The Prodigal Troll Part 4

"Ah! But a thirsty man is glad for even the smallest drop that wets his tongue. Do you have much experience with cattle?"

"None at all, but for the team that pulls a plow." And that some forty years ago, as a boy. He saw no need to be so specific.

"That is a difficult task," Sebius said, absurdly pleased. "You will talk to me, and perhaps in the weeks and months, nay years, to come we shall labor side by side. I cast divination bones before we departed the Imperial City, and they indicated that my future and fortune would be made by a man named Bran."

Chills s.h.i.+vered through Yvon. "It's not an uncommon name."

"But you are an uncommon man." Sebius continued to grin. "Yes, anyone can see there is something hidden about you. Make my fortune here as the bones foretold, and I shall see you never want for anything again."

The other boy returned, bearing bowls of boiled oats mixed with maple syrup. He gave both to Yvon, to preserve his dignity, and Yvon pa.s.sed one up to Xaragitte. She murmured thanks.

Sebius grabbed the boy roughly by the shoulder and shook him. "Fetch this lovely woman, the image of Bwnte herself, watered wine to drink. Not a drop for yourself or I'll have you beaten! And when you return, remain in her service throughout the day." The lad darted off, and Sebius turned to Yvon. "I must attend to other duties now, but I've marked the boy and you may order him about as you like."

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 ident.i.ties 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 s.p.a.ce 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 G.o.d. 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 ma.s.s 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, s.h.i.+fting 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 G.o.d.

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 t.i.tle. 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.

The dust rose up Yvon's nose, carrying with it the smell of mammut and cattle, and his ears were filled with the sounds of herders and soldiers and a lone man's keening weep.

"Bran, my friend," Sebius said at his side, "I am very glad that no harm came to your niece. And more than glad that you will help us find our way here. The Baron will certainly reward you, as will I."

Yvon drew a deep breath, and became aware that he'd been holding it. "I am grateful for your aid already. Nothing more is required."

"Perhaps, when the herds are settled, your niece will permit me to visit you and pay her my respects. I owe you compensation for leading her into danger today. It was not my intention."

"And thus requires no forgiveness. It is forgotten as if it never happened. But you will be welcome when you come." Welcomed with a sharp blade perhaps. Although Sebius might prove a useful hostage too, if the chance presented itself.

"We will talk again," Sebius said. "I beg three pardons, but you will excuse me now? I must see to calming the herds. Please excuse me."

Yvon bowed slightly. "A lady comes and goes about her land as she wishes."

Sebius grinned smugly and hurried off.

Yvon turned to Xaragitte. He reached out to her and she withdrew, bouncing Claye against her shoulder to still his hiccups.

"Where is our bag?" she asked. Looking after their possessions, as was her right and duty.

Yvon's head swiveled as if he expected to find the bag nearby. He didn't remember dropping it, but he no longer carried it either. They'd need the blankets to survive the colder nights up in the mountains on their way to Lady Eleuate's. "I beg your pardon, m'lady," he said, mortified.

He ran in search of it at once. Retracing his footsteps proved nearly impossible, but he saw two ragged boys tugging at something where the cattle had been and when he took it from them and chased them off, it proved to be the bag, trampled by cattle and ripped open by their hooves. He peered inside. Their blankets were still there, but the bowl he'd stolen was shattered into a thousand shards. A bad sign, he thought, as he shook the fragments into the churned ground.

His way back through the crowds of animals and people was blocked by the mammut handlers leading their charges toward the river's edge. The Baron's wizard held the hem of his silver-threaded robes out of the mud as he walked along with them to sing the demons at bay. He was a middle-aged man, young for his role, and therefore powerful. No doubt a.s.signed by the Empress herself, another gift to Culufre. Or Sebius.

The eunuch stood with Xaragitte. "The tuskers are heading down to the river," Yvon called out. "Going to bathe?"

"Yes, yes," Sebius replied. "The Baron has decided to call a halt for the night, and so arrive at the castle tomorrow when he'll have the complete day to settle affairs there, instead of at dusk tonight. I came to inquire if you and your niece might join me for the evening meal?" Yvon felt like a man sinking in quickmud. "We ..."

Sebius stood formally, right arm across the waist, left arm extended, as a woman did at the threshold of her house. "The campfire is my home tonight. M'lady Pwllya is invited with her child and escort to partake of the best my humble table has to offer."

Xaragitte straightened her shoulders, flipping Claye around in her arms to face the eunuch. "We are honored to accept your invitation, m'lady."

Sebius clapped. "Most, most excellent. Now I beg you, yet again, to excuse me."

Xaragitte glared at the eunuch's back as she hurried away. "I hate her," she said, rocking the child on her arm. "She means to rob Lady Gruethrist."

