Alexander, Lloyd - Vesper Holly 01 (6 page)

"I hope Nile's all right," Vesper said. "Lucky thing he wasn't in the village."

Master Nilo, I replied, was undoubtedly loafing in some quiet corner. Wherever he was, he was better off than we were. Our feckless dragoman must have sniffed trouble in the wind and made himself scarce.

"He told us not to go," Vesper reminded me.

For that, I had no answer. My immediate concern, in any case, was for Vesper and how to deal with the regrettable fix we had fallen into so unwittingly. I tried to look on the brighter side. As I told Vesper, considering the turmoil in Alba-Collia, we were safer out of there.

"And into Zalik's lockup?" returned Vesper. "Don't count on a gracious welcome."

I disagreed. Whatever my personal opinion of him, Colonel Zalik was a military officer of high rank, with a strong sense of duty. I was confident he would do everything he could.

"I'm sure he will," said Vesper.

She turned her attention to the matrona. Squeezed though we were in this jolting Zentan equivalent of a police van, and possibly facing criminal charges, Vesper took the occasion to inquire about Silvia.

"Didn't I see her that night in your cottage?"

The matrona nodded. "Yes. She had suffered an injury. I treated her and gave her a place to rest."

"Silvia had an accident? Was she badly hurt?"

"She is well recovered," said the matrona. "She left soon after you."

"What happened?" Vesper pressed on. "What kind of accident? Did she come to Alba-Collia with Milan?"

The matrona gave only the vaguest answers. Vesper would have kept on nosing into an obviously private matter, but by then, we had reached Vitora and were heading toward the center of town, and the conversation was interrupted by a sudden commotion.

The driver halted instantly. There were sharp volleys of rifle fire. The cavalry escort galloped for Colonel Zalik's headquarters, which seemed to be the source of the shooting. The driver and the guards seized their weapons, leaped from the wagon, and raced after the horsemen.

The Illyrian prisoners snatched the opportunity to scramble down and scatter in all directions. Two of them had picked up the matrona and, between them, were practically carrying her bodily away.

Vesper, too, had jumped out. I clambered after her. She began pulling my arm, urging me to follow the escaping Illyrians.

That, I tried to explain, was the last thing in the world we should do. We were in trouble enough without becoming fugitives from justice, declared criminals, hunted by Zalik's police.

"I'd rather be hunted than caught." Vesper tugged all the harder.

We had no time to continue our discussion. A band of horsemen came dashing straight at us. Some brandished rifles, others led pack animals loaded with boxes and sacks, and all of them whooped and hallooed like madmen, yelling ferociously in Illyrian, which made their war cries all the more bloodcurdling.

On their heels galloped a detachment of Zalik's cavalry —not a great number, since most had been dispatched to Alba-Collia. Nevertheless, they sharply engaged the Illyrians, who wheeled their mounts to confront them.

These Illyrians must be the rebels whom Zalik had warned against.

Shouts of "Vartan! Vartan!" rose around us. Despite Vesper's reluctance, I tried to remove her from the fray. By now, unfortunately, we were caught in the midst of plunging hooves and of Illyrians and Zentans grappling each other, firing in complete disregard for innocent bystanders —namely, Vesper and me—or slashing furiously with sabers or wicked-looking Illyrian blades.

I tried to gain the attention of a Zen tan rider, hoping he might get us clear of our predicament. Without so much as pausing to ask who I was, he brought up a long-barreled pistol and aimed straight at me.

Vesper sprang forward in a flash. She seized the fellow by one leg, heaved with all her might, and toppled him out of the saddle. His shot went astray while he himself pitched headlong to the ground, a foot entangled in the stirrup. His mount bolted away, dragging him cursing and struggling down the street.

This happened so quickly it took me a few moments to realize the dear girl had saved my life, or kept me from serious injury. I had no time to express gratitude.

In that fraction of a second, as I turned a Zentan brought a rifle butt down on my head, after which, I was aware of nothing else.

When I opened my eyes again, I thought my vision was blurred. I realized it was dawn mist. The air was sharp and chilly, the fragrance of pine almost overpowering. As best I could tell, I lay in a grassy clearing. Tethered nearby, horses cropped the turf. A handful of Illyrians loitered about in the bluish haze.

Vesper sat cross-legged on the ground beside me. She smiled fondly. "Don't worry, Brinnie. You're definitely alive. You had a hard knock, but nothing's broken. You'll be fine."

Vesper had been munching on a slab of black bread, which she offered me. I did not feel up to breakfast. The full truth of our situation struck me with alarm.

