The Years of Longdirk- The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  3

  During his last few hours in the baron's dungeon—they might have been around midday or midnight for all he had been able to tell—Toby had started falling asleep, and for once falling had been the appropriate word. Time and again he had awakened with a sickening jar, tearing his wrists on the manacles and bruising his back against the wall. His shoulders still ached as if his arms had been pulled from their sockets.

  Nevertheless, the moment Hamish disappeared over the wall he lurched up and grabbed his hose from the bush. He hauled them on, and fortunately the wet cloth clung to him well enough that he could trust them not to fall off, so he left his doublet where it lay. He pushed his feet into his buskins, grabbed up his staff, and followed Hamish, veering to the left to move parallel to him and confident that he was making a lot less noise.

  Hamish could argue all he liked that there was no such thing as prophecy, but those three visions had been utterly convincing. Three times Toby had found himself somewhere he could not possibly be, and yet sights, sounds, smells, and in the last case sheer agony, had all compelled belief. The hob used him as a mount to ride around and see the world, and it cared for him much less than a man would care for his horse. It was stupid, childlike, and treacherous, but it had never played this sort of joke on him before.

  Certainly the visions were not exact prophecies. The street in Valencia had turned out as he had foreseen it, a litter of rubble between burned out buildings, but the man he had expected was absent. Hamish seemed to be constitutionally incapable of disbelieving anything he had read in a book, but if he now stumbled upon the tent and its occupants as Toby had described them, then even he might have to change his mind. Then he might be able to think up an explanation, for the teacher's son was a lot smarter than big, dumb Toby Longdirk.

  Hamish was still creeping gently along through the trees like a stampeding herd of buffalo, although Toby could see a twinkle of firelight ahead already. Be fair! Not many men would make less noise. Hamish spent every spare minute reading and thus was an invaluable source of information. Toby never read. He preferred to practice useful skills like fencing, marksmanship, wrestling—and stalking. In the middle of this smug self-praise he stepped on something squishy and recoiled so fast he almost fell.

  The revolting stench told him it must be a corpse. Too small to be a horse or cow. Goat? Sheep? He was about to move around it when something reflected the starlight. He poked with his staff and concluded it was a steel helmet. Gagging, he stooped and forced himself to explore further. Slime, maggots ... The man must have been dead for weeks. He found the prize he was hoping for, a sword. He wondered if the hob had guided him to it, then dismissed the idea as absurd. Any stray dog was smarter than the hob. Still, a sword would be very useful if he was about to encounter what he feared.

  He wiped his hands on the grass and rose. Hamish was shouting in Castilian, hailing the camp. Trailing his quarterstaff and carrying the sword, Toby moved faster, heading straight for the fire. Even without the vision he would have been suspicious of this lonely campfire. Only a strong, well-armed group would advertise its presence in this lawless, starving land, and there was no sign of such a camp here. In a few moments he was close enough to see Hamish through the trees, and his worst fears were realized.

  Hamish stood near the blaze, apparently quite oblivious of the revolting object suspended above it. He was smiling and talking, but the creature stalking him was obviously a demonic husk. Once it had been a woman, and there was probably some life left in it even yet, but when demons managed to possess people, few of them could resist the temptation to torture their hosts and enjoy their pain. The thing that had lured Hamish into its trap was naked and scarred with burns. It had torn out most of its hair and chewed on its own limbs. Its eyes were empty bloody sockets, but the demon would be able to see without them. Hamish Campbell was a dead man.

  Any army employed hexers, so it was not surprising that a war demon had escaped its controller and remained behind to add to the miseries of Aragon. But it had not yet detected Toby. With luck, he might be able to slip away unseen. His legs trembled with the urge to flee.

  It lifted its web of illusion from Hamish. He screamed, flailed his arms, and tried to run, but his feet did not move. He swung his staff. The demon cackled shrilly and wrested it out of his grip as if he were a child, then tossed it away. Then it clasped his face in the ravaged claws that were all it had left of its hands.

