After covering a league or so, Little Chicken dropped to a walk. He snapped off the icicles below his nose so that he could open his mask, but when Rap raised his mitts to do the same, the goblin knocked his hands down.
Red and puffing, he studied Rap impassively for a moment, then asked, “Blisters? Rubbings?”
Rap mumbled something incoherent and shook his head.
Little Chicken nodded in grudging satisfaction. “You run good, town boy.”
Rap grinned, but only to himself. He nodded.
“Go much faster, then?”
Rap nodded with less certainty, and the goblin chuckled as he closed his hood, but when he broke from the walk into a jog again, he kept the same pace as before.
Any resident of Krasnegar needed good legs. Rap had hoped that his week on horseback might have left him in better shape than Little Chicken was. As the hours crept by, he discarded that idea. The night became a blur of snow and trees, of shadows and moonbeams, of pounding heart, of smoky breath out and icy breath in, of chest burned by the frigid air, of Fleabag loping along, always at a distance, of Little Chicken ever just ahead, usually jogging, rarely taking a walk break. At times they must run with hands held high to divert branches, at times they were slowed to a snail pace by cluttered deadfall, but mostly they just ran. There was no conversation and Rap would not have been capable of it anyway. He was soon unable to think or feel anything except a steady, grinding, suicidal resolve that the town boy was going to keep up with the goblin.
Just before moonset they came to Porcupine Totem, and when the dogs began to bark, Little Chicken stripped off the masks. He pushed Rap ahead as they approached the doors. By that time Rap was too weary to wonder why, but he was accepted as Flat Nose of the Raven Totem without question. Most of the clan were absent, visiting Raven Totem for the entertainment, but there were a couple of young men left in charge, and many old folk, and some children too young to travel.
The village layout was very similar to the Ravens’, perhaps a little larger. Rap staggered into a lodge that seemed quite identical and met insufferable heat and glare. His knees almost buckled on the spot. Yet the household had been asleep and was only just reviving the fire for the visitors, so perhaps the hall was really quite cool. Little Chicken’s fingers expertly unfastened Rap’s buckskins for him, and he stepped out of them with relief, sank down on the hearthstones, and greedily drank of whatever it was they gave him. His mind was as full of smoke as the ceiling. All he wanted was sleep, sleep, sleep …
Then Little Chicken, stripped to a loincloth as he was, pushed him down flat on the big fireplace and produced a bucket of the inevitable grease, contributed by the hosts. He inspected Rap’s feet carefully, then set to work at giving his legs a vigorous massage, skillfully unknotting the tendons and easing the aches. It was heaven.
“Soft, town boy,” he growled contemptuously.
Rap agreed, thinking that he could not have run another two steps. When the massage was over, he offered to do the same for Little Chicken, although he knew he would be very unskilled.
Little Chicken’s eyes flashed in anger. “For trash?”
Probably he did not need a massage. He looked as fresh as when he had started out, hours before. After snatching up a dish of food that was waiting by the side of the fire, he stalked to the door. Rap’s farsight showed him heading for the boys’ building.
It was then that Rap realized why he had been pushed forward for the introductions, and why the skin around his eyes hurt—which he had not noticed before. It was only after he had gulped a quick meal and thanked his hosts and rolled up in a greasy, stinking fur to sleep that he wondered what Inos was going to say about that.
He had hardly closed his eyes, he thought, when Little Chicken was shaking his shoulder and starting another massage to loosen muscles knotted up in sleep. Then he sternly ordered Rap to go out to the pits right away. Two of the women rushed to prepare food for the guests even as Rap was being dressed again by his handler. Little Chicken obviously took his duties seriously, whether they be to die entertainingly or to serve a master. He would allow Rap to do nothing that he could do for him, not even lace a boot; he would accept no help for himself. In his own eyes he was trash, neither boy nor man, merely a possession that should try to be useful and must pamper this fragile nongoblin.
