He stared at her. The pa.s.sage of a night had eased much of his gloom; now sheer surprise banished the rest. "Where did you learn to quote Lekapenos? And whose rendering is that? Whoever did it knew his Sithonian well."
"As for the rendering," she shrugged, "it"s mine. That pa.s.sage always appealed to me. Where else would I learn my letters than from the epics?"
There was much truth in that. The baron still recalled the G.o.dlike feeling he"d had when the curious marks on parchment began to correspond with the verses he"d learned by ear.
He was glad to exchange the dirt road that led to Ikos for the main southbound highway before the former became a bottomless river of mud. Moments later he was wondering at the wisdom of his choice. Behind them came a drumming of hooves, the deadly clangor of bronze on bronze and wheels rumbling on stone roadbed-a squadron of chariotry, moving fast.
Van unshipped his spear and Gerin began to string his bow. Then a deep voice sounded above the rising clatter: "Way! Way for the men of Aragis the archer!"
The baron pulled off the road with almost unseemly haste. Ignoring the rain, Aragis" hardbitten troopers pounded past, brave in surcoats of scarlet and silver. A handful of draggled bandits were their reluctant companions. Proud hawk-face never smiling, Aragis" captain-or perhaps it was Aragis himself-raised one arm in salute as his men thundered by. Some of them had leers for Elise, stares for Van"s fine cuira.s.s. The bandits looked stolidly ahead; Gerin guessed they could already see the headsman"s axe looming across their futures, and precious little else.
"Whew!" Van said as the chariots disappeared into the mist ahead. "This trip will make a fine yarn, but it"s not something I"d like to do more than once."
"You could say that about most things that make good stories," Gerin pointed out. Van chuckled and agreed.
From Ikos to Ca.s.sat was a journey of two days. To the baron it was a time of revelation. For years his mind had not reached further than the harvest, the balance of a blade, or the best place to set an ambush. But Elise had read many of the works that were his own favorites and, better yet, thought on what she read. They pa.s.sed hour after hour quoting favorite pa.s.sages and arguing meanings. Gerin had almost forgotten there could be talk like this; over the years, all without his knowing it, his mind had grown stuffy and stale, and now he relished the fresh new breeze playing through it. Van chimed in too from time to time; he might lack the shared background of Gerin and Elise, but he had seen more of the varied ways of man than either, and his wit was keen.
Like most summer rains in the northlands, the storm lasted little more than a day. As the sky cleared the purple bulk of the High Kirs, a great rampart looming tall on the southern horizon dominated the landscape. Eternal snow clung to many peaks, scoffing at the high summer below. Eight pa.s.ses traversed the mountains; seven the Empire had painstakingly blocked over the years to prevent the incursions of the northern barbarians, once so frequent. In the foothills before the eighth squatted the town of Ca.s.sat, a monument to what might have been.
Oren II had planned it as a splendid capital for the new province his father had won; its great central square was filled by temples, triumphal arches, law-courts, and a theater. But fate had not been kind. Birds nested under the eaves of the n.o.ble buildings, and gra.s.s pushed its way up be- tween marble paving-blocks. The only reality to Ca.s.sat was its barracks, squat, unlovely structures of wood and grimy plaster, where a few hundred soldiers of the Imperium pretended to rule the northlands. A few streets full of horsetraders, swordsmiths, joy houses, and grogshops tended to their needs. The dusty wind blew mournful through the rest of the town.
The dragon flag of the Empire, black on gold, flew only over the barracks. There did Carus Beo"s son, the Marchwarden of the North, perform his office; mice alone disputed in the courthouse Oren had built. Carus had once been a favorite at court. He had earned his present post some years before, when the Urfa ma.s.sacred a column he led. Because of what he saw as his exile to the cheerless north, he despised and resented the border barons. Gerin called on him nonetheless. Few as they were, Carus" men would be a valuable aid in holding the border against the Trokmoi, could he be persuaded to send them north. Elise accompanied the Fox; Van took the wagon to a leading seller of horseflesh, seeking fresh animals to replace Gerin"s well-bred but weary beasts.
