It had been a bad winter. Below the ice there had been much damage to the stonework, although no one else could have known. Somewhere behind them in the moors, the imp army was camped. Rap had stayed a couple of days ahead of it all the way, and the journey had been far, far worse than his trip south. While the cold had been less severe, the snow had been deeper and stickier, the winds stronger. Worse yet, Rap and Little Chicken had traveled as heralds of disaster, croaking ravens prophesying war. The imps had burned every goblin village within reach of the road. Had the warnings not flown ahead of them, they would undoubtedly have massacred the inhabitants, also. The people of the first village had died, all of them, from patriarch to newborn. Inos’ journey back to her homeland had been marked by pillars of smoke, by women and children fleeing out into the wasteland, by precious foodstocks pillaged, by unprovoked and unnecessary rampage. The leader of the imps, the one with the fancy helmet, was certainly an utter madman. What he sought to gain, Rap could not guess, nor why Inos had allowed it. He could only assume that she had been powerless to stop the destruction.
The wagon road to Pondague had been sealed behind her, for in future the goblins would brook no travel on it. No force less than a full army could traverse the taiga now. No more would trains amble north in summer with supplies. Krasnegar would suffer and its way of life become harder even than before. Madness!
Only once had Rap and Little Chicken departed from the trail. They had made a wide detour around Raven Totem, sending the words of warning by goblin messengers, running double shifts to catch the army again on the far side.
And now he was home. Rap emerged from the travail of the causeway onto the dock road, dark and deserted, swept clean by the wind. He swung up the bar on the gate. Those gates would stop white bears, but not impish legionaries. Once inside he began to trot again, out of old habit, with Little Chicken and Fleabag at his heels. Dawn would come in an hour or so. Soon the town would be stirring. He headed for the nearest stairway.
What did the imp army want of Krasnegar? Did it come to put Inos on her throne and defend her against the jotnar, or did it come to loot? Would it treat the town as it had treated the goblin villages? Certainly it could not be stopped short of the castle itself, and there would not be enough food in the castle to withstand a siege. Indeed, a former factor’s clerk could guess that there would not be even enough food in the city for an additional two thousand hungry men. The crops and the grain ships were months away yet, the wagon road impassable.
Rap scanned each corner and branching carefully. In Krasnegar the law said that horse thieves were to be hanged.
He had planned to bring the horses back. He had expected to return with a grateful Inos, heir presumptive or already queen. Most of all, he had been mesmerized by Andor.
Andor! Rap could not think of Andor without baring his teeth. What that sorcerer had done to Rap was bad enough, but he had also used his power on Inos, and that was unforgivable. She would have been as helpless to resist Andor as Fleabag was to refuse Rap himself.
An early riser emerged from a doorway two corners ahead. Rap took cover in a doorway and waited, puffing gently, hearing Little Chicken doing the same beside him, and Fleabag’s noisy pant.
“You run good, forest boy,” Rap whispered. Little Chicken grunted quietly, but angrily. Rap smiled into the darkness. Goblins were not accustomed to stairs.
The town man vanished into another door and Rap set off again, his companions following the tap of his moccasins on the cobbles and steps. He had spent many hours planning this return, thinking while running, wondering whom he would seek out, reviewing all those childhood friends who had turned aside when he had demonstrated occult powers. His final choice had surprised him greatly.
He was approaching the castle. He could, if he wanted, run right in through the gates, for no guard was ever posted there, except in summer when there were strangers in town. Krasnegar had sheltered too long behind the diplomatic skill of its king, a skill buttressed by a word of power.
If Holindam was still alive to tell Inos that word, would it serve her in the same way? Rap had not thought to wonder what change the word would produce in Inos. What was her great talent? Not diplomacy! Gaiety? Zest? Beauty?
Perhaps beauty. He would never forget her as he had seen her in the forest, unexpectedly sprung from the child he remembered to glorious woman, a slender wood nymph in a malachite cloak, with hints of golden hair inside the hood, green eyes shining in her winter-pale face. He wept himself to sleep with that memory. Inos with her beauty augmented by magic would be a goddess. She was close enough now.
And so he thought again of Andor, baring his teeth. He had plans for Andor that he had never thought he could have for any man. Almost, Rap could think of turning him over to Little Chicken.
They stopped in an alleyway by a door and waited for their hearts to slow and breathing to calm. Nothing like a few months’ running to put a man in shape, even for running up Krasnegar.
Rap scanned, sensing the small apartment of two rooms and a kitchen. There was a communal toilet on the other side of the alley, behind Rap. The owner was up and dressed, kneeling by his fireplace. His wife and children had died years ago, in the same pestilence that had killed Rap’s mother, and he had lived alone ever since. Rap had never been invited into this tiny home; he knew no one who ever had.
He tapped.
Hostler Hononin looked around in surprise and then heaved himself to his feet. His feet were bare and his shirt hung down unfastened over his pantaloons and hose. His face was weatherbeaten, lumpy, and wizened, and his stoop thrust his head forward aggressively. The tangle of gray curls around his bald spot was still rumpled by sleep; he appeared even more surly than usual as he padded over to the door.
“Who’s there?” His voice was loud enough to make Rap jump. Rap tapped again, reluctant even to whisper his name.
The little man scowled, then opened the door a crack—it had not been locked—and light jumped in Rap’s face, dazzling him. “Oh, great Gods, boy!” Hononin recoiled. “By the Powers! Rap!” He was stunned. Then he pulled the door wide. “Quick! Come in before anyone sees you! And who the hell is this?”
Then they were all inside and the door closed. Hononin choked and put a hand over his mouth.
“Sorry, sir. It’s bear grease. It keeps the cold out.”
The old man looked him over, then the others. Fleabag sniffed suspiciously at him. Little Chicken was staring around the little room, his odd-shaped eyes stretched by alarm and clasutrophopia.
“Did you tell her?” the hostler mumbled, through his fingers.
”She’s coming. Tomorrow.”
As his eyes adjusted to the light, Rap glanced curiously around the room. He had been gone so long that furniture seemed very strange to him—the table and two wooden chairs in the middle, and a big, overstuffed chair near the fire, with its insides falling out. Crude sketches of horses hung on the bare plank walls. One candle in a bone candlestick threw a wavering light over a heap of old tack in one corner and a small bench with saddler tools. A threadbare rug . . . Cozy enough in its way, though.
The old man nodded. “Good.”
“He’s still alive?”
“So they say.”
Rap breathed a deep sigh. That was what he had wanted most—that she be able to say good-bye.
Hononin retched again and backed away. “You stink like you’ve been bathing in the honey pit. I’ve got some soap somewhere I’ve been saving. Ever used soap?”
“Once or twice, sir.”
“Use it good. Need hot water. Get those rags off.” He headed for his kitchen and soon a loud clanking told that he was working the pump. Rap began unlacing and instantly Little Chicken had knocked his hands away and started doing it for him. Rap knew better than to resist; his last attempt had given him a sprained wrist.
Hononin returned with a bucket and stopped to stare at this valet service. ”Who the hell is he?”
“He’s a goblin, sir.”
“I can see that, idiot! And what are all those marks on your face? You gone goblin, too? Burn those rags—they’ll help heat the water, and maybe get the stink out of here. His, too. You undress him now or does he do it himself? You’ve grown, lad. You leave any spare clothes behind in that room of yours? No, they wouldn’t fit you now anyway. I’ll go and see what I can find.”