Speak to the Devil (30 page)

“Much as expected,” he said, smiling. “Promises, no more.”

“Same with me. I have to go back for him at terce tomorrow.”

There were too many other people at their table and directly behind them to say more about important matters. They could speak only in generalities.

“How long,” Wulf asked, “until our other brother gets some company?”

Shrug. “My friend said maybe forty days.”

“Why so
long
? The boy Gintaras rode here in eight days!”

Otto grinned in an affectionate, big-brotherly way. “First he has to find the money, and no king ever has enough money. Then find men. He won’t send the regiments, because they have to stay and guard the capital. If he does, they have to be replaced here. Either he must find mercenaries or call up a feudal levy. September is the worst possible time to muster levies. Is the mutton as tough as it looks?”

“Tougher. The pork is good and lardy, though, and there’s lots of honey and raisins in the frumenty.”

Otto cut a slice of pork with his knife and spooned some of the thick
wheat porridge onto his trencher. “It’s not just time from here to there that counts. It’s couriers from here to the countryside, then men from the countryside back to here, then on to where you need them. Mercenaries are moving into winter quarters, the lords are away hunting so they can have salt venison in the winter, and even when they get the summons, they don’t want to take their men from the fields and vineyards.

“Meanwhile the quartermaster has to find horses and tack, oxen and wagons, victuals, fodder, tentage, bows and arrows, guns, powder and shot, horseshoes and nails, blacksmiths, farriers, saddlers, anvils, carters, and fletchers and bowyers. Some of these are certain to be almost impossible to find, but you never know which will be lacking this time. Officers want attendants, heralds, secretaries, and cooks; the men want women and priests, in that order. If Mauvnik can even get such a force moving within forty days, it’ll be a miracle.

“And the journey itself will be a teeth-grinding business. Armies often make only three or four miles a day. Winter days are short; they can’t start before dawn, and they need daylight to pitch camp. Trails can divide or disappear altogether in the forest, and if it rains they become mud pits. Rivers in flood wash away ferries and bridges; they drown the fords and turn the water meadows into marshlands for a mile on either side of them. Don’t even think about snow—you damn nearly have to carry the horses then. Armies always have food and forage problems. The lords don’t want them anywhere near their game parks. In enemy country it’s easier, you just go where you please and take what you want, but if you try that in your own homeland, you’re going to have barons running to the king, screaming rape and pillage.”

Wulf licked his fingers. “I think my way of traveling is better.”

“Oh, it is, lad, it is!”

Would Castle Gallant still be standing when the king’s men finally arrived?

After dinner, Otto changed back into traveling clothes and settled with the landlord, who was happy to rent out the same room twice in one day. Once they had left the yard, heading for the city gate, the brothers could talk freely of war and Voices.

“Vlad is as cantankerous as ever, and even bigger, I think,” Wulf said. “I’m to meet him at the castle door tomorrow. I should take him straight
to Cardice, shouldn’t I?” Cardice and Madlenka! He must see her again, even if all he could do was admire her from afar, like the poet Petrarch adoring Laura.

Otto agreed. “We don’t want to have to explain any more miracles than we must. The Spider admitted that he knew who put Anton over that jump at the hunt. He admitted he wanted you more than Anton, but had been told that you were only sixteen, too young for his purpose.”

“I think Marek started that story. Which means the cardinal gets his information from the monastery.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Otto said. “And if Marek misinformed the monks about your age, he was probably trying to protect you. But Zdenek knows who and what you are, and he agrees you should be rewarded.”

“Does he truly? If I survive, of course. Reward me for Speaking to the devil? Can I sue him if he doesn’t keep his promise?”

Otto laughed. “You can probably scare him by threatening to turn him into a real spider. As far as your ladylove is concerned, he seemed quite sympathetic and certainly didn’t rule out a change of bridegroom. That is, as long as she doesn’t go and marry Anton first. And I told him that you need help just as much as Anton does. Again he didn’t promise, but he did say he would try to send someone. The password will be ‘Greenwood.’”

Wulf thought about all that and said nothing while they waited to clear the gate, where a jam of travelers was lined up to be inspected by the guards. Then a path was opened for the nobility. They were waved through and saluted.

