Warlock`s Last Ride

Nine

ROD DREW HIS SWORD. "WHAT KIND OF BLOOD?"

"It is difficult to say when the molecules are so thinly spread," Fess answered, "but I am fairly certain that it is not human."

"Won't hurt to make sure. Follow your nose."

"I can scarcely do anything else, Rod, since it is so much farther in front than the rest of me."

"A point," Rod agreed. "Follow your scents."

"Technically, Rod, a robot has no sense."

"Nor do I, half the time," Rod sighed. "At the moment, though, I'll rely on your tracking ability."

They turned off the beaten track and broke through a screen of brash into a small clearing, where a boar lay on its side, blood spreading from a rip in its abdomen.

"It would seem we have found the loser in a fight over a female," Fess said.

But Rod dismounted and knelt beside the boar, inspecting the wound. Then he rose, shaking his head as he remounted.

"It was no tusk that made that wound, Fess. It was a blade with a serrated edge."

"Only a boar hunter, then?"

"If so, he was a very clumsy one—hunters meet a boar's charge head-on, or step aside and stab for the ribs and the heart. This poor beast must have staggered for hundreds of yards before it finally collapsed."

"Perhaps, then, the hunter is tracking it."

"Could be—the kill is fresh enough, only beginning to draw flies." Rod started to sheathe his sword, then thought better of it. "If that hunter is coming this way, I'd better be ready to meet him."

"People who hunt boar, Rod, generally do not hunt people."

"With some notable exceptions. England's William the Second was killed when he was out hunting, after all."

"With an arrow, not a boar-spear—and as I recall the incident, he was hunting deer at the time."

"Yeah, but his nobles were hunting him."

"It could have been a Saxon peasant who loosed that arrow, Rod."

"Or a nobleman who wanted it to look like a peasant's work."

"The peasants did have much to resent, so soon after the conquest," Fess mused.

"Yeah, but so did the noblemen, even if they were part of the invading force. William Rufus wasn't the wisest or most moderate of rulers."

So, happily bickering, they went back to the trail and on down it. After a while, Rod decided they must have passed the hunter, if he'd been tracking his prey—and the thought that he hadn't bothered gave Rod a chill; he didn't like men who killed solely for sport.

To banish the gloom, he took out his harp and plucked out a melody in a minor key as he rode, remembering other such journeys in his bachelor days, when he had been looking for something worth doing, looking for a woman he could fall in love with who would fall in love with him—and knowing he never would, that he was far too unattractive.

Incredibly, he actually had found such a woman. Even more incredibly, she had actually fallen in love with him. He marvelled how little had changed, for here he was riding down a woodland path alone, searching for her again.

A cawing broke into his reverie. He frowned, looking up into a tree at its source—and was astonished when the cawing shaped itself into words.

Three ravens sat high in a tree, where the branches thinned enough to let them survey the forest around them. "RAWK!" croaked the first. "I see a tasty morsel!"

"And I," cawed the second. "But we must wait for him to die."

"How, though, shall we decoy his hound?" a third asked. "Even his horse stands guard over him!"

Rod frowned. Someone lay dying? Not if he had anything to say about it. "Off to the right, Fess—that's the direction they're looking."

"As you say, Rod." The robot horse stepped off the path and picked his way between saplings and rotting stumps into a small clearing.

"CRAWK!" The third raven cried in alarm. "There comes a human doe!"

"As heavy with child as she may go," the second said in disappointment.

"Patience, brothers," said the first. "Perhaps the hound will drive her away."

But Rod came into the clearing in time to see the hound run to the woman, saw her stroke its head with words of praise even as she made her way toward the young man who lay, blood oozing from the shoulder joint of his armor, eyes closed and face pallid.

The young woman sank heavily to her knees with a cry of distress. She was indeed in the final weeks of pregnancy. "Oh, my Reginald!" she cried. "Live, my love, live! Do not leave me now!"

The young man's eyelids fluttered; he looked up at her a moment before his eyes closed as though the weight of the lids were too heavy a load for him to bear. The young woman gave a long, keening cry.

"Mayhap she will die with him," the first raven called hopefully.

Rod rode toward them, and the second raven saw and gave a loud, long caw of anger. "Brothers! A vital one comes within!"

"CLOSE THE DOOR," Durer said.

Aethel stepped through and shut the portal. The three other agents exchanged a glance, wondering why the rest of the cadre was shut out.

'Too many people make a discussion too cumbersome," Durer told them. "Everyone wants to say something, and nobody wants to listen. The five of us should be able to come up with a useful idea."

"An idea for what, Chief?" Aethel sat down with the others.

