The sprawled form made no move. The thieving miller-bailiff judged that no one would be coming after him—not soon—and that Gol was going to wait a long while before burning down their master's mill.
Silent, Durand climbed to his feet.
"You should've been a sailor, friend," Gol said. "We've never seen anything like it." There was something said among the men that Durand couldn't make out—and laughing.
Durand stole down the slope of the roof, fighting against noise and bad balance. It was like walking on rotten mattresses, but he let the shouts from the street and the thunder of the mill wheel smother the little pops and crackles of the straw.
Finally, he could see over the roof's edge. Gol's men were pacing and staring up; they spotted him.
The bailiff must have seen the same thing. He twitched then, spinning onto his back, and Durand realized he wasn't in a good position.
He felt the bailiff's hands on him. The man's boot swung up for his guts—a wrestler's throw with a wild six-fathom fall at the end for Durand if he couldn't get loose.
They were locked together. For an instant, he and his victim were poised on the brink, then Durand's strength won out, and he wrenched the bailiff's shoulders off the roof and into the air. Durand's smile twisted, and he shoved the man up, pressing him high.
Gol’
s boys smiled up. A few flapped their hands, beckoning.
"Right," said Durand, and, with a chuckle, he pitched the fugitive down into a trio of laughing soldiers.
When he got down, the lads were shoving wineskins in his face and clapping him on the back.
"You, friend, are the most fearless squirrel in all the Atthias!" announced the blond soldier, Mulcer, who had squared off with the Rook. "Who needs ladders? He's a one man siege tower, this one!"
Gol laughed with the rest, before the whole lot of them rounded slowly on the bailiff.
"Where is it then, eh?" Gol said. "We went to a lot of trouble to get our hands on your neck. You think we're going to let you go without wringing the money out of you?"
They had circled the bailiff.
"Right boys," said Gol. "Let's hear what he has to say." Two men caught the bailiff's arms and held him tight. "The money's mine, Lordship," said the bailiff. One of the men jerked his fist back, but Gol raised his hand. "No. I want to hear this." "A man's allowed to save," answered the bailiff. "Clever."
"It's true!" the bailiff protested. "How'd you come by it all?" "I get a share, don't I?"
Gol tapped his temple. "Ah. Now there's the trouble. You forget. I know what you're paid. It ain't enough, friend. Not nearly."
"Lordship, it were never that much!"
"But I've seen it, friend. Or as good as. Your little friends in town are telling tales. A penny here. A penny there." The bailiff's eyes hardened for an instant. "Don't you worry just who now. They lined up to do it. Nobody likes a bailiff. Or a miller. Especially one with his thumb on the scales. Buying short measure. Stealing the sweat off their backs. Fining them blue. A bit of advice: When you've been stealing pennies from your neighbors, you don't want to go jingling them under their noses, friend. They tend to remember. You'd have done much better robbing your master and spreading it about a bit. We'd never catch a man at that." He rapped a knuckle heavily against the man's breastbone. "Where's the money?"
"Let me go, and I'll tell you where it is."
"So you do have it," concluded Gol. "And you know where."
"Let me go."
"Where?"
"Out the back. For God's sake. There's a bag. Please. I shoved it up an eel trap and rolled the lot into the river."
Gol glanced up to Durand and a couple of the others who went and pulled up all the traps, finding nothing but a half-dozen lashing eels. When they splashed back, Gol was squatting like a stone by his prisoner, and there was a rumble from the village road. For an instant, the glitter of Gol's eyes was the only motion.
Then there was a pounding.
From the dark came a tall stallion and a storm of cloak billowing about the shoulders of a horseman like a giant Durand and the other trap-pullers stood dripping as the horseman's cloak settled, like great wings folding. He was bald as a skull, and a beard bristled round his lips. This was Lord Radomor. Some old wound—the one he took for the king—had hitched one shoulder, but he still had the look of a man who could tear up trees with his bare hands.
Gol drew himself up to face his master, but risked a quick look to Mulcer.
The blond man shook his head. "Nothing."
Gol muttered, "Balls," and bowed low to his lord.
"Lordship!" Gol said.
Radomor's voice rumbled: "Is this the one?" The lord's stallion seemed to have caught his master's mood. It looked ready to leap out of its skin.
"Aye, Lordship," said Gol. "It's him. He's admitted as much."
Radomor's dark eyes glinted as he turned on the thief, but then for a long time he said nothing. The bailiff was blinking, straining.
"You robbed them in my name," said Radomor. "You cheated and swindled and stole and poisoned, all the while saying 'Speak to Lord Radomor. It is he who cheats and swindles and breaks you. It's he your children should remember in their curses.'"
The bailiff twisted, pinioned on his knees as his lord loomed from horseback. "No, Lordship! I swear it!"
"Swear nothing! You've broken oaths that set your soul at hazard, and now you would say more? You put treason in their hearts. I heard their rumblings in my father's hall, far off in Ferangore. Men speaking against taxes. Men speaking against their lord, and t
heir duke, and their king in El
dinor."
Radomor turned to Gol. "Has this man returned what he has stolen?"
Gol spread his arms. "He has told us where it's hid, but there's nothing—"
Now the prisoner lashed like a gaffed fish. "God. It was there! I swear it!"
While the others jumped to restrain him, Sir Radomor's naked skull only tilted a degree or two.
"How does it feel to lose what you have slaved for? To be betrayed?" He stopped, drawing a gust of air through flared nostrils. For a moment, his eyes shut. When they opened, the time for argument had ended.
