Mistress of the Catacombs (20 page)

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"By the Lady," Hakken moaned as he rode along behind Garric and Vascay. "If the Protectors caught us, they wouldn't hurt me worse 'n this saddle's doing. If I had to do it again, I'd say tie me to the cursed nag's tail and drag me along behind!"

"It's not much farther," Vascay said. "Pretty quick we'll all have a chance to get outside a quart or two of Lord Thalemos' wine, Hakken."

They'd skirted Durassa proper to reach their employer's estate northeast of the city. The past mile of road had been bordered to either side by vines growing in the shade of great elms whose leaves kept sunlight from blasting the tender grapes. So far as Garric could tell, the plantings were all part of a single estate. If Lord Thalemos owned it, he was a wealthy man indeed.

"They can curse the horses all they like," Vascay murmured to Garric, "but going on four feet has gained us back the time we lost by not being navigators. There's no way we'd have hiked this far before daylight."

Tint vaulted onto Garric's pillion again, making his mount whicker and bunch. Garric lifted the reins to keep the horse from bolting, though the beastgirl had startled him as well.

"Soon we sleep, Gar?" she said. "Sleep soon."

"Not long, Tint," Garric said. "Now stay quiet, do you hear? Just sit quiet."

He was bone tired and the scrunch of his sword into that first Protector's forearm still grated in his mind. His nerves were worn by the beastgirl's refusal to ride a horse alone and her frequent jumping up and down behind him. There were extra mounts, so Garric—heavier than most men—could shift at intervals between horses. Even so, Tint's additional eighty pounds were more than an animal should have to bear.

"Saved our lives, though, didn't she?" said Vascay, correctly reading the anger in Garric's stiff expression.

Garric smiled and relaxed. "So she did," he said. "She's like a child, but in some ways a very clever child."

He reached behind him left-handed and patted the beastgirl's shaggy buttock. She whimpered with pleasure.

Garric wasn't the horseman his ancestor Carus had been, but the experience he'd gained during the past few months with the king in his mind had enabled him to ride the ten miles from the ambush site without difficulty. Vascay was almost as good—the peg leg didn't handicap him in this any more than it did in any other fashion Garric had noticed—and others of the bandits were at least competent horsemen.

Half the band, though—well, Garric had seen grain sacks with as much business in the saddle. Still, as Vascay had said, they'd gotten where they were going. The stiffness—and bruises, for the men who'd repeatedly fallen—wouldn't be a problem after a day and a few good meals.

"The entrance drive's just beyond those willows," Vascay said. "There'll be a gatehouse and a watchman."

He clucked and prodded his horse's ribs with his iron-banded peg. It complained but quickened its pace slightly.

Garric grimaced and nudged his gelding with his heels. He wasn't sure it'd obey—and loaded as it was, he wouldn't blame the poor beast if it simply continued to plod along. To his pleased surprise the horse broke into a shambling trot, drawn by Vascay's mount and perhaps hope of getting Garric off his back. He and the chieftain rounded the curve together.

The gatehouse was there, but empty. A real gate would've been pointless since the estate was unwalled, but there was a turnpike to halt those entering by road. The shaft lay on the ground, broken off at the post instead of being swung out of the way; intruders had chosen to emphasize their power and their hostility.

Vascay and Garric drew up, side by side in the moonlit road. The chieftain had slipped his javelins butt-first down the top of the high boot on his remaining leg. He pulled one out and balanced it in his palm.

"Tint!" said Garric in a hoarse whisper. "Are enemies waiting for us?"

"No men here, Gar," the beastgirl said. She slipped from the saddle. "House, Gar! We sleep in house?"

The rest of the gang was riding up behind them; though, judging from the cursing, Hakken had fallen off in the road again. Garric had touched the hilt of his sword; he deliberately released it.

"Not just yet, Tint," he said. "We've got things to learn before we sleep tonight."

"Hey, what's going on?" Ademos demanded. "Isn't this the place?"

