by David Drake
“It certainly could have been!” Lady Claire said in exactly the same voice—including the peevish undertone. “Papa, you mustn’t let that man take my bracelet!”
“I shan’t,” Duke Ronald said, looking at me harshly.
I had no idea where the bracelet came from. I much doubted it had been stolen from Lady Claire, but I couldn’t prove that and the claim might have been true. “Mistress,” I said, looking at Claire and raising my voice. “The claim is on your soul and may the Almighty requite you justly.”
“The vagabond doesn’t lack spirit,” the mirror said. “Lady, I shouldn’t wonder if he were wearing the bracelet from your other wrist also. What do you think?”
“Search him!” Lady Claire shrilled, jumping to her feet and pointing at me. The blue-capped guards were converging on me and unholstering their shields and weapons.
I wasn’t carrying another bracelet, of course—nor had been the Waste Wraith, unless it had been somehow concealed within the monster’s exiguous garments. On the other hand, a search would find my weapon and shield. I’d seen enough of what passed for justice in Allingham to know that Ronald would confiscate my hardware, and without it there’d be nothing I could do.
I still had it at the moment.
I pulled out weapon and shield and switched them on. “I am not a vagabond!” I shouted. “I am a Champion of the Commonwealth and will defend myself if you attempt to disarm me!”
There were four guards in the audience and the fifth one—whom I’d spoken to—at the doorway. That last man didn’t move—he didn’t even put his tablet down—but other four continued pushing forward while spectators tried to scramble out of the way.
Sam rushed into the room. I hadn’t called him, but he must have sensed the atmosphere. I doubted that the civilians I’d left him with had even tried to stop him; when spectators started forcing their way out of the room they’d probably moved out onto the street.
I was glad to have him.
One of the guards facing me took a clumsy swipe at Sam as he reached my side. I made a straight thrust at the guard’s sternum. His shield was out of position with his stroke; my weapon cut through the edge of it without slowing, killing him instantly.
I’d been an innocent traveller until that. Now I was the fellow who’d killed a local official.
The three men facing me drew back, startled and I suppose frightened by the sudden death of their companion. The fellow hadn’t been expecting a fight. His face was turned upward as he sprawled before the dais; he’d been trying to grow a beard which had been coming in a darker red than his auburn hair.
It would be bothering me more to have killed somebody so out of his depth if he hadn’t attacked Sam.
That reminded me: the Duke was also armed and he was sitting behind me. I spun around. He’d gotten up and dropped the bangle. He’d switched on his weapon and shield, though I wouldn’t really say he was in a posture of defense. He’d backed slightly when he got off his throne. I jumped onto the higher level of the dais so that I could reach him easily. I didn’t have any time to waste or the rest of the guards would get around to doing their jobs.
The ceiling was high. I slashed overhand at his head. He blocked my weapon with his shield, which was as good as I’d feared it was. He cut at my chest. Rather than letting my shield block him, I guided his weapon away with mine and stabbed down into his left thigh before he’d even realized he was open. I hit the femur but with enough force to drive through it at a slant angle.
Duke Ronald screamed in pain as he collapsed. The guards were still gathering their courage to rush me. Before they could do that, I jumped into the middle of them, using my greater height as a boost.
Sam’s vision highlighted their dithering, showing the slightest movement—even when it wasn’t completed. I knocked the guard in the center backward with the sole of my boot. I stabbed high at the man on my left. He managed to deflect my thrust with his shield but it was a near thing. The elements of his shield began to fail even though my blow hadn’t been well-aimed. The guards’ equipment was really low-end as I’d expected.
I’d wounded the Duke seriously, probably even fatally unless I’d somehow missed the femoral artery, but it wouldn’t have been safe to turn my back on him if he’d been an opponent I respected. Certainly if I had that wound I’d have managed to hurl myself off the dais onto my attacker if he’d turned his back on me.
