Cloud Castles (20 page)
The short man bounced into my way. This close he was impressively muscled, and he’d nocked an arrow on a bow that looked like a small tree trunk. ‘
Γετ τηισ
γρτινγ χλoχ
ωoρηγρπψ oμψμχινγ δεχ!’ he commented, in his deep organ of a voice.
‘Okay, okay,’ I said soothingly. Every heave of the deck made me nervous. ‘Look, there used to be one but it died, all right? I just want a word with your quartermaster here—’
‘
Γυεσσ τηε ωoρδ I ωαντ ωιτη ψoυ
!’ he objected, and made a significant gesture with the bow.
‘Leave him, by your courtesy,
kyrios
!’ called out a rich familiar voice. ‘These be old friends and true men, with brave tales to tell. They’d not descend so but at sorest need!’
The burly man looked me up and down with a disconcerting eye, as coldly intelligent as a squid’s, and lowered his bow. I bowed politely, because that looked like his kind of thing, and stepped past, to meet another and equally disturbing gaze.
‘Well met by loon’s light, Master Stephen!’ the tall woman said. ‘You are grown since last we met.’
‘Well met, Mistress Mall!’ I echoed her, and seized the
hands she stretched out to me. ‘Maybe I’ve just put on weight.’
She smiled. ‘I talked not of the body. In your company that’s perilous. You have been touched by something, I see, something that sets you afire.’
I shivered. ‘That was the other guy. Mall – I feel one hell of a lot better just seeing you again—’
She drew back. ‘Nay, I’ll have no bussing, sirrah, for here’s no mast for you to go fleeing up after! ‘Sides, these lads, if they once saw me permit such liberties then little peace I’d have thenceforth – we’re among Greeks, remember?’
‘True,’ observed Jyp. ‘Might make you safer, though, Steve …’
We ignored him. ‘God help any of them that tried to pinch your backside, angel. But as you said, we’ve come for a purpose – and I daren’t leave the ‘copter there long, in case it goes through the deck or slides off it. So here’s what’s happened …’
Mall listened, and her face grew grimmer. She contemplated me with something more than her usual tolerant affection. ‘Here’s dark doings, and a blacker venture yet to amend them. The Graal! The Sangraal! Who dares fix their eye on such a summit? ’Tis too high even for that crabbed old conjuror Le Stryge, my word upon’t. There’s another behind him, and a greater by far – and such an one with such ambition must needs be dangerous, at whatever they essay! Stephen, my Stephen, it’s a strange destiny that’d thus enmesh you.’ She was looking at me oddly now, very oddly indeed. ‘As well forbid the sea obey the moon as I to aid you, always – but here also’s a peril wider still that must be stopped.’ She glanced at Jyp, and at Katjka, perched in the ‘copter. ‘That deep one there, she thinks so, or she’d not be here. So be it!’ She clapped a hand to her sword. ‘A minute to gather my dunnage, then I stand to your command!’
‘Command? Mall, we need you to lead us!’
Her wide mouth twisted. ‘Nay, sirrah, I know my place. Your quartermaster at sea I’ll be, on land your ancient, a strong right hand, but no commander save at direst need. You are a leader, my master, with all the strengths and foibles of the breed. In your paths I’ll tread, willingly. But a moment, I pray you; I must make my peace with the master here. O
kyrios
, a word!’
Evidently the squat man understood English well enough, which made me wish I’d been more polite. As Mall talked to him his face darkened again, and he thumped
his solid bow stave on the deck; but she insisted, and he grew more concerned. Finally he thumped the bow again, but gave a curt nod – to me, not her.
‘Thanks,
o kyrios;
,’ I told him. ‘We’ll try and get her back to you as soon as we can.’
If we can.
That was the unspoken condition, and I saw he knew it too.
He gave me that oddly regal nod again, and growled ‘
Xηαιρετε
!’
‘
Chairete, o kyrios!
Let’s hope so, anyhow. Got your dunnage, Mall? Okay. Let’s ride.’
Mall turfed the light bag that held her few necessities behind the seat, then leaned back out and called, ‘
O Ithaca!
I pray you, no more of your strayings against my return!’
Ithaca, if that was his name or title, smiled sourly and raised his eyes to Heaven, as if she’d made something pretty ripe in bad-taste jokes, but waved a tolerant hand. Mall swung herself lithely up into the undersized back seat. Katjka, overwhelmed on all flanks, accepted the situation with a sour smile; Mall, of course, didn’t mind a bit. I slid the door shut and waved the Greek skipper back as I started up. He didn’t need telling; but as I gunned the collective and lifted us swinging from the deck, he stood staring after us, rubbing his bristly chin thoughtfully.
‘Let’s hope he be not inspired!’ yelled Mall into her headset, as Jyp showed her how to use it. ‘Such a
helix-apteryx
device as this would be all the Argive loon requires! Now, how is’t you propose to slip into this sorceror’s den of yours?’
‘That,’ said Jyp grimly, ‘is the original sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.’
‘For a start,’ I whispered, lifting my head cautiously over the damp lip of the bank, ‘there are the guards. Heavies on the gate, and I don’t doubt a couple of patrols in the grounds, with dogs – attack dogs.’
‘Don’t light this place much, does he?’ muttered Jyp, squinting at the blackness beyond the old fence as if to spy his way through it. The moon flooded the sky with blue, but the tree line beneath was solid black, like a cut-out silhouette. Nothing moved, and the least spark would stand out.
‘Avoids light pollution – he’s supposed to be red-hot on environmentals.’ The idea left an unpleasant taste. ‘But there’s lighting there, he’s got an automatic on-demand
system along the drive, so he could just as easily have every inch of the grounds criss-crossed with floods, tracker spots, you name it. If I know Lutz, he has. You can bet there’s some sort of contact wire on the fence, too – even electrified, maybe. Along the top, anyhow – he wouldn’t want passing dogs setting it off all the time. And around the house walls there are lights, he had them on for the party.’
‘Plus a nifty alarm system,’ Jyp muttered. ‘And from what Kat says, something a whole lot nastier inside, for a cert. Tough crib. So how’re we supposed to crack it?’
I took a deep breath. Katjka and I had done a lot of talking on the way here, and I had something like a plan worked out. Now I had to sound as if I believed it myself. ‘Well, my first idea was to con my way into the house, being who I am; it’s just about the only place Lutz wouldn’t want me killed! If he could help it, anyhow. From there I could fake it, get loose on some pretext, snatch a few photos – it wouldn’t be too hard. But with Katjka, not to mention the rest of you … We’ll have to go to my second idea: break in. Three stages: cross the grounds; get in the house; get into the room—’