The Serpent Page 3

  That was true even if Timmons supported her for at least a little while after they arrived. There were a lot of things in this world that I didn’t think were right, but I couldn’t change most of them. And not everybody shared my opinions, anyway.

  Timmons stopped and turned to face us at a fork in the Road. “You’ll take the left way, then,” he said. “It’s not as far to where Errol was as it’ll take us to go back to Boyd and finally get a meal.

  “Clara,” he said in a harsher voice. “Come along right now unless you want to stay here.”

  The maid looked at me; hopefully, I thought. “She’s going back with you,” I said. “I don’t know how this is going to go, but it’s no place for her. Come along, Baga. We’re going to meet some people.”

  Sam started up the branch without me even touching him. You and your dog get that way pretty quick, especially if you’ve fought together. Which we were likely to be doing again shortly. The hairs on the back of Sam’s neck were starting to bristle so he was smelling my expectations in my sweat.

  “Going to get your hardware out, sir?” Baga asked as we strode along.

  “Not until we’ve met these other folks,” I said. “If I walk in on them tooled up, they’ve got to fight. And I’d rather not if I don’t have to.”

  “You’re going to have to, boss,” Baga said. I was pretty sure he was right.

  We reached a blotch in the Waste which marked the Road’s conjunction with a node. I said to Baga, “You can wait on the Road if you like.”

  “And if they scrag you, do what?” he said. “Or did you figure to leave Sam out here too? Go on, boss. I said I was with you, didn’t I?”

  * * *

  We walked through the hazy barrier into a node which must once have been a city but which had been overtaken by waves of reddish sand. Walls and columns were visible for as far as I could see, except where the dunes were at their highest.

  A group of men clustered near a campfire. They’d either have packed in the wood or found the corpse of a desiccated tree overwhelmed by the sand. There were at least a dozen of them and a group of dogs interspersed among them.

  “Good day, masters,” I called as I walked toward the group. The nearest of the men was ten feet away. The dogs had started up and several began yapping; Sam ignored them like the trained professional he was.

  “I’m looking for a missing woman,” I said. My arms were loose by my sides. “Lady Irene of Banft. Have any of you seen her?”

  Along with the dogs, several men had jumped to their feet also. One of them was a fellow well over six feet tall with red hair. “Diccon,” he ordered. “See him off!”

  The man closest to me was a teenager with wispy hair. He drew his weapon and shield and stepped toward me. The hardware was no great shakes but would have set a peasant back a full summer’s harvest.

  I pulled my gear out of my pockets. The rest of the gang stood up. Several of them grunted in surprise to see that I wasn’t unarmed after all.

  Diccon came on. He tried to put himself in a posture of defense but he had no training. I cut at his shield low and overloaded it in a shower of sparks and a momentary blue haze. My stroke finished by severing the boy’s right leg at mid-thigh.

  He toppled onto his side. I leaped over his body, and laid into the rest of the gang before they realized they were in a serious battle. One I thrust through the chest before he got his shield on. A second was trying to run away when I swiped him spine-deep across the back.

  I tried to get the red-haired leader but rather than face me he sprang off the node, accompanied by a brindled lurcher with a lot of collie in him. One of the remaining band made a full-armed swing at me. I took the blow on my shield without bothering to parry. His weapon came near to overloading from the stroke which the shield shrugged off untroubled.

  He ran onto the Road just as his leader had, and the rest of the gang followed without hesitation. I realized I was lucky. There were still eight or nine of them and their arms, though not of top quality, would have permitted them to surround me and bring me down if they’d had time to think.

  That of course was why I’d attacked the way I had, giving the gang no time to plan.

  I continued to face the barrier in case some of them came back to the node to try conclusions. None of them did. I looked at the bodies I’d felled in my first rush. Baga had put a tourniquet on Diccon’s leg. My chest thrust had opened the second man like a deer unlaced for the hounds which had hunted it. The man with the severed spine lay facedown as he’d fallen. His fingers opened and closed without strength and his eyes blinked as he looked at me. He didn’t speak.

