“Perhaps he knew it was close.”
Ian could hear the smile in Gar’s voice. “If his help had arrived, why would he have run away with me? No, I’m almost certain he’s a local boy.”
“Almost certain.” Master Oswald pounced on it. “You’re not really sure, then.”
“Quite sure.” Gar was still amused.
“But just in case, we have him where we can watch him.”
So that was why Gar had helped him! A knot twisted itself up in Ian’s belly. Had the freelance aided him only because he did not trust him? “Besides,” Gar went on, “I like the boy.” The knot loosened, a little.
“You’ve taken a liking to him awfully quickly.” Master Oswald growled.
“Amazingly so,” Gar agreed. “Any kid who’s willing to brave the dangers of that forest, and take on a two-hundred-mile walk at his age, just because he wants to be free … well, I’m on his side.”
“So am I,” Master Oswald admitted. “But encumbering yourself with a child could be very foolish. I needn’t remind you how much of a liability he could be, to someone who has to stay on the move—and secretly!”
“Or how much of an asset,” Gar countered. “He knows things about this culture I could only guess at—and I’d trust him a lot further than any adult.”
The knot loosened the rest of the way, and Ian resolved that he would prove Captain Pike right to have trusted him.
“Yes,” Master Oswald mused. “That brings us to why he ran away from home. As to that, I had some news last night, after you had gone. It seems one of Lord Murthren’s serfs had helped his daughter to escape into the forest—just in time, too, because Lord Murthren had noticed her, all too favorably.”
Gar whistled. “The lord himself? The poor lass was in for trouble!”
“A lot,” Master Oswald agreed, “a great deal of trouble. Her father helped her escape, and they whipped him within an inch of his life for it.”
Ian squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw, fighting to keep from crying out, trying to banish the sight of his father lashed to the post.
“Brave man,” Gar whispered.
“Very,” Master Oswald agreed. “He went on to urge his son to run away—when he’d just been taken down from the whipping-post and needed somebody to care for him, he told his son to run away right then, when they’d least expect it. The kid ran—a boy too young to have a brand.”
“And they flogged the father again?” Gar asked. “No, he cheated them. He died first, before they discovered the boy was missing.”
The cellar was very quiet. Ian felt the ache within him expand, hollowing him out; two hot tears forced their way through his clenching eyelids.
“So.” Gar’s voice was soft. “Our young guest really needs a friend.”
“He’s a brave boy,” Oswald admitted, “and an orphan now—the mother had died a while before.”
“You had the news quickly,” Gar said, in tones of respect, “and thoroughly.”
“That’s my job,” Oswald growled.
“Well, I have some information for you, too,” Gar said, “something we very narrowly managed to avoid on the way back here.”
“A troop of soldiers, of course.”
“More than that—Lord Murthren himself.”
“Lord Murthren!” Master Oswald sounded amazed—and, yes, alarmed. “Out hunting a simple serf boy by himself?”
“No, he had a troop with him,” Gar said grimly, “but yes, he was definitely leading them in person. He said something about the boy having violated one of the Secret Places of the Old Ones.”
It was very quiet in the room below. Ian lay very still, and tried not to breathe.
“He couldn’t have known that when the boy escaped,” Master Oswald said.
“No,” Gar said. “So…”
“So he received the distress beacon, too,” Master Oswald snapped, “which means he has a scanner.”
“And knows how to operate it,” Gar pointed out. “Yes.” Master Oswald’s voice had hardened, but began to sound sarcastic now, too. “And, although Lord Murthren is one of the two or three top aristocrats in the land, he’s hacked his way to that position on his own. His father was only a count.”
“Of course,” Gar said, “it’s possible that the King gave him a scanner, and taught him how to use it after he’d become a top counsellor. However…”
“However.” Master Oswald sounded as though he were grinning like a cat, licking cream from his whiskers. “However, he probably inherited the rig from his father, who inherited it from his father—and on and on back.”
“Chances are that it’s probably been there since the colonizing ship landed,” Gar put in.
“Exactly,” Master Oswald grumbled. “And if even a petty count in the backwoods has a scanner and knows how to use it…”
“Probably,” Gar finished, “all the lords do.”
“So that’s one more piece of technological knowledge they’ve kept,” Oswald said, with an air of satisfaction. “Possibly ritualized—you know, you push this button, and then that button, and twist this dial, and the thing does what it’s supposed to do, and they do it as part of their daily duties…”
“The same way that they know how to operate their machine guns and pocket nuclear bombs,” Gar agreed, “and how to make more ammunition. And they’re lucky their ancestors made the blasted things damn near indestructible.”
“They know how to clean them and maintain them, presumably,” Oswald said, “but again, only as a ritual. ‘You must do this and this and this to your machine gun when you waken every morning, or it will fail you when you need it.’ That’s how they know how to make gunpowder, too—just follow the recipe, pour the powder into the casing, and squeeze the bullet in on top.”
“Making brass casings is a strain on a Baroque metalsmith, I’ll agree, but it’s possible, especially with hand-me-down equipment from a high-tech culture,” Gar said, “once he’s been shown how. He wouldn’t understand what he was doing or why, but he could do it.”
“Rimfire,” Master Oswald said. “Who couldn’t? And that’s why the ancestors went to slug-throwers instead of beamers, of course—something just barely within the capabilities of a Baroque society. That’s probably the way they use their safety bases—by rote.”
“Self-repairing,” Gar said, “not that they’d need anything beyond cleaning, hardly any maintenance. Last forever.”
“As they have,” Master Oswald agreed, “or for five hundred years, at least.”
They were silent a moment. Then Master Oswald said suddenly, “Where’s the boy heading, anyway?”
“Castlerock,” Gar said. “So he says, anyway.”
“Castlerock!” Master Oswald was delighted. “No! You mean it? That far in the backwoods, and he’s heard of Castlerock?”
“Heard enough about it to want to go there,” Gar confirmed. “After all, it’s the only place an escaped serf can go and be even halfway safe.”
“So even here, they’ve heard there’s an island off the north coast that serfs have been escaping to for the last dozen years! That campaign is taking very firm hold.”
“Word gets around,” Gar said, “especially among an oppressed population. When virtual slaves hear of an island in the Central Sea where serfs can actually hold off their masters’ armies, it captures the imagination.”
“Hope,” Master Oswald agreed. “Even if they can’t escape, they can hope—for themselves, but even more for their children.”
“Which plants the seed of unrest,” Gar noted, “and which is why the masters have to stamp it out, as quickly as they can.”