by Ken Hood
Birds fluttered and shrieked. The stench made his head swim, but he came at last into the cool shadow of the archway. He almost turned to see if Hamish was still there, watching over him, and decided not to. If he was, it would embarrass him to know that his intentions were so transparent; if he wasn't, there was no point.
Toby stepped through the space where the doors had once hung, then waited until his eyes adjusted to the dim, cool light of the high-vaulted chamber. So this was a sanctuary, was it? Before the rebels came it might have been very beautiful, although in an ornate Spanish style that would have seemed alien to an ignorant Scottish Highlander. Now it was a ruin, a singularly repellent one. The invading army had smashed everything breakable and then used the place as a latrine, leaving a deep layer of excrement on the floor and splattered over the walls. Stained glass, frescoes, and carvings had all been smashed. At the far end, where there would have been an altar and probably a throne, there remained only bare stonework above a heap of ruins.
No, the tutelary had gone, for no spirit except a demon would tolerate this ugliness and filth. Furthermore, since no spirit ever left its own haunt willingly, it must have been raped away by a hexer and perverted into a demon itself. Tutelaries made the worst demons of all, Father Lachlan had said, because they were wise in the ways of men. It need not have been Nevil himself who worked this abomination—he had many hexers in his service—but it might well have been. Doubtless the former benevolent guardian of this sad little town now resided in a jewel somewhere, perhaps on the rebel king's own finger. A spirit once dedicated to the welfare of its people was now given over to hate and destruction.
Obviously Toby's harebrained plan to rid himself of the hob was even less likely to work than he had expected. Had he found the sanctuary bereft of its tutelary but intact, then he would have shown all its beauty to the hob and tried to persuade it to remain there. He did not know if it could voluntarily quit him without killing him, but it would have been worth a try. It still was.
"Hob? Fillan! I'm talking to you." Could it even hear him or understand? Probably not. "This is a sanctuary. People lived in this town once, many people. Others would like to come and live in the houses, but they cannot if the place lacks a spirit to care for them. If you choose to remain here, then people will come and repair it and make it beautiful again. You see on the walls and the ceiling? They will repair all the pretty pictures for you. They will bring offerings and praise you for helping them."
He heard nothing, felt nothing. He said what had to be said:
"If you can only leave me by stopping my heart, then I will pay that price. Let me die and you will remain here. This will be your house."
No response. The hob either did not hear or did not understand. Or else it wanted to continue traveling the world, because it was peculiarly crazy, even for a hob.
With a sigh, Toby turned away from the desolation and walked out into the brightness. Hamish had not moved from his place in shadows at the far side of the plaza, keeping watch. The birds were back at their feasting.
CHAPTER SIX
The first houses they investigated had been thoroughly looted, the furnishings broken or deliberately fouled, including the water casks, which had long since dried out anyway. Whether demons or mortals led by a demon, the invaders could have destroyed everything more easily with fire, so they must have taken pride in their work and wanted to leave evidence of their thoroughness.
Toby's canteen was long empty. A town must have a supply of water, and the rain barrels could not possibly be adequate. There would be a spring or a cistern of some sort, but would the demons have poisoned it?
Moving together in ever-grimmer silence, they turned a corner into a tiny yard and almost knocked over a girl coming out. She leaped back with a scream and then continued to retreat. She was short and slight, dressed all in black: a long skirt and a sleeved blouse. Her cloth bonnet was tied under her chin to conceal her hair and ears, leaving only her terrified face exposed. Incongruously, she had a bright-colored pottery bottle hung around her neck on a cord, and this she clasped to her with both arms as she backed away, staring at them in horror.
"Senores! Do not hurt me." Her voice rang shrill and cracking with terror. "I will submit! I will do anything you say, and I can cook for you, too, or wash your clothes. Anything, senores! There is a bed upstairs, senores, and I will not resist, if you promise not to hurt me and not to tell your friends. I will be just yours, yes? Just the two of you. And you will not—"
"Stop!" Toby howled, turning his back. "Hamish, speak to her."
Hamish went down on one knee. "Senorita!" he said, speaking Castilian, as she had. "We mean you no harm, no harm at all. We have no friends with us. We are foreigners, but we are loyal subjects of the Khan, not the Fiend. There are just the two of us, and we do not molest women. We will not touch you. Please do not be alarmed."
How could she not be alarmed in this place, trapped by two strange men, and one of them a giant? What horrors had she experienced to make her react so? She had expected to be raped before she even knew they were foreigners.
"I will do anything you want, senores, but please do not hurt me."
"We shall not touch you, senorita. We are honorable men. You have nothing to fear from us."
"You are not soldiers?"
"No, we are merely travelers, men who honor and respect women."
Cautiously, Toby looked around. She had backed against the wall, very small and vulnerable, arms crossed across her breasts and that inexplicable bottle. Her face was sickly with fright. She was scarcely more than a child.
Hamish rose and bowed. "I am Diego Campbell Campbell. We are visitors from a faraway land. We will not harm you, I promise."
