Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda

by Joel Rosenberg

***

  “‘Be still, Pirojil,’” Pirojil said, as the gates of the city receded in the distance behind them. The wind was from the east, driving the smells of the city away from them, and even the cries in the town markets were almost completely drowned out by the gentle clop-clop-clop of their horses’ hooves.

  “That was good,” he went on. “I liked that. Not ‘Shut up,’ or ‘Quiet down,’ or even ‘Shut your festering gob, or I’ll tear off your leg and beat you to death with it,’ but ‘Be still, Pirojil.’”

  Forinel made a face, but didn’t meet Pirojil’s eyes as they rode, any more than Pirojil met his. It wasn’t a matter of avoiding Pirojil’s eyes — there was nothing there that he needed to see.

  “Well, it seemed like something a highborn would say,” he said.

  “It was.” Pirojil nodded. “That’s why I liked it. You’re taking to this better, and more quickly, than I’d have guessed you could.”

  Was it part of the elven magic? Or was it just that Kethol had always been at least somewhat brighter than Pirojil had been tempted to give him credit for? Both explanations seemed improbable, but if Pirojil had had to pick one, he would have picked the magic, and then cursed the magic for not having worked better.

  Forinel scanned the treeline to the right, while Pirojil kept a watch on the left, and hated the fact that he was enjoying himself.

  Not that there was anything to worry about, as far as Pirojil knew. But that was the way of it — you kept your eyes open, no matter how safe you thought you were. The world was filled with sharp things, and too often those sharp things had an eye for your soft flesh.

  But he couldn’t keep his eyes open all the time, or watch everything at once, so he split the world into halves or thirds, and paid full attention to his portion, trusting that Kethol would watch his own.

  It was a silly little nothing. Just a ride down an unpaved dirt road that was heavily rutted with wagon tracks while the setting sun cast long shadows in front of them, and he and Kethol divided the universe neatly in two.

  But the silly little nothing felt good.

  That was the thing about having friends. Pirojil hadn’t had many friends.

  The closest things to it in recent years had been Kethol and Durine, and Durine had died on him — just like the Old Emperor, just like all the others, just like those who had betrayed a young man whose name wasn’t even Pirojil then, and whose screams as they died in a burning house, its doors and windows jammed shut, had long since been drowned out in his dreams by fresher, louder screams. He could barely remember what the crackling of burning flesh sounded like, and he had long been able to smell roast pork without gagging and vomiting uncontrollably.

  That was the good thing about time passing — the pain passed, too.

  There wasn’t much that Pirojil liked about the old days, but this was one of them: this silly little thing, this riding down the road, with the universe split in two, was something that he would miss, when this was all over.

  And it would be over, and sooner than later.

  Kethol would want to keep him around, of course, but there was no good reason that Forinel would, and the best way to quell any suspicions was to be sure that they were never raised in the first place.

  He would have to go, and the likelihood that he would now have all three shares of the cache of gold and jewels that he and Durine and Kethol had been accumulating over the years should have made him feel happier than it did.

  They had talked about a tavern in Biemestren, where the three of them could painlessly separate Imperial soldiers from their pay with beer and food downstairs and maybe a few whores upstairs.

  The Three Swords Inn, they would call it. Pirojil liked the sound of that.

  Durine would have kept the peace. Most soldiers, even drunk, would have been more afraid of actually losing their manhood in a serious fight with the big man than they would of appearing to lose their manhood by backing down from the big man, and for those who were too drunk or likely to be too stupid, a man who didn’t wait for the other to strike the first blow could end a fight before it had started — and that didn’t have to be Durine; Kethol and Pirojil would have been perfectly happy to slap a stick across a drunk’s back while the drunk faced off with Durine.

  Kethol could spend his days hunting — it wouldn’t be difficult for an old soldier to get a hunting warrant or two — and his nights playing bones, further separating stupid soldiers from good coin.

  Pirojil would brew the beer. The weak, sour beer of the Eren regions was drinkable, if usually no better than that, but he knew a few recipes that a younger man had learned, long ago, that would put this horse piss to shame.

