The Wizard's Daughters: Twin Magic: Book 1 (15 page)

With the fire going, the house was much warmer than the clearing or the wagon, so they cleared some space in the center and lay down to sleep. Ariel and Astrid summoned their moon-guard, which began circling the house. The wolf eyed it curiously, but smelling nothing suspicious, thereafter ignored it.

Erich sat closest to the door, taking the first watch as he had been doing, with Ariel and Astrid between him and Walther. The wolf curled up between the girls.

A little while later, with Walther snoring away, he felt a hand come over his. He looked over to see Ariel looking up at him.

“What will you do when we reach Köln?” she whispered.

“I don’t know. With this money, I have considerably more options now. But I should not remain there long.”

“Can you stay at least until we are married?”

“I will try.”

“Perhaps we will need to travel again. You could come with us.”

“Perhaps.”

Her hand tightened.

“Are you fond of me at all?”

“Yes. You and Astrid both.”

She was silent for a few moments. “I wish you were a mage.”

He could think of nothing to say to that. She squeezed his hand again and rolled over.

♦ ♦

In the morning, Erich sharpened his new sword as Ariel and Astrid made breakfast and Walther loaded the wagon with the things they were taking from the ogres’ hoard. Beside him, the wolf gnawed on a bone from the previous night’s dinner.

When they were packed up and prepared to leave, Erich realized the wolf had followed them out. When Walther set the wagon moving, she loped along behind them.

Walther noticed this as well and stopped.

“Daughters, we cannot take a wolf to Köln. We will have trouble just bringing it into the next town.”

The girls immediately protested. “We cannot send her away,” Astrid said. “She will starve on her own.”

“We can control her,” Ariel said.

Walther looked at Erich, who shrugged. “I suppose we can try,” he said.

It took all three horses working together to move the tree out of the way, but soon they were heading briskly down the hill. The wolf continued to follow them, keeping up easily. Oddly enough, their horses did not seem to mind her presence.

“Like a shadow,” he remarked a bit later.

“Yes,” Astrid said. Then, “I like that. We should call her Shadow,” she said to her sister.

“It appears we’re stuck with you,” he said to the wolf.

♦ ♦

By now the land had flattened out, and they were into the settled farmlands around the Rhine. A few more days would have them in Köln.

They reached the next town by mid-afternoon. As they approached, Ariel and Astrid assured Erich and their father that Shadow understood she needed to stay close to them and not be afraid. When they reached the gate, Ariel whistled to her, and the wolf jumped into the wagon and lay down. The gate guards gave them a cautious look, but said nothing as Walther paid the toll.

“There is a bounty on those ogres over the hill, is there not?” Erich asked one guard.

“There is. Did you kill them?”

Erich held up his string of ears, each easily twice the size of a man’s with a sharp point at the top. The guard’s eyes widened. “Where do I go to collect it?”

“The gate of Count Werner’s castle. In the center of town.”

He left the others at an inn—the innkeeper demanded extra to admit the wolf—and found the Count’s modest castle. The guards there were surly with Erich until he showed them the ears. Then one went to get their captain.

He proved to be an older man, stout, with a trim white beard. He examined the ears closely.

“Ogre, to be sure. Where did you find them?”

Erich described the spot of the ambush but did not mention their lair, in case he should want to visit the place again on his trip out from Köln.

“We’ve sent men to that ford and back many times and found nothing.”

“I am convinced they were watching the road. They were ready for us. They no doubt would have seen your men coming.”

The captain nodded, and went to his office. He returned a bit later with a leather sack. “Fifty crowns,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“You have our thanks as well. Those ogres have been a profound nuisance for months. There was another group of bounty hunters that came through here a couple of days ago, but it appears you beat them to it.”

“We met no one on the road.”

“Surely? There were nine of them, on horseback. Their leader was an Italian. Wore a black cap with a red feather. Be hard to miss.”

“No.”

