Not Exactly The Three Musketeers

by Joel Rosenberg

  "Wonderful for you," it said, in his mother's voice, "but what of the realm?"

  That took all the fun out of it in an instant. He was suddenly in his office in the west wing of Biemestren Castle, his desk rammed against the comer of a box canyon whose walls were gigantic piles of paper that threatened to tumble at any moment, smothering him in their dull gray-ishness.

  And the horse was still there, and still sounding like his mother.

  "It's about time you got married," it said, its face changing into hers, then back. He tried to tell himself that he had never noticed the similarity before, but Thomen Furnael didn't like lying to himself. Or to anybody else, for that matter.

  Yet another reason that he shouldn't be emperor. Deception was an important tool of statecraft. Not as useful as fear, perhaps, but at least as important as loyalty.

  "Mother," he said, "we've had this discussion before, and we'll no doubt have it again." He climbed up on his desk and then made his way up the sheer wall of paper, clinging by suddenly bare toes and fingers to the canyon walls. Another tax request from Parliament was coming undone, and if he didn't push it back into place in time, it all would fall in.

  Not that it mattered what he did, mind. But he had to look at it, pretend to consider it, and, while hanging by toes and fingers from the walls perhaps ten, fifteen stories above his desk, sign it.

  It should have been somebody else. Thomen was a second son, and while myth and legend had second sons as being poor relations of their elder brothers, Thomen had always thought it the best of things to have the privileges and wealth that came with nobility without the responsibility. Second sons were wastrels, yes, by popular consensus - but it would have been nice to have been a wastrel.

  But Rahff was long dead, and Father was long dead, and the Old Emperor was long dead, and Jason Cullinane had abdicated the throne and the Silver Crown in Thomen's favor, and if there was a path out of this dead-end paper canyon, he couldn't find it, not in his waking hours, and not in his sleep.

  And, truth to tell, in a sense he didn't want out There were days - few of them, but some - when he thought that he was doing a decent job of all this.

  Knitting together two formerly hostile principalities into one empire and eventually one country took a certain touch, and maybe a certain sense of history as well as proportion. The Old Emperor might have had some of the latter, but not a trace of the former.

  "Well, then," his mother the horse said, "if you have any sense of history, young man, you'll understand that the first duty of the ruler has always been to survive, and the second duty has always been to perpetuate bis line." She/it punctuated the sentence with a sniff that was born pure Mother and pure horse at the same time. "You've not so much as a bastard child, much less a proper heir."

  Yes, that was the plan, be it sleeping or awake. Bind him tightly with a wife and children, and he would be trapped in this canyon forever, without any possible means of escape.

  "Escape?" A new voice chimed in. Walter Slovotsky stood in front of him, one hip thrown over the edge of Thomen's desk. He was taller than Thomen, both in dream and in reality, but not much, and while age had begun to let his chest fall and become belly, that war was by no means over. His beard was well-trimmed, and his eyes seemed to smile genially, but the grin that seemed a fixture on bis lips was neither friendly nor hostile, but entirely one of self-appreciation. Any realm wise or lucky enough to host Walter Slovotsky deserved to be graced by that smile.

  Thomen didn't know whether he loved or hated Walter Slovotsky, but he had always liked and resented him.

  "I know," Walter Slovotsky said. "Now tell me about this escape, if I heard you aright."

  "Yes, escape," he said, gesturing at the paper walls. "From this."

  Slovotsky chuckled. "Now, let me understand this. You work in a nice, clean room, with food, drink, and companionship on call and available at any time; you get to make decisions that count - in fact, that's your fucking job - and you don't have to deal with hairy, smelly strangers who want to slit you from guzzle to zorch and back again; and you complain that all this is a trap from which you need escape."

  Put that way - and if Thomen could be sure of nothing else, he could be sure that Walter Slovotsky would put it just that way - it didn't sound bad at all.

  "Well, of course it doesn't," Slovotsky said. "And that's because it isn't that bad. In fact, it's as soft a touch as you're likely to find outside of a dream."

