by Ken Hood
For a dawdling moment it seemed he would get no answer, then Toby said, "Barcelona. The water there tastes terrible."
"What happened to your wrists?"
"Manacles. I was in jail." He peered up at the stars. "How long was I gone? How many pages?"
"Not many. I wasn't reading much. Ten minutes at most."
"I was in jail a lot longer than that. Look, I'd better wash these clothes before the blood dries any more."
Hamish took the hose from him. "I'll do it. And your shirt, too."
Normally any hint of mothering provoked the big man to bull-headed stubbornness, but this time he muttered thanks and meekly stripped. Still moving as if every joint hurt, he stretched out on his blanket and covered himself. "I'll tell you when you get back." He must be in much worse shape than he was admitting.
Hamish headed off to the spring. Three times in a week Toby had passed out cold and wakened up babbling about visions. The first time he had talked of a tent in the woods, a knight, and beautiful lady. Then a man in a city street. Now what? He thought the visions were prophetic, but that was plain impossible. Since leaving Scotland Hamish had read every book about spirits, demons, gramarye, and hexing he had been able to lay his hands on. He had spoken with every acolyte who would spare him a minute. He knew as much about spiritual powers as anyone except a true adept could ever know, and one of the things he had learned was that seeing the future was impossible. Not even the greatest tutelary could ever foresee the future.
Not visions—delusions! Madness.
As he was rinsing the garments, his belly rumbled again, louder than ever. A month to Barcelona? How many oranges could a man eat in another month? Oranges and sometimes dates, although most of the palms had been cut down, and onions, and... and roast pork?
Demons! His mouth was watering like the Fillan in spate. He scrambled all the way to his feet and sniffed. He was not imagining it. Someone was roasting pork somewhere upwind, and not very far away, either.
He went back to the cellar, laid the wet shirt and hose on a prickly bush to dry, and then sat down crosslegged. "Tell me. They hung you up by your hands?"
Toby was sitting up, wearing his doublet, wrapped in his blanket. "Nothing so crude. Baron Oreste has more subtle methods." He grinned more surely this time, more like his own self.
"Oreste? He's in Barcelona?"
"He was in my dream."
"That was no dream!" Hamish squeaked. "You mustn't go to Barcelona if he's there!"
Toby frowned and looked mulish, which he did very well. "I suppose that would be charging the bull, wouldn't it? Does this mean that you believe in my visions now?"
Oh, demons! "No, I don't believe in visions, not yours, not anyone's." The only thing Toby's visions might mean was that the hob was finally driving him out of his mind, and Father Lachlan had warned him of that years ago. Or the hob itself was going crazy, locked up in his mind. It wouldn't make much difference, would it?
"Then there's no problem!" Toby smirked at outwitting Hamish Campbell. "No reason not to go to Barcelona? We can talk about it in the morning. Nice town, Barcelona. Roomy dungeons, all the latest torturing machines. I didn't see you there. You didn't miss much."
"Tell me about the second vision."
"I've told you a dozen times."
"Tell me again!"
"You sound just like your father. You want me to pull down my britches and bend over, domine?"
"Is that the only way to get your attention?"
Toby smiled ruefully. "Sorry. We were walking along that street in Valencia, the one I pointed out to you the next day. It wasn't much of a street, because all the houses had all been burned. You saw that. What you saw in reality was just what I saw in the vision, except there was a ragged old man there. We talked with him."
"You don't remember what we said?"
"No. He seemed friendly enough. After a while we went off with him, and he led us through a doorway. That was all. Then I was sitting on the trail feeling giddy, and you were asking if I was all right."
"And when we reached Valencia, you found that street, but there was no one there."
"Yes."
"So these... these dreams you're having... they're not real, Toby! They don't show you the future. They can't. That isn't possible! What you're having are fits of déjà vu. It's not uncommon to see a place and think you've been there before. Everyone does, sometimes. I do."
"Not like this." Toby held out a thick wrist, torn and scabbed with blood.