I chopped at the guard I’d knocked to the ground, taking his left foot off at the ankle. I was trying to disable him, so that he wouldn’t be in my way while I dealt with his companion.
The guard on my right thrust at me. His point skidded off my shield. His right arm was advanced so I stabbed him in the shoulder before he could withdraw. He dropped his weapon and stumbled backward.
The guard on my left, the one whose shield was now half burned out, dropped it and ran from the room. I thought I heard him sobbing, but I was sucking in loud gasps myself so I couldn’t be sure.
The clerk at the door was technically a guard also, but that obviously wasn’t a part of his job that he relished. He was standing indecisively where I’d first seen him. I switched off my weapon and shouted, “Drop your weapon and you’ll be fine!”
He looked at the weapon he was holding and flung it away with an expression of horror; he might have really forgotten he’d pulled it out its holster. He called, “Sir, what do you want of me?”
I walked toward him so that we could speak normally. “Does the Duke have a deputy ruler?” I asked when I was within arm’s length.
“Sir?” the clerk said. “Well, I suppose Lady Claire.”
I turned and saw the girl slumped over her father’s body. The pool of blood had run onto the lower step of the dais but it seemed to have stopped spreading. On high output my weapon tended to cauterize wounds but not enough to close a severed femoral artery.
“No, not her,” I said. “Is there a chancellor or something?”
The guard seemed to have gotten the idea because he said, “There’s Quinlan the treasurer upstairs. That good enough?”
“Go fetch him,” I said. “He’ll be fine, but don’t make me go get him myself.”
The fellow scampered down the hall in the direction of a flight of stairs. While he was gone, I picked up the Duke’s equipment, the only really good items in the room. I had to move Lady Claire in order to unbuckle the bandolier and holsters.
She looked up at me and snarled, “You murdered my father.”
“I defended myself against a thief,” I said. “And you were making him a thief, girl.”
That reminded me. I found the bracelet on the floor. I then stepped over to Claire’s chair and picked up the mirror.
“Stealing me, now?” it said in my voice.
I glanced down at it. The face on the glass was mine with a quizzical expression. “I’m taking you back to my friend Guntram,” I said. Then I said, “Did you know what was going to happen? Were you trying to get the Duke killed?”
The mirror laughed loudly and said, “Well, he wasn’t much loss, was he? You got what your leader would have wanted, didn’t you?”
I’d just killed several men. I’m not sure what Jon would have wanted, but it certainly wasn’t something I’d wanted to do.
Though I didn’t know what Jon would have wanted, I surely knew that he’d have done the same thing under the same circumstances. There had been no choice.
The clerk came back, leading a plump older man in very gold-embroidered clothes. “This is Lord Quinlan,” the clerk said. “I told him you wouldn’t hurt him.”
“Royce said you wanted to see me, milord,” the treasurer said. “Very little of the duchy’s treasury is in specie, I’m afraid.”
“I’m not here to loot Allingham,” I said. “I was here by chance and defended myself when he tried to rob me. Because he’s dead, I am claiming the node on behalf of the Commonwealth of Mankind, but it will take weeks or even months to get a proper governmental team here f
rom Dun Add. I’m appointing you vicar until then. Royce, how many guards are there in Allingham, you guys with blue caps? Besides the ones here today.”
“I guess ten all told,” the clerk said doubtfully. “I saw Hastane run out after you killed the Duke so I guess he’s okay.”
“You killed the Duke?” Quinlan said. He hadn’t gotten any farther than the doorway to the hall, so he probably couldn’t really have seen the dais and what was there.
“He came at me with a weapon,” I said. “Look, Lord Quinlan, you may need more people than that. Can you recruit them? And Royce? Is there going to be a problem with you guards taking orders from Quinlan?”
“No sir,” the clerk said forcefully. “Not after I get ’em in here to clean up the mess.”
“Right,” I said. “Tell them if I come back I’ll take care of any problems. You’re in charge of the guards.” I turned to Quinlan and said, “That all right with you, sir?”
