Blaze of Silver

by K. M. Grant

  At once he was pushing Ellie toward Sacramenta. “We’ve got to get to the king,” he said, “we’ve got to get to Speyer before Amal. He’s going to kill Richard. I know it.”

  But Ellie could not think about anything except Kamil. She clung to Will, the pain in her arm temporarily forgotten. “What did they do to him?” Horror gouged cavities into her face.

  Will avoided her eyes. “We’ve got to get to Speyer before Amal,” he kept repeating. “He is going to use Kamil’s knife to kill the king.” But Ellie would not get up. She beat one fist into the soil and groaned like an animal. At first Will felt helpless, then he could bear it no more. His voice rose as he seized Ellie and shook her, forcing her to listen to him. “Jesus help us! Can’t you see what’s going on? The Old Man’s revenge isn’t finished yet. Not that he’s going to chase us. Of course not! He’s not interested in us and never has been. But he’s not yet finished with Kamil. Kamil’s body may be dead—I can hardly think Amal would have dared to leave him alive—but the Old Man now wants to destroy his reputation. Amal will kill Richard with that triangular knife and make sure to leave it behind. Anybody who knew Kamil will identify it at once. Kamil will then be both thief and murderer and the Old Man will claim that he was an Assassin all along. It’s diabolical.” He set Ellie down and quickly began to prepare the horses for mounting. “We’ve got to ride now, Ellie, not for ourselves but for Richard and Kamil. Can you do it?” He did not know what would happen if she could not or would not.

  But Ellie was already hauling herself on. Her arm throbbed unmercifully yet she was glad of the physical pain. Perhaps if, when they had emerged at the top of the cliff, she had not wasted time, Kamil would not have been caught. He may have done wrong but he did not deserve to die like a dog. Perhaps if she had condemned a little less and understood a little more, as Will had, she would not be seeing, in her mind’s eye, Kamil’s body lying untended for the vultures to pick at.

  Will did not try to comfort Ellie. He simply urged Hosanna into a gallop and took some comfort of his own from the sound of Sacramenta’s hooves behind. He too mourned for Kamil with his whole heart, his old jealousy forgotten. Unlike Ellie’s, however, his mourning was not full of regrets, it was full of promises. Whatever the cost to himself, he vowed to avenge the man he still thought of as his friend. He knew the vow would involve sacrifices but he knew too that he could not live with himself unless the sacrifices were made. God would surely ensure that such sacrifices were not impossible to bear. He had to believe that.

  A mile ahead, Amal sat on Shihab, a shrunken old man with too much on his conscience. But he had the knife, he had his orders, and there was nothing else to do except carry them out.

  17

  Returning to his ship, the Old Man of the Mountain sat on his golden cushions and mused. His revenge on Kamil may have suffered a glitch, but the glitch had turned out to be nothing for Amal had assured him that the boy was dead and now only the final destruction of his reputation remained. The Old Man had, on the whole, recovered his temper, cheering himself with the thought that by the time Amal had finished, Kamil’s name would be so blackened that when history came to be written, nobody would have a good word to say about him. That was just the kind of revenge the Old Man liked—the kind that lasted. His musings were not, at this moment, concerned with Kamil. Instead he was wondering whether he should or should not go after William de Granville, Earl of Ravensgarth, to punish him and the girl for their insolence. He did not believe that even if Will got to Richard he could prevent the king’s assassination. A knight was no match for an Assassin. Yet it went quite against the grain for an Assassin to allow any slight, even the smallest, to go unpunished. So the Old Man could not decide. Will and Ellie were not really his enemies and, now that Kamil was no longer under their roof, they had nothing that he wanted. But they had not been polite. He began to crack walnuts, then changed his mind and clapped his hands to send, as usual, for oranges. A flunky scurried up from below with a bowlful. The Old Man chose three and began to toss them. Up, up, up they went but when he caught them in his round white hands they dissolved, one after the other, into a sticky mass of pulp and discolored juice. They had gone moldy on the journey. The Old Man let out a piercing shriek and drummed his small heels on the deck. The whole ship rocked with consternation. Men stopped their ears. When the Old Man shrieked, they knew he would not desist until he had made somebody else shriek louder.

