The Rope Dancer

by Roberta Gellis

  “Which of us are you trying to soothe?” she gasped.

  Telor bent his head and kissed her hair. “Carys, Carys, what am I to do with you? You were supposed to hide in the wood and be safe. What happened here?”

  “Is Deri safe?” she asked, lifting her head.

  “He is binding the other men,” Telor replied and glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t think this one needs binding.”

  “I did not touch him,” Carys cried, thinking Telor was disturbed because she had killed again. “I think his neck is broken. Would you like it better if he were on his way to Marston to tell his lord we are here?”

  The horse was perfectly quiet now, and Telor dropped the rein to enfold Carys more fully in his arms, smiling down into her defiant face. “No, dearling, no. I am more concerned that you rush into danger without proper thought for yourself.”

  “I rush into danger,” Carys echoed indignantly. “Did I not beg you and Deri to give up this mad…” Her voice faltered into a slightly hysterical giggle. Carys was quite literal, and she could not call “mad” a plan that had won them four horses and possibly other loot, even though she still found it difficult to believe they had succeeded.

  Telor laughed heartily and dropped a kiss on her nose. “I told you we could do it—at least, we would have if not for the strangest piece of ill luck that let that one escape me. Deri brought down two men; the first cried out as he fell, and the second, as we hoped, turned to see what had happened. “

  Carys shivered briefly. “I thought we were lost when I heard him yell.”

  “He was down before he had done shouting,” Telor told her. “And I thought I would be just as fortunate as Deri because the man in the lead was on the far side of the road, and this one”—he gestured with his head at the body in the road—“was just the right distance behind. I was sure either that he would be caught by the side of my staff and knocked off balance or that he would pause to draw his weapon and give me time to hit him with my return swing. Instead, at the very moment I struck, he must have been stung or pinched by his stirrup, for he cried out and bent down. My staff went right over his back and hit the horse, which naturally ran off. How did you bring him down?”

  “My rope,” Carys said, pointing at it.

  “My God,” Telor marveled, “I never would have thought of that.”

  Carys giggled. “You would have if you had been beaten as often as I by people who walked into it.” Then she shook her head. “But I did not think it could kill him.”

  Actually Carys was more surprised than regretful, but Telor did not realize that. He hugged her close again, satisfied, thinking that Carys had not intended to kill.

  “Likely,” he soothed, “the rope did not kill him. It may have brought the horse down, and he fell in such a way that he broke his neck. It is not important, dearling. Let me put you up on one of the horses, and you go tell Deri that no one escaped, and there is no need for us to flee. I will pull this barricade out of the way. We do not wish to frighten any travelers.”

  The horse Telor had been riding had come close to be with the other animal, as horses will do, and Telor caught the rein and drew it still closer while he shortened the stirrups for Carys. By the time he turned to lift her to the saddle, Carys had had time to think, and she said, “Telor, are we going back to Creklade to tell the bailiff that Orin is in Marston?”

  Telor’s lips thinned. He did not wish to take time to warn the bailiff of Creklade, but he knew that was wrong. Telor realized defeating Orin was not a piece of work for a man, a dwarf, and a girl. Although he had not yet mentioned his plan to Carys and Deri, his hope for bringing punishment on Orin was based on the information that William of Gloucester was in Lechlade.

  Not that Telor believed Lord William would attack Orin for Eurion’s sake, but there were other good reasons and inducements for him to take Marston if he could do so easily. First, Orin came from the king’s army; Telor thought he might be a deserter, a captain who had taken his troop and left when both pay and loot failed to materialize. Lord William, Telor was sure, would prefer someone loyal to his father to hold Marston. Also, there was another inducement special to Lord William’s unusual tastes: Sir Richard’s books and scrolls, which Orin probably had not yet destroyed. Telor was sure that Lord William would value those writings above any ordinary loot. Finally, Telor hoped he could convince Lord William that it would be no great trouble to take Marston. The manor was not designed for a strong defense, and he intended to offer to get inside and try to unbar the gates.

