"Oh, don't worry about him; the little beast can't keep down anything solid," said Balnshik serenely, tossing a handful of incense onto a brazier.
"I can hear every word you're saying, you know." Lord Ermenwyr's voice floated from the palanquin. He sounded peevish.
"What about some clear broth, darling?"
"No. I'm still motion sick and, anyway, it'll probably be poisoned."
Balnshik's eyes flashed, and she turned to Smith with a charming smile in which there were a great many white and gleaming teeth. "Will you excuse us, please? I must attend to my lord."
So saying, she vaulted into the palanquin, vanishing behind the curtains, and Smith heard the unmistakable sound of a ringing slap, and the palanquin began to rock and thump in place once more. It seemed like a good idea to leave.
He wandered over to the kitchen pavilion, where Mrs. Smith had lit a fire and set saucepans bubbling at magical speed, and was now busily dabbing caviar on little crackers.
"Can you prepare an order of clear broth?" he asked.
"What, for the greenie?" She glared across at Ronrishim Flowering Reed, who had finally relinquished the hut and was now seated in front of a tent, apparently meditating. "Bloody vegetarians. I hate cooking for those people. 'Oh, please, I'll just have a dish of rainwater at precisely air temperature with an ounce of mother's milk on the side, and if it's not too much trouble, could you float a couple of violets on it?' Faugh!"
"No, actually, it's for Lord Ermenwyr." Smith looked over his shoulder at the palanquin, which was motionless now.
"Oh. The invalid?" Mrs. Smith turned to peer at the pavilion. "Heavens, what a grand tent. He's a nasty-looking little piece of goods, I must say, but as he's dying I suppose we must make the effort. A good rich capon stock with wine, I think."
"Parradan Smith's a gangster," Burnbright informed them, coming close and appropriating a cracker.
"Get away from those, child. What do you mean?"
"I peeked when he was washing himself, and he's got secret society tattoos all over," said Burnbright, retreating beyond the reach of Mrs. Smith's carving knife. "And he's got an instrument case he never lets go of almost. And knives."
"How do you know they're secret society tattoos?" Smith was troubled.
"Because he's from Mount Flame City, and I'm from there too, and I know what the Bloodfires' insignia look like," said Burnbright matter-of-factly. "Their deadly enemies are the House Copperhammer. When they've got a war on, you find body parts in the strangest places. All over town."
"Lovely," grunted Mrs. Smith.
"He's listed on the manifest as a courier," said Smith, looking out at the man in question, who sat just inside the door of a tent, polishing his boots. Burnbright nodded sagely.
"Couriering somebody's loot somewhere, see. I'll bet he's got a fortune in that instrument case. Unless it's a disguise, and he's accepted a contract on one of the other passengers and he's biding his time before he kills them!" she added, her little face alight.
"Wretched creatures. He'd better leave
me
alone; I never travel unarmed," said Mrs. Smith, handing her the tray of hors d'oeuvres. "Go set that on the buffet and inform the guests that the main course will be served in half an hour. Grilled quail glazed with acacia honey, stuffed with wild plums."
It was as good as it sounded. Even the Smith's infant stopped crying for a while, given a leg bone with sauce to suck on.
When twilight had fallen Balnshik emerged from the palanquin, carrying Lord Ermenwyr in her arms like a limp rag doll, and settled him in the splendid pavilion before coming out for a plate for herself and a bowl of broth for her lord. She made as profound an impression on the other males in the party as she'd made on Smith. Even the Smiths' two little boys stopped chewing, and with round eyes watched her progress across the camp.
She seemed not to notice the attention she drew, was courteous and formal. Smith thought he saw her glance side-long at the Yendri, once, with a glitter of amused contempt in her eyes, before there came a querulous feeble cry from the pavilion, and she turned to hurry back to Lord Ermenwyr.
"Clearly she doesn't think much of Mr. Flowering Reed," pronounced Mrs. Smith, and had a drag at her smoking tube. She was sitting at her ease with a drink beside the fire, as the keymen cleared away the dinner things for her.
"Except I hear the Yendri are supposed to have really big, urn, you know," said Burnbright. Mrs. Smith shrugged.
"It depends upon what you mean by big, dear."
