If Shandie could be taken into a shielded refuge like White Impress, then he might recover. Maybe. But a mundane like Ylo had no means to locate such shielding. If he could lay his hands on the magic scrolls he could ask the sorcerers for advice, but the scrolls were in Shandie’s pocket. To ask for them would only fan the madman’s suspicions—perhaps he could try to steal them in the night. A reply might not come for days, though.
“Can’t go anywhere tonight,” Ylo said, smitten with sudden inspiration. “They close the bridge at sunset.”
Shandie grunted. He was still staring at his companion with undisguised suspicion. The legionaries’ geographical dispute was growing louder in the background.
“I don’t think we’ll get any food here,” Ylo continued. “And it would be old and ill-treated if we could. We’ve still got some apples and stuff in the packs. Why don’t we go and have a snack and then make an early night of it?” He was talking too fast, almost babbling.
“What, no wench tonight?”
“Same argument as the food.”
“It’s never stopped you before.” Shandie was not so far out of his mind that he had lost his shrewdness. If anything, his crazy suspicions would make him even harder to deceive than usual, and marble was malleable compared to Shandie.
“I’ll have two tomorrow to make up,” Ylo said, wishing he could wipe the sweat off his face without drawing attention to it. “Come on. This place makes me ill.”
Shandie reluctantly put his tankard down among the boots around him and rose to his feet. He swayed, steadying himself with a hand on the wall. “You’re right,” he muttered. “Hard day.”
It had not been a hard day at all. They had covered less than fifteen leagues, which was as much as they dare ask of the horses on these roads. Shandie had been known to ride three times that far in a day, often.
Then he sat down again, heavily. “Get me ‘nother beer.” This unshaven, unkempt wastrel was a far cry from the dapper prince Ylo had served so long. He was either a very sick man or he was drunk. The idea of Shandie drunk was unthinkable, but then this whole experience was unthinkable.
“You’ve had enough beer, Yshan.”
“Am not Yshan!” Shandie roared, coloring. “I’m done with your stupid games! From now on I’m not hiding who I am, and I’m going back to my palace, and I’m not going to Mosrace, and I’ll not believe all that evilish nonsense about threats to the Impire!”
God of Mercy!
What was Ylo to do? The fate of the world had suddenly been dumped in his unwilling hands. He didn’t want it. He didn’t know what to do with it. He could still think of no solution except to get Shandie as far away from Hub as quickly as possible, in the hope that the sorcery might yet weaken with distance and let him recover his wits.
For a moment he considered taking the imperor along by force, but that was obviously impossible. Tie him to the saddle? Shandie was probably as strong as he was, and could shout for help. Get him up to the room and stun him with the chamber pot? Stun the imperor? Keep him stunned for weeks? Ylo had seen too many men crippled by head wounds to consider that fantastic solution.
Then he realized that a local cloud of silence had settled over the table at his back. He looked around, and up, into the inquisitive stare of the man he had heard earlier. Beyond him, behind a forest of tankards, his three companions were watching—They had heard Shandie shouting about Mosrace, and other things, dangerous things.
They wore civilian clothes. They were all about the same age, old to be soldiers, and yet their steady gaze held the unmistakable look of legionaries—tough, hardened, self-reliant. The nearest one bore a jagged old scar across his nose. Four men in their middle forties . . . Without a doubt, these were veterans, legionaries who had completed their twenty-five-year stint and were heading home with their requital in their pockets to find themselves wives and farms. They might be honest, or they might not. They might cherish a virulent dislike for aristocrats like the officers who had ordered them around for a generation, or they might hold to the instinctive respect and obedience that had been hammered into them so painfully in their youth and reinforced every day of their manhood.
Ylo was still staring up at the scarred man staring down at him, and he seemed to be the leader. He was not unlike Hardgraa in appearance. In fact, he had centurion written all over him.
A sudden germ of an idea . . .
“Perhaps you can tell us,” Ylo said, “how many days’ ride to Mosrace?”
