“Yeah, but as meat, it should be delicious!” Matt dropped the two bulbous brown objects, careful to yank his toes out of the way. “Whaddaya think?”
The dragon stared, then caught one of the things up in his mouth. He dropped it a second later. “I could chew it if I had to, but I might break a tooth—and quickly though I regrow them, it might not be worth the while.”
“Oh, they’ll be edible after we’ve soaked them overnight,” Matt told him. “Salty, but soft enough to eat.”
“What are they, wizard?”
“Hams,” Matt told him. “Salt-cured, smoked, and dried. Probably weighed too much to cart along. Just as you guessed, there was no worry about leaving them—the Moors won’t eat pig meat.”
There was, of course, the little problem of where to soak the hams.
“It does mean we’ll have to stay here overnight,” Matt pointed out. “You might be able to pack a dozen hams, but not a whole water tank.”
Papa dropped his load of hams and said, “Yes, we must stay the night.”
Matt frowned, looking about him. “I don’t like it. Not that I’m really worried about ghosts, mind you, but I’m not keen on staying in a place that’s so easy to infiltrate. No matter which house we choose, any good second-story man would have a dozen windows to choose from.”
“A point,” Papa admitted. “Therefore, let us sleep outside the town.”
“I don’t mind camping out,” Matt said, “and I suppose it’s an advantage to be able to see a mile in every direction—but it does feel a bit exposed, with the Mahdi’s army only three days behind us, and his scouting parties all around.”
Papa pointed at a structure poking up above the houses. “There. I noticed it as we came in. It is several hundred yards past the town.”
“A windmill?” Matt stared. “Hey, not a bad idea! The walls should be as thick as any in this country, and no windows on the ground floor! Shouldn’t be too hard to defend.”
“And being outside the town, it will probably have its own well,” Papa pointed out. “We shall find water for your hams.”
“Let’s go!” Matt said. “You climb up, Papa, and I’ll start tossing them up to you!”
They loaded the dozen hams as efficiently as experienced stevedores, then secured themselves for takeoff between Stegoman’s huge back plates. The dragon took a little run, a lot of flapping, and took off in time to clear the town wall by three feet. They soared out toward the windmill.
“Wait a minute!” Matt pointed down. “What’s that?”
They all looked down, in time to see Stegoman’s shadow glide over a man who labored along the roadway, leaning against the crossbar at the front of a wagon tongue. Behind him rolled a two-wheeled cart—but slowly, very slowly. The man was straining every muscle to keep it moving, for it was piled high with small pieces of furniture, wooden plates and spoons, pewter mugs and the occasional earthenware stein, feather beds, casks, and bottles. The stakes of the cart were hung with hams, sausages, and bulging wineskins.
“I think,” Papa said, “that we have found all the personal items that were so obvious by their absence in the three towns we visited.”
“Yes, and maybe half a dozen more! Either that, or he’s an innkeeper who can’t bear to leave his capital behind to be confiscated.”
“Would he truly rather risk death at the hands of the enemy?” Papa wondered.
“I don’t know, but I think we might want to ask him,” Matt said. “How about landing, Stegoman?”
“As you wish,” the dragon rumbled. His eye gleamed as he looked down at the hams. He banked into a tight curve. His shadow fell over the traveler again. The man looked up in alarm.
Stegoman circled back, coming lower, and the man dropped the wagon tongue in a panic. He sprinted away from his cart—then skidded to a halt. Face a mask of agony, torn between fear and avarice, he turned back, yanking a cudgel from his belt, and set himself between Stegoman and the cart as the dragon landed.
“Foolish man!” Stegoman rumbled. “Do you truly think that puny twig could halt me?”
The man flinched but held his ground. “If it doesn’t, I’d rather be dead!”
From the ground, Matt could see that the fellow wasn’t very large—maybe five feet tall and skinny as a rail. The wizard stared in disbelief at the man’s words. “You’d die rather than lose a cartful of junk that’s making you labor worse than a galley slave just to keep it with you?”
