“Rye!” The bell tree stick clutched in her hand, Sonia ran into Rye’s view and came to a skidding halt below him. She looked up, laughing with relief. “Rye, come down! The beast is dead!”
“Dead as a doorknob,” the short man agreed, joining her under the tree and nudging the fallen beast with the toe of his boot.
“How can we ever thank you, sir?” cried Sonia. And to Rye’s enormous surprise, she dropped a graceful curtsy, which looked very odd indeed in comparison with the mud-smeared rags she wore.
“Ah, say nothing of it!” the little man said, pulling off his green knitted cap and bowing magnificently. “Magnus FitzFee at your service. Always glad to help a stranger in a fix. And I hate bloodhogs anyhow.”
Casually placing his foot on the dead beast’s shaggy side to brace himself, he began heaving at the spike jutting from the body.
“We come along, and there’s the boy running like a streak of lightning with the bloodhog after him, see,” he grunted, pulling at the spike with all his might. “And I say to Popsy, ‘Bless my heart,’ I say, ‘look at that! Did you ever see a fellow run that fast, even with a bloodhog after him?’ And Popsy, she says she never has.”
With a final, determined heave, he pulled the spike free. Its wicked barb and the lower half of its shaft were thick with dark blood. He crouched to wipe it on the grass.
“So then I say, ‘Well, he’s got to the tree, but that won’t do him much good if we don’t give him a hand, will it? Bloodhogs never give up, Popsy, as you know,’ I say. ‘That mean old specimen will have that tree down in the end. And then that champion young fleet-of-foot will be minced meat in two minutes flat.’”
Sonia smiled and nodded. High in his tree, Rye shuddered.
Having cleaned the spike to his satisfaction, Magnus FitzFee stood up.
“And Popsy says I’m dead right,” he went on, stowing the spike in a leather pouch he carried on his back. “So I stop the cart, and get my old crossbow out from under the seat, and do the business. Nothing to it!”
He glanced up at Rye, clearly wondering why he was still in the tree.
“You all right up there?” he called politely.
“Yes, Rye, come down!” Sonia laughed.
It is all very well for her, Rye thought resentfully. He wanted very much to climb down. He had been trying to make himself begin for many long minutes. The trouble was, his limbs seemed to have frozen. Every time he looked down, his head swam. Never in his life had he been so high above the ground without a safety harness.
I got up here without a harness, he told himself. So I can get down.
He managed it at last, though his legs felt like water and his arms almost as bad. Magnus FitzFee watched the beginning of the ungainly descent, then discreetly turned his back to wave to his daughter on the cart.
“So you’re more of a runner than a climber, friend,” he said when he heard Rye sighing with relief as he finally reached the ground. “I’m the other way around, myself. Not built for running, but I can climb like a clink.”
“What is a clink?” Sonia asked without thinking.
FitzFee spun around. He gaped at Rye, then turned his startled gaze on Sonia. His eyes were blue as chips of sky in his brown face.
“And where would you two be from, that you don’t know what a clink is?” he demanded. “Why, there’d not be a house around here that doesn’t have a clink or two in the roof!”
There was a heavy silence. Rye saw Sonia’s face flush as red as her cap, and could feel the heat rising in his own cheeks and neck.
“We — we are not from around here,” he said awkwardly.
“No,” murmured Magnus FitzFee, looking keenly from one to the other. “No, I see you aren’t. I can’t think why I didn’t realize it before. That run …” He grimaced. “The bloodhog distracted me, I daresay. Well, well.”
“Dadda!” called the girl in the cart. “Dadda, come on!”
“One minute, Popsy!” FitzFee shouted over his shoulder. “Don’t you move, now!”
Rye glared at Sonia. She shrugged uncomfortably. They both made their faces expressionless as FitzFee turned back to them.
“Where are the rest of you?” he asked abruptly. “What are you doing here on your own?”
“We — got lost,” Sonia said.
“Lost?” FitzFee frowned and rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. “Lost …”
Again he looked over his shoulder, but this time, he seemed to be gazing past the road, to the tall trees of the Fell Zone. Quickly, almost furtively, he crossed his stubby fingers, and then his wrists.
Rye’s stomach lurched. FitzFee had guessed where they had come from! Did that mean he had stumbled across other Weld volunteers who had managed to escape the Fell Zone? It was quite possible, if he lived around here.
Sonia was frowning and gnawing her lip, her eyes fixed on the crossbow slung over the little man’s shoulder. Rye knew she was bitterly regretting the slip that had raised FitzFee’s suspicions. She feared that now they were in terrible danger.
Rye feared it, too. FitzFee had saved their lives, certainly. But that was before he began to suspect who they were. However friendly he seemed, he was still a barbarian — and the barbarians, one and all, were the savage enemies of Weld.
Somehow they had to convince FitzFee that his suspicions were wrong. They had to turn his thoughts away from the Fell Zone and the walled city hidden in its center.
I will say we are from another island, Rye thought feverishly. I will say our boat was wrecked on the shore of Dorne and that we have been wandering….
“Master FitzFee, we came here —” he began.
“Don’t say any more, friend,” FitzFee said gruffly, without turning his head. “I don’t want to know another thing about you, and what I do know I’m going to forget from now. These are dangerous times, and I’ve got my family to consider.”
He looked back at Rye and Sonia again. His face was very serious, but his eyes had softened with what looked curiously like respectful pity. He thrust his cap at Rye.
“Put this on,” he ordered. “You can keep it — I’ve got plenty more. And let’s say no more about this business. As far as I’m concerned, you’re just a couple of ordinary, lost young travelers, see? How would a humble goat farmer know any different? You understand me?”
Speechless, they nodded.
“Very good!” FitzFee waited till Rye had put on the knitted cap and pulled it right down over his ears. Then he straightened his shoulders, thrust his hands into his pockets, and gazed up at the dazzling sky.
“Lovely morning, isn’t it?” he remarked, in quite a different tone. “So! What will you do now, young travelers? Can a humble goat farmer do anything more to help you?”
Rye took a chance. “You can help us to find our way home,” he said carefully. “Home … to Oltan.”
Bless my heart!” FitzFee gasped, quickly crossing his fingers and wrists again. “Oltan? Just before Midsummer Eve? Have you lost your senses? You, of all people, shouldn’t be —”
He suddenly broke off and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as if to rub out the words he had been about to say. No doubt, Rye thought, he had remembered that he was supposed to be a simple goat farmer helping two lost strangers he knew nothing about.
“Surely you will not refuse to show us our way home?” Sonia urged, keeping up the story they all knew to be a lie.
FitzFee looked left and right, plainly not knowing what to do. Then, abruptly, he gave in.