"Not at all. Good for the lads. I always tell them that instructing's one of the best ways of learning, because it shows you what you thought you knew and don't really. This is the armory. The man with the shoulders is our wrestling champion, Neal Big, and that antiquated spider over there is Gavin the Grim, who can still chop any man into sausage filling in the twinkle of an eye."
Thereupon Sir Malcolm set the entire Campbell warband onto Toby, or so it seemed. Baby-faced recruits no older than Hamish knew more about swords and guns than he did, while the old-timers knew more about everything than he could ever dream of knowing. Every man in the castle could teach him something and seemed eager to do so. He intrigued them — he was a hero, a fugitive, and a baby giant. They came at him in relays. The day became a blur of locks and throws… longbow and crossbow… pistol and musket… saber, rapier, and short sword… matchlock and wheel lock.
He soon realized that they were making a game of it, seeing who could work him to exhaustion. Fine — just let them try! They couldn't, of course. He had the stamina of a mule, always ready to go again as soon as he caught his breath. With blades he won polite praise and a few heady compliments about being a natural athlete, but he lacked the speed ever to be a top fencer. He could already handle a quarterstaff, and he took to wrestling like a bat to bugs. Along about what felt like noon, he realized that night was falling already. By the time he retired to the little tower room he shared with Hamish, the candles were burning low and his roommate lay fast asleep, flat on his back with an open book spread on his chest.
Morning dawned in one solid ache, but the first ten minutes on the mat with Neal Big limbered him up again.
That afternoon, as he hammered short swords with Gavin, he observed the dumpy shape of Father Lachlan perched on an empty powder keg in a corner of the armory. When the fencing paused for a breather, Toby trotted over and dropped on one knee beside him, panting.
The acolyte beamed at him over his spectacles. "From the breadth of your grin, I take it you are enjoying yourself, my son?"
He nodded, that being easier than speaking.
"No bad dreams?"
Head shake.
"You are certainly working hard enough. Do you know, Tobias, from one cause or another, I don't think I have ever seen you totally dry?"
Toby chuckled. "What… you mean when… told Rory… I might… cause terrible damage?"
"Ah." The little man frowned. "I am concerned. You have displayed superhuman powers, but they are not under your conscious control, are they? You don't will them to happen. So far they have been restricted to effecting miraculous escapes, but can we count on that always being the case? Suppose Sir Malcolm and his men try to arrest you?"
That was an uncomfortable thought. He wiped his forehead with an arm. "I might hurt them?"
"Perhaps. You might just disappear out of their reach, or you might haul down the castle on their heads! I don't know, and neither do you." Father Lachlan pushed his glasses up his nose. "Listen to this, as a theory: Lady Valda attempted to put a hex on you, and something went wrong. The arts she practices are very dangerous, so that's not too surprising. As I told you, she cannot compel you directly. She would order a demon to make you do whatever it was she wanted of you. She might have included instructions to the demon to protect you from outside interference, right? And somehow those orders have taken precedence, so that the demon defends you even from her? Frankly, Tobias, I don't believe you are in any great danger from the sentence of death that has been passed on you — but I think anyone who tries to carry it out may be very surprised indeed!"
There were flaws in that theory, surely. Where did "Susie" come into it?
The old man saw his hesitation. "It is only a suggestion, and I admit objections. Demonic powers have a limited range. If the demon she invoked was imprisoned in the jewel on the dagger, then she must have planned to give you the dagger to carry with you — but she didn't, did she? So where is the demon? How does it stay close to you?"
"I don't know, Father."
"Neither do I! But I still believe that we must get you to a sanctuary as soon as possible, before something bad happens. Now I see that poor old man is waiting for you to stop shirking."
"'Poor old man?' Gavin? He's got more stamina than a billy goat!" Toby went back to fencing.
The next day he was pleased to see that the weather was worse than ever. He had begun to worry about Meg, wondering why she was not coming to see him, as he could not seek her out. He determined to ask Hamish, but he did not see Hamish all day, either.
The two of them shared a small circular room at the top of one of the towers. It was drafty and furnished with nothing but two straw mattresses, but none the worse for that. That night, as he was turning his plaid into a blanket, he heard a sleepy murmur of greeting, the contented purr of a bookworm who has spent a whole day digesting books and expects to spend more days doing so.
"Awake?"
"Mmph!" Meaning no.
"Hamish, do you know how they corn gunpowder?"
"Mmph!" Meaning yes.
Toby rolled himself into a bundle. "Do you know how an arrow is tuned to a bow?"
There was a pause. Then a slightly more alert boy said, "Yes, again. Why? Why do you want to know?"
"I don't. I know already." He stared miserably at the darkness.
Hamish misunderstood, which was not surprising. He yawned extensively. "Go ahead and tell me if you want to, but I read about it once."
"I don't want to tell you."
A note of irritation. "You woke me up to tell me you don't want to tell me how an arrow is tuned to a bow? Have you been planning this for long, or did it just come to you on the spur of the moment?"
"Sorry. Have you seen Meg?"
"Not to speak to. She went walking with Lady Lora this afternoon, when the sun came out. I've heard her singing in the hall." Yawn. "She's fine."
"Oh. Good. I was just wondering. Sorry to wake you. Go to sleep."
"Sleep, is it? Go to sleep? Now? After you start acting…"
"Start acting what?"
"Oh, nothing. G'night, Toby."
The room was small. Toby leaned a long arm across and took an ear between finger and thumb. "Do you want this? It feels loose."
"Owww!"
"Should I pull and see?"
"All right! Let go! Thank you. What do I have to talk about?"
"You were about to tell me about noticing me acting strange."
"Oh, I would never be that crazy!" Straw rustled and Hamish chuckled from the relative safety of the far side of his pallet. "I've hardly seen you since we got here! But… why did you ask about corning and the arrow thing?"
"They're interesting," Toby said stubbornly.
"But it's not like you to find 'why' sorts of things interesting. I'm the scholar; you're a doer." He fell silent for a moment, then turned a white blur of a face in the dark. "That's what you meant, isn't it?"
"Yes," Toby admitted. "They tell me things — and I remember them! I even care! I never did before. Your Pa used to say I was the worst student he'd ever had."
Hamish laughed aloud. "That's a ridiculous understatement! I'll never forget my first day in school! I must have been five. You would have been about eight, right? I know you were the biggest boy in the school even then, and that day Pa was trying to teach you the four-times table. I knew it already, of course — I could read when I was three — and I couldn't believe a boy as big as you could be finding it so difficult. Neither could Pa! I had never seen him really angry before. I hardly knew him. I was weeping because my Pa was behaving like that — screaming and yelling at you, cuffing you, beating you. All the kids in the village were sitting there, waiting to be taught, and he spent more time on you than on all of the rest of us together, but I don't think you knew one more fact at the end of the morning than you had when you walked in late, and you'd had at least a dozen strokes of the birch."