"It's the hob playing tricks on you."
"Then I wish it would stop. Now I'm going to go to sleep. So should you." He eased himself down, moving like a very old man. He rolled over.
"Toby. Someone's roasting pork. I could smell it. Upwind. Not far."
Longdirk heaved himself up on one elbow, grunting at the pain. He fixed Hamish with a dangerous stare. "I smelled it too."
"Well?" Hamish pleaded. "They might share?" Zits, but he was hungry for a decent meal!
"Not me. That's what I saw in my first vision, Hamish. Or smelled, I should say. There was a fire in an orange grove with something being roasted on a spit. I'm not going near it!"
"What?" Hamish swallowed a mouthful of drool. "Why not? I know it's a risk, but if we warn them we're coming and we're not armed—"
"I did. Last time. Listen, I'll tell you again exactly what I saw. There's a fire, obviously, and a tent. Made of cloth, blue and gold. I think there were horses, but I'm not quite sure about that. You were with me, and it was a night just like this one: warm, starry, very little wind. In the vision I shouted to warn whoever was there, and they came out of the tent, two of them, a gentleman and a lady, very well dressed. He had a green and gold jerkin on, she was in red and white. The man called to us to come forward. We walked forward, me in the lead, and just as I neared the fire, something frightened me."
"What?"
"I don't remember! All I know is that I shouted and turned to run. Then I ran into you, and that was all. I woke up." He grinned menacingly. "You go and explore if you want to. You don't believe in my visions, so you've got no reason not to, right? I'm in no state to go anywhere, but if you feel like bringing me back a juicy rib or two, I won't refuse."
Hamish glared back at him suspiciously. "How far did you go tonight?"
"Just to where you found me, I'm sure. I wouldn't have gone on without my staff, would I? Go and see if my vision was true."
Tobias Longdirk was not the only man who could be stubborn. "Very well!" Hamish said. "I'm going."
"Wind's from the northwest. Take your bearings from the stars. Bon appétit!" Toby smirked and lay down again.
Hamish took his staff and went to the wall.
"Hamish?"
"What?"
"Be careful!"
"I can look after myself," Hamish snapped. So he could, by most men's standards, because Toby had taught him. Toby was in a class by himself when it came to fighting, but that didn't mean Hamish Campbell was a pushover.
CHAPTER TWO
Beyond the spring Hamish came to the start of an orange grove, just as Toby had predicted. Toby could have seen that in daylight.
The trees made things tricky, and there was no clear path. He went slowly, being extra cautious. Creeping up on anyone was dangerous in war-ravaged Aragon. People slept with their bows strung nowadays. He was a little surprised that Longdirk was letting him do this—not exactly an unwelcome surprise, but an uneasy-making surprise. Toby was treating him as an equal now, no longer the boy he had been when they began their adventuring together. Although he was full-sized, or almost so, and a seasoned traveler with smatterings of five or six languages, he was still a little disbelieving every time he drank from a pool and saw the fuzzy fringe of beard around his face. He would never admit it to anyone, of course.
Nor would he admit that he was now scared spitless. Creeping up on strangers in the dark like this was not prudent. Normally he would have tried to talk Toby out of trying it. He woul
d certainly never have volunteered to do it himself, alone. He couldn't go back now, of course. But if something jumped out at him, he knew he would head for Longdirk fast as prunes through a goose.
There were other things moving in the woods. He paused a couple of times to listen, but when he stopped they stopped, and all he achieved was a higher level of funk. They were probably those feral dogs, attracted by the smell, just as he was. Feral dogs and feral Scotsmen...
There was no way to go quickly in the dark, even knowing that the roast pork might be all eaten before he arrived. The ground was littered with dead branches, the air full of live ones at head-height. Don't trip in the tangle of weeds, which... ouch!... included thistles.
Yes, a faint light twinkling in the darkness ahead! The mouth-watering odor was stronger. Not very far at all, and Hamish had a nervy vision of the men who had built that fire creeping around in the trees to find his fire at the same time as he was creeping... no, his was downwind and it didn't have any pork on it.