"It's the place," said Vascay quietly, "but somebody's been here before us. The Protectors, I'd judge. They were waiting for us to land, and they'd already been here."

"Well, you knew the Intercessor was a wizard," Garric said. He supposed his voice sounded cold, but the facts were obvious enough when he came to think about them. The time and place of their landing had been predicted, as only a wizard could do. But—

"Since you say Metron is a wizard powerful enough to enter Laut from Tisamur," he continued aloud, "then he may have kept Lord Thalemos safe from the Intercessor's men. Come on, let's find out."

He clucked to his horse. It whickered but refused to move. Angry and half-expecting to be shot down by a volley of arrows, Garric kicked his mount hard—harder than he meant to do. It stumbled badly but settled into a walk that took it over the fallen pike.

"Come on," Vascay said gruffly. His horse clopped into motion to follow Garric.

"Hey, but what if they're waiting for us?" Ademos objected.

"If you don't shut your mouth, you'll find the Sister waiting for you and soon!" Vascay snarled. "The monkey thinks it's all right, doesn't she? And by the Sister's eyes, I'll take her word for it after the business back where we landed!"

He cleared his throat. "Sorry, Gar," he said. "Your friend Tint thinks it's clear. And she's all our friend, all of us who're still alive."

Three of the band had died in the ambush, and Alcomm's left arm now ended at the elbow; he rode with his belt tied to the horn of his saddle. They'd have all been killed or captured without Tint's warning, though.

The entrance drive had been gravelled, but grass grew thickly through it except where the feet and wheels of traffic kept the stone clear. The villa ahead had been built for show: its curving, colonnaded wings stretched to either side of a central section whose pillars rose the full three stories to an ornate pediment.

Later owners had converted the structure to more practical purposes. The openings between columns on the wings were bricked up, increasing the internal area considerably. The ornamental plantings on the north side had been removed to make space for ranks of great storage jars under a shed roof, and wagons were parked on the drive and in front of the building.

There were no lights in the villa or its outbuildings, but Garric saw shutters tremble as he and Vascay approached. He reined up fifty feet from the entrance; Vascay halted beside him.

Tint, who'd been ambling along on all fours, stood upright. "Men here, Gar," she said. "Men scared."

Then, hopefully, "We kill men, Gar? Be easy—they scared."

"We're not the Protectors come back!" Garric called. "We're friends of Lord Thalemos. We need to talk to whoever's in charge now, but there won't be any trouble."

He dismounted and walked toward the villa on foot; the gelding whickered thankfully. Garric didn't need the height of a saddle to cow servants who were already terrified; indeed, that'd probably be counterproductive.

His thighs were on the verge of cramping anyway. Gar was exceptionally strong but he'd never ridden a horse until Garric took over his body. The strain of staying in the saddle was different from anything Gar's great muscles had been called on to do in the past.

Tint loped along beside him with the excitement of a just-unleashed dog. The beastgirl was too pleased to have Garric back on the ground to remember that she'd wanted to sleep.

Garric glanced behind. Vascay had dismounted but remained with the horses. The rest of the band—except for Hakken and an even more distant straggler, still coming down the drive—were climbing out of their saddles with varying degrees of skill and relief.

The horses were blown also. Bad riders were hard on their mounts, as surely as the reverse was true.

Garric stopped under the villa's looming facade, uneasily aware that a nervous potboy on the roof could throw a tile—or a chamberpot—down to brain him. "Somebody come out!" he demanded. "We don't mean any harm, but we need to know what's happened here!"

"Come on out or we'll smoke you out like badgers!" Toster called in his deep bass. "It's been a long hard road getting here, and I'm not in the mood for nonsense!"

Light flared. Ademos had struck sparks into a fireset of straw matting snatched from a wagon. He stepped away from it. The yellow flames threw stark light over the bandits' faces, making them look even harder and more desperate than Garric knew them to be.

