by Dave Duncan
Hamish sighed and went back to his book. He was stretched out on his belly in the ruins of a cellar with the stars above him and too many ants and sharp pebbles underneath. The ruin was ancient, not part of the recent devastation, and although it was an uncomfortable place to camp, it provided shelter for the fire—a very small fire, just enough to cast a little light on the pages of the book. No one would see it down in this hole, and in Aragon these days the wise traveler did not attract attention to himself.
The book was excessively dull for even his omnivorous tastes—everything he did not need to know about designing a formal garden for a chateau. Being written in langue d'oïl, northern French, it had no market value here, or he would have traded it away for food a long time ago, like everything else. His worldly possessions were down to the minimum needed for survival: tattered hose (if they tattered any more there would be very little point in wearing them at all), one equally ragged doublet, a shirt in quite disgusting condition, the remains of a straw hat that a donkey had chewed, buskins almost ready to fall apart, one thin blanket and a piece of rope to tie it, one leather water bottle with two leaks, one very small knife, a quarter staff, and a book. He owned a half share in a whetstone, a tinderbox, and a copper cup; everything else had been stolen or traded away for food. Toby still had the steel helmet he had won in Navarre, but only because it wouldn't fit anyone else's head—much like the book. They did not have a sword between them, or even a dagger, just staves, here in a land where strangers, especially foreigners, were liable to be shot on sight.
His stomach rumbled. Steak. Suet pudding with cream. A bowl of steaming oatmeal, well salted. Or roast pork? He had not seen a pig or a cow or a goat or even a habitable house for days. The rebels had burned crops and vineyards and cut down trees by the thousand, but even they could not reduce a fertile land to a total desert, so there were still pickings to be had. He had been living on onions and fruit. He hated oranges.
Back to the book. In his father's house were many books. Zits, but he was homesick! Homesick for books, for Ma and Pa, for Eric and Elsie, for soft rain and soft, peaty drinking water, and brown soil. Anything but this red, burned wilderness. He had left home to see the world. He had wanted to see life but had witnessed too much death. For three years he and Toby had been hunted by the Fiend's agents—Brittany, France, Aquitaine, Navarre, Castile, and now Aragon.
The puny fire shot up a few sparks. Having nothing to cook, Hamish had claimed a fire would be a defense against the feral dogs prowling around. Toby had agreed solemnly, although he had known perfectly well that Hamish just wanted to read. Somewhere not too far away, a dog howled. He shivered. Nasty noise! Those brutes hunted in packs. They were dangerous. His stomach rumbled a surly reply. Back to the book.
Then a man cried out. Hamish was on his feet in an instant with his staff in his hand and no recollection of picking it up.
"Toby! Toby?"
Toby wasn't there. His blanket was, and his staff, so he could not have gone far.
Hamish scrambled over the wall, out of the cellar. The moan came again. He headed toward the sound, feeling his way carefully with his staff until his eyes adjusted to the starlight. Another groan ...
Toby was a few yards off—flat on his back with his hands above his head and his eyes shut—not asleep, then, because he always slept facedown, which he claimed was all Hamish's father had ever taught him in school. He appeared to be unconscious. Again?
Demons! For three years Hamish's recurring nightmare had been to wonder what he would do if anything ever happened to Toby—anything permanent. Normally the big lunk seemed indestructible, but twice in the last few days he had passed out for no apparent reason.
"Toby! Wake up! Toby!" Sick with alarm, Hamish grabbed a shoulder and tried to shake him. Easier to shake an oak tree. He lay down and put an ear on the big man's chest and was reassured to hear a steady Dum ... Dum ... Dum ... He was alive, anyway.
"Uh?" Toby said. A huge shiver ran through him. His eyes opened. "Hamish?"
"Who d'you expect, you big ape—Baron Oreste?"
Toby frowned and did not answer.
"What's wrong?"
He winced. "Cramps. Can you move my arms?" He grunted with pain as Hamish took his arms and totaled them to a normal position at his sides. "Now help me up." That was easier asked than done, for he weighed tons, and he gasped a few more times as Hamish heaved him into a sitting position.
