“Wise of them,” Gar said sourly. “For all they knew, you might have had a small army of mountaineers waiting to fall on them.”
Claudio looked up in surprise. “A good thought! Perhaps we should have.”
“Only if we had been mountaineers,” Benvolio said, with a sardonic smile. “Since we are not, they would have taken our cart and donkey before the Stilettos had their chance.”
“True, true.” Gar nodded. “More true, that they might not be averse to taking us to sell to the Stilettos if they find us. Perhaps we should travel together?”
Claudio and Benvolio took one look at Gar’s great size and agreed quickly.
They had only been on the road another hour before they met two more wayfarers—but one of these was leaning on the other and limping badly, so badly that now and again he would hop, his face twisted with pain. Both wore rags, and the one with two good legs was sallow and pinched with hunger. He looked up at Gianni and his party with haunted eyes and seemed about to bolt; probably all that prevented him was his lame friend.
“Good day,” Gianni cried, holding up an open hand. “We are poor travelers who have lost all our goods to the Stilettos, but moved too fast to be taken for their slave parties. Who are you?”
“A thief and a beggar,” the lame man snapped, “just released from the prison of Prince Raginaldi.”
“Released?” Gianni stared. “Fortune favors you, and all the saints too! I thought that once a man vanished into that dark and noisome pit, he vanished forever!”
“So did we.” The thief still looked dazed, unable to understand his good fortune. “But the jailers cast us out, cursing us and spurning us, saying we would have to find our own bread now, for the prince needed his dungeon for more important prisoners than we.”
“More important?” Alarms sounded all through Gianni. “What manner of prisoners?”
“They didn’t say,” said the thief, “only that there would be a great many of them.”
“Has he turned you all out, then?” Gar asked. “Almost all,” said the beggar. “There were a murderer or two he kept, but the rest of us are set free to wander. Some went faster than us.”
“Almost all went faster than we did,” the thief said in a sardonic tone.
The beggar looked up with a frown. “If you feel that I hold you back, Estragon …”
“Hold me back?” the thief snorted. “You hold me up! Can you not see how heavily I lean on you, Vladimir? I’m a thief, not a fighter—and you and I were always last to the bowls of leavings the warders shoved into our pen!”
Gianni had a brief nightmare vision of a dozen men clamoring and fighting over a bowl of garbage. “You must rest,” he said, “and eat, as soon as we can find food.”
“Food?” The thief looked up, grinning without mirth. “Find it if you can! This night and day since we were set free, we have had nothing but a few handfuls of berries that we found by the wayside, shriveled and bitter, and some stalks of wild grain.”
“Can we find them nothing better than that?” Gianni asked Gar. The big man frowned, but didn’t answer. Instead, he picked up a few pebbles and went loping off into the fields beside the road. He was back ten minutes later with a brace of hares. Gianni decided he liked Gar better in his right mind.
While they ate, though, two even more bedraggled specimens came hobbling up to them—a man in worn and grimy motley, who leaned upon the shoulder of another, who wore a black, wide-sleeved gown that was stiff with dirt, almost as stiff as the mortarboard he wore upon his head. Gianni could see at a glance that the sleeves held pockets for ink and paper, and knew the man for a scholar, while his companion was a jester.
“Ho, Vladimir!” the jester said in a hollow voice. “Have you found food, then?”
“Aye, because we have found charitable companions,” the beggar answered. He turned to Gianni. “Would you take it amiss if we shared with Vincenzio and Feste?”
“Not at all,” Gianni said.
Gar seconded, “If we had known they would join us, I would have brought down more rabbits.”
“Oh, do not split hares over us.” The jester sat down stiffly, folding his legs beneath him, and raised an open hand in greeting. “I am Feste.”
“I am … Giorgio.” Some innate caution kept Gianni to using his alias. “This is Gar.”
The giant inclined his head.
“I am Vincenzio.” The scholar, too, held up an open hand.
“Should we not call you ‘Doctor’?” Gar asked.
“Oh, no,” Vincenzio said, with a rueful laugh. “I am only a poor Bachelor of Arts, not even done with my studies to become a Master. I ran out of money, and needed to wander from town to town, hiring out my knowledge to any who had need of it. The prince’s men assumed I was rogue and a thief, and clapped me in irons.”
Understandably, Gianni thought. He had heard of many wandering scholars who were just such thieves and rogues as Vincenzio mentioned—and he would not have wagered on the man’s honesty himself. “No greater cause than that?”
“Well,” said Vincenzio, “it might have been the conversation I was having with the village elders, about the ancient Athenians and their notions that all human beings have the seeds of greatness within them, and deserve to be treated with respect—even to have some control over their destinies …”
“Which means their government,” Gar said, with a sardonic smile. “Yes, I can see why the soldiers clapped you in irons. They gagged you, too, didn’t they?”
“And a most foul and noisome cloth it was.” Vincenzio made a face. “Indeed, I had thought we would be thrown right back into that dungeon when those Stilettos stopped us half an hour ago.”
“Stilettos?” Gianni looked up sharply. “What did they do to you?”
“Only searched us, as though they thought we might have gold hidden in our garments for the stealing,” Feste said with disgust.
“Did they beat you?” The beggar looked up with wide, frightened eyes.
“No, they seemed too worried for that,” said Vincenzio. “They sent us packing, and we blessed our good fortune and fled, thanking all the saints.” He frowned at the others. “I’m surprised you didn’t run afoul of them, too—they were set up to block the road so that they might search every traveler who came by.”
“We saw them from a curve of the road above,” Vladimir confessed, “and thought it wiser to risk a slide down the slope than an encounter with mercenaries.”
“Nearly broke my ankle,” Estragon grumbled, rubbing that joint. “It seems I chose wrongly, as usual.”
“Did they say what they were searching for?” Gar asked.
“Nary a word,” Feste said, “and we didn’t stay to ask.”
“No, I’m sure you didn’t,” Gianni said.
“They were even too worried to beat you for their amusement?” the thief asked, wide-eyed.
“Even that,” Vincenzio assured him. “Did I not tell you we blessed all the saints?”
“Let us say a blessing again.” Gar took the spit off the fire. “We’re about to dine. Does anyone have a knife?”
No one did, so they had to wait for the meat to cool before Gar could break it to portion it out. The next day, they kept a wary eye on the road ahead, and at the slightest sign of soldiers, they took to the underbrush. In that fashion, they crept warily by two separate roadblocks, closely enough to hear the soldiers muttering and griping about such senseless duty—but there was an undertone of nervousness to their grumbles, almost of apprehension. After the second, they came back onto the road and fell in with a trio of peasants in tunics as filthy as anything the other recent prisoners wore. They looked up, startled, at Gianni’s hail, saw Gar’s size, and leaped aside—then stared.