Part 7 (2/2)

”Maybe.”

Clay looked over the men, nodding. ”If we'd had to fight Ocher, sir, I'd say no, we couldn't do it. But as it is . . .”

”With a feed and a rest in Champlor instead of a night, they'll make it.”

”The horses have been ridden long, but not too hard. Easily, we'd make it, sir.”

”We'll go on,” decided Otto.

76.'Etizabetfi ”Wittey ”And when you arrive in Champlys-”

”We arrive. What do you mean?”

”The sorcerer,” Clay said, his eyes narrowing a little.

The sorcerer had turned away from Lys and led his horse across the crossroads. He appeared to be addressing the pillar, bowing and gesturing, and the men were carefully and uneasily not watching him. Lunete was, though. Dewar knelt. Ottaviano saw him pouring from his wineskin at the base of the pillar and nodded to himself.

”Oh. Him. I don't know. They're tricky b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. I'd just as soon he jogged along, but I have a feeling there's d.a.m.n little I might do to encourage it.” Ottaviano shrugged slightly. ”I suspect that if Ocher attacks, he'll find the place less interesting than he thought, and if he sticks around-” He shrugged again.

Clay nodded. Ottaviano moved away, leading his horse to the trough.

A light, misting rain began falling as they left Champlor, which was a small, fortified city on the border of Lys and Sa.r.s.emar. The rain became more determined in the last ten miles, and the horses1 hooves splashed through puddles on the road.

Dewar, who by his sorcery needed no light to know the road, carried none; a soldier riding beside Ottaviano bore a torch. By its light, Dewar glanced from time to time at the other, picking up a new detail of his bearing or face each time. He was perhaps a hand's-breadth shorter than Dewar, neither bulky nor slender, and quick in his movements- mirroring quickness in his thoughts. Dewar considered that Ottaviano had acted rashly toward him, but admitted to himself that, were he indeed a spy of Ocher {which seemed to be what Ottaviano thought he was), Ottaviano's handling of him was shrewd enough. By picking him up, Ottaviano exerted a certain control over his movements.

Dewar's curiosity was engaged by the situation into which he had ridden. His knowledge of Landuc's local politics was spotty. Who was Ocher? Why was the Countess of Lys fleeing him, with Ottaviano's a.s.sistance? What would Sorcerer and a (jentteman 77.they do in Champlys, and would it be worthwhile to stay and watch this play itself out? And he thought also that he would enjoy talking more with Lunete, or flirting with her to amuse them both. His travelling was without timetable; he could linger a few days or a month and cement an acquaintance that could prove useful later. Surly Ottaviano might object, but Dewar had the clear impression that his influence over the lady was something less than iron-banded. He glanced at Otto again; their eyes met, for Otto was studying him with the same surrept.i.tious intensity.

”I thought sorcerers hate the rain,” Otto said, feeling caught out.

Dewar raised his eyebrows. ”Your Majesty, show me a man who will indifferently stand out in the wet and be soaked to the skin, and I will show you a man who is at least half an animal. Probably a sheep.”

Ottaviano blinked, then smiled, then laughed softly. ”Touche.”

Dewar smiled and looked away, suddenly liking Otto for all his bl.u.s.ter. He caught sight of a milestone at the roadside in the dull torchlight. ”Five to Champlys,” he observed. ”Or fifteen.”

”Five. I know where we are.”

Dewar nodded and sighed to himself, settling in for the last handful of mud-weighted miles.

Lunete left her place in the middle of the troop of men and rode-forward to join Ottaviano as the walled city of Champlys became vaguely apparent before them in the rain and darkness. She nudged her horse between Otto's and the sorcerer's and smiled at them both, unseen in the smoky light, but the smile colored her voice.

”Welcome to Lys,” she said.

”But i thought we had been in Lys for some miles,” Dewar countered.

”Champlor has been part of Lys for not more than a hundred and fifty years,” Otto explained. ”It was some-body-or-other's dowry.”

”Ah,” said Dewar, ”from Sa.r.s.emar . . .”

”It came from the penultimate Baron of Yin, actually,”

78.t,Ciza6etfi Lunete put in. ”He had five daughters, none of them inclined to religion. Champion went with the youngest, who was a spendthrift and a burden to her family. Unhappily she died just ten years later of the wasting disease, which annoyed the Baron greatly-but it was too late to get the city back, because it had pa.s.sed to her husband, my father, by the terms of the marriage contract.”

”Which is why Yin today is so much smaller than it used to be,” Otto said. ”There's a moral there.”

”Don't dower your daughters with real estate,” said Dewar. ”But he is hardly the first to learn that the hard way.”

”Hmph,” said Lunete.

In spite of himself, Otto chuckled.

