Kingdom Of Argylle - A Sorcerer And A Gentleman Part 41

The soldiers had fallen back, leaving a barricade of dead and dying in front of the gryphon. Dewar fell back, jostled and shoved by the crowd of prisoners, who were running into Prospero's fire, most supporting one or two weaker others.

"I will kill you!" screamed someone nearby, and two of Prospero's men were knocked down by Otto, leaping forward toward Dewar as he retreated toward Freia and Trixie. Freia wasn't visible to him, but he was sure she was there.

Otto swung at him, a two-handed skull-crus.h.i.+ng swing with a mace, and Dewar ducked and heard it sing in the air. He cut at Otto's arm and nicked him as he brought the mace around again; a crossbow bolt sprouted from Otto's mailed shoulder, though, and he lost control of the mace swing.

"Hurry!" Prospero shouted. "To me! Argylle!"

Prisoners echoed his shout. "Argylle!" came back from => 'E&zað.

the quarters of the courtyard. The melee increased in speed and desperation.

Dewar tripped on a body and rolled frantically away as Otto brought the iron mace down at his head, thumping the stone pavement instead. More prisoners were fighting hand-to-hand with the garrison soldiers, but all were falling back toward the fire.

"Hey!" Freia yelled, and tripped Otto, who punched her in the ribs and sent her sprawling over the gore and dead.

Trixie screamed and pecked at him. Otto swung the mace, smas.h.i.+ng the gryphon in the beak and twisting the back-swing toward Dewar, who dodged it again.

Never again, Dewar vowed, would he venture .within sixty-four miles of a battlefield without a comprehensive and impermeable collection of protective spells.

"Argylle!" shouted Prospero.

Freia got up, stumbling and holding her side, and staggered over the disordered corpses toward the fire where Prospero stood fighting two guardsmen. An uncoordinated mob of Imperial soldiers at one side were being held off by prisoners with scavenged weapons while their fellows ran with closed eyes and clenched teeth into Prospero's fiery Way. Dewar caught a glimpse of this as he dove away from Otto's mace, rolling behind Trixie, who raked Otto's mail s.h.i.+rt with her hind claws and lurched after Freia but was distracted by an arrow striking beside her left eye. With another scream, the gryphon set into a retreating group of royal soldiers, wildly stabbing and biting, pursuing them around the tower, away from Prospero, into a dark corner.

The Way in the fire was closing; the vortex of sorcery was drawing in on itself. All the prisoners in the yard were through save the group with Prospero, holding the Way secure and backing toward it. Dewar ran forward, not wanting to lose this chance. Otto pursued Dewar, then pa.s.sed him, lunging toward Prospero with a knife. Freia tripped Otto again; he grabbed her ankle and brought her down with him.

"Argylle! Away!" Prospero cried hoa.r.s.ely, killing a man Sorcerer and a Qentteman 341.

with a swift in-and-out thrust; his gory blade was black in the unnaturally white Way-fire light. He kicked the corpse away, into another soldier's feet so that he stumbled onto Prospero's ready sword.

Prospero's men backed toward the whirling, narrowing Way in the fire. He gestured them through, shouting, "Go! Go!" and stepped back into it himself. The Way was shrinking as it closed. Otto was nearly there; Dewar caught up to him and yanked him back, punching him ineffectively in his mailed stomach. Otto turned and struck him along the head, but Dewar twisted and caught himself and fell, tumbling into the Way with Prospero's dark cloak whirling above him.

As he fell, he heard Freia shriek "Paaaapaaaaa!" in a long keening wail.

The Way closed with a thunderous, sky-breaking bang and sent sparks and ashes flying in an acrid cloud.

Dewar landed on sand and fire, thrashed out of the fire, and brushed singeing coals off himself.

He was on a beach, near a crowd of men, Prospero's men. There were long boats in the low surf, ferrying the freed prisoners-of-war to furled-sailed s.h.i.+ps waiting out in the bay, black silhouettes. It was cool, but not cold. No one paid attention to Dewar as he stood, shaking white sand and black cinders out of his clothes. The sky was overcast, the air mild, circulated by a velvety offsh.o.r.e breeze. A glow at the horizon might be dawn or sunset, brightening the purply twilight.

The men, rejoicing, shouted and called in their own language, which he could not understand, and he tried to find Prospero, who had vanished among them.

"You!" cried someone suddenly, and seized Dewar's arm.

They stared at one another.

"You're Utrachet," Dewar said to the rangy, yellow-bearded man who faced him.

"You're none of ours," Utrachet replied with a lilting accent Dewar had heard recently on Freia's tongue, and 342.

l&zattetfi Dewar found himself being hustled over to a collection of long torches driven into the sand where an argument proceeded hotly.

It was suspended. Prospero and four other men looked expectantly at Dewar.

Utrachet addressed them in that incomprehensible speech.

