A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  His concern was well founded. They had ridden hardly a furlong over the pasture before their way was blocked by another hedge, its thorny tendrils reaching higher than a horseman and thicker than a wagon. They turned aside to flank it and with surprising good fortune soon found a place Ylo thought they might break through. He dismounted and persuaded the roan that if he could do it, a horse could follow. There was hawthorn in the hedge, and wild roses, and stinging nettles. Both man and horse got well scratched, but not fatally. The far side was pasture. He looped the reins round a branch and went back to fetch the sorrel.

  A flash of light far-off caught his eye and he knew at once that it was sunlight on armor. They were distant, two fields away, but he could make out the dust they were kicking up. He counted eight or nine riders, already spread out as if they had been in hot pursuit for some time.

  “There they are,” he said numbly. “See, darling?”

  Eshiala must have seen. With a wild scramble her horse exploded through the hedge, screaming in alarm. Ylo leaped back out of the way. Maya, clasped tight before her mother, uttered a wail and lifted tiny hands to fend off trailing branches. The sorrel catapulted into a gallop.

  Common sense said that the game was over. The hounds had their quarry in sight at last and now they could run it down.

  Common sense be damned — Eshiala’s maternal instincts had taken over. Her child was in danger.

  “Ride, Ylo!” she shouted, her voice fading into the distance. “Ride like the wind!”

  2

  Archon Raim built his own furniture with adze and chisel. The exiled king of Krasnegar preferred sorcery. Rap had constructed two admirably debauched lounging chairs to adorn the lawn outside his cabin, outfitting them with comfy pallets in an eye-catching purple. They would have swallowed a pixie whole, but they let him stretch out to his full length and degenerate in comfort. They were on the large size for Inos, and she had made some fitfully disparaging remarks about his color sense. If the Gods were truly insistent that he must wither away into senility in this gilded prison, then he would have ample time to do something about such matters.

  But not now. Now was still for talking, and smiling, and strange feelings of thankfulness. It was only two days since he had brought Inos to the Rap Place at dawn, feeling much less like a romantic knight rescuing his lady than a plowman carrying his peasant bride home to his hovel. Years ago she had given him a palace; now he had landed her in a two-room cabin. Being Inos, she had sensed his mood and praised the quarters beyond reason. Being Inos, she made that hovel feel more homelike than any castle.

  Two days were not enough to wipe out eight months of separation, eight months of not-expecting-ever-to-see-again. Two days were not enough to exchange tales of all their strange adventures. Two days were not enough to erase the feelings of miracle upon waking to find the wanted one lying alongside, or looking up to meet the remembered eyes again. Two days were nothing and yet infinitely precious.

  Now they lay under the shade of the elm and smiled at each other in bone-deep contentment.

  “What was the worst?” she said suddenly.

  He shrugged. “When the sorceress caught me in Casfrel, I suppose. Or when we had to let Olybino die. But he must have known that would happen. I feel guilty that I always underestimated him.”

  “He probably underestimated himself until he needed to be more than he had been. And the best part?”

  “Silly question.”

  She chuckled.

  Later, she sighed. “What happens next. Rap?”

  “Here? Nothing. The Keeper will see to that.”

  “Can she? Can she really keep the Covin away for ever?”

  “She thinks so. Or says she does. It is in the laps of the Gods. If anything brings Zinixo’s full attention to bear on Thume, he will realize that it is not what it seems. Otherwise…”

  Otherwise the two of them remain here in exile for ever, moldering away into old age.

  “No escape?” Inos asked, knowing what he had not said.

  “Not without her consent. I expect she has bespelled us so that we cannot escape. She probably foresaw what happened in the djinn camp, or else she had a prophecy to guide her. She knew I would return. She knew — you can bet on that. I don’t think the Keeper takes any risks at all.” He glanced around. “We have company.”

  Kadie and Archon Thaïle came strolling across the grass. One had short fawn hair, one long black hair, but they wore identical skirts of blue and green, identical white blouses, identical sandals. Gold eyes and green eyes, but their smiles were equally strained.

