The Warlock Enraged-Warlock 4 (18 page)

stands firm anyway—unless she sees good reason to change her mind. And I think having given me a promise is a pretty good reason. But at the bottom of it all, Fess, I don't think I'm the one who convinced her."

"You mean the Duchess?"

Rod nodded. "Mother-to-mother communication always carries greater credibility, for a wife and mother."

"Come, Rod! Certainly you don't believe yourself incapable of convincing your wife of your viewpoint!"

"Meaning I think she won't listen to me?" Rod nodded.

"She won't. Unless, of course, I happen to be right...." It wasn't hard to tell when they reached the border; there was a patrol there to remind him of it.

"Hold!" the sergeant snapped, as two privates brought their pikes down with a crash to bar the road.

Rod pulled in on the reins, doing his best to think like a crochety old farmer—indignant and resentful. "Aye, aye, calm thysen! I've held, I've held!"

"Well for thee that thou hast," the sergeant growled. He nodded to the two rankers. "Search." They nodded, and went to the back of the cart, to begin probing through the cabbages and bran sacks.

'"Ere! 'Ere! What dost thou?" Rod cried, appalled. "Leave my cabbages be!"

"Tis orders, gaffer." The sergeant stepped up beside him, arms akimbo. "Our master. Duke Alfar, demands that we search any man who doth seek to come within the borders of Romanov."

Rod stared, appalled—and the emotion was real. So Alfar had promoted himself! "Duke Alfar? What nonsense is this? 'Tis Ivan who is Duke here!"

"Treason!" another private hissed, his pike leaping out level. Rod's fighting instincts impelled him to jump for the young man's throat—but he belayed them sternly, and did what a poor peasant would do: shrank back a little, but manfully held his ground. He stared into the boy's eyes, and saw a look that was intense, but abstracted—as though the kid wasn't quite all here, but wherever he was, he cared about it an awful lot.

Hypnoed into fanaticism.

The sergeant was grinning, and he had the same sort of shallow look behind the eyeballs. "Where hast thou been, gaffer? Buried in thy fields, with thine head stuck in a clod?

Ivan is beaten and gaoled, and Alfar is now Duke of Romanov!"

"Nay, it cannot be!" But Rod eyed the soldiers' uniforms warily.

The sergeant saw the glance, and chuckled in his throat.

"Aye. 'Tis Alfar's livery." He scowled past Rod. "Hast thou not done yet? 'Tis a cart, not a caravan!"

Rod turned to look, and stared in horror.

"Aye, we've done." The troopers straightened up.

"Naught here, Auncient."

"Nay, not so," Rod snapped. "I've still a few turnips left. Hadst thou not purses large enow for all on't?"

"None o' yer lip," the sergeant growled. "If thou hast lost a few cabbages, what matter? Thou hast yet much to sell at the market in Korasteshev."

"Why dost thou come North?" demanded one of the men-at-arms—the one with the quick pike. Rod turned to him, suddenly aware of danger. He gazed at the trooper, his eyes glazing, as the world he saw became a little less than real, and his mind opened to receive impressions. What was really going on behind the soldier's face?

He felt a pressure, almost as though someone were pressing a finger against his brain. Mentally, he stilled, becoming totally passive. He sensed the differences in the minds around him; it was like smelling, as though each mind gave off its own aroma.

But four of them were all thinking the same thought: Stop those who flee, to make Alfar stronger and greater. However, someone coming into the Duchy was very boring. He was no threat—just more potential, just one more mind that would help magnify Alfar's glory.

But the fifth mind was alive and alert, and teeming with suspicion. A dozen questions jammed up at its outlet, demanding to be asked. Underneath them lay the suspicion that the stranger might be a spy or, worse, an assassin. And at the bottom of the mind writhed a turmoil of unvoiced thoughts, all rising from a brew of emotions: ambition, suspicion, shame, anger, hatred. Rod carefully suppressed 130 Christopher Stasheff

a shudder, and bent all his efforts toward thinking like a peasant fanner. He was a rough, unlettered country man, who labored twelve hours a day on his lord's fields, and four hours a day on his own—the four to raise a cash crop that could all be fitted into one small cart. Of course, he tried hard to get the most money he could, for all that work—the small, additional amount that would make the difference between poverty, and an adequate living for himself and his family during the winter. What did these arrogant bastards mean by trying to keep him from Duke Romanov's fat market in Korasteshev! And where did they get the idea to act so high and mighty? Just because they were wearing leather armor and carrying pikes! Especially when anyone could see that, under the green and brown uniforms, they were dirt peasants, like himself—probably less. Probably mere serfs, and the sons of serfs. The soldier shifted impatiently. "Tell, peasant! Why dost thou seek to come into—"

