The ancient warrior's reflexes weren't needed now; they were almost never needed. But they
were
available, and sometimes that'd saved Garric's life and perhaps the kingdom.
Shin hopped upright; the ogre knelt, dipped her head, and offered Garric's sword back to him on her upturned palms. Garric nonchalantly buckled his weapons on, silently amused by Carus' background calculations of how best to kill everyone around them now that he had the sword. Just in case, of course.
"Thank you, Kore," Garric said. "You may rise."
Looking at the local men again, he went on, "My jester, Shin, will—"
The aegipan bowed low.
"—share the room with me. You do have private rooms, do you not?"
"Here?" the innkeeper said. The silver piece had wiped away his initial truculence. "Why, no sir, there's no call for that here at the Notch House."
"You got the lean-to out back for a pantry, Noddy," the scalp-scarred hunter said. "You could put'em in there."
"That won't be necessary," Garric said quickly. "The common room will do very well. As for my mount—"
Kore curtsied, cleverly throwing her left foot back rather than her right foot forward—which might've given the impression she was lunging at the locals.
"If you have a dry outbuilding, I think that would be better than the stables. Kore's quite harmless—"
If Carus'd had a physical body, his laughter would've been ringing from the steep sides of the valley.
"—but her presence might spook the other animals."
"No
way
it's going to be spend the night with me!" the stable hand said. He hopped backward, bringing the pitchfork down tines-foremost in a posture of defense.
"There's the grain shed, I guess," the innkeeper said, rubbing his chin with his knuckles. "He, ah . . . . Does he eat grain?"
"I assure you your grain is safe from me, Master Noddy," Kore said. "Though I trust you won't object if I rid the building of some of its rats?"
One of the hunters looked at the other and said quizzically, "What is he, then?" "Why do you suppose he's asking his partner, Kore?" the aegipan said in an arch tone. "Surely it's obvious that any of the three of us would be the proper party."
"To begin with, I'm not 'he,' gentle sir," Kore said. She gestured to her upper, then her lower, set of dugs. "And appearances are deceiving. On the face of it, I'm a perfectly proportioned female ogre in the prime of life, scarcely three hundred years old. In reality, however, I am a beast of burden, bearing Master Garric with a modest deportment rarely to be met with in a horse—no matter how good that horse might taste."
"Gentlemen," Garric said, "I'm very thirsty, and I could use supper as well."
"As could your jester, dear master," said Shin. To Noddy he added, "I don't suppose you have asparagus at Notch House, do you?"
The innkeeper stared at the aegipan, then raised his eyes to Garric's. "What might asparagus be, sir?" he asked.
"Shin will settle for porridge and some fruit," Garric said. Seeing Noddy frown he added quickly, "Or vegetables. At least some onions?"
"We might run to onions," the innkeeper allowed. "Leest, run back quick and tell your mistress to throw some porridge on to warm. Now!"
The boy sprinted for the frame building. He wouldn't have raced off like that to carry out a task, but he was excited at the chance to tell his mother what he'd learned—little though that was in fact.
"And a lamb, perhaps?" said Kore. The men walking toward the house stopped and turned, wide-eyed. "No? Well, a haunch of mutton?"
"We've ham," said the innkeeper. "And sidemeat."
The ogre gave a theatrical sigh. "It's fitting," she said to the sky, "quite fitting. I will gnaw my hog femur and think deeply philosophical thoughts about the advantages of a diet of pork."
Garric cleared his throat and started the procession on into the house again. The scarred hunter unstrung his bow, though his partner still kept an arrow nocked.
"Is there a side-trail Master Orra could've taken between the Boar's Skull Inn and here?" Garric asked.
"There's game tracks," said one hunter. "Hogs and deer. I guess he could've gone off down one 'a those if he wanted."
"Why'd he want to?" the other hunter said. "If he could afford a horse, he wasn't hunting for meat and hides."
"We passed a peel tower, I believe the name is," Shin said as he trotted up the three steps to the front door. His hooves clacked on the boards. "Who is it that lives there, if I may ask?"
"Well, I can't rightly tell you, ah, Master Jester," said the innkeeper, opening the door for his guests. "It wasn't here before the Bad Time, you see."
