Alyss stood up, drawing herself to her full height.
"How very kind of you to point all this out for me," she said icily. Keren shook his head, smiling at her, trying to placate her.
"I'm just pointing out the facts," he said. "Before I suggest an alternative. The only alternative, I think."
"Alternative?" she repeated. He had her attention now because for the life of her, she couldn't think what he was talking about. "What alternative?"
"You could become my wife," he said simply.
"Your wife?" she repeated, the rising pitch of her voice evidence of the shock she felt at the suggestion. "Why would I become your wife?"
He shrugged. The smile had faded from his face at her reply, but now it returned. She sensed that it was less than genuine, more an attempt to cajole her.
"It's not an altogether outrageous suggestion," he said. "As my wife, the Scotti would have to accord you the proper degree of respect. You would have the freedom of the castle." He stood and waved a hand at the surrounding countryside outside the window. "And the lands around here. You'd be free to come and go as you please."
"You'd trust me not to escape?" she said, still staggered by the enormity of the idea, and the arrogance behind it. He seemed not to notice the fact.
"Where to? We'd be surrounded by Scotti, remember. They're planning an invasion here, not just a simple raid. And besides, if you were to marry me, you would show a certain, shall we say… empathy… for my actions."
"You mean," she said coldly, "I would brand myself a traitor as well?"
He recoiled a little at the word. "Don't judge too harshly, Alyss. Remember, we wouldn't always remain here. In Gallica, you'd be a baroness with me."
She knew she shouldn't antagonize him, knew she should humor him. But his presumption was so enormous that she couldn't control her feelings.
" There is one small impediment," she said. "I don't love you. I don't even like you very much."
He spread his hands in a dismissive gesture. "Is that so important? How many marriages have you seen among people of our class that were based on love? In most cases, convenience is the deciding factor. And I'm not such a bad catch, after all, am I?" He added the last question in a lighthearted tone, still trying to jolly her into the idea.
"Our class?" she queried coldly. "Let me tell you what class I am. I'm an orphan. I have no family. I do have people to whom I owe allegiance and gratitude and even love. So, as a lower-class, lesser being than you, let me say that I do happen to believe that love is important in a marriage."
His face darkened with anger."It's that Ranger you're thinking of, isn't it? I knew there was something between you."
Alyss had spent years training in diplomacy. But she also spent those years training to make her point quickly and succinctly. She forgot the diplomacy now.
"That is none of your business," she said. "The fact is, there are probably fifty people whom I would find easier to love than you. Knights. Rangers. Couriers. Scribes. Blacksmiths. Innkeepers. Stable boys. Because at the end of the day, they would all have one huge advantage over you. They would not be traitors."
She could see that her words cut him like a whip. He had been angry, but now he was furious. He turned stiffly and walked to the door. As he reached it, he looked back at her.
"Very well. But remember, when you're on your hands and knees in the freezing rain in a Scotti village, scrubbing out a privy or feeding the pigs, you could have been a baroness!"
He thought it would be the last word. But as he went to close the door behind him, she said softly, "The price would be too high."
He turned and their eyes met. There was no more cordiality between them. She had crossed a line in their relationship, and they would never go back.
"Damn you," he said quietly, and closed the door behind him.
27
Horace craned over Will's shoulder to look at the rough sketch his friend had completed.
He frowned. From where he stood, the device Will had designed looked like a handcart, except that the main body, where the load would be carried, appeared to be upside down.
"What do you think?" Will asked.
"I think if you try to carry anything in that cart, it'll all fall out straightaway."
"I'm not putting anything in it. I'm putting us in it," Will said.
"In which case, we'll fall out," Horace replied.
Will gave him a withering look and tapped the salient points on the drawing with his charcoal pencil as he explained. "It's quite simple, really. There are two wheels, shafts and a framework underneath and a sloping, planked roof on top. The whole thing rolls along with us walking along underneath it."
"Well, that'll stop us from falling out," Horace said."But why are we under it in the first place?" Horace asked.
"Because if we weren't under it," Will said, with a hint of acid in his voice, "we'd be out in the open, where we could be hit by rocks and crossbow bolts and spears." He looked meaningfully at Horace to see if there was another question. But Horace's eyes were riveted on the drawing now, and a small furrow was forming between his eyebrows.
"The beauty of it is," Will continued, "we can disassemble it and reassemble it in a matter of minutes."
"Well, that's definitely an advantage," Horace replied. His tone of voice said that he thought it was anything but.
Will sat back in exasperation. "You enjoy being negative, is that it?" he asked.
Horace spread his hands wide in a helpless gesture.
"Will, I haven't the faintest idea what you've got in mind with this… thing. Bear in mind, I'm a simple warrior, the sort of person I've heard you and Halt refer to as a bash-and-whacker. Now you tell me you want us to walk around under a handcart that someone's built with the top where the bottom ought to be and expect me to get excited about it. And by the way, " he added, "I've seen better drawings of wheels. "
Will was looking critically at the drawing now, trying to see it through Horace's eyes. He thought that perhaps his friend was right. It did look rather strange. But he also thought Horace was being overcritical.
