“Theo!” she called, almost tripping over a fallen tree and stopping beside him in a crouch. “What is it? Are you hurt? Did you see something?”
“Hurt? See something? You blistering imbecile! You unfathomably moronic she-creature! Of course I’m hurt! I was paralyzed for three point eight hours and forced to endure irrational and inconceivably humiliating acts on the part of Vanderjack and even you! Hurt? See something? Thundering pigswill!”
Gredchen cleared her throat. “Well, yes. I apologize for the bit with the wagon and the sheet over your head, but-”
“And all of that carrying on with the highmaster and the wizard and that brainless thug of a mercenary, who I should have had killed years ago!”
Gredchen went off a short distance, then returned with a piece of cloth she’d bundled up. Unfolding it, she revealed a pair of ripe nectar plums and a cluster of unpeeled tree nuts. “Hungry?” she asked meekly.
Theodenes pulled himself into a sitting position. “Hungry? Are you categorically psychotic?”
“Well, I thought you might be hungry after all of the paralysis.”
Theodenes took a deep breath and shut his eyes. He opened them again, looked at Gredchen, then looked at the food.
“I am starving.”
“Good. Then I’ll prepare this and we can start to make plans for going back into the castle.”
Theodenes sputtered. “Back into the castle? Witless harridan! We have escaped with our lives from the dragonarmy highmaster of Nordmaar and her draconian elite. What could possibly make you want to go back inside?”
“Good question,” said Gredchen, peeling the green flesh from the nuts with a small knife. “There’s the painting, which I really do want to bring back to the baron.”
“Insanity,” muttered the gnome.
“Then there’s Star.”
Theodenes paused. “Star?”
“Oh yes. You probably didn’t get all of that, but Star’s alive somewhere in the castle. I think Rivven told the wizard he could have him.”
Theodenes scrambled to his feet and promptly fell back down again on his rear end. “A wizard? The only thing a wizard would want to do with Star is conduct some sort of foul thaumaturgical rite upon him and extract his essence or harvest his remains for supernatural reagents!”
“Right. I knew you wouldn’t be very happy with that idea.”
“What about the highmaster?”
Gredchen handed some nuts to Theodenes, who sniffed at them before popping them into his mouth and chewing them noisily. “She’s taking Vanderjack back to Wulfgar. They made some kind of strange bargain. Vanderjack wasn’t pleased to find out that he had come all this way to bring the painting back and not some beautiful woman.”
“I ab nob surpbride,” said Theodenes, his mouth full of chewed nuts. “I woub be agry doo ib I fow dout.”
Gredchen frowned at him, finishing the nuts and turning to the fruit. “So you’re angry too?”
“I am angry to the core!” he said, greedily eating the sliced fruit and getting juice all over his beard.
“About the painting?”
“That is between you and Vanderjack,” said Theo, remembering to swallow first. “But the sellsword has a financial obligation to me, he can’t just disappear; he owes me big for all he’s done, right down to killing my cook!”
Gredchen brightened. “So you’ll return with me to the castle?”
“Do you think my expandable conflict primacy attainment utility is there too?”
Gredchen squinted. “Your what? Oh, your polearm? I’m sure it is; it’s such a valuable weapon.”
“Excellent! Then in an effort to rid myself of unnecessarily distracting anger and resentment, I shall accompany you-with addenda to be added to our contractual agreement at a later date-and retrieve both the painting and Star from the castle. Vanderjack too, if he’s still around.”
Gredchen smiled. “Thanks, Theo. That means a lot to me.”
“Nonsense,” Theo said. “As a mercenary, a master of weapons and tactics, an expert at overcoming obstacles, and as a gnome, I forsake paltry gratitudes. I shall be doing this for the glory of discovery and the attainment of purpose.”
Theodenes stood up once more. He smiled at his success, put one foot before the other, and fell flat on his face in the soft mud.
Ten minutes later, with their stomachs full and mud wiped away, Gredchen and Theodenes packed up what remained of their temporary camp and headed back along the road to Castle Glayward. Along the way, Theodenes began to formulate a plan.
“How long have you known this wizard?” Theo asked.
“About ten years,” she replied. “It’s complicated. He’s been working for Rivven Cairn at least as long as the occupation of Nordmaar.”
“Is she not herself a sorcerer of some description?”
Gredchen nodded. “Yes. Studied under Emperor Ariakas. But mages are a strange lot. Very few of them master all of the different fields of magical study. Rivven never really studied the arts of conjuration and binding pacts of dark magic. She’s more ambitious and a little obsessed with fire and war.”
“Sensible, given her position,” said Theodenes.
“So she hired Cazuvel years ago to work for her. She had some contacts within the Towers, I suppose. Mages who were more afraid of her and of Ariakas than they were of the Conclave.”
The two of them rounded a bend. The castle loomed over them from atop its mesa, awkward and towering in the early-evening gloom.
“I have dealt with wizards and their ilk before,” Theo mused. “If, as you say, this Cazuvel has been working with the highmaster for a decade, he must surely have the advantage of knowing this castle better than we do.”
“I know it just as well as he does,” Gredchen said. “I grew up here.”
Theo looked at her. “You were here as a child?”
Gredchen stammered. “Well. Yes. Sort of. I mean, you know how it is in castles. There’s a lot of people living and working inside of them. Like a small town.”
“How long, exactly, have you been working for the baron in your current capacity?”
Gredchen ran her hand through her hair. “Oh, roughly ten years.”
“Interesting,” said the gnome and said nothing more as they walked.
When they had arrived at the last sloping approach to the main gates, Theodenes stopped and pointed. Several figures were moving around in front of the castle walls, near the top of the approach; despite the darkness, the gnome could make out their features. They were draconians.
“Kapaks,” he whispered. “See the wings, tightly folded behind them, and their stature-hunched yet nimble. Not dull brutes like the baaz draconians, nor walking arsenals like the sivaks.”
“I know what kapaks are,” she hissed back. “Those must be the scouts that have been ranging through the jungle hereabouts. Rivven must not have taken them with her.”
“I count at least six,” said Theo. “If we walk up the slope to the front gates, we shall be immediately set upon by the venomous blades of a half dozen kapaks.”
“Do you have any better ideas?” Gredchen asked.
“Quite so!” said Theo. He pointed at a number of heavily-vine-laden trees hanging over the road. “We’ll need your knife to cut those down. And those spiked floral arrangements over there.”
A short time later, thanks to the ingenuity of the gnome, Theo and Gredchen had two serviceable grappling hooks fashioned out of thorny spiked vegetation and sufficient lengths of vine to pass for rope. Gredchen located a likely place from which to toss the grapples upward, and together they scaled the sheer, hundred-foot side of the massif upon which the castle stood.
Theo was the first over the side of the cliff, and he looked around. Gredchen came next, but by that point, the gnome had scurried over to a heavy cornice along the base of the castle wall and poked his head around the corner.