The Years of Longdirk- The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  "Next wish, Longdirk?"

  "To be free of my hex, or demon, or whatever it is."

  "That means Glasgow. And after that?"

  The ox was being driven. "I don't think Valda's dead." Mindful of Meg's reproach, Toby added, "That's why I can't accept your offer, my lord. If I stay here, she'll find me, and I may not be the only one who suffers then." That was true, if only part of the truth.

  "It would have been tactful to say so sooner," Rory murmured. "I told you I'm grateful. So what do you want? What will you be when you grow up, Little Toby? Soldier? Farmhand? Miner? Shepherd? Highwayman?"

  The barn door closed. He said the words he'd never spoken aloud before. "I'm going to be a prizefighter." He saw Meg shudder. "It's all I've got! I'm big, and I can box. I can't do anything else. There's good money to be made in the ring in England."

  Even Rory seemed disappointed. "There's also gambling, and cheating, and criminals. A very low crowd."

  "Making a living by hurting people?" Meg said. "Breaking bones, smashing faces? And what do they do to you? In a few years you'll be a pug-ugly, shambling hulk with no brains at all!"

  "Note that I refrain from making funny remarks here," Rory said airily. "Prizefighting sponsors I cannot produce. The best I can do is to refer you to Sir Malcolm. He has some of the finest trainers in Scotland. No boxing instructors, so far as I know, but you can brush up on your holds and throws. They need work."

  He rose, graceful as a swallow. "Come, Miss Campbell. We must leave the lads to their meal and go see what Grandmother has provided for us. Our solar is greatly praised, but your beauty will transform it." He offered her a hand. "Hamish—you want books? I'll show you the library."

  Hamish sprang to his feet, food forgotten. "That would be wonderful, my lord!"

  "There's about a thousand volumes, I'm told. Reading is not my favorite pastime. Help yourself. You, Knuckles, have to keep under cover. Master Stringer is another idiot, but stay out of his way if you value your cervical vertebrae."

  Toby's nails dug into his palms. "For how long?"

  "Until the storm blows over and the boats can leave. Then we'll ship you and Father Lachlan off down to Dumbarton. It's a good idea to let a hue and cry die down—people always assume after a week or two that the fugitive has fled to foreign parts, and they forget. Do keep your mouth shut."

  Rory nodded a mocking farewell and departed, with Hamish tagging at his heels like a puppy and Meg on his arm in her courtly gown.

  Damn him! Damn him! Damn him!

  6

  Toby was trapped. Even if he was allowed to leave the castle, he would never escape from Campbell country against Rory's will. In any case, he could not desert Meg, although she had not asked for his help and probably never would. He must just accept the master at his word and wait for the Atlantic to stop throwing gales at the coast. Then, if Rory were to be trusted, he could risk his neck in Dumbarton, seeking an exorcism at the sanctuary.

  So he had time to kill. The Campbells were respectful but distant; he must not talk politics with them and he had nothing else to discuss. Meg and Rory and Father Lachlan could float amid the gentry, hobnobbing with Master Stringer and dining with Her Ladyship. Hamish would be happy to eat, drink, breathe, live, and sleep books. Not Toby! Reading had always been torment for him, one plodding word at a time.

  Much as he disliked admitting a debt to Rory, the idea of wrestling lessons had a strong appeal. The next morning, he accosted Sir Malcolm.

  The castellan scratched his red beard as if perplexed, but a twinkle in his eye hinted he had already been warned. "Just wrestling? How about a few of the other manly arts as well? Fencing? Musketry? We can't do much on archery or horsemanship without going outdoors. That's true of artillery, too."

  "All of them!"

  "Then all of them you shall have. If you'll just come with me, Master Toby." Sir Malcolm led him upstairs.

  Toby followed, wondering if he had been overly brash. He might have chopped down more than he could saw up. "This is very kind of you, Castellan."

  "Not at all. Good for the lads. I always tell them that instructing's one of the best ways of learning, because it shows you what you thought you knew and don't really. This is the armory. The man with the shoulders is our wrestling champion, Neal Big, and that antiquated spider over there is Gavin the Grim, who can still chop any man into sausage filling in the twinkle of an eye."