"The wheels aren't that bad," he said finally. Horace took the pencil from him and tapped the left-hand wheel on the drawing.
"This one is bigger than the other by at least a quarter," he said.
"That's perspective," Will replied stubbornly. "The left one is closer, so it looks bigger."
"If it's perspective, and it's that much bigger, your handcart would have to be about five meters wide," Horace told him. "Is that what you're planning?"
Again, Will studied the drawing critically.
"No. I thought maybe two meters. And three meters long." He quickly sketched in a smaller version of the left wheel, scrubbing over the first attempt as he did so. "Is that better?"
"Could be rounder," Horace said. "You'd never get a wheel that shape to roll. It's sort of pointy at one end."
Will's temper flared as he decided his friend was simply being obtuse for the sake of it. He slammed the charcoal down on the table.
"Well, you try drawing a perfect circle freehand!" he said angrily. "See how well you do! This is a concept drawing, that's all. It doesn't have to be perfect!"
Malcolm chose that moment to enter the room. He had been outside, checking on MacHaddish, making sure the general was still securely fastened to the massive log that held him prisoner. He glanced now at the sketch as he passed by the table.
"What's that?" he asked.
"It's a walking cart," Horace told him. "You get under it, so the spears won't hit you, and go for a walk."
Will glared at Horace and decided to ignore him. He turned his attention to Malcolm. "Do you think some of your people could build me something like this?" he asked.
The healer frowned thoughtfully. "Might be tricky," he said. "We've got a few cart wheels, but they're all the same size. Did you want this one so much bigger than the other?"
Now Will switched his glare to Malcolm. Horace put a ha
nd up to his face to cover the grin that was breaking out there.
"It's perspective. Good artists draw using perspective," Will said, enunciating very clearly.
"Oh. Is it? Well, if you say so." Malcolm studied the sketch for a few more seconds. "And did you want them this squashed-up shape? Our wheels tend to be sort of round. I don't think these ones would roll too easily, if at all."
Truth be told, Malcolm had been listening outside the house for several minutes and knew what the two friends had been discussing. Horace gave vent to a huge, indelicate snort that set his nose running. His shoulders were shaking, and Malcolm couldn't maintain his own straight face any longer. He joined in, and the two of them laughed uncontrollably. Will eyed them coldly.
"Oh, yes. Extremely amusing," he said. "Highly entertaining. Why did I train to be a jongleur, I wonder, when we had two comedians like you available? Now I know," he added, with heavy emphasis, "why people call comedians fools."
Horace and Malcolm, with a supreme effort, managed to bring their snorting and laughing under control. Malcolm wiped his eyes.
"Aaah," he said to Horace, "it does you good to start the day with a laugh."
"It's late morning," Will pointed out.
"Better late than never," Malcolm replied.
Will seemed about to say something, but Horace thought it might be time to get to the business at hand.
"Will," he said, more seriously, "why don't you tell us what this thing is supposed to do?" Horace sensed that the idea would be sound, no matter how bad the drawing might be. He had never known his friend to have a bad idea.
"It's to get us closer to the west wall," Will said. "With our ladder."
Horace looked at the sketch again."You plan to push this right up to the wall?" he said. "And this roofed-over section is to protect us from the defenders above, right?" He shook his head. "It'll take too long, Will. They'll have plenty of warning, and as soon as we come out from under the roof here, they'll be ready and waiting for us."
"I know that," Will said. "But as you pointed out, if we try to run from the tree line to the wall carrying a ladder, it'll take far too long – and they'll have time to get back on the wall again to fight us off."
"So? Wheeling this… thing… will take us twice as long. Sure, we'll be protected while we're on the way. But I still don't see – "
Will cut him off. "I plan to get us halfway to the wall," he said. " Then we'll rig it so that one of the wheels collapses."
"What's the point of that?" Malcolm asked.
"Let me take it from the beginning," Will said."We assemble the cart at the tree line. We tie our ladder on top." Quickly, he sketched in a ladder on top of the roof. "Then, in the middle of the afternoon, Horace and I and, say, four of the Skandians get under it and start pushing it toward the wall."
"In the middle of the afternoon?" Horace said. "They're sure to see us! They'll be throwing spears and rocks at us – "
Will raised a hand for silence.
"We'll keep going till we're twenty meters from the wall, then we'll collapse the wheel here. The whole thing will sag over to the side. The defenders will think they hit something crucial or that the thing was badly built. In any event, they'll see we're stopped. Then the other four people run like hell back to the trees. We' ll rig some kind of armor for them to protect them."
Malcolm nodded. "That sounds fair," he said.
But Horace had noticed an omission in Will's plan." You said the other four run back. What about us?"
Will smiled at him. "We stay put, under the cart. They won't know we're there because they won't know how many people were hidden under it in the first place."
Understanding started to dawn in Horace's eyes now.
"So we'll be twenty meters from the wall… with a scaling ladder," he said softly.