Behind them, Clay yelled an order to shape up; they were half a mile from the city gate now. Lunete glanced back at the sodden line of men and shook her head slightly-they looked as if Ocher had beaten them soundly and harried them home. But at least, she thought, n.o.body was killed. Otto managed it all very neatly, and the sorcerer Dewar's fortuitous intervention came in time to prevent the one potentially lethal confrontation they had. Ocher must be apoplectic with frustration. She smiled to herself and lifted her head in the rain, which had lightened to a drizzle, as they drew near the gate.

The standard-bearer blew three lamentable notes on his horn. ”Open for the Countess of Lys!” bellowed Ottaviano at the watchtower.

”Who calls without?” cried back the watchman, querulous.

”Shsh,” Lunete said to Otto, and raised her own voice and her face to the tower, pus.h.i.+ng back her hood to be clearly seen in the torchlight. ”It is I, your Countess Lunete of Lys with my escort come from Sa.r.s.emar, and if you do not know me, you are a fool,” she called.

”Aye, m'lady,” called back the watchman, and some wet minutes later the gates swung outward, admitted them, and closed behind them.

Dewar began edging away from the party as Lunete J3 Sorcerer and a QentUman c- 79 leaned down and spoke with a man who stood with a torch inside, under an archway. Lunete, however, had kept her eye on him, suspecting that Ottaviano meant to tell him to begone, and called, ”Wait, Dewar.”

Otto sighed and wryed his mouth in his hood.

”At your ladys.h.i.+p's command,” Dewar replied.

”Your company has been a welcome diversion on the road. Accept my hospitality, I beg you, and permit me to offer what comfort may be found in my house to you for your courtesy.”

Dewar smiled and inclined his head. ”Your Grace could not have bethought herself of a more welcome nor a more generous offer,” he said.

Lunete smiled at him and returned to her conversation with the man, which concluded half a minute later. She nodded to Otto and nudged her horse forward; Dewar came up on her left again, Ottaviano to her right, and Otto's men followed as they clopped and splashed through the dark town, past another arch, through a wide market-square, up a modest hill to a modest castle, where they were received.

8.TWO MEN SIT IN A TAVERN where the lighting is bad and the clientele worse. They are in the back, at a table barely big enough for their forearms and steins, but of a perfect size to lean head-to-head and dice, as they are doing.

The room's low ceiling is simply the floorboards of the second storey, supported on timbers as thick as a big man's thigh. It is stained from above and below in a free-form mosaic of blood, urine, beer, wine, water, and smoke-circles. There are names, initials, and occult signs carved into the crossbeams, so many that the beams are nowhere square. The corbels and braces at each wall-end of each beam were decorated early in the inn's history and have been acquiring a patina of adornment since; some have become buxom figurehead-like women (some with addi- 80 -=> 'Ltizabetfi Wittey tional heads where their b.r.e.a.s.t.s should be); others are fantastically Priapic expressions of wishful thinking (around these are carved many exhortations and insults); and fully half are deformed gargoyles and sheila-na-gigs. The broad-brimmed plumed hat of one of the two gamblers hangs from a set of male genitalia at half-mast over his head, getting smoked by a greasy lamp below. The walls are spa.r.s.ely adorned by such lamps, whose chimneys are dirty and wicks ill-tended; they have black-striped and greyed the graffiti-laced walls with their soot over the years, and the few tiny high-placed window-panes are nearly opaque from their acc.u.mulation of grease-cemented s.m.u.ts.

But little light is desired by the patrons for their pursuits. The drinkers, both sullen and boisterous, prefer the dimness and fug to bright clean air; the prost.i.tutes working the crowd, or being worked in the corners and booths, consider the bad light an ally; the host saves pennies on oil; and many gamblers' stratagems are covered by the shadows. The gambling between the two men at the small table in the rear, however, is as clean as a pair of loaded dice on one side and a touch of sorcery on the other could make it.

Unlike the other gamblers, those two make little noise; the movements of their hands and coins is nearly automatic, with only perfunctory emotion expressed at a win or loss. Both are well-armed and both wear heavy leather jackets with no device; they both have well-broken-in boots and bulky, weatherproof, weathermarked cloaks in nondescript tweeds. One wears his sword across his back and the other at his side; the former, very dark but with bright cold grey eyes, is bearded and the latter, brown-haired and blue-eyed, approximately clean-shaven.

”This offer of yours is a little strange,” said the brown-haired man, resuming the conversation after a meditative lull.

”So may't seem,” his companion murmured, ”yet my client, though peculiar, is able to afford such whims.” He dropped the dice back into the wooden cup they were using as a shaker.

”I'd like to know what your client gets out of me and my Sorcerer and a Cjentteman 81.men heading in and raising h.e.l.l. I'm suspicious of a deal this sweet.”

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