A Path to Coldness of Heart (38 page)

“What?” Kristen asked.

“I know some of those guards. I don’t want them to recognize me.”

He need not have worried. The Blodgett girl was not unattractive. Without stirring any deep fantasies she captured the attention of the caravan men, then was clever enough to leave them all smiling when she walked away.

Kristen whispered, “Check the old woman. She was hoping they would carry her off.”

“Really, Kristen? You’re not being fair to her now.”

Ozora finished ragging Bight. She barked orders meant to get the party moving again.

“Oh, my,” Kristen murmured. “Dahl. Look there.” She indicated a solitary traveler headed east. He was ragged. He shuffled dispiritedly. He looked like the last of the displaced persons who had trudged every road just a year ago. “Isn’t that Aral?”

“Him or his handsome twin. You get stuff ready here. I’ll catch the little sh… bugger.” He bounced up and trotted after the traveler, who appeared not to have noticed the resting Sedlmayrese. Being that far gone in thought was begging Fortune to poke you in the eye.

So. Inger’s Thingmeet was drawing a broader-based crowd than the Queen anticipated.

This could turn interesting.

...

Bragi settled on a weathered block of limestone, exhausted after clambering out of the ruined temple—or whatever it was in its time.

“Damn! I’m still out of shape! I thought I was getting it back. I was so wrong!”

“It’s not just that,” Michael Trebilcock said, settling nearby. “The transfer had something to do with it. Look at this guy. And he does it every day.” He indicated the Tervola Tang Shan, who was just oozing through the gap in tumbled stone masking the stairway down to the hidden portal. “He’s about twelve and he’s woofing for air.”

The Tervola was, likely, older than either of them but had not suffered the wear and tear. He said, “The drain was caused by a filter Lord Yuan installed. It keeps the unnamed from tracking who is going where. Lord Yuan will ameliorate that effect when he has time.” Tang went to assist two bodyguards having trouble getting through the gap because of their size.

Bragi surveyed the world into which they had emerged. It seemed comfortably Kavelin come autumn, after the leaves began to fall, yet he recognized nothing. “Where are we? This don’t look right.” By which he meant that everything was too clean and tame to have been abandoned long. The surrounding fields had yet to return to nature. The forest, more than two hundred yards downhill in every direction, had not yet begun to encroach on the cleared land. The fields boasted tangles of wild grasses and late wildflowers but none of the scrub and thorny brush that invaded abandoned fields almost instantly elsewhere. Insects buzzed even though the season was late and the nights had to be chilly.

Tang Shan, laboring to make himself understood in a language he did not know well, explained, “This ruin is eight…miles?…south-southeast of your Vorgreberg.” He extended an arm to point. Ragnarson could just make out smudgy air in that direction. The Tervola continued, “Our instructions are to accompany you partway. We should reach a main road in an hour or two. We will leave you there, hoping that Destiny has no more cruel tricks in her sack.”

Ragnarson frowned at Trebilcock. Trebilcock shrugged. “Some idioms don’t translate.”

Tang Shan said, “This was once a temple, important to its cult. It has been abandoned for a century but the consecrating power has not yet faded. It is a good place.”

Ragnarson felt that. “I didn’t know it was here.” Something this close to Vorgreberg ought to be common knowledge and part of the local folklore.

Tang said, “You will have a hard time finding it from outside. Protective glamours turn you aside gently beginning so far away that you wouldn’t notice except to think you were getting confused the way people can in the forest. Our troops found it while hunting partisans during the occupation. The partisans were unaware of it despite exploiting the surrounding forest for cover.”

Ragnarson grunted acknowledgement. He had encountered similar “outside” islands when he was young and living by his wits and blade. Those, though, had not been sweetly benign. He said, “We should get moving. These places are never as tame as they try to make you think.”

One eastern soldier smiled thinly. Bragi assumed that meant that arrangements were in place already.

Tang Shan and the lifeguards wore what, at a hundred yards, might pass for local clothing. Any nearer, though, and one would have to be afflicted with terrible eyesight not to see that they were no local peasants. Even Tang was big for Kavelin.

Shan said, “You are correct. We should. Lord Yuan has work waiting for me. I’m looking forward to it.”

