“What’s that?”
“Join Otto and me in getting roaring drunk tonight and singing disgusting bawdy songs till dawn.”
Marek started to laugh, but stopped abruptly, looking surprised. “You know, that’s the first time I’ve made that vulgar noise in five years?”
CHAPTER 28
The weather in Bavaria had changed overnight. Under heavily overcast skies, an unfriendly wind wailed pitilessly around Castle Orel, promising rain to follow. Wulf had asked his Voices to deliver Otto, Marek, and himself to the road alongside the lake that he had seen the previous day. They had consented without argument. Clearly they would take him only to people he knew or places with which he had some previous connection, but as usual they refused to explain why.
Marek had tried a short journey through limbo on his own and had returned doubled over with pain, which Wulf had cured for him. By his reckoning, he was still only a Four. Wulf could only advise him to keep trying.
Seen from the lake, Baron Emilian’s Castle Orel was a spectacular affair of towers, turrets and many windows, balanced on a rock like an osprey plume on a hat. Even to Wulf’s uncritical eye it looked more like decoration than a practical machine of warfare. Otto laughed at it and asked what it was supposed to be guarding in the middle of a forest. It was only a glorified hunting lodge, he said. Indeed, the land around the lake was an open beech wood that lacked the close-cropped grass that indicated pasture. It was surely a lord’s game park, and a moment’s search turned up both old pellets of summer deer droppings near the lake and the ruts made by wild boar.
The brothers rode off up the hill. Roughly halfway to the castle, Otto and Marek found a secluded spot to wait, and Wulf rode on alone.
He reined in Copper at the front edge of the drawbridge. The moat was a dry trench, of course, up there on top of the crag, but it was deep, steep-sided, and floored with sharp rocks.
With the drawbridge down and the portcullis raised, he could have ridden all the way into the bailey if he wished, but dangers lurked there that he would rather avoid. The baron might want to know how his hostage had obtained that weighty bag of gold yesterday. Worse, Emilian might be hosting a squad of Dominicans, lying in wait for the Satanist. Wulf still did not trust Marek’s change of allegiance and protests of family loyalty; it would have been easy for him to step through limbo to Koupel in the middle of the night and report what his devil-worshiping brother was up to. This suspicion and gnawing dread would be the pattern of Wulf’s life from now on, aware always of the glowing nimbus that marked him as a Speaker and made him blatantly visible to any other Speaker, who might or might not be equally visible to him. He shivered as the wind sank claws through his cloak and tried to bluster him over the edge of the moat.
“Holy Saints, what is Vlad doing?”
— Watching his sumpter being laden, Victorinus said. — His mount is saddled and ready to go.
“Thank you.” The Light faded.
He drew his dagger and inspected his blurred reflection in the shiny blade. The nimbus still shone around his head. Several times in the night he had dreamed that he was on a battlefield, all alone, facing the entire Pomeranian army. The army had charged and he had called on his Voices to aid him-and they had not been there. He had awakened shaking and sweating, and he must have called out in his sleep, because he had awakened Marek once.
If Vlad did not come soon he was going to find his youngest brother tragically frozen. Copper neighed in complaint and stamped a foot.
Last night had been a wonderful family reunion with Marek, all the better for not having Anton and Vlad there, although that was a shameful thing to think of one’s brothers. Anton had very little humor and Vlad had far too much, of his own bruising kind. Otto had included Branka, who was entitled to be there as hostess and mother of the next generation of Magnuses. She had assured the family’s Speakers that she believed they remained in a state of grace, and had not only joined in the singing, but had supplied some bawdy verses that even Otto had not heard before.
Vlad appeared in the archway, astride one horse and leading another. He wore a sword but no armor, having forfeited his when he yielded to Emilian.
Wulf had not counted on an extra horse. He would have to ask his Voices if they could transport it, or if he would have to come back for it. He backed Copper out of the way and doffed his hat in salute. “God bless, Sir Vlad, and welcome to liberty.”
Vlad just scowled. His horses were nondescript nags, his hat and cloak a fair match for them. Baron Emilian had not quite thrown him out naked, but he had not been generous with parting gifts.
“I hope that you don’t expect me to ride far on this pig. Or be seen in these rags.”
“You won’t be riding far. Just down this trail a ways.”
“And then what?”
“Otto is waiting there.”
Vlad looked surprised at that and fell silent. As they rode, Wulf outlined the events of the last few days, from Anton’s craziness at the hunt to Otto’s meeting with Cardinal Zdenek. He was just short of explaining Marek’s defection before they turned off the trail and around a thicket, to a secluded dell where Otto and Marek were waiting. Vlad greeted Otto with a humility suitable to a shamed warrior who had put his family to considerable trouble and expense. He was always respectful to his older brother, even formal.
He had a personal name for the each of the others. “God’s blood! If it isn’t Midge! And a friar now? Koupel threw you out?”
Marek smiled with good humor. “They couldn’t afford to feed me.”
Anton, had he been there, would have pointed out that Marek hadn’t needed to be ransomed.
Vlad snorted. “So what are you doing here with these devil spawn?” he asked Otto.
“Enjoying their company and admiring their astonishing success. They have generously offered to let me accompany them to Castle Gallant, so we can have a joyful family reunion and celebrate our brother’s advancement.”
“I have to go to Dobkov first. I can’t go anywhere in these rags and riding this spavined bone rack.” Vlad was probably right about the horse, which looked incapable of carrying his weight very far.
“We are not going to Dobkov,” Wulf said. “Marek and I are being hunted and that is the first place our enemies will look for us. They may track us down at Castle Gallant, but that risk we must take.”
“Dobkov first!” the big man insisted.
“Your choice-Cardice, or stay here and eat weeds?”
Vlad’s face flushed above his great beard. He looked to Otto. “You let this brat speak to you like that?”
Otto smiled. “He never needs to speak to me like that. Tell him which you choose.”
“Gallant, then.” Vlad’s glare at Wulf suggested that he might bring up the matter again in the future, in private. “Except that I don’t want to be accused of being in league with the devil. You left there only two days ago, you say, to deliver a report to the king and bring my ransom here, in Bavaria. Today you ride back with me? You’ll be denounced. We all will be! The Magnuses are Satanists!”
In fact, the miracle of Anton’s recovery might already be causing that sort of trouble, but all the fires of hell were not going to keep Wulf away from Cardice and Madlenka.
Otto said. “We’ve made up a story. We don’t have to deceive many people. Servants and the townsfolk don’t ask nobility impertinent questions. The daughter, Madlenka Bukovany… Wulf thinks she’s already guessed.”
Wulf said, “She’s a smart girl, smart enough not to tell anyone. Her mother was still hiding under bedclothes when I left. I can’t see the constable or the seneschal or any of the senior staff questioning the odd small miracle that helps save the castle from the Wends. The bishop is the problem. If he will overlook our little ways, we’ll be all right. If he doesn’t, nobody will.”