Impossible Odds

by Dave Duncan

  “I can drive you down there now in my—”

  “No! A horse is faster.”

  He sighed. “Then all I can offer is refuge. You remember Hunyadi, who used to work here? He runs a hostelry on Coppersmiths Street, just before it bends. You can trust him, and probably his men also, if he is not there. He can get you to Fadrenschloss. Here you will be safe.”

  Aldea had first come to Fadrenschloss at the time of Johanna’s betrothal, a trooper in the Palace Guard. Now he was a captain but had not learned much. A large, dull man, he turned surly when the Grand Duchess announced her change of plan; he started arguing that his orders said she was to stay for three days. Ernst watched with amusement as she brought him to heel. Even lacking the status and authority Rubin should have granted her, she knew how to get her own way now—

  “Must I complain to my husband that you defied my express orders?…By what right do you question my decisions?…I’m sorry you are not eager to get back to your family, Captain. Don’t your men want to return to theirs? If we do not leave at once we shall still be on the road at nightfall.” And so on.

  The bailey was full of dismayed people. The feast, the music, the decorations…Her Royal Highness was leaving?

  Aldea argued again when Johanna told her maid to remain behind to look after the baggage and that Ernst would arrange for her to be escorted home the next day. Ernst had agreed to no such thing. He would be happy to do so, of course.

  Johanna fussed and fretted while the horses were brought out and saddled. When all was ready at last she gave him a farewell hug and protested when he cupped hands to help her mount. He insisted.

  Her mount skittered and she brought it under control.

  “Can we be there by sunset?” she demanded.

  Aldea glanced at the sky. “We could, Your Highness.”

  “Then I can. Ride!”

  Even with less imagination than a walnut, Aldea was starting to wonder at this urgency. “Something wrong?”

  “I am anxious to see my child, is all. I just meant you needn’t hold back for me. I can ride you all into the ground.”

  An outburst of coughing all around her conveyed widespread skepticism. She glared at them defiantly.

  “Watch me!” she said, and went out the gate at a gallop.

  They were big men all and wore half armor. She was much lighter and had a superb horse. Just after sunset they turned onto the Krupa bridge and she knew where she was. Her impatience drove her to kick in her heels for a final spurt; outstripping the men, she thundered up to the gates alone. They were closed. No one answered her hail. She had to dismount to haul on the bell rope and then the stupid, hairy face that peered out the wicket refused to understand who she was. Grand Duchess? He called her a drunkard and spat at her. Only when a furious Aldea rode up would the guards open the postern.

  If she had been in any doubt, that incident proved that she could never smuggle Frederik out of the palace by night. In daylight it should be easy. She had watched all sorts of shady-looking people wander in and out unchallenged.

  His Royal Highness had yet not returned from Trenko, but even to establish that took much effort and self-control. By itself, Rubin’s absence meant nothing. He often vanished for days at a time when he had cornered some dainty nymphet. This time, combined with what she had been told at the monastery that morning and what von Fader had told her, the news knotted her with terror.

  She fled in search of Frederik and found him in the capable hands of Ruxandra, being made ready for bed. Frederik took one look at her and flew into a screaming tantrum.

  “He’s just punishing you for going away,” Ruxandra said reassuringly, and cuddled him. “Where’s a good boy, then?” She was a dumpy, grandmotherly woman, as respectable as a snowy owl. Having spent her life rearing other people’s children, she knew a lot more about babies than Frederik did. If she had a fault it was that she thought the Grand Duchess spent far too much time with her own child than was good for either of them. At the moment, Frederik seemed to agree.

  In the end he lost the battle, though. His crib was moved back into Johanna’s room, he grudgingly allowed his mother to hug him, and eventually he lost his nightly battle against sleep. So did his mother. Worried as she was, haunted by fears that Volpe and his killers might already be on their way, she had spent two hard days in the saddle. She fell into bed and followed her son’s example.