“Well, they weren’t hunting the ogres in any case. They were looking for someone, a tall man with a jeweled rapier, the leader said.”

Erich felt a chill. He was carrying the war knife, and his rapier was back at the inn.

“Did they give this man’s name?” he asked evenly.

“Erich von Jülich-Berg,” he said. “No one I’ve heard of.”

“Nor I. We did not see them.”

“I suppose they took a different route, then.”

♦ ♦

Erich’s satisfaction at having collected the bounty evaporated. There was no mystery what this meant. His brother had not forgotten him. It had been years since the last group of sellswords had tracked him down, and he had begun wondering if Wilhelm had given up. Clearly, he had not.

What chilled him even more was realizing how close they had come to finding him. Somehow or other his group had missed them on the road, but he felt a sinking feeling they were heading for Weilburg in search of him. He had given his name there, and many had seen his rapier.

How many knew he had left with Walther? He was not certain, but there were surely a few who did.

He could not tarry in Köln.

Part III

22.

Johannes was putting the finishing touches on his paper when one of the university pages knocked on his door.

“Come.”

A young boy leaned into his office.

“Sir? There is a man at the gate asking for you.”

Johannes looked up in annoyance.

“And? What is his
name
, boy?”

“Sir, he said his name was Walther.”

Johannes sat up straight. They were early, which was a good thing.

“Let him in at once. And on your way back down to the gate, find my son and send him up here immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

“
Immediately
, do you hear me? Do not leave his office until he is on his way up here.”

“Absolutely, sir.”

The boy ducked out. Johannes got up and went around his office straightening things up. He knew the girls would likely not care about his housekeeping, but it was important that they all have places to sit. They needed to sit together with his son for a good long while.

Franz appeared in a few minutes, face flushed from running up the stairs. He stopped to catch his breath, and Johannes scowled at him.

“I did not mean for you meet your future wives dripping in sweat, fool. Have some sense.”

“I am sorry, Father.”

Johannes found a handkerchief and threw it him. “Clean yourself up. They will be here in moments.”

In fact, Johannes did not hear them climbing the stairs for another five minutes, most of which he spent fussing over Franz, adjusting his clothes and then mopping his face again.

“This is an extremely important occasion. Please treat it as one.”

“Yes, Father.”

Walther appeared first, and Johannes went to embrace him. “Welcome, old friend.”

“It has been too long,” Walther boomed. “And this must be Franz. You have grown, boy.”

“It is good to see you again, sir.”

Walther’s daughters came up behind him, and Johannes’ breath caught in his throat. They had been very pretty the last he saw them, in the first bloom of their youth, but now—
dear God
, he thought,
please let Franz keep control of himself
.

Behind them came a man Johannes did not recognize, who was armored and carrying a long curved sword at his side.

“This is Erich,” Walther said, “our guard and guide on the trip here.”

Johannes nodded briefly at him, turning around just in time to see Franz gaping at the girls. He lurched back into his office, trying to gain control of the situation before Franz made a fool of himself.

“Ariel, Astrid, it is good to see you. This is my son Franz.”

“Hello,” they both said.

“Um,” Franz gulped. “Hello.”

“Franz is an instructor at the university here,” Johannes went on. “His field is natural magic, which is yours as well, I believe.”

“Yes,” one of them said. “Though we have had no formal training, except with Father.”

“We have been studying our mother’s books,” the other said. Johannes had no idea which one was which, and he could see that was going to be a problem.

“I teach—” But Franz was cut off by the sound of Johannes’ weasel hissing and squealing. Johannes spun around to see a wolf—in the name of all that was holy,
a wolf
?—in his office.

“Shadow, no!” one of the girls called out. She went to the wolf and pushed it to the far corner of his office, away from the weasel, which then darted over under Johannes’ desk.

Walther’s other daughter joined her sister, and the two of them got the wolf to sit on the floor. Johannes struggled to regain his equilibrium.

“I am sorry,” Walther said. “They picked this beast up on the road here, and will not give it up.”

