“Adams draws himself up real straight. ”No, sir,” he says. “Sir, I am one of Harry S. Truman’s hired killers.’ ” Arnie raised his head. “See my point?”
“I’m not sure.” Ian smiled, and tried for a light answer. “Shoot the burglar seven times?”
The look on Arnie’s face said that Ian had flunked a test. He started to turn away.
“Arnie—stop, please. I’m sorry.”
Arnie turned back, with a tired smile. “It’s okay. I guess I preach too much. Comes from living for too many years.” He dismissed it with a wave of the hand. “Old men talk too much, and do too little of anything else.”
He walked away, looking more his age than he had in a long time.
Marta approached Ian as he stood alone, her brother Burs on her arm. Burs had barely exchanged a dozen words with Ian on the trip; despite Ian’s resolve not to embarrass him, it seemed that he had.
She had exchanged her travel clothes for something less practical, a dress that seemed to consist of a single sheer strip of white silk perhaps a foot wide, looped over one shoulder, leaving the other shoulder bare, then wrapped and rewrapped up and down her torso from under the shoulder to just above the knees. There were enough layers to leave it opaque where it clung to her breasts, but only a single layer covered her smooth, flat belly. It was held in place by a simple brooch at her hip, and perhaps it was an accident that as she stood there, the brooch came within inches of his fingers, as though daring him to remove it.
“My brother Burs,” she said, her voice so smooth and silky he just knew that she was trying to tell him that there was deception in the air, “has a favor to ask.”
“So let him ask,” Ian said.
Burs nodded, his near hand on the pommel of his sword. Like an open hand, that originally meant peaceful intent—there was no way one could quickly draw a sword from the scabbard with the near hand—although Ian had no doubt that there were people who practiced using the near hand to support the scabbard more firmly for a quick draw.
But Ian wasn’t worried, not particularly. The kid’s manner didn’t suggest hostility.
Burs Erikson drew himself up straight. “My—the margravine has said that she thinks you might consider me as one of your companions when you face the Pain.”
The Pain. Ian frowned. That was the ceremony by which warriors considered worthy enough lost their left hand and gained the status of Tyrson.
What he really wanted was Ivar del Hival at his side to run interference, but the fat asshole was all the way across the barge.
Well, best to take the bull by the teeth, or between the horns, or whatever the goddamn metaphor was. And best to be who and what you were. “And what if I told you that I don’t intend to face ‘The Pain’?” Ian asked. “What would you ask of me then, Burs Erikson?”
“If?” The boy’s nostrils flared. “If you were to say such a thing, I’d ask if you are a coward, I suppose, or if you know your niche in life to be a lowly one, not worthy of the metal hand of a Son of Tyr.”
“Ah.” Ian smiled. “Do you know how Tyr lost his hand, Burs Erikson?”
“Every child hears the tale,” he said. “The gods were binding Fenris-wolf, claiming it to be but a game, although in earnest they wanted the dog tied until the end of time. But he burst through every bond they could try. Then, finally, they … created something that even such as he could not break, and asked to try that.
“But Fenris-wolf, son of the Trickster himself, grew suspicious, and demanded a hostage. Great Tyr placed his hand in the wolf’s mouth as that surety, and when Fenris-wolf found itself bound beyond escape, it bit his hand off. From that day on, Tyr wore that stump as a sign of his courage.”
Ian nodded. “I was once told, by someone who should have known, that he lost it through accident, through clumsiness in striving with Fenris-wolf, and later claimed it to have been through bravery and heroism.”
“ ‘By someone who should have known’?”
“Friend of mine. You haven’t met him.” Ian still remembered the moment when Hosea had said that. It felt like eons ago that he had sat at the table in Harbard’s cottage with Hosea, and Harbard, and her. Harbard had frowned at the story, but Freya had merely nodded.
Ian had no doubt about the truth. “Do you know what we in Hardwood call somebody who puts his hand in a wolf’s mouth to no purpose, Burs Erikson?”
