Gold Throne in Shadow (24 page)

Christopher staggered forth into their arms.

“Priest, heal thyself,” Gregor muttered, as Torme leapt forward in concern.

But they all relaxed once they realized he was just drunk.

“I take it things went well,” Gregor said.

“They did indeed. I got us banished.” Christopher, never politic, was utterly inept when he was three sheets into the wind.

“Grave news, my lord,” Torme said, but Christopher waved him off.

“No, it's great news. That wench won't be able to hide in a fort full of men. The wizard's going to build us a fort, see. He's not such a bad guy.”

“I'm certain it is only the liquor talking,” the doorman said, shaking his head at the last comment. “He is most assuredly nothing but that.”

The sun was just coming up, light creeping into the dark sky.

“I would like to take a nap now,” Christopher said. He looked around for a comfortable place to lie down.

“This way, sir,” Torme said, guiding him home. Karl and Gregor fell in behind, the squad of surreptitiously yawning soldiers following.

“This would be the perfect time for her to strike,” Gregor muttered.

“Unless he only fakes his impairment.” Torme always cast Christopher in the best light.

“Is that possible?” Gregor said, prepared to be impressed.

“No,” Karl admitted. “The man can't hold his liquor. But she doesn't necessarily know that.”

“Hey!” Christopher mumbled. “I heard that.” He turned around to find Karl and give him a sound thrashing, got lost, and had to wait for Torme to point him in the right direction again.

The men were careful not to show their dismay. They were not insensitive to the death of the child, but they were still young men. The town, with its rowdy taverns and accommodating women, still held plenty of allure for them.

“You can come back every few weeks, and be party animals then.” The idea of a weekend pass was another one of Christopher's innovations. “In between times, you're going to be soldiers.” They perked up at that. They were at that improbable age where fighting sounded like as much fun as chasing girls.

His army poured out of the gates, a long column of wagons and men. The cavalry was already in the field, scouting the advance.

Karl approved, of course. “It was good for them to live a hero's life, for a while. But it is better for them to have to earn it again.”

Gregor had already registered his delight by leading out the cavalry. He'd been gone from the city since daybreak. No doubt Royal would rather be with them, tromping through the countryside, but like Christopher, the big warhorse was saddled with other responsibilities. Disa rode on a gentle mare, looking uncomfortable and out of place.

“How do you usually get around?” Christopher asked, when it became obvious she had never ridden before.

“The poor walk, Brother,” she said. That was no longer an option. Her magical skills were too valuable for mundane transportation.

The thought made him grin. Just as soon as he got the chance, he was going to travel in a wholly new manner, too.

But today he had an army to oversee, a thousand trivial decisions to make, and a logistics nightmare. The wooden wall-molds occupied most of the space in his wagons, so they would be making multiple trips over the next few weeks for the rest of their supplies. In the meantime they had to pack only what they could not do without.

The locals came out to cheer them as they marched past villages and hamlets. Christopher wasn't sure if that was because his men had already made friends with them, or because they were just relieved there would now be soldiers between them and the ulvenmen.

After the second day they were out of the farmlands, and the roads ended. Now it was hard slogging through unbroken swampland. Just finding a path would be work, and finding a destination would be impossible. He wanted to build his fort on a hill, but the trees were so thick that visibility was limited to a few dozen yards.

Karl sent a soldier up a tree, to no avail.

“Well then,” Christopher said. “I'll just have to do it myself.”

Handing the reins of his horse to Karl, he stepped into a clearing, closed his eyes, and cleared his mind. He spread his arms and chanted the words of the spell, waiting for wind beneath his wings.

When the feeling came, it was immediately exhilarating. He drifted upward, slipping through gravity's fingers like water, elevated by desire alone. It was the same feeling as a heavy sigh, the same release of tension, that moment of weightlessness as you sink into your leather easy chair. Only the direction was different.

Opening his eyes, he soared. Arms outstretched, crucified on a shaft of air, he moved
up
, past the tops of the trees. He dared not look down, dared not to respond to the sudden shouts and cheers of his men. He did not want to chicken out.

So he went higher, without letting himself think of how high. The wizard had told him the chief danger of the spell was that it only lasted a fixed amount of time—for Christopher, it would be slightly less than an hour—and when it did fail, it did so with little warning. If you were within sixty feet of the ground, you would be safe, the spell letting you down gently for at least that far. But after that, it could disappear at any moment, dropping you like a stone.

As long as he didn't lose track of time, he would be fine.

He couldn't hear the noise of his army as clearly now. There was nothing in his peripheral vision but blue sky. Still he went up, figuring that a thousand feet would give him a good view. He was afraid that if he looked down now, he would not have the courage to go higher.

When he finally let himself stop pushing upward, he brought his hands in and forced his gaze toward the ground, so very far away. He hung in midair, standing on nothing. He had expected it to feel like skydiving. He was wrong. It felt like flying.

His army snaked out below him like a string of ants, tiny brown dots barely glimpsed through trees. He laughed wildly and spun in a circle. Then he leaned forward and began to fly in earnest.

The wind rushing past his face was still light, so he wasn't breaking any speed records. Without the passing ground as a reference it was hard to guess, although the wizard had described it as half-again as fast as a man could run. Royal could put a stiffer wind in his face in a hard gallop.

But Royal had to work for that, and this was effortless. All of his duty and grief had been left on the ground, discarded like a rumpled night-robe. For these few moments he was simply, ecstatically happy.

