“Your Guardians?” Perennius asked with his eyes closed against the shimmering road.
“I doubt it,” Calvus replied. Her voice drifted out of the tawny blur. “More likely it’s another result of my arrival. We hadn’t any experience with the process before my sibs and I were sent here. The side effects of the process – ” the catch in the tall woman’s voice might have resulted from nothing more than a dry throat – “were not things that had been foreseen. At least, not things that we were warned to expect.”
“Would you have come anyway?” the agent asked the world beyond his eyelids.
“Yes.” The word seemed too flat to convey a loss of siblings which was more traumatic than a multiple amputation. “But I’m not sure they knew that we would come. I’m not sure the technicians realized how well they had raised us.”
“Well, if we’ve got dragons as well as Guardians to deal with,” Perennius said, “we’ll deal with them. At least the bastards don’t seem to be able to track you down while we’re moving.”
The appearance of another variable did not distress the agent. Rather the contrary, and Perennius knew himself well enough to guess why. The agent was practical and experienced enough to make all the preparations possible under the circumstances. He could never be comfortable risking failure because of his own laziness. That would
have been as unthinkable as refusing to take a useful action because it might involve his own injury or death.
But when it was impossible to plan, when Aulus Perennius had to react to what the moment brought . . . when success or failure balanced on his wits and a sword’s edge – that was when life became worthwhile for its own sake. If the mission were entering the mists of chance more deeply as they approached their goal, then so be it. They would deal with what came. He would deal with what came.
“Time we got moving again,” the agent said aloud. “According to the itinerary, there’s an inn some five miles farther on.”
“It may be abandoned,” the centurion suggested. “Cleiton said there isn’t any traffic past the gorge any more.”
“There’ll be somebody there to serve us,” Perennius said unconcernedly, “or we’ll make do with what they left behind.” The agent began to stand. He used his hands in the chinks of the wall behind him to support his weight until he was willing to ease it back onto his legs. The spear wound was warm to the touch, but it seemed to have caused less swelling than even a bruise usually would. Again he wondered whether Calvus could influence muscles as well as minds.
“And tonight,” the agent went on, “we’ll talk about what we’re going to do when we get there. When we get to Typhon’s Cavern.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Well, there’s somebody home,” Perennius commented as he watched the thread of smoke. Because the inn was half-way down the slope to the ford, the party had a view of the stables within the far sidewall of the courtyard. There were no immediate signs of activity there, but three of the stable doors were closed as if they were occupied. The smoke was from a flue of the vaulted common room to the rear. The structure could easily sleep a hundred men on straw pallets, but the evidence of the single fire suggested the handful whose beasts might be in the stable.
“Part of the estate,” Sestius said. There was a low tower on one corner of the common room. The bath and the gatehouse, on opposite sides of the gate in the front wall, looked as if they were adapted for defense also. The centurion added morosely, “They may have got a caretaker to stay on when Kamilides and his crew lit out.”
Gaius had bent to tie his donkey’s reins to a bush. He straightened with a puzzled expression. There was a piece of bone in his hand. “Aulus, look at this,” he said, stepping closer to the older man.
Perennius glanced at the bone. “Part of an ox thigh,” he remarked. “What about it?”
“Camel, I’d guess,” said Sestius, peering at the courier’s find. “Ox would be – “