Revenge was not practical. Polijn had never been one to go out of her way to repay injuries. But the minstrel’s plot probably involved hard work for her and/or some kind of loss or injury to Anderal. Averting any new injuries to oneself or to someone who had helped one was very practical.
At midmorning they reached the crossroads Anderal had spoken of, and Carasta pulled her into the shadowed nook inside the high stone shrine. “Silly to save this bread for lunch when we’ll be in the middle of a party by that time,” he said. “Come on.”
The shadows were easy on the eye after a morning’s trudge through sunlit snow. And the opening apparently faced away from the prevailing winds, for the floor was dry. Little horses were carved all over the interior and on the surface of a little table inside. Carasta hoisted himself onto the center of this and hauled the bread from his pack. There wasn’t quite room there for Polijn to sit, but he did allow her to cut the bread on the available free space.
“You’ll soon be eating better than this,” he told her through a mouthful of the bread.
Polijn nodded. “One supper with the duke and another with the abbot,” she said, doing her best to sound enthusiastic. Carasta was much more amenable to questions if he thought you were with him.
“You don’t think far enough ahead,” he told her, shaking his chunk of bread in her direction. “Lucky you have me.” He reached for his pack. “We’re not going back to the shelter.”
He opened the pack and showed her why. Polijn had been wondering why he hadn’t made her carry both packs.
“This horse is one solid shuptit ruby,” he told her, stroking the head of the idol. He shook his own head. “Pity we can’t sell it up to the castle, but that’s way too close. We can nose around and find out where the next closest customer might be.”
Polijn did not reply, just stared at the immense jewel. One of the problems with Carasta’s plots was that he thought too far ahead. If he had applied his great brain to the near future, he would have known the abbot’s men were bound to come after them. There was a limited number of suspects in the theft, after all. Or, if this was a nonviolent sect, they had only to send a runner to the duke. Nobody who could survive as duke in these parts was likely to be nonviolent. And if he was as devout as Anderal believed, there would soon be two fewer minstrels and quite a few untidy piles of bone and flesh in the snow.
“Nobody’s going to stop and pray on a holiday,” Carasta went on, covering up the horse again. “Way too busy. And by the time they do notice their god’s gone, we’ll be headed in another direction.”
He hopped down from the table. “Well, let’s see about this duke. We’re for warm food and plenty of good music now.”
A loud and unmusical clang brought them both around the corner of the shrine. “That’ll be cowbells on the duke’s herd,” said Carasta without much conviction.
From this side of the shrine, they could also make out the sound of someone singing even worse than Carasta, which Polijn would not have thought humanly possible. She nodded as she caught sight of the lone figure. That explained alclass="underline" it wasn’t human.
A creature six feet tall and a good four feet around was marching cheerfully through the snow. A large pack sat high on his shoulders, and as he sang, he whacked a soup pot with a ladle, less to advertise his wares (who was out in the snow to buy from him?) than because he was enjoying the noise. Dyed and figured leather was all he wore in the way of clothes, more as armor and ornament than for protection from the cool air.
Polijn pulled back out of sight, but Carasta stepped clear of the shrine and raised an arm. “Hlar!” he shouted.
“Hlar!” the goblin merchant hollered back, waving the ladle. Speeding up, he reached the shrine in seconds and dealt Carasta a welcoming buffet on the shoulder with the same ladle.
“Arrh, but it’s a lonely dodge, selling up north!” he said, wincing not at all as Carasta shoved a fist against his chest. “Dirklad’s the name, spices the ware. What’s yours, and how’s business?”
“Carasta and Polijn,” Carasta told him, reaching back to pull Polijn into sight. “The greatest minstrels in the north, when we’re in the north. Business will be better once we reach the duke’s celebration, and better still if we can avail ourselves of your fine percussion.”
The goblin answered with a barrage of clangs. “First human I’ve met with such an ear!” He swung the ladle again and congratulated Carasta on the other shoulder. “Let’s go!”
Carasta and Dirklad set off without any further discussion and Polijn followed, largely because Carasta still had a hand clamped around her left wrist. She studied Dirklad’s face, just to make sure this wasn’t the same goblin Carasta had had dealings with before. She’d marked that one. Dirklad was a new one, though, as far as she could see. What was it about Carasta that attracted the creatures? Or about the goblins that attracted Carasta? He could be haughty enough with other merchants, a class he considered beneath him. In general, the minstrel was only this jovial when he saw a prospect for profit.
“I don’t see much of your partner back there,” Dirklad declared. “Why don’t you walk in front, missy, so’s I can get a good look at you?” Carasta pulled her forward.
“Arrrh, yes,” the goblin went on. “I knew a lass like you once. So pretty she was that the witches were jealous and had to put a curse on her, sure as the ocean cries, ‘Sink!’ Everywhere she went, she had to sing and dance: no talking or walking, just singing and dancing. She made some money, of course, but one day she went walking through the woods, and her song attracted a bear. He went after her and she couldn’t run away, she could only dance as quick as she could.”
He paused there to scratch behind one ear.
This was a story Polijn had not heard before. “What then?” she asked, her professional interest aroused.
Dirklad shrugged. “She wasn’t the first minstrel to dance with a bear behind!” Carasta guffawed along with the goblin as Dirklad swung the ladle down to give her a swat of camaraderie. This was going to be another long walk.
They finally reached the ducal palace shortly after midday, hearing it long before they saw it. Other latecomers were moving through the gate of a walled enclosure; they joined the procession. Inside, fires and food were set all around the courtyard, among people who obviously were no more afraid of chill winter breezes than Dirklad. The newcomers were greeted by the crowd of merrymakers with glee on general principle, but when Carasta announced that they were a company of minstrels, as well as adepts in the worship of Our Lord Horse, mighty exultation was the result.
“Take them to His Grace!”
“His Grace’ll want to hear them first!”
The celebrants dragged them toward the main building until they reached an aisle blocked by rings of spectators watching two burly men with sabers performing a sword dance around a woman with a broadsword. “Here now,” called Carasta, “I’m all for a bit of fun, but I’m supposed to be presented to His Grace.”
“Aye, good minstrel,” someone from the crowd told him. “As soon as His Grace is done dancing.”
It seemed they were not destined to enter the stone keep at all. The big, muscled man with bare arms and a long beard was His Grace Duke Burgo, while his no less muscled but clean-shaven partner was his brother Perlo. The woman hoisting the six foot sword over her head was their sister Chilia, who was perfectly enchanted with the new arrivals. “Ah, it would have been no true festival without minstrels,” she exclaimed, tossing her arms around each of the three in turn. “And just in time for the ceremony of the gift exchange.” Carasta’s eyes gleamed, though the hug had left him too out of breath for a reply.