Kingdom Of Argylle - A Sorcerer And A Gentleman Part 28

Prospero completed his spell just as the flap was moved by a guard outside. Dewar grabbed the canvas and stepped under it, face-to-face with the guard, blocking his view of the interior.

"Time's up," said the sorcerer to the soldier, who, startled, nodded and stepped back.

Prospero, unseen, brushed past Dewar, jostling the tent as he did.

"Thanks," said Dewar to the guard, dropping the flap, "and have a quiet night."

246.

*EfisofirtA "Good night, SIT" said the guard, stepping back to his position, and Hurricane stamped and snorted.

Since the horse was right in front of the guards, Dewar supposed it was impossible for Prospero to mount now, and so he took the animal's bridle in his right hand and walked away. The ring told him Prospero was on the horse's other side.

When they were away from the guards, Prospero moved around to Dewar's left.

A whisper in his ear: "Smartly done. Give me that ring; I'll see it returned."

Dewar reluctantly tugged the ring from his hand; it was plucked out of his fingers and vanished.

Prospero's voice murmured, "I shall not leave my sword here."

"Oh, s.h.i.+t."

"Mend thy tongue. Who comes?"

Dewar heard the footsteps as Prospero did, and turned to see Ottaviano in s.h.i.+rt, pants, and boots, jogging up to the tent, speaking to the guards, ducking inside.

"Otto. Mount and get out of here!"

"And thee! Hurricane - "

Ottaviano shot out of the tent and started toward them at a run.

"Mount! Go! I can manage him!"

Prospero mounted, then bent and grabbed Dewar's arm, hauling him halfway up. Dewar cursed and stepped on Prospero's invisible foot in the stirrup, swung his leg over the horse's back behind Prospero, and Hurricane sprang forward, "What about your sword?"

"I'll fetch it later!"

"Dewar! Get back here, you son of a b.i.t.c.h! Guards! Stop them!"

"Hark, the cur gives tongue," Prospero said to n.o.body in particular, and leaned low on Hurricane's neck. "Ah, my kingdom for a Gate, a Way, a Road!"

Ottaviano, surprisingly, was still in sight where he ran after them, and his shouts were rousing the camp. Three Sorcerer and a (jentteman 247.

sentries with halberds ran to intercept Hurricane; he gathered himself as he approached them (Dewar felt the Well flow into the horse) and leapt, a wondrous flight-like jump, over them, past them, landed running, a miracle, and one he repeated a few seconds later.

One of the halberds, swung high by an angry guard, clipped Dewar's head on the second leap, grazing invisible Prospero too. Prospero grunted; Dewar gasped and clutched Prospero to stay on the horse. Warm blood grew cold with the wind of their travelling on his face. People were shouting alarms; hastily-aimed arrows pa.s.sed them, though one stuck in Prospero's unseen thigh, a weird sight; they seemed to pa.s.s through Hurricane or perhaps they only missed. Dewar shook his head; blood flew and his vision darkened momentarily, then stayed dark. Or was it shadows? Hard to say. Dewar drew on the Well and felt clearer-headed. He could see Prospero now greyly in the moonlight. They were racing through the camp, pursued by shouts and somehow dodging all the attempted interceptions.

Hurricane leaped again-the dry moat, Dewar realized- and flew through the air. Was Prospero making for his own headquarters, for reunion with his captured forces? Or fleeing? If only they'd had longer to talk-Hurricane galloped now- Herne was beside them, on his huge dull-red horse, edging closer, closer- Prospero was shouting something, and Herne shouted back. He had a naked sword in his hand and he was pacing them as Hurricane took a low rise at an impossible speed. Prospero was pulling Hurricane away, gesturing, and a fire left his hand and sizzled in a line through the air to splash off Herne's whirled sword.

"Ariel!" Prospero bellowed.

"Master!" rang from the air around them.

"Keep our pursuers back!"

A true hurricane joined Hurricane, blowing in his wake, a screaming headwind that slowed Herne's horse no matter how he fought against it. Prospero bent Hurricane's head to the west again. Dewar could not quite focus on the Well 248.

'Widey now. Confused, he thought that might be due to Ariel's turbulence. He let the Well go from him and slumped forward against Prospero's back. Hurricane's muscles gathered and stretched beneath him, and the cold air flowed past his face. He was flying, he thought, and flew on alone into blankness.

