Gianni looked down and saw his sword and scabbard gone, his feet bare, and his belt shorn. “Well, at least I have life,” he grunted.
“And a miracle it is! I woke in midafternoon and forced myself up enough to crawl to water. I upset a considerable number of ravens and vultures, and came back to find them eyeing you.”
“Thank you for upsetting them again.”
“I labored long trying to revive you. For a time, I thought you were dead, but laid my cheek near your face and felt a ghost of breath from your nose. I’ve stretched all my meager store of soldier’s healing lore, but you’ve revived.”
“And am not happy about it, I assure you.” Gianni clutched a pain-fried head.
“Here.” Gar held out two small white disks in his palm. “Swallow them, and drink!”
Gianni gave the little disks a jaundiced look. “What are they?”
“Soldiers’ medicine, for a blow to the head. Drink!” Gar thrust a wineskin at him, and Gianni reluctantly took the two small pills, put them in his mouth, then took a swallow of water. He almost gagged on them, then looked up gasping. “What now?”
“We rest until your head no longer drums, then go back to Pirogia.”
Back to Pirogia! Gianni’s stomach sank at the thought of confronting his father with the report that he had lost not only his father’s goods, but also his mules and even his drivers—that he had lost the whole caravan. Stalling, he gestured vaguely about him. “Should we not … the bodies …” Then he blinked, amazed to see a long, low mound of fresh earth beside the road and no bodies about him, only a deal of churned mud. He realized what liquid must have softened the road, and almost lost his stomach again.
“I had to do something while I waited for you to waken,” Gar explained. “There’s nothing more to keep us here, and every reason to find a priest to bring back, so he can say prayers over them. Come, Gianni. It’s far more my disgrace than your own, for you hired me to prevent this very thing but I must confess my failure, and accept the consequences.”
“I, too.” Inside, Gianni shied from the thought of his father’s face swollen in anger, but knew he must do even as Gar had said—report his failure and take his punishment. “Well, then, back to Pirogia.” He started to struggle to his feet, but Gar held him back. “No, no, not yet! When your head has ceased to pound, I said! Give the medicine a chance to do its work! Wait half an hour more, Gianni, at least that!”
It was an hour, at a guess from the decline of the moon, but Gar did manage to pull Gianni to his feet and start down the road, though they held themselves up only by leaning against one another as much as they walked.
They tottered through the night, and Gianni would have said “Enough!” and lain down to rest a dozen times over, but Gar insisted that they keep on trudging through the dust. Even after the moon had set, he kept urging, “Only a little farther, Gianni!” or “Only another half hour, Gianni—we’re bound to find a barn or a woodlot in that time!” and at last, “Only till dawn, Gianni. Let us at least be able to see if enemies come!” Gianni protested and protested with increasing weariness, until at last it seemed that Gar was holding him up. Over that blank and featureless plain they plodded, through a darkness that showed them only a lighter blackness where sky met land, with the occasional huddle of cottages in the distance, the occasional granary or byre. Gianni would have wondered why Gar thought it so important to keep him walking through the night, if fatigue hadn’t addled his wits to the point where only one thought could take root, and that thought was: sleep!
Finally, the sky lightened with the coming day, and Gar ground to a stop, lowering his employer gently to the grass by the roadside. “Here, at least, we can see.”
“I told you there were no barns, no woodlots, between here and Pirogia,” Gianni said thickly.
“In fact, you did,” Gar agreed. “Go ahead now, sleep. I’ll wake you up if anyone comes to disturb us.”
But Gianni didn’t hear the end of the sentence. He fell asleep just as Gar was promising to wake him. And wake him he did, shaking his shoulder and saying, with a note of urgency, “Gianni! Wake up! Trouble comes!”
Gianni was up on one elbow before his eyes had finished opening. “Trouble? What kind?”
“Horsemen,” Gar said. “Can they be anything but trouble?”
“Only if they’re another train of merchants.” Gianni stumbled to his feet, looking down the road to where Gar was pointing, amazed to realize that it was midafternoon. Had the mercenary kept watch all that time, and not slept?
But he saw the cloud of dust already a little way past the horizon, heard the faint drum of hoofbeats, saw the glitter of sunlight off steel, and said, “That’s not a troop of merchants.”
“No,” Gar agreed, “it’s a troop of cavalry. You know this land better than I do, Gianni. Where can we hide?”
Gianni looked about him, feeling the first faint tendrils of panic reaching out about his mind. “Nowhere! This is table land—there’s only the ditch beside the road!”
“And they’ll see us if we try to run for the shelter of a granary—if we can find one.” Gar was tense, alert, his eyes luminous, but seemed quite poised, quite cool-headed. The mere sight of him calmed Gianni a bit. “There is the ditch,” the mercenary went on, “but they’re sure to glance down and see us crouching in the mud … Hold! The mud!”
Gianni stared. “What about it?”
“Off with your doublet—quickly!” Gar yanked open his jerkin and leaped across the ditch, dropping the garment into the tall grass at the edge of the field of green shoots. “Off with your shirt, too! Quickly, before they can see us clearly!”
Gianni stared. Had the man gone mad?
Then he remembered that he was supposedly paying Gar to defend them both, and decided not to waste his father’s money that he wasn’t paying. He leaped across the ditch to join Gar in a race to strip to bare flesh, leaving only his hose, which were badly ripped from the fighting and the fleeing anyway.
Gar knelt to yank up fistfuls of straw and throw them over the heap of clothing. “Quickly, hide them!”
Gianni bent to help him cover the clothing, and in a minute, only a heap of dried grass lay there at the edge of the field.
“Now, get down! And dirty!” Gar leaped down into the ditch, scooped up some mud, and began to daub it over his chest and shoulders.
“I already am,” Gianni protested, but he overcame distaste and slid down beside Gar, rubbing himself with dirt. “What are we doing, making ourselves look like complete vagabonds?”
“Exactly!” Gar told him. “You can’t rob a wandering beggar, can you? Paint my back!” He turned about, daubing mud on his face. Gianni rubbed mud over his back, then turned for Gar to do the same to him. “More than vagabonds—brain-sick fools! Pretend you are mad, though harmless.”
Gianni felt a surge of hope. It might work. “And you?”
“I’m a half-wit, a simpleton! You’re my brother, guiding me and caring for me in spite of your madness!”
“The mad leading the feebleminded?” That had too much of the ring of truth to it for Gianni’s liking but he remembered the lunatic beggar who sat at the foot of the Bridge of Hope at home, and found himself imitating the man’s loose-lipped smile. “What if they ask for our names?”
“Don’t give your true one, whatever you do—one of them might think you could fetch a fat ransom, or that I might be of use in the ranks! No, we give false names. Yours is Giorgio and mine is Lenni!”
Gianni stared. “How did you think of them so quickly?”
The thunder of approaching hooves prevented Gar’s answer. He clapped a hand on Gianni’s shoulder. “They come! Stay down—no one would think it odd for wayfarers to hide from condotierri, even if they were mad! Remember, you have so little mind that no one could care about you!”