  She was awakened by a voice calling her name from what seemed a very long way away. Light on her face…bed curtains open…moonlight pouring in through opened shutters…a man standing beside her, holding a lantern…Illuminated from below, his face seemed bizarre and weird until she identified the goatee and the heavily pouched features of her husband.

  “Johanna, awake! My violet, my faun! Waken!”

  Bewilderment. “My lord! You’re back!”

  “I should say the same to you. You were supposed to be safely out of the way at Fadrenschloss.”

  “Safely? Oh, yes, yes! There’s a plot! Von Fader warned me. Lord Volpe—”

  Rubin chuckled. “I know all about my foolish uncle’s mischief, my rosebud. It will not prosper, I promise you, but we must leave the palace for a while. I came back to rescue Freddie. I did not expect to find you here as well. Come, my turtledove. We must hurry. There is some danger.” He sounded extraordinarily cheerful. Those foolish endearments were what he called her while making love.

  Sleep fell away. She sat up, clutching the covers to her. Rubin was wearing a traveling cloak with a hood, and surely a sword under it. She had never seen him armed before.

  “My evil uncle is on his way, turtledove. Dress and bring our precious. We must fly.”

  She slid from the bed and stumbled across the room. She had never dressed in front of him before and was absurdly conscious of his eyes upon her, but modesty would be an insane luxury when their very lives might be at risk.

  In his cot in the corner, Frederik whimpered at the disturbance and then fell silent.

  “Ruxandra!” Johanna said, fighting with stockings. “No, better let me get her.” Laces streaming, she sped to the anteroom and then the nurse’s bedroom.

  Ruxandra gaped and gasped as her mistress shook her awake and shouted at her, but even ravings about revolution did not ruffle her. “Don’t move him yet, Your Highness,” she said, as calmly as if discussing colic. “I’ll pack a bag for him first.” She started stuffing clothes in a pillowcase. Johanna ran to fetch her jewelry.

  They rushed along dark corridors, their lantern making monstrous shadows dance around them. Rubin went first, with his hood raised—because, he said, the sight of him flying by night might start a panic. Johanna clutched her son bundled in blankets, trying to soothe his sleepy grumbles, terrified he would erupt in screams of rage. Ruxandra followed, carrying the bag and spare blankets. Down back stairs, across a deserted kitchen…when they emerged into the chill of the stable yard, they found men harnessing horses to two carriages. Breath smoked in the torchlight. A fat moon sailed among silver-trimmed clouds.

  Johanna headed for the great eight-horse ducal coach.

  Rubin caught her arm. “No! We will take the other.” He guided her over to the smaller coach and climbed in first, so he could take Frederik. The Marquis of Krupa took fright and screamed. Johanna scrambled up to take him and comfort him. He screamed louder. Ruxandra was helped, almost heaved, in by a groom, and the door was slammed. A voice shouted, a whip cracked, and the state coach began to move with much clattering of horseshoes and creaking of cold axles. Iron-rimmed wheels rumbled like thunder on cobbles, fit to waken the whole city. Then the second coach followed.

  Frederik continued to howl. Johanna handed him to Ruxandra to let her try.

  Her husband put his arm around her. Startled, she drew away until he removed it. Not much light entered through the horn-paneled windows, but the interior was not totally dark. Intimacy in front of a servant was unseemly.

  “Now, Your Grace,” she said. “Pray tell me wh
at is happening.”

  “Volpe has turned traitor, my lovebird. He has been planning this for some time. Fortunately Abbot Minhea is loyal, so I have been kept informed. Now Volpe and several hundred knights are on their way from Vamky, intent on deposing me. We should be clear of the city before he arrives, but we shall be back, never fear.” The coach rumbled and clattered along narrow lanes where moonlight could hardly penetrate.

  “And where are we headed now?”

  “Wait and see. I have plans.” His voice was smug in the darkness.

  The carriage rocked and bounced sickeningly on the rough roads. Johanna wished fervently that they had gone on horseback, although Frederik was too big now to carry easily in a sling. He did not like the coach. No sooner had he howled himself to sleep than it would lurch and jostle him awake again, so even Ruxandra could do nothing with him. The roads grew rougher and steeper, up and down. At times rain pelted on the roof and trickled in around the windows.

