“This chocolate is really very good, isn’t it?” Kade said, her normal calm restored,
“Aunt? How many men in a cohort?”
“Quite a lot, dear. We shall certainly be safe from goblins with four cohorts to guard us. I have too much porridge …”
“But no Oopari! Why did you dismiss him like that?”
Kade blinked innocently. “Because he wanted me to. Are you sure you wouldn’t like some of my porridge?”
“Whatever he wanted, I would feel safer with him close.”
Then a ladylike foot tapped Inos’s ankle, Kade flickered her eyes warningly, and her voice faded almost to a mumble. “It was for their own good, dear.”
Inos became suddenly more aware of all the men around her. They all had their backs turned, and they all seemed to be intent on other things, but …
“We don’t want any accidents.” Then her aunt added in a more normal tone, “The porridge is not too terribly lumpy.”
“How many men in a cohort?”
“Five hundred, I think, but it may be more. I’m not sure.”
Now Inos understood. She felt very foolish. Four cohorts? On important occasions in Krasnegar, Sergeant Thosolin could muster eighteen men-at-arms.
3
Dusk on the fourth day … Rap’s belly roared louder than the storm now, but that was partly because the wind was fading. There was not much new snow coming down.
He had been chewing on a scrap of leather all afternoon, and then his farsight had sensed movement in the distance—right at the limit of his range, a small herd of sheep or goats. He could not tell if they were wild or stray, but there was no herder with them. He had started to lace up his moccasins, making Little Chicken want to know why. There had been an argument, the goblin insisting he was a much better marksman, Rap that he was more likely to find the quarry in these conditions.
The final result had been a compromise. Little Chicken had gone to do the killing, and Rap had sent Fleabag to drive the prey toward him.
So Rap now sat in lonely humiliation, listening to the wind’s mocking wail, watching the shadows leap, and licking his lips at the thought of meat. His role might not be very manly or even dignified, but it was hard work. The herd was still out at his limit and seemed reluctant to come closer. Even controlling Fleabag was difficult at that distance. Rap’s head had started to ache as it had not ached since his first days with Andor—
Forget Andor! Concentrate!
“You! Boy!”
With a wail, Rap released his mental hold on Fleabag and the herd. He spun around, then fell back on his elbows at the unbelievable apparition in the corner.
A huge white chair had appeared there—no, it was a throne, with a dais below it and a silken canopy above. It was built of interlocked curved rods that he recognized right away as walrus ivory, all intricately carved and inlaid with gems and gold; it was grander even than King Holindarn’s chair of state, which he had used only twice in Rap’s memory, on very solemn occasions. It glittered, as if it sat in a brighter place than this smoke-filled, dingy hovel.
There was a woman on it. She was very tiny, slumped slacklimbed in the corner of the cushioned seat, her legs sticking out like a child’s. Her scanty hair was white and straggling loose. She was very old, scraggy, and stark naked.
He echoed her. “You!”
Hastily he turned his head away. She could not possibly be real, but even so—no clothes! It was the same old woman he had seen the first time he had raided the Ravens’ larder. He had been very hungry then, too. It must be a form of madness, a flaw in his character. Real men did not go crazy just because they hadn’t eaten for a couple of days. Real men could starve for weeks before they went mad. He wasn’t a hardened woodsman like Little Chicken, he was a soft town boy, a mere stablehand—
“The faun again!” The ancient cackled in shrill amusement.
Rap closed his eyes to concentrate … Sure enough, his farsight detected nothing there except fragments of firewood and a snowdrift. He was hallucinating again. Determined not to be distracted from his purpose, he reached out for Fleabag.
“Faun! You stop that! Don’t you know better?”
“Huh?” Despite himself, Rap’s farsight switched to the source of that voice. This time it saw. This time there was someone there. He twisted around again. The throne had gone. The little old woman was standing much closer and, mercifully, she was now dressed in goblin robes, as she had been the first time he saw her. Now she seemed to be quite solid and real. He moaned.
