“What,” I pondered, “would a great nobleman consider Necessity?”
“Hah.” Utterback was darkly amused. “The secretary grows impudent, to turn his master’s words against him.”
“The master grows careless,” returned I, “to speak of rebellion before the secretary.” I stepped closer to Utterback, and spoke into his ear. “We know nothing of this matter, whether there be rebellion or no, because the corsairs blockade us here, and keep the news from sailing to us. Let us then take horse and ride to Newton Linn—I cannot imagine the Aekoi will have sailed so far north, and there will be tidings waiting us.”
Utterback gave him a look. “Are you so reckless? Or so determined on adventure, that you would venture rebellion?”
“I have already lost all,” I said. “Family, fortune, prospects. One prince is as good as another, so they be generous to their followers.”
Utterback regarded me closely. “Have you the stomach for more than one Ethlebight? For if we have a civil war, plundered cities will be common as spots on a leopard.”
I felt my stomach turn over. I could find no words. Utterback put a hand on my shoulder.
“Nor am I so bloodthirsty,” he said in comfort. “Nor am I.” He sighed, and turned to walk heavily down the quay. I joined him.
“The Pilgrim offers as his philosophy,” Utterback said, “that a dispassionate submission to the dictates of Necessity is the first of all virtues. And so I shall resign myself to fate, and continue this sad, useless embassy until Necessity compels me to another course.” He shrugged, and looked over his shoulder at me. “Thus shall I be a dutiful son, or failing that a dutiful subject, or if both objects fail, the dutiful citizen of a dungeon, as fortune wills.”
“As my lord wishes,” said I. “Though the humble secretary wishes to remind his master that there are still courses of action that have not been considered.”
“Ay. I could join a monastery!” Utterback grinned, and made a mocking bow with a swirl of his feathered cape. “The master thanks the secretary, and will release him to finish his letter, though he also hopes the secretary will be discreet regarding the substance of this conversation.”
I bowed. “Of course, my lord. The secretary knows better than to argue the merits of rebellion in a message that anyone could open.”
But even without a description of my conversation with Utterback, I had a very long postscript to add to my letter to Kevin.
I could describe Clayborne’s possible rebellion as a rumor I had heard on the docks, and suggest that the Irresistible might be intended for fighting the war, and not the corsairs after all. If any of this were true, no help would come to Ethlebight this winter, and precious little in the way of sympathy.
I was beginning to realize how little the country cared about my city, and how small its concerns were against the intrigues of the great powers of the land.
* * *
The Embassy Royal set out at midmorning, after the long breakfast at the Guild of Apothecaries. Clouds opaqued the sky, and by afternoon the cold rain pelted down.
I had brought a long overcoat that, like the rest of my clothes, I had looted from an abandoned house. It was a thick cheviot tweed, very warm, and had a cape that I could pull over my head as a hood. I remained reasonably comfortable, but still I wished I’d bought oilskins. The rains continued on and off all day, and made the journey miserable.
My new chestnut, Toast, with his palfrey’s gait, floated with ease over the road, and would have delighted me had the weather been more reasonable. I bribed Toast with his favorite food and consoled myself with the thought that I no longer had to put up with the lurching carriage, even at the cost of being wet and cold.
I am not a natural rider, and after the first day I was near-hobbled with pain But as the journey continued, the pain faded, and I believed that the animal and I were forging an understanding, one based on bribery if nothing else.
Mavors’ Road was in better condition than the coast road, but the weather made it more trying. And for five days the coach lumbered through wet weather, its big wheels throwing up sheets of water as it careened through ponds, lagoons, and fords. It bogged down frequently and had to be shoved and worked and coaxed out of the mud. Then the road began to ascend the Toppings, one after another of steep-sided hills crowned with hardwood forests. Here the road was in poor repair, and sometimes washed out. Creeks and rivers ran between the hills, and though some were bridged, most had to be forded, and the water was high and the crossings difficult. Old castles loomed above the track, most of them deliberately torn open so they wouldn’t become the haunts of bandits. The towns were small and mean, and the inns mean and wretched. Soon, Gribbins and Utterback were scratching again, and I rejoiced on my clean bed of straw.
