The Demon Lord (21 page)

Gueynor’s transformation to a mercenary’s lady took her almost two hours, and even then it was quicker than Aldric had expected. Although she still regarded his scheme, with a degree of scorn, as an elaborate children’s game of dressing-up enhanced by adult reasoning, she had done her best. Her blonde hair now had the rich russet hue of fox-fur, its braids wrapped close around her head instead of hanging loose as was customary for unmarried Jouvaine women. Their lashes shadowed by kohl on both upper lids and lower, the girl’s blue eyes were startling in their sapphire brilliance as they stared at Aldric, daring him to utter any comment about her omission of the suggested padding. Wisely, he said not a word. She was dressed in wide-legged, baggy trousers tucked into short boots, a high-necked tunic, and a knee-length hooded riding coat of plainly Pryteinek cut which even bore some Segelin clan-crests worked in contrasting colours along its hem. The colours had little enough to contrast with—fawn and green and brown for the most part. Retiring, self-effacing shades.

The Alban quirked his solitary eyebrow at the coat and wondered how such a garment came to be in this small Jouvaine village. The folk of Prytenon were not renowned travellers, especially in the Empire. Strange indeed… Gueynor remained—indeed could never have concealed—the fine-featured, pretty girl whom he had met two days ago—but she was no longer the same girl, either outside or in. It was, considered Aldric, just as well.

“Henna is permanent,” he criticised gently, looking at her hair.

“I know. So this isn’t henna. It should wash out when it has to.”

Aldric smiled a little. “Very well,” he said. “I bow to your superior knowledge,” and suited the action to the word; not with the elegant inclination of his upper body that she had seen once or twice before, but with a sweeping, insolent bend low over one extended leg, accompanied by extravagant flourishes of his right hand. Gueynor might have been tempted to laugh at such theatricality, but the slight scraping of his longsword and the sinister regard of that dark, one-eyed face dissuaded her.

“You look… evil,” she whispered.

“Good!” He straightened, brushed his clothing into line with both hands and stalked once around the girl, looking thoughtfully at her and at the long coat. “I won’t ask where this came from; I’m not that much interested. But just to satisfy my own curiosity, tell me—can you ride a horse?”

There was an awkward little pause in which Aldric was able to answer his own question, before Gueynor finally admitted in a small voice, “No, I can’t.”

“I didn’t think so.” Aldric let the matter drop, for he had no intention of riding very far or very fast anyway. But he hoped that his intention would not be altered by events…

There was no rain when they rode out of Valden. It was still a little before noon, something which surprised the Alban until he recalled that this was midsummer day,
an Haf Golowan
, the longest day of the year. Last night had been the shortest night… except that it had seemed years long to him. He had been awake at dawn; Evthan had been buried in the early morning, at sun-up if the sun had been visible through the featureless overcast. And now they were leaving. Aldric shook his head wearily; it seemed wrong, hurried—what had happened here should have taken longer than two days, had a little more dignity about it. He turned the headshake into a shrug that stated plainly there was nothing to be done. Because it was true.

Gueynor sat his pack-pony’s back better than he had anticipated; indeed, there had been moments when he had experienced more difficulty. To give her a mount had entailed a redistribution of saddlebags; Lyard resented being employed as a baggage horse, and the resentment of an Andarran stallion was not easily ignored. At least the big courser had settled now, making his disapproval plain with resigned snorts and blowings-out of his lips. But he had learned not to try any more lively demonstrations…

Except for Darath the headman, none of the villagers watched them go. It was as if Valden wanted to forget them both—or at least to forget Aldric—as quickly as possible. Only Evthan had ever really made him welcome and now that he was dead, the Alban could not blame the others. Even the most wooden-headed peasant, seeing that both he and Gueynor had deliberately changed their appearance, would guess that something was far from right and equally, that the less known about it the better. So be it, then. Aldric did not care—not so that anyone could see, anyway.