  "Pretty, pretty!" it gibbered. "The pretty man is welcome. You will find happiness here—food and love, yes?" It pulled Hamish's head down to its breast in mock affection.

  Hamish was doomed. It would take possession of this new victim and torture him also until he died and someone else walked into the trap—which happened first would matter little. In theory a creature and its resident demon could be slain with a blade through the heart, but that was only in theory. In practice the demon would freeze an attacker to the spot or throw lightning bolts at him or pick up a tree and hit him with it. No one except a hexer could creep up on a demon undetected, or evade its powers.

  Or possibly the hob. Capricious and unpredictable though it was, it did hate demons. Toby could not abandon his friend. If the hob would let him, he must try to do something.

  Hamish was squirming in the creature's grasp, retching at its stench, but powerless to avoid that odious mouth approaching his. The horror was about to kiss him, and even Toby's stomach turned over at the sight.

  "Stop!"

  The husk released Hamish and spun around, staring with festering blind sockets toward the sound.

  Toby took a step forward, and neither the demon nor the hob blocked him. "Stop, monster! Here is a larger, stronger body for you to claim. Let the boy go and take me." He blundered forward.

  "Idiot!" Hamish screamed. "Get out of here!"

  "Come!" the husk shrilled gleefully. It jiggled and waved its arms. Its torn dugs flapped up and down. "Two of you to play with! Much feasting and loving and pain! Come to my embrace, lover!"

  Toby felt it take control of his feet, rushing him forward to his doom. Hamish was still rooted to the spot, still cursing Toby's folly.

  The ghoul spread its arms to embrace its new victim. At the last moment Toby's arm brought up the sword. The hob must have revealed itself then, for the demon screamed, but it was too late to stop the blade. It slammed into the woman's chest, straight through the heart. Corpse and Hamish collapsed at the same moment. Toby felt his limbs returned to his own control and staggered, grabbing a branch to support himself.

  His hose dropped around his knees, and he started to laugh.

  Even after he had managed to choke down the laughter it was a few moments before he could do more than just shake. Then he pulled up his hose and retrieved both sword and staff.

  Hamish had scrambled away from the dead husk. His face was chalky in the firelight. "You flaming fool! That was crazy!"

  "Don't thank me, friend. Thank the hob."

  Apparently not yet trusting his legs to support him, Hamish sat where he was and stared up incredulously. "I didn't know you could control it that well!"

  "I didn't control anything," Toby said. "I just remembered how it hates demons."

  "You knew there was a demon here, and yet you let me come?"

  "I thought there might be, because of the vision. I didn't suggest it, because you don't believe in visions."

  Hamish said something in langue d'oïl that did not sound polite.

  4

  Toby wakened with the sun blazing down on his right ear. He had overslept, which was annoying but also confirmation that his sleepless night in the dungeon had not been pure hallucination. Not that he needed more evidence than his arms, which still ached all the way from wrenched shoulders to bruised wrists. And now was the moment to wonder what might have crept into bed with him: spiders, snakes, scorpions? He rolled over and heaved himself upright.

  Hamish was reading, of course. Beside him lay a heap of oranges and two swor
ds. He smirked with the smugness of the earlier riser. "Sleep well?"

  "A few nightmares. You?"

  "No. I had my nightmares before I went to bed. There aren't any more demons around. If there were, your snoring would have brought them running."

  Since he was wearing nothing but his locket, Toby reached first for his clothes. "You found another sword."

  Hamish nodded, closing the book. "I found eight bodies, too. There's other stuff on them, but I couldn'a bear to touch any of it. Yours is a demon sword, you realize?"

  Of course. They were conventional, single-edged military swords, with simple L-shaped guards, probably of Spanish make, but one of them had slain a demon and so would have power against demons. That might be useful, for although incarnates were not exactly commonplace he seemed to have a knack for running into them.

  Dressed, he reached for the oranges. "Any thoughts on my visions now?"

  Hamish scowled. "No. That hob of yours breaks all the rules. And your prophecies aren't accurate—but they do seem to come close," he conceded.

  Toby thought of Baron Oreste's dungeon and shivered.

