The Pixilated Peeress (33 page)

             
"Stop her, Berthar!" said Thorolf. As the Director seized Yvette from behind, Thorolf continued: "See what a luck
y escape you had, your Grace?" Then to Berthar and Yvette: "He's a valuable property. The
Commonwealth can get some splendid reparations from this fellow in return for's liberty."

             
Yvette swore: "You're so damnably practical! Not a trace of romance!"

             
Th
orolf ignored the statement. "Bind up his leg, Ber
thar; his wound is not grave. Then you might take care of mine." He turned to the Sophonomist guards. "What of you fellows? Your employers are dead, and your so-called Church is about to follow them into
o
blivion. What will you do for a living?"

             
An officer said: "Well, sir, we hadn't thought yet. Hast any ideas?"

             
"Aye, I have. Our regular army is short of men. If you'll return to Zurshnitt with me, I'll put in a good word for you at the barracks."

-

             
Days later, Thorolf dismounted from his mare and en
tered the Green Dragon, shaking snow from his cloak and stamping it from his boots. He wore his best civil
ian suit of scarlet doublet and azure breeches; his hair and beard were newly trimmed.

             
He found
the Countess Yvette in the common room, gorgeous in a new emerald gown and holding court to a circle of adherents who had followed her into exile. She introduced Thorolf around:

             
"Sergeant, behold my loyal subjects: Sir Maximin, Coppersmith Clodomir, Tan
ner Gundobald, Attorney Siagro, Merchant Ursus, Captain Magnovald, Free
holder Cautinus
...
"

             
She turned back to the group. "That is all for today, good people. I shall see you a sennight hence, when you shall tell me of your progress in raising loans and
enlisting others in our righteous cause. Good night!"

             
When the followers had departed, Thorolf said: "How goes the government in exile?"

             
"Not so well as I should like, but better than I feared. My partisans pay my maintenance here. What of the Sophono
mists?"

             
"Gone with the flowers of autumn. Parthenius had told the diaphanes to stay in the castle, knowing they'd soon be slaughtered in any fight. When he died, they wandered off; I ween their deltas have abandoned them, freeing them to return to normal
lives. Orlandus' other officers have fled. When Lodar sent a squad of consta
bles to the castle, they found no one within save a hand
ful of gray-clad probationers who, refusing to believe that the cult was destroyed, continued their sweeping or polishin
g
or whatever other duty their Masters had laid upon them."

             
"Couldst try to recover that golden gown they gave me?"

             
Thorolf shrugged. "I'll do what I can; I have filed a claim for the money we gave Orlandus to change you back to a woman. But others have
also filed claims, and they speak of auctioning off abandoned property in the castle. So count no unhatched fowls."

             
She sighed. "A pity; in it I truly looked my rank. But what of you?"

             
"Not altogether well. Berthar failed of election to his Board; so
my academic career seems as far off as ever."

             
"Why did Berthar fail?"

             
"For a fribbling reason. A member of the Board, Banker Gallus, sent his old horse to the park with a request that it be given a home for its final years. Ber
thar, who's a stickler f
or rules, told the fellow he'd do so if Gallus would furnish a stipend to cover the ani
mal's food and care. The Board member refused, Ber
thar sent back the horse, and Gallus blackballed Berthar at the next meeting. This despite that she-dragon I cap
tur
e
d for them! It confirms Doctor Vipsanio's philoso
phy of Chaoticism."

             
"Poor Berthar! Such a pleasant man, too. What of Duke Gondomar?"

             
"The Supreme Council got him to agree to a ten-thousand-mark reparation and a new commercial treaty. Some lawyers sni
ffed 'twas unconstitutional to let him go without trial, but the government overbore them. They're holding him till the money arrives. How much to heart his popeyed Grace will take the treaty, since it was extorted by duress, remains to be seen."

             
"How di
d he track us to the trollish village?"

             
Thorolf grinned. "I wondered, too. So I bought a keg of our best Rhaetian ale and had it borne to the cell where he waits. As cells go, it's comfortable. When I proposed that he and I have a beer guzzle, he huffed
and puffed a bit, blowing his mustache out like a win
dow curtain and popping his eyes at me like one of Berthar's snails. But at last he came round. I pointed out that, whereas we were foes in the last affray, we might be allies in the next.

             
"When he'd
drunk enough to float a skiff, he told me. He was lurking in a secret camp when one of that trio who robbed Berthar straggled in and reported. Thereupon Gondomar set out with his company to seek our trail. They got lost or they'd have found us sooner. The
uproar the trolls made when the Sophonomists ap
proached revealed the direction they sought. At the end, he and I were singing drunken songs together, and he offered me a post in his forces."