"A rebellion, of course! A coup to thrust that little snip off the throne and put our man on!"

Again the others exchanged a glance; the "little snip" was in her fifties.

"Not a chance of succeeding without one of the twelve great lords to lead it," Stan said, "and they're all too willful to let us guide them."

"Except the king's brother," Durer countered.

The others sat very still. Anselm Loguire had been the figurehead for Durer's last rebellion against Queen Catharine. The agents didn't even have to look at one another; they knew they were all thinking the same thing: How long will it take him to stop living in the past?

"Anselm Loguire isn't a lord any more," Orin said. "He's attainted—stripped of his title and estates."

"I know, and that witch Catharine gave them to her younger son," Durer snapped, "but the other lords all know that Anselm is really the rightful Duke Loguire and heir to all its estates."

"Maybe," said Aethel, "but they all know what happened to him, and that it was only because King Tuan counselled mercy that Anselm is still alive."

"Alive—and bitter," Durer pointed out. "He's probably long over his gratitude at being left alive and in charge of a small estate. He'll be angry with his brother and the queen—angry and wanting revenge."

"And wealth." Stan knew it didn't pay to argue with the boss for long.

"For his son," Aethel added.

Durer nodded, pleased to see them falling into line. "But we need something to push him, something to turn bitterness into action, something so strong that he won't care whether he lives or dies as long as he has a chance of bringing down the monarchy."

Everyone was quiet, each glancing at the others. Then Aethel hazarded, "A threat to his son?"

"LET US HOPE it is the knight's enemy," the first raven said.

"Aye, and that he will slay the fellow, then drive off his hound and take his horse," said the second.

"No such luck," Rod called back to them and hoped the young woman couldn't understand their words. He dismounted even as Fess stopped beside the fallen knight.

The young woman looked up in terror, then leaned across her husband to protect him, crying, "If you have come back to finish what you have begun, know you shall have to slay me, too!"

The hound crouched, baring its teeth and growling, and the horse stamped its hooves and neighed a warning.

"I did not begin this," Rod assured the young woman, "and I have some knowledge of healing. May I come near?"

Wild hope filled her eyes, and she struggled to straighten up. "If you can staunch the flow of his blood, aye!" She stroked the back of the hound's head, crooning, "Aye, you are a brave guardian, but, I hope, not needed now. Let the good man approach, Voyaunt, let him come nigh."

The hound sank to the ground; its growl receded deep into its throat, but it watched Rod with suspicious eyes.

Rod took his first-aid kit from his saddlebag and went to kneel on the other side of the knight. He unbuckled the shoulder-piece, asking, "What is his name, young woman, and your own?"

"He … he is Reginald de Versey, goodman, and I am his wife, Elise."

"I am Sir Rodney." Rod flashed her a smile. "No, I don't look like a knight, not in these travelling clothes, but I am one nonetheless." He pulled out his dagger.

The hound's growl rose as it did, rising ready to pounce.

"Easy, fellow," Rod crooned. "I draw the blade to save your master, not to slay him. Dame Elise, reassure him, if you will—I must cut away the cloth beneath to find the wound."

"Gently, Voyaunt, gently." Elise stroked the hound's neck but didn't sound too sure herself.

Fess stirred, and his words filled Rod's head through the implanted earphone. If the hound springs, Rod, I shall block his way before he can reach you.

"Nice to be able to concentrate on my work without worry," Rod muttered. "With luck, the wound won't have begun to, with thanks, Fess-ter."

"Pray not!" Elise said with a shudder.

Only my duty, Rod, the horse assured him.

Rod laid aside the padding and the blood-soaked linen shirt beneath. The rip was long and ugly. Rod frowned. "It was no sword that made this wound, Dame Elise, unless it had a serrated edge. Who did this knight come to confront?"

"He … he said he merely wished to patrol the park, Sir Rodney, for he thought there might have been poachers about."

"And he went against them without his game wardens?" Rod shook his head as he pulled out a cloth and a small bottle that looked as though it contained brandy but really held iodine. He poured some on the cloth and pressed it into the wound as he said, "A knight wouldn't wear armor to brace a few poachers."

"So I thought, but he said he must not become too accustomed to riding without the weight of steel plate." Elise's voice quavered. The hound growled at her anxiety, but she stroked it to calmness.

"If he meant to exercise, he would have gone to the tilt-yard." Rod placed over the wound a cloth that had been impregnated with antiseptic and clotting agent, then began to wind a bandage around it. "We'll take him home, and when I'm sure the flow has slackened, I'll stitch him up."

"Stitch?" Elise asked, wide-eyed.