  Thereupon Sir Malcolm set the entire Campbell war-band onto Toby, or so it seemed. Baby-faced recruits no older than Hamish knew more about swords and guns than he did, while the old-timers knew more about everything than he could ever dream of knowing. Every man in the castle could teach him something and seemed eager to do so. He intrigued them—he was a hero, a fugitive, and a baby giant. They came at him in relays. The day became a blur of locks and throws . . . longbow and crossbow . . . pistol and musket . . . saber, rapier, and short sword ... matchlock and wheel lock.

  He soon realized that they were making a game of it, seeing who could work him to exhaustion. Fine—just let them try! They couldn't, of course. He had the stamina of a mule, always ready to go again as soon as he caught his breath. With blades he won polite praise and a few heady compliments about being a natural athlete, but he lacked the speed ever to be a top fencer. He could already handle a quarterstaff, and he took to wrestling like a bat to bugs. Along about what felt like noon, he realized that night was falling already. By the time he retired to the little tower room he shared with Hamish, the candles were burning low and his roommate lay fast asleep, flat on his back with an open book spread on his chest.

  Morning dawned in one solid ache, but the first ten minutes on the mat with Neal Big limbered him up again.

  That afternoon, as he hammered short swords with Gavin, he observed the dumpy shape of Father Lachlan perched on an empty powder keg in a corner of the armory. When the fencing paused for a breather, Toby trotted over and dropped on one knee beside him, panting.

  The acolyte beamed at him over his spectacles. "From the breadth of your grin, I take it you are enjoying yourself, my son?"

  He nodded, that being easier than speaking.

  "No bad dreams?"

  Head shake.

  "You are certainly working hard enough. Do you know, Tobias, from one cause or another, I don't think I have ever seen you totally dry?"

  Toby chuckled. "What . . . you mean when . . . told Rory... I might... cause terrible damage?"

  "Ah." The little man frowned. "I am concerned. You have displayed superhuman powers, but they are not under your conscious control, are they? You don't will them to happen. So far they have been restricted to effecting miraculous escapes, but can we count on that always being the case? Suppose Sir Malcolm and his men try to arrest you?"

  That was an uncomfortable thought. He wiped his forehead with an arm. "I might hurt them?"

  "Perhaps. You might just disappear out of their reach, or you might haul down the castle on their heads! I don't know, and neither do you." Father Lachlan pushed his glasses up his nose. "Listen to this, as a theory: Lady Valda attempted to put a hex on you, and something went wrong. The arts she practices are very dangerous, so that's not too surprising. As I told you, she cannot compel you directly. She would order a demon to make you do whatever it was she wanted of you. She might have included instructions to the demon to protect you from outside interference, right? And somehow those orders have taken precedence, so that the demon defends you even from her? Frankly, Tobias, I don't believe you are in any great danger from the sentence of death that has been passed on you—but I think anyone who tries to carry it out may be very surprised indeed!"

  There were flaws in that theory, surely. Where did "Susie" come into it?

  The old man saw his hesitation. "It is only a suggestion, and I admit objections. Demonic powers have a limited range. If the demon she invoked was imprisoned in the jewel on the dagger, then she must have planned to give you the dagger to carry with you—but she di
dn't, did she? So where is the demon? How does it stay close to you?"

  "I don't know, Father."

  "Neither do I! But I still believe that we must get you to a sanctuary as soon as possible, before something bad happens. Now I see that poor old man is waiting for you to stop shirking."

  " 'Poor old man?' Gavin? He's got more stamina than a billy goat!" Toby went back to fencing.

  The next day he was pleased to see that the weather was worse than ever. He had begun to worry about Meg, wondering why she was not coming to see him, as he could not seek her out. He determined to ask Hamish, but he did not see Hamish all day, either.

  The two of them shared a small circular room at the top of one of the towers. It was drafty and furnished with nothing but two straw mattresses, but none the worse for that. That night, as he was turning his plaid into a blanket, he heard a sleepy murmur of greeting, the contented purr of a bookworm who has spent a whole day digesting books and expects to spend more days doing so.