Burs shook his head. “No, and I’ll play questioner to your jester, Ian Silver Stone. What do you call such a person?”
“We call him ‘an asshole’,” Ian said, the last two words in English. “But yes, if I ever chose to face such a thing, I would be proud to add you to my companions,” he said, carefully, “although of course Arnie Selmo and Ivar del Hival and others you don’t know have prior claim. But yes, I’ll add you to the list.” He raised his right hand and made a sign that he hoped looked mystic and meaningful, although all it was, was the salute D’Arnot had taught him, and spoke in English again.
“Do not,” he intoned, carefully, “call us, for we shall call you.”
Burs Erikson didn’t quite know how to take it, but after an awkward moment he decided that a bow and a quick exit was the best choice.
Marta leaned up against the rail, watching her brother go. “Oh? So you don’t intend to face the Pain? Not even for me?” She turned back to him, standing close, her face upraised.
“Ah. You want me to be one-handed?” he asked. He let his left hand rest on her arm against the rail, and then let it drop to her hip. “I’ve some use for both my hands, as you may recall,” he said, surprised at how easily the words came without stammering.
Her eyes locked on his. “So, again, Ian Silver Stone, you insist on having it your own way.” She took one step toward him, as though daring him to reach out and touch her. “Is this the way it is always to be with you?”
“Perhaps,” he said.
“We’ll see,” she said, her face upturned, her mouth twisted ever so slightly. Her eyes caught the twinkle of the stars overhead, and somehow made the cold distant light close and hot. Her arms wound around his neck. “We make landfall at the Seat late tomorrow,” she said, her breath warm in his ear. “You’d better get some sleep.”
She stepped back, turned, and walked away, her slim hips swaying from side to side perhaps a trifle more than was strictly necessary.
Still, every eye on the barge seemed to be on him, rather than her. So, moving as slowly as he could, he raised his hand to his brow in a brief salute at her vanishing figure, then turned about, rested his forearms on the railing, and considered the night.
Chapter Seventeen
The Seat
If Torrie’s backside didn’t hurt with every plodding step the pony took, if his lower back hadn’t settled into a permanent ache, if his shoulders didn’t hurt when he slumped—and hurt when he didn’t slump—if it didn’t feel like glowing coals had taken up residence under his kneecaps, if he wasn’t always hungry but too gut-tired to eat, if his eyes didn’t feel hot and scratchy, then Torrie might have enjoyed the view.
It was, in theory, magnificent. The road twisted back and forth down the rich green hills like a piece of ribbon candy. The Seat lay below, spread across the fork where the slow, gentle Jut joined the faster-flowing Gilfi, to become the Great Gilfi.
They moved their ponies to the side of the road to make room for a carriage and its accompanying horsemen. The last of the riders, a tall, bearded man on a high-stepping gray gelding, turned in the saddle as they passed.
Torrie hunched forward more in the saddle, pulling himself deeper into the hood of the dwarven cloak. Dignity had long since been thrown to the wind; there was nothing dignified about riding a broad-shouldered dwarf pony, particularly not when you had to keep the stirrups short and pull up your legs and hunch down into the cloak anytime somebody might be watching.
It had been done before, Dad had said, and it would probably be done again: Humans expected to see dwarves riding the dull, placid
little ponies, and if their attention wasn’t drawn to the three outsized riders scattered throughout the dozen, they wouldn’t be noticing them.
It was all very logical, if painful.
Just as painful, just as relentlessly logical as Maggie had been, back in Storna’s Stele.
I was suspicious from the first, she had said. It seemed strange.
Hosea chopping wood? Why? His… his talent has always been cleverness with his hands. Delicacy, not brute force. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find him reworking the plumbing, or carving a secret hiding place in the main overhead beam. If we had found him making a pin-and-tumbler lock out of wood, well, sure, that would have made sense.
But taking a wedge and sledgehammer to turn sections of a log into chunks of firewood?
No. That’s not Hosea. That’s somebody else. Think about it, dammit.
