by Dave Duncan
"And if you are told that you yourself have been accused of demonic practices?"
"I deny it vehemently."
"And you stick to your original story?" Father Guillem demanded.
"Like glue," Josep said nervously. "What of Senora de Gomez?"
The monk frowned. "I shall speak with the women at once, if you will excuse me."
He stopped to wait for them. The others walked on.
"What about Gracia?" Toby inquired cautiously.
"She has strange fancies, poor girl. You understand," Josep said apologetically, "that I am much concerned about my father. It is a bad thing when a man must be buried in unconsecrated ground, far from the domain of a spirit to nurture his soul. Father Guillem has been of much consolation to me. But on the night after my father's death—we had not gone far, you will recall—Senora de Gomez came and told me that she had seen his wraith and had taken it into her care! She is going to transport it to Montserrat, she said. Naturally, I pretended to believe her and to be comforted by her words. I fear the loss of her husband and children has addled her wits, Senor Toby."
"I think you are right. It is very sad. There is no harm in her delusions, except when they upset other persons, such as yourself."
"The Inquisition might disagree with you," Josep said softly.
"It might indeed. Let us hope she will be discreet if we meet the inquisitors. But may I ask what solace Father Guillem offered you?"
"Ah." The boy smiled as if to imply he did not really believe what he was about to say. "He admits that when the rebels ravaged the land, their hexers also plundered all the shrines and sanctuaries of the guardians, but he insists that other spirits will eventually replace them, and that they will then gather any wandering wraiths to them, so the souls of the dead will be comforted. He has almost persuaded me to continue to Montserrat with him, so that the tutelary may confirm what he says. He is an acolyte there, after all."
"And a learned one." Very odd! Where were these new spirits to come from? His hob plight had made Toby curious about the ways of the immortals, but this doctrine was new to him. He would not ask more, for it seemed unkind to scratch at Josep's emotional scars. He would query Father Guillem or Brother Bernat some time. "That is good news, for how else can this land ever recover? Who would live in a town without a tutelary?"
After a few more minutes, he left Josep and caught up with Pepita and the friar. The old man eyed him with a tolerant smile.
"How is your breathing coming, my son?"
"I find I need my lungs too much for talking, Father, but tonight I will practice very earnestly, I promise you."
"I still see two of you!" Pepita said mischievously.
"Little demon!" The friar tweaked her ear fondly. "She will not say such things to any strangers we may meet."
Could a child resist the Inquisition's cunning interrogation?
"Father, I know I promised not to ask questions." Toby presumed that the questions he was not to ask concerned Brother Bernat himself and his strange little ward. (Why and how did the child see two of him? There was a real mystery there.) He hoped that queries concerning his own problem would be permitted. "My friend Jaume has asked one that I cannot answer. May I report his doubts to you, on the understanding that you are not required to comment?"
The old man guffawed in a way Toby had not heard from him before. "Report it, then."
"He wonders why the visions I see are so apt. Out of what may be many days or weeks, the hob lets me remember each time only a few hours or even minutes. He points out that it seems to choose intervals that are especially significant. Most of them have been very dramatic warnings."
Brother Bernat nodded approvingly. "He is a perceptive young man. It even chooses episodes that are of particular concern to you—like you cutting off Jaume's head, for example—and ignores what should be of importance to itself. You do not recall the baron exorcizing it, or the moment at which it realizes the tormentors are killing you."
"Exactly! Neither of us believes that the hob is smart enough to be so selective."
The friar walked on in silence for several minutes, wielding his staff, staring at the ground. Eventually he said, "My son, I am not quite ready to answer that. You will have to be patient and trust me."
Toby made some polite response, nettled but trying not to show it. The question seemed simple enough; the answer should be. Whatever the old man was hiding from him could only be more bad news. Hamish might suggest that there was no answer and the backward-in-time theory was all moonlight and mirrors. Toby decided he would not agree. The friar was being cagy, but he did have an explanation in mind.