  The orange-bringer trembled the most. He ran for a bowl of warm water but, in his terror, spilled some of the water and soaked the Old Man’s towel. Desperate, he shook out his hair and offered it instead, crouching low and trying not to moan as he felt those sharp fingers curling, twisting, and pulling. It took him some time to realize that the drumming was less insistent and even longer to realize that the hair tugging had, in fact, ceased and the Old Man’s shriek had faded into a hum. Eventually, he felt two fingers lift up his chin. “Hair,” said the Old Man dreamily, his face like that of a fat round robin. “Do you know, my good man, I suddenly have a fancy for hair.”

  The orange-bringer gave praise to Allah. He was only going to lose his hair! He made cutting signals but the Old Man batted him aside. “No, you clumsy idiot, not your hair,” he said, “but that girl’s. That’s what I want. I want you to go ashore and follow William de Granville and his little friend. You must find them and when the girl is asleep you must cut off her hair as close to her scalp as possible and bring it to me. They must not see you. They must suspect nothing. When they awake, it must be as if the devil has visited them. That’s the way to punish them! For ever after, my shadow will hang over them, day and night. If they see you neither come nor go, they will never sleep easy in their beds again.”

  The Old Man was so pleased with this plan that he patted the orange-bringer’s head, carefully wiping into it the last of the pulp. “Go now,” he said, “and don’t return here until you can lay the girl’s plait at my feet. You have some time. Storms are predicted. We shall wait until they pass before sailing home.” The orange-bringer began to crawl away. The Old Man stared at the horizon, then suddenly called him back. Now he was showing his teeth and the orange-bringer’s heart sank. “I’ve thought of something to make your task even more amusing,” the Old Man said. “At the same time as stealing the girl’s plait, steal that red horse’s tail. I have a fancy to use it as a fly whisk.” The orange-bringer breathed again and ventured to give the Old Man an oily grin. “It’s a pity Will de Granville is cleanshaven,” he said, and when the Old Man jokily wagged his finger at him, the orange-bringer’s spirits soared and he ventured to stand up straight.

  As soon as the Old Man heard the splash of the row-boat over the side, he began to tap his fingers. He had held off inspecting the ransom silver, saving it for a treat. Now, he felt, he deserved such a treat. His fingers stopped tapping and began to itch. The anticipation was gloriously unsettling. When the itch moved along his fingers, up his arms, down his body, and even into his toes, the Old Man rose in a surprisingly graceful movement. Half an hour later, he was sitting in a sealed cabin that stretched half the length of the ship. The darkness was absolute, pushed aside only directly over the wagons by huge round lamps that swung slowly back and forth with the wash of the sea. The ransom wagons, painstakingly emptied, then floated on rafts to the galley before being hoisted aboard and refilled, were open and the Old Man was entirely alone. He climbed up onto the first, lowered himself into it, and lay down. The bed of stolen Christian silver felt better than the best goose-feather mattress. He buried his arms up to the elbow and his legs up to the knee. He trickled the coins over his palms and even juggled with a few silver artifacts, enjoying the dull clink as the precious objects dropped back into the great pile. He stood up and dropped handfuls of treasure over his head. Then he climbed onto the side and leaped lightly over, now landing in the wagon containing the Hartslove contribution. This the Old Man inspected with added interest because it was full of beautiful things, and when he
came across the ruby brooch that Marissa had so reluctantly given, he took it carefully between his thumb and first finger. The red horse’s head glowed gently as the Old Man held it this way and that. He read the inscription with Hosanna’s name and inspected the ornament again. This was a fine piece. He liked it. He would wear it himself. Deftly, he undid the catch and pinned it to his tunic. Digging deep, he found a circlet of gold given by an Anglo-Norman duke, carefully crowned himself, and began, in his delight, to dance. His shadow on the wall danced with him even though it wavered slightly. A squall was blowing in from the east. When the Old Man had finished dancing, he locked the wagons up again and went back to his golden cushions to wait for the squall to pass.

