Let’s not go into too many details right now, Dweia scolded. We’re leaving Bheid and Gher out, and I don’t think we want Koman eavesdropping. Let’s wait until evening. Then we’ll be able to talk freely.
“It’s good to be home again,” Althalus said, looking around the tower room after they’d returned to the House.
“How long did it really take for your eyes to get better?” Gher asked Eliar.
“I started catching some glimmers of light—on my own—after a few days,” Eliar replied. “It took a while before I could see very many details, though.”
“Emmy must have stopped time, then.”
“I wasn’t paying too much attention,” Eliar conceded. “Other things were happening that were a lot more interesting.”
“Maybe you’d better let me explain that, Eliar,” Dweia said.
“What made you decide to speak to Althalus through Gher?” Bheid asked her.
“He was available,” she replied, “and it seemed sort of appropriate. The whole idea was to conceal what we were doing from Koman. Althalus understood that in fairly short order. If Ghend had known that Eliar was recovering, he’d have done things differently.”
“Are there really caves under that tower?” Bheid asked.
“Not nearly as many as Captain Dreigon thinks there are,” Eliar replied with a faint smile. “Most of the caves he thought he was marching through are here in the House. After he’d set up his camp out in that big pasture, I led him about a half mile toward your mountain and then slipped him through a door back here in the House. That was about as close as we wanted to get him to Koman. By then, Leitha was camped on Koman’s doorstep, and every time he started getting at all close to what we were really doing, she’d warn me so that I could do something to throw him off track. At the same time, Andine was watching Kreuter and his Plakands in their camp and passing things on to me about their plans.” He tapped his forehead with one finger. “We had what amounted to a council of war going on in here for most of the night.”
Bheid’s expression grew a bit wistful.
“You can join us, if you want,” Leitha suggested, “and probably even if you don’t.”
“Not me,” Gher announced quite firmly.
“It doesn’t hurt, Gher,” Andine told him.
“Just leave me out of it.”
“He’s right,” Dweia told Andine. “He’s a bit young for certain ideas. Bheid, on the other hand—”
“My thought exactly,” Leitha said, giving the priest a sly, wicked look. “Come, Brother Bheid. Come with me. I’ll take care of you.”
That has a familiar ring to it, Althalus said silently to Dweia.
The old ones are the best, she replied with a slight shrug.
It was about midafternoon, and Althalus was standing at the window watching Kreuter’s cavalry running roughshod over the Ansu horsemen around the foot of Daiwer’s Tower.
They’re even better than Sergeant Khalor said they were, aren’t they? Eliar observed silently, joining Althalus at the window.
“You don’t have to do that here, Eliar,” Althalus told him, speaking aloud.
“It got to be sort of a habit, I guess,” Eliar replied. “It’s quite a bit faster, isn’t it? You can just hand over a whole idea without fumbling around looking for the right words to make it clear.”
“How are you feeling?” Althalus asked. “You were in fairly bad shape when you and the ladies left to come back here to the House.”
“I’m fine now, Althalus. I get headaches now and then, but Emmy says that’s only natural. My hair’s even starting to grow back. Have you seen any sign at all of Gelta?”
Althalus shook his head. “I think she’s given up on this particular war, so she ran off and left her Ansus to fend for themselves.”
“If word of that gets out, she’ll have a lot of trouble recruiting new troops.”
“What a shame. Isn’t that Kreuter coming up the rock slide?”
Eliar peered out the window. “It sort of looks like Kreuter, yes.” Then the young Arum frowned. “Is that a woman he’s got with him?”
“I think you’re right, Eliar. It’s a long ways down, but it does look a lot like a woman. I think maybe you and I’d better go on down there and see what’s afoot.” He turned slightly. “Emmy,” he called, “Eliar and I are going back to Wekti for a while. Kreuter’s coming up that rock slide—probably to collect the rest of his pay. I want to talk with him a bit. We might need him later.”
“Don’t be late for supper, Althalus,” she replied.
“No, ma’am. Let’s go, Eliar.”