"I think we made pretty good time today," said Smith. "No disasters or anything. Don't you think it went well?"
"Tolerably well," said Mrs. Smith. "At least there weren't any breakdowns this time. Can't count the hours I've wasted at the side of the road waiting for replacement gears."
"Have you been with the caravan long?" Smith asked her.
"Twenty years, next spring," she replied.
"Traveled much through the Greenlands?"
"Far too often. What about you? Have you a first name, Smith, by the way?"
Smith glanced over at Pinion, who was scouring out a pot with sand, and lowered his voice when he spoke. "I've been here and there. And yes, I have a first name. But..."
Mrs. Smith arched her eyebrows. "It's like that, is it? Lovely impersonal name,
Smith.
Rather fond of it, myself. So, where were all your questions leading?"
"Have you ever heard of somebody, a demon or something, called the Master of the Mountain?"
Mrs. Smith gave him a sharp look, and Burnbright cringed and made a gesture to ward off evil. "Clearly," said Mrs. Smith, "you're not from the interior. You're from the islands, I'd bet, or you'd know about him."
Smith wasn't anxious that anyone should know where he'd been born, so he just said, "Is he in the Greenlands? Is he a demon?"
Mrs. Smith waved her drink at the Yendri, who was just retiring into his tent. "That one could probably tell you more, though I doubt he would, however nicely you asked. You haven't heard of the Master of the Mountain? Half demon and half something else, or so the story goes. Yendri, possibly, though you wouldn't know it from the way they hate him. Mind you, he's given them enough reasons."
"What reasons?" Smith drew closer, because she was lowering her voice. She hitched her folding chair a little nearer to him and pointed off into the night, toward the northwest.
"You'll be able to see it, in a week or so, poking up out of the horizon: a black mountain like a shark's tooth, perfectly immense. That's his stronghold, and he can look down from up there on every inch of the Greenlands, and you can bet he'll be watching us as we creep past on our tiny road. If we're very fortunate, he won't trouble himself to come down to say how d'ye do.
"I don't know how long he's been up there; a couple of generations, at least. There's talk he used to be a mercenary. Certainly he's some sort of powerful mage. Demon-armies at his beck and call, spies in every city, all that sort of thing. These days he contents himself with swooping down and raiding our caravans now and again. But there was a time when he singled out
them
for the worst of his plundering." Mrs. Smith pointed at the Yendri's tent.
"No idea why. You wouldn't think they'd have anything worth stealing, would you, in those funny little brushwood villages of theirs? Something personal, seemingly.
"In any case--you're aware they used to be slaves, the Yendri? No, not to us--that's one thing they can't blame us for, at least. It was somewhere else, and somebody else enslaved them, until they overthrew their masters and escaped. There was some kind of miracle child whose birth sparked the slave rebellion. One of their greenie prophets carried her before them like a figurehead, and they all emigrated here. When she grew up she became their Saint. Heals the sick, raises the dead, most beautiful woman in the world, et cetera. You haven't heard of the Green Saint either?
"Well. So the Yendri settled down as a free people then, with no troubles except the Master of the Mountain raiding their villages with dreadful glee, which I understand he did on very nearly a weekly basis. And then, oh horrors! He captured the Green Saint herself.
"Though I have heard she went and offered herself to him, if he'd stop being so terribly evil," Mrs. Smith added parenthetically, and drew on her smoke again. "However it happened--she moved in with him on his mountain, and while she didn't exactly convert him to a virtuous life, he did stop burning the poor greenies' wigwams about their ears. Not that they were grateful. They were furious, in fact, especially when he and she proceeded to have a vast brood of very mixed children. Said it was sacrilege."
"A demon and a saint having kids?" Smith pondered it. "Funny."
"Not to the Yendri, it isn't," said Mrs. Smith.
"Let's talk about something else," begged Burnbright.
So the subject was changed. Not long afterward the fire was banked, and everyone retired for the night, with the exception of the Smiths' baby, who cried for a good hour.
The next day, once camp was broken, proceeded in much the same way as the previous one had. Endless hours they rumbled across the empty fields, and though Smith watched the horizon, he saw no threatening darkness there, not that day nor on the next few to follow. The Smiths' infant cried, the Yendri kept himself aloof, Parradan Smith killed no one, and Lord Ermenwyr did not die, though he remained in his palanquin as they traveled and the purple fume of his irritation streamed backward in the wind.