"Tell me about your homeland, my son, for it is one place I have never visited. Your countrymen have a reputation for valor."
"We are a pugnacious people, you mean? This is true, but you must realize that we have the English for neighbors... . "
Eventually Toby realized that it was almost noon and they were not far from the end of the valley, which he had identified as a possible ambush site. If the don was going to accept his suggestion that they scout ahead for trouble, then it was time to call a halt and do so. Excusing himself, he strode forward to join Atropos and Petals and their riders. As he came level with the don, he said, "Senor ... "
But then a horseman rode from behind the trees just ahead, with a file of pikemen trotting behind him. In moments they had blocked the road, and a backward glance confirmed that a second squad was closing the trap in that direction—not so many, but armed with arquebuses. The ambush had come a little sooner than he expected.
3
They were German mercenaries, the landsknechte the Spanish called lansquenets—mostly big, bearded men who seemed even bigger in their heavily padded doublets and hose. A man unfamiliar with them might laugh at those grandiose multicolored velours and velvets and satins, with piping and padding and pleats, all elaborately slashed to reveal linings of contrasting hues and set off by wide, flat caps with trailing plumes and, in many cases, gold chains around their necks. He would not laugh twice, for landsknechte were tough as anvils, the elite shock troops of the Fiend's army.
Their leader was grizzled and leather-faced as if he had seen many hard campaigns, but he was bedecked in crimson and chartreuse as splendid as any of the younger armored butterflies behind him. While he rode up on a magnificent, skittish black even bigger than Atropos, he seemed to be looking more at Toby than at the don. Or was that only Toby's guilty conscience saying so?
The don halted to let this upstart challenger approach, while the pallor of his anger made the copper mustache burn even brighter than usual. Toby edged in close to his stirrup like a child seeking comfort from its mother. Neither of them had anticipated the ruthless efficiency of landsknechte, who had cleared the entire valley so that there would be no residents to warn northbound travelers about the ambush and yet allowed southbound traffic like Johnson's party to pass undisturbed—clever!
Toby himself should not have underestimated the Inquisition. There was not a friar in sight so far, but he did not doubt that they were close. What a deadly combination! The baron and the Inquisition were an obscene partnership in the first place. It was no surprise that Oreste was willing to pay any price to gain possession of Granny Nan's pretty amethyst, even the indignity of dealing with the Inquisition and assigning it some of his best troops; and perhaps no more unexpected was that the Dominicans would stoop to cooperating with the notorious hexer if it let them snare a nefarious international monster such as Tobias Longdirk had been made out to be. Why, it was a good deal all round! The amethyst would go to the viceroy in Barcelona, and the Inquisition would get the infamous Longdirk as payment for services rendered.
Doña Francisca urged her pony forward a few paces. "Captain, you are in the presence of the illustrious Don Ramon de Nuñez y Pardo, a hidalgo of Castile! By what right do you dispute his progress?"
The mercenary ignored her, directing his answer to the don himself, with frequent si
delong glances at Toby. His men were already closing in on other members of the party, disarming them and taking charge of the horses.
"I bear authority from the Holy Office, senor. The venerable friars have asked for your assistance in answering a few questions. You will dismount now and surrender your weapons, which will be returned to you when —"
"It is outrageous! The viceroy himself will hear of this insult to —"
"You refuse to assist the Holy Office, senor? On what grounds?"
Even Don Ramon could not find an answer to that, but he was shaking with fury. To avoid straining his self-control any longer, Toby removed his baldric and surrendered his sword to a fresh-faced boy as tall as himself, a human maypole of mulberry, sulphur yellow, and cerulean blue, but too young to have earned any gold chains yet. Another man confiscated his staff. As the pilgrims were escorted off along a track through the trees, he was somewhat flattered to note that although the don merited two guards and nobody else more than one, he had a personal escort of six. Six landsknechte were the equivalent of at least a dozen ordinary soldiers.