Rod nodded. "Just as you would a torn garment." He realized that the young woman had been watching him carefully not just out of fear that he might harm her husband, but also to study how he cured the wound. He began to unbuckle the rest of the armor. "However, it won't help him to be carried back with this weight on him."

"Ahhh! He shells the sweetmeat for us!" cawed a voice high in a tree.

Rod cawed back, projecting thoughts with the sound. "Yes, but then I'm stealing him from you, greedy ones. Go seek a dead polecat for dinner!"

"Faugh! How unmannerly of you, to insult us so!"

"Oh, all right," Rod said, relenting. "I passed a dead boar half a mile back. Go stuff yourselves with pork." Even as he said it, he wondered if the same blade that had killed the boar had also wounded this knight.

"Ah! Many thanks for this kind information, human!" The ravens raised their wings.

"Wait!" Rod called. "A favor for a favor, information for information! Do you know the road to Tir Nan Og?"

"Tir Nan Og?" The third raven turned a blank stare to his mates.

"I have heard of it," the second said. " 'Tis the Land of Youth, the place the Wingless Ones think they go when they die."

"Fools! They come only to us." The first clacked his beak in contempt.

"Aren't ravens supposed to know everything that moves in Middle Earth?" Rod called.

"Belike, for there are ravens in every county," the third replied, "but how are we to know what a raven a thousand miles distant has seen?"

"He speaks of fable," the first said, and turned to Rod. " 'Tis not ravens you seek, bare-skin, but crows."

"Aye, two crows!" the second agreed. "Their names are Hugi and Munin, and they sit on the shoulders of the All-Father Odin."

"No, those aren't quite the feathered wizards I had in mind," Rod said with a smile. "Well, let me know if you do learn of that road from one of your friends."

"We shall, but we see them rarely," the first raven told him. "Where shall we find you, soft one?"

"Prithee let him be," said the second, "for with nonsense like his, he shall come to us soon enough."

"Or we to him," the third agreed. "Go your way, human, and be assured we shall find you when the time has come."

Rod managed to keep the smile in place. "Better make sure no one beats you to that boar, hadn't you?"

"Indeed!" All three ravens leaped into the air, beating their wings to rise above the treetops, then coasting down the wind toward the dead boar.

Shaking his head in disbelief, Rod turned back to the knight and his wife to find her staring at him in amazement. "I could almost have thought, sir, that you spoke to those birds!"

"I'm good at bird-calls," Rod told her, "and it worked— I got them to go away."

The lady shuddered. "I am right glad you did, for they are truly birds of ill omen!"

"Just creatures trying to make a living, like the rest of us." Rod inspected the bandage around the knight's shoulder. "His wound has clotted enough to make it safe to move him. Let's finish taking his armor off."

"A wise thought." The lady turned to husking her husband so efficiently that Rod knew she had done it many times before. He only wondered if it was her husband's armor she had removed, or her own.

He managed to push the knight up onto Fess's back, then leaned him against the horse's neck and tied him into place. "Walk by him, lady, on one side, and I'll walk on the other." Rod gave her a glance of concern. "Though you shouldn't be walking far just now."

"I've a cart at the edge of the wood," she told him with a grateful smile. "Be sure I have no wish to lose Sir Reginald's son!"

Or daughter, Rod thought, but only nodded. "Not too long a walk, then—and the cart will be a better place for him than horseback. Let's go."

Fortunately, the route the lady showed him didn't go past the dead boar.

THE MOCKER STRODE through the house, snapping, "Meeting! Now! News!"

Each agent stopped what he or she was doing, stopped to stare at the retreating back of their new and former chief. They had each wondered what news the dusty messenger had brought; now they were about to find out. They rose from their desks and hurried to the keeping room.

They found the Mocker already seated at the head of the table, drumming his fingers in impatience. As the last agent came into the room, he snapped, "Right! News has come! Gallowglass has left his home!"

"Left!"

"Gone off?'

"Where?"

"Why?"

"As to 'gone off'—yes," the Mocker said. "As to 'where,' he seems to be wandering through a forest with no particular purpose in mind. As to why, I assume it's his way of dealing with grief."

The agents were silent a moment, staring at their chief. Then one said, "What happens now?"

"I don't know," the Mocker said with a certain degree of relish. "This isn't the way things happened in the timeline I just left."

"You mean he's changing the future?"

"Right. In history as I know it, that gawky eldest son of theirs left the planet again as soon as his mother was buried—some sort of argument with his siblings. The Gallowglass stayed with them—for comfort, we've thought; at least, that was the historians' verdict."

"Now it seems that the comfort was theirs, not his," a woman said.

"Perhaps, although I scarcely think that hulk of a boy could have given much reassurance in his place."