“Yes,” the vicar said. I figured he’d agree with any bloody thing I said.
“Right,” I repeated. “Royce, point me at a place where Sam and I can get something to eat. We’re not going to stay long, but I figure I need to be here that long.”
“Sir?” said Quinlan, glancing toward dais. “What of Lady Claire?”
A question I’d avoided considering. She was sitting beside her father’s body, looking at her hands. “Let her be unless she tries to get involved with running things.” I looked at the clerk and said, “Royce?”
“Right, sir,” he said. “Then I’ll show you the Ace of Spades. Then I better get back here with some help.”
CHAPTER 10
Going Home
We left Allingham as quickly as I could. I was eating slabs of ham and cheese between halves of a crusty roll. Sam had eaten but he was carrying along the hambone, which I knew from experience he would demolish overnight. He had jaws that didn’t quit and he was still a young dog with perfect teeth.
Allingham seemed a perfectly nice place now that the Duke was gone. The whole business had given me a sour feeling, but that was what being a Champion was all about: dealing with bullies who preyed on other people. Duke Ronald hadn’t been a bad example of the type, but the whole breed had to be stopped. Otherwise people would grow up believing that if you had the strength to do it, you could take anything you wanted. Without the rule of law there could be no safety and no progress: if you created something, somebody else might just take it away because they wanted it.
In a way that was worse than monsters from the Waste. The monsters were destructive but random. People like the Duke and his daughter took exceptional items that other humans had created or found with difficulty, reducing the willingness of ordinary people like me to prospect the Waste or rebuild the rare wonders that they found there.
I was very tired when we reached Elvira and I think Sam was wearing down as well. I’d decided when we left Allingham that if Baga wasn’t ready to go back when I arrived I was going to return to Dun Add by myself. I’d buy him a dog of some sort so that Baga would be able to follow when he felt he was ready to. Now…I was thinking that relaxing at Mistress Sarah’s farm might be a pretty good idea.
“Hello the house!” I shouted as we walked through landingplace. I hadn’t been aware of much when I arrived the first time, breath burning in my lungs and my legs wobbly from the effort of carrying Baga from where we’d met the termites. “Mistress Sarah, I’m back a bit sooner than I’d expected.”
Robin came out of the barn an instant before Sarah appeared on the porch of the house. “Pal?” she said. “Wilf is just checking over Baga and he’s doing quite well.”
I cranked the hand pump in the yard, bringing up a gourdful for the pottery dish on the ground which Sam had shared with the chickens, then an additional gourd for myself. I walked into the house behind Sarah and reached Baga’s room just as the healer was preparing to leave.
“How soon will you be able to start for Dun Add, Baga?” I asked.
“Right now if he says so,” Baga said, nodding to Wilf.
They were both standing beside the bed. I nodded to Wilf and said, “Healer?” on a rising note.
Wilf said, “He should keep the burns out of the sun and covered in grease. But there was no serious damage to the muscles, so if he’s willing and you’re reasonably careful on the way I see no reason not to.”
“Mistress Sarah,” I said. “If you can put us up one more night, we’ll be out of your hair tomorrow morning.”
* * *
Baga started out limping. He said the skin on his left arm and chest caught him every time he moved. Sam and I had made a pretty fast trip back from Allingham, though, and weren’t inclined to push. I suggested we go off with Master Sime so that Baga had the use of his healing cabinet. That would have meant sharing it with Sime’s late wife. Baga preferred pain to doing that, and though I didn’t agree with his decision I could understand it.
He loosened up as we walked toward Dun Add. Before we reached Arpitan and the boat he was back to normal.
We picked up a grouping which grew to over thirty people going to the city. Normally I’d have gotten past and gone down ahead but this time I was just as glad to be in company and the slow pace suited Baga.
I push myself hard and that spills over in the way I treat other people, I know. I’m trying to train myself to be more careful, though. I wasn’t in a real hurry to get back to Dun Add, though I had business for the Leader and the Clerk of Here.