  His mother was suddenly behind Slovotsky, her arm raised, an improbably long, improbably needle-pointed dagger clenched in a white-knuckled fist. Slovotsky made a face and, and without looking around, reached up and grabbed her descending hand and twisted the knife out of it, looked at it for a moment, then tossed it aside, into nothingness.

  "Now, now," he said, chiding her in a gentle voice that in real life would have enraged her, but in the dream actually served to calm her down. "That's not nice. I'm just telling him the truth. You wouldn't slay the bearer of bad news - " He stopped himself and raised a palm. "Never mind. Of course you would."

  He chucked Thomen under the chin with the hilt of the knife that he had just tossed away. "Always a bad idea, kiddo. If you punish people for bringing you bad news, then the only people who will bring you bad news are those whom you can't punish. And you want to get your bad news hot off the presses, while there may still be something you can do about it. By the time you reach the point of your pyramid-shaped society, the point is sharp enough to cut you, and will be most unpleasant if the universe decides to shove it up your backside."

  Well, Walter Slovotsky in a dream still had much in common with the real-life Walter Slovotsky: Thomen could only understand about half of what he was saying.

  At best.

  "So," the Emperor asked, "what is this bad news that you're bringing me?"

  "It's pretty horrible." Uncharacteristically, Slovotsky looked shy. "I hesitate to even mention it in front of your Imperial Majesty, for fear."

  "For fear of what? That I'd have you killed?"

  "Well, no. Not in a dream I'm not. I mean, you could have me killed, but, this being a dream and all, it wouldn't quite take."

  "Then what are you afraid of?"

  Slovotsky sobered. "I'm afraid I'll hurt your feelings. Wouldn't want that." His smile was back in place, and Thomen's mother was gone, vanished as he wished - as people only do in a dream.

  Thomen's mouth was dry. "I'll live," he said. "Tell me."

  "Okay: the truth is that you like being Emperor. The truth is that it tickles you to hold the closest thing to absolute power that you're ever likely to see.

  The truth is that you think you do a fairly good job at it. And the truth is that you wouldn't give it up. Your mommy wouldn't let you, and if she was dead, you'd find another reason. You like having the Ladies accompanying the barons to Parliament trying to sneak up to your room to have you father an heir on them, and you like - "

  "Do you really think I'm that shallow, that venal?"

  Slovotsky's face went blank. "Doesn't matter what I think. This is only a dream, after all. The problem is that you think you're that shallow, that venal - or at least you're afraid that you are."

  Mother was back again. "This is the man," she said, her jaw tense, her lips and knuckles white, "who got your father killed. How dare you, his son, just lie there and let him speak to you that way?"

  Thomen's jaw was tight. "Because," he said, "I think he's right. Anybody can say anything to me, as long as they're right. I need to hear truth, Mother."

  "Hey, take it easy." Slovotsky laughed, and took a step forward. "It's a fucking dream, kid. You don't have to be rigidly fair. You don't even have to be honest with yourself. If you're mad at me for living a life, wild and free, doing what I want when I want, well, then, go ahead and hurt me for it - in a dream.

  I won't mind. Really. I won't even know." He slapped Thomen once, lightly, across the face. "But, shit, if this'll make it easier for you ..."

 
Thomen Furnael, former heir to what was now Barony Cullinane, former judge of the realm, former child, former younger brother to Rahff Furnael, now prince of Bieme and emperor of Holtun-Bieme, awoke from his sleep to find himself on his knees in his nightshirt, trying to choke the life out of his blanket.

  Chapter 12

  Durine

  Deer were amazing creatures, Durine had long ago learned. He had seen them run silently out of brush you'd swear a mouse couldn't make his way through, and bound across a trail into even denser brush without so much as a hoof beat. It wasn't as though they were quiet; it was as if your ears couldn't work to hear them.

  Durine wished he was a deer just about now.