"What by all the spirits is wrong?"
"Told you—cramps."
"Why? Why cramps? What happened?"
Gingerly Toby raised one knee. "I just spent a night in a dungeon."
Hamish discovered that his fingers were wet. There was blood on them.
It made no sense at all. Back at the fire they inspected Toby's scraped and bleeding wrists. The blood had run up his arms to the elbows. His hose were bloody, too, and when he removed them, he displayed ankles almost as bad. Worse, though, the cloth was only blood-soaked, not shredded like the skin underneath. How had he managed that? It had to be gramarye.
"It's the hob's doing!" Hamish said, and was annoyed at the shrillness in his voice. "Why is it mad at you now?"
"Don't think it is. Tell you in a minute. I was going to the spring. I had the water bottles."
Hamish went back out to find the water bottles. He took them to the spring beside the burned cottage. As he was filling them he raised his head and sniffed. Roast pork? Impossible! He went back to the cellar and watched in frustration as Toby washed the blood from his wounds.
"We should bandage those!" But they had nothing to use for bandages. They could tear up a shirt, but their doublets were made of coarse hessian that would scrape intolerably in the heat of the day.
"They'll be all right," Toby said. "Just scrapes. Better to leave them uncovered. Then I can pick the maggots off. I told you these visions were more vivid than your average daydream."
Hamish did not believe in the visions. He thought they were delusions. "What did you see this time?" He added more twigs to the sputtering little fire.
For a dawdling moment it seemed he would get no answer, then Toby said, "Barcelona. The water there tastes terrible."
"What happened to your wrists?"
"Manacles. I was in jail." He peered up at the stars. "How long was I gone? How many pages?"
"Not many. I wasn't reading much. Ten minutes at most."
"I was in jail a lot longer than that. Look, I'd better wash these clothes before the blood dries any more."
Hamish took the hose from him. "I'll do it. And your shirt, too."
Normally any hint of mothering provoked the big man to bull-headed stubbornness, but this time he muttered thanks and meekly stripped. Still moving as if every joint hurt, he stretched out on his blanket and covered himself. "I'll tell you when you get back." He must be in much worse shape than he was admitting.
Hamish headed off to the spring. Three times in a week Toby had passed out cold and wakened up babbling about visions. The first time he had talked of a tent in the woods, a knight, and beautiful lady. Then a man in a city street. Now what? He thought the visions were prophetic, but that was plain impossible. Since leaving Scotland Hamish had read every book about spirits, demons, gramarye, and hexing he had been able to lay his hands on. He had spoken with every acolyte who would spare him a minute. He knew as much about spiritual powers as anyone except a true adept could ever know, and one of the things he had learned was that seeing the future was impossible. Not even the greatest tutelary could ever foresee the future.
Not visions—delusions! Madness.
As he was rinsing the garments, his belly rumbled again, louder than ever. A month to Barcelona? How many oranges could a man eat in another month? Oranges and sometimes dates, although most of the palms had been cut down, and onions, and ... and roast pork?
Demons! His mouth was watering like the Fillan in spate. He scrambled all the way to his feet and sniffed. He was not imagining it. Someone was roasting p
ork somewhere upwind, and not very far away, either.
He went back to the cellar, laid the wet shirt and hose on a prickly bush to dry, and then sat down cross legged. "Tell me. They hung you up by your hands?"
Toby was sitting up, wearing his doublet, wrapped in his blanket. "Nothing so crude. Baron Oreste has more subtle methods." He grinned more surely this time, more like his own self.
"Oreste? He's in Barcelona?"
"He was in my dream."
"That was no dream!" Hamish squeaked. "You mustn't go to Barcelona if he's there!"
Toby frowned and looked mulish, which he did very well. "I suppose that would be charging the bull, wouldn't it? Does this mean that you believe in my visions now?"