No messengers came galloping down the road, shouting out news of war, rebellion, or the death of kings.
Sometimes the hills were so steep that the passengers had to leave the great carriage and walk in the downpour, which vexed Gribbins greatly. His high, peevish voice carried far along the road, and I was happy to trot ahead to where the only sounds were birdsong and the clop of Toast’s hooves echoing off the surrounding trees.
On the third day in the Toppings the weather broke, and thick golden sunbeams swept like pillars of light across the green country, while mist scudded between the leafy, brilliant crowns of the hills. The ridges ahead did not seem as tall as the ridges behind, and I felt my heart lift as I sensed that soon we might win free of the Toppings and descend into the lush country that fed the River Saelle.
Late in the morning the road descended into a long coomb, with a clear, lively stream running alongside the track, and willows overhanging the water. The leaves were just beginning to turn, and in the bright sun gleamed gold and scarlet flashes along the stream’s green banksides.
I rode a few hundred yards ahead of the Embassy, enjoying Toast’s easy glide over the ill-maintained road, and taking pleasure in the rich abundance of life in the coomb, the birds singing in their trees, the river’s laughter as it scurried over stones.
The road made a curve, and I pulled up short at the ancient willow that had fallen across the track, and an instant later saw that the tree had not fallen in its own time, but been sawn. I realized that the birds had fallen silent, and I scented a faint trace of smoke in the air—not woodsmoke, but smoke with the slight taste of brimstone, like that of a slow-match.
My heart began to thunder like a kettledrum, and I sawed Toast’s head around and banged my heels on the chestnut’s sides. The elderly horse paused for a moment of astonishment at this unprecedented treatment, then jolted into belated action as I kept kicking him. Soon, Toast was flying down the track at something like a canter, while I waved an arm and shouted.
“Ambush! Bandits! Ambush!”
On the grand carriage, the three footmen, coachman, and postilion stared at me with identical expressions of imbecilic surprise. My blood turned cold as I realized that the Embassy Royal was essentially defenseless—the three footmen were armed with blunderbusses, but the rains had doused their slow-matches days before, and they hadn’t been relit. Instead of terrifying weapons of close-range combat, the firelocks were now little more than awkward clubs.
Shots cracked out, white gunsmoke plumes gushing from the green bank above the road, and what seemed a host of wild men rose from concealment and dashed down onto the track, hot on my heels. The ambuscade had been laid just at the fallen tree, and because of my warning the attackers now had to sprint to the coach instead of finding it right in their net, but they were no less dangerous for having to run a hundred yards. I cast a glance over my shoulder and saw there were about a dozen, all armed with swords, pikes, or pollaxes.
Calculations sped through my mind, and they all led to the same sad conclusion: the Embassy was about to be waylaid and robbed, its delegates perhaps beaten or killed. I, with my little sword and superannuated gelding, could not affect the issue one way or another, and it was there
fore only sensible that I preserve my life.
Someone, after all, still had to carry the Embassy’s message to the capital.
Toast raced past the great carriage at an accelerating canter. The baggage coach, with its servants, was only now slowing down, its driver standing on his box to peer in bewildered curiosity at the fast-unfolding disaster ahead of him. I left the baggage coach behind, and for a moment my heart lifted at the sight of a clear road ahead—and then a man stepped onto the path to block my way.
He was an old, white-bearded character in a flat-crowned hat. He seemed to be wearing a faded blanket over his shoulders; and a pair of heavy boots, like buckets, engulfed his skinny legs. He carried a spear in his gaunt, thick-knuckled hands.
I reasoned that if the bandit was going to stand in the road like that, it was my clear duty to ride him down. So, I dropped my head behind the gelding’s neck and kicked the horse into greater effort.
The old man stepped forward, waving his spear up and down like a flyswatter, and shouted, “Hai! Hai! Hai!”