Out of consideration for Gueynor’s inexperience, he held to a soft pace that was little more than an amble, glancing over every now and then to see how she fared. He had improvised a bridle, but her saddle was no more than a folded blanket—without girth, stirrups or pommel. Accustomed for years to the hip-hugging embrace of a high-peaked war saddle, Aldric himself would have felt uneasy riding bareback. Gueynor’s seat was rigid and inflexible, her backbone like a poker and probably transmitting every jolt unmercifully; her knees were clamped to the pony’s well-upholstered ribs like pincers—but she looked well enough, considering…

They spoke seldom, each wrapped in private thoughts, although the Alban occasionally raised a suspicious gaze towards the sky. He was familiar with this changeable summer weather and had no wish to be soaked; quite apart from the discomfort, he doubted that the dye of their disguises could survive a thorough wetting.

At least his worries were proved groundless. The remaining clouds thinned rapidly and then cleared, until even in the shadow of trees it was hot. The afternoon sun blazed overhead and mere branches offered little shelter to travellers on the narrow forest trails. Wisps of vapour curled like fragile skeins of cobweb from the damp undergrowth, and the warm air grew close and sticky. There was no wind.

“How far to Seghar anyway?” Aldric’s voice was quiet, influenced perhaps by the vast humid stillness that surrounded them. Even the horses’ hoofs no longer seemed to fall so heavily, and he was reminded inescapably of that first day’s hunting. And of all that had followed it.

“One day’s walk from Valden,” Gueynor replied at last. “On horseback, maybe a little less.”

“At this speed? No less, and probably more. Though we might get there before full dark.” A thought struck him as he spoke the words—visions of being locked out during some sort of curfew went floating through his mind. “If we don’t, will they let us in… ?”

Gueynor, unhelpfully, didn’t know.

Aldric kicked both his moccasin-booted feet free of the stirrup irons and let them dangle as he stretched backwards as far as the tall, curved cantle would allow. “Then we’ll stop for a while. If the guards let us in, we’ll get in, and if not it’s already too late to hurry.” He was philosphical, resigned, his tone suggesting that he didn’t care one way or the other.

There had been a stream running close beside the bridle-path for maybe half a mile now, tumbling down over half-seen granite crags as it flowed from the higher reaches of the Jevaiden plateau, and once in a while it formed wide pools alive with golden light and bronze-green shadowy depths. The twinkling of a thousand sun-shot ripples looked cool and inviting to the Alban’s eye; he was hot and he was sleepy. Hungry, too. After last night’s waking vigil nothing seemed to be urgent any more. Nothing at all…

In the first half-hour since the path beneath his pony’s hoofs had dried out enough to give off dust again, the fat man’s carefully dressed hair and beard had turned to grayish rattails. The round-bellied, short-legged beast was refusing to hurry through such heat, and being of similar proportions himself, its rider could only sympathise. Under richly embroidered garments his skin was gritty, and his nose was acutely aware of how much he was sweating. He and the little horse both… except that
it
was not required to impress people, and could not even begin to try. Tugging sticky silk out of his armpits in some distaste, he eyed the nearest pool and decided that, regardless of how cold the water might be— and probably was—a bath and a change of clothing was long overdue.

Dismounting from the relieved pony, he hobbled its forelegs and removed saddle and saddlebags before leaving it to graze while he washed. The water was as shockingly cold as he had feared, and he adopted his usual technique for such an eventuality. Employed, for obvious reasons, only when he was alone, it consisted of a long run-up, a leap accompanied by a yell of anticipation and an explosive backside-foremost landing in the deepest part of the pool. A column of foam-streaked water rose and fell, but the pony, who had seen and heard it all before, merely blew disapprovingly before continuing to eat.

Although a clump of bushes upstream jerked abruptly, as if shocked out of a deep and comfortable sleep…

Sitting in the shallows with his legs stuck straight out before him, the man scrubbed himself all over with clean gravel from the riverbed until he glowed with cleanliness and friction, then rinsed it off by swimming splashily across the pool. Like many fat men he was a good swim-mer, buoyant and therefore confident in water, and once the initial chill became merely refreshing he floated on his back and watched the dragonflies as they flicked and hovered briskly over him. For all his idleness his mind was working rapidly; not thinking about anything new, merely reiterating what had passed through it so many times before.
I shouldn’t have accepted this commission
—
it’s probably a dangerous one and I’m getting too old for that
. He wondered how long his unenthusiastic search would have to go on before he could justifiably abandon it and go home…

There was a quick buzz near his head which ended in an incisive splash, and the dragonflies scattered. “Fish?” he speculated aloud, surprised that his own presence wasn’t a deterrent. “Or maybe a diving bird?” Yet the same reason for doubt held true. Intrigued, the fat man rolled over and ducked his face beneath the water to see what
had
made the noise. He saw—and tried to gasp, instead inhaled a lot of river with a gurgling belch and submerged for several choking seconds before he broke surface, sputtering.