He began planning what he would say. He would start by telling whoever was there that they were in no danger, of course, so that they didn't start banging away with muskets. Then admit to being a foreigner but not part of the Fiend's army. The delicious aroma of roasting meat was making him slaver like a dog. He eased through the grove toward the yellow flicker, keeping eyes peeled for guards or sentries, but the fire was a small one, and there was only the one. He couldn't see any people near it, only trees. The smoke stung his eyes.
Time to warn them he was coming.
"Friends! Friends! Good evening! I am alone. I come in peace. I mean no harm!" He used Castilian, because his Valencian and Catalan were still as thin as the seat of his hose.
Nothing happened.
He clattered his staff on branches and marched forward, shouting out the same message, over and over, with variations, adding a few words in Valencian. "Friends! I come in peace. I seek only charity and companionship."
The fire was quite close now. It still seemed deserted, but campfires did not build themselves. His scalp prickled. He shouted again.
Suddenly he saw the tent beyond it, exactly as Toby had described, gold and blue stripes. He stopped dead. How could he reconcile that with prophecy not being possible? The flap lifted. They came out, a man and a woman, young and handsome, both beautifully dressed. The man wore green hose, a green and gold jerkin padded wide at the shoulders, a shining cloth-of-gold cloak with fur trim. A sword dangled at his belt. The lady's gown was snowy white, slashed with crimson on the full skirts and puffed sleeves, cut low at the neck over a sheer chemise. Her hair was hidden by a red and black mantellina trimmed with braid and velvet that hung to her shoulders. What were a prince and princess doing here in the woods with no attendants?
At least Hamish couldn't see any attendants. Perhaps there were other people or even horses in the darkness beyond the tent. Hard to say—he was too fascinated by these gracious nobles.
"Who approaches?" shouted the man in Castilian. He had a hand on his sword.
"One hungry traveler, senor! I am unarmed and come in peace."
"Come forward so we may see you." The man gestured to his lady to keep back while he advanced to meet the stranger.
Hamish walked forward until he entered the firelight. He bowed.
The nobleman smiled.
Then the fire roared up, much larger than before. Hamish jumped and looked toward it. The source of the delectable odor was a human torso with the remains of a head still attached. It had been skewered lengthwise by a rod about eight feet long, supported on a metal tripod at each end. The underside was charred and the top raw. There were remains of half a dozen other corpses scattered around under the trees.
Hamish turned back to the handsome caballero, but he had gone. The tent and the beautiful maiden had vanished also. The thing standing in front of him, leering at him, was a demon.
CHAPTER THREE
During his last few hours in the baron's dungeon—they might have been around midday or midnight for all he had been able to tell—Toby had started falling asleep, and for once falling had been the appropriate word. Time and again he had awakened with a sickening jar, tearing his wrists on the manacles and bruising his back against the wall. His shoulders still ached as if his arms had been pulled from their sockets.
Nevertheless, the moment Hamish disappeared over the wall he lurched up and grabbed his hose from the bush. He hauled them on, and fortunately the wet cloth clung to him well enough that he could trust them not to fall off, so he left his doublet where it lay. He pushed his feet into his buskins, grabbed up his staff, and followed Hamish, veering to the left to move parallel to him and confident that he was making a lot less noise.
Hamish could argue all he liked that there was no such thing as prophecy, but those three visions had been utterly convincing. Three times Toby had found himself somewhere he could not possibly be, and yet sights, sounds, smells, and in the last case sheer agony, had all compelled belief. The hob used him as a mount to ride around and see the world, and it cared for him much less than a man would care for his horse. It was stupid, childlike, and treacherous, but it had never played this sort of joke on him before.
Certainly the visions were not exact prophecies. The street in Valencia had turned out as he had foreseen it, a litter of rubble between burned out buildings, but the man he had expected was absent. Hamish seemed to be constitutionally incapable of disbelieving anything he had read in a book, but if he now stumbled upon the tent and its occupants as Toby had described them, then even he might have to change his mind. Then he might be able to think up an explanation, for the teacher's son was a lot smarter than big, dumb Toby Longdirk.