  I was shaking with exhaustion. If any of the gang had remained in the node I would have continued killing them—living on my nerves. Now that the pressure had come off, I was a marionette whose strings had been cut. I’m not sure how I could have reacted if the guards had come back then.

  Baga returned from the tents with a double armload of blankets. The guards had been carrying much more baggage than was normal on the Road where humans were the primary beast of burden. They’d been hired primarily as porters since Lady Irene couldn’t be left to rough it. Perhaps if Lord Ercole had been choosing guards rather than menials and trusting defense to a Champion, he would have considered their character more carefully.

  “What do we do now, boss?” Baga said. He looked into the pot hanging over the fire by its bail. I’d already checked to find dried meat and potatoes which had probably been carried dried also.

  “We wait,” I said. “According to her maid, Lady Irene regularly vanished back at Banft but she always returned. We can only hope that she does the same this time. We could search the ruins but I wouldn’t expect to have better luck than the guards did earlier.”

  “Whatever you say, boss,” Baga said. “I sure don’t have a better idea.”

  Neither did I, but this didn’t seem to me to be a very good one.

  CHAPTER 3

  Damsel in Distress

  Baga was sleeping in one of the two tents with Diccon, who was still alive. Sam and I used the groundsheet as a low cover. He nestled his back close to me for the warmth. I felt him when he stirred and raised my head though I hadn’t heard anything myself.

  My eyes caught motion in the direction Sam was facing. In a low voice I said, “Lady Irene, we are friends and the guards are gone. I am Pal of Beune, one of Jon’s Champions.”

  She’d been heading toward the cold fire, so I added, “There’s food and water here.”

  “Look,” she said in a harsh, angry voice. She was holding something in her right hand, but I didn’t think it was a weapon. “I can return to the Underworld in an instant. You can’t hold me.”

  “I don’t want to hold you,” I said. We were still speaking in low voices, but I saw the flap of Baga’s tent twitch. I hoped he wouldn’t come out because I believed Irene about vanishing whenever she wanted to. “I want to escort you wherever you want to go. A wounded guard told me that was Westbriggan, though I’ll have to ask people along the way for directions. Unless you know all the turns yourself.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Irene asked. Her dim figure didn’t exactly relax, but she seemed less like a frightened fawn.

  I sat up, leaning so that the ground sheet didn’t brush the top of my head.

  “I’m a Champion,” I repeated, though I wasn’t sure Irene knew what that entailed. “I heard that Jon had assigned another Champion, Lord Frobier, to escort you but he’d taken sick. People told me that you’d fallen into the hands of really bad men, so I followed to rescue you. You didn’t need rescue, but I thought you might still need an escort. I offer myself.”

  “You’re a friend of Frobier?” she said.

  “I am not,” I said. “I make the offer out of duty to the Leader Jon and to the Commonwealth itself. We Champions can’t make all Mankind safe, but we make it better when we’re able to. This is a case I think I can make better, if you’ll let me.”

  Irene
sighed. “If you can give me some water, that will help me for now. And after that we can discuss other matters.”

  I waved toward Baga’s tent and called, “Bring the canteen out for the lady, Baga.”

  * * *

  Lady Irene drank greedily. She wiped the wooden mouth of the bottle with the palm of her hand, but she didn’t insist on a tumbler.

  “Why do you want to go to Westbriggan?” I asked. Baga offered her one of our own sausages; the guards probably had a store of food also.

  “My cousin Sarah won’t force me to go to Lord Diederich,” she explained. “She never liked my father and would be horrified that he sold me to Diederich—for that’s what it was.”

  “I very much doubt that Jon would force you to go to Diederich,” I said. “He can’t have understood the actual situation when he directed Lord Frobier.”

  “Are you sure?” Irene said. “Frobier didn’t seem to care what I thought.”

  “Lord Frobier isn’t here,” I said. “I’ll venture to take you to Dun Add and stand as your Champion before Jon if that’s even necessary.”