"How did we come here.*^" I tried to climb to my feet. "These people are dangerous rebels, those maniacs fighting in Vitora—"

"They took us with them," said Vesper. "I asked them to."

"You did what?" My head started pounding worse than ever.

"It was either that or jail. They unloaded a packhorse so they could tie you to its back."

That, I said, was very thoughtful of them. I trusted they would now be kind enough to return us to civilization.

"That hasn't been decided yet," said Vesper. "I don't think they mean us any harm. But what they do with us is up to Vartan."

"He's here?" I cried. "Vartan himselP"

"He planned the whole thing. He counted on Zalik sending most of his men into the village. Then Vartan and his people swooped down on Vitora, broke into the armory and storehouses, and made off with all they could carry. It worked perfectly. It was one of his best raids. That's what Silvia tells me. She was in Vitora."

Silvia a rebel? I thought of Milan. Surely he was one. Now I understood why he and his cronies had been loitering around the village.

"Silvia told me about the Zentan uniforms, too," added Vesper. "I was right. The Illyrians ambushed those cavalrymen just outside of town and took their clothes and horses.

"That was another of Vartan's plans. Very clever, I'd say. What safer way to travel? The Zentan patrols never gave them a second look. But Silvia was wounded during the ambush, and they took her to Alba-CoUia. Matrona Mira patched her up. The matrona keeps a sort of hospital and hiding place for Vartan's people."

The old matrona? Illyrian rebels were popping up everywhere. I explained to Vesper that we did not dare be further mixed up with them. If King Osman found out, we could hardly convince him we had not been deliberately consorting with his enemies. We must escape as soon as possible.

"I wouldn't try it," said Vesper.

Silvia strode up then, ordering us to make ready. I pleaded that I was in no condition to travel. She and her friends would not take it amiss if we stayed behind and looked after ourselves? Silvia gave me a hard glance. I did not press the subject.

Vesper, in any case, was in excellent spirits as we mounted and set off again. The sun was up, it turned her hair bright orange; in her Illyrian garb, she appeared altogether at home amid the steepening hills. She jogged along, sniffing the spicy air, admiring the peaks rising ahead, chatting with Silvia beside her.

The Illyrians, however, allowed little opportunity to appreciate the scenery. They kept pushing the pace, eager to join their comrades. The rebels, I gathered, had separated into smaller bands. Some had gone ahead, some followed. All were to meet higher up in the Petrosias.

When the ground became too broken, we had to dismount and pick our way up rocky inclines. We skirted Vartan's Steps—huge slabs of granite stripped bare by wind and weather—and continued climbing. I asked Vesper if she thought they were taking us all the way to Mount Albor.

"I hope so," she cheerfully replied. "We might do some exploring."

The Illyrians, however, halted on a wide and level shelf jutting from the mountainside.

"Brinnie, it's practically a village," Vesper exclaimed. As she pointed out, the area indeed swarmed with people. Men and women trundled kegs and crates, or sorted stacks of weapons. Cook fires burned here and there. At the horse lines, some rough-looking fellows tended the animals. It was a beehive of activity, almost literally, for the slopes were honeycombed with caves and recesses of varying size. In front of one, somebody had even hung out laundry.

"This must be Vartan's stronghold," said Vesper. "Amazing! I mean, it's amazing they'd let us see the place. That's a secret they wouldn't want let out. I suppose they trust us to keep our mouths shut. Or they don't expect we'll be leaving."

I did not care to reflect on that possibility. Vesper dismissed it. "We needn't worry. I'm sure Vartan will be reasonable. I'll explain it all to him."

Silvia conducted us into one of the larger caverns. It was full of Illyrians, squatting on the ground or stretched out sleeping. There were ammunition chests and stacks of rifles and sabers, the gains of the previous night.

In the midst of it all, glowering and scowling, sat Milan.

Vesper tried to pull me back, but I stepped up to him immediately.

"My dear Milan—Vartan, if you prefer," I began, "we are unfortunate victims of circumstance. We ask only to return quietly to Alba-Collia."

To my dismay, Milan paid no attention whatever. His eyes were elsewhere. At the same time, a cry from Vesper interrupted my plea. I turned. A new arrival had entered the cave.

"Nilo!" Vesper ran and embraced the wretch.

I was not as happy to see him. Forgetting our present danger, I had a few bones to pick.

"Scoundrel!" I flung at him. "We have been arrested, clubbed, kidnapped, our lives at risk—all thanks to you."

"Effendi, this is not my fault. If you and the Lincilla had only listened to me, if you had kept away from the festival, you would have been safe."