"Nay, 'tis not possible; 'twas but some illusion of his stressed mind's desire: I say 'tis so," Prospero said. "Leave this one to me a moment. Carry on the evacuation."

The men muttered and left them staring at one another.

"What wouldst thou here?" Prospero asked finally.

"We have unfinished business. I didn't appreciate being chucked in a ditch in a blizzard," Dewar said. It came out less elegantly than he had intended.

"Go to. 'Twas not I cast thee to Herne," Prospero said. "Thy hands loosed and thou didst take rude leave of me."

"I pa.s.sed out from being hit on the head," Dewar replied. "I didn't want to go with you; you insisted and then dumped me. I'll not forget it."

Prospero stared at him, incensed. "That's thy message? Wilt challenge me, spratling? I warrant thee, thou'lt not find it healthful exercise."

"I'm not continuing in this farce. I've been trailing you all over the Well-be-scorched countryside to settle-"

Utrachet ran up. Dewar saw now that he was limping and hiding it badly. He spoke to Prospero quickly, agitatedly.

Prospero exploded with an obscenity. A whirlwind sprang up and whipped away down the beach, throwing stinging sand.

Utrachet spoke again, and Prospero shook his head and said, "Let us begone from here. The men come first."

Utrachet nodded and left.

"As for thee, I have no time now to give audience to thy grievances," Prospero went on to Dewar. "Canst leave o' thyself, or I'll remove thee, for I'll have none about the place not wholly of my party. I'd not be so abrupt, but I've much in hand."

Sorcerer and a Qentkman 343.

Dewar's hot anger drained out of him and left an icier, more enduring fury. "1 shall leave, sir," he said, bowing, "and it shall be an ill day we meet again." He pulled his cloak around him as he turned his back deliberately and walked away, into the dunes to find something flammable, to return to the Tower of Thorns and consider whether he'd been insulted sufficiently for a challenge. He halted a half-step. He should mention to Utrachel, or perhaps to Prospero, that that overly-chaste young woman Freia had aided him-but no. Let her tell them so herself, if she so chose; why, to be a.s.sociated with Dewar now in Prospero's mind might bend the Prince's ill-will toward her. She'd done him no wrong to earn that. He had nothing more to say to Prospero.

Prospero shouted after him, "Look-" but was interrupted by a messenger from the flags.h.i.+p lying in the warm water offsh.o.r.e, and he stared angrily at Dewar's disappearing back in the darkness as he answered the messenger's question. Running off like Freia, he thought: d.a.m.ned disrespectful children. Dared they value him so lightly, selfish young creatures?

30.OTTAVIANO TACKLED FREIA AND BROUGHT HER down, knocking the breath from her as she doubled over a dead man's breastplate.

"No you don't!" the Baron of Ascolet screamed.

The Way was dark, gone. The uproar of flame and battle had stopped. Wounded survivors were moaning and calling for help. There seemed none unwounded.

Freia gasped for air spasmodically, immobilized with Otto's weight on her. He stood, cursing, and released her for a moment; she was still breathless and lay panting.

"s.h.i.+t," finished Otto, after a pause, summing up the evening.

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Freia got to her knees. Otto hauled her to her feet, putting a knife to her throat.

"Tell your animal to back off."

Freia still gulped at the air. She whispered indistinctly, hoa.r.s.ely, then swallowed as the gryphon screeched and started toward them.

"Trix-go-home-" she forced out, past the cold steel too close to her windpipe. "Trix-home! Now!"

The gryphon stopped, confused. "Rrrnrawwwwkkkh," she croaked. The arrow by her eye bobbed as she moved her head from side to side.

Four men carrying swords came from a door in the keep.

"Home-now!" Freia ordered her weakly. "Now! To Prospero! Go home!"

Otto twisted her arm as the gryphon jumped. But Trixie went up, not forward, with a long resentful screech, and she ascended around the keep before flapping away into the night.

"Get these corpses out of here!" yelled Otto to the soldiers. "Tonight!"

"Aye, sir," one of them called.

He turned his attention back to his captive, pus.h.i.+ng the knife fiat on her neck. "You son of a b.i.t.c.h, I'd like to disembowel you organ by organ."

Freia tried to turn her head away from the knife, not grabbing for it as it was too close to grapple.

"So I will," Otto went on, "but you're going to tell me all about yourself while I'm doing it." The uncontrollable, messy rage had left him cold and clear-minded.

Freia closed her eyes and breathed in and out deliberately.

"Starting now," Otto decided, and he frog-marched his prisoner into the charred fortress of Perendlac, where Golias had failed to hold his prisoners.

Otto forced her up a flight of stairs and down a hallway; he pushed her into a lamplit room and shoved her against Sorcerer and a Qentieman 345.

the wall while he tied her hands behind her. He spun her around then and slammed her against the window-frame. With another thong, he tied her hands to one of the grates behind the iron shutters, which were closed and locked. It was too high; she had to stand on tiptoe.

