Pathfinder (Pathfinder 1)

Loaf was a tired old man. He might still look strong to others, and act vigorous enough, but that was the problem: It was all an act. Things needed to be done, and he did them, but if he had been left alone, if he had had no responsibilities, he would have been content to sit in a rocking chair, close his eyes, and dream. Not the dreams of sleep, but the dreams of memory.

The trouble was that half those memories were unpleasant. Not so much the memories of killing, though Loaf had known his share of battles; in the frenzy of war, it was invigorating to slice and probe and hack and slay, especially considering that if he did not keep his attention fully engaged, he himself would have been sliced, probed, hacked, and slain. Rather his unpleasant memories were of the words he wished he hadn’t said, or the clever things he didn’t say because he only thought of them later.

The quarrels he could have avoided; the quarrels that would have been worth starting if only he had thought of the witty insults that would have brought him the pleasure of a well-earned split knuckle or sliced lip.

He could put up with the memories of missed opportunity and other regrets, for there were other memories—childhood friends and enemies, all remembered now with fondness. The dire fears of youth that now he knew were not to be feared at all. The childish longings that, fulfilled or not, he now wished he could feel again.

His life with Leaky was a good one, and he was not going to disappear from her life, which is what it would amount to, if he were to sit in that chair and dream. They had an inn to run, and it was a thing worth doing—the rivermen, scoundrels though so many of them were, needed a safe haven at this spot on the river, and this town needed somebody to keep the fire of ambition sparking and snapping here in this little strip between the water and the woods. He kept hoping someone else would come along with the spunk to make things happen, but there were no others besides himself and Leaky.

And Leaky was really the one with the spunk; Loaf merely acted as if he cared as much about things as she, because it made her happy when she believed he shared her feelings.

So in a way it had been a relief to join the boys on their downriver trip, and get away from the duties of Leaky’s Landing. She would manage splendidly while he was gone, Loaf knew that. And these boys, with their magic and their mirthful talk. They were ambitious, or at least Rigg was. Determined to fulfil his duty to his dead father, or so Rigg said—but Loaf saw in Rigg what he had seen in a few of the commanders he had served under: the fire of hope. Rigg wanted to do something that mattered. He wanted to change the world, and because he was a good lad, he wanted to change it for the better.

Umbo was more like Loaf—content to follow along, to let Rigg set forth the goals that they’d pursue. Not that Umbo was above grumbling when he didn’t like the duties that Rigg’s ambition imposed on him. Good soldiers grumbled all the time—but they followed the plans laid out for them all the same.

But when Rigg was taken captive, and Loaf and Umbo fled the boat and went back upriver, Loaf began what might have been the happiest time of his life. Oh, he felt bad that Rigg was arrested and when he thought about what might be happening to him, he worried. But mostly he just lived day to day with Umbo, like a soldier on the march, teaching the boy what he needed to learn, watching as Umbo struggled to do things that Loaf couldn’t imagine doing. Umbo was consumed with his need to learn how to save his friend by traveling backward in time, but since Loaf knew that it was beyond him, he was free to watch, to encourage, to protect, and, as near as Loaf could understand the feeling, to love him the way a fat

her might love a son.

Back home in Leaky’s Landing, his old duties descended on him, but he bore them lightly, knowing that he would have to leave again, as soon as Umbo figured things out. Leaky noticed it, too, saying to him one time, “It’s like you’re not even here, you lazy man.” Little did she know how the rocking chair called to him even in the best of times, and how gladly he’d slip off into dreams—even into dreams of Leaky herself, so much easier to abide than the demanding woman that he loved but who wearied him out with all the chores that she imposed.

She did impose them, even when he thought of them himself and didn’t wait to be asked. He always did them because of her, even if she didn’t know it.

Hurry up, Umbo, he wanted to say. Let’s get back on the river, drift down to O, then on to Aressa Sessamo or the edges of the wallfold, wherever Rigg decides that you must go. I’ll help you do your work for your friend.

So Loaf was happy on the late afternoon when Umbo came to him in a vision—a waking vision, suddenly standing in front of him where Loaf stood chopping wood behind the inn—and said, “Stop chopping now and go inside so you can keep Leaky from having to kill a mad drunk. And if it happens in the next five minutes, then I’ll be ready to go back to O.”

Loaf took the ax over his shoulder, walked into the inn, and sure enough, there was a riverman who must have drunk a jug of something stronger than ale before he arrived, and now was threatening Leaky with his heavy staff if she didn’t serve him “the real drink and not that lily-water that rich men dip their fingers in.” The man slammed the staff onto the counter with all his strength—and no one had more strength with a quarterstaff than a poleman.

Leaky was going for the throwing knife she used to protect herself against men too strong to allow them to come within reach of her. Loaf well knew that the riverman was ten seconds away from lying dead on the floor with a knife in his eye. So without even thinking, Loaf brought down the ax onto the quarterstaff where it lay, careful not to use so much force that he’d damage the oaken counter, but plenty to break the staff in two.

Horrified at this outrage to his drunken dignity, let alone the damage to his staff, the riverman roared and turned to face Loaf, brandishing the nub of his staff with the broken end ready to jab into the innkeeper’s face. Loaf kicked him in the knee with his heavy boot, again being careful only to bruise the joint, not ruin him by breaking it, for such an injury would be slow to heal and the riverman would run out of money long before he was able to get back on a boat and work again. His offense was being an angry drunk; no doubt he was affable enough when the drink wasn’t in him.

The riverman lay on the floor yowling with pain. Loaf looked around for the man’s compatriots, and they soon came forward to drag the man out of the inn. “You didn’t need to kick him so hard,” one of them said to Loaf. “He meant no harm.”

“I saved his life,” said Loaf, “and the knee’s not broke.”

“Spraint though, most like,” said the sullen man.

“Keep your friend drinking ale and he’ll come to no grief. The strong spirits are too much for him, and you know it.”

“He wouldn’t’ve hurt nobody.”

“My wife had no way of knowing that,” said Loaf, “even if it were true, which it isn’t, because I think this man has killed before.”

“Only by accident,” said the man.

He said this just as he was maneuvering his friend through the door, and suddenly there was a thunk and Leaky’s throwing knife quivered in the doorjamb not three inches from his head. The man jumped away from the knife, which meant knocking down the drunk and the man trying to hold him up on the other side. They lay in a jumble on the floor, like eels, and all the other men in the river house laughed as if it were the funniest thing they’d ever seen, which, apart from a drowning landlubber, it probably was.

The noise brought Umbo in from the kitchen, where he’d been washing glasses and bowls. “Why didn’t you call for me?” he asked Leaky.

“If I’d needed to throw something as big as you, I’d have called sure enough,” said Leaky. “There’s not a thing you could have done.”

The drunk and his friends were up and out the door now, and Loaf roared with laughter as Leaky planted her foot in the drunk’s rear and sent him, and his friends, sprawling in the damp dirt outside.

With the door closed, and the rest of the guests turned back to their food and drink, Loaf pulled Leaky’s knife out of the doorframe and gathered Leaky and Umbo behind the bar. “There was something Umbo could do,” said Loaf. “And he did it. Why do you think I came in here? He warned me that you were about to kill a mad drunk, my love, and sent me inside with my ax in hand.”

Umbo grinned. “Did I? Or . . . will I?”