“How do you know this place we’re going to, and how do you know it’s still there? When were you there last?”
He didn’t look back but his voice drifted to me over his shoulder. “I saw it last three years ago. I know where it is because I was born near there. I know it is still there because it was built to endure forever. And I know that’s true because the shepherd who built it was my grandfather. I helped him chink the walls while I was still a babe in my mother’s arms. And I know it’s warm and dry and stocked with fuel because my cousin Doran still uses it today, when his flocks are on that side of his lands.” Now he turned back and looked at me, laughing. “Have you any further questions, Master Clothar?”
I closed my mouth, which had gaped open in surprise at what he was telling me, and then laughed back at him, kicking my mount’s flanks to bring it level with his, and we rode on through the downpour, out into the forest’s edge where we could ride parallel to the road and pass our quarry by without fear of being seen.
It was dark within the confines of the forest, and although I knew the expectation was illogical, I felt it ought to have been drier, but this forest was all deciduous growth, so there was nothing but a thin screen of leaves preventing the driving, incessant rain from falling straight through the canopy to the ground. And so as we rode through the trees we found it worse in places than being out in the open air, facing the rain. Out there, at least, we would be able to tell where the attack was coming from and hunch ourselves against it. Here, in the shadows beneath the trees, depending on what we or our mounts brushed up against or disturbed in passing, we were constantly being caught unprepared by small deluges, and sometimes enormous ones, that crashed down on us from all directions, landing indiscriminately on our heads or on any other part of our bodies that happened to be in the way. I tried hard to empty my mind of anything other than picking my way forward through the undergrowth and remaining alert to the possibility, however unlikely it might be, that Beddoc might have sent out scouts in such weather to check the forest’s edge for enemies.
Sooner than I had expected, Ursus held up his arm in a signal to halt, and I reined in close to where he sat staring off to his right, listening intently. I tilted my head to listen, too, only to wonder for possibly the hundredth time at the acuity of my companion’s hearing. I could hear nothing but the hammering of rain on my helmet. The noise of it filled my entire world.
“What can you hear,” I asked him.
“Nothing, and that suits me well. We’re close to the old mansio, but not too close. I’m going to take a look. You stay here.”
He swung down from his saddle and went toward the road, and I could not believe how quickly he faded from my sight, obscured by the mist among the trees and the falling rain, the blackish green color of his heavy woolen cloak seeming to absorb the very air about it and rendering him invisible. I forced myself to sit patiently, waiting for him to return, and in a short time he did, looming up suddenly within paces of me, though I had been watching diligently for the first signs of his coming.
“They’re there, settling in for the night about a quarter of a mile up ahead, and a miserable-looking crew they are. They won’t all be able to fit beneath the roofed portion of the place, not by a long shot, so there will be a deal of squabbling over who gets to stay where and I imagine the people in charge of them will have a job keeping the peace. I managed to get close enough to hear a few things, but the only important thing was someone giving orders for a squad to come into the forest looking for firewood … dry firewood. They won’t find any, not in this downpour, but that means they’re going to search deep into the woods, trying to find a dry cache, so we had better make a wide loop just to be sure we avoid them. Let’s go.”
We struck off deep into the woods and rode in a long semicircle for the better part of half an hour, until we were sure we had left the enemy night camp far behind us, and we came out onto the road again. From that point on, free of the need to worry about being seen, we traveled as quickly as our mounts could carry us. The daylight lasted long after we had expected it to fade, so that it was still not completely dark by the time Ursus reined in and led us off the road, along a narrow but clearly marked pathway that took us, as he had promised, to a dry and sturdy, draft-proof haven that was stocked with an ample supply of cut and split firewood, carefully piled beneath sheltering eaves that had been extended for that purpose. We had a fire going within minutes of arriving and we ate in comfort and then bedded down in the luxury of two narrow, hand-built cots, with our wet clothes hung and stretched out around the inner walls, steaming toward dryness in the heat from the fire.
I was almost asleep when Ursus spoke for the first time in nigh on half an hour, and his words snapped me back to wakefulness.
“Be prepared for anything tomorrow, Clothar, and expect it to be worse than anything you can imagine. You hear me?”
“Aye. But why would you say that?”
“Because that is the only way to go, as a thinking man. Going in expecting the very worst, anything you find that’s less than that will appear to be welcome. I have the feeling that we are about to be involved in a struggle, you and I—perhaps a civil war between brothers—whether we like it or no. The stakes are high enough to justify a war, no doubt about that—a kingship and its power for the winner. I don’t believe in auguries but I mislike the way things have fallen out, these past few days. This brother of yours, Gunthar, sounds like a bad one to me. He does not strike me as the kind of man who’ll be content to sit quietly back and run the risk of being frustrated and deposed. Granted, he doesn’t know yet that King Ban dispossessed him, or that Ban himself is dead, but he does know Ban was seriously wounded, and that in itself might have been enough to make him react according to his true nature.
“I hope I’m wrong and everything is well, and I would be happy to admit within a few days that I’ve been speaking like an old woman tonight, but we’ll find out the truth tumor-row, when we reach Genava. Sleep well, in the meantime, and hope the rain stops before dawn. At least we’ll start out warm and dry in the morning, which is more than can be said for Beddoc’s cattle.”
With that, Ursus turned noisily around in his bed and was snoring heavily in the space of what seemed like several heartbeats, but his last words had bereft me of any easy ability to sleep and I lay awake with my own thoughts until the fire had died out completely and even the roaring of the rain on the roof dwindled into silence.
How would Gunthar react, I wondered, now that Ban’s last decision had been made public? I had always been as one with his half-brothers in believing him to be abnormal in his responses to being thwarted or crossed in any way, and we had often laughed derisively at his excessive reactions on such occasions, declaring him, among ourselves, to be insane and beyond redemption, simply because we had had no fear of him in those days, confident in our father’s protection and in our own conviction that Ban’s firstborn son was different in almost every way to each and all of us. But the last time I had laughed thus, I was less than ten years old and knew nothing of the world. Six years had elapsed since then and I had barely thought of Gunthar in all that time. How had he changed during those years, I wondered now, and I doubted that any change he might have undergone would be for the better.
It was more than conceivable, I thought, that Ursus was exactly correct and that we might be hovering on the verge of falling into a situation that was beyond our control, within the next few days. And thinking that, I fastened upon the phrase, beyond our control, and tried to think what that meant. My entire life, I realized now lying there in the flickering firelight, had been entirely under the control of other people, King Ban, Chulderic, Tiberias Cato, and Bishop Germanus foremost among them, until the day of the ambush in which Lorco lost his life. Since then, from that day forward, I had thought I was controlling my own life without help, but by then I had become dependent upon Ursus, exchanging one mentor for another so that even now, gazing into the future, I was being guided by his wisdom and experience. Be prepared for the worst, he had said, because that way anything less looks like a reprieve. I tried earnestly to envision the very worst that could occur to us in the days ahead, but all I could think of in those terms was Lorco’s head suddenly changing shape and bursting apart with the impact of the arrow, because that was the very worst thing that had ever happened to me. I could not imagine anything ever being more dreadful than that, and thinking that, I must have drifted off to sleep.