I wanted to hear none of that. He had saved his own skin, the least he could do was make an effort to save ours. He could vouch for us, assure our captors we would reveal nothing of their camp, convince Milan that we would go about our business, that he should release us here and now.

Nilo spread his hands. "Milan cannot decide that."

"That's true," put in Vesper.

Vartan, I replied, was leader of the rebels and his orders would certainly be obeyed.

"But Milan isn't the one," said Vesper. "Brinnie, you've got it mixed up. Am I right?" she added, turning to look squarely at Nilo.

The lout gave an exasperating grin and shrugged his shoulders. "Yes, Lincilla. I am Vartan."

"I thought so," Vesper said. "I just wanted to make sure."

"Lincilla, how could you have known?" Nilo looked at her with a mixture of astonishment and admiration.

"I had to guess a lot, and the guesses turned out to be right," said Vesper. "Little things here and there. For one, you showed up at the hotel just when we needed a dragoman. A neat coincidence? It might have been. Or might not."

"It was not," admitted Nilo. "We knew of your arrival in Zenta. Two farenkis are not easily overlooked, especially when one of them is so charming. We soon learned your destination."

"At first, I wondered if you were the one who tried to kill me in the Old Town, coming back to finish the job. That didn't fit very well. You wouldn't have waited, you'd have done it right away. So, you weren't an assassin. And you certainly weren't a dragoman. "

"I was not a good one?"

Vesper smiled at him. "You were—well, you were very likeable. Otherwise, you were a disaster. You couldn't have been a real dragoman.

"A spy for the Zentans?" Vesper went on. "I doubted that. You were truly anxious to get out of town. For some important reason. Why didn't you just pick up and go? Then, just to see how it worked, I imagined what someone would do if he had to travel safely for a long distance. There were a lot of possibilities. Including being a dragoman for two farenkis who were under royal protection. That fit nicely, with Milan, Silvia, maybe some others, keeping an eye on things along the way. A cavalry escort that turned out to be Illyrian rebels. You had to be one of Vartan's people. So important? So valuable? Vartan himself.

"It was a good guess," Vesper added. "Then, just now, as soon as you came in, everybody stopped talking and eating, and they all turned to look at you as if nothing would happen until you got here.

"Don't worry, Nilo. I won't tell anyone. Neither will Brinnie."

I stood there too bewildered to speak, let alone tell Nilo's secret. Or Vartan's secret. He had changed so suddenly and completely. His whole bearing was different. He had an air of easy authority, as if long accustomed to being obeyed. His eyes were sharper and harder now that he had thrown off the guise of a feckless layabout. He looked a litde dangerous. I preferred him when he was feckless.

"One thing I still haven't figured out," said Vesper. "Who stabbed me?"

"I do not know," said Nilo, "and that, Lincilla, troubles me greatly."

Here, I broke in to say that a more immediate question was our getting back to Alba-Collia.

"And to Colonel Zalik?" said Nilo. "That would be unwise."

He drew a sheaf of papers from his jacket. "In Vitora, we took the opportunity to investigate the bimbashi 's office. We hoped to find information useful to us. We did. We also found these."

Vesper leafed through the papers which Nilo handed to her. "A receipt for our equipment—it got there the day before we did. My letter—never sent. A message from Osman, ordering Zalik to give us every assistance. And this."

She held up a document bearing the royal seal. "Our firman. He had it all the time."

"Zalik is your enemy, Lincilla. You must avoid him at all cost. The real question is, What shall you do now?"

I suggested handshakes all round, wishes of Godspeed and good luck, and we would make our way back to Zenta.

At this, Nilo hesitated. He frowned and bit his lips. "My people have put all their hope in Vartan. They will not betray me. I trust their silence. Can I trust yours?"

"You can," said Vesper. "You know that."

Nilo gave her a long glance. "Yes. I do know."

But there is always one in every group, whether the Ladies' Garden Committee or a meeting of cabinet ministers; once all is happily settled, some wretch has to point out what has been overlooked, raise questions, pick nits, and start the whole business up again. In this case, it was Milan.

"Remember this, Vartan," he said. "They are under the protection of the Zentan king. Are their loyalties with him?

He gave them di finnan. Did they promise anything in exchange? What keeps them from telling Osman all they know of us? The word of Afarenki —"

"The Lincilla's word is enough," declared Nilo.

"You have it," Vesper said. "I'll do bener than that. I think I can help you. Osman doesn't want Illyrians and Zentans at each other's throats. He told me that. I'm sure he meant it. His vizier's the one who's dead set against dealing with the Illyrians."

"It comes to the same. The Zentans wish to destroy us. But every Illyrian will fight against them."