The Marchwarden of the North sat at a well-scuffed desk piled high with parchments of all sizes. He was sixty or even a few years past; his yellowish-white hair had retreated to a ruff round his ears and the back of his neck, leaving all his pink scalp bare save for a meager forelock. There were dark pockets under his eyes, and his jowls quivered when he lifted his head from whatever bureaucratic inconsequentiality Gerin"s arrival had interrupted.
"My man tells me you seek the a.s.sistance of the Empire against the Trokmoi. Surely the boldness of the brave holders of Elabon"s frontier cannot have declined to such an abysmal level?" he said, looking at Gerin with no liking at all. His narrow eyes swiveled to Elise, and a murky gleam lit them. There was a liking there, right enough, but only of the sort that tempted the Fox to kick his stained teeth down his throat. Elise studied a point on the wall directly behind Cams" forehead.
"Surely not," Gerin agreed, stifling his annoyance. Ignoring the fact that he had not been offered a seat, he handed Elise into a chair and took another for himself. Carus" sallow cheeks reddened in irritation. Just as if nothing had happened, the Fox resumed, "At the present time, however, circ.u.mstances are of unusual difficulty." He went on to tell the Marchwarden of Balamung and his threatened invasion.
Carus was drumming his nails on the desktop by the time the Fox finished. "Let me see if I understand you correctly," he said. "You expect the troops of the Empire to get you out of the trouble into which you have gotten yourself with this wizard, who, if I may speak frankly, does not strike me as being overwhelmingly dangerous. Now to justify this service, you may point to- what?"
"Among other things, that we border barons have kept the Trokmoi out of the Empire for two hundred years and more."
"A trivium." Carus waved his hand in a languid southern gesture which might have seemed courtly on Rihwin but was grotesque coming from a man of the Marchwarden"s years and corpulence. "If I had my way, we would merely send a few thousand tons of stone down behind the Great Gate. That would quite nicely seal off the barbarians for all time."
"Horseb.a.l.l.s," Gerin muttered. Elise heard him and smiled, but Carus heard him too, and that the baron had not intended.
"Horseb.a.l.l.s?" Carus" mouth moved in "what might have been a smile, but his eyes stayed cold. "Ah, the vivid turn of phrase of the frontier. But do let me return to what I was saying: indeed, I think the Empire would be just as well without you. What do we gain from you? No metals, no grain: only trouble. Half the rebels of the past two hundred years have had northern ties. You corrupt the calm, orderly way of life we crave. No, my good lord Gerin, if the barbarians can eat you up, they are welcome to you."
The Fox had not really expected much help from the Marchwarden, but he had not expected outright hatred, either. He drew in a long angry breath. Elise pressed his hand in warning, but he was too nettled to pay heed. He spoke in the same polished phrases Carus had used, and the same venom rode them. "You complain the Empire has received nothing form us? Up on the border, we wonder what we get from you. Where are the men and chariots of the Empire, to help us drive away the northern raiders? Where are they when we fight among ourselves? Do you care? Not a bit, for if we are kept distracted, why then we cannot think of rebellion. You judge, and rightly, our flesh and blood a better shield than any you might make of stone or wood, and so we die, for nothing."
Bowing to Carus, Gerin stood to go. "And you, my fine Marchwarden, you have gained the most of all from our thankless toil, for while we sweat and bleed to keep the border safe, here you have stayed for the past twenty-five years, shuffling papers from one pile to the next and-sitting on your fat fornicating fundament!" The last was a roar of surprising volume.
Carus leaped to his feet, fumbling for a sword but finding only an empty scabbard. Gerin laughed mockingly. "Guards!" bleated the Marchwarden, and when the men appeared he gabbled, "Clap this insolent lout in chains and cast him in the dungeon until he learns politeness." His eyes lingered on Elise, and a flabby hand reached out to take her arm. "I will undertake to instruct the wench personally."
The expression of befuddlement on the guards" faces was ludicrous; they had not seen their master so active in years. Gerin made no move for his own blade. He said mildly, "Do you know what will happen if you seize us? As soon as the barons learn of it, they will come down in a body and leave your precious barracks so much kindling, and not long after that the Trokmoi will be here to light it. It almost makes me sorry you won"t live to see any of it."