  All these plans, however, depended on finding Lord William in Lechlade. If they went at once, they might be in Lechlade before the long summer evening ended. If they carried to Creklade the unwelcome news that Orin was now the town’s nearest neighbor, they would certainly not reach Lechlade until the next day and might be delayed longer while the bailiff made sure they were telling the truth.

  “I suppose I must warn them,” he said unwillingly.

  “They may not believe us.” Carys stated Telor’s doubt. “Would it not be better just to leave the barricade and the dead man in the road? Whoever passes will then bring a warning that all is not well here, and the townsfolk will soon discover the truth on their own.”

  “Clever girl,” Telor approved. “We will do just that.”

  He cupped his hands for Carys to be lifted to the saddle, but she cried, “My rope!” and ran to untie it. While she was doing that, Telor examined the horse that had fallen to see whether it had been hurt. Although there was a long scratch on the animal’s right fore-shoulder, it seemed otherwise sound, and when he and Carys were mounted, the horse moved easily.

  As soon as they passed the boulder, they saw Deri coming, leading the two other horses with one hand and carrying Telor’s quarterstaff balanced over his shoulder. He uttered a wordless cry of relief, and as they reached him and dismounted, he asked eagerly, “Did you catch him, Telor? How? I thought we would have Orin on our heels any moment.”

  “Carys caught him,” Telor replied. “She stretched her rope across the road, the horse ran into it, and the man was thrown and broke his neck.”

  “I thought you had some other reason for bringing that rope than that you would not be parted from it,” the dwarf said with satisfaction, remembering his suspicions. He grinned at her. “I do not think girls are perfect just because they are pretty and desirable creatures. I—” He stopped abruptly and then continued, just as abruptly. “Well, where shall we go and what shall we do?”

  Both Carys and Deri looked at Telor, but he did not respond immediately. He had been distracted by what Deri said about pretty girls followed by his abrupt change of subject. Together with the change he had noticed in Deri since Carys had joined them, this brought the sudden revelation that the dwarf had at last put grief behind him and was ready for—needed, in fact—a woman to care for. Carys? Telor’s gut tightened. No, not Carys. Deri had denied wanting her, and more important, his attitude toward her had been like that toward a beloved, if exasperating, sibling.

  As Telor’s thoughts followed one path, another part of his mind was aware that the question Deri had asked about what they should do next had not been answered out loud. Telor began to say, “Go to Lechlade,” when the name of the town called out a memory. Some years before Telor had found Deri close to death on the road, Telor’s master Eurion had been consulted about what to do with a dwarf daughter by the owner of a cookshop where they always ate because the food was good. Telor remembered that the cook had said that he and his wife had kept hoping the girl would grow, but she had not, and now that her fluxes had begun they had given up hope. What the cook wanted to know was whether he should send the child off with a troupe of traveling players who had offered him money for her. He was fond of his daughter and did not wish any harm to come to her, but he said he could never find a husband for a dwarf and did not know what else to do with the girl.

  Eurion was strongly prejudiced against the jongleurs. To him, they soiled th
e image of the bard and were the cause of the loss of respect for the tradition of singers of history and legend. Eurion therefore filled the cook’s ears with horror stories about the treatment of dwarves among the traveling troupes. Better, the minstrel had said bitterly, to take the girl down to the river and drown her, since she would not live long among the players and the little time left to her would be a continual torment. The cook had not been pleased with Eurion’s advice, but he had growled that the creature was his daughter and he would do his best for her.

  Aside from a momentary feeling of sympathy, Telor had not given that child a thought from that day until he had found Deri. The idea of introducing Deri to the dwarf girl had first occurred to Telor when Deri’s physical condition had improved enough to allow him to feel his terrible loss. But Telor had known that the grief was too overwhelming to leave room for any new, happier emotion and he had dismissed the idea. In the fourteen or fifteen months that Deri had been with him, Telor had not passed through Lechlade nor thought again of the cook’s daughter, and of course, she might be dead or miraculously grown and married by now. But since Lord William was in Lechlade and they had to go there anyway, it would be very nice if going to Lechlade solved more than one problem.

