THE SEA HAG by David Drake

Conall blinked. Aria looked as though Dennis had slapped her.

“Ah, that isn’t really necessary…” the king muttered.

“But it is necessary to me, King Conall,” Dennis said in a tone that even to him seemed to be rising toward madness. “For I undertook as my duty that I should be your cattle-guard and on my honor, King Conall, I will do that thing. You would have none in Rakastava but honorable men, surely?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Conall muttered, turning his face down and away. “Well, in that case—”

“Since you are recovered and able to make your own decisions, Prince Dennis,” said Aria sharply, “then you are welcome to the hospitality of Rakastava—and we are pleased to have your company.”

Dennis bowed stiffly.

“There is no further agreement between us, Prince Dennis,” the princess continued. She was on the verge of tears. The hard set of her face was the crust above a pool of flaming lava. “None! If you choose to go to the forest, then only your own will sends you there!”

Dennis bowed again. “If your highness—” he said to Conall, who was gaping at his daughter, “—and you, milady, will forgive me, I’m already behind the herd by some hours. Come along, Chester.”

“The fool who is in the right, Dennis,” Chester murmured as he followed his master, “is more annoying than the one who has wronged him.”

CHAPTER 35

The hot, humid air of the jungle’s margin drew away Dennis’ strength and left him sleepy again. The cows had watched him approach with greater aplomb than they had shown the day before.

Two days before. He’d lost a day.

Insects still buzzed around the corpse of Malbawn. Two of the creature’s limbs rose at twisted angles. The breeze whistled across their hollow interiors.

Dennis flexed his aching muscles. More had been at risk than a day of fever dreams.

He looked at the cows, nestled for the most part into bowers their bodies had flattened out of the jungle’s edge. Their jaws moved in quiet contentment, chewing cuds of the grass they’d cropped in the cooler hours of morning.

“You know, Chester…?” the youth said. “If I’d brought a pail, I bet I could get some fresh milk. I don’t like depending on the—you know, food in Rakastava.”

“I have brought a pail, Dennis,” the robot said. He reached into the battered shopping bag from Emath and came out with a large bowl of the same smooth, brown material as Rakastava’s surface.

Dennis smiled at his friend. “We will gather some fruit, Chester,” he said. “And some nuts, may be. And then we will try to find out whether to milk a cow is the same as a goat, and whether I remember to do even that.”

He paused. “But first,” he said, looking at the gloomy, cave-like entrance of Malbawn’s hut, “we will look in the mirror and I will see my father.”

When Dennis entered the hut immediately after his battle, he’d been keyed up by the fighting and nervously ready to react to any new horror.

The second time he saw the interior, it was dingy and depressing; nothing more. He couldn’t imagine anything willingly living in such squalor, not even a creature as foul as Malbawn.

But he couldn’t imagine people willingly living in Rakastava, either; and he was willing to live there himself for a time, with its food that had no flavor and its air that had no life.

Dennis thought of Aria and said, “Mirror, show me my father.”

The surface blurred and cleared into the remembered brilliance of Emath Palace.

Hale was on his throne in the audience hall. He’d aged more than the few weeks since Dennis saw him last.

A deputation of villagers, leading citizens in their robes and heavy golden chains, stood before the throne. They were angry and, though no sound came through the mirror’s glint, it was obvious that several were shouting at once while they shook their fists at the king.

Nothing like that had ever happened in Emath.

“What…?” Dennis said, more to himself than to Chester.

The robot responded anyway. “When a fool refuses the service he owes,” Chester quoted, “he will lose his goods to another.”

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