“Inos! Oh, poor Inos! when spring comes, she’ll be waiting for the first ship to bring his letters and instead it will bring that news.”
“Who knows what news it will bring?”
“What do you mean?”
In the darkness, only his farsight told him that Andor shrugged.
“When a king dies, his successor had better be on the spot and ready. ”
“You mean someone may try to steal the throne?” But obviously that was what Andor meant—stupid question. Try to behave like a grown man, dummy! ”Who would do that?”
“Anyone who thought he’d get away with it. Sergeant Thosolin has the armed men. Foronod may think he’d make a better monarch than a slip of a girl, and many would agree. Furthermore, the news is sure to reach Nordland before it gets to Kinvale, and the temptation to the thanes will be fresh seal to orcas. If Inos is not right here, then she has very little chance of ever becoming queen. That’s my guess, anyway.”
The injustice of it burned like lye. “Then why doesn’t the king send for her?”
Andor sighed and adjusted himself to a more comfortable position. “Sagorn says that he refuses to admit he’s that sick. He can’t keep food down, he’s in constant pain—but he’s not going to admit anything. Secondly, he refuses to risk men’s lives. Which is stupid, since half the men in town would volunteer. But he has forbidden any expeditions.”
Poor Inos!
“Is that the real reason you’re leaving, Andor? To tell her?” Andor’s teeth showed faintly in the gloom. “It’s nothing to do with me, laddie.”
More silence, then he said quietly, “But we could travel together until we got over the mountains. Once we’re in the Impire, it’s easy, and I would see you on the right road for Kinvale. We could hire a guide, if you want one, but you’d have no problem there.”
Rap’s hands were shaking, and he clasped them together on his lap.
A long pause . . .
“Wooden swords, Rap? Or the real thing now?”
“I have no authority! Who would believe me?” Andor did not even bother to answer. Inos, of course.
“Appoint myself? Disobey the king’s command?”
“Where is your loyalty, Rap? To the king or to her?”
Darkness and silence.
“If you must choose—and now you must—then where is your loyalty? Do you not think that Inos would want to be at his side in his last days?”
Rap did not need to answer that question.
It was a craziness. The odds were appalling. But Inos would want to be at her father’s side, and Inos was his friend—or would be, were she not a princess. Andor was right, as usual. In such an emergency, Rap must prove his courage, prove his manhood to himself, and show Inos his to . . . loyalty.
He shivered. He was not sure which scared him more, the weather or the goblins. He had seen goblins hanging around the harbor. They were short, very broad people with gray-brown skin and jet-black hair. They called themselves the green men, and in certain lights their skin did have a greenish tinge in the brown, like old tarnished brass. In summer the men wandered around wearing an indecent minimum, each one usually followed by three or four women covered from head to toe. But all the stories agreed that they practiced torture.
It was a hair-raising thought—setting off with Andor on a journey through that cold, a journey that would take weeks. The air itself could kill.
“When?”
“Now.” Andor was smiling again now.
“Now?”
He pointed to the window, which was glowing more brightly silver. “The moon is rising. Everyone is so busy getting ready for Winterfest that we won’t be missed.”
“But . . . we need supplies!”
“Name them. I’ve got my list, let’s hear yours.”
“Four horses. Bedding. Food. Fodder—lots of oats. Weapons. A pot to melt snow . . .” He dried up and Andor chuckled.
“I thought of a few more things, but it isn’t really very many. No wooden swords?”
Rap gulped, smiled, and said, “No wooden swords.”
Andor reached out a hand to shake. “Good man! If we get caught by bears in the harbor or by a blizzard in the hills, we’ll die, but that we have to chance. Otherwise we just keep going—the hills, then the moors, then the forests, then the mountains. Once we’re over them, then it’s plum cake. Three weeks in summer . . . say five now. Then a week for Inos to get ready. Angilki will lend her some men, I think, or she can hire some. Five weeks back. Three months, or four at the outside. Sagorn thinks he may just last that long. Remember, he has a word of power, and that will help him.”
Sagorn had said the words made their owners hard to kill, and he had glanced at the king when he said it.
“The king has a word, too?”
Andor nodded. “Inisso had three, it is said, and he divided his power-one word to each of his sons. I can’t believe he would have done anything so stupid, but that is the legend. Kalkor of Gark probably knows one of them, even yet. He’s a superb killer, a thane’s thane. Duke Angilki must have one, ‘cos he’s an utter idiot, but a demon with wallpaper—so I’ve heard—and the kings of Krasnegar have always had one. That’s how they have retained their independence for so long. But if Inos doesn’t get back here before her father dies, then it will die with him. The throne is not all she will be cheated out of, Rap.”
“But how could we collect all that stuff and get away unseen?”
“I told you—Winterfest. No one will question you, anyway. They’ll assume you’re doing something for Foronod. And you can walk around in the dark! Where are the bedrolls kept, the thick ones?”
“I don’t know. In the storeroom by the smithy, I suppose.”
“Look for them!”
Rap scowled, and knew that his scowl would show in the silvery tendrils of moonlight spreading into the little room.
“Rap! I wouldn’t risk this madness with anyone else but you, and I won’t if you’re going to be a mule-headed pig. That farsight of yours will be our trump card. Nothing can sneak up on you, if you’ll use it. But use it you must! And you need practice. Now, are the bedrolls there?”
Rap thought about the storeroom and said, “In the corner beside the axes.”
“Axes! Good! I forgot those. You get the bags and—”
“The stable gate is locked. The keys are on Hononin’s belt.”
“Then I’ll get those.”
“You?” The hostler was one of the very few people in Krasnegar who did not like Andor. Hononin detested him, apparently. The hostler was a grumpy old demon.
“’Yes, me!’,” Andor laughed. “Where can I find him, do you suppose?”
3
For the next two hours, Rap felt as if he were fighting a blizzard. The new clothes alone would have been enough to put him in a daze, and the thought of trekking off into the wastelands of the taiga, the prospect of an adventure with a hero like Andor, the chance of seeing Inos again . . . Emotions swirled through him like a spring tide. Moreover he now must force himself to use his uncanny sensing ability instead of suppressing it, and soon his head was throbbing with the effort. Yet farsight was a wonderful assistance for a common thief.
The realization that he was stealing upset him even more than the thoughts of danger ahead. He tried to convince himself that everything he was taking would be returned eventually, except the food. Andor had said that he would handle the food, and he had promised he would leave payment. Sweating in his opulent new furs, Rap scurried around the palace storerooms, collecting things and carrying them to the stables, using no lights, yet rarely having to hesitate or fumble.
The bedding was where he had known it would be, and so were axes and oats and spears and shovels . . . he cached his loot in an empty stall and then set to work on horses.
Firedragon was a temptation, but he was stud for the royal herd, so the temptation would have to be resisted. Young animals would be the best, but even some of those were beginning to show the effects of their harsh winter confinement. In the cold, uncaring moonlight he saddled Joyboy and Crazy; he loaded Peppers and Dancer with the bags of fodder and equipment.
Then he was ready and he slumped down on a bag of chaff to catch his breath, wondering what he might have forgotten. The stable was dark, warm, and smelly with horses, filled with their little snufflings and shiftings, homely and familiar . . . and as Rap sat there, the implications of what he had done suddenly struck him like snow falling off a roof. The storerooms had opened to him because he was Foronod’s helper—Foronod’s trusted helper. He had been entrusted with the keys, and he had betrayed that trust! He was disobeying his king. Who was he to summon Inos to a perilous trek back through the winter forest, when her father would not? Had Andor bewitched him? He began to shake and stream with sweat. Traitor! Thief!