“This isn’t a tryst,” said Roman. “Your fiancée is coming along on the expedition.”
“Really? Well, then we definitely have to go back home, I’ve got a whole series of cravats—”
“Don’t worry,” said Roman. “Nan knew all about it, and she’s packed for you accordingly. Haven’t you, Nan?” The question was delivered with all the subtlety of a clay pot filled with hornets aimed directly at her face.
“Oh, fine.” Nan slumped into a competition-grade sulk.
“Oh good,” said Willie. “Now, where’s the best lighting?”
“What?”
“I need to be standing in favorable light when you knock! Honestly, have you never courted a woman?”
“Have you?” asked Sloot.
“I beg your pardon?” Willie’s hands were on his hips in a flash. All the years he’d spent in prep school practicing his well-I-never expressions had really paid off.
“Er, I mean, have I? Sorry, I was just clarifying who you were talking to.”
An expression of confusion carried out a very successful coup to supplant Willie’s outrage and seized control of his face.
“The gaslamp across the street,” said Roman.
“Thank you, Roman,” said Willie. “Was that so hard?”
Sloot waited several minutes until Willie had decided on the pose that best suited his cape length. He ultimately went with a modified Dimples on a Daffodil, leaning gently against the lamp pole, but not so much as to seem haughty about it.
Knock, knock. The door swung open immediately.
“I was wondering how long it was going to take him to get that pose just right,” said Greta. “I’ll give him credit though, it comes off a lot less haughty than I’d have expected. Who’s this?”
“This is Nan,” Sloot replied. “Nan is Willie’s—”
“Seamstress,” interrupted Roman.
“Seamstress? Why would Willie need a seamstress for a trip to Carp—”
“Fishing!” exclaimed Sloot. “Carp fishing can be very hard on the linens, am I right?”
“Carp fishing?” Nan questioned. “This time of year?”
“Why don’t you go help Willie?” said Roman. “That was a very complex pose, and he seems to be having some trouble on the dismount.”
“Coming, Willie!”
“Not so loud about our destination up north,” said Sloot after Nan was out of earshot. “You never know who’s listening!”
“I’m sure I’d know if Uncle was within earshot,” said Greta. Sloot Peril, newly-enlisted agent of Uncle, tried very hard to act naturally and failed into a fit of tittering. Luckily, people expect accountants to be a bit off.
“All the same,” said Roman, “better to avoid mentioning it to Nan at all.”
“Won’t she figure it out eventually?”
“We’ll worry about that when it happens.”
Greta shrugged. “She’ll be upset about having lugged the fishing gear all the way to— up north, but I guess that’s your problem. Let’s get this over with.”
Greta shouldered a canvas travel bag and locked the door behind her. Nan brought Willie over. He was grinning like an idiot. To be fair, that was the only way he knew how.
“You two behave yourselves,” Nan scowled. “I’ll be watching you every minute, so there will be no hanky-panky. Am I clear?”
“Fine,” said Willie.
“Thank you,” said Greta with a broad smile.
***
They made it to the east gate with no trouble, and Roman managed the bribery with an ease that suggested it wasn’t his first time. That didn’t surprise Sloot, though it also didn’t do anything to quell the maelstrom in his stomach. He was openly consorting with people who dealt with bribery! What would his mother think?
He’d forgotten for a moment that his mother had been a Carpathian Intelligencier as well. He couldn’t bring himself to wonder in horror at what the Domnitor, long may he reign, would have thought.
“Have you ever been outside the city, Greta?” asked Willie.
“No,” she replied.
“I have.” Willie smoothed down his pencil-thin moustache. “We went to Nordheim not too long ago. That’s where I bought that mammoth you love so much.”
“I see.” Greta kept her eyes fixed on the ground in front of her.
“You’re learning quickly,” said Willie. “No cobbles on the streets in the wilderness, good to watch where you’re— Oof.”
“Where you’re oof?”
