by Glen Cook
“They will send a delegation.”
“Of course. You guaranteed universal safe conduct. We’ll see a lot of old friends who abandoned us earlier this year: Sir Arnhelm, Sir Rengild, Quirre of Bolt, lots of others. They’ll drool and fawn and spin tale tales about how they had no recourse.”
“You give them too much credit. They won’t care what we think. They’ll be safe.”
“Yes. I’m surprised so many took you at your word.” She was, after all, a Greyfells.
It irked Inger that even Josiah could not get past his expectations.
Fulk vigorously proclaimed something in toddler. She did not understand. Josiah hoisted the boy onto his hip, wincing. “That better, Short Stuff?”
Fulk burbled happily. He leaned against Gales’s shoulder, shut his eyes. He was ready to nap. Gales said, “He needs to get out more. He tires too easily. He needs exercise and exposure to people, too.”
Inger stepped into the box whence she would deliver a brief speech declaring the Thingmeet convened. “We should all be doing lots of things. But I’ve pretty much lost the drive.”
“And here comes Nathan looking determined to lead us deeper into the slough of despond.”
Not quite true. Wolf announced, “We’ve found a transfer gate. Babeltausque says he can clear the booby traps in time.”
Inger asked Josiah, “That’s good news, isn’t it? So why so glum? You too, Nathan.”
Wolf said, “The sorcerer never gave up hope of finding that missing treasury money, Majesty. He really wanted to please you. He kept digging—when he wasn’t playing with his girl toy or looking for a replacement who isn’t as overdeveloped.”
“That was unkind, Nathan.”
“Apologies, Majesty. It was, though probably not untrue.”
Gales observed, “We might all be less uncomfortable if we spent less time judging Babeltausque.”
Wolf nodded. “Of course. We do have to work with him. And we can’t fault his work. Or his effort. But, still, what I wanted to say is, Babeltausque says he found the exact place where Mundwiller and Prataxis hid the stuff that night.”
Inger felt hope explode—and then fade. Nathan would hardly be so dour if the news was positive. “And?”
“And we got the best part already. They unloaded it into the creek twenty yards upstream from that farm pond. Babeltausque found just about as much more as two old men could have carried. The Crown Jewels were there. They were all crappy reproductions that melted. I’d bet that Mundwiller and Prataxis didn’t know. They wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble if they had. Maybe nobody knew. Maybe some crook swapped everything out ages ago.”
Inger sighed, already resigned. Dredging the pond had left her without hope. Still, she did slump some. “There went a rare good day. So what’s the deal? Was there any money at all?”
“It was under the mud in the creek feeding the pond. Babeltausque says the mud probably built up after the stuff was dumped. The boxes we found in the pond probably got washed down during a storm. After we cleaned the pond that mud had somewhere to go again…”
“Money, Nathan?”
“Copper and bronze. Less than twenty pounds by weight, all corroded. The jewelry boxes might be worth more if we get them restored. They’re antiques.”
Inger borrowed some lower class invective and explored it creatively. Then she beckoned a soldier. “Hassel, take Fulk before the Colonel collapses.”
“Yes, Majesty.”
“Nathan, tell Babeltausque I appreciate his efforts, and yours, too. I need you both here, now, though. We need to set this up.”
...
The commission from Sedlmayr formed an entire caravan. Ozora Mundwiller was in charge and was less discomfited by the rigors of the road than sons and grandsons half or even a quarter her age. She proudly said it herself: she was one tough old buzzard.
If she could do something, youngsters ought to be able to follow suit while hopping on one foot and playing the panpipes.
Kristen, Dahl, and young Bragi were there, tempting fate. Haas remained steadfastly opposed to Kristen taking the risk. He was sure Inger would not refuse such a fine chance to respond ignominiously, safe-conduct be damned.
She was a Greyfells and there were ample precedents. Dahl did, however, understand that trying to change Kristen’s mind was a waste of air.
