Luck Of The Wheels

TEN

Some wise great-grandfather had planted saplings along the main street of Tekum. They were great grey-trunked trees now, offering shade and relief to eyes wearied by endless eddying prairie. Ki wondered if anyone remembered the name of the tree-planter, or even gave a thought to the man who had greened what was otherwise an unremarkable-looking town.

'There's the inn,' Vandien observed.

Ki nodded. The signboard hung from rusted chains. Two Ducks. Ki clicked to the greys as she turned their heads into the innyard. It didn't look busy. A team of mules hitched to a buckboard dozed in the afternoon sun. An old dog lay flat on the baked earth. His tail flopped lazily at the wagon's approach, but he didn't bother to lift his head.

Ki halted the team. Silence. A fly buzzing. She looked at Vandien, and their eyes met. He looked miserable. Ki lifted her hand slowly, knocked on the cuddy door. 'Willow,' she called softly. 'We're here. The Two Ducks.'

For another moment, silence reigned. Then, 'Oh, no!' Willow moaned. 'Not so soon!'

Goat muttered something in a salacious tone. Willow made no reply that Ki could hear, but she was trying not to listen. She felt the girl's movements in the cuddy. 'Probably gathering up her things,' Vandienmuttered. Ki didn't add, 'and getting dressed and brushing her hair.' It took a very long time for Willow to open the side door of the wagon and climb out.

She looked awful. The clothing she wore was rumpled, the shining copper hair a tangled nest. She dropped her single bag of possessions at her feet. Goat leaned out the door of the wagon. Ki glanced back, to see Willow smiling tenuously up at him. 'Now?' she asked. 'You did promise,' she added, her smile getting shakier.

For a moment Goat smiled down at her. Then his look grew cagier. 'Ride with me to Villena,' he offered. 'Then I'll tell you.'

Willow's face crumbled. 'I cannot!' she begged.

'Then I cannot,' Goat shrugged. His smile grew wider.

And Willow's face changed. Green and blue eyes blazed with anger. The snarl that contorted her face seemed almost reptilian. Ki expected venom to shoot from her lips, while Goat recoiled in horror. 'I hate you!' Willow hissed. 'I hate you and I have always hated you! Your touch is like the touch of a slug, of offal smeared against the skin! You stink, and your breath is foul. You are the poorest of males, and your body ...'

'You liked it well enough last night,' ventured Goat, but there was no courage in his taunt. It sounded like a plea.

'I hate you!' Willow shrieked, and sprang toward the wagon, clawing.

Goat slammed the door shut. Ki picked up the reins.

'I hate you all!' Willow screamed after the wagon. 'All of you! You brought me to this, you ruined me!'

Willow sank slowly down to sit atop her bag. Her shoulders shook with her sobbing. Ki glanced across at Vandien. His face was grey, his mouth a flat line. 'I feel,' he said softly, 'as if we have done a great evil, all unawares. And I feel accursed, as if there is yet a debt to be paid.'

'You sound like an old tale.' Ki could not keep the awe from her voice. She, too, felt the wrongness of what they drove away from. If a curse felt like a weight draping her shoulders and a black net closing around her heart, then Ki felt cursed.

The cuddy door behind them jerked open. 'Aren't we going to stop at all?' Goat complained. 'I want to see a bit of Tekum before we ...'

'Not here,' Ki said tersely. 'The next inn, perhaps. But not here.'

'But -'

Vandien reached back and slammed the door. His hands clenched the edge of the seat. Ki glanced at his white knuckles, then fixed her gaze on the road. The tree-lined street was quiet, most trade closed down for the heat of early afternoon.

'I don't know if I can stand it,' Vandien said in a strangled voice. 'Having that thing in there.' Ki nodded. Suddenly Goat did seem more of a thing than a person. 'What do you suggest?' she asked softly.

Vandien shook his head wearily. 'We can't just leave him here.'

'He'd only find his way back to Willow.' Ki paused, then observed, 'Like rotten meat. You hate to carry it with you, because of the stench, but you fear to throw it aside lest you poison some poor beast.'

'His uncle in Villena.' Vandien's voice was unenthusiastic. 'I hope that poor bastard knows how to deal with him. I don't.'

'I wish we didn't have to stop here at all. But we're low on salt and tea, and I want to ask the smithy if he has anything for ticks and fleas. This damn warm weather ...'

Ki let the sentence dangle, and she could feel Vandien make the journey north with her, back to the cool lands. What was a snow-blocked pass or ice on the harness buckles compared to endless heat and bugs and guards and papers?