“Farsight, too?” The old woman waggled a finger at him. “That’s all right—safe enough—but that mastery of yours! Don’t you know that sorcerers can feel power being used like that?”
Dumbly he shook his head.
She walked a few steps closer, peering around. “Well, we can. Not that anyone but me’s likely to be watching in these parts. It’s all right to look and listen, see, but do anything, make things happen, and you start ripples. You’re strong, lad. You ought to know that. Why, you’ve got goblin tattoos!”
A sorceress! Andor had warned him that sorcerers were always on the lookout for more words of power. He had betrayed himself to a sorceress! Rap felt the hair on the back of his head stir. He began dragging himself backward on his elbows, across the dirt floor.
The woman followed, cackling. “A faun with goblin markings? That’s new.” She grinned at him like a skull, revealing a perfect set of teeth. “Goblin faun! What …” She hissed angrily. “No foresight? You blocking my foresight? No, you’re not capable. Who?”
“Who—who are you?”
“Me? You ought to know. Ought to guess, see? Who are you, more to the point?”
“I’m Rap … Flat Nose of Raven Totem.”
“Raven?” She looked quickly around once more. “Where is Death Bird? What’ve you done with him?”
“N-nothing!” Rap quailed before a blast of anger as palpable as heat from a farrier’s brazier. “Little Chicken, you mean? He’s out hunting—”
“Where? Show me!”
Show? Rap reached out to point with a shaking hand, toward where the goblin was wallowing in a thigh-deep drift, a long way off.
The old woman stared that way, then shrilled her senile laugh. “So he is! Well, all right. But you take care of him, you hear! Very precious, that one! See, you’re not to harm him!”
He? Rap? Harm Little Chicken? The woman was as mad as a gunny sack of foxes!
Bracing up his courage, Rap felt for the herd, and it had vanished. Fleabag was heading home again. Supper had fled, therefore, and he remembered that he had been hungry the first time he had met this strange sorceress. Even as he watched, she began to shimmer and fade, and his farsight had already lost her. “I’m hungry!” he said. “I mean, Death Bird is hungry!”
She seemed to solidify for a moment and study him, head on one side, leering. “Fauns!” she sneered. Then she uttered a shrill, childish snigger and clapped her hands.
Simultaneously she vanished and a curly-horned, black-woolled sheep thudded to the floor just before Rap’s toes. The impact shook the cabin, and a great cloud of dust and snow shot out from beneath the animal. With a scream of alarm, it scrabbled to its feet. There was no doubt at all that the sheep was real.
After her warning, Rap dared not try his mastery on the animal, and his limbs were still shaking so much that he took longer than he should have done to corner it. Cutting a sheep’s throat with a stone knife was harder than he had expected. He splashed a lot of blood on himself and was butted a few times. But why a black sheep? Had that been easiest for the mad old sorceress to see in the snowy bush, or was she making fun of a faun with goblin tattoos? Rap was too hungry to care.
He was eating roast mutton when Little Chicken returned, empty-handed, exhausted, and furious. But for the first time, the goblin seemed to be impressed by Rap’s occult powers.
4
With a louder crack than usual, the rear of the carriage dropped, twisting t
o the left. It came to a shuddering halt.
“Are you all right, your Highness?” Andor inquired solicitously. He and Inos were crushed pleasantly together, holding hands under the lap rug, but Aunt Kade was now suspended above them, grimly hanging onto a strap.
“Quite all right, thank you, except that perhaps my highness is now a little more noticeable than usual.”
Andor laughed appreciatively. “I shall see what has happened this time,” he said, unlinking his fingers from Inos’ and preparing to disembark. There were loud shoutings and nervous horse noises outside. Water splattered on the roof, although the rain had been showing signs of turning to snow. Andor opened the door and stepped out gracefully, managing both rapier and cloak with apparent ease. Kade clambered across to sit next to her niece on the lower side of the canted vehicle. She took up a lot more room on the bench than Andor had.