The experience with the mammut seemed to have changed her att.i.tude. "Let's just eat her food and sleep a bit," Yvon said, "so that we'll have the strength we need when we must escape."

"I'm strong enough now to do whatever must be done," she replied. "Let me know when you are too."

She turned her back on him and carried Claye away.

At sunset, they sat a little apart from the herders on a hillside above the river and ate porridge mixed with strips of meat so salty it was impossible to tell what animal it had once been. Yvon scooped his into his mouth with his fingers and thought it delicious, eating slowly to be gentle on his recovering stomach. Xaragitte set her bowl down to play a clapping game with the baby.

Claye leaned his head back, his mouth as wide as a nestling bird's. He wagged it from side to side and said "Ahhhhhh!" Xaragitte opened her mouth all the way too and leaned toward him, pulling his hands to the sides and pretending to chomp on his nose. He giggled, and she clapped his pudgy hands again.

Yvon watched them, thinking about the rhyme. Any story told about two G.o.ds in any of their guises was always, really, about the third. The G.o.ddess Bwnte might bake the moon, and her son Sceatha, G.o.d of war, might spit it out. But in another story, Verlogh, G.o.d of justice, gathered up the fallen crumbs and planted them in the ground where they sprouted up as people.

Claye closed his mouth more with each repet.i.tion, imitating his nurse. When his lips were tight shut, she kissed his mouth and told him he was a good boy. He tucked his chin into his chest, grinning, but she set him down to rub her chest just above her heart. Claye grabbed a handful of porridge from Xaragitte's bowl and flung it on the ground.

Yvon started up. "Hey! Don't let him waste that!"

A hand fell on his shoulder and he jumped. Sebius's high voice said, "No, no, no, that's fine. With such a lovely child, how can anything be wasteful?"

Xaragitte sucked Claye's hand clean in her mouth and wiped it on her skirt. She stood, lifting the little boy. "I'm glad to see you, m'lady Sebius," she said, without a trace of gladness, "so that I may thank you thrice for your hospitality. But the day has tired us, and we should sleep."

There was a different imperial plural in her voice, thought Yvon: the royal we of every mother and her child. It did not include him.

"Of course," the eunuch chirped. "Is there anything additional I may do?"

"You've done too much already," she replied. Taking her blankets from the pack, she went a short distance away. Yvon watched her go, wondering what had happened to the cheerful woman he had once watched from afar in the castle.

Sebius lay her staff on the ground and sat beside Yvon with her own bowl of food. "I see how she looks at you, and how you look at her."

Yvon jumped a second time. "What do you mean?"

Sebius smiled around a mouthful of food. "It is obvious that you are not her uncle, and also that the child is not yours. You stand like a beggar outside her door."

A saying among men, out of place on the lips of a eunuch: A woman's body is her home-only those that she invites inside should enter: "It's not like that between us."

Sebius laughed aloud, covering her mouth to prevent spilling the porridge. "Did I tell you? The divination bones foretold that I would meet a man in this valley named Bran, and he would make my fortune for me."

A s.h.i.+ver shot up Yvon's spine. Like most knights, he stayed away from divination. A man could go forward into battle with a clear heart only if he didn't know the outcome.

"So, to bind our friends.h.i.+p," the eunuch continued, "I will give you this advice. A woman outside her home, out in the wilderness, is always anxious. More especially if she has a child with her. You, my friend Bran, should deliver the lady Pwylla to her family. Then return to help me, and I will see that you have new clothes." She gestured at Yvon's filthencrusted trousers. "The very finest! Also many gifts to give to her and her baby. Then she will see the old jewel set in a new broach."

Yvon grunted noncommittally.

Sebius made a knuckle-rapping gesture. "Knock, knock. Come in!" Laughing, she scooped more food into her mouth.

While they were eating, a small group of soldiers came over and set up camp near the herders. Or near to Yvon and Xaragitte. Even though there was only twilight in the sky now, Yvon thought he recognized the soldier from that afternoon, the one who'd noticed Yvon's concealed sword. Sebius scowled at their proximity, as if it were a slight on the way she controlled the herders, and rose at once to go complain. She was so incensed she forgot to pardon herself from Yvon's presence.

Yvon rose, took his blanket, and went over to sit beside Xaragitte. The move brought him closer to the eunuch and the soldiers, but he couldn't hear the particulars of their argument. The soldiers clearly refused to budge, and though it was already dark, Sebius turned and stomped off toward the Baron's tent down by the riverside.

Yvon gathered up the rest of the eunuch's meal, along with Xaragitte's, and packed it away in their bag.

Xaragitte turned slowly in her blankets so she wouldn't disturb the sleeping Claye. Her face turned toward Yvon, and not even the shadowy light could soften the pain in it.

"What is wrong?" he asked, reaching out his hand.