There was no fish, no bird. Just a long, slender arrow turning slowly as it drifted tail-first upwards, wreathed in a cloud of tiny, self-made bubbles. The sharp steel head whose weight pulled it from the horizontal glinted ominously under water as it rotated, as coldly malevolent as the eye of any predatory fish and much more immediately threatening.

As he coughed and tried to drag air back into his flooded lungs, the fat man raked wet hair from his eyes as if that would help him to discover who was shooting. It did not. All he could see was forest: either the pillared tree trunks or an impenetrable tangle of undergrowth. But someone could evidently see him… The impression was reinforced when a voice said, “Get out, come here—” and when he began to wade towards the shore, added “—and bring my arrow with you.”

Despite the risk of another, impatience-provoked shaft, he took a few minutes to wrap himself modestly in a large towel before following that emotionless voice to its source. The fat man was trying hard not to think about what had just happened, for either it was an exam-

pie of skilled archery or the bowman had intended to kill him and had missed. Neither alternative was appealing . . !

He was startled again only seconds later, this time by an extremely large black horse which appeared without warning from behind a tree. The animal was not hobbled—he could see as much from the way it moved— and it watched him for a moment or two before wandering back into the shade with a snort capable of several interpretations.

The archer, and by inference the horse’s owner, was lounging under an oak tree, his booted feet crossed atop a pile of saddlery and gear. There was a young woman seated with equal comfort by the bowman’s side, although her back was tensed and her face uncertain. There was no such unease about her companion—or it was concealed with consummate skill behind a palpable aura of restrained menace. The shadows cast by low, leaf-heavy branches effectively masked his features, and it seemed unlikely that they fell just-so by accident rather than design. There was a book set upside-down on the grass to keep its place while its reader folded his arms and dozed, or embraced his lady—or shot at unsuspecting swimmers with the great war bow resting negligently across his thighs.

At first sight everything appeared most casual, almost disorderly; but a second glance revealed purpose behind the chaotic scatter, based on access to the quite unreasonable quantity of weapons this couple carried with them. Besides the longbow in plain view there was a second, much shorter, cased and hanging from the saddle-footstool, with filled quivers for each; and there was a pair of
telekin
neatly holstered either side of the pommel, a dirk at the man’s belt and a longsword propped within easy reach.

Hilt and harness, boots, bow and breeches were all stark black, and there was a black wolfskin rolled into a cushion between the stranger’s head and the tree trunk against which he reclined. His shirt was white, open to the waist and with its sleeves rolled up; there was a bracer strapped to one brown forearm and a thumb-ringed shooting-glove on the other hand. Silver glittered in the hollow of his throat, a thick torque with a pendant talisman of some kind, and at sight of that metal the fat man relaxed visibly.

“What did I do that you find calming?” The voice still used Drusalan, but now, closer, there was an undertone of some out-of-place accent.

“Silver,” the fat man replied with a nod towards it, privately surprised that his voice was so steady. “At least you’re not—” a quick, rather insincere grin as if to prove he spoke in jest “—not some forest demon.”

At his words the girl sat more upright still, making a soft sound of surprise. “A strange thing for any man to say, Kourgath,” she murmured, and the suspicion in her tone was intended to be heard.

Too late now to abandon any commission
... thought the fat man apprehensively, looking at the bow, the
telekin
and the longsword and beginning to fear for his safety. And for his dignity: the towel around his ample waist was working loose. He tugged at it, grateful for something to do with hands that threatened to tremble at any moment, and when he looked up found himself being studied by a single grey-green eye in a much younger face than he had expected to see. Clean-shaven and very brown, there was the stark diagonal of a patch across brow, right eye and cheekbone. As he returned stare for stare with the advantage of two eyes on his side, he saw the archer’s gloved right hand come up to ease his patch a little- lower as if hiding something.