He led the way southward without another word. Had it not been for the first glimmers of dawn light, Rap would not have believed that his stay at Porcupine Totem had lasted more than a few minutes.
The following days passed in the same way, Each morning Little Chicken obtained directions. By moonlight he brought his owner safely to another village. Conversation was impossible in the masks, and when the journeys ended Rap was too exhausted to try. In any case, his companion refused to stay in the adults’ building once he had given Rap his massage and seen him settled.
Rap talked a little with his hosts, but he had nothing to tell them, and their news was meaningless to him. His questions about Darad brought only angry silence—just by asking, he was breaking the rules for guests. He was never refused hospitality or courtesy, but the welcome was grudging, partly because he was not goblin-born, mostly because of Little Chicken. To own trash was a crime. Rap had offended by not giving his defeated opponent the death he deserved and wanted.
Gradually Rap’s fitness improved, aided each evening by the most enormous meals he had ever eaten, much of them fresh meat that was a great luxury to him. Gradually Little Chicken raised the pace, but only slightly, for the villages were set an easy day’s run apart, and greater speed would have brought no advantage. The daylight was becoming noticeably longer as the sun began its slow return to the northlands and the travelers worked their way south.
About the sixth morning, just as it was time to fasten the masks and leave the lodge, Little Chicken paused and regarded Rap with a glint in his eye.
“Salmon Totem,” he said, “then Eagles, then Elk. Three days?”
“Right.”
“Or sleep in snow, then Elk. Two days?”
Any perceptible hint of a challenge from Little Chicken was unbearable. “Let’s do that, then.”
The goblin’s angular eyes widened. “And run faster?”
“Fast as you like!”
“Town boy!” Little Chicken laughed, and contemptuously pushed a handful of grease in Rap’s face.
A few hours later, grimly aware of the tearing pain of the faster pace, Rap thought to wonder why his companion had not brought food if there was to be no lodge at the end of the day’s trek.
The answer, obviously, was that a goblin could live off the land. They stopped when Little Chicken judged the light too poor for running—he did not know that Rap could see in the dark. He lighted a fire and then made two others. Three small fires were better than one big one, he said, and then he screamed in fury when Rap tried to help by gathering firewood. Needing a bucket to melt snow, the goblin used his backpack, dropping hot rocks in it. While the resulting water was necessary and welcome to Rap, it was the strangest-tasting brew he had ever swallowed.
“I find food!” Little Chicken announced. He pointed scornfully at Fleabag, whom he had completely ignored until that moment. “You keep that here?”
Rap agreed, and did so. He was glad of the company, sitting in the darkly haunted forest, watching the shadows of the densely enclosing conifers dance around his triangle of firelit snow, and trying not to wonder what he would do if Little Chicken failed to return. Fleabag just pawed out a hollow and went to sleep.
But Little Chicken did return, in an astonishingly short time. He came bearing two white rabbits, which he had caught beyond farsight range, so that Rap did not know how he had done it. He could hardly have been quicker had he run to a market for them.
He was an expert skinner and a skilled cook, too, damn him!
The campsite was in a hollow, half filled by a deep snowdrift, and Rap soon discovered that this was not by chance. As soon as he had eaten,
Little Chicken set to work digging out a snow cave there, scooping like a dog, and again indignantly refusing assistance. When it was dug deep enough, he began gathering spruce branches, breaking them off trees made brittle by the fearsome cold. Again Rap tried to help and this time Little Chicken did not shout at him. Instead he demonstrated his vastly greater strength by snapping with apparent ease any bough that Rap had failed to break: Rap gave up in humiliation and returned shivering to the fires.
Finally the cave was lined to Little Chicken’s satisfaction. He backed out and nodded to Rap.
“You first,” he said. “I follow, close door.”
“What about Fleabag? He would keep us warm.”
Little Chicken’s expression should have been invisible in the dark, but Rap knew that he was regarding Fleabag with hostility. “Won’t come.”