The wizard had warned him of another danger. If he went too high, he ran the risk of attracting a passing elemental, some mythical magical beastie that lived in the winds. The creature would undoubtedly take offense at such an unnatural intrusion into its domain and might punish him by dispelling the magic. His sixty feet of graceful drifting would not be much comfort then. And he could only do this spell once a day, so even if he had the concentration to cast it while falling, he couldn't.

Since the stakes were so high, he had resolved to take the wizard's words seriously, no matter how much like superstition they sounded. He wouldn't be setting any altitude records.

Going any higher would not be profitable, anyway. Already the land below him stretched out unbroken and smooth, a carpet of flat, scrawny green with patches of brown mud splattered liberally across it. Beginning to descend, he searched for a lump worthy of his plans.

With a start he realized he had no idea how much time had passed. It couldn't have been long, but the euphoria of the experience distorted everything. What he would give for a wristwatch! Instead, he swooped down and circled around, searching for his army. Flying over their heads would make them look up to him. It was hard not to respect a man whom even gravity deferred to.

When he found them, their startled cries alerted him to one last danger. They might shoot him by accident. He went lower, until he could see their faces and they could presumably see his, and found the head of the column again. Then he floated in, like the witch in Oz, and once his boots touched the soil, he let the spell dissipate. He didn't dare risk a second ascent, not having any clue how much time was left.

The men gaped open-mouthed at him, except for Karl, of course.

“Did you find a suitable location?” Karl asked, the pure normalcy of his tone more grounding than the earth beneath Christopher's feet.

“No,” Christopher admitted. “All I saw was more trees.” All of his cares and burdens scrambled up from the mud, climbing onto his back where they belonged. But they seemed lighter now, unreduced in number or import but nonetheless robbed of their crushing weight. “We'll keep going south, and try again tomorrow.”

Gregor and the cavalry finally rejoined them, trotting in as the sun set.

“No ulvenmen,” the blue knight reported, “but we found a good camp.”

“What makes it good?”

“Why,” Gregor said with a grin, “it's next to plenty of mud.”

They only had a week before the wizard would come out to find them and start the magic. The men had a lot of shoveling to do, and easy access to the raw materials would count highly. But Gregor was joking, of course. Everything out here was next to mud.

11

FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE

I
n the morning, as he was eating breakfast and ruminating on how badly the quality of his victuals had fallen in the last three days, his sentries brought him a visitor.

The young man was dressed in green leather, with a six-foot bow on his back and a short sword on either hip. He went to one knee as soon as he saw Christopher.

“Get up,” Christopher said, annoyed at the formality. “Have some porridge.” That seemed like punishment enough for far worse crimes, so he put his annoyance aside.

“You do not even know my name, and yet you offer me food from your table?”

Christopher shrugged. “It's not food. It's porridge.”

“I see your reputation for generosity is not unmerited.”

He had to think about that one for a while before he decided the young man wasn't mocking him.

“So what's your name, and why are you here?”

“I am Ser D'Kan,” the young man announced, and then muttered under his breath, “and not for the porridge,” looking sourly at the bowl after his first spoonful. Christopher's men were very good at many things. Cooking was not one of them.

“I am here for a job, my lord.” He squatted next to the small campfire that Christopher and a few others were sitting around.

Christopher was trying to remember the speech Lalania had written him for dismissing applicants and petitioners.

“Not a partnership, my lord. I do not pretend to be so significant that you would take me into your retinue. No, I desire a job, for pay, a simple quid pro quo.”

“I don't need archers, really.” Not with two hundred riflemen.

“I offer my skills in woodcraft. I am ranked as a Ranger.”

Now Christopher remembered where he had seen green leather before. “You mean like the Baronet D'Arcy?”

“Not so very like him.” D'Kan's face flashed a hint of distaste. “For instance, I am only a Knight. Still, I believe I can lead your hunt in vastly more profitable directions than you have hitherto experienced.”

That wouldn't be hard.

“Are you willing to work with my scouts, and teach them what you can?” D'Arcy had seemed to enjoy doing that. But this fellow looked scandalized by the idea.

“I suppose that is not unthinkable.” Apparently it was not that scandalous. He must want the job pretty bad.

“So how much is this going to cost me?”

“In salary, my lord, not a single coin. Though I ask that you feed and shelter me, I will be glad to contribute to the rations with my hunting. And naturally if you choose to share some of the spoils of the hunt, I will be grateful.”

Christopher put down his empty bowl.

“You haven't actually said what I will be paying.”

D'Kan bowed his head in acknowledgment. “Only this. If I aid you in your hunt, I would ask aid of you for mine.”

“I don't think I can find anything you can't.” Only after he had spoken did Christopher guess the obvious.

“It is not the finding I require assistance with. It is the laying low of the prey I cannot do alone.”

Which is what he wanted an army for. Killing a dragon or some other nonsensical monstrosity with gods knew what obscene powers.

“I think you better tell me what kind of monster you expect me to help you with.”

“The worst kind, my lord. A brigand, a traitor, a murderer, a killer of women, a thief of children, a kin-slayer.”

Only a man. A very bad man from the sound of it, but Christopher was pretty sure his army could take a lone man. Conveniently he ignored the fact that his army had just retreated from a lone woman.

“That sounds like the kind of deal I could make. But maybe you should tell me who he killed, first.”