With a sigh, Toby turned away from the desolation and walked out into the brightness. Hamish had not moved from his place in shadows at the far side of the plaza, keeping watch. The birds were back at their feasting.
CHAPTER SIX
The first houses they investigated had been thoroughly looted, the furnishings broken or deliberately fouled, including the water casks, which had long since dried out anyway. Whether demons or mortals led by a demon, the invaders could have destroyed everything more easily with fire, so they must have taken pride in their work and wanted to leave evidence of their thoroughness.
Toby's canteen was long empty. A town must have a supply of water, and the rain barrels could not possibly be adequate. There would be a spring or a cistern of some sort, but would the demons have poisoned it?
Moving together in ever-grimmer silence, they turned a corner into a tiny yard and almost knocked over a girl coming out. She leaped back with a scream and then continued to retreat. She was short and slight, dressed all in black: a long skirt and a sleeved blouse. Her cloth bonnet was tied under her chin to conceal her hair and ears, leaving only her terrified face exposed. Incongruously, she had a bright-colored pottery bottle hung around her neck on a cord, and this she clasped to her with both arms as she backed away, staring at them in horror.
"Senores! Do not hurt me." Her voice rang shrill and cracking with terror. "I will submit! I will do anything you say, and I can cook for you, too, or wash your clothes. Anything, senores! There is a bed upstairs, senores, and I will not resist, if you promise not to hurt me and not to tell your friends. I will be just yours, yes? Just the two of you. And you will not—"
"Stop!" Toby howled, turning his back. "Hamish, speak to her."
Hamish went down on one knee. "Senorita!" he said, speaking Castilian, as she had. "We mean you no harm, no harm at all. We have no friends with us. We are foreigners, but we are loyal subjects of the Khan, not the Fiend. There are just the two of us, and we do not molest women. We will not touch you. Please do not be alarmed."
How could she not be alarmed in this place, trapped by two strange men, and one of them a giant? What horrors had she experienced to make her react so? She had expected to be raped before she even knew they were foreigners.
"I will do anything you want, senores, but please do not hurt me."
"We shall not touch you, senorita. We are honorable men. You have nothing to fear from us."
"You are not soldiers?"
"No, we are merely travelers, men who honor and respect women."
Cautiously, Toby looked around. She had backed against the wall, very small and vulnerable, arms crossed across her breasts and that inexplicable bottle. Her face was sickly with fright. She was scarcely more than a child.
Hamish rose and bowed. "I am Diego Campbell Campbell. We are visitors from a faraway land. We will not harm you, I promise."
"I am Gracia Arnalt Arias de Gomez."
"Senora de Gomez, I am at your service. May I have the honor of presenting my friend Tobias Longdirk Campbell?"
Toby bowed also. "Your servant, senora." She did not look old enough to be married, and her black garments implied mourning—a widow? He did not know what to say next.
Hamish came to the rescue, more proficient with words in any language and especially words to women—not that he was much of a ladies' man, although he tried hard enough, but Toby was most certainly less of one. "You also are a stranger here, I think?"
She nodded, staring at him with the huge dark eyes of a cornered rabbit. Why was she wearing a bottle? It was ornamental, not practical everyday ware, glazed in whorls of red and green, fitted with a handle through which the thong was strung. The mouth was corked, but the way it lay on her breast and the way it moved when she did suggested that it was empty.
"Then we may have interesting tales to exchange. Senora, my friend and I are very thirsty. May two weary travelers beg the mercy of a cup of water?"
She nodded, shooting a hasty glance at a dark doorway.
"We shall wait out here." He strolled over to a flight of stone steps leading up to another house and sat down. By the time Toby had joined him Gracia had vanished indoors.
"She probably has fourteen brothers and three uncles in there," Hamish growled, watching the door. "Women don't travel alone."
"Unless she's the last survivor."
"She's from Castile."
"She's been here for some time, though." The little yard was the first clean place Toby had seen in the town, sunlight and shadows on ancient stonework, barred windows, two weathered doors broken off their hinges and one whole. It had been tidied and swept. "I wonder why the wraiths haven't driven her away?"
"If she offers you roast pork, refuse politely."
"Don't be obscene!" To compare that sweet child and the creature in the orange grove was utterly repugnant. "She may have jumped out the back window and run away already."
Hamish shrugged cynically. "She's from somewhere near Toledo, I think. Not a great lady, more than a peasant."
Toby could not have guessed that much, but Hamish had an ear for languages. He had known Latin as well as Scots and Gaelic before he left Scotland. Since then he had picked up a working fluency in Breton, langue d'oïl, langue d'oc, and Castilian, although even he had been stumped by Euskara. Soon he would be jabbering away in Catalan like a native. They were all variants of either Gaelic or Latin, he would explain solemnly, as if that were obvious. He was Diego now because he enjoyed translating his name into the local tongue: Hamish, James, Seamus, Jakez, Jacques—Diego.
Gracia reappeared, struggling two-handed with a bucket. She set it down in front of the men and retreated quickly. She was no longer wearing the bottle. Without rising, Hamish slid to his knees and reached for the cup under the water. He drank, refilled it and passed it to Toby, both of them being elaborately courteous, making no sudden moves. The water was sweet and fresh.
"You are wounded, senor." The girl was staring at Toby's swollen wrists, which had been bleeding again. Anyone could guess those wounds had been made by manacles.
"Just, um... How do you say 'scrapes,' Hamish? They are nothing, senora. But I should clean them if you will tell us how we may refill your, um, fetch more water for you."
"There is a cistern. If the senor will permit me to tend his injuries?"
That hint that she was regaining her confidence was welcome and must be encouraged, however much Toby disliked being mothered. "They are only scratches, senora. You are very kind." He held out his hands.
Gracia approached as warily as a deer, producing a rag she must have brought for this purpose. She barely took her eyes off his face as she washed away the blood, and he felt her fingers shaking, but she was more deft than Hamish would have been.
He thanked her and insisted he did not need bandages.
"The senor was also limping?"
Hamish had not noticed that! It was true that Toby's ankles were in worse shape than his wrists now, but he could not reveal those without removing his hose.
"My buskins do not fit well," he said. "We have walked a long way." His buskins were falling apart. What chance did he have of finding a pair to fit him in this ruin of a town?
Gracia seemed to accept the explanation, and she was gaining more confidence by the minute. "I can find the senor a new pair!" she said eagerly.
"To fit me?"
"I believe so. If the senor will excuse me a moment?" She hurried off into the house again.
"You know," Hamish said thoughtfully, "if you can get hurt in these visions of yours, then one day you may come back dead!"