He and she settled down to a cold lunch, beside the road, with Bragi napping and most of the caravan bustling around taking the animals to water, preparing food, doing all the things that had to be done during a rest stop.
Kristen mentioned the heavy traffic, moving both directions on the road. Lone drummers, tinkers, and caravans great and small, kept the air laden with dust.
Haas grunted. He had little to say. He was hanging in there, sullenly awaiting his chance to declare, “I told you so!” Or so Kristen teased.
Bight Mundwiller and the Blodgett girl settled close enough to be overheard. Bight carped, “I just don’t get what her problem is.”
“She doesn’t like me anymore.”
“Well, duh! But I don’t get why. She thought you were great before.”
“It’s because of who I was staying with. Something happened between her and some enThal when she was our age.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Sure it is. But old people just hold grudges.”
“She doesn’t know you.”
“Hey, neither do you. Not really. I could be some kind of monster. Right? But it doesn’t matter. She don’t want me getting my paws on the Mundwiller fortune. She can’t believe that I’m not interested. She thinks she sees Ozora in Haida. Be patient, Bight. It’ll all work out. Think about Vorgreberg. We’re almost there. Aren’t you excited?”
“Some. But mostly because you are. I’ve been there. It isn’t any big deal. Sedlmayr is nicer.”
“Cleaner and friendlier, anyway.”
“What?”
“That’s what you all keep telling me, anyway. So it must be true. Right? Or will we find out something different when we see the real thing? Only…”
“Only what?”
“Only, it is the capital! Right? Come on, Bight!” She scooted closer, leaned against young Mundwiller lightly. “Come on! You know…”
Ozora Mundwiller shouted for Bight.
Kristen whispered, “That old raven does have it in for the girl now. What changed? What did she mean, Ozora sees a lot of herself…?”
“Ozora wormed her way into the clan by seducing Aram Mundwiller when he was younger than Bight is now. Then along came Cham. They couldn’t run her off, then.”
“It worked out good for the tribe. In the long run.”
“You know Ozora can’t think that way.” Then Dahl shrugged. He did not much care. He watched a caravan trudge past, westbound. It included a dozen camels, which excited the Blodgett girl tremendously. She ran off to pester the drovers. Haas grumbled, “Girl, don’t give those men the wrong idea. I’m feeling too lazy to rescue you.” Then he grunted and hastily turned his back on the road.
“What?” Kristen asked.
“I know some of those guards. I don’t want them to recognize me.”
He need not have worried. The Blodgett girl was not unattractive. Without stirring any deep fantasies she captured the attention of the caravan men, then was clever enough to leave them all smiling when she walked away.
Kristen whispered, “Check the old woman. She was hoping they would carry her off.”
“Really, Kristen? You’re not being fair to her now.”
Ozora finished ragging Bight. She barked orders meant to get the party moving again.
“Oh, my,” Kristen murmured. “Dahl. Look there.” She indicated a solitary traveler headed east. He was ragged. He shuffled dispiritedly. He looked like the last of the displaced persons who had trudged every road just a year ago. “Isn’t that Aral?”
“Him or his handsome twin. You get stuff ready here. I’ll catch the little sh… bugger.” He b
ounced up and trotted after the traveler, who appeared not to have noticed the resting Sedlmayrese. Being that far gone in thought was begging Fortune to poke you in the eye.
So. Inger’s Thingmeet was drawing a broader-based crowd than the Queen anticipated.
This could turn interesting.
...
Bragi settled on a weathered block of limestone, exhausted after clambering out of the ruined temple—or whatever it was in its time.
“Damn! I’m still out of shape! I thought I was getting it back. I was so wrong!”
“It’s not just that,” Michael Trebilcock said, settling nearby. “The transfer had something to do with it. Look at this guy. And he does it every day.” He indicated the Tervola Tang Shan, who was just oozing through the gap in tumbled stone masking the stairway down to the hidden portal. “He’s about twelve and he’s woofing for air.”
