"It's you," Durand said. "You've got it, haven't you? ..."
In the gloom, the big outlander's face was as expressionless as the moon. He rugged the heavy saddlebags straighten
"Did you not hear what Gol said? They're going to burn for this."
The giant squared with Durand. He was as big a man as Durand had ever seen. Small bones clicked in the knots of his hair. The pommel of an enormous sword projected beyond the slope of one of his mountainous shoulders.
Durand lifted the silly hatchet. He could not turn his back on an entire village. He could not slink off when he was challenged.
He wished he had his shield.
"The money's in your bags. Gol might not have hung that miller," Durand said. The words were a low growl.
Fulk only reached back, his hand moving for the hilt of the outsized sword. Durand planned to say more. The Sons of Atthi must speak a challenge, but, the instant Fulk's fingers touched the hilt, the razor wing of his blade whipped from its scabbard and through Durand's face.
But Durand had flinched away.
The foreigner blinked slow. He stood in some outlandish swordsman's pose. The long sword hovered overhand, and they stared at each other down the winking length of the blade, Fulk's dark eyes flat and pitiless.
Durand felt his heart beat, and then the pause was finished.
The big man caught his breath, then threw himself into motion, lashing, stamping, and wheeling, bowlegged in his baggy breeches. Each stroke sheared off another region of Creation, leaving no earth to stand upon and nowhere to run. Every instant flickered with death.
On a downswing, Durand found himself reeling closer to the monster, face-to-face. He jabbed the axe for Fulk's jaws, but, with a twist of hilt and blade, the axe was caught.
For a heartbeat, Durand hung from the axe handle.
Then a huge fist drove into his ribs, and, in a staggering moment, the moon flashed down to stab sick blackness into his skull.
The trees burst like clouds of soot.
He must be falling. Soft boots stalked very close.
He squinted against pain to see a sword glitter high among the treetops.
A voice said, "Enough!"
Durand could hear the giant's breathing, labored in the silence. He tried to focus his attention.
"Lemme guess." It was the captain
...
Gol. "You're not a man who'd go very far just out of rage, Fulk An'Tin
an. You've got all the spark of
a millpond carp."
Breathing answered, and a slow grind of gravel: Fulk's weight shifting in his soft boots.
"All this for a sack of pennies? If you'd stayed with us, you could have had a hall somewhere. Land. You would have made this miller's takings a hundred times over before you died."
Fulk grunted.
"Was it worth your life?" asked Gol.
Finally, Fulk spoke. "Is it worth yours to stop me, Lazar Gol?" His voice was thick and full of lips. The Valduran had a point, though. Gol had caught him, but any fisherman could hook a shark.
"Clever, Fulk. Put that sword down and we'll hang you nice and tidy. With your weight, it'll be over in no time."
"He is lost, this master you've chosen."
"It's not your business, friend, to judge your betters."
"I have seen it. The shadows are hard to read in these knotted lowlands, but my eyes follow them. He was lost on that field with his men. This is a cheat, all of it"
"And now you're running off."
The big man caught his breath. Durand knew the sound.
Grunts and scrabbling boots flurried. Then Durand heard a sound like a pitchfork biting straw—once, twice, three times, and a body fell. There was hardly any gasping—hardly any scrabbling at the earth and choking.
Hands seized Durand's head with enough of a jerk to make his guts lurch. Thumbs pressed, near to crushing.
"King of Heaven," Durand grunted.
"No such luck," said Gol's voice. A slap flashed sparks through Durand's head, and Gol grinned down.
"Your skull's in one piece. No soft spots. Bloody amazing. You'll live. And when you get up? Bury this gloomy bugger, right?"
Durand's head flopped back, and he heard someone smack a horse into motion.
Fulk was dead and steaming like a downed ox, and Gol had no mark on him.
Durand wove his
way back through the berms and fences of Tormentil, sick. On the fringes, among sheds and apple boughs, a black wind stirred. Durand felt the grip of eyes on him. In a moment, the wind had curled away into nothing, like a serpent of ashes. It was so dark.
"Durand,"
said a voice. 'This way."
With relief, he recognized the whisper for Heremund's. The blot of Heremund's silhouette stooped against the blank page of a wall. Durand must have reached the tavern.
"While you were gone—"
"What?" Durand breathed, exhausted. "What is it?"
"Another one."
"Host Below, Heremund." He didn't even have the hatchet "Another what?"
"That man in the black gardecorps. The counselor or physic? On my oath, the devils must be twins. He just rode in from Ferangore. Caught like a black rag on the back of a wild horse." Durand saw Heremund's black shape twitch low. "Here. At the window."
As Durand lowered himself against the wall, there was a voice. "It is so, Milord." The speaker might have been in the yard with them; Durand hunkered lower. Heremund held a finger over his lips.
"Stop!" The word throbbed in the darkness of the tavern, deeper than cellars. Radomor was inside. "I have told you what it will mean if you repeat these things."
"Yes, Lord. Without proof."
"You know not what you say." The voice ebbed; there were footfalls. "My son. My wife."
"There is proof now, Lord. We cannot hold our tongues."
"I have known Aldoin of Warrendel since we were children."
"They have been seen together. She sits in her window high above your father's city."
"That she may do. She may do as she pleases."
'There is a sign."
"Oh no," said Heremund.