“Just testing my reflexes,” said Willie as he picked himself off and brushed the dirt from his cape. “Fraught with danger, the wilderness. I thought I’d practice falling down just there, measure my recovery time. Er, Sloot, how’d I do?”
“Very well, m’lord.”
“That was just perfect, Willie!” Nan ruffled his hair. Greta narrowly suppressed a chortle.
The road was dark, with only a thin crescent of the moon to guide them. They set up a little camp once they’d made it out of sight of the torches atop the city wall.
They started walking again in the morning, stopped briefly for lunch, and came eventually to a remote farmstead where Roman said Bob would leave them horses and provisions.
“Yer them salties what m’lady said would come,” said the filth-encrusted yokel who greeted them at the gate, if you could call it a greeting. Or a gate.
An entire life in the city had exposed Sloot to a panoply of different greetings, ranging from tips of the hat with intricate flourishes that would only be fashionable for a week or so, all the way down to ill-rehearsed sneers that demanded whatever coin he had on him at knifepoint. This, by contrast, was little more than an acknowledgment of their presence. On their trip to Nordheim and back, Sloot had learned that country people tended to stick to facts. They had little interest in interpretations thereof, and reserved flowery displays of affection, such as handshakes, to immediate family, and then only on their birthdays.
“I’m Roman, and this is—”
“That’s fine,” said the yokel, rolling his eyes and walking toward a barn. Roman looked to Sloot and shrugged, and they all followed along.
The rest of the journey to Carpathia was relatively uneventful, with the exception of Willie’s occasional yelps of surprise at seeing yet more grass.
“You just never get used to it,” he kept saying. While it was true that there was rarely more than a few square feet of the stuff to be found in any one place inside the city, Sloot felt that he’d acclimated to the abundance of it with ease.
Then, after nearly a week of riding, the plenitude of grass started to wane.
“We’re nearly there,” said Roman, a hint of excitement in his voice. Sloot wondered how long it had been since he’d been home.
Grassy hills rolled into stony, barren fields. This was starting to look like the Carpathia that Sloot had been taught about as a boy. His hyper-vigilant sense of worry began to see danger lurking behind every boulder, death over every steep incline on the horizon.
By the time that the last of the grass disappeared, the afternoon had given way to evening and an ominous red sky. This was definitely the Carpathia he’d learned about as a boy, and he started hyperventilating as his oldest fears gripped him.
Was a cannibal lurking behind that boulder, sharpening his long knife in anticipation of gutting Sloot and making a turban of his intestines? Would he have an extra row of teeth like in the pictures, and stink lines coming off his head, and would he be waving a flag made of human skin that says “The Domnitor Is A Ninny” like in his nightmares?
By the time the sun was nearly down and the ominous shadow of Castle Ulfhaven loomed into view, Sloot was having trouble deciding whether he was relieved that there had been no cannibals, or unsettled by the possibility that nothing he knew about Carpathia might be t
rue.
Heart of Carpathia
The first bloodthirsty savages they encountered were at a farmstead not unlike the one just outside Salzstadt where they’d gotten the horses. The proprietors here were also yokels by trade, and equally disinterested in conversation that deviated from simple facts. The only notable cultural difference was the uniquely Carpathian surname on the gate: Entrailravager.
Sloot was still doing his best to come to grips with his recently discovered Carpathian heritage. It helped to see that yokels were more or less the same in both countries, but he still wasn’t able to get past the ominous surnames thing. Was he really to believe that the Entrailravager family were as unlikely to consider him for their stew as your run-of-the-mill Old Country yokels?
Old Man Entrailravager led them all into the barn, where Sloot mostly managed to refrain from pleading for his life. The proprietor refrained from reassuring Sloot, owing to the fact that he hadn’t seen any proper whimpering in quite a long time, if his gleeful giggle was any measure.
Once Old Man Entrailravager retired to the house, they watered the horses and minimized their packs for the five-mile hike to Ulfhaven. This caused Sloot to wonder if the most challenging part of sneaking into Ulfhaven would be explaining to Willie the concept of need.
