The Dinosaur Lords (29 page)

—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES

The villa’s banquet hall had been painted with astounding skill. It appeared to have no walls at all. Instead sunlit meadows and hedges bursting with white and purple blooms surrounded it. Vines twined up to and across square roofbeams. Behind a dais at the front of the room rose a tree so realistic Rob half expected a breeze to stir its widespread boughs. Although the wine he kept putting away at a healthy pace may have had as much to do with that as art. Almost in spite of himself he found the effect enchanting.

Rob sat at the large table on the dais. At the other end Karyl sat next to Bogardus, with a dozen or so odd fish who constituted Providence’s ruling Council eating their dinners in between. For a pack of self-proclaimed egalitarians, they looked conspicuously better bred and better fed than your common ruck of Gardner, just as Rob, the ever-cynical, had cynically expected. For some unaccountable reason, a youth who was as obvious a grounding as he was occupied the seat beside him.

The young man nudged Rob in the ribs. The wine had so mellowed Rob that he refrained from giving the lout the clout that he deserved.

“See that servant over there?” the Gardener asked over the mosquito-buzz of a hundred diners. “The grey-bearded old fellow?”

A tall, spare man, elderly but straight-backed in an unbleached hemp smock, stood decanting golden wine on a sideboard by the kitchen door.

“What about him?” Rob asked.

“That’s none other than Comte
É
tienne, former ruler of all Providence.”

The talkative young man was of medium height, a bit shorter and less sturdy than Rob, though altogether serviceable. His face was blue-eyed, open, and square-jawed beneath a shock of white-blond hair. Rob had yet to catch his name and was disinclined to make an effort to. It had been a long day.

Even if this lad wasn’t playing the supercilious little prick the way the first lot had, Rob would rather have sat beside a female. The Garden grew some lovely specimens. Sadly they hadn’t thawed perceptibly toward the newcomers. Except for the green-eyed lass with the chestnut hair, who was nowhere to be seen.

“Is he, now?” Rob said.

“He gave it all up,” Towhead said, “to serve Beauty and Truth as a common Gardener.”

“Perhaps that accounts for his somewhat sunken-eyed look.” Much as he hated the nobility, Rob could scarcely conceive of any of them voluntarily giving up their status.

“Oh, he’s far happier, he says. Took the notion from Mor Jaume’s own father, Carles, you know. When Jaume was just a boy, all the court gossips claimed he was weak, unworthy to rule dels Flors. Then he defeated the mountain bandits, stilled all those wagging tongues, and the old Count abdicated in his favor. Now Jaume roves the Tyrant’s Head as Imperial Champion and leader of the Companions, and Carles administers the county in his stead as seneschal.”

“I didn’t know that,” Rob said. To his mind there seemed a sizable gap between scullion and viceroy. It surely didn’t sound as if Jaume’s dad had given up more than the title itself.

But what do I know?
he thought.
I’m a Traveler, a rogue, and a
dinosaur master. To say much the same thing three different ways.

He turned his attention toward the table’s head, where Bogardus spoke earnestly to Karyl.

“Oh, Guillaume’s no fool. At least, not a total one. He leaves traffic on the Imperial High Road strictly alone. The Empire may wink at slave-taking among suspected heretics, especially out here on its fringes. The spice and spider-silk caravans from Ovda are another thing entirely.”

“That must be why Cr
è
ve Coeur raiders never troubled us on our way,” called out Rob, would felt left out, loud enough to carry.

The intervening Garden Councilors shot him an assortment of disapproving glares and catfish mouths. He met them with a smirk.

Bogardus, calm as ever, simply said, “No doubt.”

Heroically refraining from showing the Councilors the Upraised Finger of Triumph, Rob simply narrowed them out of his focus and concentrated on the conversation in which he’d now been tacitly included.

“Are your other neighbors attacking you?” Karyl asked.