  As he worked his way through the woods toward where forested land broke on plowed ground on the far side of the baroness's residence, he sounded to himself a lot more like a cow trampling through the humus and detritus littering the forest floor.

  Well, be that as it may, he had volunteered for the job, and it made a lot more sense for him to be doing this than Kethol. A better woodsman, certainly, but too much the hero.

  Branches and twigs clawed at his clothes and body, but the few scratches were nothing to worry about, even though every insect in the forest seemed to be using his cuts and scratches as dining troughs. As long as his eyes were left alone, the cuts could be healed.

  It took him longer than even the generous amount of time he had allowed himself to work his way through to the far side, and the sun had set by the time he peered out onto the fields. He was bone-tired, hungry, and thirsty enough to consider another draught from his half-empty water bag, but that was to be expected.

  What wasn't expected was the party at the stables saddling up for a ride, a half-dozen soldiers led by a woman in riding breeches and cloak, her hair tied back, who looked for all the world, even from this distance, to be the baroness herself. It was, of course, possible that she was fond of a nighttime ride every now and then, and it would certainly be prudent to take along a bodyguard or seven, but Durine didn't believe that for a moment.

  Where was she going? And why?

  Saddled, the party clopped away at a slow walk on a dirt road that led away from the Residence, the baroness in the lead. An extra horse trailed along behind, pulled along on the end of a rope by the last of the horsemen, barely able to keep up, even though it was unencumbered by a saddle or a rider. Why they wanted a spavined old horse as a spare was something Durine couldn't quite figure out; the others all had decent mounts.

  They quickly disappeared over the hill, and in a moment, even the sound of the hooves had faded in the distance.

  Well, this wasn't the first mistake Durine had ever made, and he hoped it wouldn't be the last. Kethol, long-legged and lanky, could probably have followed them for quite some distance at a fast soldier's pace, a dogtrot. Kethol could keep that up as long as he had to.

  Durine, well, Durine was large, and he was strong, but he wasn't Kethol.

  Cursing himself silently for a moment as he stripped off his cloak and wrapped it around the rest of his gear before hiding the package under a pile of brush - it wasn't that he was really angry at himself, but it gave him something to do - he shook his head.

  Well, if Kethol wasn't available, then Durine would have to do the best he could. He worked his way through to a path that exited the woods, and plodded his way along the edge of a wheat field toward the road that the baroness and her party had taken. He was exposed for at least a short while to anybody looking out the back of the Residence, but it was a risk Durine would have to take; it would have been impossible to make his way through the woods around to the road that the party had taken before dark, and he wasn't a dwarf, able to see in the darkness.

  As it was, the sky had gone slate-gray and the stars and the distant pulsing Faerie lights had begun to show by the time he reached the spot where the riders had vanished over the hill.

  So far, so good.

  He started off at a slow walk, getting into the rhythm of walking before gradually picking up the pace. The road was as good as a dirt road ever got: baked in the heat of the sun since the last rain, it was relatively free of holes and divots, although it was by no means the sort of solid road that the imperials built and maintained. His slow walk became a faster one and he forced that up into a jog, with each step landing on the heel of his boot and pushing off from the balls of his feet. Running wasn't something Durine was built for, but this whole mission was something that none of them were really built for, anyway. You just had to do the best you could, and hope that was enough, and hope that was enough not to get you killed.

  His scabbard kept slapping against his leg, so, without slowing or stopping - he had the sense that if he had the sense to slow or stop, he'd turn right around and go back, instead of chasing horsemen on foot - he unbuckled his sword belt, then rebuckled it and slung it over his shoulder. His pouch still bounced against his right buttock, but that didn't bother him. It was kind of reassuring, really, and helped him keep the rhythm.

  It was said that a man could run down any other animal, if given enough time, and surely that had to include a horse carrying somebody.

  Of course, it wasn't said that any man could pull that trick. A one-legged cripple certainly couldn't. A young child unsteady on his first legs couldn't.

