Sorcerer of the North (20 page)

Reluctantly, he nodded. His training had taught him that when you were entering enemy territory, it was best to find out all you could beforehand. Alyss saw the angry light go out of his eyes and took her hand from his arm. She smiled at him.

"Now give me a ride back to the forest edge."

"You're right," he said as he swung up astride Tug, then leaned down to help her mount behind him. "It's just that I wanted someone to pay for the way I felt the other night."

Alyss, her arms around his waist, squeezed him gently. "I don't blame you," she said. "And you'll get your chance, believe me." She was silent for a few moments as they rode back through the forest, bending low over Tug's neck from time to time to avoid the low-hanging creepers and branches that obstructed the trail. Then she spoke again.

"You know, it might be a good idea if we sent in a report to Halt and Crowley, to let them know what we've found so far. They might have some ideas about all this. We'll send it by message pigeon."

Message pigeons, Will knew, were trained by the Diplomatic Service to return to their last place of rest. Once a pigeon had flown back to its home base, it would be ready to return to the spot from which it had been released. Nobody knew how the birds managed to fix the positions in their minds, but they were invaluable for communication in the field. Alyss continued.

"I'm being watched, so I have to get back to the castle. But could you ride back, make contact with the pigeon handler, and send off a report?"

Will nodded agreement. There was certainly plenty to tell his superiors—even if, so far, there were no conclusions to be drawn.

"How will I know your man?" he asked.

"He'll know you. When he sees you, he'll make contact."

They were back at the edge of the forest now and the going was clearer. Will touched Tug with his heels and the little horse broke into a canter. As they reached the small copse of trees where he'd met Alyss, she slid quickly from the saddle, glancing anxiously along the road to the point where her escort should appear. So far, there was no sign of them and that meant there was no sign of the men following them either.

"You'd better make yourself inconspicuous," she said, and Will nodded, urging Tug into the shadows under the trees. The dog followed, lying prone in the long grass.

From his position, Will could see the bend in the road a couple of hundred meters away. Now he saw the first rider in Alyss's escort rounding the bend.

"They're here," he said softly, and Alyss ran quickly to a thick clump of bushes at the edge of the trees, unfastening her short cloak and pulling the tunic over her head as she did so. She was wearing only a brief shift underneath the tunic and Will turned away hurriedly as he caught a glimpse of bare shoulders and arms. He heard rapid rustling from the bushes, then Alyss called to him.

"You can open your eyes now." She sounded vaguely amused at his embarrassment.

She had donned a long white riding habit over her tights and riding boots. The cloak, tunic and knife belt were bundled together at her feet. Will glanced along the road. The four-man escort, grouped around the mannequin tied to Alyss's horse, was almost up to them. From the shelter of the bushes, Alyss signaled to them. She turned and waved at Will, a conspiratorial grin on her face.

"See you back at the castle," she said. Then, in what was obviously a carefully rehearsed piece of confusion, the escort was alongside her. The horses milled back and forth, confusing the scene, and one of the men released a slip knot, allowing the mannequin to slide sideways off the horse. Before it hit the ground, Alyss had swung up into the saddle. Another member of the escort bent quickly to retrieve the mannequin and within a matter of seconds the group was riding on, the mannequin already half folded and out of sight.

As they moved away, Will waited, unmoving, in the trees. They were still in sight when Tug's ears twitched and the dog let out a low rumble.

"Still," Will told them both. Sure enough, two men-at-arms were rounding the bend, looking cautiously along the trail to make sure they hadn't closed up too far on the party they were following. Will sat, unmoving, as they rode past. He gave them several minutes' grace, then he rode out, heading south to find Alyss's pigeon handler.

Will performed in the men-at-arms' barracks that evening. It was normal practice for a jongleur to spread himself around. After all, if he were to perform in the main hall every night, the audience there would soon grow bored with his repertoire. And the soldiers in a remote castle such as Macindaw could often prove to be more than generous. They had little to spend their money on in a small, remote shire like that one. As a result, he could expect to make his purse considerably heavier if they enjoyed his work.

