“As do I, sir,” Joe responded, rising. He gestured to Mia, who got up and scampered after him.
As soon as they were away, a Bentar officer approached and bowed.
Sugasto looked at him. “Well?”
“A considerable number of coins, the usual clothing one would expect of one coming from the south, including loincloths, and the remains of what appeared to be bronze ornamentations, a rather elaborate beltlike contraption that makes noises when moved or put together whose function we cannot fathom, although it appears innocuous, and the usual saddlebag materials. Nothing else, my lord.”
“Hmmm…” the sorcerer said, thinking. “That man is one of the most dangerous nonmagical men I’ve ever met, but he does seem to be precisely what he claims.”
“You had many ways to plumb his very soul and beyond, my lord. If you still have doubts, why didn’t you use them?” the aide asked him.
“Partly because someone that strong has strong magical allies who could shield him, and partly because, to get through those, I would have most likely destroyed someone who might be extremely useful. There was also this very odd sense of fairy about him when I initially probed him that defied explanation. The girl had it, too, last night, which is why I found her so intriguing, but then she didn’t have it today. It’s the damndest thing… But he’s a mercenary all right, and a good one, and she’s definitely a properly bound slave, as both seem to be. Still…”
“If he passed all the conventional tests, why do you still doubt him?” the aide asked.
“Because, while I know I have never laid eyes on that man in my life, I could swear, after talking to him, that I’ve met him before, even spent some time with him. It’s just a feeling; there’s no rational basis for it, but I can’t get it out of my mind. Perhaps it will come to me, sooner or later, or I’ll find some good way to divine it without having to pay a price to a demon.”
“But you gave him safe conduct, my lord!”
“Northbound, yes. Where can he go that isn’t ours? As I suspected, he was illiterate. He never even tried to read the safe conduct, which is a natural act of any literate person. It is valid, but it also states that, if he tries to leave the empire, he is to be arrested using all necessary force.”
“Still, my lord, you permit a potential spy of high capability to roam freely behind us?”
“Let him look. He won’t be difficult to find. He has deep, genuine affection for that girl, perhaps even love of some kind, and she worships him as a dog worships her master. A big mercenary with a naked slave girl in the north won’t exactly be unnoticed. The same spell that protects her binds her to me. If the spell is removed, she dies horribly. If it is not, then at any time I wish I can command her as easily as I work my will upon the dead. I can summon her soul to me, no matter where she is. No, gentlemen, I don’t believe we have much to fear by giving him a little rope.”
Joe used his abilities of fairy sight to examine the pass and found nothing there. It was just what it said it was. Of course, he had no guarantee it was really a safe conduct, but that would be easy enough to test.
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, that sure turned out better than it had a right to,” he noted.
“Yes, Master.”
“But?”
“No, it is not that, Master. I have thoughts again of the flying horse.”
“Forget it. You heard what the man said. No use pushing our luck.”
“But there is one night of the full moon left, Master! The longest, just about all night! If one of us could somehow be next to that creature at moonrise…”
“Hmmm… I see what you mean. It might carry us and our supplies a pretty fair distance by dawn.”
“Then you will give me permission to do it?”
He looked around. “There’s got to be thousands of lonely men on this base. I’m not gonna leave you here for hours and hours just on the off chance you might get in there. Too dangerous.”
“Master, I am but your property, your tool. It is my function to try this if it is possible.”
“No, if anybody tries it, it should be me. I can bluff my way around for a while if this pass is any good, and I weigh more than twice what you weigh, so more could be carried.”
“Master, someone must get everything together and ready. I cannot leave without you. They would notice. Your safe conduct is nothing for me. And if I left carrying your sword, if I could, it would be noticed. But if you left, they would hardly remember the slave you came in with. I am the only one. And as you will change, too, probably to Kauri, you will be able to fly as well. But you must remember to wrap all things iron securely and only what we need and what the two of you together could lift.”
He frowned. Damn it, it did seem worth a try, and since they wouldn’t really be stealing anything, nothing would be missed. And, so long as she was not caught and managed to get away, two big “ifs,” even if it proved impractical, it wouldn’t be that much of a problem.
“You really think you can do it?”
“Master, the worst that happens is that I get caught and must be a tearful slave who lost her way. Otherwise, I shall simply become one of these men, or a Bentar, or something similar and nothing is lost. Yes, I believe I can do it.”
“All right, then. Let’s test out this safe conduct and go see the pegasus. If you can give everybody around the slip and hide nearby, it’s on. Otherwise, you get on your horse, which will be left there, and you come out with me.”
She nodded.
When you act like you have nothing to fear, it’s amazing how easily you can move around restricted areas. They were stared at, now and again, but they reached the area where the flying horses—or, as they discovered when they got there, more properly flying horse—were kept before anybody even tentatively asked for their authorization.
Joe whipped out the safe conduct, and the man who made the challenge blanched and lost all his belligerence. Sugasto was right about one brag: his army was scared stiff of him.