"What? What nonsense are you spewing now? I"ll-gark! Carus" voice abruptly disappeared; Elise was tickling the soft skin under his wattled chin with the tip of her dagger. She smiled sweetly at him. The blood drained from his face, leaving it the color of the parchments on his desk. Moving very carefully, he detached his hold on her arm. "Go," he said, in ragged parody of the pompous tones he had used moments before. "Get out. Guards, take them away."
"To the dungeons, sir?" asked one, scorn in his voice.
"No, no, just go." Carus sank back into his chair, hands shaking and beads of sweat gleaming on his bald pate. With as much ceremony as if it were a daily occurrence, his men conducted Gerin arid Elise from the Marchwarden"s rattled presence.
The sun was still high in the southwest; the audience had made up in heat what it lacked in length. Gerin turned to Elise and said, "I knew having you along would be a nuisance. Once he got a glimpse of you, the old lecher couldn"t find a way to get me out of there fast enough."
"Don"t be ridiculous. I"m a mess." Of itself, her hand moved to brush at her hair.
The baron surveyed her appreciatively. There was dust in her hair and a smudge of grime on her forehead, but her green eyes sparkled, the mild doses of sun she allowed herself had brought out a scattering of freckles on her nose and cheeks, her lips were soft and red, and even in tunic and trousers she was plainly no boy . . . easy there, he told himself. Do you want to make Ricolf your enemy too, along with the Trokmoi and Wolfar? He gave his beard a judicious tug. "You"ll do," he said. "You"ll definitely do."
She snorted and poked him in the ribs. He yelped and mimed a grab at her; she made as if to stab him. They were still smiling a half hour later when Van pulled up in the wagon. He smelled of horses and beer, and had two new beasts in the traces. A grin split his face. "Himself gave you the men, did he?" he asked eagerly.
"What? Oh. No, I"m afraid not." Gerin explained the fiasco; Van laughed loud and long. The Fox went on, "I expected nothing much, and got exactly that. You seem to have been pretty busy, though-what is that, anyway?" he jerked a thumb at one of Van"s newly-acquired horses.
Unlike its companion, a handsome gray gelding, this rough-coated little beast was even less sightly than the s.h.a.ggy woods-ponies of the Trokmoi. But Van looked scandalized; he leaped down and rubbed the animal"s muzzle. A quick snap made him jerk his hand away, but he said, "Captain, don"t tell me you don"t know a Shanda horse when you see one? The fool trader who had him didn"t. He thought he was putting one over on me. Well, let him laugh. A Shanda horse will run all day and all night; you can"t wear one down if you try. I like the bargain, and you will too."
"All right, show me." Gerin helped Elise up, then climbed on himself. Van followed. The wagon clattered out of Ca.s.sat toward the Great Gate, the sole remaining link the Empire allowed itself with its northern province.
It was a long pull through the Gate. Toward the end of it the gray was lathered and blowing, but the horse from the plains showed no more sign of strain than if he had spent the day grazing. Gerin was impressed.
Though Elabon had not blocked this last way through the Kirs, her marshals had done their best to make sure no enemy could use it. A number of solid fortresses of brick and stone flanked the roadway. Watchmen trampled smartly along their battlements, alert against any mischance. The bronze-sheathed wooden gates of the towers were closed now, but could open to vomit forth chariots and footmen against any invader.
Wizards, too, aided in the defense of the Empire. They had their own dwellings, twin needle-like spires of what seemed to be multicolored gla.s.s, off which the late afternoon sun shimmered and sparkled. Should the armed might of the fortresses prove insufficient to blunt an attack, it was the duty of the warlocks to set in motion the thousands upon thousands of boulders heaped on either side of the pa.s.s, and thus block it forever. The arrangement made Gerin uneasy: what wizardry had made, it could easily unmake. He cheered slightly when he discovered the warriors in the fastnesses could also start the avalanches by purely natural means: there were paths leading up to the tops of the piles of scree, and certain triggering rocks there had levers under them. The Fox did not envy the fate of the men who would work them.
The succession of powerful strongholds awed even Van, who had only contempt for nations which relied on walls and garrisons for defense. "Folk who huddle in forts are dead inside," he said, "but with forts like these it will be a while yet before anyone notices the reek of the corpse."