  “You will?” she said. “Why would you do that?”

  I smiled. “Because it’s my duty,” I said, “and I believe in justice. Understand, that’s assuming that the facts are as you say. If they aren’t, you’re on your own, so make up your mind to tell the truth—or else go to Westbriggan if your cousin doesn’t care about the truth.”

  “If you’ll stand by me with the Leader,” Lady Irene said, “I’d much prefer to go to Dun Add.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do,” I said. I looked around. It was close enough to dawn that the sky was noticeably bright in the East. Lady Irene for the first time noticed the two bodies who lay where they’d fallen Baga, and I had no tools with which to bury them, even in loose sand. I suppose we could have scooped with our bare hands but I didn’t feel like doing that—nor ordering Baga to.

  “What happened to them?” Irene asked.

  “They attacked me,” I said. “There’s a wounded one in Baga’s tent that I guess I’ll send folks from Boyd back to get. If he’s still alive.”

  “I see,” said Irene. Then she said, “Do we have to go back to Boyd?”

  I thought for a moment. “No,” I said. “We can turn the other way when we leave here. If you’d like, we’ll do that.”

  I wasn’t afraid of Lord Frobier, especially given how sick he’d been when I’d last seen him. I was just as glad to avoid a nasty interview, though. “Do you need to sleep before we set off then?”

  “No,” Irene said. “I’m ready to leave right now.”

  * * *

  Baga and I were travelling light, and we hadn’t really unpacked anyway, so it was only a minute or two before I could help him shrug the pack onto his back. We were all—Sam included—glad to get away from this nameless node. I would ask somebody to go back for Diccon, but if no one at the next node was interested in doing so, I wasn’t going to lose sleep. I’d been trying to kill the boy, after all, to save our own lives.

  “Ma’am?” Baga said. “Your ladyship, I guess. Since we’re all friends now… Where in heaven is it that you go off to when you disappear?”

  I wasn’t certain we were all friends, at least in Irene’s mind, but it was a question I’d been wondering about too.

  “I was raised by a Maker named Master Sans,” she said after a moment. She gestured with the bundle of yarrow stalks she was carrying in her right hand. “He’d found or maybe made a place that isn’t really part of Here. He could get into it by going into a Maker’s trance but it took time and concentration. Have you ever seen a Maker working?”

  “I’m a Maker myself,” I said. I knew exactly how much effort was required.

  “Well, Sans wanted a quicker process and he thought he could turn me into a key with some tools the Ancients had left in the place he’d found,” Irene said. “Sans called it the Underworld, so I do too. I don’t need these—” She waggled the yarrow stalks “—but they make it quicker for me to open the passage than it would be without throwing them. A crutch, if you will. Do you male Makers use them too?”

  “A few do, yes,” I said. “There’s one of the weaponsmiths in Master Louis’s shop who always looks into a kaleidoscope before he starts work. But ma’am—from what you said, do you think of yourself as a Maker yourself?”

  “Of course I do,” she said. “Of course I am. I go into a trance and adjust atoms to create devices the way the Ancients did. What would you call it?”

  I thought about it. “I’ve never known a female Maker,” I said. “And with men we’re moving actual atoms. But that isn’t what you’re doing, is it? I mean you’re not making things the way I do? Not that I could see afterward when I looked after you reappeared.”

  Irene looked increasingly angry. “So,” she said. “You couldn’t see it so I didn’t really open a way from Here to the Underworld? I suppose I didn’t vanish either?”

  “Ma’am,” I said, “I’m just trying to understand. You surely vanished, but I don’t see how from looking where you were afterward.”

  “Then I suppose the pattern in the air atoms reformed after it opened a path for me,” she said. “Do you expect me to know what happens after I’ve left?”

  “No ma’am,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. “I was just trying to understand.”

  After a moment I cleared my throat and added, “Ma’am, is this something I could learn to do?”