  But now Durine was dead, his body lying rotting in the cave; and now Kethol was Forinel; and now that fine and distant dream had gone where all good dreams go, come morning.

  Pirojil doubted that, even with all three shares, he had enough to buy a tavern in the capital; he thought it unlikely that he could run it by himself; and he knew enough about himself to know that he couldn’t trust somebody he hadn’t bled with well enough. He knew that he didn’t have the temperament to watch closely over somebody he couldn’t trust, or to stay his own hand when he was betrayed, as he surely would be if he didn’t watch closely enough.

  So that plan was gone.

  Dead as Durine, dead as the Old Emperor, dead as all the others.

  Still, if he was careful, perhaps he could buy an inn somewhere cheaper than the capital. Or, perhaps, a small piece of good land, probably up in the Cullinane hills. Land should be relatively cheap in such heavily orc-infested country, and that meant that all he would have to do was kill a few dozen or a few hundred orcs before settling down to the relatively quiet life of a common landowner.

  Dirty work, certainly, but he’d done much dirtier.

  He wouldn’t be the first of the Old Emperor’s soldiers to buy a piece of land, and he wouldn’t be the last. His ugliness wouldn’t prevent him from finding some peasant girl who found that being the mistress of even a modest home was far preferable to spending her days scratching the soil, her evenings cooking and cleaning and washing and mending, and her nights being pounded by some smelly peasant.

  Pirojil, at least, knew how to wash. As to his ugliness, if it was a problem for her, she could just spread her legs and then close her eyes, eh?

  It would be a better end than most, and even if it all failed, he knew that a loyal retainer would always be able to find a bed and a meal at Castle Cullinane, and be greeted with dignity. The bed would not be particularly soft; the room might well be over the stable; the meal would not be eaten at the table with the baron and his family.

  But if he would be, in effect, a beggar coming to the door, nobody would treat him that way.

  And that would probably always be true at Baron Keranahan’s residence, whether it was the country home or the keep in Dereneyl.

  But it would feel different. That was the trouble with it. What had Pirojil ever done for the Keranahans — besides help conquer them during the war, besides putting an imposter in the baron’s house? Nothing.

  No.

  He couldn’t say anything to Kethol about that, of course.

  It was silly. A soldier should long ago have lost any sort of compunctions at all. He was just too tired. That probably was it.

  ***

  They rode along in silence, and when they arrived at the Residence, Pirojil simply turned down Forinel’s offer of help with the horses, too tired to lecture him about how a baron would leave such things to others.

  It had been a long day.

  Pirojil’s legs moved leadenly as he walked the horses to the stableboy.

  He went to the kitchens, and got himself a joint of mutton and a huge flagon of beer, and brought it out back.

  The mutton was greasy and cold, but he had had much worse. The beer was weak, and tasted more of mouse than of barley, but there was plenty of it, and he drained it and another two flagons quickly. He considered
heading out to the bathhouse to wash the road dust off, then decided not to bother. The beer had washed it from his throat, and bathing could wait for morning, after all.

  He quietly entered the Residence through the kitchen and climbed to his room on the second floor.

  He had slept in worse, and rarely in better. The room was large and airy, and there was a bell pull next to the bed, the rope almost touching the gleaming, freshly cleaned thundermug, clean enough to drink out of. While the hard mattress was of horsehair rather than soft down, that was fine with him. There were no rocks in it, after all, and Pirojil had slept on rocks all too often.

  He unbuckled his belt, carefully set his sword and dagger and his pistols in their usual positions, then pulled off his boots, and tumbled into bed.

  He was grateful for the beer.

  It made his sleep a dark and warm thing, utterly devoid of even a hint of distant screams.

  Part 3

  Multiple

  Attacks

  7

  FREDENSDAY

  When you write a check that your mouth can’t cash, the only thing do to is go out and do something about your bank account.

  — Walter Slovotsky

  SKEPTICALLY, KETHOL EYED the once-again-full glass of wine in front of him.

