"Wartsel?"
Banderan smiled. "Well, that's the name I heard. You know him?"
"I've heard the name, and I think I may have seen him once or twice, but no, I don't know him." Pirojil shook his head. A soldier didn't have a lot of time to take lessons with a swordmaster in the finer points of dueling. What you learned, you learned in the troop, and if you were of a mind, from some extra sparring. And if you had actually picked up more skill than you were supposed to, it was best to minimize it, not brag about it.
"An honest answer, eh? I like that" Banderan pursed his lips. 'Tell you what: you tell me what three Cullinane soldiers are doing prowling around Neranahan, and perhaps I'll see what I can do to get your friends out of jail as quickly as I can."
"But I told you we're out of that now. We're off seeing if there's some good work in Holtun, something maybe more profitable than soldiering for the Cullinanes."
Banderan shrugged. "Yes, that's what you told me, and it's not something I particularly believe." He dropped the horse's hoof and straightened, wiping the scraper on the sole of his boot. "Care to swear to that on your sword?" His light smile dropped. "I knew a man who beswore himself on his sword once; it twisted out of his hand the next time he drew it."
Pirojil never much liked swearing on his sword, not even if he was telling the truth. Asking for magical intervention was too much like asking for trouble, and Pirojil had always found trouble easily enough to come by without asking for it.
Still, telling the truth might not be the stupidest idea here. Banderan and his light company might be well settled in, but they were technically still occupation troops - Biemish, not Holts - and would be unlikely to be offended at the idea of somebody investigating some problem in a Holtish barony, as long as it wasn't his Holtish barony.
And besides, he didn't have much of a choice, not if he wanted Banderan's help.
Pirojil didn't have much of a lie ready, but he did have the signed orders and the death warrant in his pouch. "Well, perhaps I'd better explain everything to you."
Banderan unwrapped the scroll and read it. And read it again. "Well," he said. "Now that you've brought me into this, it would seem that I'm best off making sure the three of you disappear and are never heard from again if I don't want the dowager empress to take a personal interest in me, which, if this goes wrong, she quite possibly would. Which means that I'd better see that all three of you are quietly buried in unmarked graves, or perhaps I'd best help you."
Pirojil nodded.
Banderan raised an eyebrow. "You don't happen to have a few golden marks on you? I could use a bribe myself, and it always helps to spread some money around."
Pirojil shook his head. He had more than a few golden marks stashed, but admitting that in a keep surrounded by Banderan's men didn't make a lot of sense. Yes, if you could fight to keep it, it was yours, and all that was fine, but looking for opportunities to prove it yours that way wasn't something that appealed to Pirojil.
"Didn't think so. Well, we'll have to see if loyalty can still buy what coin might." He looked Pirojil in the eye. "I've always set a high value on loyalty myself," he said quietly. "I expect that's understood, no matter how the bones finally fall."
Pirojil didn't know quite what the fat man was getting at, but he nodded anyway. "Loyalty and honor are not something I talk about much."
Banderan's mouth twisted into a grin. It didn't look like a comfortable expression on his face. "Just as well. A man who talks too much of loyalty and honor isn't one I'd trust." He sighed. He handed the scrolls back to Pirojil and straightened himself. "Well, let's get a solid meal in our bellies; there's much to do before nightfall." He beckoned toward a soldier. "I'll need some volunteers, Ereden. Let's start with you, Alren, Manrell, and the blacksmith."
A cold wind was blowing in, scattering wispy threads of clouds through the night sky.
Pirojil crept through the night, keeping to the shadows near the buildings, The last thing he wanted to do was to draw attention to himself.
Their horses and gear were hidden down the road, watched over by one of Banderan' s men, Pirojil hoped, and three others were now in Riverforks, waiting for the midnight bell, their signal to begin their parts of the plan.