Traffic through the Great Gate was heavy. There were traders heading north, their donkeys braying loud disgust at the weight of the packs they bore. There were traders coming south from their journeys, donkeys braying loud disgust over nothing at all. There were mercenaries, wandering wise men, wizards, and a good many travelers who fell into no neat scheme.
Nearly two hours went by before the wagon reached the end of the pa.s.s. Golden under the light of the setting sun, the southern land spread out below like a landscape from a master painter"s brush. Field and forest, town and orchard all were plain to see, and brooks and rivers were lines of molten copper.
"It"s a rare pretty country," Van said. "What are the people like?"
"People," Gerin shrugged. "I"d best keep an eye on my wallet, then." "Go howl! You"d bite a coin free-given." "Likely I would, if I planned to spend it." "Scoffer!" Just then a warm, dry breeze wafted up from the south. It was sweet and spicy, with the faintest tang of salt from the distant Inner Sea, and carried scents the baron had forgotten. Like the frothing flow of a swift stream breaching the dam which had restrained it, long-buried memories flooded up in Gerin. He thought of the two years free from care he had spent in the City, and then of the sterile, worry-filled time since, and was appalled. "Why did I ever leave you?" he cried to the waiting land below. "Father Dyaus, you know I would sooner have been a starving schoolmaster in the City than King of all the Northlands!"
"If that is the way you feel, why not stay in the City?" Elise asked. Her voice was gentle, for the sight of the fair land ahead had enchanted her quite as much as the Fox.
"Why indeed?" Gerin said, surprised. He realized the notion had never crossed his mind before, and wondered why. At last he sighed and shook his head. "Were the danger behind me less great, I"d leap at the chance like a starving long-tooth. But for better or worse, my life is on the cooler side of the mountains, and much depends on me there. If I stay, I would betray more than my own men. All the land will fall under Balamung"s foul sorceries, and his evil thirst will not be slaked by it. It may happen yet; the G.o.ds have given the northland little enough hope. It is partly my fault that Balamung is what he is, and if I can make amends, I will."
"I think you will do well," Elise said slowly. "Often it seems the most glory is won by those who seek it least."
"Glory? If I can stay alive and free without it, I don"t give a moldy loaf of journeybread for glory. I leave all that to Van."
"Ha!" Van said. "Do you want to know the real reason he"s bound to go back, my lady?"
"Tell me," Gerin suggested, curious to see what slander his friend would come up with.
"Captain, it would take more than a wizard to drive you away from your books, and you know it as well as I do." There was enough truth in that to make Gerin throw a lazy punch at Van, who ducked. Most of the spare silver the barony produced flowed south to the copyists and book-dealers of the City.
They wound their way down from the pa.s.s, hoping to reach a town before the sun disappeared. Gerin was less concerned about the ghosts than he would have been on the other side of the mountains; peace had reigned here for many years, and the spirits were relatively mild. For his part, Van grew downright eloquent when it came to the advantages of fresh food, a mug of ale (or even wine!), a comfortable bed, and perhaps (though he did not say so) a wench to warm it.
The road was flanked by a grove of fruit-trees of a kind unknown north of the Kirs. Not very tall, they had gray-brown bark, shiny, light green leaves, and were full of egg-shaped yellow fruit. Both leaves and fruit were fragrant, but Gerin remembered how astonishingly sour the fruit was to the tongue. It was called ... he snapped his fingers in annoyance. He had forgotten the very name.
As the trees began to thin, another smell made its presence known through their perfume: a faint carrion reek. Gerin"s lips drew back in a mirthless grimace; he knew too well what would be ahead. "I think we"ve found our town," he said.
The road turned, the screen of trees disappeared, and the town was there, sure enough. It was not big enough to have a wall, and the Fox was sure folk living ten miles from it had never heard its name. Nonetheless, it aspired to cityhood in a way open to the meanest of hamlets: by the road stood a row of crucifixes, each with its slow-rotting burden. Under them children played, now and then shying a stone upwards. Dogs slunk there too, dogs with poor masters or none, hoping for an easy meal.
