Ken Hood - Demon Rider

Hamish squinted at him blearily, his face a white blur in the gloom. "But when we get to the checkpoint it's goodbye?"

"Father Guillem will show me the trail out to the north. Josep has promised to find you a ship, has he not?"

Hamish nodded, looking even more miserable.

"I wish you safe voyage," Toby said awkwardly. Life without him was a dismal prospect. "Don't bother giving my love to the glen. I'll miss you, friend. We've had good times in among the tough ones."

"And you don't want me around after what happened last night."

"That has nothing at all to do with it. I have made blunders of my own often enough, and you have pulled me through them."

"Not on that scale. I wish I could be strong like you. You don't let women bother you."

Could he really believe that? Sometimes the bookworm was as blind as an earthworm.

Toby tried repeatedly to cheer him up. "Look on the bright side—you're going home! It's just your sore head that's making you feel this way. Did Pepita help your headache? You want me to ask her to try again?"

"She did no good at all. Why don't you try instead?"

"Me?"

Hamish scowled. "This alumbradismo ... When you called down the lightning on the landsknechte , that was gramarye, sort of. Like Brother Bernat's healing."

"I suppose there's a resemblance, but frying people is a strange way to cure what ails them."

"Very funny. He had an incarnate spirit, you have the hob. So why can't you learn to control it the way he could?"

"I don't think he could control it. He could ask, that's all—like praying to a tutelary. I wouldn't know how to start. He said I mustn't even try to control it, or it will end up controlling me. Maybe in thirty or forty years, he said, I will be able to risk asking favors of it, in small ways. I'm no saint, Hamish, and I'm sure I never will be. The hob isn't an elemental, and it isn't 'sitting right,' whatever that means. I was too old when I started. The best I can hope for is to keep it from interfering."

He suspected his chances of doing even that were slender as gossamer. He was bound for disaster, sooner or later. That was another reason to go on alone.

Hamish sighed. He liked the world to be more logical. "You're not planning anything foolish, are you? You're not going to go off with the don to try and kill Oreste? Or try to buy him off with the amethyst?"

"Never. Strangling that monster would be a very good idea, yes. I would dearly love to squeeze his throat until his eyes pop and his tongue sticks out and his face turns purple, but I know it's impossible. I just want to keep well away from him, and the Inquisition, and the Fiend. A quiet life for me and the hob, nothing exciting. A job as a woodcutter, perhaps, or a stonemason—something I can put my muscles to work on." Then he lied. "Perhaps someday a wife and children, if I can ever be quite sure that—"

"Demons, Toby! I don't want to go! Not yet. Please?"

Toby sighed. "Let's get you to Montserrat. If the spirit will cure your cracked head, then you'll be able to think straight again."

Hamish managed a smile. "Thanks! But I know what I'll—"

They peered into the murk.

"Toby? Isn't that the don shouting?"

Toby urged Smeòrach forward.

There could be no better site for an ambush. Overhanging foliage made the trail into a tunnel, gloomy and foggy. The slopes on either hand were impassable for horses, overgrown and much too steep. Don Ramon, in the lead as always, had just gone round the next bend and now came cantering back into view, his warning shouts growing clearer. Only one word mattered: Barricade!

For an instant Toby wondered if the man had panicked at the sight of the expected checkpoint, then discarded the notion. Other men might make such an error, but not the don, and the odds must be overwhelmingly bad for him to have turned tail.

Roadblock ahead meant danger at the rear, of course. Cliff down on one side, cliff up on the other. A perfect trap, lobsters in the pot.

The only hope was to turn tail and hope to break out downhill. As Toby reined Smeòrach in, he saw the women start to turn their mounts, but then Josep knotted up the pack train like kelp on a beach and blocked the don's path completely. Worse!

He spun Smeòrach around, back toward the last bend, shouting warnings to Father Guillem and Hamish. He drew his sword and reined in with an oath as the brigands came around the corner. There were at least a score of them, a ragtag band of pirates, all on foot and clad in a motley collection of garments and armor, but spread out in good order, not all clustered in an easy target. Someone knew his job well. Pikes, swords, no arquebuses—the don had proved the previous night that firearms were useless in such weather—but also crossbows. In desperation Toby looked again at the flanking slopes and saw more men above the trail, even a couple in trees on the downhill side. Chattering to Hamish, he had missed those, but so had the don. A dozen bolts were pointed at his heart. They would have difficulty missing at that range.

It would be small comfort while dying to know that Baron Oreste was not going to get him, nor lay his fat hands on the amethyst.

Sick with despair he glanced back. Jacques had jumped from his donkey and was disentangling the pack train, apparently very expertly. The don would get by it in a moment. But even he could do nothing against this force.

Had they been landsknechte , Toby might have hoped to give himself up in return for the others' freedom, but one glance at these ruffians was proof enough that they were only after loot, not him in particular. He felt mostly anger at being taken so easily... frustration at failing so close to his destination... sheer terror at what those bolts could do to his flesh... an urgent disinclination to die... the hob! Not the hob!

Swan. Lochan na Bi. Swan. Lochan na Bi. Swan. He lowered his sword and strove to breathe as he had been taught, struggling to calm his racing heart. He must not let the hob rampage! It might strike down his friends as easily as his foes.

And besides: If you ever travel that road again, you must not expect to return.

"Company halt!" barked the leader. He was big, although probably more blubber than muscle, with a coarse, black-bearded face. He wore a steel helmet and breastplate. Alone among the group he carried no weapon in his hand, but a gilded hilt protruded from the scabbard at his side. He regarded the catch with satisfaction. "Throw your swords over there."

His arrogant smirk made Toby's fists clench and brought sweat to his forehead even as he repeated his mantra and tried to think of the swan. "We are but poor pilgrims, senor. We have little worth stealing except our mounts."

"We'll be the judge of that. Throw away your sword, boy."

Gold did not matter now, and certainly the horses did not. Even if the pilgrims lost everything except their lives, they could walk to Montserrat from here.

Toby eased Smeòrach forward to place himself ahead of Guillem. "Will you spare our—"

Before he completed the move, the monk roared, "Fools!" in a voice like a cannonade and kicked in his heels. Startled, his horse leaped into motion.

Toby shouted, "Careful, Father!"

Still bellowing, the monk rode straight for the brigands, going much too fast over the rocks and mud. "You are within the domain of the holy tutelary of Montserrat. It will not condone such violence!"

"Take him, Jordi."

A crossbow cracked. Father Guillem and his horse went down together in a somersault and rolled on the muddy, rocky trail. The horse screamed, tried to struggle to its feet, shrilling in pain, but then collapsed in a heap and fell silent. Father Guillem lay face down, half dragged out of his robe. The bolt must have gone right through him without hitting bone, or the impact would have hurled him backward out of the saddle. If the shot had not killed him, then the horse had smashed him to pulp. He was either dead or dying.