The room fell silent for a moment, agents glancing at one another, then glancing away.

"What?" The Mocker glared around at them. "What information are you withholding?"

"Not really information," another woman said. "Just a guess … from the reports our agents inside Castle Gallowglass have been sending, we'd wondered if… well…"

"Spit it out!"

"That woman that's with the eldest," a man said. "She seems to be horrendously insecure, but maybe that's a comfort to the Gallowglass heirs in itself. Certainly, by intention or accident, she seems to be able to prevent friction."

"An empath?" The Mocker frowned.

"Maybe a projective empath," the first woman said. "The accounts make it clear she visits with each of them, and they feel more confident afterward."

"That's simply the effect any weakling has on people who are unsure of their own importance!"

"The reports don't paint her as a weakling," the second woman snapped.

The Mocker glared at her until she lowered her gaze.

"She definitely is a telepath, at least," the man said.

The Mocker sat back, thumbs in his belt. "Then perhaps we need to remove her from the equation."

Nobody looked particularly happy at the idea. The Mocker frowned, wondering why, then shoved the idea aside. "We'll table that. We can always send an assassin later. For the moment, we'll have to split up the siblings, set them against one another."

Everyone nodded at that. After all, it was obvious; the second generation of Gallowglasses were virtually unbeatable, as long as they all worked together.

"The Mist Monsters …" another man said.

The Mocker frowned. "I read the reports. Difficult to believe, I admit, but on this benighted planet, anything could happen."

"It did," the agent assured him. "It seems they need to be invited in, and the advance guard of illusions they sent were doing a fine job of wangling that invitation until the Gallowglass brats interfered."

The Mocker nodded slowly. "Send an agent to persuade the peasants to work themselves up to inviting monsters in, eh?"

"It worked once," the man said, "though we weren't behind it."

"You should have been! All of that will take time, though. Meanwhile, I think I had better contact our enemies."

"The High Warlock?" a third woman gasped. "But he'll recognize you!"

"Not him—SPITE!"

They all sat back, appalled. "That is consorting with the enemy," a second man said.

"We can use them to help us get rid of the Gallowglasses, then chop them down." The Mocker's gesture made it seem a simple matter. "We'll have them spring their coup at the same time that we engineer our peasant uprising."

The agents looked at one another in surprise; then one nodded in reluctant approval. "It could work—but what do we do with SPITE afterwards?"

"There won't be any SPITE afterwards," the Mocker said, "at least, not on this planet. We'll have agents among the palace guards assigned to shoot down their agents right after they've done in the Gallowglasses."

"It would be nice to have revenge on them at last." The third young woman gazed off into space.

Even the Mocker decided he didn't want to know what scene she was imagining.

SIR REGINALD WAS only a knight, not a lord, so the dwelling Elise led Rod to was a manor house, not a castle, though it was clearly fortified, and they rode on a drawbridge over a moat to come to its front door. Servants and men-at-arms came pouring out as soon as the cart rolled into the yard.

"Take your master to his bed," Rod told them, "and bear him gently; I'd rather his wound didn't open again."

"We shall indeed." But the steward cast a doubtful look at Rod, unsure of his right to give orders.

The lady saw. "How are you called, Sir Knight?" she asked Rod.

"Rodney," he answered.

"Sir Rodney came upon us in the forest," the lady informed her steward—and the rest of the servants who were listening.

They paused in the act of pulling the knight onto an improvised stretcher, staring at Rod. Then the steward nodded in respect. "As you bid us, Sir Rodney. Quickly, lads! Bear him to his bed!"

The soldiers took the stretcher and paced quickly up the stairs and into the house.

"Had it not been for him, your master would have bled to death on the road," the lady informed the rest of the soldiers and servants, "if I could have pulled him into the cart myself."

"Lady, you should not have gone alone!" an older woman chided.

"You were right to tell me so, Nurse, for I… Ahhh!" The lady doubled over with pain.

"It is the child! All this parading and worry has brought it before its time!" The older woman bustled up to the cart, arms up to catch. "Some of you stout oafs help your lady down!"

Three footmen jumped forward and lifted as much as helped the lady down into the nurse's arms. Scolding the servants and soothing the lady, she helped her into the house, one painful step at a time. The next spasm took her on the threshold, but the lady throttled her reaction to a groan.

"Upstairs and into your bed," the nurse said severely. "The child must be born in its rightful place and time!"

They went on into the house, the footmen following anxiously in case they were needed to carry their mistress up the stairs.

The steward turned back to Rod. "Will you take some refreshment, Sir Rodney?"

"Not a bad idea." Rod dismounted. "After I'm done sewing up his wound, that is."

The steward goggled. "Sewing?"