Eliar nodded and reached for the handle of his special door.
“I think you’re the luckiest man in the world, Khalor,” the burly Kreuter declared as he came puffing up the last few yards of the rock slide. “This silly mountain you stumbled across is probably what they had in mind when they invented the word ‘unassailable.’ I know I wouldn’t want to attack it.”
“Are you bringing your womenfolk to war with you now, Kreuter?” Sergeant Khalor asked curiously.
“This is my niece, Astarell,” Kreuter replied, introducing the tall, dark-haired young lady coming up the slide with him. “Her father—my brother—died recently, and I pretty much have to take her under my wing until I can kick some sense into her older brother.”
“One of those family disputes?”
“My nephew’s a thoroughgoing scoundrel. He arranged a marriage for Astarell—for money—that was so inappropriate that I was tempted to kill him. I didn’t find out about it until after you and I had our little discussion in Kherdon, so I didn’t have any choice but to bring her along.”
“That’s why it took you so long to get here.”
“Don’t be silly, Khalor. Astarell here can ride a horse better than just about any of my men. I’d have been here several days ago if you hadn’t kept changing your mind.”
“You said what?”
Kreuter clambered up the last few feet of the rock slide with his niece close on his heels. “First you sent a messenger who said ‘Hurry.’ Then one came running up and said ‘Wait.’ I was just about ready to turn around and go back to Plakand.”
“I only sent one messenger, Kreuter.”
“Well, two of them reached me.”
“I’d say that somebody on the other side was playing games,” Althalus said. “We might want to come up with some way to prevent that in the next war. Our enemy seems to have some very efficient spies.”
“Passwords might help a bit,” Kreuter’s niece suggested.
“Not when the enemy spies are as good as they seem to be, my Lady,” Chief Albron disagreed. “Oh, my name’s Albron, by the way.”
“My manners seem to be slipping,” Khalor apologized. “This handsome young devil’s my Clan Chief, and he invited himself along to study war.”
“He hasn’t been in the way all that much,” Gebhel noted. “His ‘shrub from Hell’ was quite useful back in the trenches.”
“Why are they all wearing dresses, uncle?” Astarell asked curiously.
“I never got around to asking, child,” Kreuter replied blandly. “I’m sure they’ve got a reason for it. Why do you wear a dress, Khalor?”
Khalor’s eyes hardened. “Would you like to rephrase that question, Kreuter—while you still have your health?”
“They’re called kilts, Lady Astarell,” Chief Albron explained to the young lady. “Each clan has a different pattern woven into the kilts its members wear. That way we can immediately recognize friends on the battlefield.”
“It’s not really unattractive, Chief Albron,” she said, eying his bare legs. “Did you know that you have dimples on your knees?” she asked.
Chief Albron blushed, and Astarell broke out in peals of silvery laughter.
“Why don’t we get in out of the sun?” Althalus stepped in. “We’ve got some business to discuss, so let’s find someplace where we can sit down and be comfortable.”
&nb
sp; “I’d like to help, Khalor,” Kreuter said after he and Althalus had settled accounts in a tent near the cave mouth. He hefted the bag of gold coins he’d just received. “The pay’s good, but I’ve got this little family problem I’ll have to clear up first. I’m not sure how long it’ll take me to track down my nephew, and I’ll need to deal with him before I can leave Astarell unprotected.”
“I can take care of myself, Uncle,” Astarell asserted. “I know how to use a knife, and if that stinking old lecher who bought me from my brother comes anywhere near me, I’ll carve out his tripe.”
“She’s a little tiger, isn’t she?” Dreigon said to Gebhel.
“Spirited,” Gebhel agreed.
“There might be a solution to the problem,” Chief Albron observed. “I know of a safe place where Lady Astarell can sit out the war in Treborea. There are other ladies there, so there won’t be any improprieties, and nobody can get past the defenses of that house.”
“We can’t take her there, my Chief!” Khalor protested.