“I’ve never had anything before!” the man whined. “Not anything, except the shirt on my back and the lice in my hair! ‘No, Callio,’ they told me, ‘you can’t have this, and you can’t have that—unless you pay!’ And where was I supposed to get money to buy with? ‘We won’t hire you, Callio,’ they told me. ‘You’re too small to do any good.’ Now all of a sudden, here’s all these wonderful, useful things, in perfect condition, and they can’t really be very important to anybody, or no one would have left them behind!”
“On the contrary.” Papa slid down from the dragon’s back. “They are the little things that make a household comfortable and that bring delight to a wife’s heart. I think they were quite important indeed to the folk who left them.”
“They couldn’t be! Or they would have taken them with them somehow!”
“Important, but not so vital as spouses or children,” Papa corrected. “They took with them what they could easily carry or what was most important among their worldly goods. They left only the things that they wanted, but could do without.”
Matt nodded. “It was either leave the extras, or travel so slowly that the Moors might catch them and sell them as slaves—or maybe even kill them in a battle frenzy. Only a fool would think possessions were worth his life.”
“All right, I’m a fool!” the little man screamed. “If the people who left all this thought they could do without them, then let them do without them now! It’s my turn to have some nice things!”
Matt slid down now, too. “That makes you just a common thief, you know.”
He was appalled when Callio burst into tears, sagging to his knees.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Hey, now, hold on!” Matt went up to him, reaching out to reassure.
The little man flinched away from his hand, crying, “All right, I am! Just a thief! Nothing but a thief! Been a thief since I was a boy learning how to cut purses! Is it my fault I was never any good at it? Is it my fault I was caught every time I tried something big?”
“You were caught?” Papa frowned. “But in the Middle Ages, the punishment for theft was cutting off a hand! How is it you still have them both?”
“Well,” said Callio, “I may not be much as a thief, but I’m very good at escapes.” His tears dried on the instant and he smiled, expanding. “Let me tell you of some of them! There was the time I lurked in a guard’s shadow as he went out—I’m small enough so that no one noticed—and the time I went along to comfort a man on his way to be hanged, then in the fuss after he fell, I wiggled away into the crowd. After that, there was the bar in the window that was a little loose, and the more I wiggled it, the looser it became—how the other prisoners howled when I slipped through the hole and they could not! But by the time the guards came to see what all the shouting was about, I was away and gone into the night!”
“Amazing,” Matt said, and watched the little man preen. “You don’t maybe sing to yourself while you’re doing these things, do you?”
Callio stared, openmouthed. “How did you know? Yes, I sing, but very, very softly, so that only I can hear.”
Yes, only he could hear—and focus the back of his mind on bending forces to help him. Matt suspected the thief was a magician with a very limited, but very strong, power. “Did you ever try singing while you were pulling off a robbery?”
Callio stared. “Sing while I was robbing? And alert my targets to what I was doing? Certainly not!”
But he’d been plenty willing to sing while he was escaping, literally in a guard’s
shadow. Matt didn’t bother pointing out the discrepancy—there was no point in telling the man until he was sure. Why raise false hopes? Especially if he was going to use his powers to steal from honest citizens.
How about dishonest citizens? Matt decided to mull that one over—but Callio probably would have been afraid to rob other criminals. He exchanged a glance with Papa and saw that the older man had grasped the same idea about the thief’s powers.
Callio caught the look. He frowned, fear gone, looking from one to the other. “How is this? What have you learned about me that I don’t know? What is happening?”
“War,” Matt said slowly, “and the Moors may come charging over the hill at any moment.”
“Don’t try to scare me!”
“Why not, if it will help you? Make no mistake, Callio—if the Moors catch you, not only will they take away all your loot, they’ll also take you! They’ll sell you for a slave!”
“I’ll escape!” But Callio had turned pale.
“Maybe,” Matt said, “but you’ll be poor again. What good will all these things do you then?”