Meanwhile, Pirojil hid himself in the shadow of a warehouse overlooking the jail. The five hatches over the cells were secured by a metal ladder that was used to climb in and out of the cells: the ladder was slid through two huge staples on either end of the row of hatches, then chained and locked in place. Picking the lock would perhaps have been possible for a dedicated thief, but he would then have been faced with the problem of sliding the ladder out and away without drawing the attention of the jailer below, who could quickly ring the alarm bar, waking the whole city within moments, including the nightwatch.
It wasn't an arrangement that would have been useful to keep somebody locked up for years, but that wasn't the purpose of the Riverforks jail, after all. Elves would - had - turned offenders into trees for transgressions that a human might not even be able to understand. Dwarves might lock a miscreant in a tunnel that required expanding or perhaps reshoring and reward him with food only as the work was done, but the Moderate People were different. Justice in the empire was often formal, but punishments were swift, be it a whipping in the public square, a fine, or an execution.
It would have been nice to have a detachment of dwarves right about now, Pirojil decided. They would be able to tunnel into the cells faster than a human who hadn't seen them work with stone could have thought possible.
Or, better yet, Ellegon the dragon. Ellegon could land, tear up the hatches with his immense claws, and be in the air with Pirojil, Durine, and Kethol practically before the jailer would have finished soiling himself.
Of course, these days, that might not be safe. With all the strange things that had flowed out of the breach between reality and Faerie, the cultivation of dragonbane had become more and more common, and many bowmen made it a point to keep their arrows tipped with fresh dragonbane extract
But it didn't matter much. The dragon might answer to the emperor, and he - it? Pirojil was never sure how to figure out the sex of a dragon - probably would answer to one of the Cullinanes or Walter Slovotsky, but the dragon wasn't about to place himself at the disposal of the likes of Pirojil, and on balance that suited Pirojil just fine.
A fire-breathing dragon that could read your mind wasn't his idea of a pleasant companion.
The night was cool, but not cold, and the guard had chosen to sit outside the jail, his chair propped back against the jailhouse wall. It would have been easy to silence him - permanently - but that assumed not only that he was the only one within earshot, but that Banderan and his people would put up with a deliberate killing in the freeing of the other two.
Well, that simplified things.
Pirojil dropped down lightly behind the jailer, and as the blocky man turned, Pirojil slipped a canvas bag over his head and jerked him out of his chair, kicking him carefully in the pit of the stomach to knock the wind from him.
It was a matter of moments to tie him, hand and foot, and just a few moments more to pull up the bag for a moment and gag him thoroughly. He was disposed to struggle at first, but the prick of a knifepoint against the back of his neck disposed of that inclination.
Silencing the guards was always a lot easier when you didn't mind if they ended up dead, but the idea here was to get Durine and Kethol out with as little fuss and attention as possible. An escape from jail would be forgotten more quickly than a murder.
And besides, this wasn't an ordinary escape from jail.
Pirojil snapped his fingers once, twice, three times. Two men moved out from the shadows, and headed for the ladder that secured the cell's hatches. Everen, the troop's blacksmith, was quick and deft enough with his lockpicks to quickly and quietly open the padlocks, while his partner, whose name Pirojil either never learned or immediately forgot, thoroughly greased the staples holding down the ladder, so
the two of them could slide it out quietly.
So far, so good.
Pirojil lifted the hatch on the third cell, and with the aid of both of Banderan's men lowered the ladder.
Kethol swarmed up the ladder, a cloth-wrapped sliver of stone in his hand, relaxing only when he saw Pirojil holding one finger to his lips.
Durine was next, and Pirojil pushed the bound guard to the lip of the hole. "It was magic," he said, his voice low and guttural. "Some sort of magic. You were just keeping watch, and then there was a flash of light and a puff of smoke, and you were inside the jail, unable to speak, while your charges were gone, leaving behind nothing but a foul smell." He forced a chuckle. "The other choice, of course, is that you paid so little attention that not only could you be overpowered, but you helped find the keys and free the prisoners without even being tortured first. So it must have been magic, and what's a poor jailer to do, eh?"