The pegasus was grazing, much like any other horse, the huge wings folded up and at its sides. Joe stared and stared at it and couldn’t for the life of him figure out how something this large could fly without a jet engine, but he’d had much the same feeling about Kauris, too. Not that the pegasus was a big animal; disregarding the wings it was actually a bit smaller than it looked when flying, perhaps more like a circus pony, complete with hairy hooves, although the legs looked impossibly thin, so thin that it was almost easier to believe it could fly than to believe it could stand up for long on them. Incredibly, aside from a long rope tied around its neck on one end and to a post on the other, there was no apparent stable or pen for it, and there seemed nobody around to ask.
“You really think you can do this?” he asked her, worried.
“Yes, Master, I do. There are plenty of shadowy places near the buildings there, and tall grass and rocks.”
“Like as not the guy’ll come back and fly it away. Then what?”
“Then I will return to you as something else.”
They walked away from the pegasus and toward the shadows from the nearest building, which appeared to be some kind of livery supply or maintenance shed. In a moment, they were in back of it and out of possible sight against the back of a hill. After a minute or so, he knew they’d not been seen.
He stood there a moment, looking at her. She was hairless and naked and plain-looking, a hairless little eunuch…
He grabbed her suddenly, and kissed her the way neither he nor any other man had ever kissed her before, the kind of kiss you know only in your dreams. Suddenly, he released her, whispered, “Don’t fail me,” and walked back out into the open, leaving her standing there, totally speechless.
She would never fail him, she knew. She would die for him first.
* * *
“You left her where to do what?” Marge almost shouted at him. “How could you? Her life versus maybe two weeks time?”
“It was her idea. She cam
e up with it and she just about pleaded to do it.”
“With maybe twenty thousand horny guys around and Sugasto, for Christ’s sake! Not to mention the Bentar!”
“I know, I know.”
“Yeah? You ever thought that, if she actually does make the change, she’s gonna need almost a runway to take off in, galloping the whole way? And when she gets up there in the dark she’s gonna have some big, leather-winged goons just waiting to pounce? You think a horse can fly like a Kauri?”
“No, I hadn’t thought about some of those things, and thanks for giving me more things to worry about,” he responded.
“Then why in hell did you let her do it?”
He stared at his old friend and comrade. “Because I thought she could,” he said simply.
She stared at him. “Holy cats! You’re in love with her! Oh, great! What an odd couple you two make!”
He sighed. “You’ve been a fairy too long, Marge. You don’t plan these things. Since we left Terindell, she’s been a whole different person. And, no, I know what you’re thinking—it’s not the kinky bondage stuff. I’d do away with that in a minute if the Rules allowed it. It’s beyond that sort of crap. Throw it away. Ignore the slave thing. She’s been a partner, tough, has more guts than any man of any status I ever met, as smart as anybody I know, and in just a short week she’s become my indispensable left arm. She’s got all the qualities I loved in Ti, only more so, but without the qualities that kept us apart. I don’t know another person who wouldn’t have been destroyed by what’s been done to her, yet the more she was stripped of everything, the stronger she’s grown. The laws, the Rules, and the sorcerers took everything people think they desire from her, stripping her down to her core, and that core’s proved already to be somebody remarkable. ”
She stared at him. “Boy, you got it bad.” Still, she had to admit, he had a real point. That girl was beginning to look like somebody who, were it not for the slave business, would take Husaquahr by the tail and shake it.
The odd thing was, had she not been a slave, she probably would never have revealed or even known how good she was. She’d be somebody’s wife, or maybe a political manipulator or something like that, depending on where she was, but she’d never have been forced to test herself and would never have been willing to take the kind of chances she took. When you had nothing, not even your dignity, you also had nothing to lose. With no inhibitions even possible, and with her brains and resourcefulness, Marge thought, she was probably more dangerous than anybody, even Joe in a rage.
“She’s not gonna look any better, either,” Marge pointed out.
He shrugged. “I married my first wife because she had the most stunning looks of any woman I’d ever seen. She had the soul of a viper—if she has a soul at all. With Ti, it was not only her looks but her education, her background, her breeding—all the stuff neither I nor my first wife had. I may be slow and ignorant, but even I eventually learn. I guess it was because everybody always prejudged me by my looks. This is a primo lesson in how unimportant that crap really is. Boquillas was one of the best-looking, dashing, charismatic men I ever met. Sugasto was kind of a pretty boy, too, when we first met him. It’s what’s behind the face and eyes that count.”
“Well, okay, Lover Boy, we’ll talk more about this some other time,” the Kauri said at last. “If she’s that good, and we don’t have your iron wrapped, the money secure, and all the rest of the junk ready to go, and she gets here, we’re gonna fail her.”
“Good point,” he admitted, and started work.
“You aren’t even worried about her?”
“Worried sick,” he admitted. “But if she wasn’t my slave but my partner and equal, a mercenary or Amazon or something like that, I wouldn’t have hesitated and you wouldn’t have anguished about it.”
“Yeah, okay. You handle the sword, remember. And wrap it securely.”
He nodded. “I’ll do the iron first. The rest I’ll let you get to, since I want to go down and settle the bill.”
“Holy cats! You’re gonna pay this dump?”
