The Prodigal Troll (8 page)

Yvon nodded acceptance of this around a mouthful of oats. He followed along behind the lumbering tusker, using two fingers to spoon the food into his mouth. He licked the bowl clean when it was empty and stuffed it in his pack.

At the castle, their true identities would certainly be discovered. Yvon knew it. But if they arrived in darkness, and slipped away before the dawn, they had a chance.

The mammut handler talked constantly with Xaragitte as the leagues fell away beneath their feet. Yvon helped her down at the noon halt. "You must watch what you say," he whispered, with a nod at the jug-eared boy. "He'll report everything to the eunuch."

"He'll report that I love my baby and that my baby loves mammuts and silly songs." She changed Claye's position to the other breast. "What kind of name is Pwylla? It sounds like something you'd throw on a rug."

He didn't have anything to say to that.

"You have no honor at all, do you? You didn't have to give our names. But you lie, you break your word without a second thought-"

"Just don't mention his name," Yvon said, tilting his head at Claye.

She turned her shoulder against him. Every muscle in her neck looked taut and strained. "I said the baby's name was Kady. Kady, you hear me?"

Her dead lover's name. "Fine. Good."

"And I will say this for the Lady Sebius-unlike you, she has fed me and rested my feet."

Yvon finished eating the food that Sebius's boys had brought them, but it no longer had any flavor. This was not how he had pictured himself and Xaragitte. He didn't know why it had gone so wrong between them or how he could make it better.

Horns sounded, ending the halt almost as soon as it had begun. The Baron meant to push his men, and the men responded. Yvon respected that: battles were won that way. It was one more thing to report to Gruethrist when they met. Some of the mammuts bellowed in reply. Yvon helped Xaragitte back onto Giruma and walked beside the mammut as the march resumed. Xaragitte said something to the handler, and he goaded the old tusker up out of the rearguard.

Yvon stretched his sore legs to keep up with them. "Ho, there!" he cried. "Slow down!"

They didn't. Xaragitte clearly wanted to be away from him. The mammut lingered just at the edge of Yvon's view, Xaragitte's red hair bobbing along above Giruma's dark red fur. Yvon found himself walking among the cattle and the cattle herders. A small group of soldiers back in line considered him suspiciously. Soldiers had a way of recognizing one another, and so he tried, without much success, to carry himself less like a knight and more like a peasant.

A fatalistic mood overtook him, brought on by Xaragitte's treatment and the size of the army. Several times his hand strayed to the hilt of his concealed short sword. He wondered, chance permitting, if he should try to murder Baron Culufre. There'd be no escape afterward. It was a poor alternative to retirement, to taking up house with a young woman, but it might be the best way to help Lord Gruethrist.

With this in mind, he began to scan the army for the Baron; and so he missed the group of mammuts coming together near Xaragitte until he heard their trumpeting.

He twisted at the noise and found he couldn't reach her. The horns of the cattle filled the intervening space like an army's spears as Yvon watched a large tusker approach the mammut which carried Xaragitte and Claye. The smaller Giruma stopped, curling its trunk submissively back on its forehead, but the big tusker still seemed agitated and reared. Its handler shouted, striking his little crook-shaped goad fiercely to no effect. A third mammut approached at a trot.

The big tusker wheeled and attacked the newcomer. Ivory clashed on ivory, heavy feet pounded the ground, and men and beasts alike cried out as they scattered out of the way.

Yvon dodged frightened cattle in his attempt to reach the woman and child he'd sworn to protect. He lost sight of them in the confusion, but he heard the animal screams, the angry voices of several men, and above it all a woman's piercing shriek.

Other mammuts charged in with their beasts. When Yvon arrived at the tumult, one mammut was down on the ground, mouthing mournful sounds, its side slashed wide open. He pushed his way toward it, fearing-

No pack. It wasn't the one that carried Xaragitte.

He didn't see Xaragitte anywhere, couldn't pinpoint her screaming in all the confusion. He ran past a man on the ground, his right leg smashed into a bloody paste, and searched frantically among the milling mammuts and growing circle of soldiers, knights, and herders. Then he spied the huge tusker looming over all the others, and ran toward it.

The handler gripped the monster's neck, fear carved on his face like a totem of the war god. Wetness seeped from the side of the mammut's head: it'd gone into musk, the most dangerous time for tuskers. The other mammuts crowded in to herd the wild tusker away from the wounded animal and the crowd. They formed one surging mass of red and brown fur until a single mammut lurched away in fright, its burden slipping from its back. Xaragitte clung with one hand to a tusk-slashed rope as the animal spun around; her other hand squeezed the baby tight to her bosom. The skinny boy hopped around below her, alternately yelling at her to jump and hold on. The handler couldn't force the beast to kneel. A loose rope tangled in the mammut's legs was panicking it.

