by Dave Duncan
Inos gasped in horror and disbelief. For her he had faced the frozen immensity of the forest—alone! So lightly! For her! Alone!
“A remarkable tale!” the duchess said acidly. “Kade, we should not detain you in your time of grief. Whatever we may do to aid you, you have only to ask, as you know.”
It was dismissal. The men rose as the ladies did. Andor was first at the door.
He kissed Inos's hand and bowed to her aunt. “If you do decide to go, ma'am,” he said, and it was not clear to which princess he spoke, “then I would beg of you to let me accompany you. It would be the least I could do to repair my folly.”
What folly? Inos floated out behind her aunt and, despite the wounds caused by the news of her father, some part of her heart soared like a skylark into the heavens.
6
The dowager duchess of Kinvale watched the door close. Then she unleashed her bleakest stare. “You are welcome here, Sir Andor. But tell me—I believe that the noble Senator Endrami died over thirty years ago?”
He did not even blink. “Twenty-six years and three months, ma'am. I was a posthumous baby, but not quite so posthumous as that.”
“So the Lady Imagina who married the Margrave of Minxinok must have been your cousin?”
“My oldest sister, your Grace. She died when I was very young. I never knew her.”
Endrami had been a distant—an extremely distant—relative, and the boy's information was correct. So either he was genuine or he had done his homework well, perhaps even well enough to spring those traps she had just tried to set. The Endrami lands were all down in South Pithmot; it would take weeks to confirm his story. “What chance that the girl can reach Krasnegar before her father dies?”
He shrugged. “It is in the hands of the Gods.”
“But we must all help the Gods to aid the Good, mustn't we? How do the king's subjects feel about a queen of such youth, and unmarried?”
“I never heard the matter discussed, your Grace. The king's danger was still a secret.”
“I see.” Feeling unusually baffled, Ekka turned to her son, who was staring at the rug, pulling at his lip in that childish habit of his. “Angilki, you forget your duties. Sir Andor must be weary from his journey.”
The duke awoke with a start and sprang up obediently. The door opened and closed again.
Ekka was left alone with Proconsul Yggingi, who sat with his helmet on his lap, regarding her impassively.
“It can be done?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She approved of his brusque manner. “A deal, then?”
“Name it.”
“Make me an offer.”
He shook his close-cropped head and his face was unreadable. “You initiated this. You invited me. You have something in mind.”
She would crack that marble facade. “Gambling debts, mostly.”
He smiled grimly. “Mine, or do you also have a problem?”
It was she who was shaken. Such insolence she had not met in half a lifetime. “Yours. You are rumored to have gone through your wife's fortune in two years.”
He shrugged imperturbably. “A year and a half. And I now owe forty-two thousand imperials more.”
Incredible! It was much worse than she had heard. “You are in serious trouble, Proconsul.” He would lie in debtors' prison till the rats ate him.
“I am ruined.”
“Desperate?”
The twist of his lips was barely a smile. “I have no scruples, if that is what you mean. None at all. Have you?”
She laughed, surprising herself. “None. To business, then. There would appear to be a disputed succession in Krasnegar.”
“Or soon will be. Certainly the jotnar there will not readily accept rule by a woman.”
“It is a long time since my last history lesson, Excellency. You must know much more about such things than I do.”
He chuckled. “The Impire is a shark, and it eats minnows whenever it can catch them.”
He had a surprisingly apt turn of phrase for a brute soldier. Ekka had not needed to recall her school days to know that any trouble in other realms was usually turned to the Impire's advantage—a disputed succession, a civil war, or even a minor border squabble, and the legions would march in on the pretext of guarding one side or the other. It didn't matter which, because both sides were inevitably swallowed up promptly. They might fight loose again in a generation or so, but by then the looting had been done. And she certainly did not need to lecture Yggingi on this.
“If the girl cannot rule, then my son has the best claim.”
The big man cocked an impudent eyebrow at her. “I understood that Thane Kalkor had a better.”
Ekka thumped her cane angrily on the rug—she was wearing a hole there, she reminded herself. It must have become a habit. “He has a claim through his great-grandaunt. But if a woman cannot rule, then she cannot pass on the title! So his case is self-defeating. His argument would be meaningless!”
“Jotnar's arguments are usually pointed.” Yggingi crossed his legs and wriggled himself into a comfortable but not very military slouch. “Granted that your son has a claim, but your son is a subject of the imperor. The imperor cannot deny a woman's right to rule, because his own grandmother was imperess regnant. So your argument is equally self-defeating. Interesting!”
She had not expected him to see that—it had taken her several days to work it out after Kade had let slip the tiger. Both sides ought to admit that the other's claim was better. Of course neither ever would. “Mmm. But if the imperor decided to . . . to go to my niece's assistance, then he would naturally dispatch you, as your precinct of Pondague borders on Krasnegar.”
He flushed slightly, which surprised her. “Not necessarily, but let us assume so for the moment. What exactly are you proposing, your Grace?”
“Take the girl back. If her father is dead—and if he isn't I expect the shock of your arrival may well precipitate his demise—then proclaim her queen, and she will in turn name you as her viceroy. Send her back here to marry my son. It would please me to have my descendants be kings, even if the title is moot.”