They were almost outside the town before she spotted an inn that suited her. It was set back from the road and there were few animals in the yard, and none of them looked capable of bearing a Brurjan's weight. From somewhere close by she heard the clang of hammer against anvil. Sigurd and Sigmund drew the wagon obediently into the yard. They stopped and stood, waiting for water.

The hostler who came from the stables frowned briefly at the garish wagon, but seemed to know his business as he moved surely around the horses.

'Water, and grain for them. Take their bits out, but don't unharness them; we won't be staying that long,' Ki told him.

He nodded to her words, then gave a puzzled frown. 'Aren't you come for the festival? Not far off, now. Folks already getting ready for it.'

She shook her head, then transferred her attention to Vandien. 'I'll buy you a beer,' she offered.

He astonished her by shaking his head. 'No. Let's just get our errands done and be moving on. I've no urge to explore this town or spend any time here.'

The cuddy door slid open. 'But I do!' Goat protested. 'I want to look around before we move on. I want ...'

'No.' Vandien's voice was flat. Goat glared at him for a moment, then turned to Ki.

'I can at least walk around with you while you do your errands. We need more honey, and I want ...'

'I'll be walking around with Ki while she does her errands. You'll be staying here and watching the wagon. I don't want you to leave it, and I don't want you talking to anyone. Some inngirls have fathers, Goat, or brothers, or sweethearts. Try your tricks here, and you'll be lucky if it's only my fist you feel. Do we understand one another?'

Goat glared at him in outrage, and then slammed the door. Ki had remained silent throughout their exchange. Now she asked Vandien worriedly, 'Do you think it's safe to leave him alone?' 'He'll be a lot safer alone than if I have to stay here with him,' Vandien promised her blackly. He grinned at her then, suddenly and disarmingly, but there was an edge to his smile that she had never seen before, and it did nothing to disarm his threat about Goat. She took his arm and walked him away from the wagon, feeling the tension that was thrumming through him. Ki sighed, and wished she could lose the image of the distraught Willow glaring after the wagon.

They bought the tea first, and a small earthenware pot of honey sealed with yellow wax. Ki tried to get him interested in the leather goods in a small open-fronted shop, but the usually gregarious Vandien was withdrawn. He was as charming as ever, and the leatherworker eager to show him her wares, but there was something missing from his manner. Warmth, Ki thought, and caring. Usually he could make every person he talked with feel as if he were the most fascinating character Vandien had ever met. Today he was distracted, as if he were listening to something else. 'No, no, I'm content with what I have,' he explained, running his hand down the worn sheath of his rapier. 'It's old, but she draws easily from this, and it keeps her safe. Anything fancier would only attract attention.' He looked up at the leatherworker as if seeing her for the first time. 'Work as fine as yours for a simple traveller like myself? Would only make the Brurjan guards think there was more about me than there really is. But I thank you for showing us your goods.'

The leatherworker warmed toward him. 'The Duke's Brurjans seem to think that of anyone they meet, these days,' she confided to them. 'Such a sifting of travellers as they have done of late. There are rumors of a rebel spy travelling to the Duchess. It is said that he has knowledge of the Duke's troops, and the strength and fortifications of Masterhold itself. The Brurjan that lays claws on him first is to be richly rewarded, with seven black mares and a white stallion from the Duke's own stables.'

'All the more reason for us to remain unobtrusive,' Ki filled in. Vandien had wandered back to the street and was watching the traffic. A haunted look was on his face. He was right, Ki decided. Finish the errands quickly and leave.

She thanked the girl, and they made their way to the smithy and found he had herbs which, rubbed against the horses' sweaty hides, would stave off the worst of the fleas and ticks. He also had a paste for worming, one he assured Ki was necessary in this part of the world as a monthly tonic. Vandien stood bored as she listened to the smithy, and did not even join in on bargaining him down to a price she thought fair. Her arms were full as they left the smithy's barn, and Vandien carried the tea and honey, so she could not take his arm as she longed to.

'Sure you don't want just one quick beer?' she offered again as they approached the wagon.

'Well ... no. No, let's get on our way to Villena. Goat! Open the cuddy door, my hands are full. Goat!'

No answer. No creak of motion from the wagon. The horses shifted in their harness as Vandien waited. Then he turned, stacked his goods into Ki's arms, and jerked the door opened himself. 'Goat!' he roared, as the door came open.

There was no reply, and the look he turned on Ki was unreadable. 'He's gone,' he told her, and jumped down from the wagon step. She struggled laden up the step to dump their purchases on the bed. She came out of the wagon to see Vandien coming out of the inn.

'Not there,' he said tersely. They looked at each other in silence.

'Want me to check the other shops around here?' Ki offered, but Vandien shook his head, hisexpression suddenly savage.

