The Serpent

by David Drake

  But the rank isn’t something I’m proud of. I trained very hard to become a Champion of Mankind, and that I’m proud of.

  “Lord Pal,” said Beddoes. “Do you know what the key you’re carrying is?”

  I grimaced and said, “It was found in the Waste and cost a man’s life. It’s an Ancient artifact. I think that Master Guntram and I will be able to learn more with a little time and concentration. Now, do you know what it is, Master Beddoes?”

  “I know what it may be,” said Beddoes. “And I will happily offer you any reasonable price on my hunch. I’ve discussed this with Count Stokes and he will back my investment. What I will not do, Lord Pal, is tell someone else what I guess.”

  Stokes nodded.

  I looked at Guntram, who was maintaining a straight face. I smiled at Beddoes, whom I really disliked, and said, “Master Beddoes, I set a great deal of store on knowledge but very little on money and the things most people choose to buy with it. I think Master Guntram and I will pursue knowledge in our own way. Thank you nevertheless.”

  “You are an arrogant young man,” Beddoes said with controlled fury. He turned to Guntram. “And you, master, as I may say without libelling my betters, are an idiot if you’re encouraging Lord Pal in his folly. You will never find the purpose of this key if you don’t already know.”

  “That may be,” Guntram said. “But I’m a fortunate man. I’m fortunate enough to know Lord Pal, the Leader’s trusted confidant and a man with an Ancient artifact of unguessed power.”

  He turned toward Lady Irene, who had been listening attentively to Beddoes. “Lady Irene, you’ve now seen the lady whom you were brought here to release. Are you able to do that?”

  From the way Beddoes stared at Guntram’s back he would like to crush the old man into the ground. I kept watching carefully in case Beddoes tried a physical attack anyway. It would be a crazy thing to attempt, but Guntram had been frail even before his months in a cyst.

  “I think so, yes,” Irene said. She took her yarrow stalks out of their wrapper, then looked hard at Marlene again. “What happens to Lady Marlene when I free her?” Irene said.

  “What?” said Count Stokes. “Well, she goes back to the palace with me.”

  “What if she doesn’t want to?” Irene asked. “She’s very young.”

  “She’s my wife!” Stokes said. “And she’s only five years younger than I am.”

  “Lord Pal,” Irene said to me. “Unless you agree to give the girl at least a week to make an adult decision as to her future, I am not proceeding further.”

  “Who do you think you are to give orders?” Stokes said angrily.

  “She’s the only person who can free Lady Marlene,” I said. “Which makes her the person whose opinion matters. Furthermore, I think her request is a reasonable one. And before you ask why my opinion matters, I’m the man who asked Lady Irene to come here and therefore am responsible to the Leader for her well-being.”

  “You’re presuming on my good nature, Lord Pal,” Stokes said.

  I was doing nothing of the sort but I kept my mouth shut rather than irritate him further. Lady Irene had made a reasonable offer and I’d said I would back her up on it. If Stokes was halfway reasonable he’d agree and there was no problem.

  “All right,” he said. “Lady Marlene has a week to make up her mind as to whether or not to keep her bargain and become Countess of Midian.”

  Irene looked at me. “Lord Pal,” she said, “you will stand in the place of a father in reviewing the lady’s marriage settlement.”

  “I neither said nor intended anything of the sort,” I said to Irene.

  “You must!” she snapped. “Her father isn’t here and she needs someone protecting her!”

  “Her father agreed to the terms twenty-five years ago,” Stokes said. “He signed the documents. And besides, he’s dead these past ten years!”

  “All the more reason for Lord Pal to examine the paperwork!” Lady Irene said directly to the Count.

  “I’m not a law clerk,” I said mildly.

  “I have some training,” Lord Osbourn said unexpectedly. “I could take a look at them. The major heads are all pretty standard.”

  “Yes, all right!” the Count said. “Now will you get on with it?”

  “Lord Pal, Lord Osbourn?” Irene said. “You are guarantors of this agreement?”

  “Yes,” I said. Osbourn said, “On my honor as a Champion of Mankind!”

  I believed in Osbourn’s honor without any need of an oath. He’d risked his life to save mine.