Oh, demons! "No, I don't believe in visions, not yours, not anyone's." The only thing Toby's visions might mean was that the hob was finally driving him out of his mind, and Father Lachlan had warned him of that years ago. Or the hob itself was going crazy, locked up in his mind. It wouldn't make much difference, would it?
"Then there's no problem!" Toby smirked at outwitting Hamish Campbell. "No reason not to go to Barcelona? We can talk about it in the morning. Nice town, Barcelona. Roomy dungeons, all the latest torturing machines. I didn't see you there. You didn't miss much."
"Tell me about the second vision."
"I've told you a dozen times."
"Tell me again!"
"You sound just like your father. You want me to pull down my britches and bend over, domine?"
"Is that the only way to get your attention?"
Toby smiled ruefully. "Sorry. We were walking along that street in Valencia, the one I pointed out to you the next day. It wasn't much of a street, because all the houses had all been burned. You saw that. What you saw in reality was just what I saw in the vision, except there was a ragged old man there. We talked with him."
"You don't remember what we said?"
"No. He seemed friendly enough. After a while we went off with him, and he led us through a doorway. That was all. Then I was sitting on the trail feeling giddy, and you were asking if I was all right."
"And when we reached Valencia, you found that street, but there was no one there."
"Yes."
"So these ... these dreams you're having ... they're not real, Toby! They don't show you the future. They can't. That isn't possible! What you're having are fits of déjà vu. It's not uncommon to see a place and think you've been there before. Everyone does, sometimes. I do."
"Not like this." Toby held out a thick wrist, torn and scabbed with blood.
"It's the hob playing tricks on you."
"Then I wish it would stop. Now I'm going to go to sleep. So should you." He eased himself down, moving like a very old man. He rolled over.
"Toby. Someone's roasting pork. I could smell it. Upwind. Not far."
Longdirk heaved himself up on one elbow, grunting at the pain. He fixed Hamish with a dangerous stare. "I smelled it too."
"Well?" Hamish pleaded. "They might share?" Zits, but he was hungry for a decent meal!
"Not me. That's what I saw in my first vision, Hamish. Or smelled, I should say. There was a fire in an orange grove with something being roasted on a spit. I'm not going near it!"
"What?" Hamish swallowed a mouthful of drool. "Why not? I know it's a risk, but if we warn them we're coming and we're not armed —"
"I did. Last time. Listen, I'll tell you again exactly what I saw. There's a fire, obviously, and a tent. Made of cloth, blue and gold. I think there were horses, but I'm not quite sure about that. You were with me, and it was a night just like this one: warm, starry, very little wind. In the vision I shouted to warn whoever was there, and they came out of the tent, two of them, a gentleman and a lady, very well dressed. He had a green and gold jerkin on, she was in red and white. The man called to us to come forward. We walked forward, me in the lead, and just as I neared the fire, something frightened me."
"What?"
"I don't remember! All I know is that I shouted and turned to run. Then I ran into you, and that was all. I woke up." He grinned menacingly. "You go and explore if you want to. You don't believe in my visions, so you've got no reason not to, right? I'm in no state to go anywhere, but if you feel like bringing me back a juicy rib or two, I won't refuse."
Hamish glared back at him suspiciously. "How far did you go tonight?"
"Just to where you found me, I'm sure. I wouldn't have gone on without my staff, would I? Go and see if my vision was true."
Tobias Longdirk was not the only man who could be stubborn. "Very well!" Hamish said. "I'm going."
"Wind's from the northwest. Take your bearings from the stars. Bon appétit!" Toby smirked and lay down again.
Hamish took his staff and went to the wall.
"Hamish?"
"What?"
"Be careful!"
"I can look after myself," Hamish snapped. So he could, by most men's standards, because Toby had taught him. Toby was in a class by himself when it came to fighting, but that didn't mean Hamish Campbell was a pushover.
2
Beyond the spring Hamish came to the start of an orange grove, just as Toby had predicted. Toby could have seen that in daylight.