“Why not? She’s a member of Chief Kreuter’s family, and we’re Kreuter’s allies. Her safety should be as much our concern as it is his.”
Khalor looked quickly at Althalus. “What do you think?”
“Maybe,” Althalus replied, “if we sort of neglect to mention it in advance.” Then he glanced quickly at Albron, whose attention seemed totally fixed on Astarell. “You know Albron better than I do,” he murmured softly to Khalor. “Am I reading him right? He seems quite taken with Kreuter’s niece.”
“I noticed that myself,” Khalor agreed. “We might want to encourage that. If I can get him married off, maybe he’ll settle down and quit pestering me while I’m working.”
“If I put it to Dweia in those terms, I might be able to float it past her. She’s got an abiding interest in arranging these things.”
“I think you’re going to get yourself yelled at, Althalus,” Khalor predicted.
Althalus shrugged. “It won’t be the first time.”
“Bheid kept blushing,” Gher reported when Althalus and Eliar returned to the House, “and sometimes his eyes almost popped out. Of course, he was just one, and there were three girl people—probably coming at him from three different directions all at the same time. I don’t think he sees the world the same as he used to.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t,” Eliar said. “I know I don’t.” The young Arum frowned slightly. “Of course, I think I started changing quite a while back—along about the time when Andine started feeding me.”
“Brother Bheid had some opinions about women that needed to be changed,” Althalus noted. “Regardless of what his teachers may have told him, women do have minds. They don’t always work the way ours do, but they are there. I want the two of you to stay on your toes during supper. I’m going to try to float something past Emmy.”
“That Astarell business?” Eliar surmised.
“Exactly.”
“Who’s Astarell?” Gher asked.
“Kreuter’s niece,” Althalus replied. “She and Chief Albron are sort of interested in each other, and Sergeant Khalor really wants to get Albron married off. Albron wants us to bring Astarell here to the House—for reasons of safety, he says, but I’m sure it goes quite a bit further.”
“The boy-people and girl-people thing?” Gher asked, making a slight face.
“There’s quite a bit of that involved, yes, but there are some military reasons as well. We’re going to need Kreuter later on, I think, and he’s very worried about his niece. If she’s safe, he’ll be available; if she’s not, he won’t.”
“I don’t see any particular problem with it, pet,” Dweia agreed after Althalus had presented his case to her at the supper table.
“No arguments?” he asked in a surprised tone. “No hissing or fluffing out your tail? You’re taking a lot of the fun out of this, Em.”
“It does make sense, Althalus, and I can make sure that Kreuter’s niece doesn’t find out too many things about our House. I gather that Chief Albron will be coming here with her?”
“From what I saw, I don’t think you could get him more than ten feet away from her with a team of oxen, Emmy,” Eliar said. “He seems to have a real bad case of the boy-girl business.”
“That’s nice,” she purred.
“Do you suppose I might ask a favor, Dweia?” Bheid asked at that point.
“Have you been good today?”
“I’ve certainly tried—of course, it’s a bit hard not to be good with three ladies camped on my shoulder.” Then Bheid squinted thoughtfully at the ceiling. “As long as we’re opening certain doors here, I was wondering if we could bring that shepherd Salkan here. I’d like to have a long talk with that young fellow. I’m getting a sense of an enormous potential there, and I’d hate to see it go to waste. Taking care of sheep is all very nice, I suppose, but it hardly challenges Salkan very much.”
“Are we recruiting new priests, Brother Bheid?” Leitha asked with a slightly raised eyebrow.
“We get that hammered into us during our novitiate, Leitha,” he replied. “Searching out talent is one of our primary responsibilities.”
“And just which religion did you have in mind for that young man, Bheid?” Dweia asked archly.
“I’m not entirely sure,” he admitted, “but I don’t think we should let him get away.”
“All in all, it came together fairly well,” the silver-haired Dreigon summed up the following morning when the Generals gathered with Eliar and Althalus in a large tent near the cave mouth.
“Except that I had to abandon my trenches,” Gebhel said sourly.