Some of the spiked and roped victims were not yet dead. Through sun-baked and blistered lips they begged for water or death, each according to the strength left in him. One, newly elevated or preternaturally strong, still howled defiance at G.o.ds and men. His roars annoyed a few of the carrion birds nearby. Strong black bills filled with noisome food, they flapped lazily into the sky, feathered corruption staring down with fine impartiality on town, travelers, and field. They knew all would come to them in good time.
Vans face might have been carved from stone as he surveyed the wretches overhead. Elise was pale and her eyes were wide with horror. Her lips shaped the word, "Why?" but no sound emerged. Gerin tried not to remember his own thoughts when he first encountered the malignant notions of justice the southerners had borrowed from Sithonia.
"Maybe," he said grimly, "I had my reasons for going home, after all."
chapter 6.
The town (Gerin learned its name was Fibis) did little to restore the l.u.s.ter of the southlands in the baron"s eyes. The houses lining the imperial highway were little if at all finer than the huts of his peasants, and only muddy alleys ankle-deep in slops led away from it. The sole hostel Fibis boasted was of a piece with the rest, being low-roofed, dingy, and small. The sign outside it had faded past legibility, and within the smell of old grease fought with but could not overcome the odors of rotting offal, urine from the dyeworks next door, and the never-absent stench from the crosses outside of town.
And the townsfolk! City ways which had seemed sophisticated to the youth who traveled this road ten years before were now either foppish or surly. Gerin tried to strike up a conversation with the innkeeper, a dour, weathered old codger named Grizzard, but got only inarticulate grunts in return. Giving up, he returned to the rickety table where his friends awaited supper. "If I didn"t know better," he said, "I"d take oath the fellow is afraid of me."
"Then he thinks you"ve tasted his wine already," said Van, who was on his third mug. "What slop!" He swigged, pursed his lips to spit, but swallowed instead.
The rest of the meal was not much better. Plainly the lack of compet.i.tion was all that kept Grizzard in business. Disgusted with the long, fruitless day he had put in, Gerin was about to head for his bed when a cheery voice said, "h.e.l.lo, you"re new here! What"s old Grizzard given you to drink?" Without so much as a by-your-leave, the fellow pulled up a chair and joined them. He sniffed at their wine, grimaced, and flipped a spinning silver disc to the innkeeper, who made it disappear. "You can do better than this, you thief," he said. Much to the Fox"s surprise, Grizzard could.
The baron studied his new acquaintance curiously, for the man seemed to be made of pieces which did not belong together. Despite his heartiness, his voice soon dropped so low Grizzard could not hear what he said, and while his mouth was full of slang from the City, his homespun tunic and trousers were rustic in the extreme. Yet his chin sported a gray imperial and his shoes turned up at the toe: both Sithonian styles. The name he gave-just Tevis, without patronymic or sobriquet-was one of the three or four commonest south of the mountains.
Whoever he was, he had a rare skill with words. Softly, easily, he enticed from Gerin (usually as close-mouthed as any man alive) the story of his travels, and all without revealing a bit of his own purpose. It was almost as if he cast a spell. He paused a while in silent consideration, his clear dark eyes studying the Fox. "You have not been well-used by the Empire," he said at last.
Gerin only shrugged. His caution had returned, and he was wary of this smooth-talking man of mystery. Tevis nodded as if he had expected nothing more. "Tell me," he said, "do you know of Moribar the Magnificent, his Imperial Majesty"s governor at Kortys?"
Van, who had drunk deep, stared at Tevis in owlish incomprehension. Elise was nearly asleep, her head warm on Gerin"s shoulder. Her hair tickled his cheek and the scent of it filled his nose. But in his mind the stench of the rood was stronger still. Here was the very thing Carus Beo"s son had feared most: a potential rebel in the capital of Sithonia seeking northern help. At any time but this the baron would have shed no tears to see the Empire go up in civil war, but now he needed whatever strength he could find at his back. He chose his words with care: "Tevis, I don"t know you, and I didn"t ask to know you. If you say one more word to me, you will have spoken treason, and I will not hear it. True, I"ve had my quarrels with some of his Majesty"s servants, but if he does not plot against me in my land, I have no right to plot against him in his. I would not have drunk with you had I known what was in your mind. Here, take this and go." He laid a coin on the table to pay for the jug of wine.