Furthermore, while a visiting entertainer might expect a small cash bonus from the castle lord at the end of his tenure, his chief payment came in the form of shelter, food and accommodation. A performer looking for hard cash would usually find it among the soldiers, or at the local tavern, if there were one.

In addition to all these excellent reasons, Will had another motive for taking himself to the barracks room that night. He wanted to get the men talking, to hear the local gossip and rumors about the forbidding Grimsdell Wood and the black mere. And nothing loosened men's tongues like an evening of music and wine, he thought wryly.

By now, he had become an accepted part of Macindaw life and people would be more likely to open up to him. In addition, the men-at-arms would feel more secure than the country folk who went home each night from the Cracked Flagon to their isolated, unprotected homes and farms. The men here were well armed and relatively secure behind the solid walls of a castle. That, if nothing else, would help to make their tongues a little looser.

He was greeted cheerfully when he arrived—all the more so when he produced a large flagon of apple brandy to help the night along. His standard repertoire of country folk songs, jigs and reels was exactly what this audience wanted. And he added a few of the bawdier numbers he had been taught by Berrigan as well:
Old Scully's Daughter
and a rather coarse parody of
The Knights of Dark Renown
titled
The Knights Whose Pants Fell Down
, among others. The evening was a success and the coins showered into his mandola case as the hours passed.

At length, he and half a dozen of the group were left lolling around the dying fire, brandy tankards in their hands. He had set the mandola aside. The singing was over for the night and the men were content with that. He had given them good value and now he once again experienced that strange phenomenon where, having performed for an audience for an hour or so, he was accepted into their midst as if they had known him all their lives.

The talk was the usual chatter of bored soldiers. It concerned the shortage of available females in the area, and the boredom of life a remote castle, hemmed in by the winter snows. It was a boredom tinged with fear, however. There was no telling when the Scotti tribes might launch an attack across the border and, of course, there was the troubling mystery surrounding the lord's illness. As the men talked more freely, Will probed subtly and discovered that they had little respect for his son, Orman.

"He's no warrior," one of them said in a disgusted tone. "I doubt he could hold a sword, let alone swing it."

There was a rumble of agreement from the others. "Keren's the one for us," said another. "He's a real man—not like Orman, a jumped-up bookworm with his nose forever stuck in a scroll."

"That's when he's not looking down it at such as us," a third put in, and again there was an angry growl of assent. "But as long as he's Syron's heir, we're stuck with him," the man added.

"What sort of man is Syron?" Will ventured to ask. Their eyes turned to him and they waited for the most senior among them, the sergeant major, to answer.

"A good man. A good laird and a brave fighter. A just leader, too. But he's to his bed now and little chance he'll recover, if you ask me."

"And we need him now more than ever, with Malkallam on the loose again," said one of the soldiers. Will looked at him and recognized the sentry he had spoken to when he had left the castle several nights previously.

"Malkallam?" he said. "He's this wizard you talk about, isn't he?"

There was a moment of silence and several of the men glanced over their shoulders into the shadows beyond the flickering light of the fire. Then the sentry answered him.

"Ay. He's laid a curse on our Laird Syron. He lurks in that forest of his, surrounded by his creatures ..." He hesitated, not sure if he had said too much.

"I went by there the other night," Will admitted. "You made me curious with your warnings. I tell you, what I saw and heard there was enough to keep me out of Grimsdell Wood in the future."

"Thought you would," said the sentry. "You young 'uns always know better than those who seek to advise you. You're lucky you got away. Others haven't," he added darkly.

"But where did this Malkallam come from?" Will asked. This time another man joined the conversation—a grizzled soldier whose gray beard and hair bespoke his long service in the castle.