  “I’ll go ahead, then,” Lady Irene said.

  She faced the clear section of the enclosure and threw down the yarrow stalks at her feet. The result didn’t surprise me or I suppose Guntram because we’d seen the lady’s work before. The enclosure shattered—less like a glass barrier breaking than like a sand castle when the tide rolls in. Lady Marlene squeaked a cry of startlement as clear dust flowed over her bare feet, covering them to the ankles. She tried to run but the dust gripped her like wet sand; she would have fallen if Lord Osbourn hadn’t been there to grab her around the shoulders and hold her upright.

  “You’re all right, milady,” Osbourn said. “We’ve got you now!”

  “Let go of my wife, Lord Osbourn,” the Count said, trying to push past Osbourn with no more success than you’d expect. I realized that Lord Osbourn was not only preventing Lady Marlene from falling down, he’d neatly blocked Stokes away from the lady.

  “As soon as I’m sure Lady Marlene is firm on her feet,” Osbourn said, “I will move out of her way. Milady, are you ready for me to release you?”

  Using her firm grip on Osbourn’s arm, Marlene pulled her feet free of the crystalline dust. She said, “Thank you, sir. May I ask who you are?”

  Marlene now stood on the low pile of dust, but she made no attempt to get farther away from Osbourn.

  “I am your husband, Countess!” Stokes shouted. “I have finally succeeded in freeing you from that commoner Hector’s clutches!”

  “I think the person who freed you, milady, is Lady Irene here,” I said, gesturing to Irene as she bent to pick up her yarrow stalks again. I noticed that Captain Tsetzas and his men had begun moving closer. I hadn’t seen Stokes signal them, but quite clearly the Count wasn’t getting his will with the situation.

  The business could easily go in a bad way. “Lord Osbourn,” I said. “I think your cousin Lady May would expect us to be polite, don’t you?”

  Osbourn stiffened as I spoke. “Yes of course,” he said, stepping aside from Lady Marlene, though their fingertips continued to touch. “Sorry, Lord Pal.”

  I didn’t like the Count either, but making love to a man’s wife in front of him seemed at best discourteous. Though it seemed that Lady Marlene’s marriage was at best doubtful.

  He bowed at the waist toward the Count. He said, “Your Lordship, I would appreciate it if you would introduce this lady to Osbourn of Madringor, a friend of Lord Pal of Beune and like him one of the Leader’s Champions of Mankind.”

  “Countess,” Stokes said. Apparently he was willing to be polite since I had been. “Lords Osbourn and Pal are both heroes from Dun Add who have been helping me retrieve you from the commoner who stole you away. I’m very grateful to them, and to their companion—”

  He nodded in the direction of Lady Irene. I wasn’t sure whether Stokes couldn’t remember her name or whether he was just unwilling to speak it.

  Irene didn’t need an intercessor. She settled her bundle of stalks in her left elbow and stepped to Marlene and drew the girl to her embrace. “Lady Marlene, I’m Irene, the Lord of Banft’s daughter. I’m to be your guide and companion during the next week while you determine what you want to do in the longer term.”

  “I don’t understand this, Lady Irene,” Marlene said. “Where am I to stay?”

  “Anywhere you bloody please!” Stokes said angrily. “You’re the Countess of Midian.”

  “I think,” said Irene, “t
hat while you’re making up your mind, you could stay in the boat here with me and your protectors, those two Champions.”

  I thought Stokes might be about to give his opinion, but he didn’t and I relaxed again.

  “That’s very kind of you, Irene,” Marlene said. “Could we get my clothes from inside? Hector brought me things each time he came back. I don’t know if it’s in style because I see very few women from here.”

  She gestured, apparently indicating the gap they were standing in where the clear portion of the enclosure had been. Lady Irene squeezed Marlene’s right hand and said, “Yes of course. Let’s do that right now!”

  The two women turned and went deeper into what had been the enclosure before Lady Irene broke it open. Stokes followed the group. About half his guards went inside with him while the remainder of the twenty or so remained grouped loosely near the opening with Captain Tsetzas.