Tevis smiled faintly. "Keep it," he said, "and this as well." He took something from the pouch at his belt, tossed it next to the coin, and was gone into the night while Gerin was still gaping at what he had thrown: a tiny bronze hand, fingers beginning to curl into a fist.
"Oh, great Dyaus above!" he said. "An Imperial Hand!" He propped his chin on his palm and stared at the little token before him. He could have been no more startled had it sprung up and slapped him in the face.
Bristles rasped under Van"s fingers as he scratched his jaw. "And what in the five h.e.l.ls might that be?" he asked with ponderous patience.
"A secret agent, spy, informer . . . call him what-you will. That doesn"t matter. But if I"d shown any interest in setting Moribar on the throne, by this time tomorrow we"d be on crosses side by side, waiting for the vultures to pick out our eyes."
"Ha! I"d bite off their heads!" Van seemed more concerned with the vultures than the crucifixion that would invite them.
"That"s one way of dealing with them, I suppose," Gerin agreed mildly. He woke Elise; she yawned and walked sleepily to the one room Grizzard grudged female travelers. Van and Gerin headed for their own pallets, hoping they would not be bug-ridden. Almost as an afterthought, the Fox scooped up the diminutive but deadly emblem Trevis had left behind.
Though weary, he slept poorly. The quarrel with Carus, his jarring introduction to the dark side of the southlands, and above all the brush with disaster in the shape of Trevis kept him tossing all night. The bed was hard and lumpy, too, and when he awoke half a dozen red, itchy spots on his arms and chest proved he had not slept alone.
Van was unusually quiet at breakfast. "Head hurt?" Gerin asked as they walked to the stables.
"What? Oh. No, it"s not that, Captain."
Van hesitated. Finally he said, "I"ll tell you right out, Gerin, last night I almost decided to buy myself a gig and get the blazes out of this crazy country."
Gerin had envisioned disaster piled on disaster, but not in his worst nightmares had he imagined his friend thinking of leaving. Ever since Van came to Fox Keep the two of them had been inseparable, fighting back to back and then carousing and yarning far into the night. Each owed the other is life more times than he would count. With a shock, the baron realized Van was a larger, gustier version of his dead brother Dagref. Losing him would have been far more than parting with a comrade; part of the baron"s soul would have gone with him.
Before he could find a way to put any of what he felt into words, Elise spoke first, asking, "Why would you want to leave now? Are you afraid? The danger is in the north, not here." She seemed unwilling to believe her ears.
At any other time the outlander"s wrath would have kindled had his courage been questioned. Now he only sighed and kicked at the pebble. There was genuine distress in his voice as he answered, "My lady, look about you." His wave encompa.s.sed not just the grubby little hamlet of Fibis and the crosses outside it, but all the land where the writ of the Empire was law. "You"ve seen enough of me in the past few days to know what I am and what my pleasures are: fighting, talking, drinking, aye and wenching too, I"ll not deny. But here, what good am I? If I break wind in the backhouse, I have to look over my shoulder lest some listening spy call it treason. It"s not the kind of life I like to lead: worrying before I move, not daring even to think."
Gerin understood that well enough, for much the same sense of oppression weighed on him. But Van was still talking: "I was all set to take my leave of you this morning-head north again, I suppose. But then I got to thinking"-he suddenly grinned-" and I decided if any boy-loving Imperial Hand doesn"t like the way I speak, why, I"ll carve the son of a pimp into steaks and leave him by the side of the road to warn his scurvy cousins!" Elise laughed in delight and kissed him on the cheek.
"I think you planned this whole thing just to get that kiss," Gerin accused. "Come on, you hulk, quit holding up the works."
"b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Van said, still grinning, and pitched his gear into the wagon.
The morning was still young when they splashed through the chilly Langros river. Though not as great as the Niffet or the mighty Charastos, which watered much of the plain of Elabon, its cold current ran swift as it leaped down from the Kirs toward the Greater Inner Sea.