“Do not tell me to leave them!” the poor thief wailed in agony. “They’re all I have, all I’ve ever had! No woman would want me because I was too poor and couldn’t earn money for her! No woman, no children, no home! No friends, because they all think I’m too small and weak to be worth respect! This is the first time in my life that I’ve ever had anything, anything at all!”
Matt’s heart went out to the man.
So did Papa’s. All sympathy, he said, “If they catch you, though, you’ll have nothing again, and the more you collect, the slower you’ll go.”
“Yes,” Matt agreed. “They’re bound to catch you sooner or later. A cartload of miscellaneous household goods isn’t worth your hands—or your life.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” Callio wailed. “If I had found any gems or gold or other small things of great value, I could tear myself away from these—but I’ve found nothing of that sort, nothing! No jewels, no coins, no plate! The selfish pigs took it all with them! I haven’t found anything really valuable, not anything at all! Don’t deny me this little bit, at least!”
“The more you have, the more you become a target for some bigger thief, or even a band of them,” Matt warned.
“Don’t tell me that!” Callio cried in an agony of apprehension. “They’ll do it, I know they’ll do it! Big burly brutes! Overbearing ogres! Shambling giants! They’ll take everything from me if they see I have anything! They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again! But I can’t just leave it all! You want me to give it up so nobody can steal it from me? What good will that do?”
“Not a whole lot,” Matt admitted, “but you don’t have to give it up forever—just for a little while.”
Callio stared. “What? That’s ridiculous! How can I give it up for a while, but have it when I want it?”
“Well, maybe not the instant you want it.” Somehow, Matt’s main concern for the little thief was to get him out of the bind his greed had gotten him into.
Papa nodded, catching on. “You can bury it. Haven’t you ever heard of buried treasure?”
“Bury it?” Callio stared. “Well... yes, but... that’s only for real treasure, I mean, gold and jewels and such!”
“But you just told us that if you’d found anything like that, you wouldn’t need to haul all this stuff with you,” Matt said patiently.
“Well... yes, but... that’s because you can carry jewels with you, without hauling a whole cart!”
“Then why do you think people buried their gems?” Papa asked.
Matt nodded. “It was because they were going into country where there were a lot of robbers—or because war was coming.”
Callio looked around wide-eyed. “You mean the townsfolk might have buried their treasures?”
“I doubt that,” Matt said.
Papa nodded. “They wouldn’t have had all that much, any of these commoners—except a few rich merchants, and I don’t doubt they hired small armies to guard their goods as they moved north to join the king.”
“Right.” Matt nodded. “No treasure to be found here—unless you bury it.”
“Me? Bury my things? But how could I do without them?” Nevertheless, Callio’s gaze strayed to the loaded cart.
“You’d know where they were, and you could come back when you’d managed to stea... uh, stake yourself to a horse or two, to do your pulling for you.” Matt didn’t believe for a second that the petty thief would ever manage to steal a whole horse.
“But what if I forget where I buried them?” Callio wailed.
“Draw yourself a map,” Papa suggested. “Three maps—this is too big a load to bury in a single hole.”
“But the wood, the feather beds! They’ll rot!”
“You won’t be leaving them that long.” At least, Matt hoped this whole conflict would be tidied up within the month.
“Then, too, this is the countryside of La Mancha,” Papa said. “It is very dry here, not much water in the ground.”
“It rains, though,” Callio protested weakly. “Not very often, but it rains.”
Matt shrugged. “So lay planks on top of the hole, a foot below the surface—and a second layer crosswise, to keep out the damp better.”
“It could work.” Callio’s gaze strayed to the cart.
“Sure it could!” Matt said heartily. “Then every time your cart gets full, you just bury the load again.”
“I could, I could indeed.” Callio gazed at his cart, nodding, lost in thought. Suddenly he turned on Matt. “Why should you care, though? What do you expect to get out of this?”
