The woman followed, cackling. “A faun with goblin markings? That’s new.” She grinned at him like a skull, revealing a perfect set of teeth. “Goblin faun! What…” She hissed angrily. “No foresight? You blocking my foresight? No, you’re not capable. Who?”
“Who—who are you?”
“Me? You ought to know. Ought to guess, see? Who are you, more to the point?”
“I’m Rap… Flat Nose of Raven Totem.”
“Raven?” She looked quickly around once more. “Where is Death Bird? What’ve you done with him?”
“N-nothing!” Rap quailed before a blast of anger as palpable as heat from a farrier’s brazier. “Little Chicken, you mean? He’s out hunting—”
“Where? Show me!”
Show? Rap reached out to point with a shaking hand, toward where the goblin was wallowing in a thigh-deep drift, a long way off.
The old woman stared that way, then shrilled her senile laugh. “So he is! Well, all right. But you take care of him, you hear! Very precious, that one! See, you’re not to harm him!”
He? Rap? Harm Little Chicken? The woman was as mad as a gunny sack of foxes!
Bracing up his courage, Rap felt for the herd, and it had vanished. Fleabag was heading home again. Supper had fled, therefore, and he remembered that he had been hungry the first time he had met this strange sorceress. Even as he watched, she began to shimmer and fade, and his farsight had already lost her. “I’m hungry!” he said. “I mean, Death Bird is hungry!”
She seemed to solidify for a moment and study him, head on one side, leering. “Fauns!” she sneered. Then she uttered a shrill, childish snigger and clapped her hands.
Simultaneously she vanished and a curly-horned, black-woolled sheep thudded to the floor just before Rap’s toes. The impact shook the cabin, and a great cloud of dust and snow shot out from beneath the animal. With a scream of alarm, it scrabbled to its feet. There was no doubt at all that the sheep was real.
After her warning, Rap dared not try his mastery on the animal, and his limbs were still shaking so much that he took longer than he should have done to corner it. Cutting a sheep’s throat with a stone knife was harder than he had expected. He splashed a lot of blood on himself and was butted a few times. But why a black sheep? Had that been easiest for the mad old sorceress to see in the snowy bush, or was she making fun of a faun with goblin tattoos? Rap was too hungry to care.
He was eating roast mutton when Little Chicken returned, empty-handed, exhausted, and furious. But for the first time, the goblin seemed to be impressed by Rap’s occult powers.
4
With a louder crack than usual, the rear of the carriage dropped, twisting to the left. It came to a shuddering halt.
“Are you all right, your Highness?” Andor inquired solicitously. He and Inos were crushed pleasantly together, holding hands under the lap rug, but Aunt Kade was now suspended above them, grimly hanging onto a strap.
“Quite all right, thank you, except that perhaps my highness is now a little more noticeable than usual.”
Andor laughed appreciatively. “I shall see what has happened this time,” he said, unlinking his fingers from Inos' and preparing to disembark. There were loud shoutings and nervous horse noises outside. Water splattered on the roof, although the rain had been showing signs of turning to snow. Andor opened the door and stepped out gracefully, managing both rapier and cloak with apparent ease. Kade clambered across to sit next to her niece on the lower side of the canted vehicle. She took up a lot more room on the bench than Andor had.
The fast progress they had made at first had now ended. On the straight and smooth highways of the Impire, the carriage had thundered along almost as fast as a rider could have done, but now they were in the mountains. The weather had turned sulky and the road upward, soon degenerating into a track. Farmland and pasture had given way to forest, and the way had become difficult, with tree branches often reaching out to finger the carriage as it passed.
Since the loathsome Yggingi had appeared with his men, a deep dread had fallen over Inos. The thought of two thousand Imperial soldiers invading Krasnegar was terrifying—especially these troops. She could recall being told in Kinvale that the local military were a despicable lot, not to be compared with the elite corps found near Hub, and that to be posted to a remote frontier station like Pondague was a humiliation, or even a punishment, inflicted only on the rabble and scum of the army. Proconsul Yggingi was rabble and scum, also, in Inos' opinion, but she had not said so.
In fact she had not dared discuss the matter at all, with either Andor or Aunt Kade, and they, too, were confining their talk to trivialities. Partly this common discretion came from fear of being overheard, for now the coachman and the footmen who clung to the carriage were all Yggingi’s men, and their ears were close to the windows. Far more worrisome to Inos, though, was the horrifying certainty that she had been betrayed.
Somehow the Imperial government had learned of her father’s bad health and had decided to seize Krasnegar before the thanes of Nordland did. Only Hub itself could have mobilized the army. That meant time—time for reports and orders to flow back and forth, time for consultations and decisions.
But how had the Imperial officials known? Andor must have passed through Pondague on his way south. He could have alerted the odious Yggingi to the opportunity. Yggingi might then have headed for Kinvale, while Andor reported to some more senior officer before continuing on to inform Inos.
In the clear light of day such fancies seemed quite absurd. One glance at Andor’s honest face, one smile from those steady eyes, and all her doubts blew away like dust. But in the long hours of night, as she tossed in unfamiliar beds in dank, smelly hostelries, they became all too terrifyingly real. Inos had invented stories where Andor had been an Imperial spy all along. She had frightened herself half to death with doubts about his background, his parentage, his childhood. She knew so little about all of those, and they seemed so very important when she was alone… yet they seemed so trivial when she was with him that she never seemed to remember to bring them up in conversation, as she had so often promised herself she would. When he was with her, she could face the future with courage—she would face the whole Impire, if necessary, and the jotnar, as well! Away from him, she felt like a lost child.
There was only Andor… and Kade. But someone had betrayed Inos.
It had been her aunt who had made the decision to journey north—a sudden and very improbable venture for a woman of her years. Kade had at least suspected that Holindarn’s health was failing even before she left Krasnegar. She would certainly champion an Imperial claim over Nordland’s. To believe that Princess Kadolan would betray her brother and niece was quite impossible… and yet somehow it seemed no more incredible than doubting Andor. One of the two must be a traitor and Inos did not know which.
She felt very small, and alone, and vulnerable. She felt like a hunted animal, fleeing home to its lair with a dangerous predator in close pursuit. She had nowhere else to go and yet her lair would be no safe refuge, for the monster would follow her in.
Obviously she was on her way to Krasnegar whether she wanted to go there or not. If she tried to balk now, then her honor escort of five hundred men would at once become an armed guard, and she a captive. Yggingi had all but told her as much. Nominally she was returning to her home under his protection, but in fact she was only his puppet. The odious man had not revealed his plans, but it was a fair guess that he would try to force her to sign over the kingdom to the imperor as soon as her father died. She could only hope that Father was still alive, and still well enough to advise her. She had no one else she could trust now.