Lighting another lamp, Otto turned to look at his prisoner and plan the extraction of information.

The prisoner stared back at him gravely, blood seeping from a dirty sc.r.a.pe on one cheek, a bruise where his fist had connected at their first meeting.

Otto looked again.

"A woman?" he said, his voice rising in disbelief.

Freia tensed and her impa.s.sivity tightened.

"Some friend of Dewar's," he mused.

He studied her. Just before he'd brought her down, kept her from following her mates into the fire, she'd been screaming to someone. Father. Dewar's daughter? Was he old enough to have a grown child? Hard to tell, with sorcerers. They changed as slowly as the Well. Otto had thought of Dewar as a young man, but he had also thought of him as a friend.

Sorcerers. Had she been yelling at Prospero?

"Or Prospero's," Otto murmured, folding his arms and leaning against the table, looking at her. Prospero's. Yes. Her accent was like Utrachet's. Dewar didn't have an accent. She'd sent her weird animal to Prospero, home to Prospero. But she had arrived with Dewar-who was probably working with Prospero now, if he hadn't been before. Tonight's appearance clinched that. The animal had been seen around Malperdy, the castle where Prospero had been imprisoned.

Otto decided to eliminate guessing. Furthermore, Dewar or Prospero might try to retrieve this lost baggage any minute. He closed his eyes and focused his attention inward, on the Well; Perendlac was near a Node, and the feeling of power ran tingling along his arms. Mentally he reviewed the necessary preventive Binding, a modification of a concealment. Simple and effective enough for now. He put his hand on her head, although she moved away as much as her 346.

'Etiza&etfi 'Wittey limited freedom allowed, and put the Binding on her. Closed, hidden, wrapped, concealed, lie beneath the bright Well's field. . .

The Binding sat uneasily. Though she was not warded, it felt looser than it ought, but Otto supposed his own haste was the reason. Now the second spell, a Truth-Binding.

She shook his hand from her head as the slight fogging caused by the spell touched her thoughts; Otto grabbed her chin and finished it quickly.

She glared at him.

"The first spell keeps you here, and the second makes it easy for you to answer questions," he said, smiling. "What's your name?"

She put her teeth together and clenched her jaw, not allowing herself to speak.

"Uh-hunh," he said. She would speak truth when she spoke, but she could still resist speaking. "Am I going to have to invoke less pleasant compulsions?"

Her look was an eloquent answer. Nonetheless, Otto disliked the idea of using violence on her. Golias had no qualms, but Otto thought of himself as a civilized, educated man.

"You were looking for your father, hm? Prospero didn't help you, did he."

"He will," Freia whispered.

"Oh, I'm sure you'll be missed when he comes to counting noses," Otto said, pleased. "A very important thing to leave behind, a daughter. Careless. What do you think he'll do now? When he notices you're not where you ought to be?"

"He'll look for me," she whispered. "If you hurt me, he will kill you when he finds me."

"I don't think so. Interesting accent you have. Odd," he mused. She shouldn't have an accent. He, having stood the test of the Well's fire, should understand her perfectly without hearing an accent. Yet when she spoke, a lilt and trill colored the words he heard. If he concentrated, he could hear the incomprehensible language she actually used, but the unusual thing was that an accent was transmitted.

Prospero's troops had had some utterly foreign language ft. Sorcerer and a (jentkman c- 34 7 which not even Otto, integrated with the Well and its worlds, could understand. Their commander Utrachet had spoken some Lannach. Otto had not had leisure to study the troops, which had struck him as strange in other ways, and now he regretted that.

"Where did you come from?" he asked.

She would not answer.

He tapped his fingers. Dewar or Prospero would come looking for her. Then they could bargain. Simple and workable, if he took care of his own defenses. Dewar, he had decided, was manageable, and Prospero could be subdued with threats to the girl here. He would demand Prospero's surrender in return for her liberty. He'd be able to get a lot of mileage out of that in Landuc. That meant he must put her someplace difficult to reach, guarded by better men than the fools at Malperdy.

Otto's mind pulled up short. If Herne or Gaston knew he had such a prisoner, she'd not be his for long. The business with this Miranda of Valgalant was still hot and he'd made an a.s.s of himself losing Prospero from Malperdy. They'd take her out of his hands and he'd lose any credit, any esteem he might have recovered.

And then two things connected in his mind, and Otto smiled in such a way that his prisoner began to sweat anxiously in her leather clothing.

He put to himself: Was not a hold on Prospero also a hold on Landuc?

Was it not so that something valued by Prospero would be valuable to the Emperor?

What would the Emperor give for something guaranteed to bring Prospero humming after it?

If she were Prospero's, she could be a more powerful weapon than the entire Army, its Marshal, and the rest of the Empire combined. Even if she were Dewar's, she could be used to bring him to heel and ensure his cooperation, or at least his noninterference. Blood called to blood.