“What?” Gillews said, head tipping from side to side as though his neck was half broken, eyes rolling as he tried to focus on the two young men. “My pall-bearers, already? Is it to a council of my peers? An arraignment before the shades of physicians past? Throw me in the mirror. Let me reflect…” He pitched his head back and wailed, “Oh, my king, my king!” then slumped in the grip of the two men, weeping.
The assistants took Gillews stumbling away.
“Dear Oramen,” tyl Loesp said, appearing at Oramen’s side. He looked after the departing figures of Gillews and his two helpers. “The doctor may have enjoyed his drink too much.”
“He enjoys nothing else,” Oramen said. “I feel outdone in unkiltered grief.”
“There is appropriate grief, and inappropriate grief, don’t you think?” tyl Loesp said, standing close to Oramen, towering over him, white hair shining in the candlelight. His dark red trous and long jacket contrived to make him look no less massive than he’d looked in full armour, the evening he’d brought the King’s body back from the battlefield. Oramen was growing tired of being polite.
“Did my father die well, in the end, tyl Loesp?” he asked. “Tell me. Please.”
Tyl Loesp had been bending over Oramen a little. Now he drew himself back and up. “Like a king should, sir. I was never more proud of him, nor held him in greater esteem, as at that moment.”
Oramen put his hand on the tall warrior’s arm. “Thank you, Loesp.”
“It is my pleasure and my duty, young prince. I am but the stake to support a sapling.”
“You have supported me well in this, and I am in your debt.”
“Never so, sir. Never so.” Tyl Loesp smiled at Oramen for a moment or two, then his gaze flicked to somewhere behind the prince and he said, “Here, sir. Look; a more welcome face.”
“My prince,” said a voice behind Oramen.
He turned to find his old friend Tove Lomma standing there, smiling.
“Tove!” Oramen said.
“Equerry Tove, if you’ll have me, Prince Regent.”
“Equerry?” Oramen asked. “To me? Of mine?”
“I’d hope! Nobody else would have me.”
“In fact, a most able young man,” tyl Loesp said, clapping both Lomma and Oramen on the shoulders. “Remember merely that he is meant to keep you out of mischief, not lay a course towards it.” Tyl Loesp smiled at Oramen. “I’ll leave you two to plot much good behaviour.” He bowed shortly and left.
Tove looked rueful. “Not a day for mischief, prince. Not this one. But we must hope there will be many in the future.”
“We’ll share none if you don’t call me by my name, Tove.”
“Tyl Loesp instructed me most strictly that you were the Prince Regent, nothing more familiar,” Tove said, and pretended to frown.
“Consider that order rescinded, by me.”
“Duly agreed, Oramen. Let’s have a drink.”
8. Tower
“Fate, I tell you, if not the hand of the WorldGod itself… or whatever manipulatory appendage WorldGods possess. Anyway, the hand, metaphorically, of the WorldGod. Possibly.”
“I think you underguess the workings of blind chance, sir.”
“Blind chance that took me to that dreadful place?”
“Unarguably, sir: your startled mount ran cross-country until it found a track; naturally it then took the levelled road rather than the coarse ground and of course it took the easier, downhill route. Then that old mill appeared, on the first place where the road widens and levels out. Natural place for it to stop.”
Ferbin looked across at the prone form of his servant, lying on the ground a couple of strides away across the leaf-littered ground with a large blue leaf poised over his head. Choubris Holse looked calmly back.
They had flown straight out from the Scholastery until hidden from it by a line of low hills, then set down on a sloped heath above the limit of cultivated land.
“I think I’ve heard of the D’neng-oal Tower,” Ferbin said, while they inspected the two grumbling, huffing caude, “but I’m damned if I know which way it is.”
“Same here, sir,” said Holse. He opened up one of the saddle bags on his beast. “Though with any luck there’ll be a map in here. Let me just have a quick furtle.” He dug his hand elbow-deep into the bag.
The saddle bags yielded maps, some food, a little water, a telescope, a heliograph, two hefty pocket chronometers, one barometer/altimeter, some rifle and pistol ammunition but no weapons, four small bomblets like smooth hand grenades with cruciform flights, padded jackets, gauntlets, one small blanket each and the usual paraphernalia of tack associated with caude, including a good supply of the krisk nuts they found so stimulating. Holse popped one in the mouth of each animal; they mewed and whinnied appreciatively. “Ever tried these things, sir?” Holse asked, holding up the bag of krisk.
“No,” Ferbin lied. “Of course not.”
“Bloody horrible. Bitter as a scold’s piss.” He put the bag away, fastened the saddle bags and adjusted his saddle. “And these bastard knights that came to the Scholastery must be ascetics or something, for there’s no sign of any of the little niceties that make life bearable for the common man, sir. Like wine, or unge, or crile. Bloody fliers.” Holse shook his head at such lack of consideration.
“No goggles or masks either,” Ferbin pointed out.
“Must have carried them with them.”
Holse was checking one of the pistol rounds they’d discovered in the saddle bags against one from his own gun. “Let’s have a quick look, and then be off, eh, sir?” he said, then shook his head and dumped all the ammunition on the heath.
They consulted the maps, one of which was of sufficient scale to show the land for nearly ten days’ flying around Pourl, depicting hundreds upon hundreds of the great Towers as well as the shade limits and periods of the various Rollstars.
“There it is,” Ferbin said, tapping on the map.
“What would you say, sir? Four short-days’ flying?”
“More like three,” Ferbin said, glad to have found a practical subject he knew so much more of than his servant. “Five Towers along and one down, four times over, then three and one. Away from Pourl, which is to the good.” He glanced up at Obor. Its red-tinged bulk was still barely above the horizon as it rose upon its slow and settled course. “It’s a long-day today. We shall have to let the beasts day-sleep, but we should achieve the tower before dusk.”
“Could do with a snooze myself,” Holse yawned. He looked disparagingly at his mount, which had tucked its long neck under its massive body to lick its genitals. “Rather hoped I’d seen the last of these things this close, I do confess, sir.” Holse’s caude removed its head from between its legs, though only long enough for it to fart long and loud, as though to confirm its new rider’s poor opinion.
“You are not enamoured of the beasts of the air, Holse?”
“Indeed not, sir. If the gods had meant us to fly they’d have given us the wings and the caude the pox.”
“If they hadn’t meant us to fly, gravity would be stronger,” Ferbin replied.
“I wasn’t aware it was adjustable, sir.”
Ferbin smiled tolerantly. He realised that his servant might not be versed in the kind of alien lore that would insist that what he and Holse had known all their lives as normal gravity was about half Standard, whatever that really meant.
“However,” Holse said. “Let’s get moving, eh?” They both went to saddle up.