long enough for pests, but I could have some stones with the pest repelling rune as an option.

I picked up some smooth stones from the basket on my desk. The men collected stones for me, like children bringing their treasure hunt prizes to their mother, they held their finds out to me and smiled deeply when I thank them. My favorite was clearly noticed, because increasingly they brought me the pale grey stones I preferred, rounded and smoothed and ready to be carved.

I suspected they found the stones deep in the fort, in the far down recesses that only our mage torches lit. They had slowly and steadily brought light to even the darkest of places. My men had seen me despite my attempts to shield them from my pain, and rather than tell me to get past the losses, had simply begun placing lights down, so that I need not be in complete darkness.

I worked, creating runes that I thought travelers might find useful.

My sergeant brought me the meatless stew that was our usual fare. He made sure I ate and then traded places with Carver, whose voice was remarkably smooth when he sang. His speaking voice was halting and stuttered, but he could sing.

I captured a song in a rune, and then asked him politely if we could capture another song just to offer as trade.

This delighted him, thinking of others hearing his voice. We debated over the song to capture, not wanting something too sad or too explicit.

He picked a lullaby, sang in his own people's language. I didn't know these words, but they felt like I imagined the sea would feel, not a storm fueled sea but a content sea. I could hear with his chorus the sound of the waves moving in and out, and could imagine the blanket of night draped over the shore.

I was glad that I had set up more than one stone with runes to capture the sound, as I felt it deeply in my soul. I wondered if I would ever see a sea. It was likely I wouldn't, ensconced as I was in the fort.

I set aside one of the five stones that had captured the song, so that I could keep it for myself. The rest I would need to need to figure out how to allow others to activate. The sound runes we used in the fort, they were triggered by a series of runes based off of motion in another area of the fort, thus providing a look and feel of a full fort. We could not occupy every space, but my magic allowed us to appear to be everywhere.

I worked on this and other conundrums until nearly time for the caravan to arrive. Then I went to the battlements and studied the runes laid upon the land. I couldn't see them all, tiny carvings in stone would be impossible to see. But I could feel them, like thousands of stars in the sky. I pulled power away from any that would do harm to the travelers. There would come a future, I hoped, when I could keep these in waiting instead of powered at all times.

For now I could manually power them down and up again. Although the enemy had not attacked since their onslaught, we were still at war.

So I stayed alert and watchful, my sergeant at my side, as we waited for the caravan.