He nodded and rose to begin pacing the room. That was a rank discourtesy, and the thump of his boots on her expensive rugs was extremely annoying, but she kept her face schooled as she had done for generations.
“That's clever!” he said at last. “The imperor will have the ruler—whichever of them it is—here in his fist, and Krasnegar will remit taxes, to help defray the costs of the protection.”
“Moreover your creditors will be hard-pressed to reach you there, and you can loot an extra forty-two thousand imperials to pay your debts.”
He stopped by the fireplace and turned to regard her with a smile that was close to contemptuous. “Not without provoking famine, I'm sure. From what I hear, it is a bleak little spot.”
“Scruples?”
He shrugged. “I might become liable for impeachment, or at least replacement.”
“My family is not without influence in Hub, Proconsul.”
He chuckled. “True. Your son will not go to Krasnegar?”
“He would sooner die.”
“But why send the girl? Marry them now, while you have her in hand. She can sign my commission before I leave.”
This, of course, was the tricky part. She had foreseen this. “Being postdated, it would be a dubious document at best. The people might not believe, unless they saw her, and witnessed her willing signature.”
He chuckled again. “But what of the jotnar? Gnomes and goblins are good sport, but fighting jotnar would be red work. You think Kalkor would accept this convenient arrangement?”
She shrugged. “I doubt if he really cares. Looting and raping are his wont, and he could have taken Krasnegar anytime he wanted. You can buy off the thanes.”
“Maybe. You want the princess returned with the word.”
“What word?”
He laughed coarsely and sauntered back to his chair. �
�It is common knowledge that the kings of Krasnegar still hold one of Inisso's words. My luck at the tables might change if I had a word.”
She twirled her gold-knobbed cane, studying it. “Then the girl stays here. I have Inosolan, and without her nobody gets the word . . . if there is one, of course.”
“I agree, then,” he said. “You give me Krasnegar to hold in fief from your son, and I send back one word-knowing princess. You pay the expenses.”
“Outrageous!”
Yggingi chuckled. “Necessary! In your felicitous turn of phrase, I have already looted Pondague for all I can take. My men have not been paid for months and are close to mutiny. So a thousand as seed money, plus the princess, and I shall take her to Krasnegar. You shall have her back, with the word if she gets it.”
From the first, Ekka had known the weakness in her plan—she would have to trust this self-admitted scoundrel. But if he needed money so badly, she had a little power left. “Your wife, I think, stays here. The journey would be too hard for her.”
His eyes narrowed. “I believe the danger from the goblins might require more men than I first thought. Two thousand imperials for expenses.”
Skinflint! But Ekka had nothing to lose except two thousand imperials and a sister-in-law. Angilki could breed a son on the girl and the next duke of Kinvale would inherit two words. It was certainly worth the gamble.
“Agreed, then,” she said.
Tucking his helmet under his arm, Yggingi rose and saluted. “Agreed!”
“So now you must try to get the child to Krasnegar.”
He chuckled. “Ma'am, I shall get your princess to Krasnegar if I have to kill every goblin in Pandemia and drag her all the way through the forest, weeping.”
Forest weeping:
And Sir Lancelot awoke, and went and took his horse, and
rode all that day and all that night in a forest, weeping.
Malory, Le Morte D 'Arthur
SEVEN
Damsel met
1
Wolverine Totem had once been the most southerly of the goblin villages, set high in forested foothills, near to Pondague. Long ago it had been raided by a troop of imps, the inhabitants slaughtered and the buildings burned. One house, originally the boys' cabin, had survived the devastation, and it was used now on occasion by travelers.
Rap had found it with his farsight in thickly blowing snow as a storm moved in. Little Chicken had been unperturbed by the weather, for he was capable of burrowing into a snowbank and staying there for days, not emerging for any purpose whatsoever. Rap, preferring freedom and fire, had been very glad to reach the dilapidated ruin. Now the two of them sat by a crackling blaze to wait out the weather. Shadows leaped and jiggled over the log walls, wind screamed overhead, and whiffs of snow blew in through chinks to pile up in corners. Yet the cold was much less now, farther south and closer to spring. Near the hearth, the temperature was almost comfortable. Rap had unlaced his buckskins, while the goblin had stripped to the waist and sat impassively, staring into the fire, poking it once in a while with a long stick, probably mourning his lack of grease for rubbing himself, his favorite occupation. Fleabag was stretched out on the dirt farther away, paws twitching as he chased memories through a forest of dreams.
Farsight failed to show anything moving outside. Even Little Chicken could not hunt in such a blizzard. Even Fleabag could not, or Rap could have sent him out to do so. They had enough food for two days, and the first day was almost gone.
Rap had slept. Perhaps the goblin had. Now Rap realized that this empty, echoing ruin had brought him his first real opportunity to talk with Little Chicken. Through all their weeks of travel together he had always been masked and running, or else too exhausted.
“I want to tell you my story,” he began. “Tell you why we're going south.”
The burly young woodlander looked up, but with no interest showing in his slanted eyes. “Not important to trash.”