Rap hesitated and then said, “He will for me.”
After a moment’s pause, the goblin said, “Show!” very quietly.
Rap crawled into the cave and summoned the dog without a word. Fleabag awoke, trotted over, and peered into the hole to see what his friend wanted. Then he obediently crept in and lay down alongside Rap, panting foul carrion breath in his face, swishing boughs with his tail.
The cave was a narrow tunnel and it seemed impossible that a third body could find room, but Little Chicken entered by lying on his back and wriggling, using his feet to push snow against the entrance until it was closed to his satisfaction. That was strenuous work and he ended crushed against Rap, puffing as hard as Fleabag. Rap would certainly be warm enough during the night between those two, sheltered from the wind and insulated by snow.
There was no light and Little Chicken’s face was too close to be seen properly if there were, but Rap knew the thoughtful expression it bore in the darkness. He waited for the question.
“How you do that?” said a whisper close to his ear.
“I don’t know, Little Chicken. I talk in my head. It works on horses, too, but most of all on Fleabag.”
The goblin stared blankly at nothing for a while and then asked, “You knock me down in testing?”
Here it came! “Yes. It was not the Gods. It was me.”
Rap was not sure why he had provoked this revelation. He did not think he was boasting. Probably he was clearing his conscience. He sensed the big mouth opening as Little Chicken bared his fangs and for a moment Rap half expected to feel them sink in his throat.
It was a smile. Unaware that he was being observed, Little Chicken was grinning into the darkness. “Good! Town boy won.” After a while he chuckled. “Good foe! Did not know. Know now.”
He said no more. He was still lying there leering at the dark when Rap fell into an exhausted sleep.
Recognizing no rules, the goblin could not resent cheating. His satisfaction came from learning that he had been beaten by a mortal and not some superhuman freak event … or so Rap concluded.
Rap was wrong.
Three fleabags emerged the next morning, into a thick white ice fog. The forest vanished within yards, trees fading away into the pervasive grayness in all directions. Still, bitterly cold, and treacherous, ice fog made all ways seem the same.
“Nice cave,” the goblin said sarcastically. “Stay long time.”
“South is that way. I will lead.”
“Go in circles.”
Rap shook his head. “Not me. South to the river, then upriver to Elk Totem, right?”
His companion shrugged, probably thinking that the exercise would do no harm, and he could always backtrack, or make another cave. So that day it was Rap who led, trotting through a white world striped with gray tree trunks, a silent goblin at his heels. The river appeared where it was supposed to and they followed it upstream. Farsight told Rap where to cross the ice and cut through the forest again, and he brought Little Chicken right to the door.
He was wondering what reaction he would get to this second revelation of supernatural power—awe? Respect? But when the buckskins came off in the firelit lodge, Little Chicken merely smiled with more secret amusement and made no comment.
Rap went to the hearth and was introduced to the rest of his hosts, being given the usual oily embraces. Little Chicken appeared with the inevitable grease bucket.
“I don’t need that any more,” Rap said firmly. “My legs are strong now. No massage.”
He turned his back. He had forgotten that Little Chicken took his duties seriously and was an expert wrestler. Without warning Rap was flat on his face, with the goblin kneeling on him.
The audience enjoyed that massage more than Rap did.
Lynx Totem … another Eagle Totem …
At Beaver Totem they were stormbound for four days while the worst weather of the winter howled like giant wolves around the cabins. So unbearable was the chill of the wind that even Little Chicken dressed in his buckskins to run from cabin to cabin, or to attend to calls of nature. The goblins strung lines between the buildings lest they become lost in the snow and freeze to death within yards of their own doors.
Rap spent most of the time in lonely brooding. He had been four weeks on his journey now. The king might be already dead and Inos had not been told of his illness.
Or had she?
He watched the goblins as they lived their boring winter lives, studiously ignoring him except when hospitality demanded that they must offer him food or drink. He endured Little Chicken’s mocking contempt on the rare occasions when he appeared in the adults’ building. He wished fervently that his talent for befriending animals would work on people, like Andor’s.
