Illaren exchanged a quick, frightened look with his brother.
“But, Mama…” Geoffrey cried.
“Thou wilt do as thou art bid,” Gwen commanded, “and thou wilt do it presently. Thou, whose care is ever the ordering of battles—wilt thou truly deny that the course of wisdom is to guard this family, and take them to King Tuan, to bear witness?”
Geoffrey glowered back up at her, then said reluctantly, “Nay. Thou hast the right of it, Mama.”
“Doesn’t she always,” Rod muttered; but nobody seemed to hear him.
She turned to him. “We shall go, husband—even as thou dost wish.”
“But Papa won’t be safe!” Cordelia whirled to throw her arms around his midriff.
Rod hugged her to him, but shook his head. “I’ve faced danger without you before, children. There was even a time when I didn’t have your mother along to protect me.”
Magnus shook his head, eyes wide with alarm. “Never such danger as this, Papa. A vile, evil sorcerer, with a whole army of witches behind him!”
“I’ve gone into the middle of an army before—and I only had a dagger against all their swords, and worse. Much worse.”
“Yet these are witches!”
“Yes—and I’ve got more than a mental dagger, to use against them.” Rod held his son’s eyes with a grave stare. “I think I can match their sorcerer, spell for spell and power for power—and pull a few tricks he hasn’t even dreamed of, since he was a child.” He hauled Magnus in against him, too. “No, don’t worry about me this time. Some day, I’ll probably meet that enemy who’s just a little too much stronger than I am—but Alfar isn’t it. For all his powers and all his nastiness, he doesn’t really worry me that much.”
“Nor should he.”
Rod looked up to see his youngest son sitting cross-legged, apart from the huddle. “I think thou hast the right of it, Papa. I think this sorcerer’s arm is thickened more with fear, than with strength.”
“An that is so,” said Geoffrey, “thou must needs match him and, aye, e’en o’ermatch him, Papa.”
“Well.” Rod inclined his head gravely. “Thank you, my sons. Hearing you say it, makes me feel a lot better.” And, illogically, it did—and not just because his children had, when last came to last, become his cheering section. He had a strange respect for his two younger sons. He wondered if that was a good thing.
Apparently, Cordelia and Magnus felt the same way. They pried themselves away from Rod, and the eldest nodded. “If Gregory doth not foresee thy doom, Papa, it hath yet to run.”
“Yes.” Rod nodded. “Alfar’s not my Nemesis.” He turned back to Gregory. “What is?”
The child gazed off into space for a minute, his eyes losing focus. Then he looked at his father again, and answered, with total certainty, “Dreams.”
8
The Duchess slapped the horses with the reins, and the coach creaked into motion as they plodded forward. They quickened to a trot, and the coach rolled away. Gwen turned back from her seat beside the Duchess, and waved. Four smaller hands sprouted up from the coach roof, and waved frantically too.
Rod returned the wave until they were out of sight, feeling the hollowness grow within him. Slowly, he turned back toward the North, and watched the soldiers moving away, bearing their wounded knight on a horse-litter. They had decided to go back into the sorcerer’s army, disguised as loyal automatons. Gwen had told them how to hide their true thoughts with a surface of simulated hypnosis—thinking the standardized thoughts that all Alfar’s army shared. She had also made clear their danger; Alfar would not look kindly on traitors. They understood her fully, every single man jack of them; but their guilt feelings ruled them, and they welcomed the danger as expiation. Rod watched them go, hoping he wouldn’t meet any of them again until the whole rebellion had been squelched.
Somehow, he was certain that it would be. It was asinine to place faith in the pronouncements of a three-year-old—but his little Gregory was uncanny, and very perceptive.
Acting on the basis of his predictions would be idiocy—but he could let himself feel heartened by them. After all, Gregory wasn’t your average preschooler.
On the other hand, just because he had a ten-year-old’s vocabulary, didn’t mean he had a general’s grasp of the situation. Rod took his opinions the way he took a palm reading—emotionally satisfying, but not much use for helping decide what to do next. He turned to Fess, stuck a foot in the stirrup, and mounted. “Come on, Alloy Animal! Northward ho!”
Fess moved away after the departing squadron. “Where are we bound, Rod?”
