Rod knew the robot-horse didn't have a sense of smell as such—just an ability to analyze air molecules and detect anything that shouldn't be there. "What's wrong?"
"The smell of blood," Fess said.
Nine
ROD DREW HIS SWORD. "WHAT KIND OF BLOOD?"
"It is difficult to say when the molecules are so thinly spread," Fess answered, "but I am fairly certain that it is not human."
"Won't hurt to make sure. Follow your nose."
"I can scarcely do anything else, Rod, since it is so much farther in front than the rest of me."
"A point," Rod agreed. "Follow your scents."
"Technically, Rod, a robot has no sense."
"Nor do I, half the time," Rod sighed. "At the moment, though, I'll rely on your tracking ability."
They turned off the beaten track and broke through a screen of brash into a small clearing, where a boar lay on its side, blood spreading from a rip in its abdomen.
"It would seem we have found the loser in a fight over a female," Fess said.
But Rod dismounted and knelt beside the boar, inspecting the wound. Then he rose, shaking his head as he remounted.
"It was no tusk that made that wound, Fess. It was a blade with a serrated edge."
"Only a boar hunter, then?"
"If so, he was a very clumsy one—hunters meet a boar's charge head-on, or step aside and stab for the ribs and the heart. This poor beast must have staggered for hundreds of yards before it finally collapsed."
"Perhaps, then, the hunter is tracking it."
"Could be—the kill is fresh enough, only beginning to draw flies." Rod started to sheathe his sword, then thought better of it. "If that hunter is coming this way, I'd better be ready to meet him."
"People who hunt boar, Rod, generally do not hunt people."
"With some notable exceptions. England's William the Second was killed when he was out hunting, after all."
"With an arrow, not a boar-spear—and as I recall the incident, he was hunting deer at the time."
"Yeah, but his nobles were hunting him."
"It could have been a Saxon peasant who loosed that arrow, Rod."
"Or a nobleman who wanted it to look like a peasant's work."
"The peasants did have much to resent, so soon after the conquest," Fess mused.
"Yeah, but so did the noblemen, even if they were part of the invading force. William Rufus wasn't the wisest or most moderate of rulers."
So, happily bickering, they went back to the trail and on down it. After a while, Rod decided they must have passed the hunter, if he'd been tracking his prey—and the thought that he hadn't bothered gave Rod a chill; he didn't like men who killed solely for sport.
To banish the gloom, he took out his harp and plucked out a melody in a minor key as he rode, remembering other such journeys in his bachelor days, when he had been looking for something worth doing, looking for a woman he could fall in love with who would fall in love with him—and knowing he never would, that he was far too unattractive.
Incredibly, he actually had found such a woman. Even more incredibly, she had actually fallen in love with him. He marvelled how little had changed, for here he was riding down a woodland path alone, searching for her again.
A cawing broke into his reverie. He frowned, looking up into a tree at its source—and was astonished when the cawing shaped itself into words.
Three ravens sat high in a tree, where the branches thinned enough to let them survey the forest around them. "RAWK!" croaked the first. "I see a tasty morsel!"
"And I," cawed the second. "But we must wait for him to die."
"How, though, shall we decoy his hound?" a third asked. "Even his horse stands guard over him!"
Rod frowned. Someone lay dying? Not if he had anything to say about it. "Off to the right, Fess—that's the direction they're looking."
"As you say, Rod." The robot horse stepped off the path and picked his way between saplings and rotting stumps into a small clearing.
"CRAWK!" The third raven cried in alarm. "There comes a human doe!"
"As heavy with child as she may go," the second said in disappointment.
"Patience, brothers," said the first. "Perhaps the hound will drive her away."
But Rod came into the clearing in time to see the hound run to the woman, saw her stroke its head with words of praise even as she made her way toward the young man who lay, blood oozing from the shoulder joint of his armor, eyes closed and face pallid.
The young woman sank heavily to her knees with a cry of distress. She was indeed in the final weeks of pregnancy. "Oh, my Reginald!" she cried. "Live, my love, live! Do not leave me now!"
The young man's eyelids fluttered; he looked up at her a moment before his eyes closed as though the weight of the lids were too heavy a load for him to bear. The young woman gave a long, keening cry.
"Mayhap she will die with him," the first raven called hopefully.
Rod rode toward them, and the second raven saw and gave a loud, long caw of anger. "Brothers! A vital one comes within!"
"CLOSE THE DOOR," Durer said.
Aethel stepped through and shut the portal. The three other agents exchanged a glance, wondering why the rest of the cadre was shut out.
'Too many people make a discussion too cumbersome," Durer told them. "Everyone wants to say something, and nobody wants to listen. The five of us should be able to come up with a useful idea."
"An idea for what, Chief?" Aethel sat down with the others.
"A rebellion, of course! A coup to thrust that little snip off the throne and put our man on!"
Again the others exchanged a glance; the "little snip" was in her fifties.
"Not a chance of succeeding without one of the twelve great lords to lead it," Stan said, "and they're all too willful to let us guide them."
"Except the king's brother," Durer countered.
The others sat very still. Anselm Loguire had been the figurehead for Durer's last rebellion against Queen Catharine. The agents didn't even have to look at one another; they knew they were all thinking the same thing: How long will it take him to stop living in the past?
"Anselm Loguire isn't a lord any more," Orin said. "He's attainted—stripped of his title and estates."
"I know, and that witch Catharine gave them to her younger son," Durer snapped, "but the other lords all know that Anselm is really the rightful Duke Loguire and heir to all its estates."
"Maybe," said Aethel, "but they all know what happened to him, and that it was only because King Tuan counselled mercy that Anselm is still alive."
"Alive—and bitter," Durer pointed out. "He's probably long over his gratitude at being left alive and in charge of a small estate. He'll be angry with his brother and the queen—angry and wanting revenge."
"And wealth." Stan knew it didn't pay to argue with the boss for long.
"For his son," Aethel added.
Durer nodded, pleased to see them falling into line. "But we need something to push him, something to turn bitterness into action, something so strong that he won't care whether he lives or dies as long as he has a chance of bringing down the monarchy."
Everyone was quiet, each glancing at the others. Then Aethel hazarded, "A threat to his son?"
"LET US HOPE it is the knight's enemy," the first raven said.
"Aye, and that he will slay the fellow, then drive off his hound and take his horse," said the second.
"No such luck," Rod called back to them and hoped the young woman couldn't understand their words. He dismounted even as Fess stopped beside the fallen knight.
The young woman looked up in terror, then leaned across her husband to protect him, crying, "If you have come back to finish what you have begun, know you shall have to slay me, too!"
The hound crouched, baring its teeth and growling, and the horse stamped its hooves and neighed a warning.