Always his thoughts came back to Andor.
King Holindarn knew a word of power. So Andor had said.
If Andor had gone to such trouble to try to learn Rap’s word, then he would also try to steal the king’s.
Words were passed on deathbeds. If Inos could return to Krasnegar in time, her father would tell her the word that had been passed down from Inisso. More and more, Rap was becoming convinced that Darad would revert to Andor, and Andor would seek out Inos at Kinvale. He would use his occult charm upon her to win her trust, then accompany her back to Krasnegar. She must be told about her father, but she must also be warned against Andor.
He had gained a week while Rap was a prisoner at Raven Totem. He might be gaining time now if he were already over the mountains, beyond the storm’s reach. As soon as the weather cleared, Rap would tell Little Chicken to increase the pace again. Somehow he must keep up.
The weather cleared at last. The journey resumed and became more than an endurance test. Now it was a contest. The runs became longer, the rests shorter. Little Chicken would offer the challenge, and Rap would stubbornly accept. He ran until blood flowed from his nostrils and life was an endless torment of pain and exhaustion.
It was madness. With his farsight, Rap was incredibly sure-footed, but if Little Chicken sprained an ankle, the two of them would die in the wilderness. They both knew that. Rap was not going to admit that he was in any way inferior to the goblin. But he was, as Little Chicken could demonstrate with no apparent effort. Rap’s supernatural abilities he merely ignored, so that they did not count. Day by day he raised the wager. Day by day Rap would call his raise. He despised himself for it, but he could not stop. He had cheated the goblin out of the opportunity to torture him—so now he was torturing himself. The agonies might not be quite so severe, although at times that seemed debatable, but they went on longer—much, much longer, day after agonizing day.
The harder Rap tried, the more amusing the goblin seemed to find him … and the harder he tried.
Then one night, Rap thought he saw his chance. It had been the worst run yet—as they all seemed to be—and he reeled on his feet as he gathered firewood. The goblin allowed him to help with that task now, because his efforts were so obviously inferior.
Suddenly, through the blur of fatigue and pain, Rap sensed movement within his range. He straightened, searched, and decided that it was a small deer. Calling f
or silence, he sent Fleabag out to circle beyond the doe and then drive it. Puzzled but impassive, Little Chicken squatted down, watching without a word. Rap strung his bow, notched an arrow, and waited, trembling with exhaustion and mental effort, carefully tracking his quarry’s approach. The deer burst through the trees where he knew it would, at easy range. He shot.
He missed.
Without seeming to hurry at all, Little Chicken rose, lifted the bow from Rap’s hand, stooped to pick up an arrow, aimed, shot, and unerringly nailed down their supper just before it vanished into the trees. He handed the bow back with a smile that showed more enamel than any human mouth should contain.
Shrouded in silent misery, Rap watched the skinning and cooking. It had been fatigue making his hands shake, of course. Even as clumsy an archer as he was should not have missed that one. He had tried to look clever and he had made a fool of himself again. Every joint and muscle in his body was shaking. This last leg of the journey seemed to have lasted for days without a break. Had he thought to notice the moon’s position when they started, he could have estimated the time, but he knew only that it had been many, many hours. He was so grossly exhausted that he was not sure he would be able to eat any of the venison anyway. He could barely keep his eyes open, his chest burned, his legs ached—and Little Chicken seemed as fresh as if he had just climbed out of bed. There had to be a limit to the amount of this torture that a man could take, and Rap was certain he had reached it now. Why not just. admit that the contest was hopeless? Who cared? What did it matter?
Then Rap saw that the goblin was studying him from his crouch by the cooking fire, and his big ugly mouth was curled in disdainful amusement again. “Eat now, Flat Nose. Then sleep? Or run more?”
Rap glared back at the smirk.
Something inside him whimpered as he spoke.
A Man of His Word Page 23