“I’m not so sure I still love you, either.” Ragnarson groaned as he got his legs underneath him.

Trebilcock remarked, “You’d better not need carrying. You do, you’ll be having supper with the wolves.”

“I’ll manage. It’s all downhill from here.”

And up. And sideways. With no road. With no path. Without even a decent game trail trending the proper direction through the autumn-painted tangle of palisade for the ruins. After two hours Ragnarson gasped, “Shan, how will you ever find your way back?”

The Tervola grinned. “We’re clever. We have secret skills.”

Trebilcock said, “They’ve been dropping bread crumbs.”

Tang agreed. “After a fashion. Worry not. We saw to our needs before we gave any attention to yours.”

“That fills me with confidence.”

“I am pleased by your praise.”

Ragnarson realized, to his surprise, that he was in better spirits than he had been for an age, though fighting the undergrowth up and down gully banks was murderously exhausting.

In time, Michael said, “Shan, we’ve been at this for three hours. You said two. Are you leading us around in circles?”

Tang Shan, worn out himself, gasped, “I am currently providing the rearguard. If we meander please blame the man out front.”

The man breaking trail was best known as Michael Trebilcock. He did not stop grumbling. But, just minutes later, he flung up a hand for a halt, then used it to cup an ear.

Faint road traffic noise leaked into the woods. The five oozed toward it.

Twenty feet further on the tangle became the usual vaguely groomed Kaveliner woodland where the deadwood stayed harvested and the brush did not get much chance to flourish. It looked exactly the same as far as the eye could see in every direction.

Ragnarson muttered, “There’s some witchcraft stuff going on here.”

“Can’t get anything past you,” Trebilcock countered.

“I’d forgotten what a wiseass you can be.”

“Look there.” Something moved from right to left up ahead. “Are those camels?”

The shapes were vague through the trees but, yes, those big lumps of ugly were camels. Ragnarson turned to ask the Tervola if he was sure they had come through the right portal.

There were no easterners to be seen.

While Ragnarson gawked at their absence Trebilcock drifted forward, sniffing. “No doubt about it. Those are camels. And I know where we are.”

“They’re gone. Those three. Vanished.”

“They stepped back inside the illusion. Ask Varthlokkur to look for the place next time you see him. We’re just south of the southern road west. Sedlmayr is off that way maybe forty miles. Two or three miles that way is your old house. Two more miles and we’ll be knocking on the castle gate.”

Ragnarson snorted. “I can imagine the party my wife will throw if she finds out I’m back.”

“She might surprise you. So. Let’s stroll on over there and take a gander at a world that has camels in it.”

Bragi was reluctant. He no longer had the inclination to play politics. He was a blunted sword, possibly bent, maybe even broken.

Michael misread him. “Who would recognize us? I look fifteen years older. You’ve lost weight, you got no beard, you’re turning grey, and you’re dragging…”

“I get your point, thank you very much. Young girls won’t throw themselves at me anymore.” Sherilee was back in his head, like a nagging toothache.

“And you’re crabby. Not to mention, you’re dressed weird.” Trebilcock flashed a huge grin.

“Lead on, boy wonder.”

Now Michael flashed a grimace. “Would it be smart for me to leave you out of sight behind me?”

“Why don’t we find out?” Then, muttering, “Camels? How come there are camels on the Sedlmayr road?” He did not like camels. In his youth, while with Hawkwind in the desert, he had had camels close by constantly. He associated their stench with that of misfortune, still.

...

Dahl Haas finished hitching the donkey to the cart. He helped Kristen board, hoisted Bragi up. He would lead. They looked like prosperous peasants. Haas hoped no one wondered why there was nothing in the cart but a child and an apparently pregnant woman.

Nearby, Bight Mundwiller and the Blodgett girl played at clumsy courtship rituals, Bight by far the more maladroit, mainly to irritate Ozora. The matriarch was suitably irked but refused to be baited by children.

Dahl murmured, “At some point Ozora will make that boy sorry he withdrew his affections from you.”

“Not funny, Dahl! And is there suddenly something wrong with the girl?”

“Like what? She’s a girl being a girl figuring out that she has the power to fog men’s minds. She’ll only get more wicked as she hones her skills.”