  "Awake?"

  "Mmph!" Meaning no.

  "Hamish, do you know how they corn gunpowder?"

  "Mmph!" Meaning yes.

  Toby rolled himself into a bundle. "Do you know how an arrow is tuned to a bow?"

  There was a pause. Then a slightly more alert boy said, "Yes, again. Why? Why do you want to know?"

  "I don't. I know already." He stared miserably at the darkness.

  Hamish misunderstood, which was not surprising. He yawned extensively. "Go ahead and tell me if you want to, but I read about it once."

  "I don't want to tell you."

  A note of irritation. "You woke me up to tell me you don't want to tell me how an arrow is tuned to a bow? Have you been planning this for long, or did it just come to you on the spur of the moment?"

  "Sorry. Have you seen Meg?"

  "Not to speak to. She went walking with Lady Lora this afternoon, when the sun came out. I've heard her singing in the hall." Yawn. "She's fine."

  "Oh. Good. I was just wondering. Sorry to wake you. Go to sleep."

  "Sleep, is it? Go to sleep? Now? After you start acting..."

  "Start acting what?"

  "Oh, nothing. G'night, Toby."

  The room was small. Toby leaned a long arm across and took an ear between finger and thumb. "Do you want this? It feels loose."

  "Owww!"

  "Should I pull and see?"

  "All right! Let go! Thank you. What do I have to talk about?"

  "You were about to tell me about noticing me acting strange."

  "Oh, I would never be that crazy!" Straw rustled and Hamish chuckled from the relative safety of the far side of his pallet. "I've hardly seen you since we got here! But ... why did you ask about corning and the arrow thing?"

  "They're interesting," Toby said stubbornly.

  "But it's not like you to find 'why' sorts of things interesting. I'm the scholar; you're a doer." He fell silent for a moment, then turned a white blur of a face in the dark. "That's what you meant, isn't it?"

  "Yes," Toby admitted. "They tell me things—and I remember them! I even care! I never did before. Your pa used to say I was the worst student he'd ever had."

  Hamish laughed aloud. "That's a ridiculous understatement! I'll never forget my first day in school! I must have been five. You would have been about eight, right? I know you were the biggest boy in the school even then, and that day Pa was trying to teach you the four-times table. I knew it already, of course—I could read when I was three—and I couldn't believe a boy as big as you could be finding it so difficult. Neither could Pa! I had never seen him really angry before. I hardly knew him. I was weeping because my pa was behaving like that— screaming and yelling at you, cuffing you, beating you. All the kids in the village were sitting there, waiting to be taught, and he spent more time on you than on all of the rest of us together, but I don't think you knew one more fact at the end of the morning than you had when you walked in late, and you'd had at least a dozen strokes of the birch."

  "Only a dozen? I always felt I'd wasted the day if I couldn't drive him up to twenty." He was bragging, of course, but not by much. "Five years of struggle! I kept hoping he'd admit I was unteachable and expel me."

  "But he knew you were faking, so he wouldn't. I don't know how you stood it, though."

  "I knew how he used to go home and weep—Eric told me. That kept me going—knowing that he wept and I never did. I still sleep facedown, even now, just out of habit."

  "When you left school, Pa said you'd won, he hadn't taught you a thing."

  That was gratifying! "Oh, he got a few facts into me," Toby said modestly. English, for example—even as a child, he'd known that English mattered, so he had let himself be taught it. That was what the school was for, why the government decreed it. "But I soon managed to forget them. Now look at me! I'm remembering things! I'm learning things! That's not like me! I must be hexed."

  "I don't think it's that," Hamish said sleepily. "You never wanted to know what Pa was trying to tell you. Anytime you learned something, you felt you'd failed, right? But what they're telling you here are things you want to know. So when you learn something, you feel you've won. That makes all the difference in the world! I'm interested in almost anything, especially if I can read it in a book—all 'cept family. Anytime Ma tries to teach me her cousinries, I turn stupid. Stupid as Toby Strangerson, she says."

  "Really? Is that what they say?" It would be nice to think he still had that reputation in the schoolteacher's household after all these years.

