Those not awakened by the whistle must have been awakened by messengers standing ready to pass the alarm. The whole manor was in an uproar before Wylum could walk from the door to the head of the stairs and disappear down them. Drums and trumpets had joined the neighing, clattering, and shouts before Gerik had even decently begun donning his armor.
It was only when he had finished that he noticed Ellysta was sitting on the bed, rather than lying in it, and was fully clad, rather than as she had been when his hands found her skin. She wore a man's garb, with several pouches on her belt that Gerik had not seen before. Beside her was a stout pack, oiled leather that looked like kender work. It bulged, and across the top was strapped a dagger Gerik had not seen since the day Ellysta came to Tirabot Manor.
To keep himself from having to speak and possibly say the wrong thing, Gerik started knotting his helmet cords.
"Let me play squire," Ellysta said. Her nimble fingers did up the knots in half the time Gerik would have taken. All of Ellysta's outward injuries seemed healed now, except few that would need potent magic to avoid leaving scars.
As for the inward hurts…
"I have to take my place on the walls," Ellysta said. "For what good I can do, if only by being there and in danger along with the rest."
"In danger ahead of the rest, I should say," Gerik said.
"Sell-swords and household guards will not climb walls to carry me off," she said.
"Some might, promised enough gold, and have you never heard of archery?"
"That reminds me. Is there a bow to spare?"
Gerik held his tongue. If he didn't, he would insult her, and she seemed ready to tell the truth regardless of whether he spoke or not. Or even whether he wanted to hear it or not, but he had to want it. He was captain and lord, and being told other than the truth put everyone at Tirabot or under its protection in danger.
"Gerik, do not take this amiss, but if you do not return-if our enemies are ready to take knights' blood-I must take to the road," Ellysta told him quietly.
Gerik thought his face asked "Why?" loudly enough, and perhaps he was right. Ellysta ran her fingers across his lips, then continued, "With you dead and me gone, there is no way to prove that my being here was other than your fancy. Without that proof, the laws against private warfare will weigh heavily against any attack on the manor. Against any harm to your folk."
She laughed. "Also, the kender and I and certain friends can lead anyone who does want my blood on a merry chase. They may still be turning over fallen logs and rotten mushrooms when the snow flies, too busy to think of Tirabot Manor-even if it is not guarded by the Solamnics."
Gerik looked at the ceiling. "Why do I have the feeling that the hens of this flock are wiser in war than the rooster?" he sighed.
"Because we are, for now," Ellysta said, with an unrepentant laugh. "But that will change, if the young cockerel lives long enough. So don't get killed, Gerik."
She kissed him decisively. "I came where some women might have seen or even expected a boy. But I looked with open eyes and mind." She kissed him again. "And I found a man."
Gerik walked steadily as they left the chamber, for all that his head was spinning.
The horsemen awoke Horimpsot Elderdrake from a sound sleep in Botsenril Woods, one that he had intended to continue until dawn. So he was in a worse mood than usual for a kender when he started counting them. Before he had finished his count at forty, he had heard a human watcher slipping away along another path. A warning was on the way to Tirabot, so he could do as he pleased.
It pleased him to make these fumble-witted humans pay for their silliness in making trouble for Tirabot Manor. It was going beyond what he or any other kender might owe to Sir Pirvan and all of his people. It was reaching the point where the humans needed to be taught a lesson about making nuisances of themselves.
Really, they were killing each other over things that no kender would have considered worth a quarrel, let alone a fight. Oh, there had been the time when his aunt put a lock on her biscuit cupboard, and half the village vowed not to dine with her or even speak to her for a year. The vow hadn't bound anybody that long, because somebody (Elderdrake suspected who, but would never tell) had picked the lock within a month.
But killing for the freedom to break one's own laws, even if some of those laws were so stupid that no kender would have lived under them for five minutes-this was "virtue"?
Elderdrake used a kenderspeak word that was usually translated as "idiots," in Common.
The kender unslung his pack and pulled out a glazed pottery jar wrapped in straw. He undid the wrapping and held the pot up to his ear. Good. They sounded all right.
One of the Spillgather guests was someone Shumeen hadn't told him about at first. Like many kender priests of Branchala, this one had chosen a practical joke for his masterpiece. It had gone a little far, and his friends had told him to hide out until they had forgotten it, then come back and try again. That was ten years ago and the priest had been with the Spillgathers ever since.
They hadn't asked him to stay away ten years, but like Imsaffor Whistletrot (and how was the old fellow doing, Elderdrake wondered) or Sirbones (who was really too old to be climbing aboard ships and sailing off to fight wizards at the rim of the world) this priest liked the road. He could also make more of his masterpiece, anytime anyone asked, without being paid-although people didn't ask very often, for obvious reasons.
Now it was time to turn the joke loose on Tirabot's uninvited guests. That should keep them from spoiling Gerik's party.
And afterward? Elderdrake studied the riders. They had fine horses and much better weapons and armor than such starved-looking, unkempt sell-swords deserved, or were likely to be able to pay for. Somebody was giving them all this, but there wasn't anybody to the south for quite a distance. So these men had to be like the ghost riders. They had to have their supplies piled somewhere that wasn't on anybody's land.
That meant it wouldn't be protected by anybody's house guards. It might be protected by that fat little wizard who'd been with the ghost-riders, but Elderdrake would worry about him when he turned up.
The riders were talking now, as if nobody could be within a mile. In the intervals between loud boasts, Elderdrake thought he heard gurgles. He hoped it was wine or ale they were drinking, not water.
Dwarf spirits did even more than ale or wine to increase the power of the priest's masterpiece, but it was too much to hope for that this band of starvelings would be given dwarf spirits-or stay in their saddles at all, if they drank any.
Gerik led twelve fighters down the road to the Alsenor Crossroads under a cloudy sky that made him glad for the five villagers who had volunteered to play scout or messenger. He had accepted them on the condition that they would ride for their lives if it came to a serious fight, and look to their families and homes first.
He hoped they would keep their oaths. The fight might be no more than his twelve, Bertsa Wylum's six, and the odd roving spy against forty or more. It might be fewer, if Wylum's luck was out and she and her people were down before the fighting started.
If it started. Gerik vowed to keep his hand off his sword and use his tongue first, remembering many admonitions about how the best way to win a fight was not to have it at all.
One came to memory, in his mother's voice. "Only leeches, mosquitoes, and vampires must shed blood. The rest of us prefer to see what a little sweat or wine will do first."
However, he suspected that the forty riders would be in a mood to talk only if they were here on some completely legal task, with no connection to Ellysta's being a guest at Tirabot Manor. Gerik would not bet a worn-out sandal thong that this was so.