  Telor had delayed in answering the question of what to do next just a moment too long, and the glance at Carys freed her tongue. “We must now rob the men,” she said with determination. “The body too.”

  “But—” Telor began to protest, and then nodded.

  It would never do, Telor realized, to seem too anxious to get to Lechlade, and above all he must act as if he had no knowledge of the cook’s daughter. If Deri suspected he was being steered toward the girl, he would be angry and resentful; whereas if he met her seemingly by accident he might be interested in her.

  “You are right again, Carys,” Telor went on. “Renegade men-at-arms or outlaws would rob them, of course. Not to do so would cry aloud that the men were brought down for a grudge or other special reason.” Then he frowned and said, “But—” and hesitated, looking at Deri.

  “Damn!” Carys exclaimed, picking up the thought that stuck in Telor’s throat for fear of hurting his friend. “None of this will work if any of those men saw you, Deri.” Carys never allowed delicacy to interfere with practical matters.

  “I am not an idiot,” the dwarf said. “I know that one sight of me would tell them who attacked them. Only one twitched, and I tapped him with a stone to quiet him. I heard two groaning before I got out of earshot, but I doubt they could see me. Their heads were toward Creklade, and the horses were between us.”

  “Good.” Carys nodded and smiled. “I will rob them.” She saw Telor’s expression and shook her finger at him. “One might recognize you. None ever saw me.”

  “I did not tie them very tight,” Deri warned. “I thought, since we were not going to kill them outright, that for a man-at-arms to lose the use of his hands—”

  Telor shrugged. “Those are nothing to me and I have no reason to wish any of them more ill than we have done them already.” Then his voice grew soft and cold. “Orin I will bring down—and kill with my own hands, if I can—and I hope his two captains are dead, but those…I do not care.”

  “It would be better, I think, if I ride back,” Carys said hastily, with a glance at Deri. She had hoped that the profit of the extra horses and what they would take in the pouches of the men-at-arms would have pacified Telor and diverted him from a purpose that seemed as dangerous as it was hopeless.

  Deri’s eyes met Carys’s for a moment, but they slid away at once, and his face held no expression. Carys’s heart sank. Either the dwarf had not heard Telor repeat his intention of somehow destroying Orin or he agreed with it. This, however, was no time to begin to argue against Telor’s crazy idea.

  “I will follow you in case one of the men has already freed himself,” Telor said to her and held out his hand for his quarterstaff. Then he gave Deri the rein of the horse he had been riding, saying, “Take the horses far enough into the wood not to be seen. We left the barricade and the dead body, so if someone should come up the road it would be better if you were out of sight.”

  Deri signified that he understood and began to search for a thin spot in the brush. Only his eyes were engaged in the task, and when he led the horses to the place and held aside the brush, urging them through one at a time, he was scarcely aware of what he was doing. His mind was fully occupied with self-loathing. It was a terrible sin to be so selfish that he envied Telor and Carys their joy because what now bound them together made him like a third leg. But his heart sank sickeningly. He would be in the way now, always in the way. No one needed him. He was a useless thing, only a burden.

  Holding the horses in the first open space he came to, Deri stared into nothing, wishing he could tear out the disgusting self-knowledge—bury it, hide it, burn it—but it was not a physical thing that could be wrenched out, or burnt out, or cut out with a knife. It was not even a decent sorrow, like the grief he had carried for so long. He had not been ashamed to show that. This filthy, festering ulcer of knowing he was nothing must be concealed or Telor and Carys would feel they had wronged him. Still, Deri hated them both, hated their need for each other, and for the first time in his life, he felt his soul to be as misshapen as his body.

