by John Barnes
"And it's no bad deal for the robber himself, you know. A bachelor robber doesn't take care of himself, out climbing trellises to ladies' windows all night long, or drinking and roaring if he's not, runs foolish risks just to impress women, can't cook to save his life so he ends up eating the same three greasy stews at the same three greasy inns over and over, so he's sick half the time and hates to go back out on the road . . . but a married robber, after a few days out shooting and stabbing and sleeping on cold ground, he comes home to a decent meal and a clean home, gets a good bath and some sleep and spends some time with his children, and he's up and ready in a week for whatever you want."
Amatus was not sure of what to say, but he ventured to Thunder that he must know more about running a band of robbers than almost anyone else.
"Oh, I suppose so. Still, it's what you do when steel's drawn and some fool is thinking of keeping his well-got gains for himself that makes you a real robber; always been careful to stay on top of that. In addition to the administrative work, which I just hate, but to tell you the truth there's no one else here to do it . . ."
He was still talking about it as they at last came into the "camp." It was plain at once that it was better developed and laid out than most of the King's Settlements out to the east. The low rise of ground was topped by a solid stockade, and the buildings themselves were substantial and prosperous, for all of being painted in blotchy browns and greens. There was a big mess hall inside the stockade, but only about half the men were going to eat there tonight. "Some of them have family here, as you saw," Thunder explained, "and many of the rest have been invited to dinner. We try to encourage that sort of friendliness among the families in the camps."
They rode on into the stockade, and there they found a splendid meal, comfortable quarters, and in short everything that they could hope for. It was not home, and the city and perhaps the Kingdom were still lost, but all the same it was something to gladden the heart.
2
The Lake of Winter
A week later, Amatus stood by the Lake of Winter, with Sir John Slitgizzard, Calliope, and Psyche at his side, as Deacon Dick Thunder pointed out the sights. "Over there is where the White Mountain glacier comes down almost to the water's edge—a bit like Bell Tower Beach down on Iron Lake, but because it's colder up here, the river flows from the glacier only in the summer months, briefly and ferociously. There are good harbors on the eastern side, and many places that would make cherry and apple orchards, but you know Royal authority never quite ran all the way up here, and I'm afraid that sort of development is beyond my means right now. There are some loggers, potato farmers, and gazebo hunters in little camps on the other side. What we have on this side is some little towns of fishermen (they haven't paid their taxes to you or their protection money to me in decades, and heaven knows neither of us is like to have the heart to collect it), a few farms, and your 'castle' if you want to call it that. The garrison there—well, you'll see."
They rounded the high, rocky point together, and before them a low peninsula spread out. At its tip there was a small, crudely built castle, really not more than a simple rock battue surrounding a keep with a crude log clerihew.
"Such a place could be held, but not against a real army," Sir John muttered.
"Still, it is possibly the last castle in loyal hands," Amatus said.
"That's a matter for interpretation," Thunder said, and they rode down the winding trail, around the little bay and out toward the castle. Halfway down the land again hid it from them, so that when they next came upon it, it was from below, and though it was still obviously small, it looked much more forbidding.
"Palaestrio! Oh, Captain Palaestrio!" Thunder shouted. "Come out and amuse us!"
There was scurrying and noise inside the castle, and finally a helmeted head poked up. "You just go on your way, Dick Thunder, it's ten whole days till our next payment is due."
"Ah, but I want something different from you this time," Thunder said, a broad grin cracking his face. "Something it will cost you nothing to give—"
"I will give you nothing! I am the King's agent in these parts—"
"If you don't, you can forget about going out berrying or on picnics all summer," Thunder said sternly, bellowing it so that the Captain could hear. "Now be a reasonable fellow and come down and talk!"
"That's completely counter to all our agreements!"
"Circumstances have changed. Now, don't be a whiny captain. Just come down here and have a talk. It's not as bad as you think. I promise."
"Oh, all right. I'll be down in a moment." Even at their distance, almost a furuncle out of omnibus-shot, they could see that he was stamping away petulantly.
"How on earth did—" Amatus began.
"Well, your father and his ministers made a habit of sending men they had their doubts about to the more remote posts," Thunder reminded him. "And do be kind to Captain Palaestrio, Highness, he's not really a bad fellow and he didn't have much choice but to pay us tribute. If it were just him, he might have stood up to us, but you know many of his troopers have been in this country twenty years, most of them are from around here, and they sort of grew up afraid of us, and he's too tenderhearted to ask them to risk their lives—"
Amatus felt a little confused as to just what he should do.
He noticed that Slitgizzard was fighting a smile, Calliope grinning openly, and Psyche had a quirk around the corner of her mouth, a smile about to break loose. "Oh, all right," he said, "I will not do anything terrible to him, or even frighten him particularly. But I still want to know what's been going on here."
The wooden gate of the castle opened, and two men came out on foot. The Captain wore something that approximated appropriate dress for a royal officer—though his triolet was threadbare—but the man who walked beside him looked like a more ragged version of one of Thunder's men.
