The Grillards, trembling, scurried off, alerting the sleeping village.
The creature ignored them. It leapt up onto the stage, marched across it, kicked open the door of the red wagon with a booted foot and strode inside.
A crowd of chattering Grillards, carrying weapons and torches, quickly gathered in the clearing, and hurried toward the stage in fear and confusion. The prolonged scream of their bukko erupted from the red wagon and brought them to a stop. They stared in rising terror, then angrily surged onto the stage shouting threats at the horrifying stranger.
Suddenly the menacing horned helmet appeared in the second story window. “Quiet,” it bellowed, and a hush promptly descended over the crowd as it stumbled to a stop.
Within the red wagon, Brown John sat stiffly on the edge of his bed, a wooden shelf supported by chains bolted in the wall. A candle holder in his hand trembled. Its flickering light cast a glow over a surprisingly simple raw wood room that was as empty as his face. That face’s many wrinkles, like his bedclothes, were in disarray. As the horned figure closed the shutters and turned toward him, he lifted the candle, and its light flowed erratically over the metal-clad body.
“Ah, it’s you,” Brown John sighed. “I thought I recognized the chain mail, but your new headpiece gave me a start. For a moment there, I was certain I was facing my long-awaited and so richly deserved doom.” He set the candle holder on a nightstand and took up his normal jaunty tone. “Where have you been? You look extremely well fed.”
“Who do you serve?” Gath demanded. “Who is your master?”
“Master? Why I have none but myself. No…” he stopped himself, “that’s not true. The pleasures of life still order me about, despite the fact that each year I serve them with less ardor.”
“Take off your shirt!”
“Undress!” Brown John’s voice choked. His mouth gathered primly, then he chuckled. “Well now, I expected you to say and do many things, all of them quite out of the ordinary. But ‘undress’? What possible value could you find in looking at my time-battered body? It is a bit paunchy, and…”
Gath reached the old man in one stride and ripped the front of his loose homespun nightshirt away. He shoved the startled man back onto his bed, and yanked away the remnant of clothing, tossed it into a shadowed corner.
Brown John struggled upright trying to draw a blanket over his nakedness, but Gath did not give him a chance. He lifted a gnarled leg, upended the bukko, then picked up the candle holder and used the light of the flame to inspect between his toes.
Brown John, with his head half buried in bedclothes, protested in a dignified if muffled tone, “I assure you there is…”A mouthful of blanket cut him off as Gath lifted him higher and inspected his legs. Brown John removed the blanket and blurted, “I am quite prepared to allow you to inspect me in a reasonable manner, but…”He dropped face first on the bed and groaned with shame as Gath spread his legs. Over a shoulder, he shouted, “Damn you, there’s no need for this. If there is anything on my person which might be of interest to you, just ask.” Gath replied by rolling him over and examining an armpit. Huffing and puffing, the old man mumbled, “You’ll find nothing there. My powers are quite mundane. I don’t even claim to have a tail.” Gath rolled him over to see for himself, then dropped the bukko and set the candle holder back on the night-table.
Brown John, with his head dangling off the bed, gathered his breath, then reassembled himself. When he was properly covered and sitting spread legged on the edge of the bed, he placed his long-fingered hands over the tops of his spindly knees and faced Gath with lofty composure.
“That, my man, was no way to treat the one person in all the forest who has befriended you. You seem to have forgotten that my sons and I have traded fairly with you for many years, and that I personally sent you that chain mail without asking one crogan in exchange! And it was my doing alone that Robin Lakehair was sent to heal you, and then, despite your lack of gratitude, sent a second time to warn you about the bounty hunters.” His fingertips drummed his kneecaps in righteous impatience. “She did reach you, I presume, and tell you about them? And that the chiefs have offered to accept you as their champion?”
“She’s been carried off.”
“Oh no! By animals?”
Gath shook his head. “A man.”
Brown John groaned and his head dropped, suddenly feeling beaten and frail. “Who?” he breathed.
“I found her tunic and some scrapes on the sides of the trees made by tall red wagon wheels… and black dye on the grass.”
Brown John looked up sharply. “A bounty hunter?”
Gath nodded. “There were three dead leopards wearing collars. Sharn reached them before I did. He killed the cats, but the man got away.” There was no emotion in his voice, nor did it sound like there ever had been.
“Ah,” Brown John whispered. “And the wolf?”
“Dead.”
The old man studied the eyes within the helmet in search of a clue to Gath’s feeling, but found nothing. “I am truly sorry,” he whispered.
“Do not be. He is free!”
“Of course… of course. Now he runs with the summer fire and the winter wind.” Brown John shook his head in disbelief. With his elbows braced on his knees, he pressed his long fingers to his brow in concentration saying, “A wild beast of the forest sacrifices his life for a beautiful village maiden.” He looked up at the stony figure. “Tell me, Gath, why?”
“He did not share his reasons.”
“Ah, yes, and shame on me for asking. The deed speaks more clearly than any words.” He sighed. “I would have liked to have known him.”
The helmet studied the old man mysteriously, then its voice, rasping harshly with inner turmoil, demanded, “Help me find the girl.”
Brown John, sensing the control of their relationship suddenly shifting in his direction, sat erect. “Gladly,” he said. “I am responsible. I sent her to you. I risked her life.” He flattened his lips ruefully. “But I can’t help you find her. Not immediately.”
With one hand, Gath lifted blanket and man off the bed as if they were no weightier than a cream pitcher. The slits of the helmet began to glow. His breathing was harsh, audible.
Brown John’s eyes widened, and he began to squirm. “Don’t misunderstand. I’ll help. But if it is one of the bounty hunters who has her-and I am certain of it-by now he has carried her high into the cataracts to the Kitzakks.”
“Will he kill her?”
“No! No! I am sure not.”
Gath glared at the old man a moment, then shoved him back onto the bed. Bruised but relieved, Brown John looked warily at the dimming eye slits, but said nothing about them.
Instead he said, “The Kitzakk priests will not kill her, either, as they apparently believe your power is linked to her. They will examine her until they discover the nature of this mysterious connection, then attempt to use it, and her, to destroy you.” He smiled with macabre reassurance. “You are their target, not her. Remember this, they are a people accustomed to success. So accustomed that at the slightest defeat they become confused and frightened, and lay all blame on their leader. That is why your destruction is crucial to Klang, their warlord. Entire continents and nations have not been able to delay him, and now one man has not only slaughtered his scouts, but defeated two of his commanders and made a shambles of one of his proudest regiments. That, I can safely say, is driving him mad.”
With a sardonic laugh, he rose and fetched a clean tunic from a wooden hook. Balancing precariously on one foot, he stepped into it.
“Where will he take her?”
“Eventually, to Bahaara, the capital of the Desert Territory,” Brown John said, belting his tunic. He rolled his neck and stretched stiffly. “I’ll say this for you, sir, I have not been handled so roughly since I purchased my first whore. I was thirteen, and she outweighed me by sixty pounds.” The bukko laughed delightedly.