by Dave Duncan
“Then why is he still masquerading as Rubin?” Ranter demanded. “You saying that’s Volpe marrying the child bride?”
Bellman said, “I don’t know. I do intend to find out. The Margrave was said to want a love match for his child, so he would hardly agree to marry her to a serial wife-killer. We know things he doesn’t, so what does he know that we don’t? And Volpe is forbidden to marry while wearing his own face. It would make more sense if Volpe pretended to be Rubin and gave himself permission to marry again, but that isn’t what the merchants said.” Or the margrave might be in on the deception. The news was another clue in the most fascinating puzzle Bellman had ever encountered, but so far it led in too many directions. He looked to Ringwood. “What do we do now, Leader?”
“Suggestions welcome.” Ringwood was learning.
Ranter yawned and stretched. “Sounds to me like now we have to start fighting for our supper. Where is this Brikov place?”
“Other side of that.” Manfred pointed east, at the wall of rock holding up the sky.
“You’re joking!”
“No, he isn’t,” Johanna said. “We came over that pass in springtime, didn’t we, Manfred? I swear we forded a thousand freshets. Officially there’s no pass there. Maps don’t show one. But there is a smugglers’ road, which is held on the Krupina side by Count János, and on this side by a brigand named Sigmund, who usually cooperates with him, but may just cut our throats to get our horses. Manfred knows the way now and can get us through, can’t you, Manfred?”
Ringwood squeaked. “Wait a second! How many men does this Sigmund have and what’s his price going to be?”
“We ignore Sigmund,” Manfred said. His wrinkles multiplied into a grin. “His men are miners and charcoal burners, a few herders. A village he does not have.” The forester leered at all the worried expressions. “They live far away.” He spread his arms. “Given time he can bring in many men. But smile and wave as we go through, yes? Then he has no way to object.”
“And we have no time to waste,” Johanna said, reaching for the boots she had shed. “Three days! There’s a cave, a shelter. Manfred can find it. We’ll overnight there. If we start from there at first light, we’ll reach Brikov by nightfall. Right, Manfred?”
The old man turned and studied the western sky. “I worry more about the weather than about Sigmund.”
“It looks fine to me,” Ranter said.
“Sigmund will not catch us. He uses mules.”
Ringwood pulled a face. “Shouldn’t we use mules, then?”
“No time to arrange that!” Johanna said, pulling on her second boot. “We ride for Brikov immediately, Commander!”
“I hear your instructions, Your Highness.” Ringwood looked around the group. “But Brikov sounds like a trap—a thwarted brigand behind us and a murdering enchanter ahead of us. I wish I’d taken some of Grand Master’s strategy lessons. What sort of person is this Count János?”
Johanna sprang up. “Short of stature, but big in everything else. Loud. Cruel, because he rules a harsh land. Loyal to his liege, the Grand Duke, but determined to defend his own rights first. He hates the Brotherhood because it is the only possible threat to his independence. I trusted him enough to leave Frederik there, didn’t I? If Volpe came looking for my son, János said, he would hang him from the ridgepole.”
“How many men does he command?”
She gathered up the blanket she had been sitting on. “I’m just a little woman, how should I know? Stop wasting time!”
Ringwood looked to Manfred for an answer.
“Fifty would answer his war horn,” the forester said. “Two hundred within a couple of days. One hundred for operations outside his borders.”
“And Frederik is in Brikov?”
“He is in the Count’s territory,” Johanna said, “not at his court. Come!”
Ringwood sighed. “All right. The expedition will now move out and make tracks for Brikov. But if I say we go no farther than Brikov, Your Royal Highness, then we go no farther! Is that agreed?”
Nothing was agreed so far as Johanna was concerned. Still muttering, “Three days!” she saddled her horse, mounted, and might well have ridden off alone had Bellman not caught hold of her bridle.
“Steady, Your Grace! We have to overnight in this cave of yours. A few minutes sooner or later getting there won’t make any difference.”