“To Alfar, of course. But for the immediate future, find a large farmstead, would you?”
“A farmstead? What do you seek there, Rod?”
“The final touch in our disguise.” But Rod wasn’t really paying attention. His whole being was focused on the devastating, terrifying sensation of being alone, for the first time in twelve years. Oh, he’d been on his own before during that time—but never for very long, only a day or two, and he’d been too busy to think about it. But he had the time now—and he was appalled to realize how much he’d come to depend on his family’s presence. He felt shorn; he felt as though he’d been cut off from his trunk and roots, like a lopped branch. There seemed to be a knot in his chest, and a numbing fear of the world about him. For the first time in twelve years, he faced that world alone, without Gwen’s massive support, or the gaiety of his children—not to mention the very considerable aid of their powers.
The prospect was thoroughly daunting.
He tried to shake off the mood, throwing his shoulders back and lifting his chin. “This is ridiculous, Fess. I’m the lone wolf; I’m the man who penetrated the Prudential Network and overthrew its Foreman! I’m the knife in the dark, the vicious secret agent who brings down empires!”
“If you say so, Rod.”
“I do say so, damn it! I’m me, Rod Gallowglass—not just a father and a husband!… No, damn it, I’m Rodney d’Armand! That ‘Gallowglass’ is just an alias I took when I came here, to help me look like a native! And Rodney d’Armand managed without Gwen and the kids for twenty-nine years!”
“True,” Fess agreed. “Of course, you lived in your father’s house for nineteen of them.”
“All right, so I was only on my own for ten years! But that’s almost as long as I’ve been married, isn’t it?”
“Of course.”
“Yes.” Rod frowned. “On the other hand, it’s only as long—isn’t it?”
“That, too, is true.”
“Yeah.” Rod scowled. “Habit-forming little creatures, aren’t they?”
“There, perhaps, you have touched the nub of it,” the robot agreed. “Most people live their lives by habit patterns, Rod.”
“Yeah—but they’re just habits.” Rod squared his shoulders again. “And you can always change your habits.”
“Do you truly want to, Rod?”
“So when I get home, I’ll change them back! But for the time being, I can’t have them with me—so I’d better get used to it again. I can manage without them—and I will.”
“Of course you will, Rod.”
Rod caught the undertone in Fess’s voice and glared at the back of his metal skull. “What’s the ‘but’ I hear in there, Fess?”
“Merely that you will not be happy about it…”
“Rod, no! This is intolerable!”
“Oh, shut up and reverse your gears.”
The robot heaved a martyred blast of white noise and stepped back a pace or two. Rod lifted the shafts of the cart and buckled them into the harness he’d strapped onto Fess in place of a saddle.
“This is a severe debasement of a thoroughbred, Rod.”
“Oh, come off it!” Rod climbed up to the single-board seat and picked up the reins. “You used to pilot a spaceship, Fess. That’s the same basic concept as pulling a cart.”
“No—it is analogous to driving a cart. And your statement is otherwis
e as accurate as claiming that a diamond embodies the same concept as a piece of cut plastic.”
“Hairsplitting,” Rod said airily, and slapped Fess’s back with the reins.
The robot plodded forward, sighing, “My factory did not manufacture me to be a cart horse.”
“Oh, stuff it! When my ancestors met you, you were piloting a miner’s burro-boat in the asteroid belt around Sol! I’ve heard the family legends!”
“I know; I taught them to you myself,” Fess sighed, again. “This is merely poetic justice. Northward, Rod?”
“Northward,” Rod confirmed, “on the King’s High Way. Hyah!” He slapped the synthetic horsehide with the reins again. It chimed faintly, and Fess broke into a trot. They swerved out of the dirt track onto the High Road in a two-wheeled cart, leaving behind a ragged yeoman gazing happily at the gold in his palm, and shaking his head at the foolishness of tinkers, who no sooner came by a bit of money, than they had to find something to spend it on.
As they trotted northward, Fess observed, “About your discussion with your wife, Rod…”
“Grand woman.” Rod shook his head in admiration. “She always sees the realities of a situation.”
“How are we defining ‘reality’ in this context, Rod?”