The first thing I noticed when we arrived at landingplace on Dun Add was that my boat was back from carrying Guntram and Lord Osbourn off to solve Lord Stokes’s problem. Maggie, Baga’s wife, was sitting on the little porch they’d built against it for the times it was in Dun Add but being lived in.
Baga and Maggie had a room in the city which Maggie used when Baga was off with the boat; at most times, however, the couple lived in the boat while it was on the ground. Boats aren’t laid out as well for stationary use as ordinary houses, but they do well enough for a couple who didn’t entertain.
I took my place in the line of new arrivals, but the Herald’s clerk noticed me and Baga, then called his superior’s attention to me and Sam. The plumply self-important Herald bustled up to me. “Lord Pal!” he said. “I thought your boat had arrived days ago! Sorry you had to wait this way.”
“It’s no problem,” I said. In his absence his clerk was processing arrivals in normal order, probably more efficiently than would have happened with the Herald’s officiousness intruding. Baga was getting out of the boat. “If it’s all right with you, though, I’ll take care of the formalities while Baga goes to his wife—whom I see sitting right over there with any boat. Baga, I’ll stable Sam while you say hi to Maggie.”
I rubbed Sam behind the ears and made minimal responses to the Herald’s questions as he filled out the arrival questionnaire. Baga didn’t so much scamper as shamble over to the boat where Maggie greeted him as soon as she heard him calling her. They were both waiting for me as soon as I’d processed through arrivals. “Come over and have a mug of your own fine lager with us!” Maggie said. “May’ll still be up with the Consort at this hour of the afternoon.”
I really did want to take care of my business at the palace but it would be a while before May was free of her duties to Jolene. “Sure,” I said, truthfully but with a bit more enthusiasm than I felt. “I’ll have a mug.”
The boat’s converter turned any organic materials into food and drink—of excellent quality now that Guntram and I had brought the vessel up to original specifications. The texture of the food was still that of wet sawdust, but if you kept your eyes shut, the taste and smell told you that you were eating fine entrees. The lager that ran from the taps was every bit as good as that I’d grown up drinking on Beune.
The mugs were earthenware rather than the boat’s own extrusions. That was Maggie’s whim. It made her feel homelike and it didn’t matter to me. I don’t know what Baga thought about it or if he di
d.
“I need to see how Guntram and Lord Osbourn made out on Midian,” I said as I sipped the lager, feeling myself relax. I liked being on the Road but when I was on duty (and that was always since I’d become a Champion) there was always a touch of stress to the situation. When I returned to Dun Add, that pressure came off.
“Well, they didn’t,” Maggie said. “Didn’t succeed in whatever it was they went to do, I mean. They’re both back all right, though. Lord Osbourn came over looking for you, Pal, when he didn’t find you at home or in the palace.”
I tossed off the remainder of my beer. “Time for me to be moving, then,” I said. “I’ll be going back to the townhouse after I’ve taken care of my business at the palace. Thank you for the lager, Maggie—and remember Baga got burned.”
We’d left Sam outside with a bowl of water. He wagged his tail when I clucked my tongue to him and bounded to me as I started through the belt of buckeyes separating landingplace from the end of South Street and the city of Dun Add proper.
I thought about walking this direction with Buck when I first arrived in Dun Add, so completely out of my depth that I didn’t know it. I’d imagined that the Leader’s court was just a larger version of Beune. I’d thought the shield and weapon I’d made myself from Ancient artifacts that were intended as an umbrella and a rock drill were in a league with the purpose-built equipment of the Hall of Champions—not as good probably, but in a league. The Leader’s palace on the high ground around which the city had grown up was the most wondrous building human beings could create and the Champions of Mankind were supernormal beings with no human flaws.
I was a Champion now and I certainly had flaws. I had equipment as good as any in Here but that wouldn’t have fitted me for the Hall had I not practiced long and hard against other Aspirants and also with the machines which mimicked human opponents at varying levels of skill.