  Eventually Rubin took his son to hold, which he had never done before. Frederik perversely stopped yelling. Either he appreciated the honor or he was just too astonished to object. He whimpered a few times and slid into a sound sleep at last. Moments later, Johanna realized she was doing the same.

  She wakened with a start, uncertain where she was. Rubin was still holding his son. Ruxandra was snoring. The carriage was climbing a steep hill. “We are going north?” she said.

  “We are. The other coach went south, to Zolensa, and I hope my wicked uncle chases it in person until he falls off the edge of the world.”

  “But where? Not back to Trenko?” Even much later in the year, crossing the pass in this contraption would be a feat. They would certainly need fresh horses. And they would have to go by Vamky, the traitor’s lair.

  Rubin uttered his strange chuckle again. “I hope not that far, but the Margrave did promise me support if this happened. No, I told you that Minhea is loyal. We shall turn the tables on the turncoat. Volpe can have the palace. We shall reign secure in the monastery!”

  “Wonderful!” she said, amazed at his confidence. This calm courage was a side of him she had never suspected. “Didn’t something like this happen in your grandfather’s time?”

  “Everything imaginable happened in his time. Don’t worry, my honeycake. All will be well.”

  Ruxandra had wakened. “Here, woman,” the Duke said. “The boy needs attention. Take him…What?—”

  The carriage had picked up some speed again, but suddenly horses screamed, the coachman hauled on the brake, gravel scrabbled under locked wheels, the whole world tilted. Johanna cried out, reaching for her child just as Rubin fell on top of her, and then baby and nurse on top of them both. The carriage rolled upside down, fell, crashed into trees, rolled again, bounced, and burst apart, spilling its contents down the cliff face.

  • 7 •

  After a long age the sky began brightening over the ranges to the east. The world was dark and wet and very cold. Johanna had no memory of being thrown clear of the wreck. Either she had caught hold of Frederik before it happened or she had found him later in the darkness, but she remembered doing neither. She was huddled against a spindly pine tree, which was all that kept her from rolling down a very steep slope and vanishing over the lip of the cliff. Frederik was asleep in her arms, wrapped in a filthy, grass-covered blanket. He had mud and blood on his face, but he was breathing. She had too many aches to think of trying to catalogue them. A trail of snapped trees and wreckage and dead horses above her showed where the carriage had rolled down the hill. Its remains were jammed against a tree some distance below her, with one wheel and a dead horse suspended over the final drop to the Asch, rumbling in its canyon.

  She must find help. It took her a while to work that out. She had lost her shoes. She was shivering uncontrollably. The familiar skyline told her that she was not far from Vamky monastery, on the west side of the river, downstream from Olden Bridge. She must be close to Fadrenschloss, but she would have to walk there in bare feet, carrying Frederik.

  Before she reached the road, she heard voices shouting. She did not bother to reply, because her son was already making all the noise necessary. Two men came clambering down through the scrub and trees. One young, one older. Father and son. Woodcutters. Help. The old one took Frederik, the younger lifted her into his arms as easily.

  Later she was in a cottage, women tending her, more people, and eventually even the Baron, huge and haggard, his face pale as his beard. Just a few bruises, she insisted. They told her she had several cuts, the worst being on her leg, but she would not scar anywhere visible. They had both been very lucky. Frederik had escaped almost completely. Infants’ bones bend like green twigs. She gathered others had not been so lucky. There was something important she ought to be telling the Baron. It escaped her.

  Ernst sent for his coach and packed her in it. Frederik expressed his feelings about coaches very forcefully, but was overruled.

  By the time they reached Fadrenschloss she was starting to come out of her daze and the horror was rising in her throat like vomit. The Baron fancied himself as an herbalist. He brought out his mother’s old box of simples and concocted a draft with the impact of a woodsman’s ax.

  They put her to sleep in her old bed.