  Kadie had elected to remain at the Thaïle Place. She came to call twice a day, but she never stayed long. She was improving, yes, but even her mother had failed to effect a cure. That was going to take time, and Rap had an uneasy hunch that Kadie made those visits only because Thaïle sent her. Today she had brought her instead.

  Rap clambered out of his chair and summoned two more chairs from the cabin. He spoke formal greetings to the pixie, and hugged Kadie. He tried to believe that she was less wooden in his arms man before. He thought he even detected a hint of the old Kadie, a faint trace of devilry as she inquired sweetly if her mother had slept well.

  “Of course not,” Inos said blandly. “Do sit down.”

  Alas! Kadie was startled by the reply, so she had not been needling. Her green eyes flicked from Inos to Rap and back again. She was of an age to start appreciating her parents as people and not natural phenomena, but she seemed shocked to think they might still do that at their age.

  The four of them settled in a circle, the youngsters insisting that the older folk take the more comfortable chairs. Rap invited Thaïle to provide refreshments according to local taste, and she magicked up a cool and tantalizingly bitter fruit punch. The meeting was all very civilized and fraught with undertones. Was this merely a rehabilitation visit for Kadie, or was there a deeper purpose?

  “Papa?” Kadie said with almost the old primness she had displayed when plotting mischief. “Tell us how the war is going.”

  “I doubt if Thaïle wishes to talk of such somber matters.”

  “Oh, she does. I mean —” Kadie caught her friend’s eye and sniggered. “I mean, I am sure she won’t mind.”

  Deeper purpose!

  “She probably knows as much as I do, or more,” Rap said cautiously. He was certain that the Keeper had instituted the meeting with Toom and Raim that had triggered his visit to the caliph, but he did not think Thaïle would be so cooperative, not with the woman who had slain her child and lover. Nothing was certain with sorcery, of course.

  “The djinn army is still withdrawing, your Majesty,” Thaïle said quietly. “The caliph still rides in a litter.”

  “I am delighted to hear it. Please call me Rap unless you see me actually wearing my crown. I left it on the bedpost today.”

  She nodded solemnly. “So Thume is out of danger, thanks to you.”

  “But can it stay that way?”

  She shrugged. “Probably, for only sorcery can expose us and we have defenses against sorcery. How does your war go? Have you and, er, Inos had time to compare notes?”

  “We have,” Rap said, wondering who else was listening to the conversation. “I doubt if we know as much as the Keeper does, but here is what we do know. Of the four wardens. East is dead and West, Witch Grunth, has been coerced into joining the Covin. Lith’rian is sulking in his sky tree, determined to throw away his life in futile defiance, and Raspnex we believe to be holed up in a Zarkian jail.”

  Kadie said, “Jail, Papa?” in scandalized tones.

  “A shielded jail. It is probably the safest place he could be. Every sorcerer seems to agree that open hostilities will break out on Longday, the day after tomorrow. That happens to be when the thanes of Nordland gather in moot to proclaim war against the Impire.”

  Kadie bit her lip. “And that’s where Gath went?”

  “He went to Nordland,” Inos said soothingly. “It is e
xtremely unlikely he will manage to attend the moot.”

  “And all the longships will be loaded with warriors when they head south,” Rap added. “They certainly won’t carry tourists. So Gath will remain in Nordland. He may actually have found himself a very safe stall.”

  Kadie looked from one face to another, obviously wondering if she should believe this. Her concern for her twin was a good sign, though. Yes, she was better since that record-breaking weep with her mother.

  “All sorcerers in the world know of the impending struggle,” Rap said, continuing his review, and wondering if the right word was struggle or just rout. “How many will elect to join in remains to be seen. If the first clash goes badly, I expect most of them will remain in hiding — no one joins lost causes. If we can put up a good show initially, we may enlist more support.”

  Who was we? Who was left? He suspected Zinixo was picking off the opposition like flies on a window. Olybino had gone. Grunth had gone. There had been no groundswell of support for them. Now he was out of it, also, unless the Keeper relented.

  Thaïle had been studying her hands, hunched in her chair like a woman four times her age. She looked up now with a frown.

