by Tad Williams
"And I am sorry too," she told him, "but it's you who don't understand, Highness. You cannot forbid me. I am going to do it. I have not spoken to my father in a year. I will risk anything to see him."
"No!" He turned to her, distraught. "I will not let you!"
"And how will you stop me, my dear friend?" She fought to keep her voice low and calm-she did not want him to think it was some womanly frailty on her part. "Will you imprison me? Will you force your men to listen to me screaming night and day that you have betrayed me?"
"What?" Eneas looked her up and down in something very close to astonishment. "You would not do such a thing." He did not sound entirely certain.
"Oh, I most certainly would. I know it is dangerous, but I must go to him."
The prince threw himself down on a stool opposite her. He looked so miserable that it was all she could do not to take his hand. Eneas was a good man, a very good man, but, like most men, he believed he was responsible for the well-being of every woman who drew breath in his vicinity. "You truly mean it, don't you, Princess? You truly mean to do this."
"I do."
He sucked air through his teeth and sat thinking, toying with his ring. Helkis, his captain, stood near the wall of the tent trying to keep all expression from his unshaven face. "You say I must either imprison you or simply let you go," Eneas said at last. "But there is another possibility."
"Oh?" She tried to sound calm but she hadn't foreseen any third way.
"I can help you not to get caught. I will send some of my best warriors with you…"
"No." She shook her head firmly. "That will do no good. I'm not going to fight my way in, Eneas. There are thousands of Xixian soldiers there, but there are also hundreds of local people, Marchlanders, who go in and out of the camp peddling food and drink and trinkets to the autarch's men. And there are other women visiting the camp. I think we all know what they are selling."
Eneas was staring at her with eyes wide. "Are you saying you will masquerade as a… as a woman… one of those…"
"As a whore?" She laughed. "Blessed Zoria, Eneas, look at you! Did you think I didn't know the word? I will not masquerade as anything in particular. I will dress in shabby clothes and let anyone who sees me draw his own conclusion."
"But your safety…!" he said, appalled.
She extended her hand. Her Yisti knife was already there, as if by magic. "I can protect myself-Shaso dan-Heza taught me well. Besides, there is no other way. Do any of your men speak Xixian?"
He darted a helpless look at Lord Helkis. "No, I think not. A few words, perhaps…"
"Nor do I, so we are not going to fool them that way. It would be stretching the point to try to pass an entire troop of soldiers off as farmers come to sell their onions. No soldiers, Eneas. I will go myself. No one will suspect I am anything but a local girl."
"As if that guaranteed your safety." He gave her a hard look. "I think you have been traveling with the players too long, Princess. You have fallen in love with legends and pretense. Just remember, such things are meant to entertain, not to instruct. In our time, great Hiliometes would have eaten the famous bull, not carried him up the mountain." He frowned. "Very well, then all I can offer you is a distraction. I will not risk my men's lives in a full assault, but there is a deserted village on Millwheel Road just to the southeast of the autarch's camp that his men use as a sentry garrison. If we attack it with substantial force and then withdraw I think we will draw attention and make it easier for you to slip into the camp."
Briony realized how quickly Eneas had shifted his thinking, and she was again impressed. Was there a cleverer prince anywhere in Eion? "You would do that for me?"
"I would do much more, Princess," he said seriously. "If only you would let me."
As the afternoon wore on and Briony prepared, she began to wonder if Eneas had been right: was she really too much in love with old stories? Had she taken the example of Zoria or even her own great-great grandmother Lily Eddon too much to heart? Outside her tent she could hear the men readying themselves for the attack on the Millwheel Road garrison and knew that despite the prince's best intentions some of them might not come back alive. It reminded her of a favorite saying of her father's, "Until you've worn a crown, you have no idea how heavy it is." The thought of Olin sent a pang through her, not just missing him, but thinking about the fierce impossibility of ever living up to his example. Did she really want to put men's lives at risk to satisfy her own need to reach her father?