Toast, confronted with this scarecrow apparition, found himself burdened with a number of choices. Apparently, he decided to contemplate his own advanced age, and the kicks and shouts and unearned abuse he had suffered from me in the last few moments, and the lack of toast evident in this unfolding scenario . . . and in an act of stubborn insurrection decided no longer to play a part in the action. The horse stopped dead in the middle of the track.
The world revolved about me as I catapulted forward over the horse’s neck to land on my back in the middle of the road, the wind completely knocked out of me, I could only gasp for breath as the elderly bandit approached on his huge boots and brandished the spearpoint at my neck.
“Will you yield?” said the toothless mouth. “Or shall I slice out your tripes?”
Unable to breathe or speak, I mutely threw my hands out to the side, and gave myself up as a captive.
CHAPTER SIX
* * *
thought the journey to the bandits’ camp took two or three hours. My hands were tied behind my back, and to keep me from learning the path, my head had been covered with a baize bag. The track led up and down, and forded streams. One of the bandits was detailed to stay by my side to steady me and guide me over the obstacles, but the man amused himself by letting me stumble and fall, once full-length in a stream, and by the time I staggered into camp, my clothes were sodden, my scraped knees were bleeding freely, and there were bloody cuts on my face from branches that had whipped me through the baize hood.
The last part of the journey was alongside a stream, and I could hear the chatter of water and smell the fresh, free air of the brook. Then I was hauled up some stone stairs and shoved into an area paved with cobbles that I could feel through the soles of my boots. The sound around me—horses clattering, shoes scraping, rude laughter, and ruder greetings—seemed to have a slight echoing quality, and I suspected that I was in an enclosed space.
I had a few moments to catch my breath. And then the baize bag was pulled from my head, and I shook my hair from my face to discover myself in one of the old forts that crowned the hills in the Toppings. To make the place useless as a bandits’ lair, the walls had been torn down in two places, and the keep ripped open; but the bandits had moved in anyway, and built their refuge amid the ruins.
I gasped in air tainted with woodsmoke, and stood in a rough line with the prisoners. Lord Utterback, I saw, seemed to have suffered no injury, and looked about himself with a distracted air. Perhaps, I thought, he was consoling himself that all this was Necessity.
Around them prowled the robbers, looking at the prisoners as wolves might stare at a lost calf. The outlaws were more ferocious at close range even than they had seemed charging along the road, as now it was possible to see the mutilations that had been inflicted on them for past crimes—cropped ears, cheeks burned with the King’s brand, fingers missing joints or twisted by the thumbscrew. Despite the mutilations, they all seemed fit and hardy, and they were well armed with swords, bucklers, pistols, spears, and firelocks, and some wore bits of armor. Almost all were young, for few seemed older than five-and-twenty—the great exception being the old scarecrow who had taken me hostage, and who swaggered around the court with his spear on his shoulder, toothlessly cackling along with his fellows.
There were also women in the company, for the most part looking worn and well-used, though some carried weapons and seemed as lethal as the males. Others made a brazen parade in looted satin finery, rings glittering on their fingers, as if to leave no doubt they were willing to barter their persons for a share of the loot that was to come.
Most surprising were a pair of monks, dressed in dirty robes, with their tonsures growing out. They carried no weapons, but otherwise looked as disreputable as the others.
And as for the loot, the baggage had been brought up on horses, along with Gribbins, who when his legs had given out had simply been tossed across a horse.
The bags and Gribbins were unloaded in a pile, and then two of the bandits jerked Gribbins off the baggage pile, and stood him up with the other captives. When the bag was taken from his head, he blinked about him with milky blue eyes, and seemed not to know where he was. There was a bruise over one eye, and his nose had been bleeding.
Of the prisoners, only Gribbins had been damaged. Perhaps he was the only one who had resisted: none of the stout footmen, whose job it was to protect us, seemed to have suffered at all.
Under the direction of a tall, narrow-shouldered man, the luggage was opened and ransacked. Lord Utterback’s fine court clothes, with their bright velvets and silks, occasioned both comment and laughter. His purse and a bag of silver were emptied into a large wooden bowl produced for the purpose, as were the purses of Gribbins, myself, and the others. Rings taken from Gribbins and Utterback were added to the bowl.
