Kronmir knew the title meant he was a genuine adept – a wizard in training. He wondered if the young man was young enough to seduce to spying, but that was mere wheel-spinning. He would recruit his spy-mage only when he was confident of his own place and security, and this was not such a moment. ‘I am a mere merchant, my lord,’ Kronmir said.
‘Ah!’ Mortirmir said. ‘I had you pegged as a fellow practitioner.’
‘Whatever for?’ Kronmir allowed himself a genuine laugh.
‘The amulet you wear shines like a beacon in the aethereal. Ah – I beg your pardon, good sir. I know that some people mislike all discussion of the immaterial.’
Kronmir toyed with the amulet that the Emperor’s former wizard had given him. ‘Really?’ he asked.
‘It must be very powerful,’ Mortirmir continued. He leaned over, and Kronmir flinched back. ‘Sorry. Curiosity killed the cat, and all. I’ll desist.’
A pretty young woman in a fine Morean gown and wimple brought a wine glass, a tumbler worked with tiny tendrils of decorative glass in blues and greens, and the small flagon. She curtsied. He raised his glass to her.
Kronmir fought his rising fear and made a snap decision – the kind he made every day. Sometimes, it was easier to know things than to live in a world of fear. So he took the chain over his head and handed it to the young man. ‘My master paid handsomely for it,’ he said. ‘It is supposed to allow us to communicate. Over great distance.’
Mortirmir smiled, a little shy now that he was engaged. He took a sip of wine and turned the amulet over. It was a silver pendant in the shape of a praying man. He looked at the base of it, and frowned, weighed it in his hand, and something about his shift in his seat made Kronmir deeply uneasy. He began to look at the exits – his automatic reaction to threat.
Mortirmir flicked his thumb over the base of the amulet, and there was a minute flare of fire – blue fire.
Mortirmir dropped the amulet. ‘Well, well,’ he said with the enthusiasm of the young and passionate for an intricate device. ‘It’s very powerful. How far away is this master of yours? Etrusca?’ He laughed.
Kronmir stood up. ‘You unmask all my secrets,’ he said, taking back his device. ‘You are very clever.’
Mortirmir met his eye. ‘I’d be hesitant to hang all that unshielded potentia around my neck. What if the man who directs your business dislikes you, sir?’ He laughed. ‘I’m only being a ninny. Here you go.’
Kronmir raised an eyebrow. ‘Good to know,’ he said.
He changed inns later that afternoon with a minimum of fuss, but the damage was done – the boy would know him anywhere, and the amulet was like a badge. Kronmir was suddenly obscurely afraid of the power of the thing – as if the young scholar’s fear was a disease he’d caught. He put it in his pocket.
Thrake – Gelfred
‘This is not how I’d planned to celebrate the nativity,’ Gelfred complained.
Amy’s Hob laughed aloud, and even Daniel Favour grinned.
They had six small huts of branches leaning against carefully constructed sapling frames. The lean-tos ran either side of a fire trench that warmed both sides, and the result was like a long, very low Outwaller house. The men – a dozen of them – could lie with their feet to the fire’s warmth and their heads under the lowest and snuggest part of the shelter.
The lean-tos were covered in snow – indeed, they were buried in it, but the deep snow only made the shelters warmer. Every deer they brought down added a hide to the refinements they had worked on the openings, and every hour of daylight added to the immense pile of firewood that formed the north wall of the shelters; a barrier against the wind.
Favour’s two hounds lay with their heads on their paws near the entrance. They had their own hides to lie on, and men collected bits of food to try and lure them as sleeping companions, but they mostly slept with the young wagoner from Harndon. Even now, at the edge of night, they raised their heads when he moved.
‘He’s the youngest, and he must look most like a dog,’ Amy’s Hob said with a rare smile. The other men laughed.
Gelfred fetched his pot off the fire and served out mulled wine.
‘I’d like to do something for our Saviour’s birth,’ he said.
Young Daniel nodded. ‘Not until tomorrow though, Ser Gelfred.’
‘Wouldn’t hurt us none to sing a carol,’ Wha’Hae said. Amy’s Hob cuffed him and Wha’Hae elbowed the man. ‘What? I like to sing.’
Ginger snorted. ‘I know “God rest Ye”,’ he said.
‘Ain’t we hiding in enemy territory?’ Amy’s Hob said plaintively.
Young Daniel gave a snort of derision. ‘There’s nothing moving out there but us and the deer,’ he said. ‘And the deer ain’t moving much,’ he added, and got a laugh of his own. Young he might be, but Daniel Favour was the elite hunter among an elite of woodsmen. His patience was legendary, and his arrows flew true.
Gelfred swirled his hot wine and poured a cup for Amy’s Hob, who took it with a surprisingly civil inclination of his head, as if they were all lords. ‘Besides,’ he said in his cultured voice. ‘We have sentries well out, on the road and on the hill.’
‘Sweet Jesu, Master Gelfred, that hillside is cold as a witch’s tit,’ added Will Starling, their newest scout, a former Royal Forester.
Gelfred glanced at the man. They were of an age, and the former Forester liked to swear hard and talk bawdy, which did not sit well with Master Gelfred.
‘Cold as a virgin’s-’ he added with relish.
Gelfred handed him a cup of hot wine. ‘Master Starling, life is hard enough without reminding these men of the women they do not have among them. And it is my pleasure, while you serve with me, not to hear my Saviour’s name taken in vain, or even the parts of a woman’s body. Here. Have some wine.’
Starling was interested in being provoked, but it is difficult to maintain a resentment against a man with mild manners and a cup of hot, sweet wine for you on a winter’s day, and he subsided muttering something about priesthood.
Young Daniel took his horn cup and nodded. ‘But he has a point, Ser Gelfred. We ought to build a blind. A lie. Like we was hunting deer, or duck. The wind on that hillside goes through my cloak and my cote and my gown and my boots all together.’
‘Cuts me to the prick,’ Starling said, but his heart wasn’t in it.
The oil lamp that burned by the entrance flared, and there was a slight buzz, like that of a hornet in high summer.
‘Company!’ Gelfred said, and every man had a blade in his hand. They piled into their winter gear – most had their boots to hand. Favour threw his white wool gown over his head, picked up a boar spear, and emerged into the freezing sunset air. He got his feet into the loops of his snow rackets and trotted towards the road.
The sentries each had a device rigged by Gelfred, who had command of the ars magicka. The buzzing meant the road, and a high, clear tone meant the hillside. Favour trotted well to the north of the sentry’s position – it was Short Tooth who had the road, and he wasn’t given to false alarms. Favour moved quickly, but he stayed clear of what little undergrowth stood proud of the snow and he didn’t give his position away. When he crested the low bluff which dominated the road, he fell flat in the soft snow and wriggled forward.
‘I have a pass, you nitwit!’ shouted the man on the wagon. ‘It’s fucking cold and I want to get over the pass before it snows again.’
Short Tooth moved slowly clear of the huge wagon, which towered twice the height of a man, and whose wheels sank all the way to the roadbed through three feet of snow without putting the wagon body near the surface. They were exceptionally tall wheels.
‘What you carrying?’ Short Tooth asked.
Favour saw Wha’Hae drop into the snow a few yards to his left, closer to the wagon. He worked the action on a crossbow – a latchet – while rolling on his back. Across the road, Will Starling glided up behind a dead tree and froze.