But what if I never have another chance to see him again? Worse, what if I could have saved him but failed to try? How could I live with that?
She owed it to her people as much as to herself, she decided. The best thing for Southmarch would be King Olin free again.
Still, it continued to trouble her as she used the little hand mirror Feival had once given her and leaned close to the candle. She carefully rubbed wet dirt onto her face, a thin wash to darken and roughen all her features, but she laid it more thickly around her eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks to make her face appear gaunter. She needed to look much older and much less healthy if she wanted to escape anything but cursory inspection. Even here in the camp of the Temple Dogs, where she was protected by the power of the prince himself, men stared at her when they did not think she was looking-even sometimes when they knew she was. A woman in an army camp always attracted attention, unless she was very unappetizing. Briony had been thinking all day about what she could do to make herself less interesting and she had a few ideas.
"By the Three, what is that on your face?" Eneas drew back. "Are you hurt?"
She laughed, although she was not feeling very cheerful: the sight of the prince in full battle array had reminded her that she was not going to be the only one taking risks. "It is a wound made from mud and a little berry juice. Never fear, it is not real blood."
"I hope that is the only such thing I see today," he said. "On you or any of these others."
"We may bloody a few Xixies," Lord Helkis suggested with a harsh laugh. "Or even a few fairies."
Eneas shook his head. "No. I will not make that mistake twice, Miron. Until we know better what these… Qar are doing, we will treat them as we would treat Marchlanders and will not show harm to them unless we must."
He was a good man. Why could she not feel more for him? "May the gods grant you and your men all come back safe, Prince Eneas," she said.
"And what will help you to come back safely, Briony?"
"My disguise," she said, pointing at her face, trying to speak lightly. "And my cunning."
"I pray to the Three Brothers that it will be so." He reached and took her hand before she could think about it, then brought it his lips. "Take care, Princess."
The closer she got to the autarch's camp the more terrified she became. It did not help that the scout who led her over the hills was a taciturn southern Syannese whose thick dialect she could barely understand.
What if I'm captured? I do not fear for myself so much-although she did, of course, how could she not? The autarch's cruelty was legendary-but what about my people? Do I have the right to risk myself?
But of course she could not judge that, not from here. She assumed that they needed her or her father back-that the people would be miserable without an Eddon on the Southmarch throne, but perhaps it wasn't true. Perhaps they were even happy with Hendon Tolly!
Still, they're under attack, she reminded herself. They can't be happy about that.
As they got closer to the top of the hills, the distant rumbles, which she had barely noticed, became louder; Briony suddenly realized that the noise was not thunder in the cloudy distance but the drumroll of the autarch's cannons-cannons being fired at Briony's home.
She and the Syannese scout were on a deer track at the crest of the hill when the treeline dropped away down the hillside and she could see the broad, gray-green sweep of Brenn's Bay for the first time in months and the mainland city looking surprisingly ordinary with wisps
of gray curling from its chimneys. In the distance, through the haze of smoke and low clouds, she could see Southmarch Castle itself.
The smoke was not from chimneys at all, she saw a moment later, but from the cannons the autarch's army had set up atop the mainland seawall and in emplacements along the shore. The long guns boomed over and over, a succession of muffled crashes like irregular drumbeats. The beach where the causeway once joined the Mount to the mainland was a seething mass of tiny shapes, so many of the autarch's soldiers moving there that it looked as if someone had kicked an anthill, but Briony saw little sign of the camp itself but for tents erected in the public squares, as well as in clusters across the open farmlands between the city and the hills. She suspected many more of the autarch's soldiers were sheltering in the city itself, but even just the number of tents was astounding.
All of that? She felt her heart grow heavy and cold. Sweet Zoria, the southerner has brought an entire nation to our doorstep. The impossible magnitude of the forces arrayed against Southmarch made her feel sick. The little March Kingdoms could not defeat such a horde even if her father were still on the throne and they had not lost all those men at Kolkan's Field…!