I didn’t feel sorry for my lost clothes—they were loot to begin with, taken from empty Ethlebight houses to replace the clothes lost in the fire, and now they were being looted again. But I winced as the tall bandit unwound the twine on the narrow box that I had found in the ruins my father’s house, and emptied out my entire fortune. The man stared down at the bowl, then fished out the alderman’s gold chain that had belonged to my father, and held it out for the appreciation of the crowd.
“Lo!” he cried “It is a great official we have before us! Give a proper welcome to the liegeman of the King!” The crowd bayed in response.
I couldn’t help but cast a look at Gribbins, who was staring at the chain. The apothecary’s dazed look faded, and for the first time since he had been thrown off the horse, comprehension entered Gribbins’s eyes. He looked at me, then back at the chain, and then at me again.
“You are a liar, sir!” he hissed. “You assured me the chain had been destroyed! You are a liar and a thief!”
I was about to ask if he hadn’t other things to worry about besides a lost chain, but one of the bandits, who thought Gribbins was referring to his chief, clouted Gribbins on the head and knocked him to his hands and knees.
Hearing the apothecary’s moans, I decided to hold my tongue.
The tall robber continued to rummage through my bag, and came up with the two books I had brought with me. He opened the first, and glanced at the title page. “Corinius, is it?” he said. “The Satires—strong stuff! And though he was an Aekoi, he had the measure of Man well enough.” He stuffed the book into a pocket, then looked at the other. “Mallio!” he said, and his voice was full of scorn. “Know you not that the Delward translation is superior to the Rawlings? Rawlings barely knew a fee tail from a defeasible estate!” He looked up at the captives. “A beef-witted, folly-fallen stinkard of a lawyer you would make if you depended on this Rawlings!” He threw the book onto the pile, then continued to sort through the baggage until he lifted Gribbins’s gold chain from the apothecary’s trunk.
“Another magistrate!” he proclaimed. “Should we bow before their glory? Should we tremble
in terror before these representatives of public order! Surely the gewgaws on their coach proclaimed their majesty!”
The grand coach, after having been looted—and after the bandits had assured themselves that the ornaments were gold paint and not gold leaf—had been declared useless and tipped into the stream. I had last seen it lying on its side, grinding over stones as the current carried it away.
It might see Selford before any of us, I thought.
Interestingly enough, the carriage horses and postilions had been allowed to leave. The horses didn’t belong to the Embassy, but to the last posting inn, and the postilions were the inn’s hired men who returned the horses to their home after each stage. I guessed that the inns probably paid blackmail to the bandits in order to not lose their horses time and again—and also likely tipped the robbers to any rich travelers passing through.
The bandit leader finished rummaging through the baggage, then mounted a stair that led to the gaping keep and turned to his prisoners. He was tall and lean, and wore a brilliant green doublet and trunks, yellow hose, and tall jackboots—all looted from travelers, I assumed. The man’s dark, pointed beard was shot with gray, and his hair straggled down his back. An overcoat, gray as the sodden morning light of the Toppings, hung to his ankles, and he wore a tall-crowned hat. He turned to his captives.
“Lord, magistrates, and other suchlike blockheads!” He spoke in the rolling tones of north Fornland. “I am Sir Basil of the Heugh. Perhaps you know of me!”
He said this with a sharklike grin, and in fact I did know of him, though all I knew was that Sir Basil was an infamous bandit.
In a purposeful, theatrical way, Sir Basil reached behind his back and drew out a long dirk, bright steel blade and a black iron handle with an acorn-shaped pommel.
“This is my dirk!” he told the captives. “This weapon has been in my family for two hundred years, and was crafted by the dark enchanters of the Nocturnal Lodge of the Umbrus Equitus. Twelve necromancers prayed over the iron for twelve nights, twelve virgins were entombed alive to guarantee the steel’s purity, and twelve captives were sacrificed to provide the blood that quenched the blade.” He drew the blade slowly through the air above his head, as if cutting the throat of an invisible giant.
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