"And get killed?" returned Vesper. "It doesn't have to be that way."

"How else, Lincilla?"

"Work out some agreement that suits both of you. I'll talk with Osman. Not his vizier. Osman himself. I know he'd be willing to grant—"

"Grant?" broke in Nilo. "Osman willing to grant?"

Vesper had touched a sore spot. Until now, Nilo had seemed interested. Vesper had not reckoned on the Illyrian temperament.

"Shall we beg a Zentan king to do us a favor?" Nilo angrily went on. "Graciously deign to grant what is already ours by right? We do not plead, Lincilla. We do not entreat. Our honor is worth more to us than a tyrant's charity. We beg for nothing. We take what is ours."

Nilo's eyes blazed as he held forth about honor, justice, freedom, and shedding blood in a noble cause. The fellow did have a way about him. He impressed me—as long as I did not think about what he was actually saying. He would have been magnificent had he been living in the twelfth century, a paladin out of the Illyriad, worthy to be Vartan himself. Given the ways of modem diplomacy, I calculated he was about seven hundred years too late.

He cooled down a bit after that. As for us, nothing could be decided at the moment. It was, Nilo explained, unlikely that Zalik would risk sending troops into the Petrosias, where he would be at a serious disadvantage, but he would harass the villagers for a while. Whatever we did, we must wait until things grew calmer.

Nilo and Milan stalked out of the cave then, talking intently between themselves.

"We'll have to stay here, Brinnie," said Vesper, undismayed at the prospect. "They're stuck with us."

No, I corrected, we were stuck with them, on the wrong side of the law.

"That depends on which side you think is right," Vesper said. "Isn't it odd— Osman says he'll bestow justice but won't let it be forced from him. Nilo's just the same. He won't accept anything that seems like a gift; he'd rather take it by force, for the sake of his honor. The more Nilo pushes, the more Osman will dig in his heels; and the more Nilo digs in his heels, the harder Osman will fight him. They're pulling at opposite ends of the same rope. What they'll end up with is a knot."

We settled down as best we could. Over the next few days, Nilo was often absent, but his followers kept arriving at the cave, staying briefly, disappearing again. They were, in all honesty, not a bad sort. They good-naturedly shared everything with us and made sure we were comfortable— that is, no more uncomfortable than they were.

Vesper enchanted them. She learned their names, laughed and joked with them, and plunked a dombra one of them had brought. To pass idle moments, she played dominoes or the Illyrian version of mumblety-peg, borrowing a nasty-looking blade from one of the rebels. Somebody produced a chess set, which delighted her. She took on Nilo, when he happened to be in residence, and trounced him at every match.

"I wonder why they never let us out of the cave together?" she said to me.

I, too, had observed that Vesper was obliged to stay behind when I strolled for air and exercise, Milan keeping a hard eye on me from the shrubbery. Silvia always accompanied Vesper.

"Are they being careful of us?" Vesper added. "Or don't they really trust us?"

For all that, she was not impatient to leave. One day, however, coming back from a walk, I found her sitting with the chessboard on her lap, turning the pieces around and around in her fingers.

"It's interesting," she said. "Illyrian sets are all carved alike. It's traditional. The pawns are Zen tan and Illyrian archers. The bishops, viziers. The kings are supposed to be Vartan and Ahmad. ..."

She put the two pieces facing each other on the board and studied them intently. "They fought each other centuries ago, and they're still at it. Osman's going to send an army against Nilo. ..."

She stopped and looked at me most forlornly. "It isn't a game, though. Nilo could be— They could all be killed."

I did not wish to answer. I had seen bands like Nilo's in Greece, in Crete, in Sicily. They all had the same look, all desperately brave and devoted. Sometimes, like Garibaldi's people, they won a little. Usually, they ended up nobly dead or drifted into banditry, having fought so long they forgot why they had started in the first place. Naturally, they were very young, but that was no fault of theirs.

"I never thought of people really getting killed before. Someone you know, someone—" Vesper suddenly put her head against my shoulder. She did not cry, but the dear girl was certainly at the edge. "Brinnie—I want to be home."

I patted her arm without, I fear, providing much comfort. Mary would have done better. Vesper straightened up.

"No. I don't want to go home. Not until it's settled. I won't have Nilo getting himself killed. And we'll find what we came to find."

I had my own opinion about those two subjects, but I kept it to myself. The poor child was suffering a touch of nerves—the result, naturally, of being more or less confined to a cave, subsisting on cheese and fiery hot sausages, being surrounded by desperate charaaers, including the most dangerous man in Illyria. It was no kind of life for a Philadelphian.