The Tervola was, likely, older than either of them but had not suffered the wear and tear. He said, “The drain was caused by a filter Lord Yuan installed. It keeps the unnamed from tracking who is going where. Lord Yuan will ameliorate that effect when he has time.” Tang went to assist two bodyguards having trouble getting through the gap because of their size.
Bragi surveyed the world into which they had emerged. It seemed comfortably Kavelin come autumn, after the leaves began to fall, yet he recognized nothing. “Where are we? This don’t look right.” By which he meant that everything was too clean and tame to have been abandoned long. The surrounding fields had yet to return to nature. The forest, more than two hundred yards downhill in every direction, had not yet begun to encroach on the cleared land. The fields boasted tangles of wild grasses and late wildflowers but none of the scrub and thorny brush that invaded abandoned fields almost instantly elsewhere. Insects buzzed even though the season was late and the nights had to be chilly.
Tang Shan, laboring to make himself understood in a language he did not know well, explained, “This ruin is eight…miles?…south-southeast of your Vorgreberg.” He extended an arm to point. Ragnarson could just make out smudgy air in that direction. The Tervola continued, “Our instructions are to accompany you partway. We should reach a main road in an hour or two. We will leave you there, hoping that Destiny has no more cruel tricks in her sack.”
Ragnarson frowned at Trebilcock. Trebilcock shrugged. “Some idioms don’t translate.”
Tang Shan said, “This was once a temple, important to its cult. It has been abandoned for a century but the consecrating power has not yet faded. It is a good place.”
Ragnarson felt that. “I didn’t know it was here.” Something this close to Vorgreberg ought to be common knowledge and part of the local folklore.
Tang said, “You will have a hard time finding it from outside. Protective glamours turn you aside gently beginning so far away that you wouldn’t notice except to think you were getting confused the way people can in the forest. Our troops found it while hunting partisans during the occupation. The partisans were unaware of it despite exploiting the surrounding forest for cover.”
Ragnarson grunted acknowledgement. He had encountered similar “outside” islands when he was young and living by his wits and blade. Those, though, had not been sweetly benign. He said, “We should get moving. These places are never as tame as they try to make you think.”
One eastern soldier smiled thinly. Bragi assumed that meant that arrangements were in place already.
Tang Shan and the lifeguards wore what, at a hundred yards, might pass for local clothing. Any nearer, though, and one would have to be afflicted with terrible eyesight not to see that they were no local peasants. Even Tang was big for Kavelin.
Shan said, “You are correct. We should. Lord Yuan has work waiting for me. I’m looking forward to it.”
“I’m not so sure I still love you, either.” Ragnarson groaned as he got his legs underneath him.
Trebilcock remarked, “You’d better not need carrying. You do, you’ll be having supper with the wolves.”
“I’ll manage. It’s all downhill from here.”
And up. And sideways. With no road. With no path. Without even a decent game trail trending the proper direction through the autumn-painted tangle of palisade for the ruins. After two hours Ragnarson gasped, “Shan, how will you ever find your way back?”
The Tervola grinned. “We’re clever. We have secret skills.”
Trebilcock said, “They’ve been dropping bread crumbs.”
Tang agreed. “After a fashion. Worry not. We saw to our needs before we gave any attention to yours.”
“That fills me with confidence.”
“I am pleased by your praise.”
Ragnarson realized, to his surprise, that he was in better spirits than he had been for an age, though fighting the undergrowth up and down gully banks was murderously exhausting.
In time, Michael said, “Shan, we’ve been at this for three hours. You said two. Are you leading us around in circles?”
Tang Shan, worn out himself, gasped, “I am currently providing the rearguard. If we meander please blame the man out front.”
The man breaking trail was best known as Michael Trebilcock. He did not stop grumbling. But, just minutes later, he flung up a hand for a halt, then used it to cup an ear.
Faint road traffic noise leaked into the woods. The five oozed toward it.
Twenty feet further on the tangle became the usual vaguely groomed Kaveliner woodland where the deadwood stayed harvested and the brush did not get much chance to flourish. It looked exactly the same as far as the eye could see in every direction.