Convincing him that there would be no parties requiring dancing left him with a hangdog look, as well as thirty pounds lighter for all of the shoes left in the barn. Further convincing him that there would be no parties at all nearly left the entire expedition several hundred pounds lighter, to the tune of Willie’s remaining gear and Willie himself, but Roman convinced him to stay the course.
Eventually, under cover of darkness, they set out on foot. Sloot jogged ahead to walk with Roman, who’d opted to scout ahead.
“What’s your surname, Roman?” he asked.
“Didn’t I tell you it’s classified?”
“You did,” said Sloot, “but I’ve been promoted since then.”
“I’ve forgotten it.”
“You’ve forgotten your own surname?”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve used it. Anyway, it’s probably long since expired.”
“Oh, come on,” said Sloot. “Surnames don’t expire, they outlive us all. It’s the way they’re designed, isn’t it?”
“Fine! I remember it, I just don’t want you getting the wrong idea.”
“What wrong idea?”
“I know what they teach you in those salt schools,” Roman spat. “Everyone from Carpathia is some sort of wild barbarian! We don’t pray to the right gods when we offer up blood sacrifices, and we murder people for grammatical infractions. What would it change for you to know my surname, anyway? Have you ever seen me raise a fist in anger?”
“Well, no,” said Sloot, who was worried that even talking about fists might cause the ears of any nearby goblins to perk up. “But how am I ever to learn about my mother culture if my mentor won’t teach me?”
“Mentor, eh?” That made him grin and swell. “All right, fine … but don’t go telling any of the others, all right? It’s still classified.”
“My lips are sealed.”
“It’s Bloodfrenzy.”
“Oh, that’s lovely.” Sloot repressed a shudder. “What’s it mean?”
“It comes from an old Middle Carpathian word that describes the gentle elation of—”
“Yes?”
Roman sighed. “Of having blood all over you and going sort of … very … enthusiastic on the battlefield.”
“Right,” said Sloot. “That’s not so bad, I suppose.”
A silence of the uncomfortable variety settled in between them.
“See? This is why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“What?”
“You know very well, what! You’ll be glancing over your shoulder at me now, thinking ‘oh look, there’s that savage Roman, good thing he hasn’t got blood on him, or I might be in for a keelhauling!’”
“I will not,” said Sloot. “What’s a keelhauling?”
“Enough education for one day!”
They walked the rest of the road in silence. When they finally came close enough to see the great stone wall surrounding Ulfhaven, Sloot couldn’t help comparing it to the one that sat along the northern boundary of Salzstadt. He might have mistaken one for the other, if not for the ghastly swarm of gargoyles atop this one. There were lots of rusted steel spikes as well, and the stony ground in front of it was littered with the weathered bones of the long-dead.
But they were both tall and made primarily of stone. In that, they were very similar.
His idle thoughts were inclined to find other similarities between Ulfhaven and Salzstadt, so Sloot elected to stop thinking altogether. Idle thoughts lead to heretical ones. Everybody knows that.
“Here we are,” said Roman at last. They’d come to a spiky steel gate at the base of the wall, several hundred feet away from the main gate and obscured by the clever piling of boulders. He produced a rusty key from under his shirt, which was hanging from a length of twine around his neck. He fit it into the lock and gave it a creaking turn that ended in a click.
Once inside, Sloot felt the familiar slipperiness of wet cobbles beneath his feet. They inched slowly into inky blackness until there was no hint of light visible from beyond the gate, then Roman paused and lit a torch. They were in a sort of arched tunnel, all stoned in with cobbles underfoot.
“Where are we?” asked Greta.
“The Catacombs of Ulfhaven,” answered Roman.
“That’s not possible,” said Nan. “Those are in Carpathia.”
It was at that moment that Sloot realized there was a part of the journey for which he’d neglected to prepare. He stayed quiet, hoping against hope that this would somehow resolve itself.