The concealed camp was no makeshift affair, for its tents were well staked, the privies decently screened, the livestock paddocks built of stout rails. Prisoners and their baggage were delivered to an empty space at the edge of the clearing, where a dense growth of thorns would provide some shade—and also block off one possible direction of escape, of course. Their mounts were led away to a corral. Half a dozen guards remained, leaning on their pikes and saying nothing.
The ground was overgrazed and fouled by horses, but reasonably comfortable for sitting, certainly better than being shut up in a tent. Three black-robed friars came and made notes of all the names. One departed but two stayed, standing in silence. As they and the landsknechte could overhear anything that might be said, no one spoke at all. The waiting had begun.
Toby had not yet seen any faces he recognized, but he felt a stabbing case of déjà vu. Everything he looked at echoed inside his head as if he should have been expecting exactly that. It was only a few hours since his last vision, his last starting-over, and events had not had time to diverge very far. He was sliding down the same drain again. He might even be into an endless loop already, fated to repeat the next week or two over and over for ever.
He leaned back on his elbows with Hamish on one side of him and Gracia on the other, all of them silent. He began counting: five tents, three wagons, six mules, four chained wolfhounds, stacks of animal fodder, a field kitchen, two flagpoles—one bearing the green banner of the Inquisition and the other the Fiend's yellow diamond on black—twenty-five horses, at least a score of soldiers beyond the six he had seen ride out on patrol, at least half a dozen friars, and two or three nondescript civilians. Say thirty or thirty-five in all, which matched the accommodation and the commissary reasonably well. The most incongruous object was a cage of steel bars standing in one of the wagons. It was the sort of cage in which bears were carried to bear baitings, but why should the Inquisition transport wild animals? No bets that that cage was warded against demons.
After a delay of about twenty minutes, when the anxiety level had presumably risen enough, a soldier and one of the mousy clerks came over to the prisoners and led Guillem away to one of the tents.
Obviously the interrogation was going to take all day, but when Toby Longdirk had nothing to do, there was one thing he could always do. He chose a clean spot to lay his head and went to sleep.
He came awake suddenly, and long training made him remain absolutely still, eyes closed, until he had worked out where he was and what had disturbed him ... the landsknechte camp ... voices. But several times before he had vaguely registered voices as his companions were led one by one to the tents, and each time he had merely drifted back to sleep again.
This time there was something different.
A voice he knew!
Like Hamish turning back the pages of a book, he dug for it: "You now, child. Yes, you. And stop that bawling, or I'll kick your pretty little ass. Come on! Move!"
Toby opened his eyes and raised his head. Pepita was being led away by one ear, and the man taking her was one of the clerks. He was stocky more than heavy-set, with a rolling gait that in itself now seemed familiar. But it was his voice that had set bugles a-blowing, for it was the voice of the young tormentor in the vision, the one who had made threats about cojones, the one with the deft line in kidney punches. Oh, yes!
Revenge? Why not? Worth a try ...
Toby cursed as he realized that he was the last. How long had poor Pepita been sitting there in terror with her only remaining companion snoring his stupid head off instead of offering comfort? He yawned, rubbed his eyes, and sat up.
Sunset had turned the sky bloody and set a cool wind to trailing dust clouds across the camp and flapping tents. The horses whinnied restlessly in their corral; once in a while a hound bayed. Thunder rumbled faintly to the north—now that might turn out interesting! The hob liked to play with thunderstorms. He had been knocked off his feet by lightning bolts more often than he could remember.
Just he and two landsknechte remained, one in red, one in green, leaning on their pikes and staring at him with wary interest. They were far enough away to be out of reach, but close enough that any aggressive move against one would get him stunned or hamstrung by the other's pike. Everyone else had gone, and their baggage also.
He located his companions, sitting in a row at the far side of the camp. They were still guarded and apparently forbidden to speak.