  At first light Frederik’s wails triggered her maternal instincts and wakened her. She found him in the next room before the woman sleeping with him had opened her eyes. The Baron had left orders that he was to be called as soon as Johanna awoke.

  When she had soothed the boy back to sleep, she joined the old man beside a pinewood fire in the solar. There she sipped mulled ale from a silver goblet and gobbled bread, cheese, and sausage as if she had not eaten for a month. She had a wonderfully swollen face, several bandages, and enough aches to torture an army, but no time to care about any of them. The old man looked as if he had not slept at all.

  “It is good to have you back, Johanna,” he said. “I wish the circumstances were happier.”

  “Me too.”

  So much for pleasantries. Ernst seemed at a loss for words, and she did not want to speak at all.

  He sighed. “Are you well enough to talk, Your Highness? I don’t want to bully you, but there are…there are important things we must discuss.”

  She nodded. “I’m still shaky, but please go ahead.”

  He clawed at his beard as he did when he was worried. “Tell me if it becomes too much of a strain!”

  “I will. I don’t remember much about the accident.”

  “Yesterday you were babbling, not making sense. Petre and his son found you climbing back up the slope, carrying the Marquis. The body of the driver was near the road. He had been thrown clear and crushed when the coach was dragged over him. We also found an elderly woman in servant garb. Dead too, I’m afraid. Who else was in the coach?”

  “Only my husband. Lord Volpe launched his coup, just as you predicted. Rubin woke me and told me we must fly at once. And we did.”

  The Baron grunted and tore his whiskers again.

  “Where is Rubin?” she demanded. Why had she not asked that before?

  “We found no other bodies, my dear.”

  The cliff! Her husband. The duke. Frederik’s father and protector.

  Von Fader’s flabby face had taken on the stern expression she remembered from watching him sit in judgment here in Fadrenschloss. Having right of justice over his tenants and vassals, he took pride in being an honest and impartial judge, punctilious in collecting all the facts before rendering a verdict, even ruling against his own best interests when law or custom required it—something most lords never did.

  “Johanna, my dear, are you certain that the man in the coach was your husband?”

  Such a question must be a joke. She resisted laughter because laughter would be easier to start than end. “Of course I am certain, my lord! How could I not be? He had known about the plot for weeks, he said, and had made plans. Alas, it seems chance favored Volpe. He has won an
d I must flee into exile with Frederik. This is what you are saying?”

  Von Fader shook his head. “It is more complicated than that. First of all, chance was not involved. The crash was no accident, but deliberate murder.”

  “No!”

  “I beg Your Highness to hear the evidence before you say that!” Sometimes she was the Grand Duchess and sometimes just the child he had fostered, the years between forgotten. He leaned sideways to haul on a bell rope. “That is a very dangerous corner for anyone who does not know it. The bend is unexpected and the surface slopes outward. Mud washes across it and makes it slick. That can be turned to our advantage. Enter!”

  The heavily wrinkled monkey face that peered in around the door belonged to Manfred, the Baron’s forester, of whom it was said that he could follow a crow’s tracks across a lake. He must have been awaiting the call. Johanna knew him of old and tried to smile at him, but smiling hurt.

  “Close the door,” the Baron growled. “Tell Her Highness what you saw.”

  Clutching his hat with both hands, the forester said nervously, “It had been raining, Your Royal Highness, and then stopped. Marks were very clear. Someone had put a wagon there, blocking the road. Driver didn’t have a chance.”

  Wagon? She said nothing, refusing to accept the implications.

  He squirmed under her stare. “A wagon and a man on a horse, Your Royal Highness. They came from the north. The horseman led the way coming, and when they left, he led the way again.”

  “They left after the crash?” the Baron said.

  “Yes, my lord. His marks were both under and over the coach tracks. The wagon stood there quite a while, waiting. Lot of drip marks.”

  “And his horse?” the Baron prompted.

  “Very big horse. A warhorse, likely, a destrier. It still wore winter shoes, with cleats.”

  Von Fader studied his former ward, waiting to see if she were taking this in.

  “The Brotherhood?”