The road was less busy outside, but the city had outgrown its walls, and was flanked by a wide sprawl of cottages. There were still too many people in view to risk a disappearance, but not so many that they could not talk freely.

“Password?” Wulf said. “Then Cardinal Zdenek regularly employs Speakers? Like the Church does?”

Otto was looking bleak. “Possible, but I got the impression that the archbishop helps out the cardinal every once in a while and Zdenek may ask for such a favor this time. Obviously he did not admit that.”

“Lord love me! You mean he’s going to borrow a Speaker from the archbishop?”

“Why not? You tell me the Wends are employing a Speaker, Father
Vilhelmas. But how many more do they have? How many Speakers does it take to move a bombard along a mountain road? The archbishop won’t want a war, and certainly not an invasion led by Orthodox priests.”

“But the abbot …” Wulf wondered if the Church might even send Marek and then discarded the thought. “How do Speakers control other Speakers?”

“That question,” Otto said sadly, “is your largest worry right now.”

No, it wasn’t. Madlenka was.

“Koupel is famous for its medicinal springs, Wulf. People go there to be cured of their ills. Rich ones give generous endowments.”

That was heresy, saying that the pilgrims were cured by Satanists.

Wulf looked away to study the road. So many people! Arriving from Dobkov in the morning had been easy—the road had been empty—but now there was no gap big enough to disappear from.

His reverie was interrupted when Otto said, “Can you move two men through limbo, as you call it? Could you take both Vlad and me to Cardice?”

“I don’t move anyone, but I can ask my Voices. That would be wonderful, if you would come. Wonderful!”

Otto smiled. “I may be needed as mediator. Anton will become insufferable pretty fast. Does he wear his coronet to bed yet? He needs Vlad, but Vlad having to take orders from Anton is likely to blow up Castle Gallant faster than the Wends’ bombard.”

Wulf laughed, but then he noticed a couple of sizable barns near the road. “See those? If we ride between them, we should be out of sight long enough to enter limbo. Holy Saints, when my brother and I are out of public view behind that barn, will you please move both of us to Dobkov, to somewhere on the road where we won’t be seen?”

—
You are becoming very devious in your requests, Wulfgang, my son.
Helena sounded amused, fortunately.

“I am wise to be devious, aren’t I? I am very grateful for all your help.”

His trick seemed to work. They ran the horses along the corridor at a fast pace and emerged on the Dobkov road. Again old Balaam was spooked, even making a game effort to buck. Copper merely flickered his ears in the equine equivalent of a shrug. Whether anyone back at Mauvnik was
having hysterics about Satanism, Wulf could not know, but it seemed unlikely. Only someone deliberately watching the two riders would have noticed their failure to reappear, and who wouldn’t sooner believe that their eyes were playing tricks?

As they rode into the bailey, the first thing Wulf noticed was a groom rubbing down a chestnut stallion over by the stable door.

“We have company! That’s Morningstar.”

Otto frowned. “So it is. Where did you leave him—Mauvnik?”

“No,” Wulf said. “Koupel.”

Thinking furiously, Wulf rode after Otto, over to the house door. By the time he had dismounted, Achim had come running from the stable to take charge of their mounts. He saluted the baron, looking up at the big man with a huge smile. “Brother Marek is here, my lord! Just came for a visit, he says.”

“Alone?”

The stableman flinched at the sharp tone. “Yes, my lord.”

“How is Morningstar? Has he been ridden far?”

“No, he’s fresh, my lord. Still frisky.”

“You’re certain Brother Marek came alone?”

“Yes, my lord.”

As the brothers ran up the steps, Otto put into words what Wulf had thought at first and then rejected: “Marek may be the help the cardinal promised.”

“So soon?”

“Well … If Zdenek had a Speaker within call in the palace and sent him straight to Abbot Bohdan it would work. No, you’re right. The abbot would want to consider the request, then summon Marek, and so on. It’s too fast.”

Hating himself for even thinking it, Wulf said, “So his visit may be bad news.”

“You want to disappear while I find out?”

“If he had brought company I would,” Wulf admitted. He attempted a smile, although he suspected it wasn’t a very good one. “But I’d feel terrible running away from anyone his size.”

