“I’ll take good care of it,” Eliar promised.
“Althalus,” Dweia’s voice murmured.
“Yes, Em?”
“You could return the gold to the strong room, you know.”
“Don’t be silly,” he chided her.
“You don’t really need it, love. You do have your own gold mine, you know.”
“I worked hard for this gold, and I’m not about to give it back.”
“Somehow I knew you were going to say that.”
Althalus hefted the bags up over his head one by one, and Eliar’s arms came out of nowhere to take them. Then Althalus and Gher returned to the unlocked back door of the hay barn, opened it, and went inside. “Let’s get our horses back into the stable and unsaddled,” Althalus said quietly as he barred the door. “Then we’ll go to Gosti’s hall and wake Galbak. I don’t want Ghend to get too far ahead of him.”
“Are there horse tracks on that trail so that Galbak and his men won’t have much trouble?” Gher asked.
“There are two sets of tracks going north from the back door of the barn to the edge of Gosti’s territory. They’re so obvious that a child could follow them.”
“Are you certain sure you’ll be able to wake up Galbak?” Gher asked as he unsaddled his horse. “He was awful drunk when we left that big room where the party was.”
“Eliar’s already taken care of that,” Althalus assured him, lifting off his own saddle. “It was something along the lines of what he did to Chief Twengor. Galbak took a quick trip to the day after tomorrow, and when Eliar brought him back, the worst of the effects of the party’d worn off. He still won’t be feeling very well, but he’ll understand what I’m trying to tell him.” Althalus patted his horse’s rump, and the animal obediently went back into its stall. Althalus looked around to make sure that nothing was out of place. “I guess that’s got it,” he said. “Let’s go turn the tables on Ghend, shall we?”
“I thought we’d never get to that,” Gher said eagerly.
“Once we’re in the hall, I want you to slip inside and lie down somewhere close to Galbak.”
“Tenlike I’m asleep, you mean?”
“Exactly. I’m going to spin a little story for Galbak that won’t involve you. Just lie still and keep your eyes closed until Galbak starts screaming—which he will do after I tell him the story.”
Gosti was snoring in his massive chair at the head of his table, and his clansmen were mostly sprawled on the floor. Althalus noticed that the general snoring was now punctuated with a few groans. “They seem to be coming around,” Althalus told the boy. “Get to your place and try to look like you’re asleep.”
“Right,” Gher said, moving quickly to a place not far from where Galbak lay stirring restlessly.
Althalus shambled toward the table, holding his head and contorting his face into an expression of suffering. He knelt beside Gosti’s cousin, reached out and shook him slightly. “Galbak,” he said in a wheezy sort of voice, “I think you’d better wake up.”
Galbak snored.
Althalus shook him harder. “Galbak,” he said a little louder. “Wake up. I think something’s wrong.”
Galbak groaned. “Oh, Gods!” he swore, putting one trembling hand to his forehead.
“Galbak!” Althalus said, urgently shaking him again. “Wake up!”
“Althalus?” Galbak said, his bleary eyes coming open. “What’s wrong?”
“I think we got into a bad batch of mead,” Althalus told him. “I’ve been as sick as a dog for the last half hour. I just saw something out in the courtyard I think you ought to know about.”
“My head’s coming apart,” Galbak groaned. “Let me go back to sleep. You can tell me about it in the morning.”
“That might be too late,” Althalus said in a worried voice. “Something’s afoot here that isn’t right, and I think you’d better look into it right now. I could be wrong, but I believe you’ve just been robbed.”
“What!” Galbak came to a half-sitting position and grabbed the sides of his head with both hands. “God’s blood!” he groaned. “What are you talking about, Althalus?”
“I woke up with my belly on fire a little while ago,” Althalus told him. “I crawled out to the courtyard and turned my stomach inside out. I’ve been sick a few times before, but never like this. Anyway, right after I’d heaved up my toenails, I saw somebody sneaking across the yard. There were two of them, and they seemed to be carrying some bags that looked very heavy. They went past one of the torches out there, and I saw that it was Ghend and his servant Khnom. From the way they kept looking around, it was fairly obvious that they didn’t want anybody to see them. Then Khnom dropped one of the bags he was carrying, and it made a jingling sort of sound. I can’t swear to this, Galbak, but it sounded to me like a bagful of money.”