  He thought that he hadn’t had more than one full glass, which was much less than the tankards of sour beer he was more used to drinking of an evening — on those evenings when he was drinking, that is, and not pretending to.

  But with the way that the serving girls kept sneaking up and refilling it, he couldn’t be quite sure. He thought that he was keeping up his end of the conversation, and he couldn’t see any suspicious glances in his direction, but he wasn’t sure about that, either.

  The only thing he was sure of was that he felt utterly out of place.

  Leria had carefully kept him engaged in quiet private conversation throughout the long dinner — the far too long dinner — and occasionally would duck her ear close to his lips, and respond with quiet laughter at whatever he said, if anything, then duck her head back to put her lips next to his ear and, in whispers, remind him of the names of all the assembled lords and their hangers-on.

  He was beginning to get them straight. Yes, Lord Moarin was easy — and even if he hadn’t met him already, it would be hard for him to ignore or forget the wrinkled old husk of a lecher, whose eyes consistently focused on the deeply scooped front of Leria’s dress, and whose young wife — Finella? Yes, Finella — was probably half the age of his horse-faced daughter, Brigen. It was interesting that Moarin hadn’t brought them out when he and Pirojil had visited the lord — perhaps he wanted to be sure to brief them to be careful about what they said in front of the baron?

  Sherrol, short, fat, and bald, had been the lord warden of Dereneyl until the occupation, and while he still was, technically, Leria had said that he spent most of his time these days overseeing loading and unloading from the dockside warehouses. If it hadn’t been for the ruffled blouse and the jeweled rings that bedecked his stubby fingers, Kethol would more likely have taken him for a longshoreman than a noble, what with the way that his face and neck were permanently browned from the sun.

  Miron didn’t seem to think much of Sherrol, which didn’t necessarily mean anything more than that Miron wanted Forinel to think that he didn’t think much of Sherrol.

  Still, the lack of affection was returned.

  “How long, Lord Miron,” Sherrol asked, “do you think that you’ll be staying in the barony?”

  “Why, Sherrol — Lord Sherrol, that is — one would think that my company is offensive to you.”

  “Please.” Sherrol’s smile was every bit as sincere as a whore’s on payday. “I wouldn’t want you to think that, not for a moment.”

  Miron pursed his lips, then gave the slightest of shrugs. “Not long, I think — I came home only to prepare the way for my brother’s return, and I’ve some … other matters to deal with sooner than later.” He made a self-deprecating moue. “I’ve some land of my own, yes, in my own right, but those few villages seem to do quite well without me, and since it seems that I’m not to become the baron, it would also seem that I’m in the usual position of a younger brother. I’d like to find some nobleman of good lineage with no son and a marriageable daughter, and while the crop of young ladies in Keranahan has bloomed quite nicely,” he said, making a slight bow toward Leria, and another toward Brigen, “so the crop of landed noblemen more than matches it.” He sighed. “My guess is that I’ll end up marrying some merchant nobleman’s daughter, and having to buy into the family business. And I was so looking forward to receiving a dowry, rather than selling my own lands to provide one.”

  As usual, Miron had talked long, and not said much — except that he was leaving for Biemestren soon, although immediately would have been none too soon for Kethol.

  Melphen was the tall, somber-looking one who studiously avoided looking across the table at Miron, while Lord Aredel — supposedly a distant relative of the Biemish Arondael family — was shaped like a beer barrel, but had a preposterously high voice. Lady Ephanie, silver hair bound up with patinaed copper wire, and remarkably firm breasts exposed to the upper edge of her nipples, was the widow of Lord Belchen.

  He didn’t have to make any effort to remember Miron, who was down at the other end of the table, close to Treseen, and who seemed to spend most of his time in quiet conversation with Ephanie’s giggling young daughters, as though he were coppering his Biemestren bets locally.

  Kethol — Forinel would have to keep them all straight.

  It wasn’t enough to lie to himself that he had known them and they him since he was a boy. The best he could do was to keep his mouth working — carefully wielding his spoon and prong with the silly, elegant flourishes that Leria had taught him, and being sure to take absurdly small bites, and letting Leria carry the bulk of the conversation.

