Too good a chance to pass up, he decided. Omnia audere. He would not be the first Magnus to die before reaching legal adulthood.
“I have them now,” he said. “I hope I can keep them.”
Vlad muttered blasphemy under his breath. “You’ll have to go faster than a farting bat, lad. There’ll be powder dust on everything under the covers. One spark can do it, you know.”
Wulf knew that much. He knelt down, opened the lid of the warmer, and began picking hot coals out of the fire with the fire tongs. His brothers watched in appalled silence.
The door swung open and Otto walked in, then stopped to stare at what was going on. He had probably noticed Wulf’s guilty start.
“Going to hit a mattress?”
“No. Bolt that door, please.” Wulf went back to work.
Otto obeyed, raising inquiring baronial eyebrows at Anton, who was officially in charge of anything that happened in Castle Gallant.
“He’s located the duke’s powder wagons.”
“Virgin save us!” Otto went to a chair. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Wolfcub?”
That was Vlad’s name for him, but Otto would mean it as a term of affection.
“Oh, yes. I’m not sure what the powder will do afterward, though.” Wulf tossed down the tongs and closed the lid. That job was done. Now he must move on to the next. Which was…?
Which was to go to a moving target. He hadn’t tried that before. He could go to people he knew, so he should be able to find a wagon he knew, and it couldn’t have moved very far from where he had seen it, if at all.
He siavehoped that the snow was still falling as heavily over there as it was here.
He was forbidden to use his talent in front of witnesses, but his brothers all knew about it already, so no more harm could be done.
Recalling the wagons, he decided that the gunpowder casks must be much smaller than wine barrels, barely more than large kegs. They had been stacked four across, with a second layer on top, three across. That would explain the shape of the covers and ropes, and would make a reasonable load for a team of four horses on rough ground. Not that he knew how much gunpowder weighed, compared with, say, wine or nails, but an army wouldn’t risk too much of its total supply on a single wagon.
The wind seemed stronger than ever, at least in Gallant, and falling off the wagon would not be a good idea. He removed his cloak, which might get in his way. Anton took it for him.
He was procrastinating. Scared, in other words.
Still balanced on one foot and one knee, he turned his back on the warming pan and the hearth. He looked up at three agony-filled faces and was touched by their obvious concern.
He checked that his dagger moved freely in its sheath. The dagger had been Otto’s birthday and farewell gift to him when he and Anton had left Dobkov, not much more than a month ago. He caught Otto’s eye and they shared a smile.
“Our Lady be with you, Wolfcub.”
Anton said, “Amen!”
“And all the saints,” Vlad rumbled. “I’d come with you if I could, Cub, but thank sweet Jesus I can’t.”
That was it, then. Time to go.
Wulf went back to Long Valley.
He was very nearly blown clean off the wagon by the storm. He threw himself flat on the snowy surface and grabbed at a rope, but it was too tightly bound to give him a good grip. He found another he could hold on to, then took stock of his surroundings.
About three feet in front of his head, the carter and a pikeman were huddled together on the bench, swathed in their cloaks in an effort to keep the blizzard from running down their necks. So far they must be unaware of their passenger. The wagon was not moving, and the horses were understandably fretting, stamping hooves and tossing heads. Another wagon directly ahead was similarly stalled. The snow was too dense for Wulf to see much farther, but he could hear a lot of angry shouting as too much army tried to move along too little road.
A row of helmets on his right, almost level with him, was close enough to touch. Fortunately, the men-at-arms wearing them all had their backs to him, cowering away from the wind fr ri in the lee of the wagon. They, too, were stamping and grumbling. Beyond them was a cliff of rock and scrub, not quite a wall, but too steep to walk up.
The escort on his left should have been facing in his direction and ramming pikes into him already, but another red-painted wagon had pulled level and extremely close, so the guards had doubled up on the far side of it. Apparently none of them had noticed him-yet.
He rolled over and slid off his perch, down between the two wagons, crouching to make himself inconspicuous. He was already soaked and shivering, and he had banged a knee on the side of the first wagon. At the moment he was safe, but the gap was so narrow that if either wagon started to move, he would be crushed by its rear wheel. There was a fourth wagon right behind these two, and its driver might see him at any moment.
Out came the dagger, and he set to work on the covering of the wagon he had just left, attacking the slope from the top of the upper layer of barrels down to the sides of the lower layer. There must be a hollow under there which he could put to good use. Despite his frantic efforts, the leather was hard as iron and put up a stiff resistance, but his luck was holding so far. Indeed, it was going at full gallop, because he was in the middle of at least four powder wagons. If he could set one ablaze, there was a good chance of the fire spreading to others, seriously depleting the Wends’ supply.
But the leather was going to defeat him. His dagger seemed to be losing its edge. Oh, of course! The covering had been blessed. So it could be cursed. Yield! You are as soft as wet paper. Rip! There was a second cover underneath the first, so he cursed that also. It gave way, and he opened a rent down to the lower layer of barrels. A quick sideways slash opened a gap wide enough to put the bed-warmer pan through.
His brothers released a yelp of joy when he reappeared. He grabbed up the pan and went back to his place between the wagons.
The adjacent wagon had started to move. Its rear wheel was about to grind him against the front wheel of the wagon he was attacking, like grain in a mill. The driver waiting on the fourth wagon, the one behind, was watching its progress and saw him.
He roared in a voice like a July thunderstorm. “You! Who’re you? Guards, guards! What’s that man doing?”
For a moment, Wulf nearly fled in sheer panic. More men saw him and bellowed in fury. Orders were shouted. Two pikes narrowly missed his head and buried themselves in the covering he had cursed. Fortunately, men started coming over the wagons at him from both sides. For a moment they needed both hands for climbing and their comrades could not use their pikes.
With seconds to spare before he was crushed, Wulf thrust the bed warmer into the gap he had made, and gave it a half-turn to tip the coals out on the lid of the barrid ds el below. Burn hot, my babies!
Then he went back to Castle Gallant.
Three men-all of them bigger than he-mobbed him, hugging him, thumping his back. He struggled free angrily, aware that he was shaking as if he had tertian fever.