Galbak jerked his hands away from his face and stared incredulously at Althalus.
“Anyway,” Althalus hurried on, “they went into the stable, and after a couple of minutes, I heard a creaking sort of sound—like a door being opened. The sound seemed to be coming from the back of the hay barn. Then I heard a couple of horses galloping away. I think maybe you’d better go take a quick look at Gosti’s strong room. My head wasn’t any too clear, so I might have been imagining all that, but you should probably go have a look at the strong room, just to make sure.”
Galbak scrambled to his feet. Then he doubled over, retching violently. “Come with me!” he barked at Althalus when he’d recovered.
They rushed to the corridor and on to the steps in front of the strong-room door. The guards were still snoring peacefully, and Galbak stepped over them and tried the door. Then he laughed weakly. “You scared me out of a year’s growth there, Althalus,” he said. “The door’s still locked, though, so everything’s still all right. You must have been having a nightmare of some kind.”
“I think you’d better take a look inside, Galbak,” Althalus suggested. “I’ve had a lot of nightmares before, but if that was a nightmare, it’s the first one I’ve ever had that involved throwing up. I’d feel a lot better if you took a look to make sure everything’s still all right.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Galbak conceded, “and it won’t cost anything to look.” He took a large bronze key from the pouch at his waist, unlocked the strong-room door, and took the torch from the ring beside the door. Then he pulled the door open, raised the torch, and stepped inside.
Althalus concealed a sly smile. The pile of pennies on the floor and the overturned table should get Galbak’s immediate attention.
Galbak was cursing when he came running out of the strong room. “You were right, Althalus!” he half shouted. “Come with me!”
Althalus nodded and followed the tall Arum back to the great hall. “On your feet!” Galbak roared, savagely kicking the clansmen awake. “We’ve been robbed!”
“What are you saying, Galbak?” Gosti demanded in a voice blurred with sleep.
“Your strong room’s been opened, Gosti!” Galbak shouted to his cousin. “Somebody undid the lock and got inside! There are coins all over the floor, and several bags of gold are missing!”
Gosti scoffed. “You’re drunk, Galbak. The main gate’s locked. Nobody could get into the fort to rob me.”
“He was already inside the fort, you dunce!” Galbak snapped. “It was Ghend and that man of his who robbed you! Althalus here saw them sneaking out with bags of your gold.” He went back to kicking clansmen to their feet. “Get to the stables and saddle the horses! The robbers can’t be far ahead of us! Move!”
“Will somebody tell me what’s going on?” Gosti demanded.
“Tell him what you told me, Althalus,” Galbak said.
“I woke up sick, Gosti,” Althalus reported. “I stumbled out to the courtyard, and I was busy throwing away a lot of very good mead when I saw that fellow Ghend—the one who says he comes from Regwos. He and his friend were tiptoeing across your courtyard like a pair of chicken thiev
es sneaking out of a coop. People don’t sneak that way unless they’ve got something to hide, so I watched them. Just before they got to the stable, Khnom dropped something he’d been carrying, and it made a sort of jingling sound when it hit the ground. They went on into the stable, and a minute or so later, I heard some horses galloping off to the north.”
“Did you see them go out through the main gate?” Gosti demanded.
“No, actually I didn’t, but I did hear horses galloping away.”
“It must have been somebody else, then,” Gosti said. “The main gate’s the only way out of the fort.”
“You’re wrong, Gosti,” the grey-haired old clansman Althalus recognized disagreed. “There’s a back door in the hay barn. Nobody’s used it for years, but it’s still there. It might have been boarded up, but that Ghend fellow has been here long enough to have pried the boards loose.”
“Galbak!” Gosti shouted. “Go look into the strong room!”
“I told you, Gosti,” Galbak shouted back, “I already did! You’ve been robbed, cousin!”