"Mama!" shrieked the Smiths' younger boy, pointing behind them. "Dragons!"
It was the fifth day out, and the Smith children were reaching critical mass for boredom.
"Don't be silly, dearest," his mother told him wearily, jogging the screaming baby on her shoulder.
"I'm not! They're flying up behind us and they're going to get us! Look!"
Nobody bothered to look except Smith, who turned on his high crate to glance over his shoulder. To his astonishment, he saw some five or six winged forms in the air behind them, at a distance of no more than a mile or two. He turned completely around, bracing his feet on the edge of the cart, and shaded his eyes for a good look.
"The dragons will get us!" chorused the Smiths' other children, beginning to wail and cry.
"No, no, they won't," Smith shouted helpfully, looking down into their cart. "Dragons won't hurt you. And anyway, I don't think--"
"The lord in the black tent says they do," protested the little boy. "I went in when the big lady came out to eat so I could see if he was really a vampire like the runner said, and he told me he wasn't, only he'd been bit by a dragon when he was a little boy for making too much noise and it made him half-dead forever but he was lucky 'cause most dragons just eat children that make too much noise, they fly overhead on big wings and just catch them and eat them up like bugs!"
"Now, Wolkin--" said his father.
"I told you not to bother that man!" said his mother.
"Well, that just isn't true," yelled Smith, mentally damning Lord Ermenwyr. "Dragons don't do that kind of thing, all right, son? They're too small. I've seen 'em. All they do is fly over the water and catch fish. They build nests in cliffs. People make umbrellas out of their wings. No, what we've got here are gliders." He pointed up at the winged figures, who were much nearer now.
"Yes, Wolkin, you see? Perfectly harmless," said his father.
"Just people with big wings strapped on," explained Smith. "Sort of. They carry letters sometimes."
"And they have, er, flying clubs and competitions," added his father. "Nothing to be afraid of at all."
"Of course not," Smith agreed. "Look, here they come. Let's all wave."
The children waved doubtfully.
"Look," said the Smiths' little girl. "They've got pistol-bows just like you have, Caravan Master."
"What?" said Smith, as a bolt thunked into his left thigh.
The gliders were raking the caravan with boltfire. The result was screaming confusion and an answering barrage of shot from the caravans. Smith, firing both his weapons, glimpsed Parradan Smith standing, snarling, balancing as he sent boltfire from an apparently inexhaustible magazine into the nearest gliders. He saw Balnshik hanging out the side of the palanquin, bracing her feet on an immense old hunting weapon, and firing with deadly accuracy.
It was over in seconds. The closest of the gliders veered off, dropped something beside the road, and went down in a tangle of snapping struts and collapsing green fabric. The others wheeled. They lifted and floated off to the east, rapidly vanishing. The thing that had been dropped coughed, spurted dust, and exploded, throwing liquid flame in all directions. Fortunately the carts were well clear by the time it went off.
"Stop," gasped Smith, but the keymen were already applying the brakes. The carts shuddered to a stop, their iron wheels grinding in the stone ruts and sending up a flare of sparks the whole length of the caravan. He jumped from his high seat and fell, clutching his wounded leg. Scrambling up painfully he saw Parradan Smith already out and running for the fallen glider, holding a freshly cocked weapon upright over his head as he ran. Burnbright had turned and was racing back toward them, looking terrified.
"Anybody hurt?'' Smith shouted, leaning against the cart as he tried to stanch the flow of blood down his leg.
It was some moments before he could get a coherent answer. Luckily, he had been the only one to sustain a wound. One of the Keymen Smiths had been slightly stunned by a bolt striking his steel pot-helmet, deflected by its wide brim; another shot had ricocheted and hit Keyman Crucible sidelong on his upper arm, leaving a welted bruise the size of a handball. Lord Ermenwyr was unharmed, but his luggage was struck through with a dozen bolts at least, and he had leaped from the palanquin and was screaming threats, in surprisingly full voice, at the remaining gliders, now only distant specks on the horizon.
"So much for his being a vampire," Smith muttered to himself. He was binding up his leg with a rag when Parradan Smith approached him, his face stony.