Struggling with despair, Briony sent the scout back to Eneas' camp and began to make her way down the hillside.
The sun was gone and the air suddenly turning cold when she reached the outskirts of the camp in the fields. She watched for a moment from a hedgerow and saw that there were still people walking in and out along the makeshift roads the troops had built, but far more were coming out than going in. She did not have much time if she wanted to be unnoticed. Briony joined a small group of peddlers a hundred paces from the guard post, doing her best to walk like an older, frailer woman as Feival had taught her-back and neck bent, head well forward, steps small and careful. The camp was too big to be fenced but four or five sentry posts stood within Briony's view, each staffed with bearded soldiers in pointed helmets, all of them armed with spears or curved swords. She did her best not to hurry as she trudged past the observing gazes of the nearest guards, leaning her weight on the stick she used as a cane, holding her breath in fear that she would be called back, but no one seemed to pay her any attention.
She waited until she was out of sight of the original sentries before speeding her pace a little. The tents spread out on all sides of her, and now she could smell food cooking, spicy scents like nothing she had experienced since she had been driven out of Effir dan-Mozan's house. The soldiers, as far as she could tell without making her staring too obvious, seemed to be of many different types, most (but not all of them) much darker-skinned than she was. Many wore a sort of uniform of baggy breeches and leather harnesses, but she saw other kinds of costumes as well, long, loose white robes that reminded her of the Tuani folk, colorful arrangements of scarves and brass ornaments that looked like something a jester might wear, and even one tall, pale-skinned man wearing black with a snarling white dog as his insignia; except for his pointed Xandian battle-helmet and diamond-shaped shield, he could have been a Marchlander.
The pale soldier, who was talking to a group of smaller, darker Xixian soldiers, noticed Briony watching him and stared back at her. She quickly dropped her gaze and walked on, so flustered that she remembered to limp only after she had taken her first few steps, but when she stole an anxious glance back at him he was talking to the Xixians again.
"He's a bad one," a voice said just beside her, startling Briony so that she almost stumbled and fell. "A Perikali fighting for the autarch, can you imagine? And do you think he'd throw me a copper crab for pity? Not only didn't he, he kicked me, too." The voice came from a small, hunched shape warming its hands over a tiny oil lamp. Briony thought it best to ignore whoever it was and walk on, but the figure called after her, even louder. "Wait! You didn't rub my head. You don't even have to give me any money. We have to stick together, our kind! Wait!"
Every impulse told her to hurry on, but the big, pale-faced soldier was looking in her direction again, as were the Xixians beside him. Briony stopped, then bent with careful gravity, pretending to pick something up from the ground before turning back to the small shape.
"Why are you shouting at me?" she asked, keeping her voice low.
"Because you didn't rub my head, dearie duck. I can tell you're not one of those Xixies, are you?"
Briony had no idea what that meant. She was trying to watch the soldiers without being obvious, but they were still glancing over from time to time, although laughing now. She hoped that was all they wanted out of her, a little amusement. She squatted down beside the small figure as though they knew each other and were passing the time. "Why?" she asked. "What would the Xixies want with you, anyway?"
For answer, the bundle rolled back the saggy hood that had obscured most of its head, revealing a little round face that looked like a child's, but wasn't. "They like to touch my head. They think dwarfs are good luck."
Briony was surprised and spoke before she could think about it. "You're a Funderling!"
The little woman looked surprised. "Well, if I didn't know you weren't a Xixy from the way you talk, I'd know it now," she said. "Usually folk out in the country only know the old stories, but they don't truly know any of us. Did you live in the city, my pigeon?"
"I… once, yes." Briony risked a glance. The soldiers were still there. She considered just walking on. It was almost dark now, which meant that the hour for sunset prayer was almost here, the planned moment for Eneas' attack on the garrison.