The bound man nodded, and Pirojil guided him toward the ladder, freeing his hands with a quick admonition to leave the bag over his head in place.
The guard slid down the ladder, which was quickly withdrawn. Banderan's soldiers disappeared back into the shadows, and were gone. Pirojil didn't blame them much; there was no point in hanging around.
Pirojil beckoned to Durine and Kethol. Half done; the rest to go. The wizard was a wizard, after all, and his loyalty could be obtained with coin.
In the gray light just before dawn, the sign over the door read ERENOR, WIZARD. This was followed by a string of fuzzy symbols that ran down the sign onto the doorframe and onto the door itself.
The sign looked newer than Pirojil would have expected. He had been expecting years of weathering, but the letters and runes were freshly carved, not more than a few tendays old. Strange. Hedge-wizards tended to stay in place pretty much forever; it was a sinecure sort of job.
Low pay, perhaps, as magical occupations went, but without the risks that major magic involved. The worst danger was probably boredom.
The door had no lock, which didn't surprise him at all. Wizards didn't tend to use locks; they had better ways of protecting themselves and their property, and Pirojil had no desire or intention of becoming a demonstration of that.
He knocked hard on the door, and then even harder.
There was no answer.
There was always the window - Erenor had a real glass window - but it would be protected, as well.
So he just knocked again, then drew his knife and pounded the hilt against the wood. There would be no danger to that; a door was supposed to be knocked upon, as long as it was done by somebody not trying to break in.
"I'm coming," a voice grumbled from inside. "Just hold on; I'll be there in a moment."
There was a whisper of hushed voices from inside, and as the door opened Pirojil saw a flash of slim naked legs vanishing through a beaded curtain into a dark room beyond.
It seemed that the wizard had been busy.
"Oh," Erenor said. "It's you."
He was dressed only in a pair of blousy pantaloons. His seeming as a young man was back in place; strong muscles played under sweat-soaked skin. There was, it would appear, more use for a seeming than simply winning a bout of arm wrestling in the bar.
No, that didn't make sense.
Seemings were by definition relatively minor spells - even major seemings were easily broken.
If Erenor had developed a spell of such power as to turn a seeming real and could employ the energies and forces necessary simply to spend a night in bed with a girl, he wouldn't be spending his days as a hedge-magician in Riverforks.
Henrad, the emperor's own wizard, certainly wasn't capable of such a thing, and Henrad was supposedly quite good at what he did.
Pirojil was no expert on magic, but...
No. Erenor wasn't that good.
Which meant that Erenor had been using a seeming in the tavern, but not to make himself appear young and strong. It had been used to make him - a young, strong man - appear old and feeble, and all he had done had been to dispel it, and then legitimately beat the surprised Pirojil at arm wrestling and sell him a useless amulet.
"I've come to talk to you about this amulet you sold me," Pirojil said. "The one that dispels these powerful seemings of yours." He reached out and touched it to Erenor's sweaty chest. "How fascinating! It doesn't appear to be working. Imagine that."
"Well," Erenor said, "one wouldn't expect - "
"That a wizard of such power and wisdom would be here in Riverforks. And I should have, not being a local buffoon. And if I'd been sober, I'd not have thought twice about it. But perhaps a minor, young wizard, barely more than an apprentice, a man of more cleverness than learning, would find himself a town to spend at least some time in while selling impotent amulets, before moving on. Magic has value, but belief in magic has more, eh?"
Pirojil pushed Erenor aside and stepped into the wizard's shop, something he wouldn't have considered moments before. Erenor was more of a scoundrel than a wizard, and Pirojil had no particular fear of scoundrels.
Pirojil tossed Erenor the amulet he had bought. "Get rid of the girl," he said. "We have a deal to make."
"But - "
"Just do it."
"So?" Erenor poured himself a drink from a mottled clay bottle, not offering one to Pirojil. "You have some sort of offer to make?"