  Meanwhile Carys had found two of the men squirming and struggling but still bound; the third was dead. The other two lay as still as the dead man when, without a sound, she presented each with the point of her knife. Without further ado, she robbed them most efficiently, taking their belts with swords, knives, and pouches and not forgetting to feel at their necks for a second pouch for each or the soft leather belt one wore under his braies.

  That was easy, but stripping the dead man was a nightmare that seemed to go on forever. The heavy, limp body seemed determined to have its revenge by thwarting her. She got the knack of handling it at last, and stripped it down to the braies, piling all the other loot onto the shirt so she could gather it up and run if she had to.

  Telor hissed at her from the brush when she was about to yank off the dead man’s braies, and she froze, listening tensely for the sound of a party on the road. All was silent, however, and she could not help giggling to herself as she realized that Telor was not warning her but wanted her to leave the corpse his decency. It seemed silly to her—she was certain a dead man would not care that he was naked—but she was glad to be finished, able to bundle together what she had collected into the shirt and heave it onto the horse.

  “You find Deri,” Telor said when he came out of the brush to rejoin her and had taken the rein of the horse she was leading from her hand. “You are too thorough.”

  Carys glanced sidelong at him and remembered that, unlike Morgan, Telor disapproved of stealing. “Well, I have never pretended to be an outlaw before,” she said. “It seemed to me that such people would take everything.”

  Telor brightened. He had not liked how quickly Carys found the hiding places of the men’s valuables, almost as if she knew from experience where to look, and he felt guilty about taking everything, even what he thought of as the small savings they tried to hide. The efficiency with which she had stripped the corpse disturbed him too. However, he was coming to terms with Carys’s occasionally cold-blooded practicality.

  “Well, I do not like it,” he confessed, smiling at her, “but that is plainly stupid. We have probably only taken what they stole from others, and Deri and I will need the dead men’s clothes. This is no time to cling to old, useless prejudices.”

  “They are not useless,” Carys told him emphatically. “Stealing is what is stupid, unless, like now, it is more dangerous not to steal.”

  She was speaking of her own experience, not out of moral conviction—for it was an unnecessary theft that had cost Morgan his life and nearly destroyed hers. But Telor put his own meaning into her words and was so moved by the beauty of her nature, which he felt had resisted corruption owing to its own purity, that he stop
ped to embrace her. Having touched her lips, he began to think of corruption—of a different type, admittedly—in a far more favorable light. He was just wondering how to get rid of the horse when Carys wriggled out of his grasp. She was delighted to know that Telor was pleased with her, but she had been growing more nervous by the minute, able to think only of a party coming along the road and finding their victims.

  She pointed ahead. “I think that is the gap Deri went through. You get what you must from the dead man. I will help Deri bring the horses out.”

  Telor laughed and nodded. “Yes, go fetch Deri,” he exclaimed ruefully. “I certainly need a keeper, for I do not seem able to mind myself when I am alone with you.”

  The gentle and amused self-blame almost brought Carys back into his arms. No matter how good her reasons, both Ulric and Morgan were infuriated by her refusals. However, her eagerness to get away from the scene of the attack remained far stronger than the faint urge she felt to touch and caress Telor whenever she was near him. She ran to the gap in the hedge and squeezed through, finding Deri without difficulty and moving so softly that Deri did not hear her. The expression on the dwarf’s face made Carys cry his name aloud and stop in her tracks. He jumped and turned toward her, wearing the perfectly natural scowl of a worried man taken by surprise. Carys let out the breath she had been holding in a sigh of relief. It must have been the dappling of sun and shade on his face that had painted the features into a mask of pain and utter despair.

  “What’s wrong?” Deri asked, tugging the horses forward. “Where is Telor?”

  “Nothing is wrong,” Carys assured him. “Telor is stripping the dead man near the barricade and we must meet him there.” Deri looked at her questioningly still, and she shrugged. “I am worse than a cat on hot stones,” she said. “Everything is going too well. I feel disaster hanging over us.”