The front door opened. The man who came out was middle-aged and heavy—but his weight was more muscle than not, very different from what Garric expected. He had a short beard and a truculent expression, though he hadn't been foolish enough to meet the bandits armed.

"You're the major domo?" Garric asked.

"I'm Lord Thalemos' stablemaster," the man said. "My name's Orphin. You want the major domo, you'll likely find him hiding in a clothes press in one of the storage rooms."

He spat. "Not that I can see why you'd want the lazy coward," he added conversationally.

"Who we want is Lord Thalemos," Garric said, "or his advisor Metron. They sent us to find something for them. We've come back and need to talk to them."

Vascay came to join him. He nodded affably to Orphin but didn't intrude on the conversation. Tint scratched her spine with her toes, then yawned and curled up at Garric's feet. Her back was a warm pressure against his left ankle.

"You want Lord Thalemos, you're too late," Orphin said, frowning in mild surprise as he took in the beastgirl's presence. "A gang of Protectors came down on us at dusk and took him away with them. As for this foreign wizard—"

He spat again, this time slapping a moth off one of the trumpet vines wrapping the adjacent pillar.

"—I'd 've said he was the one who called the Intercessor's heroes down on the master, but he didn't go off with them. Metron hasn't been around since the Protectors come riding up the drive. One of the girls said she thought it was him she saw running toward the boathouse right before the trumpet blew from the gate, but I don't know. The Protectors searched there too, and they didn't find him."

The stablemaster's grim visage melted into a look of despair. "Shepherd help me, I don't know what's going to happen next. I guess they'll send in an overseer from the Intercessor's staff. Then what'll happen to us?"

"They didn't come out with officials?" Vascay asked. "It was just the Protectors?"

"That was enough, wasn't it?" Orphin said. "There must've been fifty of 'em. We couldn't do anything to stop them, not even if we'd been willing to hide in the woods the rest of our lives."

He spat again, hitting another moth. "Which I'm not, seeing's I've a wife and children, whatever you think about it."

"I think if I had a wife and children," Vascay said quietly, "I might have made the same choice. You'll put us up for now—"

"They'll be coming back!" Orphin said. "You can't stay here, they'll kill us all if—"

"You'll put us up for now," Vascay repeated, twitching the bundle of javelins to emphasize his words, "in the stables, and you'll find us food. After you've done that, we'll talk some more. But we're not going anywhere till we've had some food and sleep."

"And something to drink," Hakken called in a frustrated, cracking voice. "A whole lot to drink!"

"Yeah, all right," said Orphin. "Get out of sight in the stables. I'll send over a hamper and a jug."

He shook his head sadly. "Most likely I'll bring the food myself," he corrected himself. "Sister take 'em, they're all scared to so much as lift their heads."

A large death's-head moth flew toward Orphin's eyes, then away. The stablemaster scowled, then spit. His aim was as accurate as usual, but the moth hovered for a flickering instant instead of continuing its path uninterrupted. The

gobbet sailed between Garric and Vascay, then splattered the ground near Toster's foot.

"Sorry," the stablemaster muttered. "Yeah, I'll take you back to the stables. Otherwise Pusta and Jelf'll think you're coming for them, and the Lady knows what they'll do."

The death's-head moth flew toward Garric's eyes. He threw an arm up, startled. It circled his head.

"Come on, brethren," Vascay said over his shoulder. "We've got straw to sleep on and food coming."

Tint, aroused by Garric's sudden movement, came alert. Her head turned upward; her muscles bunched with the lethal certainty of a crossbow cocking.

"No Tint!" Garric said.

She leaped, her arms outstretched to snatch the big moth. Garric, faster than he'd known he could be, grabbed the beastgirl's throat and held her back.

"No, Tint," Garric repeated as he relaxed his grip on the girl. The moth lifted a few feet higher, describing figure-8s between Garric and Vascay.

"Is she all right?" Orphin said uneasily. "She hasn't got hydrophobia, has she?"

"Gar mad?" the beastgirl whimpered, rubbing against Garric's leg. "Gar not mad, please?"