The Stricken Field (12 page)

"If I had only myself to consider," she said reluctantly, "I'd probably come along just for the fun of it. I'm sure Raspnex has something up his sleeve, probably a sharp knife. But I must think of Gath. Perhaps he and I should stay behind and study decorum and social graces at the knees of the nobility of Throgg."

Shandie cleared his throat and avoided her eye. "Actually, we were thinking just of you, Inos. I realize that he is very young, and I promised Rap that I would be bound by your wishes where Gath was concerned-but that was when we thought he was safe in Krasnegar. Now he's caught in the mill like the rest of us, so I don't think my promise is valid anymore."

Inos took a very deep breath and the feathery snowflakes tickled her nose. "Oh? You were planning to leave me and take my son?"

"Well, yes. The warlock seems to think he might be useful, although I'm not sure exactly how."

God of Murder!

"Emshandar?" Inos said in an excessively gentle tone. Shandie looked around at her in surprise. His eyes widened at what he saw.

"Don't you remember," she continued softly, "when you were a skinny little boy, one night you went to the Rotunda? You saw Warlock Zinixo try to kill the man who is now my husband."

"Rap bursting into flames? I had nightmares for months."

"And then what happened? Do you remember, Emshandar?"

"I ... You ran to him and ... and hugged him."

"Yes, I did," Inos said, smiling. "Fire and all. My aunt always told me I was impulsive. And you think I will desert my son?" she roared.

The dwarf driver turned around to see what the noise was all about. The imperor flinched. "Be sensible, Inos!" "No, you be sensible! That is the most insulting suggestion I have ever heard! Gath is only a child. If Warlock Raspnex thinks he can use him, then he comes and asks me, is that clear? And I decide! And you can take your thriving metropolis of Throgg and shove it up your Imperial toga! Is that absolutely clear, your Majesty?"

"There is no need to be offensive."

"You started it! There is no need for you to patronize me!"

A small smile twisted Shandie's stubble. "Why not? You were trying to mother me!"

"I ... Well, that's different!" She returned his grin. "No woman ever believes any man understands marriage. I suppose no man ever believes any woman understands warfare. Truce?"

"Truce!"

"How about a treaty of cooperation?" "What does that mean?" he asked warily.

"Why didn't you tell me you could communicate with my husband?"

Shandie looked out over the moor for a moment, hiding his expression. When he turned back to her, his face was unreadable again. "Lord Umpily has been captured. Right at the beginning, Raspnex warned us that the scrolls might not be secure once the Covin learned about them. Our messages may be intercepted, or even traced back to their source."

"And you thought I was a flighty, feather-headed woman? You thought that once I knew about them, I would jeopardize security by pestering Rap with innumerable love letters?"

"Not that bad. Something on those lines, I suppose" "Well, I didn't," she said miserably. "I can't torture him by telling him what I've done. I sent him three words on the warlock's scroll: "I love you!' That's all. He'll know my handwriting. He'll know I've been warned." He'll think everything is all right. He'll be deceived. Lying by omission is still lying."

"I'm sorry, Inos." Shandie sounded as if he meant it. "Apology accepted." She sighed. "Now, how can my son possibly help the warlock when we get to Dwanish?"

"I don't know. I don't think Raspnex does, either, but he's got some sort of vague idea, or hunch, maybe." "Gath has prescience, but it's very weak. The warlock himself must be much more powerful."

"Yes." Still, Shandie was giving nothing away.

Inos studied him for a moment. "The only way I can think of that Gath might be useful is as bait."

The imperor sighed. "That had occurred to me, too."

"Lifted to saddle!" Kadie said. "Jumped up in back! Put arms around. Dug spurs in horse. Galloped toward sunset. Kissed warmly."

"Kissed horse?" Blood Beak demanded with open disbelief.

"Oh, of course not! He kissed Princess Taol'dor!"

"Why?"

"Because it's romantic for princes--" "Must not speak impish!"

Kadie snorted. "Wanted to kiss her," she said sulkily.

"Kiss in bed, when lodge fire banked. Is obscene other times."

Really! Feeling her cheeks burning, she nudged her pony to a canter. Goblins had absolutely no idea of romance! Blood Beak did not seem to know the difference between a kiss and, er, more intimate behavior.