Yvon rushed over to catch Xaragitte at the same moment several soldiers did likewise. He shoved them out of the way to take hold of her, barely avoiding the mammut's feet as it bellowed wildly and reeled to one side.

The soldiers, already tense, were ready to rescue Xaragitte from Yvon. But she draped one arm around him, sobbing as Claye wailed with her sympathetically. "It was awful, awful," she cried. "I'm cursed! Everything I do is cursed!"

Several soldiers made the warding sign at her proclamation. Yvon might have echoed the gesture, but Xaragitte's knees sagged and he needed both hands to hold her up. One soldier started toward them. Glancing down, Yvon noticed that his short sword was partly visible. He shrugged his shoulder, shifting his cloak to hide it. The soldier hesitated, uncertain.

Another mammut rumbled just behind Yvon, and a voice spoke, more lordly and commanding than any Yvon had ever known.

"Is the lady injured?"

Xaragitte stopped crying, though one last shudder rolled through her body. She immediately stepped away from Yvon. Yvon turned and froze. Even the baby's eyes widened and his cries suddenly became hiccups.

For young Baron Culufre stood before them, atop a war mammut fit for a king. If not a god.

He looked very much like the Empress, Yvon thought.

laye's tears seemed to dry instantly on his face. He reached out toward the Baron's mammut. "Mahmah!"

It loomed fourteen feet tall, clad from trunk to tail in iron plate and chain mail set with emeralds and lesser gems. Swords too large for any man to wield adorned its tusks. The Baron stood just behind the handler, so sure of his balance that he held onto nothing. His armor matched the mammut's, with jewels set likewise upon his breast and helm, though even the emeralds did not glitter as much as his bright green eyes. His braid was formed of many smaller braids, all bound together, as if he were an army of knights embodied by one man-which, as Baron, he was.

"Is the lady injured?" he repeated in his deep voice.

"She's frightened, that's all," Yvon answered, finding his tongue. His hand twitched toward his hidden sword, but he knew he could never strike and kill the Baron, not here, much less kill him and escape. The back of his neck itched. Remembering that he was braidless, he ducked his bare head and added, "Your Magnificence."

"You served her and the child well to catch them so. How do you serve Us?" The imperial plural.

Yvon now doubted the resemblance to the Empress was chance. But before he could answer, Sebius appeared like a blister after a long march. "This is the man I told you of this morning, Brother. Bran, a farmer of this valley."

Brother?

Yvon looked again and saw the resemblance in the shape of their faces, their stature. It had been too long since he'd been in the Imperial City or followed the brackish currents of its gossip-were these two of the Empress's sons? Perhaps only favored nephews, children of her sisters. But certainly chosen for great things if one this young had been wedded to the aged Lady Culufre. Yvon was willing to bet the Baron's next wife would be some promising younger daughter of a minor house, named heir to the Culufre title. It explained the newness of the eunuch also. A man owned only what he could carry with him to hunt or war, but a eunuch had all the property rights of women, and the Empress's gifts to Sebius would be available to the young Baron Culufre. Sebius might even be the more favored of the two.

This complicated Lord Gruethrist's chances for victory.

"Ah, yes, We recall," Culufre answered. "Whither do you fare, farmer Bran?"

Yvon struggled to recall what he'd told Sebius. "We go to rejoin my niece's family in the mountains."

Culufre permitted himself a small, deliberate smile in Sebius's direction. "We appreciate the importance of families. It is Our great hope that We shall make life at this edge of the realm easier for all families. To that goal, We shall send Our mammuts on to visit Lady Eleuate. You shall travel with them, and tell Our men all you know of the surrounding country."

Claye hiccuped in the silence that followed.

Xaragitte stepped toward Yvon. She shook her head, stroking Claye's scalp, but whether it was to soothe him or herself, Yvon could not say.

Culufre missed nothing. "Please inform your niece that she should not be dismayed. She shall not be required to ride Our mammuts again if they fill her with trepidation. But We enjoin you to travel with them, on Our behalf, to more quickly speed her to her family's domicile."

He stared at Yvon. At the last moment Yvon remembered to duck his head. "Thank you three times, Your Magnificence, thank you." When he lifted his eyes again, the Baron had already turned to the wounded mammut and gave orders there.

Yvon slowly unclenched his fists. Baron Culufre would be a hard man to dislodge from the valley. But Gruethrist had settled the valley. He was a hard man too and knew the country better, if only he could escape the castle.