Will nodded, his excitement evident. "All we have to do is sit quietly for a few hours. By that time, the wrecked cart and the ladder will have become part of the landscape. They'll be used to it, so they'll begin to ignore it. Then, when Malcolm starts his show to the south and everybody's attention is distracted, we break out and run for the wall with the ladder."
"We could make it before anyone notices," Horace said.
" That's the general idea," Will said, smiling.
28
Horace came to a halt and set the timber beams he was carrying against a tree trunk. There were plenty of trunks to choose from. The path they were following twisted and turned among a tangle of trees and undergrowth. He wiped his brow with a scrap of cloth and sank to his haunches to rest. "This is heavy going," he said to Will.
Will nodded. "It's slower than I thought it would be. These game trails are so bad they might as well not be here at all." He raised his voice and called to Trobar, who was still moving ahead of the rest of the party, clearing the worst of the undergrowth and vines from the long-disused track they were following. "Trobar! Take a break!"
The giant turned and waved an acknowledgment. He sat cross-legged in the middle of the track. Shadow, his ever-present companion, moved to sit beside him, eyes intent on him. Will smiled ruefully to himself. The name was appropriate, he thought. The dog had become like a second shadow to the huge figure.
Back along the track, the Skandians eased their burdens off their shoulders as well and sat on the ground. There was not enough clear ground for them all to gather around. They simply relaxed wherever they were on the track. Water skins were passed along the line, and the men drank as they eased their aching muscles. Low conversations broke out among the groups.
It was tough going, Will thought. He was used to moving through forests and among trees, and even he found this tangle of trees, vines, bushes and saplings almost impossible to negotiate. They were forced to follow whatever faint game trails they could find leading in the right general direction. But they were trails more in concept than in practice. Even with Trobar moving ahead with a large sickle, hacking away at the worst of the undergrowth, it was a struggle to make progress. The situation was aggravated by the fact that, at any given moment, nearly half their party was laden with the components for what had become known as the Upside-Down Cart. The framework timbers, the roofing planks, the shafts and the wheels had all been disassembled so they could move it through the forest to the western side of Macindaw.
Gundar made his way along the narrow track to where the two friends were resting. He was carrying half of one of the scaling ladders – they had three in all, each constructed in two pieces to make them easier to carry through the forest. He let it fall to one side as he reached them.
"Are we nearly there?" he asked cheerfully. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and took the water skin that Horace offered him.
"Just around the next corner," Horace lied, and the Skandian grinned at him.
"Now you can see why we prefer to do our traveling by ship," he said, and the two Araluens nodded agreement.
"In the future, I'm going to do the same," said Will. "This makes the Stormwhite Sea look easy. How are your men managing?"
Gundar regarded him with approval. A good leader was always concerned with his men's welfare.
"Oh, they're complaining, swearing and generally carrying on. In other words, they're fine. It's when Skandians don't complain that you know you've got trouble."
Horace stood up, stretching his back and neck muscles.
"We might as well take the opportunity to spell the carriers," he said. At any given time, only half of the Skandians had loads to carry – aside from their weapons and armor, of course. So at regular intervals, they would relieve the men carrying the cart components. Will noticed that Horace, however, hadn't asked for anyone to spell him so far. Gundar had obviously noticed the same thing.
"One of you lazy beggars back there come up and give the general a break!" he called out. It was the jocular term they had adopted for Horace. But while it was said jokingly, it also had a ring of respect to it.
A burly figure pushed
his way along the narrow track to them. Even before he could make out the man's features, Will knew who it would be.
"Here, give them to me, General," said Nils Ropehander.
Skandians were a strange breed, Will thought. Since Horace had rammed Nils's helmet down on his head and broken his nose with a flat-hand punch, he had become one of the young knight's most enthusiastic followers.
"Can't say I'll be sorry to be rid of them," Horace said, passing the heavy hardwood planks to the Skandian. Nils swung them easily over his shoulder and turned to go back to his place in the line. Will, who had just risen to his feet, managed to dive sideways in time to avoid having his head knocked from his shoulders by the swinging planks. His startled cry puzzled Nils, who swung around to see what had caused it. As he did so, the planks clanged solidly against Gundar's helmet.
"For Loka's sake!" the wolfship captain snarled. "Watch what you're doing!"
Nils swung back, apologizing. Will saw it coming this time. He had been about to regain his feet, but he stayed in a crouch as the planks whipped through the air at head height above him. The situation could have gone on all day, but Horace, seeing his chance, stepped in close and grabbed the end of the planks, stopping Nils's back-and-forth movement.
"Just keep them still, all right?" he said.
Nils looked apologetic. "I don't know how that happened," he said.
Gundar was inspecting his helmet. There was a new dent there, he was sure of it. He looked accusingly at Nils. Like all Skandians, he was very fond of his helmet.
"When we get to Macindaw," he said, "let's just send him up the ladder with those planks. He'll clear the defenders out in no time."
"I'm sorry, Skirl," said Nils. "I didn't see you there. Didn't see the Ranger either."
"That's the point," Gundar told him. "Before you start swinging around like a demented milkmaid at a Spring Festival hop-dance, look over your damned shoulder!"
Nils nodded, looking suitably abashed.
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