“If he passed all the conventional tests, why do you still doubt him?” the aide asked.
“Because, while I know I have never laid eyes on that man in my life, I could swear, after talking to him, that I’ve met him before, even spent some time with him. It’s just a feeling; there’s no rational basis for it, but I can’t get it out of my mind. Perhaps it will come to me, sooner or later, or I’ll find some good way to divine it without having to pay a price to a demon.”
“But you gave him safe conduct, my lord!”
“Northbound, yes. Where can he go that isn’t ours? As I suspected, he was illiterate. He never even tried to read the safe conduct, which is a natural act of any literate person. It is valid, but it also states that, if he tries to leave the empire, he is to be arrested using all necessary force.”
“Still, my lord, you permit a potential spy of high capability to roam freely behind us?”
“Let him look. He won’t be difficult to find. He has deep, genuine affection for that girl, perhaps even love of some kind, and she worships him as a dog worships her master. A big mercenary with a naked slave girl in the north won’t exactly be unnoticed. The same spell that protects her binds her to me. If the spell is removed, she dies horribly. If it is not, then at any time I wish I can command her as easily as I work my will upon the dead. I can summon her soul to me, no matter where she is. No, gentlemen, I don’t believe we have much to fear by giving him a little rope.”
Joe used his abilities of fairy sight to examine the pass and found nothing there. It was just what it said it was. Of course, he had no guarantee it was really a safe conduct, but that would be easy enough to test.
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, that sure turned out better than it had a right to,” he noted.
“Yes, Master.”
“But?”
“No, it is not that, Master. I have thoughts again of the flying horse.”
“Forget it. You heard what the man said. No use pushing our luck.”
“But there is one night of the full moon left, Master! The longest, just about all night! If one of us could somehow be next to that creature at moonrise…”
“Hmmm… I see what you mean. It might carry us and our supplies a pretty fair distance by dawn.”
“Then you will give me permission to do it?”
He looked around. “There’s got to be thousands of lonely men on this base. I’m not gonna leave you here for hours and hours just on the off chance you might get in there. Too dangerous.”
“Master, I am but your property, your tool. It is my function to try this if it is possible.”
“No, if anybody tries it, it should be me. I can bluff my way around for a while if this pass is any good, and I weigh more than twice what you weigh, so more could be carried.”
“Master, someone must get everything together and ready. I cannot leave without you. They would notice. Your safe conduct is nothing for me. And if I left carrying your sword, if I could, it would be noticed. But if you left, they would hardly remember the slave you came in with. I am the only one. And as you will change, too, probably to Kauri, you will be able to fly as well. But you must remember to wrap all things iron securely and only what we need and what the two of you together could lift.”
He frowned. Damn it, it did seem worth a try, and since they wouldn’t really be stealing anything, nothing would be missed. And, so long as she was not caught and managed to get away, two big “ifs,” even if it proved impractical, it wouldn’t be that much of a problem.
“You really think you can do it?”
“Master, the worst that happens is that I get caught and must be a tearful slave who lost her way. Otherwise, I shall simply become one of these men, or a Bentar, or something similar and nothing is lost. Yes, I believe I can do it.”
“All right, then. Let’s test out this safe conduct and go see the pegasus. If you can give everybody around the slip and hide nearby, it’s on. Otherwise, you get on your horse, which will be left there, and you come out with me.”
She nodded.
When you act like you have nothing to fear, it’s amazing how easily you can move around restricted areas. They were stared at, now and again, but they reached the area where the flying horses—or, as they discovered when they got there, more properly flying horse—were kept before anybody even tentatively asked for their authorization.
Joe whipped out the safe conduct, and the man who made the challenge blanched and lost all his belligerence. Sugasto was right about one brag: his army was scared stiff of him.
The pegasus was grazing, much like any other horse, the huge wings folded up and at its sides. Joe stared and stared at it and couldn’t for the life of him figure out how something this large could fly without a jet engine, but he’d had much the same feeling about Kauris, too. Not that the pegasus was a big animal; disregarding the wings it was actually a bit smaller than it looked when flying, perhaps more like a circus pony, complete with hairy hooves, although the legs looked impossibly thin, so thin that it was almost easier to believe it could fly than to believe it could stand up for long on them. Incredibly, aside from a long rope tied around its neck on one end and to a post on the other, there was no apparent stable or pen for it, and there seemed nobody around to ask.
“You really think you can do this?” he asked her, worried.
“Yes, Master, I do. There are plenty of shadowy places near the buildings there, and tall grass and rocks.”
“Like as not the guy’ll come back and fly it away. Then what?”
“Then I will return to you as something else.”
They walked away from the pegasus and toward the shadows from the nearest building, which appeared to be some kind of livery supply or maintenance shed. In a moment, they were in back of it and out of possible sight against the back of a hill. After a minute or so, he knew they’d not been seen.
He stood there a moment, looking at her. She was hairless and naked and plain-looking, a hairless little eunuch…
He grabbed her suddenly, and kissed her the way neither he nor any other man had ever kissed her before, the kind of kiss you know only in your dreams. Suddenly, he released her, whispered, “Don’t fail me,” and walked back out into the open, leaving her standing there, totally speechless.
She would never fail him, she knew. She would die for him first.
“You left her where to do what?” Marge almost shouted at him. “How could you? Her life versus maybe two weeks time?”
“It was her idea. She came up with it and she just about pleaded to do it.”
“With maybe twenty thousand horny guys around and Sugasto, for Christ’s sake! Not to mention the Bentar!”
“I know, I know.”
“Yeah? You ever thought that, if she actually does make the change, she’s gonna need almost a runway to take off in, galloping the whole way? And when she gets up there in the dark she’s gonna have some big, leather-winged goons just waiting to pounce? You think a horse can fly like a Kauri?”
“No, I hadn’t thought about some of those things, and thanks for giving me more things to worry about,” he responded.
“Then why in hell did you let her do it?”
He stared at his old friend and comrade. “Because I thought she could,” he said simply.