  “You don’t have any idea of numbers?”

  “None. I don’t know how strong the Covin is. Hundreds, I expect, and it includes at least two of warden rank. Zinixo raided the Nogids and snatched more than half the anthropophagi. He must have collected a majority of the dwarves in his twenty years of plotting. Probably all goblin sorcerers were votaries of Bright Water, so he would have inherited them, apart from the two Raspnex found at Kribur. But Azak’s private little covin of djinns is still at liberty, as far as I could tell. Shandie unearthed — I use the word advisedly — a sizable contingent of gnomes, who indicated that they might support him under the right circumstances.”

  It sounded even worse put into words than it did when he thought about it in private.

  He sighed. “I admit that it looks bad, Archon. Thaïle, I mean. The anthropophagi and trolls who went to Dragon Reach must have been betrayed by Grunth, or most of them. The rest of the trolls would much prefer to stay in their jungle. Imps… I have no idea, although imps probably outnumber other races in sorcerers, so there must be many still at large.”

  “But less than half?” Thaïle said coldly.

  “Very likely. The elves won’t fight, except to defend their sky trees. The pixies won’t fight, either.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Do you still say we should?”

  Put like that, the question had a horribly obvious answer.

  “That leaves jotnar and merfolk,” Rap said, avoiding it. “The merfolk I know nothing about. Jotnar? I doubt that Nordland has many sorcerers. Jotnar despise sorcery.”

  Silence.

  A pair of butterflies danced across the shadowed circle and waltzed away into the sunshine again. Rap thought of pixies. The Keeper was right. You should not try to turn butterflies into hornets.

  “You have omitted one factor from your appraisal. Rap,” Thaïle said quietly.

  He looked at her in surprise. She seemed so young and so much an innocent country maid that it was easy to forget the wisdom her great power must have brought her.

  “What’s that?”

  “That you have been removed from the battle.”

  “Me? I doubt that I would make any difference at all. I must be the weakest sorcerer in the world.”

  “But you are the acknowledged leader of the counterrevolution. So now it is leaderless. What of the imperor?”

  “As far as we know, he is in jail with Raspnex.”

  Inos intervened. “Shandie cannot be the leader. First, he’s a mundane. Second — Raspnex says — the other races will never rally behind an imp, and especially that one.”

  “And I’m a half-breed?” Rap said. “A mongrel? Is that what he implied?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I never wanted to be leader.”

  “Exactly. He said that it was only because you had repeatedly refused a warlock’s throne that everyone would be willing to accept you.”

  Now there was perverse logic! It sounded more like an elf’s than a dwarf’s. So what was the purpose of this discussion? Was Thaïle hinting that she might be able to help Rap escape from Thume if he still wanted to go and take charge of the war? And did he really want to? His review of the situation had emphasized just how horribly hopeless it was. Every race in Pandemia seemed to have lost more than half its sorcerers to the Covin, which meant that his cause was mathematically hopeless already. The few exceptions were hardly encouraging: djinns and merfolk totally unknown quantities, the jotnar probably of little account. That left gnomes. What hope of them ever even showing up?

  Common sense said he should accept the safe haven he had found in Thume and let the world fend for itself.

  “Thaïle…” He stopped. “Something wrong?”

  The pixie was staring blankly into space. She muttered an apology and rose to her feet.

  Kadie jumped off her chair. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” Thaïle murmured. “Have business to attend to…”

  She faded away like smoke. Kadie screamed in alarm.

  3

  The sorrel gelding was a big, strong fellow, although he had a lazy streak. Ylo had been delighted to get him and had paid a ridiculous price for him. The roan was gentler, a placid little mare with a good seat, chosen for Eshiala. Now he could see that he need not have been so fussy — that woman could ride a whirlwind!

  Try as he might, he could not catch up. The mare was just no match for the sorrel, especially bearing Ylo’s weight. The two horses smoked across the hayfield with Eshiala steadily drawing out in front Faintly Ylo heard little Maya’s howls over the thunder of hooves. The next hedge was coming up ahead, and Eshiala had obviously seen the gate in it. It wasn’t a gate, though, just a gap blocked by a wicker hurdle. She put the sorrel straight at it and soared like a bird. Then she was gone.

