...Of all the Blue Order, Sir Willard retained most of his humanity, despite the extreme discipline of the Rule of Anatos. For this reason...and for his leadership in the Cleansing, Sir Willard appealed to the popular imagination. Some scholars contest that this appeal came not from his victories in the Cleansing, but from a talent for bungling in matters of  love and politics...most agree now that this latter trait was invented by balladeers for dramatic affect..

                        — From Legends and Lies, by Tulos of Burry

Chapter Fifteen

Harric and Caris rode together wordlessly on Rag. They followed Brolli, splashing up the stream through a broad wooded valley. The dwarf-man perched awkwardly upon his pony's saddle, as if crouching, for his legs and rump were too small for proper riding, and his long arms bent akimbo to clutch its mane. The Phyros-thief brought up the rear, leading his "unridable" spare on a tether.

Even if there were no fear of pursuit and no reason to keep silent, Caris would have been unable to speak, for her entire concentration was devoted to keeping Rag calm so near the Phyros. Partly, too, Harric suspected she welcomed that immersion just then, fleeing into it from the baffling revelation of the wedding ring on her finger. That was just as well, for Harric himself was in shock on a number of fronts. He had no idea what to make of the wedding ring, but even worse—if that were possible—was the revelation that his mother could influence one of the immortal Old Ones—the mad Sir Bannus, no less!—to hunt and slay him.

Frustration and despair tore at him. He wanted to rage and weep and break things. Even the excitement of their escape from Gallows Ferry was short-lived—literally bludgeoned from him over the mile of jarring road until his body was so beaten he simply wanted to crawl beneath a log and expire.

Brolli never paused long enough for Harric to indulge that fantasy. They sloshed through sandy shallows, stumbled through stony rapids, maneuvered around fallen trees, putting miles between themselves and the road. Occasionally the stream crossed rough forest roads or through pastures cut from the woods by sleeping farmsteads. Most of the farms were low, dark buildings with smoldering beast-pots outside their doors, to keep the yoabs and mountain cats away.

Shepherd fires winked on hillsides above them where dogs barked, low notes lonely in the distance.

On one occasion they passed within bowshot of a barn full of light and laughter and fiddle music. Brolli led them up the opposite bank in a wide arc through pastures, returning to the stream when well past danger of a sighting. Once past, they halted again among the willows along the stream and waited while he dismounted and retraced their steps to erase or conceal the evidence of their passing.

During the longest of these halts, Caris removed her armor and packed it in the oil cloths and canvas she kept in her packs. Harric made no apology for lumping his own pack there as well, and letting her sort the armor herself while he soaked his battered face in the cold stream. One eye was swollen shut. One lip was fat and the other split. Funny how he hadn't even noticed during the escape. He found several crab-apples beneath the scalp, which explained why his skull felt as if it were shrinking around his brain. The ribs on his left side, though surely only bruised or he would not have been able to stand, nevertheless felt like broken crockery in his chest.

Cupping the cold water to his face, he held it against his bruises until it drained, then cupped it again, and again.

Voices dogged the edge of his consciousness. It wasn't Willard's voice, nor Brolli's or Caris's. He wasn't sure how long they'd been there. All night? Faint whispers at the edge of his awareness. He stood, disoriented and dizzy as they murmured, warped and unintelligible, as through a pipe or bottle.

From the bank the moon-cat watched through egg-white eyes.

"Bannus knocked my brain loose, Spook," he muttered. Spook stared. Harric splashed water in the cat's direction, but it only retreated a few pace and went back to staring.

 "Boy?" said the knight. "You all right?"

"No," Harric said. "I'm not. But I'll live." He stooped again, cupping water to his eye. The voices had ceased.

"This friend you're leading us to, boy. She's a fire-cone warden?"

Harric paused, water dripping from his cheeks and chin. "Caris is leading us."

"She...helped me this winter," Caris said, speaking in the strained, halting tone she took when trying to attend to people and horses at once. Rag fidgeted, backing and pulling against her tether as if part of Caris's attention was not enough to calm her near the Phyros. "I stayed with her," Caris managed. "She'd...welcome us."

The old knight only glanced at Caris, and spoke again to Harric. "This fire-cone warden. It's got to be a few days' travel to a fire-cone grove, doesn't it?"

Harric cupped more water to his face. He'd only seen a fire-cone tower once as a boy on an adventure with Chacks and Remo. They'd plotted to the famous trees to steal bushels of the resin-rich cones and make their fortunes (or at least enough to make a walloping resin charge). They had grand times hiking and camping and dreaming how they'd spend their shares, but like all boys, they found their stomachs less willing than their spirits once they ran out of food the second night. As they had turned back, sunrise mocked them with a clear view of the tower on a distant ridge.

"Farther than it seems," he answered. "At least a couple days."

Caris nodded. "It's two days from the road to a high pass. After we cross the pass, it's not even a full day's ride to the fire-cone grove and the tower. It's a very good place to disappear...I wouldn't have found it on my own. I was lost. Abellia found me."

The old knight grunted. "Just what we need, boy. Horses need rest. I should tend to these wounds. Been running too long."

Harric watched through the water in his lashes, looking for clues that might explain the old knight's strangeness toward Caris. Surely he couldn't blame Caris for his blunder with the rings....

Spook arched his back and hissed, scattering Harric's thoughts.

 "Spook, what — ?"

The cat stared into the darkness of the wooded bank, where a pair of large shining eyes flashed gold in a glint of moonlight. Before Harric could raise the alarm a voice greeted them from the darkness.