Kadie was astride a pert little gray, now named Allena the Mare. Her companion was running alongside. He had been doing so all day, burdened with a bow and a quiver and a sword, and yet he matched her new pace with no apparent strain. Behind them, their twenty-four-man guard would keep up just as easily.

"Tell more!" Blood Beak demanded.

It was understandable that he would want her to do most of the talking; she could not imagine how he had breath to speak at all. She must have told him fifty stories in the last few days, all the great classics. Yet somehow romances lost something when translated into goblin, and she thought it would be far more appropriate for her to be teaching him impish than for her to be talking goblin all the time. His insistence upon that was ominous and best not thought about.

The sun was shining warmly and a blustery wind smelled of spring. It also made the farmhouses and haystacks burn well. The eastern sky was muddy with smoke, the landscape in all directions heavily populated with columns of goblins. To spare her mount she was allowed to use the lanes and roads, but the horde itself traveled in a straight line, across the country. The vanguard ran down all the fugitives, even those on horses. The rearguard set fire to anything that would burn. Every few hours the army would reach another town and sack it, raping and killing all who remained there-like trained acrobats, goblins built human pyramids against the walls and were usually over the top before the defenders had notched their first arrow.

Fortunately Kadie rarely had to watch any of these horrors at close quarters. She had not seen King Death Bird in several days, and no dwarves, either. The dwarvish army had gone its own way. She was a solitary captive princess in a mass of thousands of brutal savages, the only prisoner who survived the nightly atrocities. She was a tourist, an enforced companion for the king's son.

"All right," she agreed. "One more story. But I'm going to tell this one in impish. It will sound better. Or will that be too hard for you to understand?"

Blood Beak shot an angry glare up at her. He was barechested as usual, his khaki skin shining with sweat, his greasy queue bouncing on his back between bow and quiver. He was not as tall as she was, but very broadshouldered, and from above she could also see how astonishingly thick he was, too. She sometimes wondered how he would look in decent clothes. His legs would certainly be impressive in hose, but his face! ... even if he could be persuaded to shave ... Long nose, square eyes ...

"I understand very good. What's this one about?"

"It's about Princess Pearlflower of Kerith and how she was captured by jotunn raiders."

"And rescued, of course?" He showed his big teeth. "Of course."

"Before she was raped?" "Yes!"

"Sound not like jotnar." He could speak passable impish when he chose, although his accent was thick as mud. "You think someone coming you rescue, Kadolan?"

Of course she did-princesses were always rescuedbut he would jeer if she said so. She had a magic sword, which everyone else seemed to have forgotten about, and both Mom and the imperor had promised they would get the warlock to help as soon as he could. Where were they all now? Still, distance didn't matter to sorcerers. And her own father was a sorcerer just wait until Dad heard that she'd been kidnapped! Of course someone would rescue her!

If they didn't, she would escape on her own, somehow. Not getting an answer, the goblin said, "No rescue!" "So? What happens when we get to Hub?"

Blood Beak laughed. Goblins didn't laugh very often, but when they did they sounded quite, er, normal?-impish. "Burn it!"

Not very likely! Hub had never, ever, fallen to an enemy.

Hub had never been sacked like all other cities had. "And then?"

He seemed surprised by the question. "Then go home, maybe."

They were heading up quite a steep hill now, through trees that she suspected might be an orchard and was certain would soon be firewood. Blood Beak was managing the incline better than weary Allena was.

"Is that all? You have no plan, do you? No purpose in all this killing and destroying!"

"Yes, do! Are doing because is fun! Imps now better know than attack the goblins more times. Maybe do this every year!"

She pulled a face. "Now you're talking stupid! Bigmouth goblin! When the Impire gets you bottled up again, it'll brick up every pass in the Pondague Mountains."

"Then climb over walls! Or not go home. Goblins stay in the Impire and let imps have the forest."

"You admit this is a better place to live?"

He looked up angrily and she thought his cheeks had flushed greener at being trapped. "Is for sissies! Real men grow in forest."

"So you are going back! And you'll see me safely home to Krasnegar?"

"No." He flashed her a sweat-soaked grin. "Will be first wife mine. Promise from Father."

That was what she'd been afraid of, but no one had ever said so and she hadn't asked. That was why he insisted she speak goblin. It was also why she was not being molested, of course. She suspected that otherwise these barbarians would treat even a princess badly.