  “Of course,” Lord Moarin said, “everybody here has been wondering about Parliament.” He cut himself yet another peasant-sized hunk of the mutton and conveyed it to his mouth with his silver eating prong. For a skinny old man, he packed away food like a woodsman in spring.

  “Is there any word about the telegraph line? Or, perhaps, the lifting of the occupation?”

  He had asked Pirojil and Kethol the same questions, and so he was asking about that purely for effect, although it was hard to tell who was supposed to be affected, and how. Treseen? Leria?

  Kethol sipped some more wine. “Little on either, I’m afraid,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “I’m told that the engineers have some questions about the best route from Nerahan — and of course there are higher priorities, the expenses aside.”

  Except for the telegraph cable itself, putting in a telegraph line wasn’t terribly expensive — it was mainly a matter of labor, and while copper wasn’t cheap and copper wire was even more expensive, labor was plentiful.

  But it hardly made sense, after all, to put up the line near the Kiaran border, when it was a foregone conclusion that Kiaran bandits would simply cut the lines, both for the value of the copper and because bandits had long ago learned that the telegraph enabled Imperial troops to respond to raids in less than half the time it would otherwise take.

  “I don’t see the problem,” Ephanie said. “It’s just a matter of, well, of putting up poles, isn’t it?” Her shrug threatened to send her breasts popping out of the front of her dress.

  “No, Lady, with respect: it’s not just a matter of putting up poles,” Treseen said, shaking his head. “You need a large team of foresters to harvest trees, and four times that many laborers to dig holes and plant the telegraph poles, and at least one engineer to hang the wires. Yes, if you throw enough workers at it, a telegraph line can go up almost as fast as a man can walk — but the copper is expensive, after all, and copper wire more so, and you want to be sure to put the line along well-traveled roads, not out in the wild, or you might as well simply be handing over th
e copper to thieves and bandits.”

  Sherrol nodded. “It’s like saying that running a river port is just a matter of rolling the barrels on and off the barges.” He gulped another glass of the wine that already had sweat beading on his bald head. “It’s true, but it’s not a half of it, eh?”

  “But why do you not just clean the bandits out from the hills, Governor?” Lady Ephanie’s mouth was tight. “I’m not criticizing the Emperor, mind, but it wasn’t this way in the old days.”

  Moarin nodded agreement. “In the old days, for much less offense than we’ve been given, we’d have sent a couple regiments storming through Kiar, setting every thatched roof on fire for a day’s ride around any such.”

  “And in the old days,” Melphen said, “the Kiarans would respond with a couple of regiments storming through Keranahan, setting fields and villages alight, in response.” He shrugged. “I’d rather live with the annoyance of a few bandits, myself. Chasing after them gives the Imperials something to do for their taxes, after all.”

  Treseen cleared his throat. “The Emperor,” Treseen said, carefully, “always takes note of what’s said, and by whom.”

  Sherrol frowned over his glass, and shook his head in apology.

  “Oh, Treseen,” Melphen said with a wave of his hand, “please don’t start with that, not again. If the Emperor wants to hang a few nobles for acknowledging that not everybody finds everything he does to be utterly brilliant and wonderful, there are other necks he’s more likely to start with than mine.” He jerked a thumb at Moarin.

  “He might be more interested in, say, the curiously small summer wheat crop that some have been having, eh?”

  Moarin was unmoved. “Governor Treseen has thoroughly inspected my holdings, and he’s found my accounts completely satisfactory.”

  Which probably meant that Moarin had paid off Treseen. Or maybe just that he had had a lousy summer wheat crop. The truth was always a possibility.

  Kethol didn’t care much, either way. As to the politics, Kethol had never bothered much with it himself, but he had spent a few evenings listening to Baron Cullinane and his regent talking about it — well, more accurately: listening to Doria Perlstein lecture Jason Cullinane, while Jason Cullinane tried to change the subject to the Other Side, rather than dull matters of taxes.