The trees made things tricky, and there was no clear path. He went slowly, being extra cautious. Creeping up on anyone was dangerous in war-ravaged Aragon. People slept with their bows strung nowadays. He was a little surprised that Longdirk was letting him do this—not exactly an unwelcome surprise, but an uneasy-making surprise. Toby was treating him as an equal now, no longer the boy he had been when they began their adventuring together. Although he was full-sized, or almost so, and a seasoned traveler with smatterings of five or six languages, he was still a little disbelieving every time he drank from a pool and saw the fuzzy fringe of beard around his face. He would never admit it to anyone, of course.
Nor would he admit that he was now scared spit-less. Creeping up on strangers in the dark like this was not prudent. Normally he would have tried to talk Toby out of trying it. He would certainly never have volunteered to do it himself, alone. He couldn't go back now, of course. But if something jumped out at him, he knew he would head for Longdirk fast as prunes through a goose.
There were other things moving in the woods. He paused a couple of times to listen, but when he stopped they stopped, and all he achieved was a higher level of funk. They were probably those feral dogs, attracted by the smell, just as he was. Feral dogs and feral Scotsmen …
There was no way to go quickly in the dark, even knowing that the roast pork might be all eaten before he arrived. The ground was littered with dead branches, the air full of live ones at head-height. Don't trip in the tangle of weeds, which ... ouch! ... included thistles.
Yes, a faint light twinkling in the darkness ahead! The mouth-watering odor was stronger. Not very far at all, and Hamish had a nervy vision of the men who had built that fire creeping around in the trees to find his fire at the same time as he was creeping ... no, his was downwind and it didn't have any pork on it.
He began planning what he would say. He would start by telling whoever was there that they were in no danger, of course, so that they didn't start banging away with muskets. Then admit to being a foreigner but not part of the Fiend's army. The delicious aroma of roasting meat was making him slaver like a dog. He eased through the grove toward the yellow flicker, keeping eyes peeled for guards or sentries, but the fire was a small one, and there was only the one. He couldn't see any people near it, only trees. The smoke stung his eyes.
Time to warn them he was coming.
"Friends! Friends! Good evening! I am alone. I come in peace. I mean no harm!" He used Castilian, because his Valencian and Catalan were still as thin as the seat of his hose.
Nothing happened.
He clattered his staff on branches and marched forward, shouting out the same message, over and over, with variations, adding a few words in Valencian. "Friends! I come in peace. I seek only cha
rity and companionship."
The fire was quite close now. It still seemed deserted, but campfires did not build themselves. His scalp prickled. He shouted again.
Suddenly he saw the tent beyond it, exactly as Toby had described, gold and blue stripes. He stopped dead. How could he reconcile that with prophecy not being possible? The flap lifted. They came out, a man and a woman, young and handsome, both beautifully dressed. The man wore green hose, a green and gold jerkin padded wide at the shoulders, a shining cloth-of-gold cloak with fur trim. A sword dangled at his belt. The lady's gown was snowy white, slashed with crimson on the full skirts and puffed sleeves, cut low at the neck over a sheer chemise. Her hair was hidden by a red and black mantellina trimmed with braid and velvet that hung to her shoulders. What were a prince and princess doing here in the woods with no attendants?
At least Hamish couldn't see any attendants. Perhaps there were other people or even horses in the darkness beyond the tent. Hard to say—he was too fascinated by these gracious nobles.
"Who approaches?" shouted the man in Castilian. He had a hand on his sword.
"One hungry traveler, senor! I am unarmed and come in peace."
"Come forward so we may see you." The man gestured to his lady to keep back while he advanced to meet the stranger.
Hamish walked forward until he entered the firelight. He bowed.
The nobleman smiled.
Then the fire roared up, much larger than before. Hamish jumped and looked toward it. The source of the delectable odor was a human torso with the remains of a head still attached. It had been skewered lengthwise by a rod about eight feet long, supported on a metal tripod at each end. The underside was charred and the top raw. There were remains of half a dozen other corpses scattered around under the trees.
Hamish turned back to the handsome caballero, but he had gone. The tent and the beautiful maiden had vanished also. The thing standing in front of him, leering at him, was a demon.