“Not as much as Guillaume is. Comtesse C
é
lestine of M
é
tairie Brul
é
e is ruthless and more than ruthless. Her father won the fief by burning the former Count in his own farmhouse, thus the name. She’s his true daughter. Other people’s pain acts upon her, it’s said, the way poetry, painting, and song act on us. She isn’t allergic to money and power, though.”

“She’s a hunchback,” Rob’s painfully blond dinner partner told him. “It might sour her outlook.”

“Ra
ú
l of Casta
ñ
a—” Bogardus shrugged. “He’s content to follow if others lead. So long as they lead him toward profit. In fact I suspect he and C
é
lestine both are content to wait until Guillaume commits to invading us. Then when we’re engaged, they’ll happily fall on us from behind.”

“Are they capable?” Karyl asked.

“Count Guillaume is the ablest of the three, although he may be more clever than truly intelligent. He’s ambitious. If he possesses any moral compass other than his belly and his peter, no one’s yet discovered it.”

Rob hoisted his wineglass. “You’ve the soul of a poet.”

Bogardus laughed. “If only I had the poet’s skill at words.”

Despite his disclaimer and the softness of his tone, Rob noticed how the conversation died away around them whenever he spoke. Most of the diners leaned forward to catch his words.

“You’ve also got some grip on strategy,” Karyl said, “which is more than most. Even those who make a profession of war. Are you sure you need us?”

“Do you like the way the hall is painted?” Bogardus asked.

Karyl shrugged. “I’m no one to ask such a question of. For all my eye and ear for art, I might as well be a lead statue of a hornface. Still, I can see it’s well executed. And I like to see a thing well done.”

“Fair enough,” Bogardus said with a regal nod. “Our finest musicians have skilled fingers indeed. But I’d never ask Jeannette or Robert to paint the hall. Following Jaume, we encourage everyone to find their own voices in the arts; and following him we encourage excellence.

“I know which end of a sword to hold. I know what battle feels like—and sounds and smells like too, much to my sorrow. And I’m no more suited to train or lead our defense force than I am to paint the hall with my feet. That’s your art, Mor Karyl.”

Rob broke off another chunk of bread and tore at its tough crust with his teeth. It was good bread. Somewhat to his surprise the fare was plain, if splendidly prepared: steamed vegetables, beans with onions, and no meat grander than roast scratcher and bouncer. He ate with appetite, as befit a minstrel who never knew when he’d get the chance again. Especially inasmuch as he and Karyl were here on sufferance, not yet guaranteed so much as a roof over their heads for the night.

Bogardus acted well disposed to his guests, and seemed very much in charge no matter how much he disclaimed formal authority. But Rob reckoned strayed priests weren’t much less subject to whim than any other sort of ruler. He certainly sensed ample sentiment among the other Gardeners in favor of sending the travelers off toward the border with a raptor-pack snapping at their calves.

“And speaking of art, and the wonderful painting that surrounds us,” Bogardus said, “allow me to introduce the prodigy who made it: Lucas.”

He smiled and nodded at the towheaded young man who sat next to Rob. The youngster’s face turned pink. He hunched his head down between his thick shoulders and stammered something incoherent.

“In all Providence nobody wields a paintbrush with more skill,” Bogardus said.

“Is that so?” Rob asked, turning to regard Lucas with some respect. He’d been wondering what earned the boy a seat at the important table.

“How well can your people fight?” Karyl asked.

Rob heard a joint intake of breath, as if the soft-voiced Slavo had shouted an obscenity.

“Not well enough,” Bogardus said. “Not even against armored infantry, to say nothing of armored knights on horseback. Or worse, dinosaur-back. As I said, our people fight fiercely to defend their homes. But they don’t have much skill. To tell the truth, our Garden’s discouraged even self-defense until it became painfully, not to say bloodily, clear that words and thoughts, however beautiful, couldn’t stay the hands of Guillaume’s marauders.”

Reaction rumbled through the hall. To Rob’s well-tuned ears it hummed with something near rebellion
. Do some of these Gardeners disapprove of self-defense?
He found that hard to grasp.

“All resistance does is make the intruders angrier,” said the woman who sat next to Karyl. “No good can come from violence.”