"I am Gracia Arnalt Arias de Gomez."
"Senora de Gomez, I am at your service. May I have the honor of presenting my friend Tobias Longdirk Campbell?"
Toby bowed also. "Your servant, senora." She did not look old enough to be married, and her black garments implied mourning—a widow? He did not know what to say next.
Hamish came to the rescue, more proficient with words in any language and especially words to women—not that he was much of a ladies' man, although he tried hard enough, but Toby was most certainly less of one. "You also are a stranger here, I think?"
She nodded, staring at him with the huge dark eyes of a cornered rabbit. Why was she wearing a bottle? It was ornamental, not practical everyday ware, glazed in whorls of red and green, fitted with a handle through which the thong was strung. The mouth was corked, but the way it lay on her breast and the way it moved when she did suggested that it was empty.
"Then we may have interesting tales to exchange. Senora, my friend and I are very thirsty. May two weary travelers beg the mercy of a cup of water?"
She nodded, shooting a hasty glance at a dark doorway.
"We shall wait out here." He strolled over to a flight of stone steps leading up to another house and sat down. By the time Toby had joined him Gracia had vanished indoors.
"She probably has fourteen brothers and three uncles in there," Hamish growled, watching the door. "Women don't travel alone."
"Unless she's the last survivor."
"She's from Castile."
"She's been here for some time, though." The little yard was the first clean place Toby had seen in the town, sunlight and shadows on ancient stonework, barred windows, two weathered doors broken off their hinges and one whole. It had been tidied and swept. "I wonder why the wraiths haven't driven her away?"
"If she offers you roast pork, refuse politely."
"Don't be obscene!" To compare that sweet child and the creature in the orange grove was utterly repugnant. "She may have jumped out the back window and run away already."
Hamish shrugged cynically. "She's from somewhere near Toledo, I think. Not a great lady, more than a peasant."
Toby could not have guessed that much, but Hamish had an ear for languages. He had known Latin as well as Scots and
Gaelic before he left Scotland. Since then he had picked up a working fluency in Breton, langue d'oïl, langue d'oc, and Castilian, although even he had been stumped by Euskara. Soon he would be jabbering away in Catalan like a native. They were all variants of either Gaelic or Latin, he would explain solemnly, as if that were obvious. He was Diego now because he enjoyed translating his name into the local tongue: Hamish, James, Seamus, Jakez, Jacques—Diego.
Gracia reappeared, struggling two-handed with a bucket. She set it down in front of the men and retreated quickly. She was no longer wearing the bottle. Without rising, Hamish slid to his knees and reached for the cup under the water. He drank, refilled it and passed it to Toby, both of them being elaborately courteous, making no sudden moves. The water was sweet and fresh.
"You are wounded, senor." The girl was staring at Toby's swollen wrists, which had been bleeding again. Anyone could guess those wounds had been made by manacles.
"Just, um... How do you say 'scrapes,' Hamish? They are nothing, senora. But I should clean them if you will tell us how we may refill your, um, fetch more water for you."
"There is a cistern. If the senor will permit me to tend his injuries?"
That hint that she was regaining her confidence was welcome and must be encouraged, however much Toby disliked being mothered. "They are only scratches, senora. You are very kind." He held out his hands.
Gracia approached as warily as a deer, producing a rag she must have brought for this purpose. She barely took her eyes off his face as she washed away the blood, and he felt her fingers shaking, but she was more deft than Hamish would have been.
He thanked her and insisted he did not need bandages.
"The senor was also limping?"
Hamish had not noticed that! It was true that Toby's ankles were in worse shape than his wrists now, but he could not reveal those without removing his hose.
"My buskins do not fit well," he said. "We have walked a long way." His buskins were falling apart. What chance did he have of finding a pair to fit him in this ruin of a town?
Gracia seemed to accept the explanation, and she was gaining more confidence by the minute. "I can find the senor a new pair!" she said eagerly.
"To fit me?"
"I believe so. If the senor will excuse me a moment?" She hurried off into the house again.
"You know," Hamish said thoughtfully, "if you can get hurt in these visions of yours, then one day you may come back dead!"
Oh, he had just realized that, had he?
"If they're the hob's doing, then it won't kill me." It had never worried about hurting him, though.
Gracia returned with a black cape trailing from her shoulders. She carried an empty bucket, but she also had the bottle hung around her neck again. "If the senor will be so kind as to follow me?"
Toby took the bucket and moved to her side, leaving Hamish to empty the first bucket and follow behind. She was ignoring Hamish completely, but she seemed to have lost her fear of Toby, for she shot a few hesitant smiles up at him, which he returned. He felt overwhelmed by her softness, her femininity. He admired the slight bulge in the front of her blouse and thought he could detect a scent of roses from her. A single dark curl had escaped from under the edge of her bonnet, but most of her hair was tied in a long braid, encased in a tube of black cloth that hung down her back. She was a reminder that there were still decent, honest people in this terrible world, vulnerable people.