             
"What wilt? Take up's offer?"

             
Thorolf shook his head. "I tho
ught about it; I could do worse. But I'll apply for a permanent sergeancy here, unless I decide to go to Tyrrhenia as a mercenary."

             
"Why do that?"

             
"The Duke of Aemilia is raising a force for war with the Republic of Brandesco. He offers over twice what
I'm now paid, and more than I should get from Gon
domar. With care, a year with the Aemilians should save me enough to see me through my doctorate." Tho
rolf paused. "Yvette, I love you. If you'll wed me, I will stay and make do on my present pay."

             
She
turned to him. "Dear Thorolf! Forsooth, I love you, too, after a sort. But I will marry none not of noble blood, nor one so prosaically practical as a
Rhaetian." Watching Thorolf s face fall, she continued: "I confess I owe you for all you've done, and hon
or demands repayment. You are a true hero in your stolid way."

             
"Just luck, my dear, as when Orlandus obligingly fell out the window, or Regin warned me of the Sophonomists' plot, or you pinked Gondomar in the leg. But
—
ah
...
"

             
"If you mean money, all th
e funds I can raise are bespoken for recovery of my country."

             
Thorolf snorted. "I would not take money! Really, Yvette, I may be a Rhaetian, but I'm not so crassly commercial as all that!"

             
"Well, then, I could give you the pleasure of my body for the n
ight
—
or even several nights, until I depart for Grintz."

             
Thorolf shook his head. "Your offer mightily tempts me, but that's not what I seek. I'm thirty, and it is time I were properly matched. We call it 'settling down.' "

             
She flared up. "You have the
insolence to reject
me!"

             
"My apologies, your Highness."

             
"Eunuch! Androgyne! Capon!" She calmed herself. "I'm sorry; I suppose you have some priggish Rhaetian reason. What were the harm?"

             
"None whatever, save that I should then become your slave, unab
le to leave your side to pursue my academic career. I am not cut out for a lady's fancy man."

             
"So, it's well and good for me to become
your
slave, which is all a Rhaetian housewife is? You know I'm abler than most men!"

             
Thorolf shrugged. "So we have an
impasse, like one of those paradoxes professors tell of, with no true, just, and sensible answer. Hence I'm off to Tyrrhenia. Belike I shall meet one of that gang who slew my friend Bardi and use him as he deserves."

             
"If only you had a drop of noble blood and weren't so damnably Rhaetian!"

             
Thorolf rose, saying:

-

 
"My lady may yearn

  
For adventures archaic,

And suitors all spurn

  
As ignoble or laic,

But she'll never discern

  
One who's not too prosaic!"

-

             
"That's my problem!" she snapped.

             
"Good night, my dear!" He rose, picked up his cloak, threw it around him, and strode for the door. Did he or did he not hear behind him a faint whisper of: "
Oh, Thorolf!"
? Whether it was real or only imag
ined, he kept
resolutely on out the door and into the snow.

-

             
The
Plain of Formi, a checkerboard of green and brown fields, stretched away to the range of hills that rose against t
he blue spring sky. The brown was that of lately plowed earth; the green that of newly sprouted crops. Across the plain the army of Ganeozzi, Duke of Aemilia, advanced in three phalanges of a battalion each.

             
Each phalanx was a hollow square of pikemen, t
wenty men on a side and, when up to full strength, three hun
dred soldiers plus officers. The officers marched inside the square along with drummers, buglers, and adju
tants. At each corner of the square marched a formation of crossbowmen. From a safe dis
t
ance, peasants shouted curses at the damage to their crops.

             
Each phalanx tramped beneath a forest of pikes, held vertically with little flags on some of the pikes for the subordinate units. The sergeants of each of the four companies in the battalion mar
ched outside the square
with halberds over their shoulders. As sergeant of Al
pha Company, Thorolf Zigramson tramped in steel cui
rass and burganet on the extreme right of the formation, growling:

             
"Close up there!'" 'Pick up your feet!'" 'You're get
ting
out of line!" "Watch the stones lest you trip!" "Sigman, your pike wobbles! Straighten up!"

             
A quarter-league ahead, the Brandescan Army lay on the rising ground of the saddle between two hills. At that distance it was merely a dark, formless mass, var
i
egated by the banners rising at intervals and sending out little gleams of sun on armor. As the Aemilians neared, Thorolf could begin to make out the forms of individuals. Shouts of command and cheers came faintly across the diminishing distance, mingled
w
ith drum beats and bugle calls.