That seemed to calm her, although she continued to mutter, “Three days!” while she waited for the others. She was still muttering it when they were trotting along the road and only he could hear her.
In just three days the torture might be over. Either she would be restored to her husband or Bellman would claim her for his own.
They left the Blanburg road and continued east by a maze of local tracks, climbing through vineyards that a few weeks before might have bustled with harvesters and carters, but were now deserted. Above those they emerged on bare hills, grazed by goats or sheep. Although the old forester had come this way only once in his life, and going in the opposite direction, he seemed to know the path he wanted, following the dry streambeds and never hesitating when they divided, as they did constantly.
Few of their present horses had been with them since Furret. Any that weakened or needed a rest had been traded off for better, and some of the present string were not going to cope with the next two days’ exertions. By choice, Bellman would have exchanged them all for mules in Blanburg. At one of their rests he suggested some be set free, and called for a vote on which were the weakest.
Manfred disagreed. “Chance rules in the hills,” he said. “A strong horse with a pulled tendon is good for eating, naught else. We may need them all.” His view carried the day.
By late afternoon the expedition was back under trees, but Manfred continued to lead the way confidently. Although every oak or beech looked much the same to city-bred Bellman, he could recognize trees that had been pollarded or coppiced, and knew that this was cultivated woodland, not primeval forest. The climb grew steeper.
Manfred began hunting something. He pointed to tracks, droppings, wood chips, and eventually even the others caught a faint odor of smoke. Heading upwind, they located a clearing where a group of charcoal burners were plying their trade. They were probably all one extended family, about a dozen people from elderly to toddlers, and without exception they were black. Their clothes were black. Their mule, their tools, and even their hysterically barking dogs were black. Spectacularly white eyes in black faces stared warily at the newcomers.
Their homes were makeshift tents of branches. Their mound was a giant beehive, covered with turf and soil to contain the fire within, drifting wisps of white smoke into the evening air. It looked simple enough, but Bellman knew that its construction called for real skill and that it would not burn properly without constant attention.
Manfred hailed them in a dialect that baffled Bellman’s conjured comprehension. He gathered only that trading was in progress. In the end the forester exchanged a horse for information about who else was in the neighborhood, a load of cut firewood that would save the travelers much labor later in the day, and a haunch of “goat” that was certainly illegal venison. In monetary terms, the burners had the best of the bargain, but both sides were happy, which was all that mattered.
“It’s a life, I suppose,” Bellman said as the travelers resumed their climb.
“They are good people,” Johanna agreed with surprising emphasis.
“They were not afraid of us.”
“They do not fear thieves, for they have nothing worth stealing except their mule, and few brigands would stoop to stealing a charcoal burner’s mule, because charcoal is a necessity for many things. They are proud folk. They value their freedom.” She had recovered her good humor
“I sense a story.”
She smiled for the first time since she had heard of the forthcoming wedding. “I have a sister, Voica, older than me. She ran off with a charcoal burner, much against my father�
�s wishes. She visited me sometimes at Fadrenschloss. She was there for my wedding and I promised her I would find her man a better job. She refused, saying that they enjoyed their liberty too much to leave the hills.”
This was the first time she had ever mentioned family. “Do they live in the demesne of Count János, by any chance?”
Johanna laughed. “You are too clever, you hear me? Yes, Voica is strong and her husband is a bull, yet they have no children. The spirits can be cruel! So I loaned her Frederik. Who will look in a charcoal burner’s camp for a marquis?”
And who would recognize him with his face all sooty?
The cave served them best by hiding their fire. It would be invaluable if the weather turned bad in the night—as Manfred still stubbornly predicted, although he could not or would not explain his reasons. Since the weather remained fair and generations of smugglers had fouled the shelter with their refuse, old bedding, and probably vermin, everyone elected to sleep under the sky. The Blades kept watch, as always, but there was no evidence that followers of the sinister Sigmund were on their trail yet.