"Why, t' sell m' bran 'n' cabbages 'n' turnips," Rod answered. "Dosta think I'd wast m' horse for a day's pleasure?" The sentry ignored the question. "You're Earl Tudor's man," he growled. "Why not sell in Caernarvon? Why come North all the way to Korasteshev?"

" 'Tis not 'all the way,'" Rod snorted. "I live scarce three leagues yon." He nodded toward the road behind him.

"Korasteshev is closer for me." He glared at the trooper—but he let his mind dwell hungrily on the thought of the prices he could get in Korasteshev. Everyone knew Duke Romanov's barons were fighting among themselves—and the more fool the Duke, for letting them! And every peasant knew that, when armies fought, crops got trampled. Nay, surely the folk in Korasteshev would be paying far more for cabbages than those in Earl Tudor's peaceful Caernarvon!

The soldier's face relaxed. So, the cranky old codger's greedy! Well and good—greed, we know how to deal with.... Rod just barely managed to restrain a surge of indignation. Old?!? Codger, okay—but, old? He diverted the impulse into suspicious fuming: Who was this bare-cheeked brat, to be asking him questions? Why, he was scarcely done suckling his mother's milk!

He was gratified to see the young man redden a little—

but the boy's suspicion wasn't quite finished yet. He ran a trained eye over Fess. "How comes a poor dirt farmer to have so fine a horse?"

Panic! Anxiety! The one thing that men might really blame him for. Rod had been caught. And hard on the heels of that emotion, came a surge of shame. He glanced at Fess. Eh, my wife was beautiful, ten years agone! Small wonder that Sir Ewing took notice of her....

He turned back to the young man. "Sir Ewing gave him to me, saying he was too old to bear an armored knight still."

The suspicion was still there in the young soldier's mind; it just changed direction. The young man was trying to find a flaw in the story. "Why would a knight give even a castoff charger to a poor peasant?" The shame again. Rod let it mount, burning. "Why, for

... favors... we did him, me and mine." Mostly 'mine.'

There was a brief, lurid image of a strapping, tow-headed man in bed with a voluptuous young woman, with chestnut hair—not that you could see much else of her... and the vision was gone. But the shame remained, and rage mounted under it. "For favors." Rod's face had turned to wood. "Not that 'tis any affair of thine."

"'Affair,' is it?" The young man let a mocking grin spread.

"Aye, thine 'affair' now, is only the selling of thy cabbages, I warrant." He turned to the sergeant. "Why do we linger, wasting time on this peasant, Auncient?"

"Why, for that he hath not set his horse to going," the sergeant growled. "Be off with thee, fellow! Get thy cart out from our station! Get thee hence to the market!"

"Aye—and I thank thy worships," Rod said sourly. He turned away and slapped the reins on Fess's back—but very gently, to avoid the metallic ring. Fess started up again, plodding away.

Rod kept a tight rein on his thoughts. It was such a huge, aching temptation to indulge himself in speculation! But he was certainly still in range of the young telepath, and would be for several miles at least—even if the kid's powers were weak. And if they were strong... No, Rod kept a steady mental stream of embarrassment and anger seething. That 732 Christopher Stasheff

the young bastard should have subjected him to such personal questions! What a filthy mind he must have! And where did such a low-born serf's son get any right to be questioning him, old Owen, about his comings and goings?

Underneath that surface spate, in bursts of pure thought not encoded into words, boiled the host of questions. Interesting, that the ranker had asked the questions, and the sergeant hadn't even seemed to notice that his authority was being usurped. Interesting, that the sorcerer's sentries would pose as underlings; they had, at least, some craftiness in their disguises. That the young warlock was one of those who had volunteered to work for Alfar, completely willingly, Rod had no doubt; the youngster clearly had the inferiority complex and paranoia of the persecuted witchling grown to manhood—and the ambition that stemmed from it. Inwardly, Rod shuddered—if he'd been Alfar, he'd never have been able to sleep easily, knowing that his underlings would very cheerfully have sliced him to bits and taken his place.