“Sure. I don’t want any blemishes on the record. And if they know we intend to set out before dawn, they won’t wonder why they never saw us leave.”
“Well, I just hope your pegasus can carry everything. Us, too. We’re great for sprinting and medium flights, but these wings won’t match the kind a flying horse would have.”
“The guy I saw flying the thing looked about average. What’s a Kauri weigh, anyway?”
“Dunno. Haven’t had to worry about a scale in years now. Fairy construction is very different from human, though. I’d say forty pounds, give or take. Just a wild guess. Still, it means not having to worry about straps and seat belts.”
“Easily within limits, even with this stuff.” He picked up the newly bought hafiid, then tossed it. “Won’t have to worry about that, thanks to Sugasto. I wish we had a decent magician along, though. I’d love to know if he added anything nasty to that spell.”
“I can read some of it,” she told him, packing away. “Hey— you better take care of that bill now, or you’re either gonna have to fly it down or she’s gonna have to carry somebody the size of the manager.”
“Good point,” he admitted, took out some money, and left the room.
For Mia, the waiting was the worst part. Not because it was so boring in and of itself, but because she had nothing to do but think. Why had he kissed her like that? Why had he kissed her at all, let alone with such—such passion. They had made love, yes, but when they thought themselves married, it had been fun but, well, ordinary. And the last time, it was an act of kindness, she knew, to help her forget her shearing. This one kiss had been different, almost, well, electric. It had been hours now, and she still felt tingly and turned on. It wasn’t the sort of thing that could be so convincingly faked—well, after living with him for months now, it wasn’t something he could fake, she knew.
It couldn’t be physical. The shearing and the removal of all adornments made her looked like an eleven-year-old eunuch.
She was finally snapped out of her confused thoughts by the appearance of a large red-bearded man in furs and horned helmet coming toward the pegasus. The man looked particularly odd because it was still fairly warm out, and he had to be sweltering in that outfit. The reason for his garb was apparent when he went to the shed and started assembling the gear and taking it over to the pegasus.
He’s going to fly off! Too soon! Too soon! she thought, disappointed beyond words. This was all for nothing, just folly.
A soldier approached the man, saluted, and said, “Are you certain you want to risk it? You might not make it until after dark, and you know how bad the pegasus’ night vision is.”
She hadn’t thought of that, either!
“Oh, ya, ya. No problem,” the fur-clad man responded. “Ve only go little ways. Besides, is still full moon.”
And, sure enough, he prepared to go. She watched with a mixture of sunken heart and total failure as the man created his strange saddle, strapped in, rode the pegasus, albeit uncomfortably, as a horse out to the main road, checked something—the wind, she realized, seeing a flag on the shed—waited, then kicked the steed into a gallop, going faster and faster down the road, and, suddenly, those great wings just spread out and the flying horse lifted, flapped a number of times, gained altitude, and then picked a direction and was off. The soldier, too, watched him go, then shut up the shed and secured it, then walked off.
Now what? she wondered to herself, looking around. The sun was very low on the horizon, the shadows long, but it had not yet set, and she would have close to an hour of darkness before moonrise. Some cover, yes, but there were a lot of people—and others—around. Where to go?
Even if she could evade these soldiers and make the front gate, it would matter little. It wasn’t so much the distance, as taking total pot luck on what she’d become. A horse wouldn’t do—it would be considered a stray or runaway and kept there, maybe tied
up. She had thought soldier or Bentar, but now she remembered Sugasto’s spell. The were curse usually didn’t affect spells, which was why the ring remained. Sugasto had said that she not only didn’t need to wear clothes, she couldn’t. A naked soldier of whatever race, particularly with a ring in his nose, wouldn’t be much of an improvement over now.
It had seemed so simple a few hours earlier. A lot had somehow seemed so simple a few hours earlier.
What around here could she become that would both allow her to escape this place and also be of some use? She had to find it fast, if it was here at all. The sun was setting, and the moon would surely follow. Not even a Sugasto could change that.
Joe and Marge both knew they’d have to allow some time after moonrise for Mia to make her escape, if, in fact, she had been successful.
Joe, once more a Kauri, waited with Marge for something, anything to appear.
“If she pulled it off, great,” Joe said worriedly. “But, right now, I’d just settle for her getting back here as anything.” He went over and stared out the window into the darkness.
Suddenly this huge face descended as if on a lift until it covered the entire window. Leathery nostrils flared, and two mean black eyes peered out from a skull that seemed made of molten rock.
Having no place to flee, Joe stepped back suddenly and did what he probably would have done even as Joe. He screamed.
Marge, literally on the back wall of the room, got hold of herself and looked at the monstrous face of the nazga.
“Hold it, Joe!” she shouted. “That damned thing’s got a tiny little ring between the nostrils!”
CHAPTER 10
THE ROAD TO HYPBOREYA
When great quests slow and threaten to bore, something will always come along to speed it up. This is not to guarantee a successful or even more rapid end, but certainly a more interesting journey.
—The Books of Rules, XV, 251(d)
Songs of the Dancing Gods dg-4 Page 23