  I went back to the boat to tell Baga what was going on and to make sure there’d be no difficulty with another guest aboard. There shouldn’t be.

  Baga wasn’t waiting in the cockpit; the door of his compartment was closed. We’d made it to Midian in a single reach, a hard run in a boat as loaded as ours had been. I didn’t blame Baga for deciding that he had finished his immediate job and had a right to shut himself off and go to sleep.

  The spare compartment seemed to be in fine shape. I assumed Marlene would want it but she might decide to share Irene’s quarters for safety’s sake. Though Lady Irene herself appeared to be giving me and Lord Osbourn the benefit of the doubt for the moment. The ladies were a long way from friends if they didn’t include me and Osbourn, so it might just be recognition of necessity.

  Guntram had followed me to the boat. To my surprise, Master Beddoes had come along also. I met him at the hatchway. I didn’t know of any reason he shouldn’t come aboard the boat, but I didn’t like him and would prefer that he stay out. “Master Beddoes? Have you business with us?”

  “I was hoping that you gentlemen could help me,” Beddoes said. He didn’t appear to be offended by my attitude. “You’re both Makers and you’ve seen Lady Irene work in the past?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Sirs,” Beddoes said. “How does she do it? Is there some magic in her sticks?”

  “I don’t have the faintest idea of what she does,” I said. “So far as I can tell, those are just dried yarrow stalks. She told me she doesn’t really need them, though they make it quicker to get her mind into the correct angles. Whatever that means.”

  “She’s seeing something that I’m not seeing,” Guntram said. “Have you ever tried to explain to a non-Maker what it is that you do?”

  I had—I guess pretty much every Maker has tried to explain to a layman. It’s like trying to tell a blind man about the difference between Red and Blue.

  “We’ve always known that women’s brains are different from men’s,” Guntram said. “I took that to mean that women couldn’t become Makers. Apparently the Ancients and our colleague Master Hector knew a different truth.”

  I thought of the teaching machine Irene had found in the Underworld and brought back to Dun Add. But Master Sans had reached the Underworld by himself, though afterward he’d trained Lady Irene from childhood to simplify the process.

  There was loud shouting outside. I looked past Beddoes and saw the group of guards at the former enclosure scattering. Beddoes turned and looked also. He shouted, “It’s a monster from the Waste! Let me in your boat.”

  I stepped aside and he shot past me, which cleared the doorway and let me out the tiny lintel of the hatchway. A giant had come from the Waste onto landingplace. It was built like a squat human but stood twelve feet tall and carried an iron pole half his own height in his right hand. Captain Tsetzas shouted and charged the giant. He paused and looked over his shoulder to see how many of his men were following him. None were. He shouted again and resumed his charge, holding his weapon out in front of him as if he were going to stab the giant with a spear.

  The giant made an overhead swing of his long club as if he were trying to drive a tent peg into the ground. Tsetzas’s body wasn’t stiff enough to do that, but a layer of the man was between the earth and the clubhead when it buried half its length. The giant looked strong, but that understated the truth.

  Sam came bounding up to me, sensing trouble. I shouted, “Osbourn, wait for me!” and linked with Sam.

  The giant turned and walked through the opening of the enclosure. The women and half the guards were still inside. I wondered if the giant—and earlier the shrews—were drawn by the structure or the woman imprisoned in it. Guntram could tell me when things were sorted out.

  The guards were moving, either to confront the monster or because that was the only way out. The giant swung, horizontally this time. The club struck three men without slowing noticeably. The first guard was almost cut in two: the iron was blunt but it moved inexorably.

  The surviving guards scattered back. I could see the Count in the background. He’d drawn his weapon and shield but he crowded close to the gray wall, figuring it would hinder the giant’s swings.

  Lord Osbourn came straight for the giant. “No!” I shouted. “Wait for me!”

  He couldn’t hear me when I was up a level with my weapon live. The giant backhanded his iron pole, shedding the guard’s corpse that still clung to it. Osbourn threw himself flat. The club passed over him.

  Osbourn got up on his toes and left hand and launched himself toward the giant’s feet. His shield was still in its holster. He’d apparently decided it would be no protection against the massive rod. He launched himself the rest of the way and buried his weapon in the giant’s left ankle.