As the brothers entered the lesser hall, three excited people shouted that Brother Marek was back. He had come on a visit. He was upstairs, in the solar with the baroness, meeting his nephews and nieces.

“Let me talk with him first,” Otto said as they clanked up the spiral staircase. “You go and change.”

Deeply troubled, Wulf headed for the guest room. All through his childhood he had been told that Magnuses were allowed to feel fear but were expected to ignore it. He was feeling fear now and it refused to be ignored. Had Marek brought a warning from the Church? Would his Voices be able to bind Wulf in some sort of obedience? Had he been so distressed by seeing Anton and Wulf that he had renounced his vows and fled the cloister? If that were the case, surely he would have hounds on his heels very quickly—Dominican friars, likely. It had been Dominicans who came for him five years ago. Not for nothing were the Dominicans known as
domini canes
, the Lord’s dogs.

He threw open the door and went in.

A man was standing in the window alcove, leaning out and staring at something below. Apparently he had not heard the door open, and had been interrupted in the process of changing, for he wore only a breechcloth. His back was a hell of partly healed black and purple stripes, grooves of torn and crushed flesh. Wulf had seen men flogged, but never as savagely as that. A bulky monkish habit lay discarded on the floor nearby, close to a saddlebag like the one Morningstar had worn to Koupel.

In the deep window alcove, with his head almost outside, Marek had not heard Wulf’s arrival. He could not see the bailey from there, but was it possible to creep up on a Speaker? Wulf slammed the door.

Marek jumped, spun around, and tried to cover his nudity with his arms, in a curiously feminine gesture. Many of the cuts wrapped around his ribs to his chest.

“Wulfgang!”

“Marek. What brings you here?”

“Cowardice.” Marek reached for his discarded black habit, squatting
rather than bending, as if trying not to expose his back. Or perhaps bending hurt.

Wulf shot the bolt. He removed his gloves and threw them angrily on the bed. “Never heard that word in this house before.” His cloak followed, then his hat.

“You saw my stripes?” Marek was clutching the habit in front of himself as a shield, not moving to put it on.

“I caught a glimpse.” As he was meant to? “I’d rather not see any more. Who did that to you?”

“Brother Lodnicka.” Marek smiled thinly. “He has a mighty arm. Fifty lashes on Monday and another fifty next Monday. I couldn’t face the thought of more, so I ran away.”

“Merciful Heaven!
I don’t blame you. What sin requires that sort of penance?”

Marek smiled thinly. “I disobeyed orders. I was told to take you and Anton to the scriptorium so the abbot and the master of discipline could eavesdrop on you. I failed.”

“Because we saw through you and refused? You were flogged for that? That’s insane!”

“I had been given permission to seek aid from my Voices. I could have compelled Anton, as long as I was close to him. I was warned that it might not work on you.”

Wulf thought a silent prayer of thanks. “I am grateful to you. But just for that they tied you up and gave you—”

“Not tied up. I had to stand for the strokes. It is a test of commitment and obedience.”

It certainly would be. Wulf shuddered. “To prove that you wouldn’t call on your Voices? And today, how did you get away?”

Marek hung his head. “I slipped away in the dark, after matins. I went to the stable. I recognized Morningstar, of course. Then, when I had saddled him, I asked my Voices, St. Methodius and St. Uriel, to bring me to Dobkov. I have broken my oaths, Wulf. I am an apostate, a damned soul.”

Lies! Wulf felt ill.

“Why haven’t you asked the Voices to heal your back?”

Marek whispered. “I swore that I would not.”

“Then why don’t I ask my Voices to do it?”

“No!”

“Why not?” Wulf asked, wondering if his brother had been driven insane.

Marek gave him a sheepish little smile. “I’ll explain later.”

“I know nothing about Speaking. I expect you to teach me, now that you’re here.”

Marek crouched to rummage in the saddlebag. “Did you call on your Voices when you were at Koupel?”

“Only after we left you. Why?”

“Do you notice a strange glow when you call on your Voices, a light you can see even with your eyes closed?”

“Yes.”

“Other Speakers can see it too, did you know?”

Wulf’s heart skipped a beat as he hastily thought back over the last few days, to times when he had called on Helena and Victorinus. Had he ever done so when he might have been observed by strangers? “No, I didn’t. Thanks for the warning.”