“It does give you a bad turn,” Matt agreed, “having to revise your view of the world. I think he’ll survive, though.”
“I doubt it not,” Sir Orizhan agreed. “Shall we break our fast, my lord?”
“I have meal and water, and can make a porridge quickly,” Friar Gode offered.
Matt exchanged glances with Sir Orizhan, then turned to the friar, nodding. “That ought to get us on the road fast enough. Thanks, friar—and maybe over a morning bowl we can talk about the route to the convent.”
An hour later they started out, Matt with some misgivings. An abbess was an administrator, after all, and he was well aware that top administrators don’t always rise to their positions because of virtue.
Toward noon a fourth person fell in with the three companions, slouching along beside them with his hood pulled up and his arms folded, with his hands in his sleeves. The trio stiffened, recognizing the bauchan.
Matt tried to be offhand about it, though. “Good morning, Buckeye. Thought you’d be sleeping it off.”
The bauchan looked at him in puzzlement. “Sleeping what off, Lord Wizard?”
“Your night’s fighting,” Matt explained. “Mind you, I’m grateful, but I thought you’d need a rest.”
Sir Orizhan and Sergeant Brock looked up, staring in amazement.
“He fought off some evil spirits for me last night,” Matt explained, “not to mention a dozen or so wolves.”
Knight and squire transferred their amazement to Buckeye.
The bauchan shrugged it off, uncomfortable with praise. “Remember that I’m a spirit more than an animal, wizard. I can manage without sleep quite well. But you have had none at all, and your mortal body must be dragging at you. What spell have you chanted to flush energy through your body?”
“I borrowed an hour of sleep from each of the next eight nights,” Matt explained. “I’m probably better rested now than I’ll be then.”
Knight and sergeant swiveled their gazes back to him, staring harder.
“Your eyeballs are going to dry out if you don’t blink now and then,” Matt told them. Then, back to Buckeye, “So what brings you out to join us on the open road?”
“A beggar at the next crossroads,” Buckeye told him. “I have gone ahead and seen that he will be of interest to you. Do not pass him by without a glance or a coin, wizard.”
Matt gazed at him, wondering whether it was a booby trap or a tip. “Trouble with you is, I never know when you’re helping me or troubling me.”
“I know.” Buckeye grinned. “That’s the delight of it. Take pleasure in your caution, mortal wizard” With a bound, he disappeared into the roadside brush.
“Surely we will not heed his words!” Brock protested.
“If it was good advice and we don’t take it, he’ll laugh his head off,” Matt explained.
“The imp!” Sir Orizhan exclaimed. “He has us by the scruff, and he knows it! We dare not take his advice and dare not ignore it!”
“And he’s chortling up his sleeve about it this very minute,” Matt assured him. “Maybe that’s why he wore clothes this time. Shall we see what’s at the next crossroads, gentlemen?”
They came to the intersection. Matt stopped abruptly and cursed softly to himself.
Sir Orizhan and Sergeant Brock stared, too. The east-west road had been deliberately rerouted into an S-curve, so that it crossed the north-south road at a slant instead of a right angle.
“Prince John’s taking the synthodruids a little too seriously,” Matt said. “He’s changed the intersection to avoid the form of a Christian cross.”
“Could he really have so transformed every crossroads in the kingdom?” Sir Orizhan asked, staring.
“You can do amazing things with magic, if you have enough of it,” Matt said grimly. “Come on—let’s see who that beggar is, leaning against the signpost.”
The beggar was a bit better outfitted than most—his clothes were dirty, but not yet reduced to rags; he hadn’t been begging long. Matt stepped up, fishing in the wallet behind his belt for a silver penny. His shadow fell across the beggar, and the man looked up, holding out his bowl in listless routine. Matt froze. The eyes were dull, the face bleak, but he recognized it, and the last time he had seen the man, those eyes had been bloodshot from too much ale.
“Lord Wizard?” Sir Orizhan said behind him. “What troubles you?”
“I’ve seen him before,” Matt told him. “So have you. We shared a table at an inn a week ago.”
“It cannot be!”
But Sergeant Brock pushed past and knelt in front of the man, then rose with his face hard. “It is. When the soldiers were done with him, they cast him out to wander the roads and beg.”
The dull eyes began to focus on them. The beggar frowned, trying to remember.
“Dolan!” Matt cried. “That was his name!”
The man stared up at him.
“What have they done to him?” Sir Orizhan whispered.
“Part of it is not so hard to guess.” Brock gestured at a crutch lying beside the beggar. “He didn’t need that when they took him away.”
“They lamed him?” the knight exclaimed in horror. “For nothing but drunken mutterings?”
“Drunken mutterings against Prince John,” Matt reminded him.
Brock knelt and looked into Dolan’s eyes. “How did they lame you, fellow? You still have both your legs.”
Dolan pointed to a large, dirty bandage on his ankle.
“His hamstring,” Brock said, his face grim. “One or both?”
Dolan held up a single finger.
Sir Orizhan began to look apprehensive. “Why doesn’t he speak?”
For answer, Dolan opened his mouth and made a sort of cawing. His lips writhed, trying to mold the sound into words and failing.
“He spoke against the prince, after all,” Matt said quietly. “They gave him the punishment they thought fitted the crime.”
“His tongue?” Sir Orizhan turned green.
Even Sergeant Brock rose and turned away. “It would have been kinder to kill him outright!”
“Yes, it would,” Matt said, “but he wouldn’t have been able to go hobbling through the land as a walking warning to anyone who might be thinking of criticizing Prince John.” At a sudden thought, he looked up, then relaxed. “For a minute there I was afraid I might find a raven listening.”
“No fear,” Sir Orizhan told him. “All the carrion eaters are in royal castles now.”
Matt tossed the silver penny into the begging bowl even as he said, “We can’t just leave him here.”
“We surely cannot take him with us!” Sir Orizhan protested. “We’d scarcely make a mile a day!”
“Oh, I think we can move a bit faster than that.” Matt knelt and clasped the beggar’s shoulder. “Dolan, I hereby adopt you! Sir Orizhan, Goodman Brock, you’re my witnesses— from this day forth, this man is my cousin!”
“A mere beggar?” Sir Orizhan stared. “Have you taken leave of your senses, my lord?”
“Not a bit.” Sergeant Brock grinned. “After all, the poor lad is in need of help, if ever a man was. Surely he is in no condition to suffer pranks.”
“No, he’s not,” Matt agreed, and stood up to call, “Oh, Buckeye! There’s somebody I’d like you to meet!”
CHAPTER 16
The bauchan came out of the trees, looking very surly indeed. “I heard, wizard! It’s a foul trick to play upon me!”
“Hey, you were the one who told me to take notice of him,” Matt reminded. “Buckeye, I’d like you to meet my cousin Dolan. Dolan, meet the family curse.”
“This is beneath you, wizard,” the bauchan complained. “He is not of your blood and bone!”