"A sign ..." Radomor's voice was weary, but then it hardened: "I will see it, this sign. I'll see it with my own eyes, or you'll pay with yours! No matter what you've done in the past, all my debts to you will be canceled and you both will pay!" He paused. Durand imagined the man jabbing forked fingers at the Rooks' bulging eyes.
If the Rooks were calling Rado
mor's wife an adulteress, it was the least they deserved.
Right above Durand's head, the shutters burst open. Plaster and splinters rained down his neck.
"Gol!" said the duke. "R
ouse the men. We ride for Feran
gore!"
Durand dredged his memory for the dark-haired daughter of the Duke of Gireth. She was practically kin. He had been at her wedding. The Rooks were lying.
By dusk, a
city bristled like a mountain in the midst of the plain before them. Lord Radomor raised a gauntleted fist, and the party jingled to a halt. Durand was alone on a borrowed packhorse, beyond his homeland, and riding to catch the daughter of the Duke of Gireth in adultery, riding to prove the Rooks had lied. Gol had set a firm hand on Heremund's chest, saying, "Whatever happens, there's no place for skalds where we're going. You can see that." It sounded bad.
Mulcer ducked close. "That's Ferangore," he said. Durand reckoned that whoever had thrown up the first walls knew his business. Caught in a fork of rivers, the city hulked atop a good steep hill: as natural a fortress as a man would ever find in the plains of Yrlac. And you could see it was old. You could see the hill fort under it, all banks and ditches. Now, though, that hill fort was girded in stone walls and ramparts. Roofs bristled in tiers, and the spire of the high sanctuary jutted like a lance-head where that first old chieftain must have sat his throne.
Durand sucked a sharp breath through his nostrils, eyes wide despite the bruises Fulk had left him. Night was coming on. "There will be blood before morning," said Mulcer. "Alwen did nothing," Durand said. "You hope."
To the Nine Sleepers, and the Maiden, and the Mother, Durand had prayed that Alwen was blameless.
"My family's served the dukes of Gireth since Gunderic's day. I lived in his hall fourteen bloody years. There are always stories about wellborn women."
"Not every marriage contract brings love with the land and titles."
"It's lies," Durand declared.
Ahead, Radomor pulled off a fine green traveling cloak, his breath catching as he swung the thing from his shoulders. The twist in the man's back and shoulder had Durand wincing. "Ever since the Downs," explained Mulcer. "They say it should have killed him." Grimly, the duke traded his cloak for a hairy rag Gol hauled from his packs.
"What's this?" Mulcer said. Some order rippled down the line. Mulcer listened, then explained. "We're to march in incognito. You're all right." Rough hands twisted emblems from bridles and stuffed them away. Hoods were pulled over scarred faces. A man blacked the white blaze on the nose of Radomor's rouncy. It bode ill. The road ahead swung over muddy fields toward the lowest gate.
Some tempting fiend turned Durand's thoughts to escape. With a little work, he could slip from Mulcer and take his chances on the road. He had sworn no oaths yet. If he left the packhorse he rode behind, his sin would be a small one.
Just then, Gol appeared. "All right Mulcer, I've got to talk to your new friend here." He grinned. "And, Durand, lad, I'll need that nag you're riding."
With a glance to Mulcer, Durand climbed down. Gol joined him in the road. The captain took the reins of Durand's pack-horse, and offered the reins of his own gray hackney instead.
"Get up, boy. We're trading horses. You're to take us in."
"Sir?"
"They don't know you round here. Climb on, get up front, and lead us in."
Durand obeyed, cantering his borrowed horse to the front of the line where Sir Radomor had stopped in the process of changing cloaks. It was hard to imagine any trade of cloaks disguising this man. There was a banked fury in him that made a man think of savages beyond the Fiery Gulf.
"Lord Radomor," Gol said. "This lad's the one chased our monkey down from your mill."
Lord Radomor leveled his gaze on Durand.
"And it was him that heard our friend Fulk," Gol added. "Durand, from the Col of the Blackroots, he says. Knows no one inside. He'll take us into Ferangore. I don't think anyone will bother about the black eyes."
"Do it," growled the lord. His eyes were chips of flint.
"Yes, Lordship," Gol answered.
"Yes, Lordship," echoed Durand.
Bowing their leave, the two men rode to the very head of the column, past any hope of escape, where the captain made to leave Durand behind.
"What'll I tell the guards?" Durand asked.
"Something'll come to you," Gol said, and took his place in the line.
Two dozen hard faces stared at Durand, looking round the nasals of old helms or watching from under ragged hoods. Breath steamed in the air. And, for a moment, greater questions were driven from his mind.
At the head of a conroi of armed men, Durand cantered for the hill city. He guessed at what the gatekeepers might say: Who was he? What was his business? He cursed, seeing slammed portcullises and shot bolts in his mind's eye. A quick glance at the thugs behind him told him the truth: The sentries on the gates would be as likely to shoot as slam the doors.
He swore again.
And then they were at the gate, and an apish man in a brimmed kettle-helm was scrambling out of a low door inside. Helmets blossomed on the battlements twenty feet overhead.
"What in the Hells are you lot up to then, eh?" said the ape. "We was about to close up." There was a crossbow in the man's fists.
Gol's horse snorted steam, tossing its head.
"Well?" The ape gestured with his crossbow. Idly, Durand considered that at this range, the bolt would either blow right through his throat, or he'd end up with a wad of wet feathers tucked under his chin. Either would serve him right.