The two of them drew up sullenly in front of Thunder, but before they could speak Amatus drew back his cloak, revealing how much of his body was missing. The two soldiers stared for a long moment, and then Captain Palaestrio went to his knees. "Highness," he gasped, and, dimly grasping the situation, the man beside him imitated the Captain's actions.
"Rise, Captain. I suppose that I should demand to know why the Royal Treasury has been paying tribute to a robber—"
"But it hasn't, sir, not a penny. All the tribute came out of the boat business, the restaurant, the general store, things like that."
Amatus's eyebrow shot up; it was impossible to tell whether he was quizzical or surprised, since he only had one brow, but since he was blinking with both eyes it was probably surprise. "The boat business?"
Dick Thunder explained. "Captain Palaestrio—well, actually, Sceledrus here, with a cut for the fort, the Captain, and me—operates a ferry service around the lake. It's the only access to the outside world for a few hundred gazebo hunters, loggers, and potato farmers," Dick Thunder explained. "As for the restaurant, well, the Captain has been accepting tax payments in fish, game, and vegetables for a long time, and you would hardly have wanted that shipped down to the city, now would you? So four days a week there's a fine little restaurant here with a view of the lake; today is one of the days, I believe—"
"Yes, it is," Captain Palaestrio said. He seemed to be recovering a little confidence, for with a slight smile he added, "Even if it weren't a restaurant day, after all, we have a firm policy that whenever royalty visits we open the restaurant."
"I didn't know that was a policy," Sceledrus said.
"That's why I write policies and you run the boats," Palaestrio explained smoothly. "I remember things like that."
Sceledrus nodded, satisfied.
Amatus was beginning to see some of the logic in all this. "And I imagine you have a general store because—"
"Well, we're the only place that a trade caravan wants to put in, and we are at the end of the road, and not everyone can come here as soon as the traders get here, and the traders seldom want to st
ay long," Palaestrio explained. "Besides, we need a way to keep putting money back into circulation. Because of the other businesses, all the flavins in the Far North would end up in our coffers if we didn't keep pumping them back by buying things. And somehow or other prices always go up considerably just when a caravan gets here, so . . ."
Amatus looked from Deacon Dick Thunder to Captain Palaestrio and back, and the first thought that crossed his mind was that these were two men Cedric would be happy to have in any capacity. That made him think of Cedric, and of the city, and that Waldo's men would be coming in force sometime soon, and he said, "I think what I would like, if it is possible, is to gather as many of the people from around the lake and the forests around it at a meeting, here, in, oh, one week's time. If you could consider extending credit to your employer, Captain, I should like to give them all a good meal—"
"Done," the Captain said.
"Going to be expensive," Sceledrus said.
"Shut up," the Captain added.
The castle turned out to be pleasant and snug inside, if not much as a fortification; "I suppose we could have taken it at any time," Thunder said, "but where would we go to buy ammunition and get blades reforged? And besides, it's a clean, safe place for my bachelor men to go to blow off a little steam and meet nice village girls." His faded brown eyes twinkled. "In fact, a few times when things weren't going so well, we loaned Captain Palaestrio some of his tribute money back."
Sir John scratched his head. "A royal outpost accepting loans from robbers?"
"We gave him very favorable terms, and he was quite punctual about paying it back."
That night they slept in the guest rooms in the clerihew, and though the sheets were rough-woven wool and the floors bare wood, everything was clean and neat, and they woke up greatly refreshed.
Dick Thunder, as Cedric had predicted, had turned out to be enthusiastic in his support; the robber who comes to the aid of the True King, after all, was a highly respected part of a thousand old songs, and one could hardly become leader of a great company of robbers without deep sensitivity to such matters. It was his suggestion that they divide up for a few days to travel around the mountain country and stir up interest in the meeting.
Since Sir John Slitgizzard was well known as Escree Jack, it made most sense for him to travel about from robber camp to robber camp, and since Calliope's status as a princess seemed to work well in winning the loyalty of the robbers, she agreed to travel with Slitgizzard. "It's just the natural reaction of men who've never seen real royalty," Dick Thunder explained, embarrassed by some of the displays of enthusiasm. "And as a sole survivor of a legitimate line, you win their hearts immediately—I mean, someone like you is supposed to get help from robbers."
That left Amatus the job of touring the lake on Sceledrus's ferry, a job slightly complicated by the fact that Sceledrus seemed to be in awe of Amatus. This was not just a matter of Amatus being a prince, or being minus most of his left side; Sceledrus had always accepted what Captain Palaestrio told him so uncritically that it had never occurred to him to wonder whether or not any of it might be true, and the thought that it might be left him awestruck.
Psyche came along with Amatus, and no one seemed to argue about that; the greater surprise was that Sylvia was going to go out with Thunder to cover the other little settlements to the south of the lake, high in the mountains.
"All I need do is talk to them about what happened to the city," she said. "It will be no problem; these people have worked hard for everything they have, and when they hear that someone might come and take all of it and spoil the rest—well, they've lived with robbers all these years because it's an exceptionally well-managed crew of robbers that never takes too much. That's not at all the same thing. They'll come right around, you'll see. Besides"—and here she leaned in toward Calliope, with a grin spreading across her face—"it so happens that this provides me an excuse to travel a few days with Richard."