  As soon as he had eaten they set off northward, still carrying their staves. Having no scabbards, they tucked the swords in their bundles, hilts ready to hand in case they were needed. Westward lay the scrubby hills, and eastward the brilliant sea.

  Amazingly, Hamish seemed none the worse for his horrifying experience with the ghoul. For a while he indulged in aimless chatter, explaining that the Mediterranean had been named by the Romans and meant Middle of the World but the Moors called it Bahr al-Rumi, the sea of Rome; that from me south coast of Castile you could see Africa; that it was only thirty years since the king of Castile had conquered Granada for the Khan; and that a tigress could outrun a horse, but the rider could escape it by throwing down a glass ball, which the tigress, seeing her own reflection in it, would think was one of her cubs and stop to suckle.

  "What do you do about the tiger?" Toby asked. "Can't it run too?"

  Hamish frowned. "The book didn't say. You suppose no one ever came back to tell them?" Then his eyes twinkled. It was never possible to tell how serious he was when he recounted a tale like that. He usually seemed to accept anything he read in a book without question, but he might have just been having fun with his big, stupid friend. Although his dark coloring made him look like a native, he was tall by Spanish standards and still gangly, so recently come to his full height that he had much filling out left to do. Fine-boned and yet firm, his features combined a pair of very solemn dark eyes with a mouth ever ready to smile. Dress him as a gentleman instead of a beggar and those long lashes would quicken every female heart in the land. If they didn't, it would not be for want of fluttering.

  Suddenly he went to business. "What exactly did you foresee last night?"

  Toby told what he could remember of the vision. "It's odd, but I don't recall much of what we said. Everything else was as vivid as real life, but the conversation's all fuzzy and patchy."

  "Like the meeting in Valencia. You didn't remember what was said then, either." Hamish was wearing his smug expression.

  "So?"

  "This sounds to me like the hob's doing. It wouldn't care much about words, would it?"

  "No it wouldn't. So, yes, you're right." Trust Hamish to work that out.

  "Then what?"

  "That's all. Oreste just went away and left me in the dark." For how long? All night? The soldiers had checked on him several times.

  "Standing up? Chained?"

  "Yes. Now you know everything. You're the scholar. Explain it."

  Hamish scowled down at the trail. "I can't. It makes no sense. Déjà vu isn't usually so dangerous. If you're seeing the future—and you can't be—then how can you change it? But you mustn't go to Barcelona now. Even you can't be that pigheaded!"

  Toby grunted.

  "Well?" Hamish demanded. "We've got no reason to go to Barcelona. There are other ways out of Spain!"

  Barcelona was the shortest, but the real reason Toby wanted to go there was to find a ship for Hamish. He had hoped to find one in Valencia, but the city was a graveyard and no ships came to El Grao. Hamish, although he hated to admit it, was bitterly homesick for Scotland. Hamish had done nothing to earn this endless, dangerous life as a fugitive except be loyal to his friend. It was time to repay the debt by sending him home. Scotland was a poor land with troubles of its own, but he had friends and family there, which Toby had not, and the sooner he was shipped back there the sooner he could start living the sane, ordinary life he deserved.

  So Barcelona it must be, but that argument would not sway him, so think up another reason:

  "You know I want more than anything to be rid of the hob. Didn't you tell me that Barcelona has one of the greatest tutelaries in Europe?"

  "Montserrat? Its sanctuary is near Barcelona, yes. But the hob won't let you go near a tutelary. You know that."

  "A hexer could exorcize it," Toby said cautiously. "I expect so, but all hexers are evil, and how do you find one anyway? How do you bribe him or pay him?"

  "The Khan must have hexers. He'd help."

  Hamish groaned. "And how do you get to Sarois?" That was certainly the problem and always had been. Ozbeg Khan was a thousand leagues away, beyond the Caspian Sea. He would love to have the amethyst, because that would give him the real Nevil's soul, and Nevil had known Rhym's true name, so the Khan could then conjure the Fiend and regain the half of Europe Nevil had conquered. That was why the Fiend had been chasing Toby so relentlessly for the last three years. "I know a hexer in Barcelona—Oreste himself."