'You know where he's gone as well as I do. Damn Goat, can't leave anything alone. It was bad enough as it was, and now to go back into it, to have to see her face again.'

He moved as he ranted, placing the bits in the horses' mouths, setting aside the water buckets the hostler had left for them. 'Let me just pay the innkeeper, then,' Ki suggested.

He was holding the reins when she came out, and for once she said nothing about his driving. The team felt his tension down the reins, for they stepped out smartly and Sigurd, for once, tried no tricks with him. Back they went, the shade of the great trees flickering across the greys' backs and changing them to silvers and whites and almost blacks as the light changed.

He turned the wagon into the dusty yard of the Two Ducks Inn, and pulling up the team, set the brake and jumped down from the seat. Ki followed him, hoping they would find Goat, hoping that they wouldn't find him with Willow, hoping desperately that nothing was going to happen, but feeling, just as instinctively as Vandien had all day, that something had already happened, that all that was left was to make a salvage attempt.

The quiet of the innyard had been deceptive. Ki and Vandien stepped into a dream standing motionless, like a play waiting for an audience. Guests of the inn stood in a white-faced circle about a grouping of three. Willow, sitting at a stained wooden table, her face cradled in her arms, her glossy hair a spreading copper against the table's dull surface, while Goat, his face a frozen mask of fear, plucked desperately at her sleeve, begging, 'Willow, make him stop! Tell him you wanted to!' The man with the drawn blade had to be Kellich. Ki would have known him anywhere. This was who Willow loved, and rightly so. This man in the loose shirt of scarlet silk and black trousers tucked neatly into shining black boots. This man, slender as his blade and as flexible, with a graven face an idol might have envied as the setting for eyes that were darker azure than an August sky. But Willow could not have loved the pain and anger in those eyes, the humiliation that whitened his tanned skin to sallowness.

'Come to your death, whelp!' Kellich invited Goat.

'No!' Goat wailed, and stepped once again into the shelter of Willow's body as Kellich moved around the table. 'Willow! Make him stop it! You wanted to be with me, you know you did! I felt it, you wanted me. Tell him! Tell him to let us go!'

Willow lifted her head suddenly. Nothing of youth was left in her face. Hopelessness and hatred had blended to leave her green and blue eyes scarcely human. She turned a killing look on Goat. 'I wanted what you stole from me!' Her voice was low, gravelly, but carried well. 'So I put in my mind what you wanted to see. Did you think I wouldn't know how to do that, you, who know so much about me? When you stole all my life from me, made my memories a mockery, didn't you stop to think that I might hate you for it, but know how to hide that hate?'

Goat's eyes bugged out, yellower with terror and outrage than Ki had ever seen them. 'Bitch!' His shriek broke on the word. 'Bitch, copper-haired bitch! You made me think you liked me, you made me think you cared for me!'

Willow shook her head slowly, her red mane sweeping her shoulders. Her face was harder and colder than ice. 'I hated you. Your touch on me was like rats scampering over my body. I loathed it. I loathed it!' Willow screamed the last words, and Goat cowered. She looked desperately into Kellich's face then, but his eyes did not change. He was not a man with deep wells of forgiveness within him. Her first errorwas to be her last.

Willow saw it as surely as Ki did. She rose with a ponderous heaviness, slapped away Goat's clutching hands. She moved away from him, into the circled watchers. 'Kill him,' she said to Kellich in passing. 'It will not save anything for us, but it may save the next person he meets. Have no pity for him.'

'I'll have no blood on my floor!' the innkeeper interjected suddenly. His ruddy face was already dripping sweat. 'I'll call the guard, I will! Duelling's forbidden, and I'll not have the Duke's guards saying I sanctioned it here! I'm warning you, Kellich! Much as I like you, I'll call the guards.'

Kellich's eyes had never left Goat. 'Call away,' he told the man. 'It won't be a duel here, Geoff. It's an execution; no, an extermination. Not for myself, not for my own pride or honor, though.' He turned suddenly on Goat. 'Give it back to her,' he said softly. 'And I might let you live.'

For a long instant Goat stared at him. Then his face crumpled, and tears brimmed his Jore eyes. 'No. I can feel the lie! You're going to kill me, no matter what I do.' His lower lip suddenly jutted, trembled. 'None of you ... ever ... liked me at all!' The last was the wail of a betrayed child. Then he threw his head up, suddenly defiant. 'When the guards get here, I'm telling. I'm telling them everything, Kellich. Your head will be carried on a pole at the front of the Duke's procession, this festival.'