  Instead of swinging again, the giant changed his grip on the club and raised it to drive the butt straight down into Lord Osbourn, who tried to roll out of the way. The blow missed because the giant was toppling onto its left side.

  I arrived in time to help Osbourn to his feet at a safe distance from the tip of the club, which was still swinging back and forth. I didn’t need Sam’s agility after all: the giant wasn’t going any greater distance than it could crawl.

  Osbourn and I shut down our weapons. I said, “What do we do with it now? Do you suppose archers can kill it?”

  He looked back at the flailing giant. It hadn’t made a sound since it appeared. “I sure don’t want to get close with it again,” he said. “Let’s get out of the way and let Count Stokes figure out what to do with it.”

  We walked back toward the boat. Sam was at my side and Christiana had come to join Osbourn. She wouldn’t have been any use in the fight as it developed but she didn’t have the instinct to get involved in a brawl the way Sam did.

  I looked at Osbourn and said, “You should have waited for me. You knew I’d be coming.”

  “It worked out all right,” Osbourn said. “I’d seen how slow he was recovering.”

  “You should have waited,” I repeated.

  Lord Osbourn stopped dead and looked at me. “What would you have done, Pal?” he demanded. “If you’d been inside with the women? Would you have waited?”

  I thought about the really serious fights I’d been in and my face twisted. “I never had good sense,” I said. I’d always wanted to get it over with. “But you should have waited for me to come up from behind it.”

  Osbourn laughed and waved me up the boat’s steps ahead of him. “All I want,” he said, “is to make my teacher proud.”

  “Well, you’ve done that,” I said. “But I wish your teacher showed better sense himself.”

  But the truth was, I didn’t. I wouldn’t respect myself if my instinct was to hang back in a fight. If the same habit of mind had rubbed off on Lord Osbourn, I was pleased.

  Baga, looking past us out the hatchway, called, “The ladies are coming. They’ve got a slew of men along too.”

  I stopped and looked back. Guntram and Ladies Irene and Marlene had left the former enclosure. Behind them came half a dozen civ
ilians carrying armloads of fabric. It wasn’t organized by containers. “Where are you going to put all that?” Osbourn asked me in a low voice.

  “We’ve got an extra compartment,” I said. “It’ll all fit if it squishes down. She won’t be able to find anything till we’re back on the ground—but she won’t need anything till then.”

  Lady Irene came straight up to me. “We’ve brought it all,” she said. “Will that be all right? Hector wasn’t strikingly generous but over the years Marlene accumulated many outfits. I suppose we could have left the older ones, but they’re all the girl has.”

  “We can carry them,” I said. “Baga can help you stow them. But you know the Count will give her pretty much anything she wants.”

  “That one!” Irene said scornfully. “She’ll wait a week as she promised, but take my word for it—she won’t stay here with that old man.”

  “I promised too,” I said. I wasn’t best pleased to hear about Marlene’s intention—or at least what Irene said it was, though I didn’t doubt it. That wouldn’t encourage Stokes to join the Commonwealth. But Stokes wasn’t my liege: Jon was. And Jon knew me too well to imagine that I wouldn’t keep my word to the girl I’d given it to.

  “In any case we’ve got space,” I repeated.

  Marlene and Osbourn came back out of the boat; four of the servants holding armloads of clothing were still waiting to go in.

  Irene called sharply, “Lord Osbourn? I need to return to the enclosure. Will you escort me, please?”

  “What?” said Osbourn. “Sure.”

  He paused for a moment and glanced at me. I waved him on. “I suspect I can handle anything going on here,” I said. They went off together. To my surprise Lady Marlene came over and joined me.

  “Ma’am?” I said to the girl. It was the first time I’d taken a good look at her. She was a lovely brunette; and looked even younger than she had at a glance.

  “I asked Irene to arrange that I talk to you alone,” she said. “She’s telling Lord Osbourn that she left one of her yarrow stalks behind.”

  “I don’t have any secrets from my friend Osbourn,” I said, feeling uncomfortable. I wished Lady May were here to deal with women on a personal basis because I was terrible at it.