“But I'll tell you anyway—don't you like stories?”
Little Chicken shrugged.
“Very well,” Rap said doggedly. “That man who brought me—Wolf Tooth, he called himself. He was some sort of demon.”
That brought no reaction. None of it did. Rap told of Inos, and the dying King Holindarn. He told of Andor and his power to bewitch people into trusting him. He told of their trek together from Krasnegar, and the inexplicable appearance of Darad.
At the end of it all Little Chicken was still gazing at him impassively, without comment or apparent interest. Seeing that the recital had ended, however, he asked. “Then this chief will give you this woman?”
“Certainly not! She is the chief's daughter. I am only a keeper of stores. She must marry another chief.”
“Why?”
That question proved surprisingly difficult to answer. So, also, did the next—why, then, was Rap going to all this trouble?
Loyalty did not translate into the goblin dialect. Friendship did, but Little Chicken could not comprehend that a man might be friendly with a woman. Women were enjoyable and useful. Friends were necessarily other males.
Friends . . . Rap was surprised to discover that he wanted to be friends with Little Chicken.
The young goblin's monstrous cruelty was not his fault. It came from the culture of his people, and he had never been taught better. Apart from that, he was admirable in many ways—self-reliant, confident, effective, and a superb woodsman. His courage was unbreakable, his strange loyalty to Rap apparently absolute. In a word, he was trustworthy, and Rap recognized no higher accolade than that.
“You run good, town boy.” Those first words on their journey had been haunting Rap ever since. They had never been repeated, and all Rap's efforts had failed to draw another syllable of praise. All his pains and efforts had gleaned nothing but amusement and contempt. He knew now that no matter how hard he might strive, he would never match Little Chicken in strength or endurance. That inferiority rankled deeply.
So he was the lesser man, but even so, surely effort deserved recognition? Rap had driven himself to his utmost limits and failed to receive acknowledgment for it. The harder he had tried, the more disdainful his companion's reaction. He had revealed his supernatural powers and they had been dismissed as party tricks, beneath a man's dignity. Only one thing about the town boy seemed to satisfy Little Chicken—that he had cheated in the testing. For some reason that knowledge pleased the goblin greatly. And of that, Rap was ashamed.
By the second day of the blizzard, Rap was growing frantic. If he thought about Inos or Andor—or anything—then his mind curdled with anxiety. Time was running out, and he should be running, also, not sitting still. The sinister Darad must have crossed the mountains long since.
Rather to his disgust, Rap had also discovered that he was in need of exercise. Weeks of running had so conditioned him that he felt stodgy without it, and incapable of relaxing.
Snow was still falling, but it was the heavy, wet, warm-weather snow of the south, not fine, dry arctic powder. When the storm passed, Rap knew, he and Little Chicken would be able to travel without their masks, but the drifts would make the terrain more difficult.
Travel where? They had left the last of the goblin settlements behind. There were imp homesteads in the area, perilous for goblins and to be shunned. Somewhere nearby lay Pondague, an impish outpost guarding the only pass through the ranges. Had Rap arrived at Pondague with Andor, it would have meant the start of friends and safety. They could have acquired more horses, bought food, and even hired companions, had they wanted them. South of the pass lay the Impire, with good roads and post inns and safety.
Now Pondague was danger and enemies. Rap had no money. He wore goblin clothes and goblin tattoos, so he might well be cut down on sight if he ran into a contingent of Imperial troops. Living off the land south of the mountains was going to be difficult, or impossible. He knew roughly what farms were and how farmers felt about poaching. He did not know where Kinvale was. He supposed that
it was a place like Krasnegar, but he had no idea how far from the mountains it was, nor how to find it.
His first trial would be to sneak through the pass unobserved. Probably he would be safer south of the mountains, where goblins were no threat and hence would not so readily provoke violent reaction. He would have to find someone—a priest, perhaps—and explain his problem. With luck he might obtain a guide who would believe his story and deliver him to Kinvale on the promise of reward from Inos. Then Rap could dress like a civilized man again and regain his self-respect. Inos would find employment for him until he could return to Krasnegar with her, by land or sea, as she chose.
Unless Andor had already got to her, of course.
Then what?
Eventually Rap decided that he did not know the answer to then what? He rose, took up a spruce bough, and swept clean an area of floor near the fire. The goblin sat cross-legged and watched without comment or question.
“Right!” Rap stripped off his jacket. “Come and give me some wrestling lessons.”
Little Chicken shook his head.
“You're my trash, you say? Then I order you to come and give me a wrestling lesson!”
A firmer head shake. Trash, apparently, could decide what trash was good for.
“Why not?”
“I hurt you.” A faint smile played over the goblin's big mouth.
“A few bruises won't matter. I want to learn, and I need the exercise.”
Another refusal.
Beginning to shiver without his coat, Rap swallowed any trace of pride he might have retained. “Please, Little Chicken? I'm bored! It would be fun.”
“Too much fun.”
“What does that mean?”
Little Chicken's eyes glinted in the firelight: “I start to hurt you, might not stop. Too much fun.”