“Chase the scoundrels down!” Gosti roared. “Get my gold back!”
“That’s what I’m trying to do, you fat dolt!”
“Neat,” Gher murmured to Althalus.
“I’m glad you liked it.”
“What do we do now?”
“You stay here. If anybody asks, tell them that I’ve gone back outside to be sick again. We don’t want to join the chase. I don’t want Ghend to see us among his pursuers.”
Galbak roused the rest of the clansmen with kicks and curses, and about a quarter of an hour later they were mounted and milling around in the courtyard. Galbak’s scouts had found the tracks Althalus had carefully put down from the back of the hay barn to the trail that followed the river gorge. The main gate swung open, and Galbak led his men out in pursuit of the thieves.
Although everything had gone exactly according to his plan, Althalus felt a peculiar sort of discontent as he reentered Gosti’s great hall. He genuinely liked Galbak, and he wasn’t particularly proud of the way he’d deceived Gosti’s tall cousin. It’d been a necessary part of the scheme, of course, and the ultimate goal of the scheme was commendable, but still . . .
“Galbak’s got a good chance of catching the thieves, Gosti,” he reported. “Ghend and Khnom haven’t got much more than an hour’s head start, and they’re not as familiar with the surrounding territory as Galbak is.” He gave the grossly fat Clan Chief a wry sort of smile. “It’s a peculiar sort of thing to say, but Ghend’s greed is actually working for us.”
“I didn’t follow that, Althalus,” Gosti admitted.
“Gold’s very heavy, Gosti,” Althalus explained, “and from what Galbak was saying, there are about eight bags of it missing from your strong room.”
Gosti groaned. “Eight bags!” he grieved.
“It’d be better if Ghend’s greed had gone even further, but eight should be enough. Ghend and Khnom only have two horses, and the dead weight of those bags is going to slow those horses down. Galbak and his men are traveling light, so they’ll be able to move faster. I’d guess that they’ll catch up with those thieves by midafternoon.”
“That makes very good sense, Althalus,” Gosti said, his sweaty face breaking into a broad grin of relief.
“Evidently, your gold’s very fond of you, Gosti. Notice how it cooperates with you and Galbak in the capture of those thieves.”
“It does, doesn’t it? I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You were meant to have that gold, Gosti, and now it’s going out of its way to come back to you.”
“I like your way of thinking, Althalus.”
“It never hurts to look on the bright side.”
Althalus and Gher remained in Gosti’s hall for several days after the robbery. Their fat host grew more and more unhappy as the messengers from Galbak failed to bring good news.
“I think it’s just about time for us to move on,” Althalus told Gher on the morning of the third day. “We’ll cross Gosti’s bridge and meet Eliar over on the other side of the river. Then we can go back to the House.”
“I thought we’d be going to Hule to wait for Ghend.”
“I want to talk with Emmy about that. We’ve tampered with reality quite a bit here lately, and I think we might want things to go back to the way they were last time before we wander off too much more. As far as I can tell, we’ve only opened up one new possibility. If we keep fooling around with it, a dozen or so more might crop up. I can handle two, but twelve or fourteen might stretch me a little thin.”
“It’d be a lot funner, though,” Gher said, his eyes brightening.
“Never mind,” Althalus told him firmly.
They gathered up their belongings and went to Gosti’s great hall. “We’d really like to stay, Gosti,” Althalus apologized, “but I’m supposed to meet a fellow in Maghu this spring, and he’ll be very put out with me if I leave him cooling his heels down there until summer. We’ve got some business to attend to, and he’s a grouchy sort of man who hates delays.”
“I understand, Althalus,” Gosti replied.
“We’d like to cross your bridge, but I’m a little short of money right now. Do you suppose . . .” Althalus left it hanging.
“I’ll send word to the men at the bridge,” Gosti replied. “I think I owe you that much. Your stories brightened a long, dreary winter, and you did report the robbery. If you hadn’t seen Ghend sneaking out of the fort, it might have been a week before we’d have known that he’d robbed us.”