"He was among us for years," he said. "We all thought he was harmless—just a simple herbalist and healer. But he was biding his time, letting us become unwary. Then strange things began to happen. There was a child who died, when all knew that it was within Malkallam's power to heal him. Malkallam let him die, they say. And others say he used the spirit for his evil purposes. There were those who wanted to make him pay for his sins, but before we could do anything about it, he escaped into the forest."

"And that was the end of it?" Will asked.

The soldier shook his head. "There were stories—dark stories—that he surrounded himself with monsters. Misshapen, ugly beings, they were. Creatures with the evil eye and the mark of the devil on them. Occasionally, they'd be seen at the edge of the forest. We knew he was doing the devil's work and when Lord Syron fell under a spell, we knew who had cast it."

"No coincidence there," said the sentry. The others nodded assent.

"And what does Orman do?" continued the old soldier. "He reads those weird scrolls of his late into the night, when decent folk are in their beds. While what we need is leadership—and someone with the guts to face up to Malkallam, and drive him out of Grimsdell once and for all."

"Need more men if we're to do that," said the sergeant major "We couldn't face down his monsters with just a dozen of us. Orman should be recruiting. At least Keren's been doing something about that."

The older man shook his head. "Not sure I like what he's doing there," he said. "Some of those men he's recruited, they're barely more than bandits, you ask me."

"When you need fighting men, Aldous Almsley, you take what you can get," said the sergeant major. "I'll grant you they ain't no bunch of choirboys, but I reckon Keren can control them all right."

Will pricked up his ears at the words. This was something new, he thought. Nevertheless, he was careful to keep his expression disinterested. He even managed a yawn before he asked, as casually as he could manage, "Keren's recruiting men?"

The sergeant major nodded. "As Aldous says, you wouldn't want to look too closely at their pasts. But I reckon the time will come when we need hard men and we won't argue too much about them then."

Will looked around the barracks. "They're not quartered here?" he asked.

This time it was Aldous who answered. "He's keeping them separate. They have quarters in the keep tower. He said that was a better arrangement—it'd avoid any chance of friction."

It was apparent that the members of the normal garrison had accepted this reasoning without any question. Will clicked his tankard against his teeth thoughtfully. Maybe it did make sense, he thought. Throwing two separate groups of fighting men together in the rather basic conditions of the barracks room might well be a recipe for trouble. Still, there was something about the arrangement that was a little unsettling.

"Maybe," said the sergeant major, "when you consider the situation between Sir Keren and Lord Orman, Sir Keren thinks it's wise to have a group of men loyal to him—not that he'd have any trouble from us, mind."

"Although," said Aldous, "we are sworn to obey the orders of the rightful lord of the castle. And with Lord Syron out of action, that's Orman, whether we like it or not."

"Sworn or not," chipped in a third soldier, "I doubt he'd find any of us willing to act against Keren."

The others all mumbled assent. But it was a low mumble and one or two glanced over their shoulders once more, aware of the dangerous nature of the sentiments they were expressing. A silence fell over the group and Will thought it best to move on. He didn't want anyone to register the fact that he'd been pumping them for information.

"Ah well," he said, "one thing's for sure. With Sir Keren's men in the tower, there are fewer to share the rest of this brandy. And there's precious little left."

"Hear, hear!" the soldiers agreed. And as the flagon was passed around, Will's mind was racing. The evening had given him much to think about and he began to wish he'd waited another day before sending a report to Halt and Crowley.

Far to the south, the two senior Rangers were studying the report that the weary pigeon had delivered barely half an hour before. There had been storms and strong winds on its path south but the sturdy little bird had flown on through the weather, arriving at Castle Araluen wet and nearly exhausted. A handler had gently detached the message from its leg and placed the faithful little bird in a warm hutch in one of Castle Araluens soaring towers. Now, feathers fluffed out and head tucked under its wing, it slept, its task completed.

Not so Halt and Crowley. The Ranger Commandant paced back and forth in his room as Halt read through Will's truncated sentences once more. Finally, the gray-bearded Ranger looked up at his chief with a frown.

"I wish you'd stop that pacing," he said mildly.