“Is it their familiar?”

“No. A pet, at best.”

“They rescued it from a pair of ogres we killed,” the other man—what was his name?—said, “and it has followed us ever since.”

Ariel and Astrid stood and returned to the group. Johannes took a deep breath.

“Franz, you were saying?”

“Um.”

“About your field of study.”

“Oh, yes. I teach animal magic. Not magical creatures, I mean, normal animals. Like your wolf.”

“
Hud anifeiliaid
?” one of the girls asked.

“Yes.”

“We know a little of it. We are able to talk to Shadow, after a fashion, though that is all.”

“We are better at elemental magic. Fire and that sort of thing. And healing,” said the other.

Franz was regaining some confidence.

“I can speak to animals such as your wolf. Would you mind if I introduced myself?”

The girls looked at each other, smiling nervously, then back at Franz. Johannes’ heart leapt.
Yes
, he thought.

“If you can,” one of them said.

Franz walked over toward the wolf. Johannes watched as he focused himself, kneeling down.

At first the wolf eyed him warily. Then it cocked its head at him, confused. Johannes wondered what Franz was telling the thing. Animal magic was a tricky process. One could communicate with such beasts through it, but the process went in both ways, like a familiar bond. One had to keep control of one’s thoughts.

And there Franz appeared to fail. All at once, the wolf leapt toward him, snarling loudly. Franz fell backwards, and the girls jumped between him and the wolf, trying to calm it. They caught the thing before it bit Franz, but it glared at him murderously.

Johannes sighed, suspecting what had happened. If the girls had bonded with this wolf, it was no doubt able to sense any salacious thoughts Franz had toward its mistresses.

He stepped forward. This meeting was going nowhere, so he needed to bring it to an end and set the next step in motion.

“I am sure you are tired from the road,” Johannes said. “I have arranged lodgings for you, as you requested. Can you meet us for dinner tonight?”

“Of course,” Walther said. “We have a great deal to get caught up on.”

“I will have one of the pages take you to your quarters. They are across the quad, behind the library. Do you remember the old Chancellor’s apartments?”

“Of course.”

“I moved myself over here, but those rooms are still vacant. Get unpacked and get some rest, and I will have a page fetch you at six. Does that sound suitable?”

“More than suitable. Thank you.”

Johannes led them out, pausing to give his son a withering glare.

23.

Erich lay on his bed, listening to the girls bathing in their room. He tried not to think too hard about what they might look like in there, and largely failed, instead seeing Ariel in her nightdress that night in his room back in Weilburg.

He had not been invited to dinner, which was fine with him. The fewer people who saw him in Köln, the better.

It had been two days since he learned of the sellswords on his trail. They would need perhaps two more days to get to Weilburg, at least a day to realize he was in Köln, and then no less than five days to return here, if they raced back, as he was sure they would. That meant he needed to be gone from Köln in a week’s time, at most—and do his best to leave no trail here.

He thought about the young mage they had met that afternoon. Erich was not naïve enough to miss what the man’s father had intended by the meeting. That had been clear. There was little other reason for his son to have been there when they arrived.

Well enough, though, he thought. That was the sort of match they were looking for. Not a talentless, landless, mostly penniless sellsword with a price on his head.

The look in Ariel’s face that night in the ogres’ hovel had said volumes.
Are you fond of me at all?
He was. He had known them perhaps a month, but he had grown quite fond of both of them. Not enough to marry them, maybe, but enough not to want to leave them just yet.

Still, what choice did he have?

His brother had sent a pair of killers after him not long after Erich had left their father’s house. Wilhelm had underestimated his skills, and Erich had dispatched them both fairly easily. The second group had come two years later, when Wilhelm assumed the Duchy. That bunch had been more difficult, but three years on the road had also made Erich far more dangerous.

But he was not so arrogant as to believe he had much chance against nine men, men who—at this point—were likely the most deadly Wilhelm could find.