“I was hoping you’d see it that way. We’ll stop by the next time we come through Arum. Then you can tell me the story of how Galbak caught Ghend and nailed him to a tree so that the wolves could eat him.”
“I don’t think Galbak would do that, Althalus.”
“You might suggest it to him the next time you send a messenger in his direction.”
Gosti’s answering grin was evil. “It would make a pretty good story, wouldn’t it?” he said.
“It would indeed, and if it got around, it’d probably be a long, long time before the notion of robbing you even occurred to anybody else.”
Then Althalus and Gher went to the stable, saddled their horses, and rode out of Gosti’s fort. The toll taker at the bridge waved them through, and they crossed the river in the bright spring sunshine.
“It went off pretty good, didn’t it, Althalus?” Gher said proudly.
“Close to perfect, Gher,” Althalus agreed. “I just wish we hadn’t been forced to bamboozle Galbak in the process.”
“Why should that bother you?”
Althalus shrugged. “I like him, and cheating him the way we did left a sour taste in my mouth.”
“Eliar’s just up ahead,” Gher said, pointing. “If we sort of hurry right along maybe Emmy can fix us something to eat. I sure missed her cooking last winter.”
“So did I, Gher.”
Eliar beckoned them, and they followed him back into the woods. “Emmy’s very impressed, Althalus,” the young man said. “I didn’t think she really approved of what you were doing, but she was laughing all the time while you two were leading Ghend around by the nose.”
“She has an artistic temperament, Eliar,” Althalus explained, “and the swindle Gher and I just put over on Ghend was a work of art. Give me just a little more time, and I’ll make her one of the best thieves in the world.”
They led their horses through the door that opened in the south wing of the House, and they were soon climbing the stairs to Dweia’s tower.
“All hail the conquering hero,” Leitha said.
“Why do you have to do that?” he asked her.
“It’s a form of affection, Daddy.” She gave him a radiant smile.
“Could I have a look at the imitation Book you made, Em?” he asked.
“It’s over there on that marble bench, pet,” she replied, pointing.
Althalus went to the bench and picked up the black Book.
“The cover matches the real Book perfectly,” he observed.
“Naturally.”
He opened the lid of the box and took out the first sheet of parchment. He looked at the sheet closely. “It seems different, for some reason,” he noted.
“That’s probably because you can read it now,” Dweia suggested.
“Maybe that’s it. Back when Ghend showed me the real Book, none of it made any sense to me. I see that some of the words are still written in red.” He frowned. “I thought I could read just about anything anybody’d written down, but I can’t seem to get the meaning of those red words on this sheet.”
“You don’t really want to. Put it back in the box.”
“Could we see how Ghend’s doing, Emmy?” Gher asked hopefully. “I’ll bet he’s awful miserable by now.”
“Moderately miserable, yes,” Andine said with a wicked little giggle.
“Weren’t you just a bit direct with Khnom, Gher?” Bheid asked. “The Knife told you to ‘deceive,’ not to ‘bang him on the head.’ ”
“I had to work on that,” Gher admitted as they crossed the room to the south window. “I didn’t want to disappoint the Knife, but I had to get Khnom out of the way for long enough for me to grab Ghend’s Book. Then it sort of came to me that ‘deceive’ might mean ‘do something Khnom wouldn’t expect me to do,’ and getting thumped on the head was just about the last thing he expected.”
“There’s a weird sort of logic to that, I suppose,” Bheid conceded.
“Things are definitely going to pot for poor Ghend,” Leitha reported from the window. “Galbak’s running him ragged down there.”
“What a shame,” Althalus said absently.
“What’s troubling you, Althalus?” Dweia asked him. “I thought you’d be pleased at the way this turned out.”
“I am—up to a point,” he replied. “I just wish I’d been able to do it a little differently, that’s all.”
“It bothers Althalus that he had to trick Galbak while we were tricking Ghend,” Gher explained. “Althalus and Galbak got along real good, and Althalus doesn’t like to trick friends.”
“Morality, Althalus?” Dweia asked in mock amazement.
The Redemption of Althalus Page 79