22.OTTAVIANO WOKE WHEN THE TINGLE RAN OVCr his body.

Something is wrong, it told him, and he lay, keeping his breathing soft and even, listening acutely and reaching with another sense for an explanation.

Nothing had broken the covertly-laid Bounds of his tent. Something else.

Otto tensed and sensed, eyes still closed.

The Bounds he had forged around Prospero were gone!

He shot out of bed, grabbing at his breeches and struggling into them, getting his boots wrong-footed and then getting them right. He stuffed his s.h.i.+rt into his breeches as he ran out into the freezing night, racing past sentries through the moonlit camp toward the guarded tent where Prospero had been confined.

"Has anyone been here?" he demanded of the one who moved to intercept him.

'The sorcerer, sir, with Prince Gaston-"

Otto half-screamed an obscenity and tore the tent flap aside, seeing what he knew he'd see.

The guard gasped.

Otto held up his hand and said "Stay out!" as he ducked inside. Once in, he closed his eyes and swept a hand, extended by a strand of Well-force, through the interior: Prospero was gone indeed, not just invisible.

But not long gone. The disturbance of the spell's breaking still quivered in the world; they could not be far off. Otto ducked back out. Prince Gaston would have a lot to answer -J3 Sorcerer and a Qentfeman 249.

for at Court, he thought, and the Emperor might just lose his temper- "Prospero's gone! Which way did they go?" he demanded of the guard, but then he saw the movement of someone mounting a horse a few hundred paces away in the shadows, and he sprinted toward them, away from the shocked guards.

"Dewar!" he shouted.

Dewar leaned forward and the horse leapt and started away, accelerating quickly to a gallop.

"Get back here, you son of a b.i.t.c.h! Guards! Stop them!" bellowed Otto, seeing the horse race past three who simply stared at it. In the cloud-patched moonlight, he saw that there was only one man visible on the horse's back, Dewar from his cloak, but that he was seated far back and thus Otto was sure Prospero sat before him, invisible.

He kept them in sight as they raced through the camp. Dewar looked back once to see him. The sentries at the perimeter, alerted by Ottaviano's shouts now, tried to intercept them; Otto saw a halberd-swing that must have connected, but Dewar lurched and grabbed unseen Prospero for support. Otto shouted "Arrows! Use your bows!" at the men. At the ditch, he lost them. Prospero's supernatural horse jumped the d.a.m.ned thing.

Herne thundered past Ottaviano as he jogged to a halt, unable to follow them over the ditch, but Herne's roan horse, as fast as Prospero's black, swerved, tore over the bridge, and galloped after the fleeing sorcerers into the night.

"Ottaviano!" shouted someone; was it Josquin?

"Baron!" another said. "The Marshal wants you." He stood beside Otto and waited, the Fireduke's right-hand man, Captain Jolly.

"I bet he does. s.h.i.+t. Oh, s.h.i.+t. He's going to be sorry for this," Otto said, looking around, walking slowly, breathing hard from his sprint. Prince Gaston, wearing a chain-mail s.h.i.+rt (maybe he really did sleep in his armor, Otto thought) and leather pants, bareheaded and highbooted and holding 250.

-Efiza&etfi Chanteuse du Mort naked in his hand, was coming, giving orders to men who hovered at his side long enough to listen and say, "Yes, sir," and rushed away into the camp.

Otto and Captain Jolly went to him.

Prince Gaston looked at Otto, lifted his eyebrows.

"Prospero's escaped," Otto said.

The Marshal's face smoothed and then tightened. He slipped the sword into its scabbard. His lips thinned; he turned and stared in the direction in which Prospero's horse was last seen travelling. "Ah," he said.

"Why did you let Dewar near him?" Otto yelled. "What in freezing heil were you thinking of?"

Jolly inhaled sharply beside Otto.

Prince Gaston flicked his eyes at his captain, who bowed and began to move away. "Get a horse," Gaston said. "Follow Prince Herne. Thou understand'st my will."

"Do my best, sir." Captain Jolly, like the others, ran off to carry out his Prince's orders.

"No better can we," Gaston said, a little bitterly.

"What were you thinking of?" Otto demanded. "You knew, I knew, what - "

"Quiet." The Fireduke's hand gripped his shoulder, warm through the thin s.h.i.+rt, and the Fireduke's eyes finally drilled through Otto's outrage and held his attention.