  And maybe Durine couldn't. His heart thumped madly in his chest, and his lungs burned with a horrid fire. His feet hurt from blisters broken open and bleeding, and his shirt hung damp with sweat. It should have been Kethol. It should have been Kethol.

  He began running to the rhythm of that thought.

  It should have been Kethol.

  It shouldn't be me.

  It should have been Kethol.

  It shouldn't be me.

  It should...

  He never could remember how long he held that thought as he held that pace, but the thought and the pace carried him down the road as it twisted across the landscape, up and down hills.

  The hardest moment came as he approached a wide wooden bridge that arched above a stream. Running across that expanse would sound like somebody beating a drum, and would carry probably into the next barony. So he let himself ease down into a slow walk, wondering if he would be able to force himself to run again.

  Durine had been wounded more times than he cared to count, and there had been a time, somewhere high in the mountains, when he had come down with an awful fever that had left him not only in agony but hallucinating, wanting to run away, even though that would have meant falling down the mountain in the dark. It had been all the other two could do to hold him down and keep forcing water down his throat.

  But he had never tried to run down a horse before, and while Durine was used to doing what he set out to, there was no sense in trying to fool himself. It would have been useful to know where the baroness and her party were going, but...

  He walked slowly, quietly, across the bridge. Maybe just a little further, and then he could, in good conscience, give up.

  Just a little further, he thought, his feet breaking into a brisk walk.

  Just a little.

  Just a little.

  Then he would rest.

  The brisk walk became a trot, the broken bloody blister on his right heel stabbing up into his leg every time he landed on it. He had developed a stitch in the side that felt like the blade of a thin, sharp knife. His breath was ragged and his heart felt as if it would burst out of his chest and splatter all over the road.

  A dark storm was rolling in from over the horizon, blotting out distant stars and Faerie lights. Wind whipped dust into the air, and into his eyes.

  Just a little farther, he thought.

  The road climbed up a steep hill, and Durine accelerated, just out of pigheaded stubbornness, even though the effort caused him to hurt even more.

  He stopped dead in his tracks at the top of the hill, then took a few shaky steps back. He dropped to the ground, gasping for air like a fish on the bank of a stream. Near the bo
ttom of the hill, where a dark hole - a cave? a tunnel? Durine couldn't be sure opened on the side of a rocky hill, a half-dozen or so horses waited in a small corral.

  It was awfully large for a dwarven tunnel -dwarves tended to dig to their own scale, whether for habitation or mining - but it was regular and even enough to be. Most of the original dwarven inhabitants had long been driven out of the Middle Lands and most of the Eren regions, but some of their burrows persisted, those that they hadn't sealed up behind them or been sealed up in. The Old Emperor had invited some to move back in, but that was mainly out in Adahan, not here.

  Had Elanee persuaded some to take up residence here? Was this some sort of mine?

  If so, no wonder she didn't want any attention. Gold could do magical things, in more ways than one, and the imperial tax on mined gold was intended to concentrate the wealth into imperial hands. The last thing the emperor needed was some Holtish baron with a secret cache.

  Whatever the origin of the tunnel, a lantern had been placed in a niche carved neatly into the rocks just outside the cave, and in its flickering light four soldiers crouched over a small fire, although the night wasn't particularly cold.

  Durine could understand that, though. There was something about a fire that made you feel safer from whatever lurked out in the darkness.

  Even if it was only a big, sweaty, tired man, whose every bone and muscle ached. It would have been awfully nice to be the one sitting around the campfire instead of out here in the dark and the cold.

  The soldiers were keeping a lousy watch; they seemed to spend most of their time watching the entrance, rather than the horses, as they talked quietly among themselves.

  The night was bright, and Durine had good night vision - for a human, at least - but he couldn't make out anything inside the entrance to the tunnel or cave. If the baroness and the other two had gone in, what had they gone in for?

  A familiar kind of whinnying scream filled the night air, giving the four men in front of the cavern entrance a start. A horse's scream of terror and pain is a distinctive sound, different from anything else. Durine had heard it before, more than once.