"It is treason to steal from your sworn lord," said Radomor. 'Treason to violate a position of trust And you have confessed." He hesitated then a moment "These peasants of yours, do you think any of them will have starved on your account? Children. Women. Do you think it came to that?"
Durand glanced to the bailiff, and saw the man bent now, head sagging nearly to the road. They would take him to the duke's throne at Ferangore. They would summon a priest-arbiter, and he would be condemned before the law.
"Do you know what all this means?" Radomor pressed.
The thief began to look up, but Radomor had finished with him, and it was to Gol that Radomor spoke next
"I am lord of this land. In my name he stole. In my name hang him."
Within the hour
, a broad ring of peasants stood in the village green, wavering in the tunics they had slept in. They might have been specters. At the center of the green, Durand and the rest of Gol's men stood under a great tree. Some of the men were breathing hard.
The bailiff kicked over their heads, hanged without priest or law.
Finally, Gol set his hands on his hips and nodded. "Right," he said, his voice pitched to the crowd. "Your bailiff-miller's caught" Murmurs rose in the crowd.
"It's done. And Lord Radomor wants to make it right with the coin." The old soldier was pacing a circle. "Some of it's his by right, but he's ordered that every penny stays in Tormentil."
Now the villagers were waking up.
"But." Gol jabbed a finger in the air.
"But!
Some bastard's sneaked off
with it all. Now. His Lordship's no fool. He understands temptation as well as I do. And stealing from a thief hardly seems a crime, does it? So, I'm giving you fair warning. That coin winds up in my hands by dawn, and every man and child gets his share, no questions. If not, if some bugger's got it hoarded away somewhere, I'll have no choice. Right? I'll tell Lord Radomor you're in revolt" He nodded toward the bailiff. 'Treason against your rightful lord. And I'll torch this place. I will."
A murmur rose from the circle of peasants. Durand wondered how many there were—a hundred at least and not a few broad-shouldered. Gol had fifteen.
"I
know
it's a bad time. Harvest hasn't been good
- There's been rumbling among the wellborn. But it'll be a bloody long winter with your stores burnt up, won't it? Yes? So that's why His Lordship's made sure I'm giving you fair warning. He won't be stolen from. Dawn. I'll roust the priest and have him call the time. By my reckoning, it's midnight now. That leaves you the last six hours of night to come up with what's owed. Look close at your neighbors. You know their hidey-holes. You know who's got light fingers, and who's got debts to pay.
"But if Heaven's Eye rises on this business without a bloody clear sign of contrition, you'll regret it"
There was not a soul on the green who doubted him; Gol had not covered the bailiff's head before hauling him up. In his features, the lesson was simple: A little man did not disgrace the name of a great lord.
6. A Tower in Ferangore
A
rough night," said Mulcer. Durand had found a spot to roll out his blankets. Most of Gol's men were sleeping in the yard. "It's not every night you see a man hanged," he admitted. Mulcer winked. "You've led a sheltered life, then, eh?" Despite himself, Durand laughed.
"I'm afraid our Radomor's past trials and arbiters. I reckon there's been too much of this lately: peasants sharpening their billhooks, the wellborn grumbling. A man can run out of patience."
"Will Gol really burn the town?"
"I used to be a man like you. Just starting. I used to half-expect dragons and princesses. But I've yet to see either. Where you from, did you say?"
"I'm from the Col. My father's the baron."
"You're what then, a bastard? A second son?"
"I think I'm more the latter," Durand said.
Mulcer smiled. "I'd say so. He couldn't find anything for you?"
"It's a small barony. He had a widower's land for me, but the old man's long-lost son turned up. He was supposed to be shipwrecked."
"Damn me"
said Mulcer. "That's that Hearnan you're talking about, isn't it? Me and Gol served with him once or twice down toward the Inner Seas. Caravan guard, I think. There was a fight near Camberlee." He shook his head. "He was always mooning after some plot of land someplace, but it seemed a long way off. Seems he's found it at last Has to be ten years!"
Durand shook his head. "Fifteen, I'd guess."
"Well, there's him happy at last. Maybe there's hope for us all." "Maybe," said Durand.
Just then the Rook passed by, leering Mulcer's way. After a taunting hesitation, he vanished into the alehouse. Heremund looked on.
It was full
dark when Durand woke up, hearing sounds among the horses.
Someone was moving around the camp. He thought of how many villagers there were in Tormentil—of how many friends the dangling bailiff might have had. He was tired beyond reason, but he had taken Radomor's pay and wasn't going to let anyone slit their throats.
He made his way to the makeshift corral, but found no one. Still, the horses picketed in the yard were awake. One brute tossed its head as Durand peered in. A few others nodded or snorted in the dark beyond. Something had been among them.
Just then, he thought he heard the clop of hooves in the street, and he followed the sound around the building. Perhaps the man who had taken the money was slipping away. He had not heard enough to wake the camp, but was glad when a woodpile provided a convenient hatchet.
The sound lured him on through the black village. He tried not to remember the madness in the forest beyond the town, concentrating his senses on the road in front of him. As he heard the millstream ahead, he made out the calligraphy of leafless trees against the clouds. There was a pale shape moving.
Suddenly, he wished he had woken the others. He tested the balance of the hatchet.
A man stood at the flank of a big horse. He turned. Durand recognized the broad forehead of the giant Valduran, and Durand understood. The big man had been with them at the mill. He had seen the miller messing about in back. There had been time—while Durand was playing ape on the rooftop—to spot what the miller had been doing and stash the hoard in the trees.