Hamish, meanwhile, kept trying to flank the lady on the other side but was balked by the narrowness of the road. That did not stop him from talking. He explained dramatically how he and Toby were refugees from the war and had never been part of the Fiend's army. That was not quite true, but true enough. Gracia responded by telling her story. Toby missed much of it, but he gathered that she had lived in a little village called Madrid, two days' walk north of Toledo, where her husband, Hernan Gomez Ruiz, had been keeper of the shrine. The rebel army had sacked the village and stolen the spirit away. Her husband and brothers had died. She did not mention what had happened to her.
"My sons also died in the war," she said. "They died bravely."
The men exchanged puzzled glances. Admittedly a woman could be a wife and mother at fourteen, but Gracia was not much more than that even now. Could babies die bravely?
She led her new friends directly to a shoemaker's dingy workshop, which was in predictable disarray, with heaps of old boots and buskins covering the floor. Obviously the invaders had helped themselves to whatever they could use and left their own footwear behind, and most of it was as disreputable as Toby's. Gracia, though, headed straight to a back corner and produced a brand new buskin of greater size than the rest, an adequate fit for his right foot. Its mate proved elusive. They had almost concluded that it had never existed and the cordwainer had died before completing a special order, when Hamish uttered a whoop of triumph and dragged the missing partner from under the ruins of the workbench. It was a little snug, but it would do.
"I feel guilty robbing the dead," Toby complained, although he knew he was going to.
"Oh, you must not care about that!" the girl said excitedly. "He does not grudge them to me, and I give them to you. So that is all right! Now we must find some better clothes for the senor. And the boy, also." She headed out of the shop, apparently unaware of Hamish's outraged glare or Toby's smirk. She was enjoying herself now. "This way! There are some garments that I believe will fit you. The senor is a very striking man!"
She blushed at her own temerity and moved off quickly. Hamish made a snorting noise and rolled his eyes.
This time she had to investigate several houses before she found the one she wanted. It had been home to someone almost Toby-sized, and no one had bothered to loot the clothes he had left behind in his tiny attic room. Even Gracia could not stand erect under the roof.
"Obviously servants' quarters," Hamish remarked acidly.
"A child's, a growing lad," Toby retorted. He found green-and-brown hose that fit when he cut the toes off, although they were uncomfortably snug around his calves and thighs, baggy at his hips and waist. The anonymous donor must have been wearing his jerkin the last time he went out, but he had left two shirts and a shabby brown doublet that could just close around Toby with gaps at the lacings. Even with the cuffs dangling above his wrists they were a big improvement on his previous rags, and Gracia was as thrilled as a child when he appeared in his new splendor. She wanted him to accept a flat cap of black velvet with a red feather in it, but he perversely insisted on retaining his steel helmet.
"Now the boy," she said as they emerged into the evening light. "He will be harder to fit because he is so ordinary."
Fortunately Hamish had his nose in a book by then and was so busy trying to walk and read at the same time that he did not hear.
"What is the name of this place, senora?" Toby inquired.
"Name?" She hesitated, looking up and down the street. "I believe the house we need is this way, senor."
So she did not know the town's name, and that probably meant she could not read, because a little later in the looting expedition Hamish located some letters and announced that it was Onda. Gracia was also very vague as to how long she had lived there, but she had obviously explored it from cellars to chimneys, and her memory for what she had discovered was astonishing. Most clothes that would fit Hamish had already been looted, but she had noted and remembered a few shirts, hose, doublets, and even cloaks, and was able to lead the men to them.
So they trailed around Onda after her, carrying the buckets, and she picked out the garments. None of them matched any other, some were bloodstained or impossibly soiled, but eventually Hamish was outfitted.
"I feel like a court jester in this motley," he whispered as they followed their guide down a narrow staircase.
"You look more like a looter," Toby responded glumly. Looters were hanged. Stealing made him feel guilty, even stealing from the dead.
Gracia puzzled him. She made him think of
a songbird in an invisible cage. Her attitude had changed from abject terror to absurd airs, so that she was issuing orders as if she expected to be obeyed without question, yet next moment she would be laughing and chattering like an excited child. She ignored the bodies in the streets except to lift her skirts when she stepped over them. At times she made nonsensical remarks about how much easier the senor's journey would be if he would just obtain some horses, and a moment later she would comment perceptively on the difficulty of finding anything to eat in the hills.
When she had her new retainers outfitted to her satisfaction, she led them to little caches of food the looters had overlooked: beans, meal, onions, dried fruit, jars of oil, and a sack of hard wheat—most precious of all, because it would keep indefinitely. She had been dipping into it for her own use, but she expected Toby to carry off the whole bag, as well as all the other things she had loaded onto him. He was already feeling like a pack mule, but that did not stop her from detouring on the road home to top him up with bottles of wine and some firewood. Then she took her porters to the cistern so they could fill the buckets. Hamish was too laden with books to be much help.
"The senor is perhaps hungry?"
"The senora has not spoken a truer word since her naming day."
"I am an excellent cook."
"I hope you are also a speedy one, or I shall eat the firewood raw."