Bellman lay and watched stars and clouds for a long time. He had spread his blanket a respectable distance from Johanna’s, but not so far that he could not hear her soft breathing. He heard much heavier breathing for a while from Trudy’s direction, while Ranter was on watch and Ringwood was not. He envied the lovers their happiness.
Was the bridegroom-to-be really Rubin, or was he Volpe in disguise? Had Bellman come all this way just to return the woman he loved to her husband, who might or might not have tried to kill her? Would Rubin even take her back? Six months’ absence would ruin any wife’s reputation, let alone a Grand Duchess’s. What then of Frederik? Would he still be dispossessed? The problems outnumbered the stars. What was young Karl up to all this time? If Frederik was presumed dead like his mother, then Volpe’s son was heir presumptive again, and would not approve of his cousin’s remarriage. Karl, it was worth remembering, had always had motive but no means. Abbot Minhea had means but no motive.
Johanna wakened at the first trace of brightness and roused everyone else. Breath smoking in the predawn chill, the wayfarers gulped a hurried meal and prepared for a hard day. Obsessed with the need for haste, Johanna would rather have skipped the meal, and yet she would not say what she thought she could do at Brikov. There might yet be time for her to go on and reach Krupa before the wedding, but her Blades would be crazy to allow it.
The road offered no easy warmup. Within minutes they were forced to dismount and lead the horses. They went up unstable screes, through dense pine woods, along boulder-strewn streambeds. After an hour or so they emerged on stony slopes naked to the sky, with ice-clad peaks glaring down at them, seeming almost overhead. Bellman knew he was not the only one wondering if Manfred truly remembered the way or was simply guessing. They were mites doomed to creep over the face of the world forever.
Around midmorning Ringwood suddenly shouted, “Look!”
He was pointing at a band of a dozen or so mounted men in the very far distance, two or three ridges back. Yes, they might be pursuing some perfectly innocent business of their own. It was much more likely that they were pursuing the trespassers. Johanna shouted for more speed, but they were already going as fast as they could.
Manfred started taking shortcuts and, incredibly, the going became even worse. They tied tow ropes to the saddles so the horses could pull them up screes that looked fit to baffle a goat. Twice a horse slipped and lamed itself and had to be slaughtered. Ranter was appointed butcher, since the task did not seem to bother him, but a couple of unfortunate animals actually fell to their deaths, rolling helplessly down the hillside, out of reach. The pursuers were closing, albeit very slowly.
Bellman dared not wonder what would happen if Count János did not make them welcome. They would have no way back and no money to replace the missing mounts and baggage. A more assertive Blade than Ringwood would have kept his ward out of such a trap.
Soon it seemed that they had no way forward, either, for the forester was leading them up a nearly impassable talus slope to the base of a vertical cliff. There, surprisingly, he mounted his horse again. When the others arrived, they found a faint path winding around a spur to enter a canyon like a saw cut in the mountain. The made trail was now more obvious and quite passable. So Manfred had not been guessing after all. This, he explained with his toothless grin, was the divide, the boundary, and Sigmund’s men would not follow them into the domain of Count János.
And so it was.
The canyon widened into a narrow valley, and that joined a wider. At the first open water, Manfred called a halt to rest the horses and let them drink. High peaks towered all around them.
“How far to Brikov?” Bellman asked.
The old man shrugged. “Should do it by nightfall.” He glanced at the sky. “If the weather holds.”
So they had a long way to go yet, but at least they could now travel on four feet, not two. The range’s eastern slope was less steep than the western, and drier. The trail descended to rocky moorland, then sandy valleys dotted with bristly pine trees, and by midafternoon the travelers were back in pasture and cultivated woodland. Manfred pointed out traces of herds and game, even of humans, but it was late in the day before they were challenged.