  "It's what everyone says. Your ignorance is a byword in the glen, big man! But I think you're just very choosy in what you want to learn. You're not stupid; you only learn what you want to know."

  Toby said, "Mmph!" into the pallet. That was a farfetched notion. It would be very odd to think of himself as not stupid. A few moments later, Hamish said something more, but he was too far away to hear....

  The next morning the rain had stopped, but a northwester was raising whitecaps on the loch. Sir Malcolm suggested riding lessons. Toby exchanged plaid for trews and jerkin and accompanied him to the stables. By lunchtime, he was clearing five-foot gates.

  "Totally fearless," the castellan said.

  Toby hadn't the heart to tell him it was just lack of imagination. There were advantages to being stupid.

  When he hobbled into the mess hall, he saw Meg sitting at a table with half a dozen of the younger guards buzzing around her like flies at a cowpat. She was smiling tautly up at them: Pretty Will and Iain of Clachan and others. Toby strode over at a moderate gallop and came up behind them. He stumbled into Will, jabbed an elbow in Iain's kidneys, and accidentally trod on Robb Long's toe.

  "Sorry," he remarked. "I'm not usually so clumsy."

  They took a thoughtful look at his face and made their apologies and went off to another table. He sat down.

  "It's good to see you, Meg. . . . What are you glaring like that for?"

  "I am not glaring!"

  Oh, yes, she was.

  Her dress was much simpler than the fantastic court gown he had seen her in before, just plain green wool with pleats and no sleeves. Her hair was back in braids. She was a country lass again—but oh, she was lovely!

  While he was out of breath, a great sweaty cart horse. He was also tongue-tied. "I've been worried about you."

  "Oh? Well, you knew where I was, didn't you?"

  "Yes, but... Well, I have to stay in the barracks."

  "There are a thousand pages. You could have written a note if you wanted to speak with me."

  "Never thought of it."

  "What are you worrying about?"

  He was so pleased to see her—why was she looking at him like that? "Just wondering if you were all right."

  "All right?" Meg said with a shrill laugh. "All right? Living like a lady in a castle? How could I not be all right? The only thing that isn't all right is that one day I'll have to wake up and be the tanner's daughter again and go back to scraping hides."


  "Enjoy it while it lasts!" He was. "Is Rory behaving himself?"

  "Oh, that's it? Lord Gregor is a perfect gentleman."

  Which was exactly what he was afraid of. She had turned her head away, but he saw a wash of pink on her cheek.

  "What's wrong? I mean, if there's something troubling you, I..." I what? He was as much of a prisoner as she was. He couldn't do anything.

  "Toby," she whispered, suddenly sounding not at all like Meg Tanner. "He says he loves me!"

  "You don't believe him, I hope?"

  "No other man has ever told me that."

  Oh, zits! He leaned his elbows on the table and put his forehead on his palms so he had to look down and wouldn't stare at her. "Meg," he told his biceps, "dear Meg! I can make a lot of money prizefighting in England. I'll save it all. In a few years—before I get the few brains I've got knocked out of me—I'll come back to Scotland and rent a few acres, and buy a horse and a plow. Then I'll find me a girl, and marry her, and make her very happy. I've never had family. I want people to love: a wife and lots of children. I would be the best husband and father I could be. I'm strong. I could do the work of three men and prosper. And I won't be anyone's man, except my wife's, and I'll always be true to her. But at the moment I can't ask any girl to believe in that dream."

  "How many years? Five?"

  He looked up. Why were her eyes so shiny? Did she want him to talk of love? He didn't even know what friendship was, let alone love.

  "At least," he said. "Maybe ten. Sorry—I'm not the one for the fancy speeches."

  "What do you mean by that, Toby Strangerson?"

  "I mean he's a glib-tongued rascal. He was brought up at court, and you know what sort of morals they have! You told me he was devious yourself. He's out to trap you. He'll try to ... I mean, he'll talk you into . . . You don't know anything about him!"

  She tossed her head, snapping braids like whips. "Yes, I do! I know he's a gentleman, which is more than I know about you. He's a courteous, educated—"