At first, I wrote it off. Okay, I said to myself, Harbard healed him up, and it’s been so long since he’s had such a use of his hands that he’s felt like doing something as simple, as primal, as uncomplicated as turning logs into firewood.
But there was too much wrong. I notice things. I don’t feel like I have to tell everybody everything I notice, but I notice things. Back in Paris, Torrie, I noticed how some kind soul decided that I didn’t need to know that my brand new black French beret had been made in the Philippines, and removed the tag.
And here, well, maybe it’s a girl-thing and not a boy-thing, but didn’t you notice that he seemed too, well, comfortable in Harbard’s cottage? Men are so… territorial, so much of the time, even when you’re not quite peeing against walls to mark your territory. When you’re in somebody else’s home, you think before taking something down from a shelf, you look like you’re about to ask permission before you sit in a chair—you act like, well, like you’re not at home.
I saw it from the first. When he moved around, it wasn’t as though it was somebody else’s house that he was staying in; it was like it was his.
Okay, write that off, too. I’m just a paranoid girl, you’re thinking. Fine. If you start talking about time of the month, we’re going to have a problem, but if you just want to think that I’m too suspicious for my own good, okay, fine, no problem. I can live with that.
But then there was the cooking. It was edible, but that was all. I’ve eaten Hosea’s cooking before, you’ve both eaten his cooking for years, and he’s better than that. I mean, come on, the two of you had to spice it up yourselves, and not only didn’t he make a comment at that, he didn’t even look surprised, or hurt.
That’s not enough. Okay. Fine.
Well, by then I knew that it wasn’t him, so I laid a trap: I talked about Ian getting into trouble having a drink in a bar. I’ve seen Ian smoke dope a time or two, but I don’t think anybody has ever seen him take a drink. Ever.
Come on, Torrie, you’ve been counting on him to be the designated driver for three years that I know of.
And getting into trouble? Come on. Ian?
No. Ian doesn’t drink, Ian doesn’t look for trouble, and Hosea knows that. But this so-called Hosea didn’t.
So: that wasn’t Hosea.
My best guess is that was Harbard, or Odin, or whatever he wants to call himself these days. We know all the Old Ones are shapeshifters to some extent—remember the fire giant? And read your Eddas, dammit, Torrie. Read the Lay of Harbard. It’s clearly Odin, in disguise, taunting Thor—who, like the two of you, was too blind to catch on.
I don’t know what happened to the real Hosea, but I didn’t think that the time to find out was in front of this character, not with you two so well taken in.
Now, I know we can’t always tell what these Old Ones are up to, but some of it is obvious. He didn’t want us going after Ian, and he went to some trouble to try to misdirect us. That means that if we do, he thinks we can screw up whatever he’s got planned.
So, we’ve got to make him right.
Let me try a bit of speculation. Once he wasn’t able to fool us, he could have tried some other way to stop us. But my guess is that with that empty rack over the doorway indicating that his spear is gone, he didn’t particularly want to face the two of you, each of you armed with a sword that Hosea tempered in his own blood. He, himself, killed a bergenisse with Ian’s sword, if you’ll remember; he knows what it’s capable of, and I don’t think he’s going to think that the real Hosea equipped either of you with an inferior weapon.
No. It wasn’t worth the risk, not to him.
It just occurred to me: maybe he has Hosea secured somewhere, and just maybe he doesn’t want to irritate Hosea by killing us, or at least the two of you. We’ll find out, but not now. Right now we have to deal with the problem in front of us.
So: what do we have? We have him not wanting us to come this way; we have him sure that the three of us are able to screw up whatever he has in mind, if we do get to the Seat in time; and we have a certainty that we’re not going to be able to just walk right into the Seat, sit ourselves down and say no.
So that means we have to get there as quickly as possible, and the three of us can’t do it by ourselves, or even as ourselves.
I think that means we need horses, and cloaks, and we need some way of concealing that it’s the three of us. I think we need to get lost in a crowd. These vestri are a crowd.