The boy had judged wrong. His threat did not cow Kellich, nor the crowd. Ki felt the whole room grow colder, felt all the people at the inn suddenly accept the necessity of Kellich's killing Goat. No mercy for him. And if Kellich did not kill him, the mob would. Goat had touched a nerve.

'Oh, damn!' Vandien breathed beside Ki. 'Damn, damn, damn, why can't I just let it happen!' Then, before she could react to his words, he was stepping forward, his hand light on the hilt of his rapier, calling out, 'Hold, Kellich! Hold!'

Ki stood transfixed as the man swung his attention to Vandien. 'You're free with my name, for a stranger,' he observed. His blue eyes darted to Vandien's hand on the rapier hilt, swiftly measured the man against himself.

'I feel I know you, from all that Willow has said about you,' Vandien began, but Kellich interrupted with a strained laugh.

'My sweet Willow seems to have found much time to speak of me, to other men!'

'You do her an injustice.' Vandien was trying to keep his voice level. 'The girl loves you. No one else. What happened between her and Goat is a thing I cannot explain. But perhaps she could, if you would give her a chance. And hearing her out would reflect better on your honor than killing an unarmed boy. No matter how revulsive we might find him, Kellich, he is a boy. No good can come of your killing him. Let me take him out of here, away from this town and out of your lives forever. Don't let him spoil what you have with Willow.'

Uncertainty danced in Kellich's blue eyes. His gaze went past Vandien, found Willow. Ki saw a spark of life and hope come to Willow's face. 'It's true, Kellich!' she cried out desperately. 'All of it's true. I love only you, and if you would listen, I could make you understand what happened.' Her voice grew suddenly stronger. 'In only one thing is he wrong. You have to kill Goat. Not for me or what he has done to us. But for ... for a greater good, one we both hold dear.' Her voice faltered, as if fearing she spoke too much. Kellich's face changed. Ki could not tell if he would heed her earlier plea, to listen to her. But she knew he would fulfill Willow's other request. He would kill Goat. Unless Vandien stopped him.

All knew it. Goat pressed himself against the wall behind the table, whimpering. The circle of folk shifted, tightened. 'I'm sending for the guard right now, Kellich!' the landlord threatened, but Kellich did not hear. Like a witch's water stick seeking moisture, his blade lifted, wavered, pointed accusingly at Goat. 'Will you be killed like a rat in a corner?' he asked Goat. 'Come out at least, to meet your death.'

'Kill him, Vandien! Kill him!' Goat shrieked, already skewered with terror.

Metal whispered against leather as Vandien's rapier came clear of its worn sheath. Ki saw him change, this drawing of weapon doing something to his body. Quicker and more lithe he became, inspired by snakes and cats and all things that live by quick wits and sinuosity. Her blood quickened. This was a different Vandien, one she had seen but once or twice before. This was not the man who drew his blade and led her through the exercises of fencing, who had endlessly and patiently corrected her until she had become a foil fit for him to practice his skills against. No. This was someone different. 'By all that is green and growing,' Ki prayed, but her voice would not come past her lips. She could only watch, stay out of his way, and protect his back. Her mouth was dry.

Vandien's rapier leapt out, not to pierce, but to tap Kellich twice on the shoulder in quick succession. 'Turn, man,' Vandien told him softly. 'Face me.'

And Kellich turned, his blade leaping up to meet Vandien's in a screaming steel kiss that held them both.

'Let's not do this,' Vandien proposed in a soft voice. 'We've no quarrel, you and I. Let me take the boy and go. I promise I shall take him far from here. I've no more love for him than you have, but his blood would shame your blade.'

There was no compromise in Kellich's face. 'Just go away,' Kellich suggested. 'Let me get this done quickly.'

Vandien shook his head slowly. Ki wondered if anyone else could see the strength the two men pitted against each other as their rapiers held that touch, could see the measuring of skill that was taking place. She could. And she could see suddenly that Kellich was good, and more than good. And he was young, with the fire that burns so hot in youths before experience comes to bank it.

She looked at Vandien suddenly with new eyes. When they had first met, the same fires that blazed in Kellich now had been hot in Vandien. He had changed, Ki realized abruptly. His body was not the svelte body of a youth, but had the heavier set of a man, the dart of impetuosity replaced with the deliberate movement of experience. She had seen him draw blade many times, most often for the joy of the contest, but sometimes in anger or danger. As the coldness swept from her belly, she knew this was the first time when she had seriously wondered if he would win.

'I can't just leave,' Vandien said. The tip of his rapier darted away from Kellich's, was pressing his blade from the other side almost before Kellich could respond. Almost.

'Vandien? That's the name?' he asked. The tendons in the back of his hand stood out.