“Quit complaining, Gebhel,” Khalor told him. “This mountain was even better than your trenches were.”
“My men wasted a lot of effort digging those trenches.”
“They got paid, didn’t they?”
“How long is it likely to take your Chief and my niece to reach that house, Khalor?” Kreuter asked.
“A week or so,” Khalor replied evasively. “I sent troops with them to make sure they get there safely, and I guarantee that your nephew won’t even be able to find the place.”
“Good. Now then, you’ve been hinting around the edges of another campaign. What’s afoot—and where?”
Khalor shrugged. “Things are heating up in Treborea again. That’s the war we were originally hired to work. The one we polished off here yesterday was sort of a sideshow. Let’s be honest, gentlemen. None of us took this one very seriously. There was a certain strategic connection, but that’s about all.”
“It’s all the same war, then?” Kreuter asked.
“The same enemy,” Khalor conceded, “at the top, anyway. The main troublemaker’s in Nekweros. I’d imagine that eventually we’ll have to go there and ask him to stop stirring things up.”
“And put ourselves out of work?” Gebhel snorted. “Don’t be silly, Khalor. Is the thing in Treborea a continuation of the argument between Kanthon and Osthos?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“You worked for the Kanthons last time, didn’t you, Khalor? Are we going back in on their side?”
“No, Gebhel. We’ve changed sides. The Arya of Osthos offered better pay,” Khalor replied.
“That’s good enough for me,” Kreuter said. “I work for the money, not for the entertainment. Is there likely to be anything unusual?”
“Probably not,” Khalor said. “Everything I’ve picked up so far has ‘conventional’ written all over it. One thing’s certain, I’m going to need more cavalry.”
“I can take care of that,” Kreuter assured him. “I’ll go back to Plakand and hire more men and horses.” He looked at Althalus. “I’ll need a few kegs of your gold, though,” he added.
Althalus shrugged. “I had a feeling that might crop up.”
“ ‘Money makes the mare go,’ ” Kreuter quoted.
“Wouldn’t she settle for oats?”
“She might, but I won’t.”
Khalor leaned back in his chair, squinting at the tent roof. “I haven’t looked at the situation in Treborea recently,” he told them, “but unless there are surprises, this one should be fairly standard. I’ve got access to some clans that aren’t quite so far away, so I’ll use those during the initial stages of the war. If you gentlemen start moving in the general direction of Osthos, you can join in farther on down the line. The treasury of Osthos is bulging, so there’ll be money enough for all of us. I’d imagine that things should be more or less stabilized by the time you arrive, and then you’ll be able to step in and tip the balance.”
“I think I could use those shepherds,” Dreigon said.
“Wait a minute,” Gebhel protested. “Those slingers are mine.”
“I thought you didn’t want to play this time,” Khalor said.
Gebhel shrugged. “I’ll be going that way anyway, and I’m fairly sure Gweti’s going to want to get involved.” Then he grinned. “Besides, if I get there late enough, I won’t have to sit out any long, boring sieges. I’ll come to your rescue, Khalor, so you can be grateful—and generous—after I pull your backside out of the fire.”
“How closely are you related to Chief Gweti, Gebhel?” Khalor asked suspiciously.
“We’re third cousins,” Gebhel admitted.
“I thought it might be something like that. Certain characteristics run in families.”
“Everybody likes money, Khalor. My family just likes it a little bit more, that’s all.”
“Obtaining Yeudon’s permission to take Salkan and his young boys out of Wekti might be just a bit difficult,” Bheid warned them.
“Permission my foot,” Gebhel snorted. “I’ll just offer them gold, and they’ll drop sheep herding like hot rock.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to offer them more.” Dreigon sighed.
“You wouldn’t!” Gebhel exclaimed.
“Watch me,” Dreigon said, grinning broadly.
It was late that afternoon when Eliar led Althalus and Bheid through the main door of the temple in Keiwon.
“What news from the war?” the white-robed priest in Exarch Yeudon’s waiting room asked eagerly.
The Redemption of Althalus Page 48