But tonight it was Zervan himself who could not sleep. Matt was in the palace with Loren. Brock, tactfully, had excused himself to go off to the Black Boar. He often did something like that, to leave mage and source alone. Zervan, alone in the house, was awake because, twice now, he had heard a sound from outside his window.
The third time Zervan swung out of bed, dressed himself, and went to take a look. Passing through the front room, he threw a few more pieces of wood on each of the fires and then took a stout stick to carry with him. Opening the door, he went out into the street.
It was bitterly cold. His breath frosted, and even through gloves he could feel his fingertips chilling. Only the wind greeted him, and the unnatural snow. He walked around the side of the house toward the back where the bedrooms were and from where he thought he’d heard a sound.
A cat, he thought, crunching through the snow between the house and the one next door. I probably heard a cat. There were no footprints in the snow ahead of him. Somewhat reassured, he rounded the corner at the back of the house.
He had time to see what it was, to feel his mind grapple with the impossibility, and to know why there were no footsteps in the snow.
He had no time to shout or scream or give any kind of warning at all.
A long finger reached out. It touched him and he died.
After the numbing wind and icy, treacherous streets, the heat of the Black Boar struck Kevin like an inferno. The tavern was packed with shouting, perspiring people. There were at least four huge fires blazing and a myriad of torches set high in the walls.
It was almost exactly as he remembered it: the dense, enveloping smoke, the smell of meat broiling over the cooking fires, and the steady, punishing level of noise. As the three of them pushed their way through the door, Kevin realized that the Boar seemed even more crowded than it was because most of the patrons were squeezed together in a wide circle around a cleared area in the middle of the tavern. The tables had been lifted from their trestles and overturned and benches had been stacked away to open a space.
With Dave serving as a massive battering ram, Kevin and Paul pushed through behind him toward the front of the crowd near the door. When they got there, amid jostling elbows and spilling beer, Kevin saw that there was a burly redheaded man in a ring formed by the crowd. The man was carrying a smaller figure seated on his shoulders.
Facing them, roaring belligerent defiance that somehow could be heard over the din, was that vast human mountain Tegid of Rhoden, and on his shoulders, laughing, was Diarmuid, Prince of Brennin.
Beginning to laugh himself, Kevin could see wagers flying all through the crowd as the two pairs warily circled each other. Even in wartime! he thought, looking at the Prince. People were standing on tables for a better view; others had gone upstairs to look down on the battle. Kevin spotted Garde and Erron, each with a fistful of wagers, standing on the bar. Beside them, after a second, he recognized Brock, the Dwarf who had brought them word of treachery in Eridu. He was older than Matt, with a lighter-colored beard, and he was laughing aloud, which Matt Sören very seldom did. All eyes were on the combatants; not a soul had yet recognized the three of them.
“Yield, North Keep intruders!” Tegid roared. Abruptly, Kevin realized something.
“They’re Aileron’s men!” he shouted to Dave and Paul as Tegid launched himself in a stumbling, lurching run toward the other two.
The big man opposing him sidestepped neatly and Diarmuid, whooping with laughter, barely managed to dodge the grasp of the other rider, who was trying to pull him to the ground. Tegid terminated his run by crashing into a table on the far side of the ring, wreaking ruin among the spectators and almost unseating his rider.
Slowly he turned, breathing stertorously. Diarmuid lowered his head and spoke a series of instructions into the ear of his unstable mount. This time they advanced more cautiously, Tegid waddling wide-footed for balance on the rush-strewn floor.
“You drunken whale!” the opposing rider taunted him.
Tegid stopped his careful advance and eyed him with red-faced ire. Then, sucking air into the bellows of his lungs, he screamed, “Beer!” at a deafening volume. Immediately a girl dashed forward with two foaming pints and Diarmuid and Tegid each drained one in a long pull.
“Twelve!” Garde and Erron shouted together from the bar top. The match had obviously been going on for some time. Diarmuid tossed his tankard back to the serving girl while Tegid hurled his over his shoulder; a patron ducked quickly and tipped over the table on which he and four other men were standing. Had been standing.
It was too much for Kevin Laine.
A moment later the North Keep duo were quite inexcusably thrown to the ground by an attack from behind. It hadn’t been subtle; they’d been simply run over. As the howls and screams rose to unprecedented levels, Kevin, mounted firmly on Dave’s broad shoulders, turned to the pair from the Boar.
“Have at you!” he cried.
But Tegid had other ideas. With a howl of joy, he rushed, open-armed, toward Dave, grabbed him in a titanic bear hug, and, quite unable to do anything so complex as stop, toppled the four of them to the floor in a tangled, sodden heap.
Once down, he commenced buffeting both of them with fierce blows intended to signify affection and pleasure, Kevin doubted not, but formidable enough to make the room spin for him. He was laughing breathlessly and trying to ward off Tegid’s exuberance when he heard Diarmuid whisper in his ear.
“Neatly done, friend Kevin.” The Prince was not even slightly impaired. “I would have hated to lose. But down here on the floor we have a problem.”
“What?” The tone had affected Kevin.
“I was keeping an eye on someone by the door for the last hour, perched up on Tegid. A stranger, I’m afraid. It wasn’t concerning me much because I rather hoped he’d report we were ill prepared for war.”
“What kind of stranger?”
“I was hoping to find out later. But if you’re here, it changes things. I don’t want him reporting that Kim and Paul are back.”
“Kim isn’t. Paul’s here.”
“Where?” said the Prince sharply.
“By the door.”
There were a lot of people surrounding them by then: Garde and Erron, Coll, quite a few women. By the time they fought through to the doorway it was too late to do anything.
Paul watched the fight with a certain bemusement. It seemed that nothing, really, could induce in Diarmuid a sense of responsibility. And yet the Prince was more than a wastrel; he had proved it too many times in the short while they’d been here in the spring for the issue to still be in doubt.
In the spring. Spring a year ago, actually, if midsummer was approaching; it was on that, and on the meaning of this savage, inflicted winter, that Paul was reflecting. In particular, on something he had noticed on the icy walk from palace to tavern.
So he was preoccupied with implications and abstractions even amid the pandemonium. With only half an eye he saw Kevin mount up on Dave’s shoulders and the two of them charge forward to down the North Keep pair from behind.
The roar that followed got his attention and he grinned, taking in the scene. Funny, manic Kevin Laine, in his own way quite as irrepressible as Diarmuid was, and as full of life.
His grin became a laugh as he saw Tegid rumble forward to gather Dave in a vast embrace, and then he winced as all four of them came crashing down.