"I wish they wasn't there now,
I
do," said the stable hand, frowning as he picked bits of horse manure from the tines of his fork. He glared at the innkeeper with a fierceness that surprised Garric. "It's all right for you, you get the profit. But it's me drives the hogs there and I don't half like it!"
"Now, Cayler, you needn't act so put upon," Noddy said, bowing Garric ahead of him into the common room of the inn. "Don't I give you all the cider you can drink each time you come back? And don't you drink it?"
"Excuse me, Master Noddy," Garric said, wondering as he spoke whether that was the innkeeper's birth name or merely a nickname. "Does your stablehand go to the tower regularly, then?"
Noddy cleared his throat. "Rabanda!" he called up the stairs in the corner. "Come down here and help me with our guests!"
He set the axe on the bar in some embarrassment, then turned to face Garric again. "Well, a servant comes from the castle every ten days or so—"
"Oftener!" the stable hand said.
"Well, it's been oftener recently, that could be," Noddy admitted. "And maybe there's two different servants, but if it is they're as like as two peas. They don't talk, but the first time he brought a potshard with pigs written on it—"
"Can you read, Noddy?" said the scarred hunter in surprise.
"I most certainly can," the innkeeper said, tilting his head so that he looked down his nose at the hunter. "Regardless, he brought the note with silver shaved off a block, nineteen parts out of twenty pure. So I sent Cayler back with him to lead six hogs. Since then they've been back—or the one has, I can't say, as I told you. They don't bother with a note now, just bring more silver."
"There's no pigs in the tower now," said Kore.
Everybody turned quickly. The ogre squatted on her haunches outside. She could probably have gotten through the open doorway, but she wouldn't have been able to stand or even squat without tearing a hole in the ceiling.
"Which she could easily do, of course," said Shin, replying to the unvoiced observation.
Garric grinned. "I smelled hogs," he said, thinking back to when they'd jogged past the tower. At the time he'd ignored it, because the fact hadn't concerned him; the information was still in his mind when required, though.
"The freshest pig droppings in the road were seven days old," the ogre said, her long face exaggerating the solemn precision of her speech. "The smell from the tower itself was somewhat more recent, I grant—but I would've heard pigs if they'd been present."
A woman—the one Garric'd seen when he rode into the valley—crept down the stairs; she'd left the child on the upper floor. She slipped through the back door to the outside oven, casting nervous glances over her shoulder. By contrast, the men in the common room seemed to have relaxed.
"I did, however, hear a horse," Kore added. "Though muffled, as if it'd been snaffled."
Garric looked hard at the innkeeper. Noddy grimaced in discomfort. "I don't know anything about who lives in the castle!" he insisted.
"Except that their silver assays nineteen parts pure," Garric said without inflection.
"Look, I don't know how it's like where you come from!" Noddy said. "Around here, though, we keep ourselves to ourselves. That's why we came out here, often enough."
He looked at the hunters for confirmation, but they turned their faces away. The one who still had an arrow nocked rotated it parallel to the bowstaff. He glanced apologetically toward Garric, then unstrung the bow.
"Never figured how a stone castle could set there," the other hunter said, watching his partner intently instead of looking toward either Garric or the innkeeper. "It's next to being a swamp even in front of where it stands, and in back it
is
swamp. I saw a hart mire hisself there. Before the castle come, I mean."
"Well, what am I supposed to do?" Noddy demanded. "Go on, tell me! What?"
"Well, Master Garric," said the aegipan. His tongue waggled in visual laughter. "We're safely past the tower, so we don't need to worry about it either."
"We'll eat here and sleep tonight," Garric said. "We'll start back just before dawn so there's light when we arrive. I'm not willing to chance the business at night."
Carus was visualizing the climb up the tower's rough stone wall. It'd be possible if he went barefoot and used both hands. He could carry the dagger in his teeth, but it wouldn't help if the mute servants tipped a vat of boiling oil over the parapet when he was halfway up. Though if the ogre lifted him as high as she could reach and then tossed him the few remaining feet—
"What is it that you expect your horse to do tomorrow, master?" Kore asked. "For that's what my oath requires me to be, you'll recall."