It seemed that everyone else had the same idea, and the result was one of those deafening silences that could only be made worse by a fight breaking out, which was more or less what happened.
All of a sudden, Nan rushed past Sloot, and he saw the shadow of her foot colliding with Roman’s backside. He went sprawling forward, landing hard against the slick cobbles. The torch went clattering into the tunnel ahead of them, ending up in a puddle and fizzling out.
“You curling fletch!” Nan shouted, clearly never having said a swear word in her life, but having decided to take full advantage of the fact that she was out of goblin earshot. “You apple-polishing pair of spectacles! You’ve lured my Willikins into corking Carpathia? I’ll wrench down your lying throat and schlepp your reeking guts from your gob!”
There was an impressive scuffle, in the midst of which Sloot was certain he felt an open hand strike him across the mouth. Such incivility! They definitely weren’t in Salzstadt anymore.
“That’s enough!” The sounds of the scuffle ceased instantly at the boom of Willie’s voice, apparently the first time it had done so. A match flared from behind them, and Willie’s torch shed its light over the tangle of arms and legs that had been dragged down fighting with Roman and Nan.
“Willie,” said Nan, “where’d you get matches? You know you’re not allowed—”
“This is my expedition,” he said with a thunder Sloot didn’t think he had in him. “I’m scared of Carpathia, too, but Mister Roman says it’ll be safe, and I believe him! He also said that we couldn’t tell you where we were going, Nan, or that something like this would happen. I believe him on that one too, because look what happened!”
“Willie—”
“No!” Willie stamped his foot. Though he’d taken that tone with Sloot on several occasions before, it was impressive to see him using it to stand up to Nan. “I say we’re going to Carpathia! I’m Wilhelm Hapsgalt, intrepid explorer, and I’ve got to have something to talk to Sir Wallace about when I invite him over for an explorers’ lunch!”
While the
content of Willie’s newfound assertiveness was cringeworthy, Sloot cringed the hardest at the possibility of a squadron of guards overhearing all of the shouting. Of all the series of events he’d ever worried might end with him rotting in a Carpathian dungeon, Nan’s swearing and Willie’s standing up for himself had never crossed his mind.
Fortunately, during the stunned silence that followed Willie’s righteous tantrum, Sloot noticed two things: a complete absence of jackbooted footsteps coming their way, and Greta looking up at Willie from her recumbent position in the pile, her face a mixture of curiosity and admiration.
Roman seemed sure that a proper romance between Willie and Greta would be helpful in securing Willie’s inheritance. Was this why he wanted her to come to Carpathia with them? He fancied himself a good judge of character, perhaps he knew that Willie would rise to the occasion, and that Greta would respond to that sort of thing?
Then, unbidden from some cockle of his heart, Sloot thought of Myrtle. He hadn’t seen or heard from her since the unpleasantness at Whitewood. If Roman was such an excellent judge of character, why had that business gone so poorly?
“Get up,” demanded Willie, “all of you. I’m going into Carpathia with Mister Roman. Who’s coming with us?”
“I suppose I must,” said Sloot.
“I’ve come this far,” said Greta.
“Nan?”
“Oh, all right,” Nan muttered. “I can’t very well let you go in there without your Nan, can I? Who’ll cut your sandwiches the way you like?”
***
After winding their way through a seemingly infinite maze of passageways, they emerged from the catacombs through a grate and walked out onto the cobbled streets of Ulfhaven. There were torches here instead of gaslamps, but it was otherwise very similar to the streets of Salzstadt. Fewer people though. None, to be precise.
The torches were all set in fixtures that were made to look like skulls. They may have been skulls, but that would have required contributions from lots and lots of people, or those who had formerly been. Sloot preferred to believe that it was the clever work of highly skilled stonemasons. That was obviously true of the gargoyles that loomed from the top of everything, so it wasn’t stretching the imagination in a way that would require yoga.
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