"It is me," Brolli said. "Sorry to surprise." He loped from the darkness into a patch of moonlight, and halted before Harric. Harric stared at the foreign features, trying to make sense of what he saw.

"Now that you can see me," said Brolli, "you must tell me: what am I? One of your Arkendian gods? A very big chimpey?"

Harric blinked. Chimpey was closer to his impression: long arms and short legs said as much. But "very big" didn't say the half of it. Brolli's trunk and arms were as powerful as any blacksmith's, and his hands were as wide and flat as baker's paddles. As he stared, the details he'd glimpsed earlier that night fell in place, and he began to understand just how other Brolli was. His face was flat and smooth and broad like an owl's, with an undersized nose and oversized eyes with enormous pupils.

When Brolli grinned he bared thick, feral-looking canines. "Not a dwarfed man?" he said, as if reading Harric's thoughts.

Harric smiled with the half of his face that wasn't a swollen pad. "You're a Kwendi," he said. "I'll bet you're the ambassador that disappeared from court. Everyone's looking for you."

The owl eyes widened with pleasure. "Yes, you have it, young Arkendian. First Ambassador Brolli, at your service."

Harric bowed reflexively. "Harric Dimoore, at yours."

"Cut the chatter," said the old knight, from where he stood with the horses. "Tell me how our trail looks."

Brolli winked at Harric, and loped on all fours to the others. "We make a good escape. I see no hunters behind, and I erase our tracks well."

The old man grunted. "Health bless your Kwendi eyes. They ought to find their horses well past us up the main road, and the hoof-marks of the other horses will make it difficult if not impossible to decipher where we've gone. With any luck they'll conclude we boarded a raft or a waterwheel."

Caris nodded. "It'll take hours to fetch their horses."

"They didn't lose them all," said the knight. "Molly sensed another Phyros nearby. It was probably tied back at the gallows to keep the stables calm. I must assume its rider is an enemy."

"It's Bannus," Harric said. "I wanted to tell you. He was in Gallows Ferry tonight."

"Sir Bannus?" The old knight muttered a curse. "Then he's here for me. Gods leave us, that's grim news. But if he follows, Molly will sense his mount, Gygon, well before he could surprise us. That's something."

Harric made a wry face. "Molly. As in, Sir Willard's Molly."

"Just so."

"Come on," Harric said. "We aren't total bumpkins, so you can leave the absurd fake names. Or, at least make up something plausible, like, Sir Fumble-Rings or something."

The old man let out a cloud of ragleaf, his eyes flashing.

"You might have something there." Brolli chuckled. "'Sir Willard and the Fumbled Rings?' Perhaps I'll make one of these ballads myself."

"Do, and they'll never find your body," said the knight.

The Kwendi laughed.

"It's her, Harric," Caris said. She stood aloof, eyes distant, face strained. "It's Molly."

Harric blinked, dumbfounded. There was only one Phyros mare in Arkendia — Willard's Molly. The rest were stallions. He'd assumed the old knight's Phyros was male because the tournament caparison draped across her haunches had concealed her sex, and because the old man couldn't have been the immortal Sir Willard. But there was no questioning Caris's horse sense.

The old man's eyes sparkled with amusement as he watched Harric's jaw wag soundlessly. "Not what you'd expect from Sir Willard, eh boy?"

"But...you're not immortal," said Harric, feebly.

"Stopped taking the Blood some years ago, son. Best thing I ever did. Seven generations is a long time to live, and a man isn't made for it. It's a hard life, with the Blood. Changes a man."

"It didn't change you," Harric protested, as if his knowledge of the ballads were greater authority than the man himself. "In the ballads — "

"Damn the ballads," Willard growled. He snorted smoke through his nose, which made his mustachios smolder like tinder. "The truth wouldn't make a nice ballad. It isn't a good life." A shadow clouded his eyes, only to be lost behind a puff of ragleaf. "Past time to claim my mortality. Grow old with people I love, if they still live. Is that so strange?"

"Do not let him fool you with that speech," said Brolli, wryly. "He tell me the same one, but I don't believe it."

Harric's head throbbed. He closed his eyes tightly and tried to put it all in order. His childhood hero, Sir Willard — Queen's Champion, Chief Architect of the Cleansing, greatest of the immortals and Blue Order — was right there before him, and dying. He climbed to his knees, bowing his head.

Old and dying, yes. But it was Sir Willard. The Willard, and the Molly. It made sense now that the old knight barely flinched when the witch vanished before his eyes. The ballads told of dozens slain by Willard and Belle.

"See that, Brolli?" said Willard. "That's the kind of respect I ought to get. None of this ballad nonsense."

"That is good. But why is he laughing?"

Harric couldn't help it. The whole procession of ludicrous events with Caris and the love charm that day suddenly made a kind of sense to him, for disasters and bungles involving love or politics were the trademark of a Sir Willard ballad. In them the great knight was always ultimately victorious, but not without creating some preposterous bungle on the side. "Caris, we're in a Willard Ballad," he said, his giddiness growing. "We're the bungle. Don't you see? It started with that squire in the market, and our flight from home, and now that ring."

Caris smiled distantly. The Kwendi cast a confused look at Willard, who scowled.

"But if we're the bungle," said Harric, gaining control of his mirth to direct his words to Willard, "then what's the burden of this ballad? What's the main heroic theme?"

"What's the what?" said Willard. "I don't follow."

"I mean, what are you doing here? A magic love charm — a pack of murderous knights — Sir Bannus.... What is it all about?" 

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