No messengers came galloping down the road, shouting out news of war, rebellion, or the death of kings.
Sometimes the hills were so steep that the passengers had to leave the great carriage and walk in the downpour, which vexed Gribbins greatly. His high, peevish voice carried far along the road, and I was happy to trot ahead to where the only sounds were birdsong and the clop of Toast’s hooves echoing off the surrounding trees.
On the third day in the Toppings the weather broke, and thick golden sunbeams swept like pillars of light across the green country, while mist scudded between the leafy, brilliant crowns of the hills. The ridges ahead did not seem as tall as the ridges behind, and I felt my heart lift as I sensed that soon we might win free of the Toppings and descend into the lush country that fed the River Saelle.
Late in the morning the road descended into a long coomb, with a clear, lively stream running alongside the track, and willows overhanging the water. The leaves were just beginning to turn, and in the bright sun gleamed gold and scarlet flashes along the stream’s green banksides.
I rode a few hundred yards ahead of the Embassy, enjoying Toast’s easy glide over the ill-maintained road, and taking pleasure in the rich abundance of life in the coomb, the birds singing in their trees, the river’s laughter as it scurried over stones.
The road made a curve, and I pulled up short at the ancient willow that had fallen across the track, and an instant later saw that the tree had not fallen in its own time, but been sawn. I realized that the birds had fallen silent, and I scented a faint trace of smoke in the air—not woodsmoke, but smoke with the slight taste of brimstone, like that of a slow-match.
My heart began to thunder like a kettledrum, and I sawed Toast’s head around and banged my heels on the chestnut’s sides. The elderly horse paused for a moment of astonishment at this unprecedented treatment, then jolted into belated action as I kept kicking him. Soon, Toast was flying down the track at something like a canter, while I waved an arm and shouted.
“Ambush! Bandits! Ambush!”
On the grand carriage, the three footmen, coachman, and postilion stared at me with identical expressions of imbecilic surprise. My blood turned cold as I realized that the Embassy Royal was essentially defenseless—the three footmen were armed with blunderbusses, but the rains had doused their slow-matches days before, and they hadn’t been relit. Instead of terrifying weapons of close-range combat, the firelocks were now little more than awkward clubs.
Shots cracked out, white gunsmoke plumes gushing from the green bank above the road, and what seemed a host of wild men rose from concealment and dashed down onto the track, hot on my heels. The ambuscade had been laid just at the fallen tree, and because of my warning the attackers now had to sprint to the coach instead of finding it right in their net, but they were no less dangerous for having to run a hundred yards. I cast a glance over my shoulder and saw there were about a dozen, all armed with swords, pikes, or pollaxes.
Calculations sped through my mind, and they all led to the same sad conclusion: the Embassy was about to be waylaid and robbed, its delegates perhaps beaten or killed. I, with my little sword and superannuated gelding, could not affect the issue one way or another, and it was therefore only sensible that I preserve my life.
Someone, after all, still had to carry the Embassy’s message to the capital.
Toast raced past the great carriage at an accelerating canter. The baggage coach, with its servants, was only now slowing down, its driver standing on his box to peer in bewildered curiosity at the fast-unfolding disaster ahead of him. I left the baggage coach behind, and for a moment my heart lifted at the sight of a clear road ahead—and then a man stepped onto the path to block my way.
He was an old, white-bearded character in a flat-crowned hat. He seemed to be wearing a faded blanket over his shoulders; and a pair of heavy boots, like buckets, engulfed his skinny legs. He carried a spear in his gaunt, thick-knuckled hands.
I reasoned that if the bandit was going to stand in the road like that, it was my clear duty to ride him down. So, I dropped my head behind the gelding’s neck and kicked the horse into greater effort.
The old man stepped forward, waving his spear up and down like a flyswatter, and shouted, “Hai! Hai! Hai!”
Toast, confronted with this scarecrow apparition, found himself burdened with a number of choices. Apparently, he decided to contemplate his own advanced age, and the kicks and shouts and unearned abuse he had suffered from me in the last few moments, and the lack of toast evident in this unfolding scenario . . . and in an act of stubborn insurrection decided no longer to play a part in the action. The horse stopped dead in the middle of the track.
The world revolved about me as I catapulted forward over the horse’s neck to land on my back in the middle of the road, the wind completely knocked out of me, I could only gasp for breath as the elderly bandit approached on his huge boots and brandished the spearpoint at my neck.
“Will you yield?” said the toothless mouth. “Or shall I slice out your tripes?”
Unable to breathe or speak, I mutely threw my hands out to the side, and gave myself up as a captive.
CHAPTER SIX
The last part of the journey was alongside a stream, and I could hear the chatter of water and smell the fresh, free air of the brook. Then I was hauled up some stone stairs and shoved into an area paved with cobbles that I could feel through the soles of my boots. The sound around me—horses clattering, shoes scraping, rude laughter, and ruder greetings—seemed to have a slight echoing quality, and I suspected that I was in an enclosed space.
I had a few moments to catch my breath. And then the baize bag was pulled from my head, and I shook my hair from my face to discover myself in one of the old forts that crowned the hills in the Toppings. To make the place useless as a bandits’ lair, the walls had been torn down in two places, and the keep ripped open; but the bandits had moved in anyway, and built their refuge amid the ruins.
I gasped in air tainted with woodsmoke, and stood in a rough line with the prisoners. Lord Utterback, I saw, seemed to have suffered no injury, and looked about himself with a distracted air. Perhaps, I thought, he was consoling himself that all this was Necessity.
Around them prowled the robbers, looking at the prisoners as wolves might stare at a lost calf. The outlaws were more ferocious at close range even than they had seemed charging along the road, as now it was possible to see the mutilations that had been inflicted on them for past crimes—cropped ears, cheeks burned with the King’s brand, fingers missing joints or twisted by the thumbscrew. Despite the mutilations, they all seemed fit and hardy, and they were well armed with swords, bucklers, pistols, spears, and firelocks, and some wore bits of armor. Almost all were young, for few seemed older than five-and-twenty—the great exception being the old scarecrow who had taken me hostage, and who swaggered around the court with his spear on his shoulder, toothlessly cackling along with his fellows.