  Once Marissa had fled from the convent, it had not taken her long to decide that she did not like her pony and also that in her determination to follow Hal and Elric to Richard she would not bother with any niceties of riding. Using her heels and a variety of threats, she kept the pony scrambling along, hating its rider but unable to get rid of her. Marissa’s woolen habit was both a drag and a boon: a drag because when it got wet, which it did almost at once, it weighed her down, but a boon because when they saw it, nobody accosted her.

  And Marissa spoke to nobody. When she wanted food, she held out her hands like a pilgrim beggar, and when she wanted shelter, she presented herself at farms and cottages, where her habit was treated with reverence rather than disdain. She did not need to ask for directions since she knew that Speyer was on the Rhine. If she just followed the river, she would surely get there in the end. This was more difficult than it looked, for though the river was bigger than any Marissa had ever seen in England, sometimes she had to leave it when the road veered away or when it had collapsed and become impassable. When she found the river again, she was nervous lest she had mistaken it and it was another waterway leading elsewhere. All the time she was not worrying about the route, she rehearsed what she would say to Richard when she found him. This was all she could do for Will now and afterward, when Richard fully understood that Will was a hero beyond criticism, then she would begin her search for Hosanna, a search that would not finish until she either found him or dropped dead. She dwelled only briefly on Ellie and even more briefly on Kamil. Amal never entered her head at all.

  When she first saw the gathering of nuns, loosely guarded by lay monks, moving slowly along the same route as herself, her heart rose. The gathering was so large that she was sure that their destination must be one of the large convents set somewhere along the Rhine’s banks. Today she could ride with them and not worry about getting lost. They would hardly notice her.

  There she was wrong. The abbess was soon alerted to the unknown novice traveling in their midst, clearly a runaway. Nothing was done at first but when dusk fell and Marissa tried to leave the nuns behind, one of the monks seized her pony’s bridle. “Get off!” Marissa was suddenly horribly aware of her stupidity. “I’m on my way to my motherhouse.” The lie came easily. “They’re expecting me.” The monk took no notice but hauled her off the pony and marched her to the abbess. Marissa kept her head. If she struggled and swore, she would give herself away. She must be haughty but dignified if she was to persuade these busybodies to let her go.

  But she met her match. The abbess listened politely to Marissa’s explanations, even encouraging her in her lie. Where was the motherhouse? In Speyer, Marissa said, not knowing the name of any other large town. The abbess seemed pleased with this answer and for a moment Marissa thought she had won. Then the abbess smiled. “We too are going to Speyer,” she said brightly, looking Marissa straight in the eye. “You must travel with us and we will hand you safely over to your new home. I’m surprised that you have been sent on this journey alone. Where did you say you came from? Clearly not a convent of any merit.” She glanced up and down at Marissa’s grubby clothes.

  “But I must hurry,” said Marissa, clenching her fists. The abbess looked at her. “Are you going to hit me?” she asked.

  Marissa could not bear it. “Please,” she begged, “please let me go. You don’t understand.”

  “I think I understand perfectly,” the abbess answered shortly. She had humored this runaway long enough. Then she added, with what she thought to be kindness but to Marissa was maddening complacency, “We’ll get to Speyer soon enough, my sister. I’m afraid we are to make many stops on the way, so you will have plenty of time to learn the virtue of patience. But once we get to Speyer you can face the proper authorities.” Though the unhappy girl argued and argued and even tried to tell the abbess the exact nature of her business to stress its urgency, the abbess’s ears were deaf, and very soon Marissa found her pony had vanished and she herself was loosely bound to another sister, who, taking very unkindly to Marissa’s tugs, kicks, and stream of invective, returned every blow and insult in kind. Marissa tried every trick in her considerable armory to free herself. None worked and though it nearly choked her to accept that she must get to Speyer slowly or risk dying of fury and not getting there at all, she had little choice. The abbess watched her carefully. In her day, she thought, girls who were told to be nuns just accepted it, even welcomed it. Now she met many more girls like Marissa. The world, the abbess decided, was not moving in the right direction.