The water at the ford was fairly high. It swirled icily around Gerin"s toes and welled up between the wagon"s floorboards. Most of the travelers" belongings were safe in sacks of oiled leather, but half the journeybread turned to slimy brown paste. Gerin swore in disgust, but Van said, "Cheer up, Captain, the stuff wasn"t worth eating anyhow."
When they stopped to rest and eat, Van turned to Gerin and said quietly, "Thanks for not pushing me this morning. You might have made it hard for me to stay.""
"I know," Gerin nodded, and neither of them mentioned the matter again.
They made good progress that day, pa.s.sing small farms in the foothills, and then, as the land began to level out, going by great estates with splendid manor-houses set well back from the road. When shadows lengthened and cool evening breezes began to blow, by unspoken common consent they camped by the roadside instead of seeking an inn. Gerin fed and watered the horses as the sun set. In the growing darkness the ghosts appeared, but their wails were somehow muted, their cries almost croons.
Elleb"s thin crescent soon followed the sun, like a small boy staying close to his father. That left the sky to the stars and Math, whose gibbous disc bathed the land beyond the reach of the campfire in a pale golden glow. As the night went on, she was joined by Tiwaz, whose speedy flight through the heavens had taken him well past full. And, when Gerin"s watch was nearly done, Nothos poked his slow-moving head over the horizon. The baron watched him climb for most of an hour, then gave the night to Van.
The next day gave every promise of rolling along as smoothly as had its predecessor. The promise was abruptly broken a bit before noon. One of the manor-holders had decided to send his geese to market, and the road was jammed by an endless army of tall white birds herded along by a dozen or so men with sticks. The geese honked, cackled, squabbled, and tried to sneak off the road for a mouthful of grain. They did everything, in fact, but hurry. When Gerin asked their warders to clear a way so he could pa.s.s, they declined. "If these blame birds get into the fields," one said, "we"ll be three days getting them all out again, and our lord"11 have our heads."
"Let"s charge right on through," Van suggested. "Can"t you just see the feathers fly?"
The very thought of a goose stampede brought a smile to Gerin"s lips, but he said, "No, these poor fellows have their job to do too, I suppose." And so they fretted and fumed while the birds dawdled along in front of them. More traffic piled up behind. As time dragged on, Van"s direct approach began to look better and better. The whip twitched in Gerin"s hand. But before he used it he noticed the road was coming to a fork; the geese streamed down the eastern path. "Can we use the western branch to get to the City?" he called.
"You can that," one of the flock-tenders answered, and so the Fox swung the wagon down the new way.
New? Hardly. Gerin noticed that none of the others stalled behind the geese used the clear road, and soon enough found out why. The eastern branch of the highway was far newer, and after it was complete no-one had ever thought of the other one again. The wagon jounced and rattled as it banged over gaping holes in the road. On one stretch the paved surface vanished altogether. There the blocks had been set, not in concrete, but in molten lead. Locals had carried away blocks and valuable mortar alike once imperial inspectors no longer bothered to protect them. The baron cursed the lout who had sent him down this road and hoped he could make it without breaking a wheel.
The district had perhaps once been prosperous, but when its road was superseded it decayed. More than one abandoned farmhouse was visible through the scrubby trees springing up everywhere in wheatfields no longer worked. The farther they went the thicker the forest grew, until at last its arms clasped above the roadway and squirrels flirted their gray bushy tails directly overhead. It would not be long until the very memory of the road was gone.
Finding a village in the midst of such decline seemed nothing less than divine intervention. Its inhabitants fell on Gerin and his friends like long-lost relatives, plying them with food and a rough, heady country wine and listening eagerly to every word they brought of the world outside. Not a copper would they take in payment. The baron blessed such kindly folk, and blessed them doubly when they confirmed that the road did in fact lead eventually to the City instead of sinking into a bog. "You see, Captain? You worry too much," Van said. "Everything will work out all right."
Gerin did not answer. He could not let things work out all right-he had to make them do so. Backtracking would have cost him a day he could not afford to spend.
The villagers insisted on putting up their guests for the night. Gerin"s host was a lean farmer named Badoc son of Tevis (the baron hid a shiver). Other villagers, just as anxious for news, claimed Elise and Van.