“We don’t; it defines us. But you mean she was just letting me have my own way, don’t you?”
“Not simply that,” Fess mused. “Not in regard to anything of real importance.”
“Meaning she usually talks me into doing things her way.” Rod sat up straighter, frowning. “Wait a minute! You don’t mean that’s what she’s done this time, too, do you?”
“No. I merely thought that you achieved her cooperation with remarkable ease.”
“When you start using so many polysyllables, I know you’re trying to tell me something unpleasant. You mean it was too easy?”
“I did have something of the sort in mind, yes.”
“Well, don’t worry about it.” Rod propped his elbows on his knees. “It was short, but it wasn’t really easy. Not when you consider all the preliminary skirmishes.”
“Perhaps… Still, it does not seem her way…”
“No… If she thinks I’m going to lose my temper, she stands firm anyway—unless she sees good reason to change her mind. And I think having given me a promise is a pretty good reason. But at the bottom of it all, Fess, I don’t think I’m the one who convinced her.”
“You mean the Duchess?”
Rod nodded. “Mother-to-mother communication always carries greater credibility, for a wife and mother.”
“Come, Rod! Certainly you don’t believe yourself incapable of convincing your wife of your viewpoint!”
“Meaning I think she won’t listen to me?” Rod nodded. “She won’t. Unless, of course, I happen to be right…”
It wasn’t hard to tell when they reached the border; there was a patrol there to remind him of it.
“Hold!” the sergeant snapped, as two privates brought their pikes down with a crash to bar the road.
Rod pulled in on the reins, doing his best to think like a crotchety old farmer—indignant and resentful. “Aye, aye, calm thysen! I’ve held, I’ve held!”
“Well for thee that thou hast,” the sergeant growled. He nodded to the two rankers. “Search.” They nodded, and went to the back of the cart, to begin probing through the cabbages and bran sacks.
“ ‘Ere! ‘Ere! What dost thou?” Rod cried, appalled. “Leave my cabbages be!”
“Tis orders, gaffer.” The sergeant stepped up beside him, arms akimbo. “Our master, Duke Alfar, demands that we search any man who doth seek to come within the borders of Romanov.”
Rod stared, appalled—and the emotion was real. So Alfar had promoted himself! “Duke Alfar? What nonsense is this? ‘Tis Ivan who is Duke here!”
“Treason!” another private hissed, his pike leaping out level. Rod’s fighting instincts impelled him to jump for the young man’s throat—but he belayed them sternly, and did what a poor peasant would do: shrank back a little, but manfully held his ground. He stared into the boy’s eyes, and saw a look that was intense, but abstracted—as though the kid wasn’t quite all here, but wherever he was, he cared about it an awful lot.
Hypnoed into fanaticism.
The sergeant was grinning, and he had the same sort of shallow look behind the eyeballs. “Where hast thou been, gaffer? Buried in thy fields, with thine head stuck in a clod? Ivan is beaten and gaoled, and Alfar is now Duke of Romanov!”
“Nay, it cannot be!” But Rod eyed the soldiers’ uniforms warily.
The sergeant saw the glance, and chuckled in his throat. “Aye. ‘Tis Alfar’s livery.” He scowled past Rod. “Hast thou not done yet? ‘Tis a cart, not a caravan!”
Rod turned to look, and stared in horror.
“Aye, we’ve done.” The troopers straightened up. “Naught here, Auncient.”
“Nay, not so,” Rod snapped. “I’ve still a few turnips left. Hadst thou not purses large enow for all on ‘t?”
“None o’ yer lip,” the sergeant growled. “If thou hast lost a few cabbages, what matter? Thou hast yet much to sell at the market in Korasteshev.”
“Why dost thou come North?” demanded one of the men-at-arms—the one with the quick pike.
Rod turned to him, suddenly aware of danger. He gazed at the trooper, his eyes glazing, as the world he saw became a little less than real, and his mind opened to receive impressions. What was really going on behind the soldier’s face?
He felt a pressure, almost as though someone were pressing a finger against his brain. Mentally, he stilled, becoming totally passive. He sensed the differences in the minds around him; it was like smelling, as though each mind gave off its own aroma.