"Sir," Otto said, through clenched teeth, "if I may - "

"Nephew," said Prince Gaston, "come with me."

Otto blinked. The Marshal had never referred to him that way.

"Come." Prince Gaston took his elbow and led him away. "Jolly will run them down," he said to a man who approached him - Captain Addis.

"The Duke of Winds has escaped!" said the Captain.

"Prince Herne rides after him," said Prince Gaston. "We shall bide here, rather than panic." He said panic contemptuously; Captain Addis reddened, saluted, muttered an acknowledgement, and backed away.

Otto and Gaston walked through the buzzing camp. As they went, the Prince Marshal spoke to a few men, here and there, just a word or two, and the place settled in the wake Sorcerer and a QentUman 251.

of his pa.s.sing. Ottaviano admired his command of the men; they had absolute faith in the Fireduke, and he apparently had equal faith in them.

Prince Gaston's squires were awake, waiting in the outer part of his tent with an oil lamp and the Fireduke's plate armor, talking as they cleaned it. It was clean, but Gaston frowned on idle squires. Their labor and chatter halted as he entered with Otto behind him, jumping to their feet and looking expectantly at their master.

"Go back to bed," Prince Gaston said to them gently. "There's naught ye may do."

"Yes, sir," they said in muted, chiming adolescent voices, and one left the tent as the other returned to his bedroll on the ground.

The Prince took the lit lamp and ushered Otto into the inner tent.

"Sit," he said.

Otto took a camp chair. His host poured wine for them both and sat down on the other side of the table. "Thou think'st I was lax," Prince Gaston said.

"I'm not too clear on what happened," Otto admitted, looking down. "I, uh, shot my mouth off perhaps prematurely-"

"Dewar came to me," Prince Gaston looked at a small traveller's hourgla.s.s in a polished bra.s.s case, "three-quarters of an hour past. He desired to speak briefly with Prince Prospero. I consented and escorted him there. Prince Pros-pero received him; I gave them a quarter of an hour and returned here." He paused, studying Otto, and continued in a lower voice. "I take it thy Bounds were not impervious to attack."

"If I'd thought they were going to be tested from the outside, as well as from within, I'd have made them differently," Otto said, biting his lip. He realized that he did not look very good now, himself. "I didn't expect Dewar to turn coat. After all his claims of loyalty-"

"Meseems a man who hath daily stated that he is here on whim, cannot be considered to have turned coat," the Marshal said.

252.

'Wittey "But you trusted him alone with Prince Prospero-"

"I'd no cause to deny him privy speech with the Prince. But a few hours past Prince Herne visited; they quarrelled, as ever."

"You're blind, Your Highness," Ottaviano said, thumping his hand lightly on the table. "You saw the way Dewar hung back today! Prospero might have bought him off against just such an event." He said this, but he didn't believe it. Dewar's notions of honor and ethics were too nice, too otherworldly-idealistic, to allow him to play the double agent. Otto's own notional ethics held him back from speaking of Dewar's geas: it was the sort of confidence a gentleman would not betray, and telling Gaston of it now-too late to use the knowledge-would be useless.

" Tis possible," Prince Gaston said slowly. "In that case I would expect Dewar to have confined him, however, thereby to leave a flaw in the binding."

Otto nodded and tasted his wine, then put it aside. His good work, undone; his sorcery, exposed-the stuff might have been water. He said wearily, "Prince Gaston, why did you let him in there?"

Gaston scrutinized his nephew's sharp, stubbled face for a full minute and then said, "To spare Prospero's life, nephew."

"To what?" whispered Otto.

Prince Gaston continued studying him.

"Save his life? After what he's done-"

"What hath he done?"

"Made war on the Emperor-"

"His war hath been judged just by many," Gaston said.

"Your Emperor!"

"My Landuc," Prince Gaston corrected him. "Baron, th'art an intelligent man, and I think thee not without perception. Suppose Prospero, in a few days' time, be delivered up to th' Emperor, and th' Emperor then execute him; hath said 'a would. What followeth?"

Ottaviano frowned a little. "Peace."

"Think beyond this war."

Ottaviano thought further. "Anyone the Emperor Sorcerer and a Qentieman 253.