Hamish was still creeping gently along through the trees like a stampeding herd of buffalo, although Toby could see a twinkle of firelight ahead already. Be fair! Not many men would make less noise. Hamish spent every spare minute reading and thus was an invaluable source of information. Toby never read. He preferred to practice useful skills like fencing, marksmanship, wrestling—and stalking. In the middle of this smug self-praise he stepped on something squishy and recoiled so fast he almost fell.
The revolting stench told him it must be a corpse. Too small to be a horse or cow. Goat? Sheep? He was about to move around it when something reflected the starlight. He poked with his staff and concluded it was a steel helmet. Gagging, he stooped and forced himself to explore further. Slime, maggots... The man must have been dead for weeks. He found the prize he was hoping for, a sword. He wondered if the hob had guided him to it, then dismissed the idea as absurd. Any stray dog was smarter than the hob. Still, a sword would be very useful if he was about to encounter what he feared.
He wiped his hands on the grass and rose. Hamish was shouting in Castilian, hailing the camp. Trailing his quarterstaff and carrying the sword, Toby moved faster, heading straight for the fire. Even without the vision he would have been suspicious of this lonely campfire. Only a strong, well-armed group would advertise its presence in this lawless, starving land, and there was no sign of such a camp here. In a few moments he was close enough to see Hamish through the trees, and his worst fears were realized.
Hamish stood near the blaze, apparently quite oblivious of the revolting object suspended above it. He was smiling and talking, but the creature stalking him was obviously a demonic husk. Once it had been a woman, and there was probably some life left in it even yet, but when demons managed to possess people, few of them could resist the temptation to torture their hosts and enjoy their pain. The thing that had lured Hamish into its trap was naked and scarred with burns. It had torn out most of its hair and chewed on its own limbs. Its eyes were empty bloody sockets, but the demon would be able to see without them. Hamish Campbell was a dead man.
Any army employed hexers, so it was not surprising that a war demon had escaped its controller and remained behind to add to the miseries of Aragon. But it had not yet detected Toby. With luck, he might be able to slip away
unseen. His legs trembled with the urge to flee.
It lifted its web of illusion from Hamish. He screamed, flailed his arms, and tried to run, but his feet did not move. He swung his staff. The demon cackled shrilly and wrested it out of his grip as if he were a child, then tossed it away. Then it clasped his face in the ravaged claws that were all it had left of its hands.
"Pretty, pretty!" it gibbered. "The pretty man is welcome. You will find happiness here—food and love, yes?" It pulled Hamish's head down to its breast in mock affection.
Hamish was doomed. It would take possession of this new victim and torture him also until he died and someone else walked into the trap—which happened first would matter little. In theory a creature and its resident demon could be slain with a blade through the heart, but that was only in theory. In practice the demon would freeze an attacker to the spot or throw lightning bolts at him or pick up a tree and hit him with it. No one except a hexer could creep up on a demon undetected, or evade its powers.
Or possibly the hob. Capricious and unpredictable though it was, it did hate demons. Toby could not abandon his friend. If the hob would let him, he must try to do something.
Hamish was squirming in the creature's grasp, retching at its stench, but powerless to avoid that odious mouth approaching his. The horror was about to kiss him, and even Toby's stomach turned over at the sight.
"Stop!"
The husk released Hamish and spun around, staring with festering blind sockets toward the sound.
Toby took a step forward, and neither the demon nor the hob blocked him. "Stop, monster! Here is a larger, stronger body for you to claim. Let the boy go and take me." He blundered forward.
"Idiot!" Hamish screamed. "Get out of here!"
"Come!" the husk shrilled gleefully. It jiggled and waved its arms. Its torn dugs flapped up and down. "Two of you to play with! Much feasting and loving and pain! Come to my embrace, lover!"