The fast progress they had made at first had now ended. On the straight and smooth highways of the Impire, the carriage had thundered along almost as fast as a rider could have done, but now they were in the mountains. The weather had turned sulky and the road upward, soon degenerating into a track. Farmland and pasture had given way to forest, and the way had become difficult, with tree branches often reaching out to finger the carriage as it passed.
Since the loathsome Yggingi had appeared with his men, a deep dread had fallen over Inos. The thought of two thousand Imperial soldiers invading Krasnegar was terrifying—especially these troops. She could recall being told in Kinvale that the local military were a despicable lot, not to be compared with the elite corps found near Hub, and that to be posted to a remote frontier station like Pondague was a humiliation, or even a punishment, inflicted only on the rabble and scum of the army. Proconsul Yggingi was rabble and scum, also, in Inos’ opinion, but she had not said so.
In fact she had not dared discuss the matter at all, with either Andor or Aunt Kade, and they, too, were confining their talk to trivialities. Partly this common discretion came from fear of being overheard, for now the coachman and the footmen who clung to the carriage were all Yggingi’s men, and their ears were close to the windows. Far more worrisome to Inos, though, was the horrifying certainty that she had been betrayed.
Somehow the Imperial government had learned of her father’s bad health and had decided to seize Krasnegar before the thanes of Nordland did. Only Hub itself could have mobilized the army. That meant time—time for reports and orders to flow back and forth, time for consultations and decisions.
But how had the Imperial officials known? Andor must have passed through Pondague on his way south. He could have alerted the odious Yggingi to the opportunity. Yggingi might then have headed for Kinvale, while Andor reported to some more senior officer before continuing on to inform Inos.
In the clear light of day such fancies seemed quite absurd. One glance at Andor’s honest face, one smile from those steady eyes, and all her doubts blew away like dust. But in the long hours of night, as she tossed in unfamiliar beds in dank, smelly hostelries, they became all too terrifyingly real. Inos had invented stories where Andor had been an Imperial spy all along. She had frightened herself half to death with doubts about his background, his parentage, his childhood. She knew so little about all of those, and they seemed so very important when she was alone … yet they seemed so trivial when she was with him that she never seemed to remember to bring them up in conversation, as she had so often promised herself she would. When he was with her, she could face the future with courage—she would face the whole Impire, if necessary, and the jotnar, as well! Away from him, she felt like a lost child.
There was only Andor … and Kade. But someone had betrayed Inos.
It had been her aunt who had made the decision to journey north—a sudden and very improbable venture for a woman of her years. Kade had at least suspected that Holindarn’s health was failing even before she left Krasnegar. She would certainly champion an Imperial claim over Nordland’s. To believe that Princess Kadolan would betray her brother and niece was quite impossible … and yet somehow it seemed no more incredible than doubting Andor. One of the two must be a traitor and Inos did not know which.
She felt very small, and alone, and vulnerable. She felt like a hunted animal, fleeing home to its lair with a dangerous predator in close pursuit. She had nowhere else to go and yet her lair would be no safe refuge, for the monster would follow her in.
Obviously she was on her way to Krasnegar whether she wanted to go there or not. If she tried to balk now, then her honor escort of five hundred men would at once become an armed guard, and she a captive. Yggingi had all but told her as much. Nominally she was returning to her home under his protection, but in fact she was only his puppet. The odious man had not revealed his plans, but it was a fair guess that he would try to force her to sign over the kingdom to the imperor as soon as her father died. She could only hope that Father was still alive, and still well enough to advise her. She had no one else she could trust now.
So Inos sat in silent fear and misery, while making polite conversation about the scenery.
Andor reappeared at the carriage door. “I am afraid you will have to disembark, ladies. Another broken axle.”
He handed Aunt Kade down, then Inos. The trail was a narrow wreckage of mud, roots, and rocks, curving off out of sight in both directions around a hillside. Rain dribbled down from a canopy of heavy branches that shut off all but a few glimpses of low gray sky, while enclosing walls of ferns and bracken pressed in tightly on both sides. This was the third axle to snap in the last two days. It meant a long delay.
