Fool's Errand (30 page)

Shortly after dawn this morning, some instinct had caused him to awaken with a start. He'd gotten the spyglass to his eyes just in time to see the princess pulled from the bowels of the mountain. As he'd nodded with satisfaction at the certainty that the one who'd sent him would be pleased that she yet lived, he'd caught a movement at the lower edge of his field of vision. Shifting the spyglass so that he could focus his full attention on the movement, the man in homespun had been amazed to see that the two soldiers had not only managed to survive the night but had survived with enough strength left to attack a herd of Khan sheep. The man—who'd heard that the Khan were huge and mighty warriors—had not been especially impressed with the shepherd's size or battle skills, but he'd been tremendously impressed by his willingness to place himself between the soldiers and the sheep, that his herd might have a chance to flee to higher ground. By this feat of bravery, he'd managed to save the entire herd but one—and while trying to rescue this one, he, himself, had been captured.

The man in homespun realized now, of course, what the soldiers who'd passed beneath his tree the night before had been arguing about. They'd been arguing about whether they ought to take advantage of their foray onto the mountain to enrich themselves with plunder and slaves, as was their right as New Men. The man could have told them that they'd be fools to do so. Deviating from orders almost always caused unforeseen complications, and unforeseen complications almost always got people killed.

The man could only hope—for the sake of his own mission—that in this particular case, the princess and her companions would not be the people who paid the price for the soldiers' foolishness.

THIRTY-ONE

Eighty-eight beans left in the jar

U
PON HEARING THAT GYPSIES
had taken his tribesmen, Ghengor was upon Persephone almost before she knew what was happening. Ignoring Rachel's pleading protests and Azriel's furious bellows, the warrior snatched up a handful of Persephone's dark hair, dragged her through the suddenly hostile crowd to the circle of polished sheep skulls and forced her to her knees.

As the Khan who'd been sitting upon the high rock ledges nimbly leapt down to the ground to join those already gathered around the circle of skulls, Ghengor shoved his hairy face in Persephone's and shouted, “Tell me where your tribesmen have taken Dax and Xanther, villain, and I shall show you the mercy of using the sharp edge of my battle-axe to remove your filthy Gypsy head instead of using the hammer edge to smash it to a pulp—bit by bloody bit!”

“I don't know where your two tribesmen are—” began Persephone, who could all but feel the hair pulling away from her scalp.

“Liar!” shouted Ghengor, giving her head a vicious shake. “You and your lot are the decoys sent to distract us so that your other tribesmen could make mischief upon the mighty Khan!”

“No,” protested Persephone, scowling so that the brute would not have the satisfaction of seeing her wince. “I and my lot came to the mountain alone, in peace, to ask you about—”

“
LIAR
!” bellowed Ghengor again, giving her head another shake.

All at once, Persephone had had enough. She was sick of being sick and in pain, and she was
especially
sick of being manhandled, threatened and shouted at by this perpetually outraged buffoon. And so, taking as deep a breath as she could manage, she shouted, “I am
not
a liar! Use your tiny brain, you great hairy imbecile! In the entire realm, there are hardly enough Gypsies left to help a one-handed man tie his shoes—why on earth would we risk half a dozen of us to kidnap two of you? And why would Gypsies leave behind evidence that Gypsies were the kidnappers when such evidence would surely mean the deaths of the Gypsies in your keeping?
Obviously
, the kidnapping was the work of slave catchers who wanted you to
believe
that it was the work of Gypsies!”

“Aha!” cried Ghengor. “So you are slave catchers!”

“No!” said Persephone, who was beginning to wonder if the fool had even a
tiny
brain. “In the name of the gods will you just
listen
to me?”

“I will not,” decided Ghengor. “You are a lying, trespassing, sheep-startling, mountain-penetrating Gypsy villain, and it is my right as your captor to do with you what I wish. And what I wish to do is to turn you into a meal for my beloved goddess!”

Having heretofore been under the impression that she was going to have an opportunity to explain herself to the prince of the tribe at some point, Persephone hurriedly twisted around to talk Ghengor out of doing anything rash.

Most unfortunately, he'd already raised his battle-axe to deliver the killing blow.

Without a moment's hesitation—or, indeed, any thought as to what she might accomplish by her own rash actions—Persephone flung her hand out. Through the soft leather of Ghengor's baggy pants, she caught a piece of Khan scrotum flesh between her fingernails and pinched as hard as she possibly could. Without letting go of her hair, Ghengor leapt several feet into the air, emitting a rather horrible high-pitched scream as he did so. When he came back down to earth (panting hard) he snarled, flipped the battle-axe in his hand so that the hammer edge was now pointing toward Persephone's temple and, with a blood-curdling battle cry, drove the axe downward with all his might.

An instant before Persephone's brains were splattered all over the gleaming sheep skulls, the larger of the two Khan warriors who'd blown in with the snow growled, “Stop.”

Ghengor managed to stop mid-swing, but he did not lower his battle-axe, and he did not let go of Persephone's hair.

The other Khan stepped forward. “I am the Khan Prince Barka,” he said gruffly as he eased off his great horned helmet. “And unless I am very much mistaken—and I am not, for we Khan never are—you are one of the dungeon slaves who helped me escape the Regent and his little games.”

While the rest of the Khan in the cavern rumbled among themselves at this remarkable utterance, Persephone felt a leap of excitement as she recognized the big man who'd been chained to the dungeon wall back in Parthania. His skin had lost its sickly pallor, and he'd gained some much-needed weight since she'd last seen him, but his hair and his beard were every bit as matted and messy (more matted and messier, even), and his presence was just as imposing.