Ragnarson muttered, “There’s some witchcraft stuff going on here.”
“Can’t get anything past you,” Trebilcock countered.
“I’d forgotten what a wiseass you can be.”
“Look there.” Something moved from right to left up ahead. “Are those camels?”
The shapes were vague through the trees but, yes, those big lumps of ugly were camels. Ragnarson turned to ask the Tervola if he was sure they had come through the right portal.
There were no easterners to be seen.
While Ragnarson gawked at their absence Trebilcock drifted forward, sniffing. “No doubt about it. Those are camels. And I know where we are.”
“They’re gone. Those three. Vanished.”
“They stepped back inside the illusion. Ask Varthlokkur to look for the place next time you see him. We’re just south of the southern road west. Sedlmayr is off that way maybe forty miles. Two or three miles that way is your old house. Two more miles and we’ll be knocking on the castle gate.”
Ragnarson snorted. “I can imagine the party my wife will throw if she finds out I’m back.”
“She might surprise you. So. Let’s stroll on over there and take a gander at a world that has camels in it.”
Bragi was reluctant. He no longer had the inclination to play politics. He was a blunted sword, possibly bent, maybe even broken.
Michael misread him. “Who would recognize us? I look fifteen years older. You’ve lost weight, you got no beard, you’re turning grey, and you’re dragging…”
“I get your point, thank you very much. Young girls won’t throw themselves at me anymore.” Sherilee was back in his head, like a nagging toothache.
“And you’re crabby. Not to mention, you’re dressed weird.” Trebilcock flashed a huge grin.
“Lead on, boy wonder.”
Now Michael flashed a grimace. “Would it be smart for me to leave you out of sight behind me?”
“Why don’t we find out?” Then, muttering, “Camels? How come there are camels on the Sedlmayr road?” He did not like camels. In his youth, while with Hawkwind in the desert, he had had camels close by constantly. He associated their stench with that of misfortune, still.
...
Dahl Haas finished hitching the donkey to the cart. He helped Kristen board, hoisted Bragi up. He would lead. They looked like prosperous peasants. Haas hoped no one wonde
red why there was nothing in the cart but a child and an apparently pregnant woman.
Nearby, Bight Mundwiller and the Blodgett girl played at clumsy courtship rituals, Bight by far the more maladroit, mainly to irritate Ozora. The matriarch was suitably irked but refused to be baited by children.
Dahl murmured, “At some point Ozora will make that boy sorry he withdrew his affections from you.”
“Not funny, Dahl! And is there suddenly something wrong with the girl?”
“Like what? She’s a girl being a girl figuring out that she has the power to fog men’s minds. She’ll only get more wicked as she hones her skills.”
“Somebody is going to get honed if he don’t watch his attitude.”
“My thesis proven. What’s his problem?”
Bight was staring in the direction the camels had gone. Nothing unusual there. A couple of shabby old travelers were approaching lazily. They might be brothers. They were tall and graying but both still had their own hair.
Haas approached the youngsters. “Is there a problem? You know those men? Are they trouble?”
The girl said, “No, Mr. Haas. The one on the right reminded me of my Uncle Bridewell. That startled me because he died last year. Then Bight said that they were too far away to recognize, anyway, even if we did know them.”
Bight said, “I got upset because I thought she was upset.”
She said, “Anyway, I can’t see through him so he can’t be a ghost. And, now that they’re closer, I can see that he’s taller than Uncle Bridewell was. But I wish they would look up so I could see their faces.”
Haas caught an odd note there but could not imagine why. He drifted back to his cart, watching the travelers as he went.
Aral Dantice came out of the woods, where he had gone to consult the famous horse trader. He grumbled, “I don’t remember eating anything that would do that to me. The flies are going to be in heaven. Well. Speaking of some remarkable shit. Look at this.” He ogled the tall old men with far more surprise than Bight or the girl had.
They were just twenty paces away and focused on the dust in front of their feet, shoulders hunched against the attention they had attracted.