Inos looked around hopefully for somewhere dry to sit, pulling up the hood of her traveling cloak.
“What enormous trees!” Aunt Kade exclaimed. “They cannot be sequoias, though?”
“Hemlocks, I think,” Andor said. “Or perhaps cedars. You! Trooper! Hand me down that chest.”
The shadows were very deep and menacing. Inos felt uneasy, shut in by this dark primeval jungle. Even the air was full of damp woodsy scent, as if it never went anywhere and was a special local air. The small area of road that she could see was full of soldiers dismounting or jingling around, horses stamping, splashing, fretting, and tugging their reins, men grumbling and discussing the problem in rough, angry tones. From farther up the hill came rougher shouts yet, as the advance guard was informed of the holdup. Equally invisible downhill, the rear was clattering into silence, also.
The dense woods concealed the mountains completely. Inos had not seen a single large hill, only trees and a steeply climbing, winding road. She took Aunt Kade’s hand, and the two of them stepped carefully over mud and puddles to the verge, seeking shelter and getting out of the men’s way. Andor followed, carrying a chest to serve as a bench. Halfhearted smears of snow flanked the trail, dirty and woebegone in the dingy gloom.
Proconsul Yggingi came cantering back down from the front to see what the delay was. He dismounted with a splash and handed his reins to a legionary, then bellowed for silence and started shooting orders. Inos was pleased to see that he looked very uncomfortable in his uniform, as if the rain were running off his helmet and down his neck. Andor was wearing a big floppy suede hat at a rakish angle, handsome and debonair as ever.
Aunt Kade shivered slightly.
“I can fetch a rug, Highness?” he asked helpfully.
“No, no!” Kade said. “Silly of me. I was looking at these dark woods and thinking of goblins.”
He chuckled reassuringly. “Rugs will not protect you from goblins! But don’t worry—there are none this side of the pass. Correct, Proconsul?”
Yggingi was clearly furious at this latest delay. “None this side of Pondague. And I have been cleaning them out beyond, also.”
“Are they so dangerous, then?” Inos asked, thinking that a herd of hippogryffs could sneak up on her through that deep darkness.
“Not really. Just vermin.”
Andor said quietly, “Goblins are actually a very peacefu
l people.”
“Peaceful?” Yggingi echoed. “They are monsters.”
“But not warlike.”
“No, not warlike! They have other means of disposing of their surplus men.” An expression of distaste appeared on his flat, square face.
“Whatever do you mean, Excellency?” Inos asked, surprised that anything could disgust so coarse a man as Yggingi.
He hesitated and then said, “Many races weed out their young men. Most do it by warfare. Goblins use nastier methods, but the principle is the same, I suppose.”
She had never thought of warfare in that horrible way. “Why? To leave more women for the others?”
“Inos!” Kade protested.
“Sometimes that is the motive,” Andor said. “Or extra land, or just to keep the place peaceful. We are not making very good time, I fear, Proconsul.”
Yggingi growled an agreement. “We shall probably not see the top of the pass by nightfall. There is a guardhouse there, but now you will probably have to bivouac, ma’am.”
“Perhaps my niece and I should ride, then?” Kade suggested calmly.
The men looked down at her in astonishment. “Could—would you?” Yggingi asked.
“I should love to! I find that carriage very bumpy. How about you, Inos, dear?”
“Of course!” Inos agreed, amused at the expression on Yggingi’s face, and Andor’s. They did not know of Aunt Kade’s unlimited ability to astonish.
Kade rose, determined. “Then we shall ride. Our habits are in that green box, Proconsul. If you would be so kind as to have it lifted down, we can change in the carriage.”
Yggingi actually smiled—a gruesome sight. “And we can leave this wreck where it is. We should reach Pondague tomorrow, and after that you can travel by sled.”
A Man of His Word Page 27