“Yes!” she exclaimed, even as something important niggled at the back of her mind. “Yes, I
was
one of those who helped you escape! Only I'm not really a dungeon slave—”

“As I recall, you are not really a Gypsy, either, and yet here you are in the company of Gypsies,” said Barka, who jerked his head toward Fayla and Tiny before handing his helmet to the grubby, long-haired child of indeterminate sex who'd come forward to reverently receive it.

“Well, uh, as it happens, I
am
a Gypsy—”

“And yet that night in the dungeon you claimed
not
to be one,” recalled Barka, scratching at something burrowed deep within his bushy beard.

“I
told
you she was a liar,” muttered Ghengor.

“Shut up,” said Persephone, who was feeling considerably more confident now that she knew that she and Azriel had saved the life of the prince who had the power to free them. Looking up at Barka, she said, “I am
not
a liar. I wasn't a Gypsy back in the dungeon but I am one now on account of having recently married into the tribe. In fact, I married the very Gypsy who released you from your shackles. His name is Azriel. That's him on the floor over there, wriggling like a landed fish—”

“I am not
wriggling
,” called Azriel in a crabby voice.

Persephone and Barka shared a look that said they both knew that he was
so
wriggling. “I didn't lie about being a dungeon slave, either,” continued Persephone in confidential tones. “It is true that when you saw me last I was disguised as one, but that was because it was the only way Azriel and I could think to rescue his little tribesman.”

Barka's dark, deep-set eyes lit up at the mention of his former fellow dungeon dweller. “And how fares Mateo?” he asked, clutching his battle-axe tighter as though fearful of the response.

“He is safe and well and reunited with his brother,” replied Persephone, smiling as she recalled listening through the dungeon door to the sound of the tone-deaf Khan prince giving singing tips to the Gypsy boy with the voice of an angel.

“Good!” cried Barka, beaming through his copious facial hair. “That is very good. Mateo was a brave little lad—nearly as brave as old Balthazar himself.”

At the name of the Gypsy who'd discovered the healing pool, the niggling something at the back of Persephone's mind burst into the forefront of her consciousness. “You're Barka!” she gasped. “You're
the
Barka!”

“Yes,” agreed Barka proudly, as though it did not occur to him that Persephone might be excited for any reason other than the fact that he was who he was. “I am a Khan prince,” he said, in case she'd missed it the first time.

“You were also the Khan ambassador to Parthania back before it all went bad,” breathed Persephone. “Cairn said that Balthazar was closer to you than to the ambassadors of either of the other two outlying tribes. She said that if Balthazar had told anyone anything about his discovery, it would have been you.”

“His discovery?” said Barka, stiffening at once.

Persephone was so excited that she did not notice the Khan prince's sudden change in demeanour. “The healing Pool of Genezing,” she said enthusiastically. “My companions and I are seeking it—that is why we came to the mountains to find you. We wanted to ask you—”

“Fetch her companions to me, Ghengor,” ordered Barka.

Muttering under his breath, Ghengor released Persephone's hair, turned and stomped toward Azriel, Rachel, Fayla and Tiny.

Rubbing her aching scalp, Persephone staggered to her swollen feet. As she did so, she called after Ghengor that he was not to move Tiny—an instruction that was given further weight by Fayla, who informed Ghengor that she'd do considerably more than
pinch
his scrotum if he so much as looked sideways at her injured tribesman. Scowling, Ghengor looked over his meaty shoulder at Barka, who impatiently told him to leave be both the injured Gypsy and his ill-tempered nursemaid.

A moment later, after having untied the ropes at their ankles, the still-scowling Khan warrior returned to the circle of skulls, prodding Azriel and Rachel before him like a couple of wayward sheep.

Persephone flashed them both a tentative smile. Rachel smiled back at once, but Azriel gave her a warning look she didn't understand.

Then Barka was speaking.

“You came to the mountains to find us,” he said.

“To find
you
, actually,” said Persephone, who was still smiling. “As I said, my companions and I are seeking—”

“So Ghengor's accusations are true, then?” said Barka.

“What?” said Persephone, her smile fading just a little. “

You
did
trespass on our mountain?” said Barka.

“Well, yes, but—”

“And did you also startle our wonderful woolly sheep?”

“Not … not on purpose,” stammered Persephone. “And before you ask, we didn't, uh, penetrate the mountain on purpose, either.”

“But you
did
penetrate it?” said Barka.

Persephone felt a droplet of sweat trickle down her back. “Yes, but—”

“And did your tribesmen take Dax and Xanther?”

“No!” blurted Persephone with a jolt of panic, for she knew that this particular crime must surely carry the greatest consequence. “No, I
swear
to you—”

“Why do you seek the healing pool?” barked the suddenly ferocious Khan prince.

Caught off guard, Persephone cried, “To save my brother, the Erok king!”

Over the crowd's deafening guffaws of unpleasant laughter, Ghengor jeered, “The Erok king has no Gypsy sister, liar!”

“He does, and I am she!” insisted Persephone, clenching her hands into fists so the Khan would not see her trembling. “I was stolen at birth by the Regent Mordecai and was only recently reunited with my twin. I promise you that I speak the truth—I even wear a ring that bears the crest of the Erok royal family. And see this scar I bear upon my arm?” she asked as she pushed up her sleeve and raised her arm above her head. “King Finnius bears its match.”

“
LIES
!” shouted Ghengor, shaking his battle-axe at Persephone.

“Perhaps not,” said Barka thoughtfully as he thrust his hand into his beard to give his face another vigorous scratch. “After my escape from the dungeon, I heard strange rumours on the roads outside Parthania. I even met a lowborn bandit who showed me a gold coin that had supposedly been tossed to him by some peacock in the long-lost princess's cavalcade.”