Pirojil didn't like working with wizards. But there could be some advantages to having one around who had more cleverness than talent, and there was no advantage whatsoever in leaving this one behind to swear that the escape from the jail had involved magic.
"Given your skills," Pirojil said, "I assume you know how to ride a horse very fast."
"Because ... ?"
"Because you've probably had to ride it very fast out of town on more than one occasion. Here's another one."
"And I should do this because ... ?" Erenor sipped at his mug.
"Well, because there's been an escape from the jail that may be thought to involve magic just a short while ago, and if you're not around to investigate the magical source of it, you're likely to be suspected of being involved. So you'd best be riding out."
"Which is why I'd want to be sure to stay here, no?"
The point of Pirojil's sword was at Erenor's throat. "No," he said. "Particularly given that my friends are faster than I am, and far more irritable, and they would much rather the local lords be fearfully considering chasing a wizard rather than bravely riding in search of us."
Erenor smiled weakly. "I see their point. And yours, as well."
"Do you need much time in packing? Or would you prefer to decide things here, between the two of us?"
Erenor was a younger man, with a right arm that he no doubt kept strong and powerful with exercise in order to cozen the credulous, but Pirojil wouldn't have given a copper shard for Erenor's chances against him in a real fight, not even one that didn't start with Pirojil's sword out and ready.
Erenor took barely a moment to come to the same conclusion. His smile was too broad by half, but it was a smile of concession. "I've a bag packed and waiting."
"I'd have thought so."
Kethol and Durine were waiting with fresh horses at the north end of town. Banderan had been generous; there were six horses, and while they were hardly highbred Biemestren warhorses, they looked sound enough. Kethol and Durine had each picked a brown gelding; Pirojil took the remaining saddled horse, a large gray mare, and boosted Erenor up to the bare back of a small bay, adding the wizard's bag to the gear strapped to the coal-black packhorse.
Let the wizard bounce along on bareback.
"It occurs to me," Kethol said, "that after we're clear of town, Erenor here might want to turn around and ride back here, perhaps to clear himself with the locals, perhaps setting them upon our trail in the doing."
"It's occurred to me, too," Pirojil said. "I think we'd better have a new companion, at least for a time."
Erenor spread his hands. "It would be my pleasure, of course.
I so much enjoyed being woken this morning to find that I have to flee my all-toocomfortable existence here that I'd not think of departing from your company." His mouth tightened. "But if I did decide to part ways with you, I'm not fool enough to return here. Too much attention would have already been drawn to me, and I'm unfond of that." He patted the neck of his horse. "Now, shall we go?"
"In a moment." It might be handy to have a wizard along, even one who was barely an apprentice. Pirojil opened the wizard's bag and dug through it until he found three leather-bound books.
"Now, friend Pirojil - "
"Be still," Durine said, his face grim.
Pirojil pulled out the smallest one, a slim book bound in brown leather and fastened shut with a buckle and strap. He unbuckled the straps and opened it. It was impossible to focus on the letters on the page; they shifted and swam in front of his eyes. It wasn't just that they were out of focus, either; it was like trying to read something in a dream, where you knew you'd never be able to, but your eyes couldn't help but try.
He closed the book, and wiped at his eyes. He didn't have the gift of magic, and he'd no more be able to read the words than he'd be able to fly. It was painful to try, in a way he couldn't have explained to anybody else.
The two other books were thicker, and bound in finer black leather, but they were the same inside.
Pirojil tossed one book to Durine and another to Kethol. "We'll hold on to these for you, for the time being."
"Well, that does seem reasonable, under the circumstances," Erenor said, sounding pleasant enough about it; he should probably have gone into acting rather than magic. "I see no problem with that. And perhaps we can discuss it further at some later time, eh?"
Kethol opened his mouth to say something, but Durine frowned him to silence. "Discussion later," the big man said. "Let's get out of here before we get into worse trouble."
Not Exactly The Three Musketeers Page 9