"He's one of them White Hounds," the woman told her. "That big fellow there in black. Captured and raised by the autarch as children, they are. He breeds them and trains them like hunting dogs. Said they're the cruelest soldiers in his whole army."
Briony wanted nothing to do with the White Hound or any other Xixian soldiers, and the longer she stayed here, the greater the chance that something would happen. "I have to go," she said, bracing herself on her stick as she stood, doing her best to look like an old woman with aching legs.
"You're not from around here," the Funderling woman said, "-and now that I see you close, you're no one's gammer, either. I don't know what your kinch is, mortlet, but it's not worth it, you know. Cheap? These southerners can squeeze a silver swan until it quacks. I've been here three days, and all I've made is this." She pulled over a cap with a half dozen coppers in it. "See? Tight as Perin's bung, the lot of them."
Briony laughed at the blasphemy despite herself. "What's your name?" she asked.
"I'm called Little Molly."
"That's not a Funderling name."
"No, it's not." She gave Briony another sharp, inquisitive look. "What's yours?"
"Just by a rare chance, they call me Little Molly, too."
Now it was the small woman who laughed. "Well, from now on they'll have to call you Big Molly. But you'll have to find another pitch, dear. This is my spot. See that? That's the beer tent, over there, and they gamble there, too. They'll come and throw in a copper and rub my head to keep the dice rolling."
Briony had an idea. "Can you walk?"
"Good as you!" Little Molly was indignant. "Just not fast. Legs are too short, and… and I'm a bit lame."
"Then come with me and I'll give you…" she thought about what she had brought with her,"… say, five coppers. How's that?"
Now the Funderling woman looked suspicious. "What do you want from me? And where did you get so much money?"
So much money! Briony almost wept. Little Molly, despite her cheeky attitude, was very thin and pale, as if she had not eaten well in some time. "Never you mind. Just come with me-I'm tired of those soldiers standing so close."
The Funderling lifted herself to her feet and together they walked down the main track. The little woman went gingerly, as though she were showing Briony how it truly looked to have fragile, weak legs. "Broke them when I was little and they never healed right," she explained. "That's why everyone mistakes me for a dwarf."
"What else can you te
ll me about the camp?" Briony asked. "Are all the men here or in the middle of Southmarch city? How long have they been firing on the castle?"
"A tennight, more or less," Little Molly said. "But they were here for days before that." She looked around, although at the moment they were in the open and more or less on their own. "They say that the autarch, he met with that Linden Tolly fellow in secret, face-to-face. Some sort of deal they were making, but it fell apart. Then the cannons started firing." She shrugged. "Do you know what you want to know yet? I need to sit for a bit."
"Sit, then." Briony crouched down beside her. Across the bay, the last daylight had lit the top of Wolfstooth Spire as though it were a candle. "I have heard tales that the autarch is holding King Olin prisoner."
"Oh, we've all heard that. Don't know if it's true. Why would he? What would the southerners want with our king?"
Yes, what indeed? Briony wondered. And we might also ask what game Hendon Tolly is playing-does he want to ransom my father for some reason of his own? "So you don't know anything about where the king might be kept if they had him?"
Little Molly gave her a hard look. "You ask some strange questions for a beggar-girl. Where's my coppers? I won't say another word until you give them to me, not another word…!"
Briony produced a silver coin from the purse hidden under her ragged clothes. "Here. That's worth a dozen crabs at least. Now answer the question, please. Where might King Olin be?" Even as she spoke, she heard a strange, blatting horn call rise above the camp, a signal for evening prayer or else an alarm call-perhaps even the alarm about Eneas' attack. Time was slipping away. "Tell me!"
Little Molly looked around in worried surprise; Briony could hear some of the men shouting to each other. Many others were hurrying in all directions across the camp, perhaps to get weapons or armor they had left in their tents. Eneas had made good his word. Now it was up to her.
"How would I know such a thing?" the little woman moaned. "Who are you? Why do you want to know such things?"