  "What?" Hamish howled.

  "He has dozens of trained demons. I'll offer to give him the amethyst if he'll take the hob off me."

  "You have the brains of a field mouse!" Hamish yelled. "Oreste would hex you or turn you into a creature or just torture you to death out of spite. There is no way you can bargain with Oreste! How could you trust a man so evil? He won't deal, he'll throw you in jail and torture what he wants out of you, or just hex you to obey him. You're joking, Toby, aren't you?"

  "Suppose I send him a letter, offering him the amethyst in —"

  "He'll trace it back to you by gramarye."

  "Well, think about it," Toby said complacently. "I'm sure you'll find a way." And he would see Hamish safely on a ship before he tried it.

  "You are deliberately being stupid!" Hamish said, sounding very much like his father had when little Toby Strangerson insisted that three and three made five. "Look at this country!" He waved at the desolate landscape, the burned houses and ravaged orchards. "Nevil marched half his army down this coast to Valencia and Toledo and back the same way. Oreste took the rest to Navarre. They destroyed everything. But somewhere in between there must be lands they never reached. There will still be people there, and food. I am sick to death of living on oranges and onions. I want to cut across country to Navarre. We have friends there, even if Nevil does rule it now."

  Toby eyed the hills. "Cutting across country in Spain is like going through a city without using the streets."

  "It's worth a try. Over there is a valley leading inland. Let's try it. Please, Toby?"

  This was serious. Hamish never begged.

  "If we go to Barcelona, I might be able to get my hands around Oreste's neck and strangle him."

  "That's a beautiful idea. He certainly deserves it. When you have a vision of yourself doing it, let me know."

  Toby shrugged. "All right! We'll head for Navarre."

  Hamish looked at him incredulously and whistled. "Truly? Spirits! I'm going to write home and tell Pa that I managed to change your mind about something."

  "He won't believe you."

  "No. He certainly won't."

  5

  At first the valley seemed as barren of life as the coastal plain. Towards noon, though, they sighted a little town on a hillside ahead, a speck of promise amid desolation, although the odds were that it had been sacked and burned lik
e everywhere else. The trail led to it, so they pushed on, dispensing with a siesta. Toby's buskins were rubbing painfully on his raw ankles, but he saw no reason to mention it.

  Hamish did not notice his limp. Mostly he prattled about things he had read, often years before, as he so often did. Toby listened in silence as usual. Only once did they return to the prophecy problem.

  "Toby?"

  "Hmm?"

  "No spirit can see the future. The books all say the same—not even great tutelaries ever prophesy. All they can do is assess a person's potential, and they're not much better at it than mortals are. Remember back in Tyndrum? Everyone knew Vik Tanner was a no-good that would never amount to a heap of horse dung while Will Donaldson was a promising lad who would go far. But Will Donaldson fell off a roof and broke his neck. When we went to the shrine at Shira, the spirit said you showed signs of greatness. It didn't say you would live to achieve it. Bordeaux said much the same. It thought you might do remarkable things."

  "Like seeing the future, you mean?"

  Hamish growled angrily. "I still think the hob is playing tricks on you somehow. Let's just hope that it doesn't play any of them around the Black Friars, or you'll find yourself explaining things to the Inquisition."

  Although the hob had no mind, no concept of right and wrong, and little akin to any human sense of purpose, it certainly had strong likes and dislikes. It would reduce a military band to screaming chaos in seconds, usually inflicting serious injuries, and it adored pretty things, which were liable to turn up later in Toby's pockets. When it got angry, people died. But none of that explained the visions.

  "Ha!" Hamish peered down at horse droppings in the road as intently as Dougal the gamekeeper tracking the laird's deer.

  "Not very recent," Toby said. "Two weeks?" He was guessing wildly. Dung had never been one of his most pressing interests.

  "Hard to say in this heat. But it's on top of the tracks." Hamish looked up with his angular face twisted in a pout. "Don't think we're going to find anyone home."

  "Let's go and make sure."