"You'd better make yourself inconspicuous," she said, and Will nodded, urging Tug into the shadows under the trees. The dog followed, lying prone in the long grass.
From his position, Will could see the bend in the road a couple of hundred meters away. Now he saw the first rider in Alyss's escort rounding the bend.
"They're here," he said softly, and Alyss ran quickly to a thick clump of bushes at the edge of the trees, unfastening her short cloak and pulling the tunic over her head as she did so. She was wearing only a brief shift underneath the tunic and Will turned away hurriedly as he caught a glimpse of bare shoulders and arms. He heard rapid rustling from the bushes, then Alyss called to him.
"You can open your eyes now." She sounded vaguely amused at his embarrassment.
She had donned a long white riding habit over her tights and riding boots. The cloak, tunic and knife belt were bundled together at her feet. Will glanced along the road. The four-man escort, grouped around the mannequin tied to Alyss's horse, was almost up to them. From the shelter of the bushes, Alyss signaled to them. She turned and waved at Will, a conspiratorial grin on her face.
"See you back at the castle," she said. Then, in what was obviously a carefully rehearsed piece of confusion, the escort was alongside her. The horses milled back and forth, confusing the scene, and one of the men released a slip knot, allowing the mannequin to slide sideways off the horse. Before it hit the ground, Alyss had swung up into the saddle. Another member of the escort bent quickly to retrieve the mannequin and within a matter of seconds the group was riding on, the mannequin already half folded and out of sight.
As they moved away, Will waited, unmoving, in the trees. They were still in sight when Tug's ears twitched and the dog let out a low rumble.
"Still," Will told them both. Sure enough, two men-at-arms were rounding the bend, looking cautiously along the trail to make sure they hadn't closed up too far on the party they were following. Will sat, unmoving, as they rode past. He gave them several minutes' grace, then he rode out, heading south to find Alyss's pigeon handler.
24
Will performed in the men-at-arms' barracks that evening. It was normal practice for a jongleur to spread himself around. After all, if he were to perform in the main hall every night, the audience there would soon grow bored with his repertoire. And the soldiers in a remote castle such as Macindaw could often prove to be more than generous. They had little to spend their money on in a small, remote shire like that one. As a result, he could expect to make his purse considerably heavier if they enjoyed his work.
Furthermore, while a visiting entertainer might expect a small cash bonus from the castle lord at the end of his tenure, his chief payment came in the form of shelter, food and accommodation. A performer looking for hard cash would usually find it among the soldiers, or at the local tavern, if there were one.
In addition to all these excellent reasons, Will had another motive for taking himself to the barracks room that night. He wanted to get the men talking, to hear the local gossip and rumors about the forbidding Grimsdell Wood and the black mere. And nothing loosened men's tongues like an evening of music and wine, he thought wryly.
By now, he had become an accepted part of Macindaw life and people would be more likely to open up to him. In addition, the men-at-arms would feel more secure than the country folk who went home each night from the Cracked Flagon to their isolated, unprotected homes and farms. The men here were well armed and relatively secure behind the solid walls of a castle. That, if nothing else, would help to make their tongues a little looser.
He was greeted cheerfully when he arrived-all the more so when he produced a large flagon of apple brandy to help the night along. His standard repertoire of country folk songs, jigs and reels was exactly what this audience wanted. And he added a few of the bawdier numbers he had been taught by Berrigan as welclass="underline" Old Scully's Daughter and a rather coarse parody of The Knights of Dark Renown titled The Knights Whose Pants Fell Down, among others. The evening was a success and the coins showered into his mandola case as the hours passed.
At length, he and half a dozen of the group were left lolling around the dying fire, brandy tankards in their hands. He had set the mandola aside. The singing was over for the night and the men were content with that. He had given them good value and now he once again experienced that strange phenomenon where, having performed for an audience for an hour or so, he was accepted into their midst as if they had known him all their lives.
The talk was the usual chatter of bored soldiers. It concerned the shortage of available females in the area, and the boredom of life a remote castle, hemmed in by the winter snows. It was a boredom tinged with fear, however. There was no telling when the Scotti tribes might launch an attack across the border and, of course, there was the troubling mystery surrounding the lord's illness. As the men talked more freely, Will probed subtly and discovered that they had little respect for his son, Orman.
"He's no warrior," one of them said in a disgusted tone. "I doubt he could hold a sword, let alone swing it."
There was a rumble of agreement from the others. "Keren's the one for us," said another. "He's a real man-not like Orman, a jumped-up bookworm with his nose forever stuck in a scroll."
"That's when he's not looking down it at such as us," a third put in, and again there was an angry growl of assent. "But as long as he's Syron's heir, we're stuck with him," the man added.
"What sort of man is Syron?" Will ventured to ask. Their eyes turned to him and they waited for the most senior among them, the sergeant major, to answer.
"A good man. A good laird and a brave fighter. A just leader, too. But he's to his bed now and little chance he'll recover, if you ask me."
"And we need him now more than ever, with Malkallam on the loose again," said one of the soldiers. Will looked at him and recognized the sentry he had spoken to when he had left the castle several nights previously.
"Malkallam?" he said. "He's this wizard you talk about, isn't he?"
There was a moment of silence and several of the men glanced over their shoulders into the shadows beyond the flickering light of the fire. Then the sentry answered him.
"Ay. He's laid a curse on our Laird Syron. He lurks in that forest of his, surrounded by his creatures…" He hesitated, not sure if he had said too much.
"I went by there the other night," Will admitted. "You made me curious with your warnings. I tell you, what I saw and heard there was enough to keep me out of Grimsdell Wood in the future."
"Thought you would," said the sentry. "You young 'uns always know better than those who seek to advise you. You're lucky you got away. Others haven't," he added darkly.
"But where did this Malkallam come from?" Will asked. This time another man joined the conversation-a grizzled soldier whose gray beard and hair bespoke his long service in the castle.
"He was among us for years," he said. "We all thought he was harmless-just a simple herbalist and healer. But he was biding his time, letting us become unwary. Then strange things began to happen. There was a child who died, when all knew that it was within Malkallam's power to heal him. Malkallam let him die, they say. And others say he used the spirit for his evil purposes. There were those who wanted to make him pay for his sins, but before we could do anything about it, he escaped into the forest."