"Why, what a pack of mongrels!" Quicksilver raged, but Geoffrey had caught another implication. " 'They?' This is not your village, then?"
"It is not," Maud confirmed. "We met the messenger on the roadway, and he was nearly done in. We left him some food and water, and told him we would bear word to the bandit Quicksilver."
"You have borne it," Quicksilver snapped. "But Aunriddy! That is not even in my county!"
"Nay, 'tis in County Frith, a day's ride away."
"Why do they not appeal to Count Frith, then?"
"Why," said Maud, "they have. He will not come."
"He fears the bandits," Nan said.
"Not so greatly as they should fear me!" Quicksilver seethed. "Oh, would that I were free again! I should chop those bandits to mincemeat, then chastise that count most shrewdly, for not defending his own!"
"'Tis for that they have called upon you," Maud said softly.
Quicksilver looked at her, stricken.
"'Tis for the King to chastise Count Frith," Geoffrey said, "but as to these bandits—why, I daresay I might join you in mincing them."
Quicksilver turned to him, surprised—until she saw the wolfish grin on his face. Then her surprise turned to disgust. "You do not care who you battle, do you? So long as you have a fight."
"You wrong me," Geoffrey protested. "I will not fight the innocent or the good!"
"You have fought me."
Geoffrey should have looked abashed, but the vision of that battle kindled warmth within him. "Aye, that I have," he breathed, "and I shall have the memory of that bout to warm my heart, when all else about it grows cold." Quicksilver stared at him, shocked, then blushed and turned away. "I thought you had sworn to take me to the King and Queen!"
"Why, so I have," Geoffrey said, "but County Frith is on the way to them."
"Aye, if west is on the path toward the north!"
"Well, it is closer than the south," Geoffrey said with a shrug. "Come, are you so loathe to fight by my side?" Quicksilver turned back to him, and if his grin was that of a wolf, hers was that of a fox. "I would rather fight you than by you," she said, "but I will take what I may." She turned back to Maud. "Find that messenger and relieve his mind. Quicksilver shall ride to the rescue of Aunriddy."
"But where is your army?" Nan protested.
Geoffrey could have told her that they were only a dozen yards away, but Quicksilver said instead, "I ride with Sir Geoffrey Gallowglass by my side, and it is his boast that he is the equal of an army. What more should I need?"
Nan glanced at Geoffrey with misgiving, but Maud said, quite complacently, "Even so—what more should you need? God speed you, then, with the thanks of a poor old widow woman to lighten your burdens—and my blessings upon you."
"Why, thank you, good woman," Quicksilver said softly.
"You are welcome, and well come indeed—and may you go as well as you came." Then Maud gathered up Nan and turned away to the cart. "Come, daughter. We must away."
"Oh, must we?" Nan protested, and Geoffrey had to smother a laugh as he mounted and turned Fess's head back up the trail. "So, then, we ride to County Frith."
"Aye," said Quicksilver, "by your leave."
"No," Geoffrey said, "by yours."
A commotion broke out behind them, dimmed by distance. Turning back, Geoffrey saw the cart rolling away down the road, with Nan chattering breathlessly to her mother. They were thirty yards away, but Geoffrey could still hear a few of her words: "He is gorgeous, Mother! If she does not grab tight to him, she is a very fool!" Maud murmured something he couldn't hear, to which Nan answered, "Oh, stuff and nonsense! He will, or she is not the man-leader she thinks she is!"
Geoffrey smiled, and turned back to Quicksilver with a raised eyebrow—but she rode with her face set dead ahead, an imperturbable mask. She was blushing, though.
When they bedded down for the night, Geoffrey thought, as he rolled up in his blanket, Keep the watch for me, will you not Fess?
Of course, Fess thought back, though why I should bother when a hundred outlaws are doing so, I cannot think.
In case they should decide to free their leader, Geoffrey thought drily, by ridding her of me. He tried to ignore the blanket-shrouded, curving form beside him in the dark and, to distract himself, thought, A most fortunate meeting with the mother and daughter, was it not?
How so? Fess's thoughts were guarded.
Why, thought Geoffrey, an hour later, and they would have missed us quite.
Yes, a most fortuitous coincidence, Fess agreed somewhat drily, Geoffrey thought.
Once again, he could see Nan, side by side with Quicksilver, in his mind's eye. A vision of Quicksilver was not what he needed to put him to sleep, so he concentrated on Nan. The daughter bears a most striking resemblance to Quicksilver.
She does indeed.
There was something in the way the robot said it, in the careful noncommittal tone he used, that awoke Geoffrey's suspicions. What was Fess seeing that he was not...? He visualized the two faces again, then the mother's next to Nan's...
And his eyes flew wide open. Fess! Picture the mother Maud's face for me, and transform it backwards twenty years! Show her to me as she was before she married!
He closed his eyes again, and Maud's face appeared behind his eyelids, then a younger version of the same face next to it, but without the kerchief, brown hair unbound, floating freely about her face and shoulders...
She is almost the spit and image of Quicksilver!
No, Fess thought back at him. It is Quicksilver who is the spit and image of Maud.
Fess rarely used slang of any sort, and it didn't take Geoffrey more than a moment to realize why the robot had done so this time. Maud is her mother!
That would be my conjecture, yes. Then Nan must be her sister!
That would account for the resemblance, Fess agreed. Then I have met all the family—save the father, who is dead. Geoffrey relaxed a little, opening his eyes to fix a brooding gaze on the shapely shadowed form beside him. He found he could not think clearly that way, so he rolled over onto his back to gaze up at the scrap of sky visible between the leaves overhead. Why would they have brought word of Aunriddy's troubles themselves, instead of sending the messenger?
Fess ignored the rhetorical nature of the question and answered, Presumably, because they wished to meet you. Yes, that would seem clear. Geoffrey frowned up at the sky. Now, why would they have wanted to do that?
Why, indeed? Fess said, with the burst of static that served him for a sigh. He reflected that his young master was a positive genius at anything military, but could be singularly dense about anything else—and apparently, he did not yet see that a campaign was forming. Too intent on his own, no doubt. Good night, Geoffrey.
But there was no answer; puzzling over a question whose solution was too obvious to see had given Geoffrey the distraction and relaxation he had needed to lapse into sleep. Fess stood by, content to watch—and it was well that he did, for though Geoffrey may have found sleep, Quicksilver had not.