  “Master Sans taught himself to enter the Underworld on his own,” Irene said. “He found the tools he used to train me in the Underworld so he didn’t have the use of them yet. I suppose you could do the same thing.”

  “But if I did use the training devices?” I said.

  Irene paused on the Road and looked hard at me. “If I were to give you access to the tools,” she said, “I suppose it would be easier than it would without the training. I will tell you, though, that Master Sans used the tools frequently but he never became as skilled as I am in going between Here and the Underworld. He decided that women’s minds were better for the purpose.”

  I said, “Thank you. I like to understand things, and I thought that might make it easier for me to do that.”

  I regretted the defensive tone in everything Irene said to me, but she’d replied and I could be polite. As Clara had said, Irene had had a strange upbringing. I didn’t imagine either her father or Master Sans were good introductions to men.

  “Your father’s still alive, I gather,” I said. “What of Master Sans, though?”

  “He had a crystal pavilion in the Underworld where he worked,” she said, “but there was a great park around it with a herd of deer. I don’t know if he stocked the park itself or found them there the way he found everything else. He made sex dolls for my father from newborn fawns. They didn’t live very long, but when one died I was sent down to escort a new one up to my father. When I went down most recently, I found that a monster had entered the park. From the Waste, I suppose.”

  She took a deep breath and went on, “Sans wasn’t in the pavilion when I entered, I always entered there. I went out into the compound and the deer were gone but I found hooves and lower legs. The ends were ragged, bitten off. I didn’t see Master Sans, but the thing came out of the Waste and chased me back to the pavilion and it almost got me. It was a mouse—only it was huge and it had a really long snout and it wriggled through the doorway at me but it couldn’t quite reach. It was awful.”

  I’d seen beasts from the Waste. There can’t have been many of them, though I’d seen two. The first was home on Beune when I was a kid, I guess a slug if it hadn’t been so huge and eating a farmer’s field down to the bedrock.

  I got credit with the neighbors for driving it back into the Waste with a weapon I made myself from a rock drill and took seven minutes to recharge. All I credit myself with is standing there when the thing came toward me. I deserve credit for courage—and maybe for luck, that the thing had decided to wander o
ff after I’d pricked it but probably for no reason to do with me.

  The other was something that looked like a dragon and I suppose was, flying to a node that wasn’t on the Road and happened to be where a villain with a boat had marooned a girl. That one I truly had driven off. I figured I could do the same for this mouse that Irene had seen—if I ever needed to.

  “I went back to Banft without a doll,” Irene concluded. “My father was furious. The envoys who’d come from Lord Diederich were still there and father accepted Diederich’s offer for me.”

  “That’s awful,” I said. There are plenty of bad parents, in Dun Add as surely as there had been on Beune, but I’d never heard of anything as brutally callous as what Irene had just described.

  “I suppose it is,” she said. “Going to Dun Add seemed a better choice than going to Lord Diederich or returning home until my father found another buyer for me.”

  “That isn’t right,” I said.

  I couldn’t speak for the Commonwealth, but I could sure speak to Jon. I didn’t think I’d need to be very forceful with Jon, though I was certainly willing to be. Actually where my mind was leaning was to carry Irene back to Banft and put my opinion of Lord Ercole’s behavior to him directly. The purpose of the Commonwealth was to replace feud and private murder with a system of courts and trials. To give in to my personal will would subvert the system I was sworn to uphold. I wasn’t going to do that.

  Sam noted the flaw in the Waste that marked the entrance and turned toward it before I directed him. I hoped there was a proper inn where we were stopping. I’m perfectly willing to doss down on an uninhabited node, but yesterday and last night hadn’t been very restful.

  The inn was right on the edge of landingplace. Mostly they were set back deeper in the node because until recently some of the travellers down the Road weren’t folks you really wanted to meet. This inn’s location was a real pat on the Commonwealth’s back.

  There was a stable for dogs to the right of the two-story frame building. The casement windows in front had lace curtains; I could see movement behind them.