"And suppose I don't want to be your wife-first or last?"

"Get beaten," he said happily. "Be beaten anyway." "Suppose you're killed in the fighting?" She had noticed that he was kept well away from danger, but she wasn't about to say so.

"Marry brother, Big Claws or Black Feather."

Marry the next goblin king and be goblin queen, one day? Raise lots of ugly little goblin princes and princesses? Kadie tried to imagine herself turning up at Krasnegar to visit the family, with her green husband and her green babies. Gath would laugh his stupid head off! Again she wondered how Blood Beak would look in proper clothes. Short and thick, all right from the neck down, but imagine him at a ball or a banquet? In candlelight goblins weren't just greenish but really green!

One of the books she had treasured in her childhood had contained a lithograph showing a frog prince-green face, and very wide mouth, and bulgy eyes. She had never seen a real frog in her life, but Kadie decided she was most definitely going to be rescued! A handsome prince would be best, but Papa would suffice.

As Rap reached out with his right hand, something jerked him off balance. His left foot began to slide. He grabbed blindly, found a flimsy bunch of fronds, and clung tight; heaved his foot back into position on the slippery root and paused, gasping with effort and fright. He was spreadeagled on a slope steep enough to be called a cliff, half buried in a prickly shrub, every part of him soaked. Rain poured at his head and back. Water cascaded down on his face, on his shoulders, and eventually ran out the toes of his boots. Very far below him a lot more of it roared white over rocks.

This was a troll shortcut.

He had been working his way along this almost-sheer face for the last hour. It was upholstered with a dense mat of shrubs and mosses, which was not always perfectly anchored to the rock. Every once in a while patches would peel away in his grasp. Meanwhile, the strap of his satchel had caught on a twig. That was what had jerked him when he moved. In order to free it, he would have to persuade his left hand to release the death grip it held on a vine. The satchel was an accursed, awkward, heavy thing, but it contained his gold, his knife, and the magic scrolls. Just about everything else had gone, even his sword, but he must not lose the satchel.

First step, then-test right hand grip. He tugged gently at the fronds. A whole thicket of fern came away in a shower of mud and pebbles ...

For three days after escaping from Casfrel, Rap had been very glad that he was half jotunn. The fugitives had scrambled up a water-filled gorge, then an ice-filled ravine, several chimneys, and a scree slope, finally crossing the divide by way of a glacier. He had understood then why the Imperial Army had been so unsuccessful at catching escaping trolls, even if he had almost frozen to death during the lesson. At night he had slept within a mass of three trolls and one jotunn, heaped together for warmth. They had descended the pass into thick snow, slithering down in avalanches. He had been completely buried twice, being dug out by Thrugg.

Now they were down into the forest, so he supposed he should be grateful for the other half of his mixed inheritance. Jotunn Darad was going insane in the steamy, rainfilled, bug-infested gloom, but a part faun should be able to cope. The trolls were in their element. Visibility had been virtually zero for the last two days, and clothes were rotting away in the never-ending downpour. His left boot had almost fallen apart, and his right was little better.

He was not at all sure how much longer he could cling to this cliff. Of course he was only imagining it, but the roar of the torrent seemed to be developing a hungry tone. It was a long way down. If he fell, he would have several leisurely seconds to review his life before it came to a sudden end.

Trouble was, he would use sorcery. He wasn't brave enough to die without a struggle, but to save himself that way would surely condemn both him and his friends to a slower and much less pleasant death. The Covin was alert now, and he could not count on it blundering a second time as badly as it had blundered at Casfrel.

Powerful though the Covin was, it had failed to subdue the sorceress in its first surprise attack; Ainopple had put up a ferocious resistance and died unvanquished. Even Thrugg had been unable to make out the details, but most likely she had succumbed to simple old age. She had needed power just to keep herself alive, and in the distraction of the battle her resources had run out. The Covin might have suffered some wounds of its own; at first it had made no search for other sorcerers in the district, or had done so perfunctorily. The hunt had begun in earnest only after a lapse of several days, perhaps when someone used hindsight, or just recognized the significance of trolls escaping. Had Rap and his companions still been in the narrow passes, they could have been located easily, but by then they were already on the western slopes, needles in the world's greatest haystack.