On the other hand, the fact that they hadn't indicated that Alfar was either an extremely powerful old esper, or was surrounded by a few henchmen who were genuinely loyal. Or both.

But the chance that telepaths were constantly running surveillance over the duchy, was just too high. Rod couldn't afford to take chances. His concentration might falter at just the moment that one of the sentry-minds happened to be listening to the area he was in. He had to take more thorough mental precautions.

Accordingly, he let the tension from the confrontation at the border, begin to ebb away, and began to relax—as "old" Owen, of course. What does it matter, what the fuzz-cheeked brat said? I'm in Romanov—and I can sell my crop for that much greater price! But my, it's been a long day! He'd been up before dawn, Owen had—as he always was, of course; but travelling was more wearying than threshing. His eyelids were sagging. How nice it would be, to nap for a bit—just a little bit! Maybe the half of an hour, or so. In fact, he was beginning to nod. It wasn't safe, driving when he was so sleepy. Nay, surely he'd better nap.

So he steered the cart off to the side of the road, reined

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the horse to a stop, lashed the reins to the top bar of the cart, clambered over the seat into the back, and found himself a small nest among his baskets. The boards weren't too much harder than his pallet at home—and at least he could lean back.

He let his head loll, eyes closing, letting the drowsiness claim him, letting his thoughts darken and grow still....

"Rod."

Rod jolted upright, blinking, hauling his mind out of the fringes of the web of sleep. "Huh? Wha? Wha's'a mattuh?"

"Did you intend to doze. Rod?"

"Who, me? Ridiculous!" Rod snorted. "Just putting on a very good act. Well... okay, maybe I got carried away...."

"As you wish. Rod." Fess was peacefully nibbling at the roadside grass. Rod made a mental note to dump the robot's wastebasket. For the time being, of course, Fess's act was as necessary as Rod's.

Of course, he did have to keep it an act. He lay back against a bran sack, closed his eyes, and let drowsiness claim him again, let the surface of his mind flicker with the images of Owen's imaginary day.

Underneath, he tried to remember what had happened inside his head when he had first come to Gramarye, how it had felt.

He remembered the shock when he had found out that someone was reading his mind. He had been eyeing one of the teenaged witches with admiration, speculating about her measurements, when she had gasped, and turned to glare at him. He remembered how embarrassed he'd been, and the clamoring panic inside as he realized someone could read his mind. Worse, that any of the Gramarye "witches" could—and that there were dozens of them, at least!

But by the time he'd met Gwen, only a week or so later, she hadn't been able to read his thoughts. For nine years, that had been the one mar on an otherwise blissful marriage. There had been spats, of course, and there had been the constant, underlying tension that always stems from two people trying to make one life together; but the loving reassurance she'd had every reason to look forward to, the warmth of being able to meld her mind with her husband's, just hadn't been there. That had put a continuing, unspoken 134 Christopher Stasheff

strain on the marriage, with Gwen hiding feelings of having been cheated—not by Rod, but by life—and Rod trying less successfully to bury his feelings of inferiority. Then, when the family had been kidnapped to the land ofTir Chlis in an alternative universe. Rod had encountered his analog, the alternate High Warlock, Lord Kem—who was very much like Lord Gallowglass, enough so to be Rod's double. But there had been some major differences under the skin—such as Kern's roaring temper. And huge magical powers—one of which was the ability to blend his mind with Rod's, to lend him Kem's powers. That had wakened Rod's own slumbering esper powers—and afflicted him with a hair-trigger temper. Fortunately, it had also roused a mind reading ability he'd never suspected he'd had. And, suddenly, Gwen had been able to read his mind; he'd no longer been telepathically invisible.

So, if he had been open to mind reading when he came to Gramarye, but had been telepathically invisible when he'd met Gwen, his mind had probably closed itself off in that first panic of embarrassment, finding out that somebody could read his thoughts when he most definitely hadn't wanted her to.

Of course, when the girl got done looking indignant, she hod looked rather pleased....

He tried to remember how he had felt at that moment, and caught it—exposed, vulnerable. Being so open was intolerable; he couldn't allow other people to know so much about him, that they might be able to use to hurt him. He couldn't let them have the advantage of knowing what he was going to do, before he did it.