Vandien nodded silently.

'It's good to know the name of a man, before your blade wears his blood.' It began in that instant, too swift for Ki's eyes to follow. The whicker and whisper of metal against metal, the swift taps and challenges, the deceptive feints that measured the opponent, the bold attacks and the lightning ripostes. Boots moved against the wooden floor and Vandien's shirt began to stick to his back. Ki tried, but could not see the struggle. Her eyes hung on foolish things, on a loose thread dangling from Kellich's sleeve, on the dark ring Vandien wore on the hand he held high behind him. Kellich's blade darted in, was trapped and spun aside by Vandien's blade, and for an instant the men sprang apart. She heard Vandien suck in breath, thought of his ribs and felt ice track down her spine.

'You're good,' Vandien breathed.

'And you,' Kellich conceded grudgingly.

'This doesn't have to be,' Vandien reminded him.

Kellich shook his sweat-damped hair, and his rapier rose once more.

'So be it, then,' Vandien said, and his voice chilled Ki. Not because it was cold, or tired, but because it was hot with excitement, full of the lust of the fight. She saw the man move in, knew that what had gone before had been but preliminaries. He had taken Kellich's measure, and found it good. Admiration for the boy shone in Vandien's eyes, and the impetuosity she thought he had outgrown flamed suddenly in him. He took the challenge home to Kellich, and she saw the youth's eyes widen in shock as he was suddenly put on the defensive. But then his blue eyes sparked suddenly, as if they met the joy in fencing that drove Vandien now, and were ignited by it. They moved like dancers, like a paired team of pacing horses, matching and swaying to one another's movements.

There comes a place, Ki thought, or perhaps it is only a moment. A time when youth and experience may meet and cancel one another. When Kellich would thrust, or weave lithely aside, or dart in impetuously, her heart would clench in terror for Vandien. But the boy's moves were met by the man's sure hand, with concise movements of a blade that wasted no energy, shifted not one whit more than was necessary to deflect Kellich's attacks. Vandien was a center that the youth orbited, the pillar of the maypole dance the boy's rapier wove around him.

The room was almost silent, all caught up in the contest. Occasionally a man grunted with effort, or made the twitching of muscles that betrayed how closely he followed the contest. Willow was a frozen statue, her eyes so wide they seemed unseeing. Goat had not moved from where he was stuck to the wall; only his lower lip trembled as he watched the fight that would decide his fate. Ki felt the sweat that ran down her back, and she prayed it would end, but did not want it to end, for fear it would end in the death of one of them. There was a gasp as, without warning, Vandien's rapier licked in to dab scarlet on the point of Kellich's shoulder. 'First blood!' someone called out, but at the instant it was uttered, the tip of Kellich's blade shot past the guard of Vandien's rapier to open a shallow gash in the back of his forearm. Both fenced on, as if there were no such thing as pain. Ki watched the blood run and then drip from Vandien's arm, outlining in scarlet the muscles that stood out in his forearm. She felt dizzy, as if it were her own blood leaking out.

A murmur from the crowd drew Ki's eyes up to Vandien's face. He was smiling - no, grinning, as demented as a demon. Even more incredible, the smile was matched by the one on Kellich's face. She could have sworn that both men had forgotten their quarrel entirely, were fencing for the pure joy of matching their skills against an equal. Both their chests were pumping like bellows, and a streak of darker scarlet marred the crimson of Kellich's sleeve. She saw Vandien put into play moves she had seen him practice against his shadow in the bright darkness of the full moon. He was pushing himself now, bringingout every trick he had ever learned or tried, dancing and darting in ways as unpredictable as a cat's play with a mouse; and Kellich was standing up to him, putting aside his attacks, but only just, and then riposting and being turned himself. They were both winded now, gasping with sounds almost like laughter, blue eyes and black shining in mutual concession of skill. Relief washed through Ki's heart. She knew suddenly, as clearly as she had known anything, that no one would die here, or even be badly injured. In another moment they would put up their blades and bow to one another, would share a drink or five, and that Vandien would find a way to make peace between Kellich and Willow.

Vandien was pushing him again, in a final series of thrusts that Kellich turned at the last possible moment. The laughter was plain in their gasping now, and all the circle was grinning. Save one. Ki saw his face suddenly behind Kellich, contorted with anger and hate and fear. She cried out aloud, but it was too late, for Goat had already stepped in, had already given Kellich the one push from behind that was all it took. His rapier went wide; the staggering step he took to try to regain his balance carried him wildly forward. Amazement widened his eyes and his mouth opened silently.

It was Vandien who cried aloud as his thrust, unchecked, sank his rapier deep into Kellich's chest.