  Ylo’s heart turned over. Gods, woman! Think of our child!

  Think of badger holes.

  Don’t think of badger holes.

  Then he was coming at the hurdle and gathering the mare for the jump. From the way her ears flattened, he guessed she’d had no training in jumping, but she took his orders and cleared it like a veteran. They came down in unripe grain and Eshiala was farther in the lead than ever.

  Utter insanity! Didn’t the woman know she was pregnant!?

  He looked back, but saw only the hedge, which was already fast receding into the distance. Here he was on the crest of the divide. He could see nothing in any direction but corn below and blue sky above, plus more hedges. This time there was no gap ahead. Eshiala did not seem to have realized that. She was still kicking for more speed, humped over to hold her child tight, holding the reins with one hand.

  When he’d first met her, she’d seemed just a delicate wild-flower wilting in the sultry hothouse of the court. He had soon discovered that she was a wild animal caught in a cruel and intricate trap, and had adjusted his plans accordingly. Before he could make his move, the collapse of the old order had thrown her into terrible danger, but it had also released her from her captivity. Since then she had shown no fear that he had been able to see. Even after he had rescued her from Yewdark, the flower had not been ready for the picking, nor the trophy for the wall. She had made him wait for his reward until she was ready to grant it. Then she had given herself without stint.

  Were Shandie to return from the dead, he would not recognize this new Eshiala, this confident, courageous concupiscent woman. Her palace terrors had been forced upon her because her inappropriate marriage had compelled her to be something she was not. She had been required to feign affection for a man she had not loved, a man incapable of loving her as anything except a mythical ideal. No one could be brave in the face of the unknown or the inexplicable, and Eshiala would rather face armored legions than a gaggle of corseted dowagers. Against dang
er she could understand, she was valiant as any battle-hardened warrior.

  And she was riding the pants off him! He would never have expected the gelding to put out for her like this. Still, in her condition this was rank insanity. He would catch up with her at the hedge and tell her so.

  She was riding straight at the hedge.

  By the Powers, woman! Stop! It’s too high. You don’t know what’s on the other side, or how wide it is. The horse will balk and throw the pair of you straight into the thorns. Make that all three of them! The wind blew cold on his sweat. He wanted to scream at her and the distance was too great, and he might distract her anyway. The hedge was a windbreak, full of trees, and Eshiala had chosen a gap between trees but the thorns and shrubbery were higher there, taller than a man. The horse would refuse…

  The horse didn’t. It showed momentarily in the gap against the sky and then Ylo was riding alone through the corn. And he couldn’t tell if his love was alive or dead on the far side.

  Well, if she could do it, he could. He patted the roan’s neck. “Did I mention that I am an extremely skilled horseman?” He got no reply. He risked one last glance around and saw no pursuit yet. The hedge loomed over him.

  He thought of Star, his first pony, and how Big Brother Yshan had set up a knee-high hurdle and dared him to try his first jump. He had done it and lived and had never truly feared a jump since — until this one. A blind jump with an untried horse too small for his weight. Even jail seemed good, suddenly.

  He took the poor roan over it by brute force, and aged about ten years. They went through the top in a blizzard of thorny branches. She stumbled on landing and recovered, then he felt the sickening jerk of a limp in her right foreleg. Bloody blasphemy!

  Well-cropped pasture sloped down into another valley. Eshiala was halfway across, angling to the left with cattle stampeding out of her path. She was aiming for a gate in the north boundary.

  Beyond this field lay more fields, no cover in sight, very few buildings. Water glinted in the valley bottom, but beyond the river — forest! Suddenly there was hope. The silvery chain of the stream divided the valley into vastly different halves. This side was all cultivated and pastured. The far slope seemed like uninhabited wilderness, stretching for leagues. If the fugitives could cross the river, they could hide from anything but dogs. They might starve to death, but someone must live in that forest. Charcoal burners or game wardens — such men could be bribed with much less gold than still jangled at Ylo’s saddle.