But four of them were all thinking the same thought: Stop those who flee, to make Alfar stronger and greater. However, someone coming into the Duchy was very boring. He was no threat—just more potential, just one more mind that would help magnify Alfar’s glory.
But the fifth mind was alive and alert, and teeming with suspicion. A dozen questions jammed up at its outlet, demanding to be asked. Underneath them lay the suspicion that the stranger might be a spy or, worse, an assassin. And at the bottom of the mind writhed a turmoil of unvoiced thoughts, all rising from a brew of emotions: ambition, suspicion, shame, anger, hatred. Rod carefully suppressed a shudder, and bent all his efforts toward thinking like a peasant farmer. He was a rough, unlettered country man, who labored twelve hours a day on his lord’s fields, and four hours a day on his own—the four to raise a cash crop that could all be fitted into one small cart. Of course, he tried hard to get the most money he could, for all that work—the small, additional amount that would make the difference between poverty, and an adequate living for himself and his family during the winter. What did these arrogant bastards mean by trying to keep him from Duke Romanov’s fat market in Korasteshev! And where did they get the idea to act so high and mighty? Just because they were wearing leather armor and carrying pikes! Especially when anyone could see that, under the green and brown uniforms, they were dirt peasants, like himself—probably less. Probably mere serfs, and the sons of serfs.
The soldier shifted impatiently. “Tell, peasant! Why dost thou seek to come into—”
“Why,‘t’ sell m’ bran ‘n’ cabbages ‘n’ turnips,” Rod answered. “Dosta think I’d wast m’ horse for a day’s pleasure?”
The sentry ignored the question. “You’re Earl Tudor’s man,” he growled. “Why not sell in Caernarvon? Why come North all the way to Korasteshev?”
“ ‘Tis not ‘all the way,’ ” Rod snorted. “I live scarce three leagues yon.” He nodded toward the road behind him. “Korasteshev is closer for me.” He glared at the trooper—but he let his mind dwell hungrily on the thought of the prices he could get in Korasteshev. Everyone knew Duke Romanov’s barons were fighting among themselves—and the more fool the Duke, for letting them! And every peasant knew that, when armies f
ought, crops got trampled. Nay, surely the folk in Korasteshev would be paying far more for cabbages than those in Earl Tudor’s peaceful Caernarvon!
The soldier’s face relaxed. So, the cranky old codger’s greedy! Well and good—greed, we know how to deal with…
Rod just barely managed to restrain a surge of indignation. Old?!? Codger, okay—but, old? He diverted the impulse into suspicious fuming: Who was this bare-cheeked brat, to be asking him questions? Why, he was scarcely done suckling his mother’s milk!
He was gratified to see the young man redden a little—but the boy’s suspicion wasn’t quite finished yet. He ran a trained eye over Fess. “How comes a poor dirt farmer to have so fine a horse?”
Panic! Anxiety! The one thing that men might really blame him for. Rod had been caught. And hard on the heels of that emotion, came a surge of shame. He glanced at Fess. Eh, my wife was beautiful, ten years agone! Small wonder that Sir Ewing took notice of her…
He turned back to the young man. “Sir Ewing gave him to me, saying he was too old to bear an armored knight still.”
The suspicion was still there in the young soldier’s mind; it just changed direction. The young man was trying to find a flaw in the story. “Why would a knight give even a cast-off charger to a poor peasant?”
The shame again. Rod let it mount, burning. “Why, for… favors… we did him, me and mine.” Mostly ‘mine.’ There was a brief, lurid image of a strapping, tow-headed man in bed with a voluptuous young woman, with chestnut hair—not that you could see much else of her… and the vision was gone. But the shame remained, and rage mounted under it. “For favors.” Rod’s face had turned to wood. “Not that ‘tis any affair of thine.”
“ ‘Affair,’ is it?” The young man let a mocking grin spread. “Aye, thine ‘affair’ now, is only the selling of thy cabbages, I warrant.” He turned to the sergeant. “Why do we linger, wasting time on this peasant, Auncient?”
“Why, for that he hath not set his horse to going,” the sergeant growled. “Be off with thee, fellow! Get thy cart out from our station! Get thee hence to the market!”
The Warlock Enraged Page 14