So he would be the next. They had saved the best for last. Moving with deliberation, he rose to his feet.
"Sit!" barked Red.
Toby turned to face the hedge and unfastened his codpiece. "Boys do it standing up." After a moment's satisfaction he pretended to be surprised that they were still watching him. "This interests you?" he inquired of Green. The man flushed, but he did not stop staring.
Making himself respectable again, Toby moved to a dry spot and sat down, wishing he dared do some limbering-up exercises. When he got his chance at that pretend-clerk, if he did get a chance, he would have to move very quickly. Revenge! He would not think of it as a murder, although it would be treated as one. That did not matter, because he was going to die anyway. Undoubtedly he would still be taken to Tortosa and tortured, but one of the actors in that sordid drama would be replaced by an understudy. Yes, yes! And there was always the chance that he might win a quick and easy death in the resulting fracas.
Time passed. Fires in the kitchen area streamed banners of flame in the wind. Thunder again, closer. It felt like rain. Red and Green moved a little nearer to the prisoner as the light faded, never taking their eyes off him.
Even in a fair fight he wouldn't bet very much on himself against either of these two, for they were both almost as big as he was and the padding in those foppish-seeming garments was actually linen armor that would block any but the surest sword strokes. Behind him was a dense wood, with thick, thorny undergrowth, so the only way he could make a run for it would be straight through the camp. They had horses, they had dogs. Escape was impossible, submission unthinkable, so only revenge remained, right?
Thunder rumbled again. The wind had died away, but the air was suddenly cold. For the first time in months Toby wished he had a warm cloak—or was his shivering triggered by fear? Fear might rouse the hob, Brother Bernat had said. So might thunder. Rousing the hob might be exactly what was needed under the circumstances. Even if it became too engrossed in the storm to pay much heed to him or recognize that he was in danger, a hob rampage would be a welcome distraction.
The troop of six landsknechte that he had seen depart earlier came riding into the camp. That must be all of them, and the day's patrolling was over.
A soldier led Pepita out of the tent and took her over to the others.
More waiting.
Then, at last, the clerk emerged with another landsknecht and came strutting across to the last prisoner.
&nbs
p; "Stand up!" said the guard in guttural Castilian. "Bring your belongings and come with us."
Toby rose reluctantly. The clerk had not come within reach. He was standing a pace back from the landsknecht and coldbloodedly assessing Toby—perhaps measuring him for the rack or judging his capacity for the water torture. Smiling!
"You're not going to hurt me, are you?"
Eagerness gleamed in the tormentor's eye. "Why do you ask, senor? Have you committed some crime worthy of punishment?"
Not yet, sonny, not yet! But I will.
Lightning flashed.
Toby strode over to the inquisitors' tent with his bundle on his shoulder and the guards at his heels. As he reached it, thunder rolled overhead.
4
Déjà vu! The tent was about six paces square, with a familiar smell, stale and sour. Lanterns hung on the ridgepole cast a pale light on a floor of elaborately patterned carpets, whose beauty stood in strange contrast to the starkness of the only furniture, a trestle table facing the door. It held two plain wooden candlesticks and the same green crucifix he had seen in his vision. The soldier went to stand at one end, and the stocky tormentor to the other.
Three Dominicans sat on stools behind the table. He remembered none of them from the torture chamber vision, but they were all vaguely familiar, memories of memory. The one in the center was a plump-faced, slug-shaped man in his forties who looked weary, as well he might after so many hours of interrogation. To his right sat an older man, gaunt and ascetic; he would go till he dropped. The one to his left was younger with freckles and red hair. Those two each had a thick book and an inkwell with a quill standing in it, so they must take turns at recording the proceedings, and it was the younger man's turn now, because his book was open. (Was that, just possibly, a change from last time?) Another landsknecht came in and stood behind Toby, meaning he now had two armed and capable fighters to evade, but he still thought he would be able to kill the tormentor when the moment came. He must not show any interest in him until then.