  18

  For the first few hours, just as Marissa had done, Will thought that he and Ellie would find the journey to Speyer relatively easy. He knew the town was hundreds of miles away, but with so many rivers to use, it was not impossible. He cursed when they had to stop for food and thought ruefully of all the ransom silver. Now he didn’t even have enough coin for a bowl of pottage. With false promises he persuaded peddlers and pilgrims to give them bread and oats. The effort of riding made Ellie feverish and Will knew that her wound was still bleeding. He steadfastly refused to look at it, however, terrified to see the discoloration that would spell Ellie’s end. It was better not to know. “If the weather holds, we’ll make it to Speyer in a month—five weeks at most,” he repeated endlessly as they headed back to the Rhone. Even as he said it, he realized what an impossible task they had. Five weeks! Anything might happen to them in that time. Hosanna and Sacramenta would tire and Amal was on the swiftest horse in the world. Whenever he thought of Shihab, Will ground his teeth. He could not think of her with any affection at all. Though Kamil had tamed her and Ellie loved to ride her, he wished her ill.

  The orange-bringer had no difficulty in following their trail. Like all the Old Man’s servants, he was adept at changing his appearance and could speak several languages. Mingling unobtrusively with the peddlers and pilgrims, he elicited information without causing any suspicion. It was less easy, however, to maneuver himself into a position where he could do what the Old Man asked with no risk of discovery.

  It seemed to take ages to get anywhere. Miles felt farther here than they did in England. The sky seemed higher. Now that it was just Will and Ellie, it was not just the impossible dialects that made the place feel alien. The wind felt bigger and more menacing than it ever was at Hartslove, as if it wanted to remind them all the time that they were friendless and far from home. They rode past slope after slope of straggling vineyards and sheltered under trees he could not name. Villages were unexpectedly set out and houses unfamiliar shapes. At night he scarcely slept because he could not quite place all the noises. He feared wolves.

  Once at the river, Will managed to negotiate a lift on a barge transporting skins. The skins smelled but this was not the time to be fastidious. The horses, hating it, nevertheless stepped obediently onto the rickety wooden slats, holding their heads high to breathe in fresh air. The bargeman, heavy of jaw and with a gypsy countenance, saved all his breath to drive his oarsmen hard. Will exulted as they rowed, bare-armed despite the cold, their muscles knotted and their hands like leather. This was better. Now they were really moving. The orange-bringer watched them embark, then found himself another barge bound in the same direction. The crewmen hardly noticed him for the man seemed to be exactly wha
t the Old Man so often told him he was—nobody.

  Will and Ellie stayed with the barge for many days. The temperature dropped and they feared that the water might freeze. But though the wind turned tears into icicles, the river remained free. Sometimes it cut a swathe under giant, tree-topped cliffs. Other times it rolled through endless valleys bounded by hills shrouded in winter fog. Will tried to be patient, reassuring himself that Amal was also in an unfamiliar land experiencing the same conditions and that a horse galloping alone seldom goes as fast as two traveling together. “We will be in time,” he said confidently to Ellie, “I know we will.”

  Ellie didn’t reply. To stem his terrors Will began to talk. He spoke of their childhood, of all the things at Hartslove that he loved, of his brother, of his father, of Old Nurse, of Kamil, of Marissa, and of himself. He scarcely knew what he said or how long he sat. As night fell his words were punctuated with sleep, and sometimes the bargewoman, who fancied herself a healer, came and plastered Ellie’s bandage with potions, each more evil-smelling than the last. Will did not object, only talked on and on, speaking more quickly when Ellie’s temperature was high and more slowly as it sank. He had no idea how many hours had passed by the time he noticed that Ellie was actually listening. Then he talked more gently and more guardedly, finding himself quite suddenly, when the fever left her and she looked at him again, afflicted by his old doubts as to whether he would ever know whether she could really love him. He was amazed to find these thoughts surfacing at such a time. Would they never go away?

  A week later, after the bargewoman reassured them that the danger to Ellie had passed, Will’s relief was enormous. When the barge stopped to replenish food and water stocks, he took the horses off and stretched their legs along the river valley, encouraging them to pick at what grass they could scrape through the snow that fell sporadically. There was no goodness in what they cropped but they enjoyed the temporary freedom and when Will brought them back, Ellie told him that their flanks looked rounder and their thick coats less dull. Will also used these excursions to listen for news of Amal and Shihab. Shihab was too distinctive to miss. But they heard nothing and Will slowly began to allow himself to hope that something had befallen them miles back and that the race to get to Richard was already won.