"Why now, sir, you have barely left your youth," the Duke told him. "If you go calling yourself old as though by royal decree, what must we think who are significantly older than you and yet who still fondly harbour the belief that we are not yet old? Have mercy, please."
"Very well," the King agreed, with a roll of the hand. "I declare myself young again. And well," he added, with a renewed look of surprise as he glanced at the Doctor and me. "Why, I seem to be quite bereft of any aches and pains for you to treat this morning, Doctor."
"Oh." The Doctor shrugged. "Well, that's good news," she said, picking up her bag and turning for the door. "I'll bid you good day then, sir."
"Ah!" the King said suddenly. We each turned again.
"Sir?"
The King looked most thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head. "No, Doctor, I can think of nothing with which to detain you. You may go. I shall call you when I need you next."
"Of course, sir."
Wiester opened the doors for us.
"Doctor?" the King said as we were in the doorway. "Duke Ormin and I go hunting this afternoon. I usually fall off my mount or get torn up by a barb bush, so I may well have something for you to treat later."
Duke Ormin laughed politely and shook his head.
"I shall start to prepare the relevant potions now," the Doctor said. "Your majesty."
"Providence, twice."
8. THE BODYGUARD
"Am I so trusted now?
"Or I am. Probably because I am regarded as being beyond the interest of any but the most desperate of men. Or because the General does not intend to visit me again and so-"
"Careful!"
DeWar grabbed at Perrund's arm just as she was about to step from the street-side into the path of a ten-team of mounts hauling a war carriage. He pulled her back towards him as first the panting, sweat-lathered team and then the great swaying bulk of the cannon-wagon itself raced past, shaking the cobblestones beneath their feet. A smell of sweat and oil rolled over them. He felt her draw away from it all, pressing her back against his chest. Behind him, the stone counter of a butcher's shop dug into his back. The noise of the wagon's man-high wheels resounded between the cracked, uneven walls of the two- and three-storey buildings leaning over the street.
On top of the huge black gun carriage a bombardier uniformed in the colours of Duke Ralboute stood lashing wildly at the mounts. The wagon was followed by two smaller carriages full of men and wooden cases. These in turn were trailed by a ragged pack of shouting children. The wagons thundered through the open gates set within the inner city's walls and disappeared from view. People on the street who had shrunk back from the speeding vehicles flowed back into the thoroughfare again, muttering and shaking their heads.
DeWar let Perrund go and she turned to him. He realised with a flush of embarrassment that in his instinctive reaction to the danger he had taken hold of her by the withered arm. The memory of its touch, through the sleeve of her gown, the sling and the fold of her cloak, seemed imprinted in the bones of his hand as something thin, fragile and childlike.
"I'm sorry," he said, blurting the words.
She was still very close to him. She stepped away, smiling uncertainly. The hood of her cloak had fallen, revealing her lace-veiled face and her golden hair, which was gathered inside a black net. She drew the hood back up. "Oh, DeWar," she chided. "You save somebody's life and then you apologise. You really are — oh, I don't know," she said, readjusting the hood. DeWar had time to be surprised. He had never known the lady Perrund lost for words. The hood she was struggling with fell back again, caught by a gust of wind. "Damn thing," she said, taking hold of it with her good arm and pulling it back once more. He had started to put his hand up, to help her with the hood, but now had to let his hand fall back. "There," she said. "That's better. Here. I'll take your arm. Now, let us walk."
DeWar checked the street and then they crossed it, carefully avoiding the small piles of animal dung. A warm wind blew up between the buildings, lifting whirls of straw from the cobblestones. Perrund held DeWar's arm with her good hand, her forearm laid lightly on his. In DeWar's other hand he held a cane basket she had asked him to carry for her when they'd left the palace. "Obviously I am not fit to be let out by myself," she told him. "I have spent far too long in rooms and courtyards, and on terraces and lawns. Everywhere, in fact, where there is no traffic any larger or more threatening than a eunuch with an urgently needed tray of scented waters."
"I didn't hurt you, did I?" DeWar asked, glancing at her.
`No, but if you had I think I might still count it better than being mangled beneath the iron wheels of a piece of siege artillery proceeding at a charge. Where do you think they are going in such a hurry?"
"Well, they won't go anywhere very far at that rate. The mounts already looked half exhausted and that was before they'd left the city. I imagine that was a show for the locals. But they will be heading for Ladenscion eventually, I imagine."
"Is the war begun, then?"
"What war, my lady?"
"The war against the troublesome barons of Ladenscion, DeWar. I am not an idiot."
DeWar sighed and looked around, checking that nobody in the street was paying them too close attention. "It is not officially begun yet," he said, putting his lips close to the hood of her cloak — she turned towards him and he smelled her perfume, sweet and musky — "but I think one might safely say it is inevitable."
"How far away is Ladenscion?" she asked. They ducked under displays of fruit hanging outside a grocer's.
"About twenty days" ride to the border hills."
"Will the Protector have to go himself?"
"I really couldn't say."
"DeWar," she said softly, with what sounded like disappointment.
He sighed and looked around again. "I shouldn't think so," he said. "He has much to do here, and there are more than enough generals for the job. It… it shouldn't take too long."
"You sound unconvinced."
"Do I?" They stopped at a side street to let a small herd of hauls pass, heading for the auction grounds. "I seem to be in a minority of one in thinking the war… suspicious.,
"Suspicious?" Perrund sounded amused.
"The barons" complaints and their stubbornness, their refusal to negotiate, seem disproportionate."
"You think they're inviting war for its own sake?"
"Yes. Well, not just for its own sake. Only a madman would do that. But for some further reason than the desire to assert their independence from Tassasen."
"But what else could their motive be?"
"It is not their motive that troubles me."
"Then whose?"
"Someone behind them."
"They are being encouraged to make war?"
"It feels so to me, but I am just a bodyguard. The Protector is cloistered with his generals now and believes he needs neither my presence nor my opinion."
"And I am grateful for your company. But I had formed the impression the Protector valued your counsel."
"It is most valued when it most closely accords with his own view."
"DeWar, you are not jealous, are you?" She stopped and turned to him. He looked into her face, shaded and half hidden by the hood of the cloak and the thin veil. Her skin seemed to glow in that darkness like a hoard of gold at the back of a cave.
"Maybe I am," he admitted, with a bashful grin. "Or perhaps I am once again exercising my duties in areas which are inappropriate."
"As in our game."
"As in our game."
They turned together and walked on. She took his arm again. "Well then, who do you think might be behind the vexatious barons?"