“Me? Nothing,” Matt said with contempt. “Just the satisfaction of helping a fellow creature.” He started to climb up to Stegoman’s back. “Come on, Papa. No point in staying where we’re not appreciated.”
“No, wait!” Callio called out, hand upraised.
“I have waited long enough, morsel,” Stegoman rumbled. “Wizards, mount!”
But Papa turned to the thief before he boarded. “What is it, then?”
“I... thank you,” Callio said lamely. After all, there wasn’t really much more he could say.
“Glad to help.” Matt settled in among Stegoman’s plates.
“There is great satisfaction in having given even this small advice,” Papa assured Callio.
The thief eyed him peculiarly. “You have a strange notion of pleasure.”
“I must, or I would never have become a teacher,” Papa told him. “Try it sometime. You may find that helping others is more rewarding than robbing them.” He gave Callio a parting smile, then climbed aboard the dragon. Stegoman ran away from Callio, huge wings beating, and climbed into the air. He banked around man and cart once, gaining altitude, then arrowed away toward the windmill—but that one circling was enough for them all to see Callio pulling a shovel from his cart and beginning to dig.
The owner of the mill, as it turned out, had been ingenious; he had built over a well, and connected the sails to a windlass that pulled a chain of buckets. It took Papa only a few minutes to figure out how to put the contraption into gear, and the sails pumped him a tank full of water. They put the hams in to soak while Stegoman went hunting for stray mavericks, but it was a comfort to know that even if he didn’t find any, he was assured of a full belly in the morning.
Meanwhile, Matt scrounged up a couple of sacks of meal that the miller had apparently overlooked on his way out, lit a fire on the hearth, found a cracked skillet that the family hadn’t thought worth taking along, and managed a reasonable facsimile of tortillas to go with their salt-beef stew. They were just about to sit down when there was a knock at the door. They traded glances of puzzled alarm; then Matt stood up and slipped toward the door, drawing his sword, while Papa called out, “Yes?”
“Shelter, gentles, I pray you!” called a voice they knew even though it was muffled by oak.
Matt relaxed, sheathin
g his sword, and opened the door to find a dirty thief, sagging with weariness. “I think there will be rain,” he said, “and I’d liefer have a better roof over me than the bottom of my cart.”
“Good thought.” Matt waved him in, touching his wallet as the thief passed. He had a notion he was going to have to guard it closely. He barred the door and turned to find Papa on his feet, beckoning Callio to a seat by the fire. “Welcome, welcome indeed!”
“I—I thank you.” Callio sat down on a rough wooden chair, but his eyes and his nose turned automatically to the fire and the cooking pot.
“Surely you must share our dinner!” Papa told him. “It is rough fare, but travelers cannot be epicures. Matthew, a bowl for our friend?”
Matt pulled the spare bowl from his pack and filled it with stew. Callio accepted it with a sigh. “You are friends indeed, for the sky does indeed look like rain, and my things would have been soaked if I hadn’t buried them as you said!”
“No trouble finding planks, then?” Matt asked.
“None at all—I’d found some near a sawmill, solid oak, beautifully grained, and even some sailcloth for mending another mill. The boards were part of my treasure, and I covered them with the canvas.”
“Well, that oughta do it.” Matt settled on the center chair and picked up his bowl again. “Hey, don’t burn your throat!”
“I shall try not to.” Callio picked a strip of meat out on the point of his knife and blew on it to cool it. “But I am so very hungry!”
“Yes—the refugees seem to have been bound and determined not to leave any food for the invading army,” Matt said, frowning.
Of course, Callio couldn’t bring himself to eat any of his loot.
Callio nodded. “I’ve never seen a countryside so stripped of anything that could be eaten.” He tucked the meat into his mouth and chewed.
Matt agreed. “Good thing it’s so early in spring, and the crops scarcely sprouting, or the farmers would probably have burned their fields as they retreated.”
“What a waste,” Callio mumbled around his meat.
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