Dave Duncan - Speak to the Devil

The door opened; in walked the count.

“Ah, there you are. My, that looks good. Come, I have someone you must meet.”

The women had risen, of course. Madlenka said, “Dinner, my lord-”

“In a minute. This won’t take long.” He offered his arm and she had to accept.

Even indoors he walked too fast for her, clanking and jingling. “My brother Wulfgang is my squire. He came with me, and I’ve just rescued him from the infirmary.”

“Oh, no! Not that awful place?”

“Yes. I’ll do something about ‘that awful place’ as soon as I get the chance. I can’t understand… Well, no matter.” He was hinting that her father should have done something about it. Which was probably true, a pox on him!

He had brought her to the stairs, and was climbing at a more reasonable pace than he walked. “Wulf took a fall, a bad one. Fortunately he was wearing armor, but he’s one all-over bruise, and that idiot doctor has been drugging him with sewage. I want you to look after him for me, will you?”

“Of course, my lord!” She felt absurdly surprised that he was going to trust her to handle even that sort of trivial task.

“Keep doctors away from him, understand? Wulf’s tougher than boiled leather. He’ll be on his feet again in a couple of days.” Anton leered down at her. “At the moment he looks like sausage meat, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He swung open the door to the Orchard Room-named for its murals, not its view, for it overlooked the bailey, like most other rooms in the keep. He let Madlenka precede him.

“Wulf! Wulfie, I brought you a beautiful nurse to speed your recovery.”

The face on the pillow looked as if it had been thoroughly beaten with an ax handle, and all the rest of him was under the blankets, except for a tangle of honey-colored hair on the pillow. His eyes flickered but did not open. Both they and his lips were grossly swollen.

“He’s been doped,” Anton said with disgust. “But he should be better tomorrow.”

Behind his back, Giedre was wearing a half-witted expression, her eyes turned upward and a hand cupped to her ear. Giedre was signaling that she had found the handsome younger brother who had been promised her and she could hear the angelic silver trumpets.

Which was annoying, because Madlenka already-in those first few instants-suspected that Somebody had Made a Terrible Mistake.

All his life, Anton had heard alarming stories about the perils of fatigue and how men did stupid things when overtired. He had never really understood this until that evening. Then the excitement and novelty which had sustained him all day suddenly drained away. All the previous night he had entertained Baroness Nadezda. For much of the night before his hard drinking messmates had feted the rookie for his triumphant near-suicide at the hunt. Now, close to sunset, his head pounded; the whole world seemed blurry and unsteady. He abandoned thoughts of persuading his betrothed to admit him to her bed without waiting for formalities. Tomorrow would be time enough for that.

Feeling as if he were carrying his horse, he climbed the steep and narrow spiral staircase in the watchtower at the top of the keep, stumbling several times on the worn steps. He had ordered two people to meet him up there. The moment he had completed his business with them, he would fall into bed and sleep. Sleep until Christmas.

As he emerged in the lookout, a chill wind spat raindrops in his face, but even that could not lift the deadening hand of fatigue. The walls were extra-high merlons topped with a conical roof, and the icy gale off the mountains whistled straight through the crenels between them. He registered that Dalibor Notivova was already there, saluting him. Luitger Ekkehardt had not arrived yet. Good. He wanted to deal with them one at a time.

He acknowledged the salute with a nod and began walking carefully all the way around, seeing his domain properly for the first time. The view was remarkable: a treeless moor flooring an upland valley cupped on three sides by rocky walls, close to vertical in many places. Behind that, to the north, stood ice-capped peaks. The Ruzena came foaming out of a gorge just north of the castle, curving around it almost directly below the tower where he stood, then surging and frothing off to the south.

The steep cliff that formed a backdrop to the west of the town was gouged by several vertical gullies that must hold running water from springs. An army at one gate could not reach around to threaten the other, so the defenders should never lack for food, either. At least three people had quoted Barbarossa’s judgment of the site to him, but that doughty old warrior would not have approved of what else Anton was seeing. As he moved around to the west, he was looking down on even more slate than he had feared. The entire space within the curtain wall was paved with roofs.

He reached Notivova. The youth saluted again. He wasn’t really a youth, though, probably a few years older than Anton himself. The chain-mail coif enclosing his head concealed everything except eyes, nose, and lips, but he seemed steady enough, showing only a trace of nervousness-which was quite natural when his superior was in a cell, awaiting trial for treason.

“Tell me about September fifteenth,” Anton said.

“Aye, my lord. The Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. I had spent the night at my mother’s house, three miles from here. I had leave.” He waited for the count’s nod, then continued. “As I was coming back, across High Meadows, I saw a man riding very fast to the west, towards the Hlucny. That’s a tributary of the Ruzena that marks the boundary between Pelrelm and Cardice. I recognized trooper Tomas and I knew he was supposed to be on gate duty that morning. I wondered what he was doing.”

Again Anton nodded, struggling to make his weary brain concentrate. Men-at-arms despised men who betrayed their commanding officers, yet Notivova was impressing him.

“Did he see you?”

“I don’t think so, my lord. The wind was behind me and blowing rain, so it would have been right in his face. I couldn’t see him well-in fact, I only knew he was Tomas because I recognized his horse and his boots… he has red boots he’s very proud of. But when I rode in I was told right away that the count had been stricken, and Sir Petr had just been brought in, dead, may God grant them both peace. I asked the constable if word had been sent to the king, and he said it was too early to alarm Mauvnik; he was going to wait a day or so to see if the count would recover.”

“So you asked about this Tomas man?”

Notivova avoided his eye. “I didn’t ask Sir Karolis. I asked some of the others and was told he was on a mission for the constable.”

Then he had ratted. Good for him!

“Then what did you do?”

“I went and told the lady Madlenka, my lord. And she told me to keep my suspicions to myself, but she would take care of it. An hour or so later I saw young Gintaras riding out on one of the count’s own horses… my lord.”

Anton sighed and turned to lean his hands on the bottom sill of a crenel and stare out at the mountains glowing in their sunset finery. Weariness made him ache all over. “Young Gintaras did a fine job for his king.” He dared not be more specific, because the timing of events must be kept muddy.

“He’s a fine young horseman.”

“Has Tomas returned?”

“Not that I’ve heard, my lord.” A careful answer. A careful man.

Zdenek had backdated the king’s edicts, so he had foreseen the timing problem. No doubt Gintaras had been suitably bribed to keep him in Mauvnik. Or he could be in a cell, of course. The Scarlet Spider left no holes in his webs.

“And no other courier was sent to Mauvnik until the eighteenth?”