"There!" Guthlag said as they swept out of town. "That wasn't hard, was it?"
"I'd rather chisel marble," Benard muttered under his breath, but he did feel pleased with himself. Heading upstream with the wind in his hair and the sun in his eyes, he even began to enjoy life. The traffic was light, just the occasional wagon or chariot, and his onagers had lost their first furious speed. On the rutted track the car bounced. And bounced. And bounced. It also swayed, pitched, and rocked. The trick was to keep one's knees slightly bent, so they said.
Hard as it was on him, it was much harder on Guthlag. The rheumatic old warrior clutched the rail with hands all knobbly and twisted. His brass collar bounced up and down his scraggly neck, his face repeatedly twisted with pain.
Benard eased back on the reins, and the winded onagers condescended to slow to a trot. "How far to Whiterim?"
" 'Bout a menzil."
A chariot should get there before noon. "Do we go through any interesting places?"
The Werist opened his eyes, the better to scowl with. "Only place on the plain that's interesting is Kosord—an' even that's half a finger from boredom."
"How about Umthord? Isn't that where holy Sinura's sanctuary is?"
"What if it is?" the old man snarled. "Heroes have no truck with Healers, nor them with us. Stop. Need a drink."
Discard first theory—despite his grotesquely swollen joints, Guthlag had not been sent along on this expedition so he could seek a healing in the famous sanctuary. So why so much gold?
The onagers did stop on Benard's signal, much to his surprise. Giving the old man the reins to hold, he knelt to untie a wineskin. Guthlag took a very long drink.
The sun was brutal already, the long baking of summer that ripened crops. The clouds impressed Benard—innumerable little puffy clouds scattered like grain on a slate and extending forever. Landscape was soon obstructed by hedges or houses or something, but that heavenly ceiling stretched on in all directions until it was lost in the haze of the wall of the world. To his right flowed the river, which was another and far greater highway, coils of ochre-colored oil peppered with three-cornered sails in red-browns. In the other direction lay endless green spreads of growing grain mottled with silver ponds.
"What'ch waitin' for, boy? Drive on, an' stop daydreaming."
"Yes, lord. Giddyup!" Benard slapped the onagers with the reins.
"You got the brake down."
Ah, yes...
♦
After a long period of bouncing, Benard said, "Any word of Cutrath?"
Guthlag cackled. "Pimple's still in the sweatbox. You miss him?"
"No. Who does?"
"No one I know of."
"So you don't think I'm in any danger?"
"Arr! Didn't say that. You're in plenty danger."
"Even after what the satrap said?"
"Hope so," the old man said grumpily. "Honor of the host's at stake. Course, it'll take some planning. Anything happens to you, then Horold'll have to ask a seer who dun't, right? Means the pimple wouldn't dare do anything himself, 'cause he knows his daddy'll beat him bloody for disobeying. No local Hero will, for same reason. But a twist of copper in a beer house can buy all the thugs you want, and there's Heroes coming through town all the time, heading for the Edge. Uphold the honor of the cult, see? By morning the culprits are long gone and you're feeding the eels."
"My lord is kind," Benard said, but he said it to himself. If it happened it happened.
He still did not know why Guthlag had brought a fortune in gold along on a simple two-day outing, but he knew better than to ask. Besides, there were more interesting things to think about. The Anziel statue was like a sore tooth, impossible to ignore for long. The angle of Her gaze would be critical—
♦
After the second wine break, Guthlag's painkiller began making him talkative. "That drawing of your'n really took me back," he mumbled. "Handsome man, then, Satrap was."
"Even when I knew him. Must have been a vision in his youth."
"He wash at that, lad. Spec I wound be here if he hand bin."
"My lord is kind," Benard said blankly.
Guthlag cackled and elbowed his arm. "Stuff that! You ever heard tell of the fall of Kosord?"
"Just scraps and rumors." Much more than he had ever wanted to hear, in fact, but he was obviously about to hear more. Perhaps he would learn how Guthlag had survived when the rest of the defenders did not.
"Aye. Well the pyromancer foresaw it, o' course, lady Tiu. She saw Stralg's horde on its way. He'd seized Skjar an' Yormoth an' a few other cities already, and Kosord would give him control of the plains, so no surprise. Hordeleader Kruthruk had been predicting he'd try for Kosord next. Fine man, Kruthruk." Guthlag spat nostalgically. "Course Stralg was running 'bout a host an' a half by then, 'bout twenty sixty. Kruthruk couldn't field even a couple of hunts, so the odds would ha' been at least five to one."
"Would have been?"
"Aye. Well, the lady read it in the fire and announced the news, and State Consort Nars was the light of Demern on Kosord. A Speaker has to give true judgment, no matter what his own interests—his blessing and his corban are the same. Nars judged his city would fare better if it didn't resist. He ordered Kruthruk to take his men and go over to Stralg. Kruthruk refused."
Benard had heard that tale before and decided then that he would never understand Heroes. He still thought so. "Better death than dishonor?"
"Some of that," Guthlag admitted. "More that his brother had been a candidate for bloodlord, so Kruthruk wanted Stralg's guts for rat bait."
"Even if that meant all his men dying, too?"
"Their duty. Said he would let Weru decide. Stralg drew up his horde on the plain and they agreed to fight it out that night. Then the state consort insisted Kruthruk give his men the choice. 'Bout half of them went over to Stralg—knowing, o' course, that he would send them into battle first to let them prove their new loyalty."
Ouch! "That doesn't sound like very good judgment to me."
"Then you're no Speaker!" the old man barked. "Stralg was bound to win, see, and he razes cities that defy him. He'd be in a better mood if his own losses were lower."
"You're right, I'm no Demernist." Benard had often wondered if his father's title of doge had been the Florengian equivalent of a state consort. Who else but a Speaker could give his children away to a monster? "That's too cold-blooded for me."
"Thaz what been a Speaker izzle bout." Guthlag hic-cuped. "The cause was hopeless, so Nars's god told him he'd best serve his city by dying 'longside his troops."
Benard pointed to a mound in the distance. "What place is that?"
"Umthord."
"I thought we went through there? A priest told—"
"Naw. Stay on the levee."
Benard drove on, passing a line of near-naked peasants wielding hoes in the everlasting war against weeds. He waved and was ignored. The sky seemed oppressively big, out here on the plain.
"And the lady Tiu chose to die with her husband?"
"That she did. She drove the chariot and brandished a sword so that they would treat her like a combatant. Knowing what Stralg's horde did to women."
"Why? Surely even Stralg would not dare touch a Daughter of Veslih!"
"She said it'd be best for the city, because Stralg would never trust her and she couldn't trust him. Nils tried to tell her she was wrong and he couldn't do it! Saw him standin' there with tears running into his beard and he couldn't tell her she was wrong. So they went off together. But they had Kruthruk assign one man to guard Ingeld until the new overlord took over the city."
Ah! "How old was Ingeld?"
"Sixteen." Guthlag sighed.
So did Benard. He couldn't imagine Ingeld at sixteen, for he kept seeing her as she had been six years ago, when they were lovers.