“Too Evilish many. What of it?”
Shandie registered the conversation and twisted around on his stool to see. He scowled. “I told you we’re not going to Mosrace. We’re going back to the palace!”
Four pairs of eyes blinked.
Ylo rose to the occasion. “My name’s Yyan—cohort signifer with the XIVth.” He indicated Shandie. “Tribune Yshan. We’re on our way to Mosrace—”
“I am not a tribune! I’m the imperor.”
The four faces inspected one another and then came back to their previous direction.
“Had a little too much, has he?” the centurion inquired. “It’s worse than that, I’m afraid,” Ylo said sadly. “He’s been prone to these attacks ever since Nefer Moor. I’m his brother. I’m trying to get him home, you see. He was all right when we started out, but—”
Shandie barked, “Ylo!”
“Ylo?” another man said. “Nefer Moor? He was at Nefer Moor?”
“We both were,” Ylo said with becoming modesty. “The stories don’t really do it justice, though. Ever since then, he’s had these odd notions. Not all the time, just—”
Shandie bellowed, “Ylo!” He lurched to his feet, but he was penned in the corner by the crowd.
Ylo twitched eyebrows meaningfully, and the other men nodded in silent sympathy. Veterans knew what battle could do to a man.
“At times he thinks he’s the imperor and I’m—”
“Ylo!”
“Ylo,” Ylo said touchingly. “I am his signifer, you see. He sometimes thinks I’m that other one.”
The whole army knew of Shandie’s defeat by dragons at Nefer Moor, and how his heroic Signifer Ylo had saved the legionary standard in the rout. The situation definitely showed promise.
“Here, your Majesty,” the centurion growled, like a bear trying to make friends. “Pull over your seat and quaff some ale with us.”
Bodies squirmed. Shandie’s stool was drawn up to the table, and heavy hands pulled him down on it. Two of the other men were sharing a bench and somehow made room for Ylo.
In the dim light, the imperor’s face was dark with fury and frustration. Whatever vile plot had been suggested to his mind by Zinixo’s sorcery and whatever part he thought Ylo was playing in it, he had enough wit left to see that anything he said now was only going to sink him deeper into the morass. As imperor or as tribune, in every way, he was pinned.
“We’re hoping a few peaceful months at home with the family will do the trick,” Ylo said, wiping foam from his lips. He felt much better already. ”He finds the road tiring. I was thinking of hiring an escort to help, er, protect, er . . . you follow me?” Again the men exchanged glances.
Shandie paled suddenly and made a choking noise.
“Well, now,” Scarface said, “it so happens my friends and me’s heading up Mosrace way.”
“How about a crown per day?” Ylo contrived to jingle his satchel.
Four pairs of eyes gleamed in the shadows.
“Each?”
“Yes. It must be done discreetly, you understand.”
“You just hired yourself a legion, Signifer Yyan!” The centurion pushed away his beer. “Name’s Eemfume. Iggi and me’ll take first watch. Bull, Squint, you go eat and get some sack time. Now, your Majesty, tell us about Nefer Moor.”
When in doubt, delegate, Ylo thought happily. He would be able to go wenching tonight after all.
Stormy clouds:
O doubting heart!
The stormy clouds on high
Veil the same sunny sky,
That soon, for spring is nigh,
Shall wake the summer into golden mirth.
— Adelaide Anne Proctor, A Doubting Heart
INTERLUDE
At the dying of the year came Winterfest.
Within the Impire it was a bittersweet celebration, a time for telling tales of the beloved old imperor now gone, and for hopeful prayers for the new one. Without all the traditional merrymaking, a surprising number of people discovered the festival dragging on rather longer than usual; many found themselves becoming unimpishly sick of their relatives before it was over.
Hub itself seemed strangely subdued without the great balls and banquets. Small gatherings of friends and family took their place. The rotund form of Lord Umpily appeared unannounced and uninvited at an astonishing number of those—gossiping, inquiring, listening, and soon disappearing as mysteriously as he had come.