And I think we need to get going, well, now.
She had folded her arms across her chest.
Well?
Which is how he found himself clinging to the almost bare back of a vestri pony. Vestri weren’t terribly comfortable on horseback to begin with, and favored broad, high-peaked saddles with fore-and-aft bellybands that held the saddle firmly to the back of the animal, where they could feel that they could ride the saddle more than the pony. Substitute a smaller Vandescardian saddle, and Torrie could ride a little lower, his cloak concealing the saddle as well as the way his legs were drawn up under him.
It had been a hard ride, and an almost constant one, day and night starting to blur together.
Money, at least, had been no problem. It was amazing how far even a single golden Middle Dominion mark went—vestri had a legendary and almost insatiable appetite for gold, and while there were only four vestri ponies for sale at any price in Storna’s Stele, that had been a start. Durin, who turned out to have an unexpected talent for haggling, had managed to increase their herd first at a vestri burrow and then in two villages, until all twelve of them had spare mounts, plus an additional four dray horses, split into two pairs that alternated pulling the supply wagon.
Money couldn’t solve all problems, but it could keep the three humans and nine dwarves horsed and fed.
What it couldn’t do was take the road weariness out of Torrie, Maggie, or even Dad. Plodding almost continually, save for a few hours’ rest mainly for the horses rather than the riders, had left him barely able to focus on the city spread out at the river junction ahead of him.
The stone walls of the old city came to a point at the V of the fork, although it was hard to tell whether the walls were originally intended as dikes or as fortification. Probably both—the ramparts circling the walls seemed designed for defense.
But the inner city lay open, at least at the moment: seven bridges spanned the rivers, and the outer city had grown up around the roads leading into it.
A few feet above river level, a pair of large open holes belched a constant stream of dirty water into the roiling waters below. Within the walls, spires and windowed towers rose, a jagged outline against the blue sky. Smokestacks left a haze that disfigured the city without disguising it. Even from this far away, it still had the stench of a city about it.
Tiny figures of people and wagons clogged the streets below, as though they were brown and gray corpuscles, bringing in food and oxygen and removing waste.
Durin called a halt. “Well, friends,” he said, his voice still the same even rasp it had been in Storna’s Stele, as though the days of riding hadn’t made a mark on his bo
dy or mind, “we could rush in and arrive all tired, in the dark, and stumble around for a place to stay until we recover, meanwhile trying to figure out if and how to deal with the problem of the three Friends of the Father, or we could pull the cart off the road onto that little grassy sward over there, and catch some much-needed sleep.”
Torrie tried to keep his face from showing his weariness. Even a little force of personality, a smidgen of character, could go far. “Which do you think we should do, Durin?” he asked, trying to keep his expression serious.
Durin smiled. “Sleep.”
The docking at the Seat was simpler and easier than Ian had expected.
Shirtless, poling in unison while they seemed to sweat in unison under the hot noon sun, the polemen had worked the barge into the slower waters near the shore. As they rounded the final bend, a watcher at the docks dispatched a six-man oar-propelled craft that looked like a racing shell, from which trailed a long thin line.
The crew drew the thin line through a solidly mounted brass doughnut at the front of the barge. The thin line pulled a wrist-thick rope. Once the rope had been made fast to the docking doughnut, the whole barge was slowly reeled in from shore and made fast to a floating dock between another, smaller barge and a high-drafted sloop.
While the Hinterlanders prepared to debark, the crew busied itself securing the barge to the dock—apparently, if it wasn’t tied down in twenty-‘leven separate places, it would leap away and slide downriver, and be gone.
Ian slipped on his gloves and retrieved Gungnir. It was still the same: as he reached for the spear, it was as though he was becoming more and more distant from himself, pulling the strings that manipulated himself, a puppeteer whose own body was the marionette.
But he adjusted, and just closed his hand around the spear’s shaft.
And then he was himself, again.
The Silver Stone Page 21