For the first time since Rob had clapped eyes on him, Bogardus frowned. “We’ve discussed this, Sister Violette.”

She was a markedly handsome woman of perhaps sixty—mature, but not yet middle-aged. She was tall and slim, with silvery hair hanging down the back of a shimmery grey gown. Rob judged she’d once been Lady Violette from the softness of her fine, long hands, which clearly hadn’t spent a lot of time sunk to the forearms in hot washing water, nor chopping vegetables.

Her age didn’t much bother Rob; the older ones were more appreciative of his attentions, if not outright grateful for them. What put him off was the way her lean-cast features had a touch of the raptor to them.

“And we’ve never achieved a satisfactory resolution, Bogardus,” she said. “We can’t just jettison our principles because they’ve grown inconvenient.”

Rob thought murder and slave raids a trifle more than
inconvenient
. But judging from the way Gardeners nodded and whispered to each other, that might well be a minority opinion here.

Karyl finished his meal. Laying down his utensils, he sat back and leaned his walking stick against his shoulder. He fixed his intense dark eyes on Bogardus.

“You’ve been a priest of Maia,” he said, “and a soldier of sorts, it seems.”

“The Great Mother calls on us to serve in various ways.”

“But you arrived eventually at pacifism. Why forsake it now?”

“I’ve asked the same question,” Violette said triumphantly. She looked around the hall for support. Rob reckoned she got more of it than boded well for his and Karyl’s employment prospects.

“Reality intruded,” Bogardus said. “Where is
beauty
in allowing my fellow Gardeners to be brutalized in the most horrific ways?”

“So you want us to train a land full of pacifists to battle dinosaur knights,” Karyl said.

Bogardus sighed. “It sounds hopeless when it’s so baldly put. I’ll understand if you gentlemen decide it’s hopeless in fact and choose to withdraw.”

“It would be best for all concerned,” Violette said.

Karyl smiled. “We’ll need a training ground. Open, a few hectares at least, the closer to town the better. We’ll also need a base of operations.”

“The old S
é
verin farm just southwest along the High Road lies vacant, Eldest Brother,” Lucas said reverently. “When the father was killed by a matador two years ago, the family moved to town. It’s got fallow fields.”

“That should serve,” Karyl said. “You need to have somebody round up volunteers.”

Sister Violette stretched and yawned ostentatiously. “This talk bores us, Bogardus,” she said.

“You hired us to take care of the situation,” Karyl said, “so there’s no need to concern yourself with it further.”

Violette’s near-pretty face hardened. Rob suspected she wasn’t used to being spoken to that way. It was a new tone in his acquaintance of the man: actually imperious, as if the erstwhile voyvod and much-feared mercenary dinosaur lord was making his return.

Maybe this is good
, he thought.
Maybe Karyl’s coming out of his fog. So long as he doesn’t annoy our employers enough that they run us off.

“Karyl’s right, Sister dear,” Bogardus said. His voice was all balm and honey. His smile, though, told Rob the Master Gardener was far from sorry to see the obviously influential Violette get her long nose bumped.

Karyl rose. “Very well. If you can find us quarters for the night, we’d be most appreciative.”

Rob stood up as well. It was more of an operation than he’d anticipated.
It seems I’ve taken more of their excellent wine on board than I realized,
he thought.

Bogardus raised a curious eyebrow. “Don’t you want some token of authority?”

“If the people of Providence need to be ordered to defend themselves,” Karyl said, “only the Creators can help them.”

Chapter
24

Chillador,
Squaller, Great Strider
—
Gallimimus bullatus.
Fast, bipedal, herbivorous dinosaurs with toothless beak; 6 meters long, 1.9 meters tall at the hips, 440 kilograms. Imported to Nuevaropa as a mount. Bred for varied plumage; distinguished by a flamboyant feather neck-ruff, usually light in color. Frequently ridden in battle by light-riders, as well as occasionally by knights and nobles too poor to afford war-hadrosaurs. Extremely truculent, with lethal beaks and kicking hind claws.