"Are you—er—"
"Of course I am. He was a perfectly fine lover, and would have made a good husband. He didn't happen to be a hero, and it's obvious that he felt just terrible about that. But how often, in the average marriage, does a need for heroics come up? It will just take him a little time to get used to the idea again."
When they parted, it was still fairly early in the morning. Sceledrus and his crew refused any offer of help from Amatus and Psyche, so they sat on top of the little cabin, waving a farewell to Calliope and Slitgizzard, who turned to ride off west, and to Dick Thunder and Sylvia, who turned southward.
That first day they made a quick run across to a lumber camp on the southeastern shore. Amatus had plenty of time to rehearse his speech on the little boat as it raced over the sun-bright waves, and he used almost all that time to become nervous.
Yet when he stood in front of loggers' cookhouse, the ground before him green with moss in the golden sun, surrounded by the tall, blue pines, he felt at home. He glanced briefly at Psyche, received a warm smile, and turned back to the crowd to speak.
He explained first that they lived in the Kingdom only because there was a king, and felt foolish as he said it, though he noticed that this seemed to come as a surprise to Sceledrus. Then he told them of places they had never seen and might never see, Overhill, and the city, and the country south of Iron Lake, Bell Tower Beach and the marshy lands below the Bitter River, the great sweep of the deserts to the east, the Great North Woods that stretched between the Long River Road and Iron Lake, and made them feel what those lands had been before Waldo, and then told them that Waldo had them, and that all that was destroyed, or would be soon.
He went on to say that Waldo would most assuredly be coming this way, for it was not in the nature of a person like Waldo to allow anything to remain outside his grasp, or unspoiled once it lay within it. He promised them nothing but blood, iron, and fire, and offered them only the choice of going to find it or of waiting for it to find them at home.
And quietly, at the end, the loggers—every one of them taller than Amatus, each with muscles like granite—came forward, and one after another promised him they would be at the meeting, and that they were ready to do whatever had to be done.
He shared their evening meal, and they were painfully shy around him, but he made a point of speaking to each of them.
The next stop required a long run across the lake, taking advantage of a night wind, and because it was a calm night most of the crew slept. Before bedding down, Amatus and Psyche sat up on the cabin, looking at the stars and moon and watching the dark shadow of the boat crawl across the reflection of the heavens.
After a long while, Amatus said, "Only you are left."
"True."
"I would gladly have remained half a man to have kept all of you, even Mortis, whom I feared, and the Twisted Man, who sometimes disgusted me."
"It is not a matter for you to choose, Prince Amatus. None of us would choose to be whole if we fully knew the cost, but we are not free to be anything else. You know that with my passing, you will be whole—"
"Physically. I miss Golias even now, as if it were a wound, and the others—"
"And you will miss me. There are things that must be."
The breeze was steady but not strong, and the boat cut through the pellucid surface of the Lake of Winter with only the slightest splash or slap now and then. All around them, the towering peaks slid by, and far to the north, in front of the bow, the great mountains that were part of what shut out the wider world reared above them. The stars were clear and close, and for a long time Amatus enjoyed their light without thinking, and watched the moon setting over the western mountains. Finally he said, "Do any of you know of the way of your passing?"
"It is in keeping with us, Highness. That is all. Golias died in the light, having explored in the dark. Mortis died like the thing of secrets she was."
"And the Twisted Man?"
"In spite and hatred." Her voice was flat and toneless.
Amatus s
at a long time, listening to the little noises the water and wind made, smelling the cold wet air that flowed over the mountain lake, down from the glaciers and onward into the valley of the Long River. It was cold enough to make his face just a little raw.
"Dick Thunder's men say they found him with the garland you wove for him around his neck. I do believe he loved vou, or something like it."
"Something like it," she said grudgingly. "We are not all your friends, Amatus; you learned that Mortis was not, and perhaps you know that Golias was and I am. As for the Twisted Man . . . he was neither friend nor foe. He was just something that had to be."
Amatus sighed. He felt compelled to ask again. "Can you tell me of your passing?"
"I have been at your side for many years, Highness. When I am not, you will be whole." She rose and went below; a moment later he followed, and after a long time, he fell asleep. Tomorrow he had to speak at three camps; the day after at four; and then he would be back to Palaestrio's castle.
At every camp, his reception was much the same; people seemed ready to offer love and loyalty. If he had not held the image of the city in flames, of the mighty army Cedric had spent twenty years building destroyed in a night, his heart might have begun to rise with hope.
Almost too soon, Sceledrus and the crew were racing the craft back to the castle on the shore, and as they neared it they saw that the castle flew the Hand and Book banner. "This is strange," Amatus said. "That banner should fly only over the current residence of the King. I suppose it is likely that my father is dead, and that I am King, and that is why they have done that, but they ought not to have until they were sure."
"Watch and wait, Highness," Psyche said, gently.
He did not have to wait long, for as they drew nearer he saw that Calliope and Sir John Slitgizzard had already returned and were waiting for them, and Deacon Dick Thunder and Sylvia were there as well, with Captain Palaestrio—and someone else.