Garric looked out at the squatting monster. He flushed with anger that came from the ghost in his mind—but the gust of laughter that followed it a moment later was Carus' reaction as well.
"I expect you to carry me to the castle or wherever else I decide, Kore," he said, "and then to wait quietly while I determine my next step. If you think you're likely to stray then I'll tether you, but the gelding you replace would stand drop-reined."
"Look, fellow," said the scarred hunter, still looking at his partner. "I'm not afraid of trouble, but I don't borrow it. I've kept clear of that castle ever since I got an eyeful of it the first time. I don't see you've got call to do otherwise."
"I disagree," said Garric. "But I accept that you don't feel the same duty to act that I do."
The duty didn't have anything to do with having become a prince, of course; he'd be doing the same thing if he were an innkeeper. He was doing what he thought a man should do.
He gave Noddy a wry smile. "Now, good host," he said, "I would
very
much like a meal."
"And I," said Kore, "will practice standing drop-reined. I hope that by morning I'll have learned that skill to my brave master's satisfaction."
Garric joined in his ancestor's unheard laughter, while the three local men watched in puzzlement.
Chapter 9
Tenoctris drew back on the reins, halting the gig on the crest above the opened tomb. Cashel hopped out and tied the mare to the base of a bush—probably Forsythia, but it was past blooming and he wasn't sure. He used the lead rope rather than the reins to give the horse more room to browse. She'd probably tangle the line in the brush, but at least he'd tried to make her a little more comfortable.
Cashel drew the satchel with her gear from behind the seat as Tenoctris dismounted. She moved carefully, but she didn't need his help like she used to for doing common things like, well, getting up and down from a gig.
"I thought there'd be guards still here," he said, looking down at the excavation. In truth he'd been surprised that they'd been able to leave the Coerli city without having an escort of soldiers. Things were different with Garric gone. It wasn't that Sharina didn't care about him and Tenoctris, it was just that she didn't believe Cashel or anybody Cashel was looking after needed other help.
Cashel smiled, standing with the staff in one hand and the satchel made from a rug in the other. He wasn't as strong as Sharina seemed to think; but he doubted a soldier or an army—could handle any likely trouble better than him alone.
"I'm going to lie in the sarcophagus again," Tenoctris said, taking short steps down the slope. "I don't need it the way I did the other night, but it's such a powerful focus that it'll reduce the process to a few minutes."
She chuckled. "That concentration of powers is the only thing of value here," she explained. "And it's of no more use to ordinary thieves than a vat of molten steel would be."
Cashel scrambled to get in front, just in case the old wizard slipped. There was next to no chance of his own bare feet going out from under him, but he slanted the quarterstaff out for a brace anyway.
He paused at the top of the trench to judge the sun. It'd be down soon, but the twilight would last long enough to see by for another hour.
"I'm going to make myself younger," Tenoctris said.
Cashel stepped into the tomb and turned to make sure Tenoctris didn't have trouble in the doorway. She maybe thought he was surprised to hear what she'd said, because she went on, "Oh, not for vanity, I assure you. It's just a practical response to the difficulties of what we'll be doing. I need a more supple body, you see."
Cashel helped her onto the bench and held her hand as she got into the coffin. He looked again at the carvings and wondered about the man who'd wanted to be buried in such a thing.
Tenoctris opened her satchel and took out a simple stylus of lead. With it she marked a triangle on the bottom of the stone box down at the end where her head'd lain when they came here before, then wrote words on each of the three sides. She looked at Cashel with a little grin and said, "Well, maybe a little from vanity too. Just a little."
Cashel smiled again, but he didn't say anything. She was joking; she wasn't any more vain that he was. Sure, Cashel was a good judge of what he could do, so he knew he could do a lot. He didn't go around bragging to other folk, though, and all the same things were true for Tenoctris.
She lay in the coffin and started murmuring her words of power. Cashel turned toward the entrance. His job was to make sure nobody came in while she was in a trance.
Cashel thought about the man who'd been buried here, if he was a man and not the demon his shadow made him. He took his left hand from his quarterstaff and touched the locket from Tenoctris. He wasn't sure why he was keeping it, but there was bound to be a good reason. Tenoctris always had good reasons.