“Somebody is going to get honed if he don’t watch his attitude.”

“My thesis proven. What’s his problem?”

Bight was staring in the direction the camels had gone. Nothing unusual there. A couple of shabby old travelers were approaching lazily. They might be brothers. They were tall and graying but both still had their own hair.

Haas approached the youngsters. “Is there a problem? You know those men? Are they trouble?”

The girl said, “No, Mr. Haas. The one on the right reminded me of my Uncle Bridewell. That startled me because he died last year. Then Bight said that they were too far away to recognize, anyway, even if we did know them.”

Bight said, “I got upset because I thought she was upset.”

She said, “Anyway, I can’t see through him so he can’t be a ghost. And, now that they’re closer, I can see that he’s taller than Uncle Bridewell was. But I wish they would look up so I could see their faces.”

Haas caught an odd note there but could not imagine why. He drifted back to his cart, watching the travelers as he went.

Aral Dantice came out of the woods, where he had gone to consult the famous horse trader. He grumbled, “I don’t remember eating anything that would do that to me. The flies are going to be in heaven. Well. Speaking of some remarkable shit. Look at this.” He ogled the tall old men with far more surprise than Bight or the girl had.

They were just twenty paces away and focused on the dust in front of their feet, shoulders hunched against the attention they had attracted.

Ozora barked, “What are you people doing? If you don’t move we’ll have to spend another night camped out with the bugs and mosquitoes.”

Something clicked. Dahl recognized the man on the left. The one on his own right. Not the one who had Aral’s attention, that the girl had mistaken for her uncle.

He did not shout. He said nothing to anyone. He just oozed over to the road to intercept the pair. “Excuse me, sirs. A moment, I beg.”

Both men kept searching the road immediately in front of their feet, shuffling dispiritedly, which willful focus made managing full awareness of their surroundings problematic. It was an ostrich approach to personal camouflage.

The nearer man responded with a dramatic start. He looked up.

Dahl lurched back. “Gods damn me!” He retreated several steps before good sense took over.

Both travelers shifted hands to the hilts of daggers and considered their surroundings.

Haas moved to Kristen, placed himself between her and the road, hoping to control her reaction.

At which point the Blodgett girl blurted, “Uncle Chames?”

Chames? What happened to Bridewell?

The girl galloped to the roadside. She was not at all shy about throwing herself onto one of the men.

Dahl heard him murmur, “Haida, we’re really trying to avoid attracting attention.”

“Oh. Hell! I’m sorry. I got excited.”

Haas moved back toward the travelers, as did Bight Mundwiller, the latter uncertainly. The other Sedlmayrese stopped to gawk.

“Too late, now. The cat has dumped the cream.”

Though she was not interested Michael introduced Ragnarson to the girl as his cousin Leopard Marks. “I forget why we call him that. His real name is Flynn.”

“Because I changed my spots.”

Trebilcock offered no name for the girl, Dahl supposed because he did not know what name she was using. He had not missed him calling her Haida.

The girl retreated into resounding silence.

Haas glared at both men, willing them to do nothing to turn the moment more treacherous than it was. He looked back at Kristen. “Flynn” did the same, having recognized her. And she had recognized him, now. She lacked all color.

They had talked about what this would mean, for her, for them, for the younger Bragi. Though the King’s return was only a theoretical possibility it never seemed vaguely likely outside popular fantasy. Unless…

Dahl looked back up the road. No. They were alone. But…

Shinsan would not arrive in full kit with bands playing if the King was back as their man.

But!

These two had been missing and presumed dead for a year. Now they were sneaking back. Together. That could have immense meaning, perhaps going all the way back to before the King’s dumb eastern adventure.

Dahl turned to Aral Dantice. Aral was Michael’s best friend.

Aral was helping the Sedlmayrese get ready to move out. His moment of surprise past, Aral was making like he had recognized no one.

Had he been running point for the others when Kristen spotted him?

Ozora commanded, “Blodgett girl! Come here! Now!”

She did as directed. Bight followed. He would bark back if the old woman was excessively unreasonable.

The old king said, “Chames, we need to move along. A pleasure to meet you, young man.” He inclined his head toward Kristen. “And your missus. Blessings be upon the babe to come.”