The young horseman who accosted them was hardly more than a boy, but he did not seem as nervous as he should be if he were waylaying armed intruders all by himself, and the flat they were traversing was well provided with cover. His dialect was even murkier than the charcoal burners’, but he and Manfred were soon jabbering away incomprehensibly. Satisfied, the boy waved an all-clear signal to the bushes and copses. After that he accompanied the group to Brikov, chattering to Manfred all the way. If there were archers in the shrubbery, they remained out of sight.
The sun had slid behind the hills when Johanna said, “This is Brikov!”
“This?” Bellman had expected a small town or at least a castle, but here he saw little more than a bare and stony valley, with cattle penned in dry stone walls and cottages scattered along the hillsides. Being much the same color as the landscape, the houses were hard to make out in the dusk.
“Why?” he asked. “I mean, why here?” Settlements should have a reason for being where they were: a ford, tillable land, or a good harbor.
Johanna smiled faintly. She was drooping with fatigue, as they all were. “Mining. Ernst explained it to me. They built their homes from the tailings tipped out near the tunnels. The hills are honeycombed with old adits. No one’s ever tried to conquer Brikov, Ernst said—it would be like invading an ants’ nest.”
And as pointless, Bellman thought. Cattle were the only wealth in sight, and they could be moved elsewhere readily enough.
The trail the guide had chosen angled up the side of the valley, going close by some of the cottages and letting Bellman see that they were mere kennels, walls of stones and roofs of turf. Indeed, some of the men watching the visitors’ arrival stood taller than their own houses. Many were armed and looked like another good reason for not trying to invade the valley.
The lord’s residence was a group of several larger buildings, more like a fortified farm than a traditional fortress. The one-story walls were mortared and the roofs tiled. Guards with halberds stood by the main gate, but it was not clear whether they were guarding the house or the three workmen busily erecting a gallows.
• 7 •
If János called in his two hundred mountain men, Ringwood decided, it would be standing room only in his baronial hall. With glazed windows, a timber floor covered with sawdust, and woollen weavings on the wall to keep out the winter chill, it was more like a wealthy farmer’s dining room than a heroes’ hall or a mess for a castle garrison. That evening it was almost empty—no oxen on the spit above the bare hearth, no plank tables and benches for feasting, just a chair for the Count himself and one for his guest, Frau Schale. The massive walls still held the day’s heat, although no
w the light was fading fast.
Spirits! It had been an exhausting day. Ringwood’s knees trembled with fatigue. He wished he had been given a seat and was much annoyed that True had not. The travelers were filthy and starving, yet Johanna had refused all offers of refreshment, insisting on an immediate audience with the Count. Ever since Ranter had told her of the forthcoming wedding, she had been behaving oddly, muttering to herself, scowling at her Blades. Ringwood worried that she was going to ask János to give her an escort so she could attend the ceremony. If János agreed, two Blades were going to be in serious trouble, arguing with two hundred mountain men.
The Count’s throne was ornately carved, had once been gilded, and was high enough to require a footrest. Perched up there, János could look down on the Duchess, whose chair was too low for comfort. “Short of stature,” she had called him, but his legs must be the problem, for his shoulders were a league wide and his head as big as a beer keg. He had a beetling brow with ferocious eyebrows, a bald scalp, and a beard like a bushel of tangled iron wire. Jewels glinted on his thick, hairy fingers, yet his clothes were homemade leathers, plain and well-worn.
Johanna’s insistence that her three swordsmen would not surrender their weapons had resulted in delay until three of the Count’s sons were located and brought in to stand behind their father and match the Ironhall men. They were shorter, wider, and much older than the Blades, but Ringwood had only contempt for the mighty broadswords they bore. He would gamble Bad News against one of those any day. Although they could not manage to emulate their father’s fearsome glare, they made it plain that they did not approve of this upstart Frau Schale who brought armed men into their father’s hall. Clearly János had not taken them into his confidence enough to explain who she was.
After the bare minimum of formalities, she said, “How goes Krupina, my lord? Duke Rubin still reigns, I hear.”
“It seems so. But where is my friend Ernst?” His voice rumbled and echoed.