“How are we defining ‘reality’ in this context, Rod?”
“We don’t; it defines us. But you mean she was just letting me have my own way, don’t you?”
“Not simply that,” Fess mused. “Not in regard to anything of real importance.”
“Meaning she usually talks me into doing things her way.” Rod sat up straighter, frowning. “Wait a minute! You don’t mean that’s what she’s done this time, too, do you?”
“No. I merely thought that you achieved her cooperation with remarkable ease.”
“When you start using so many polysyllables, I know you’re trying to tell me something unpleasant. You mean it was too easy?”
“I did have something of the sort in mind, yes.”
“Well, don’t worry about it.” Rod propped his elbows on his knees. “It was short, but it wasn’t really easy. Not when you consider all the preliminary skirmishes.”
“Perhaps… Still, it does not seem her way…”
“No… If she thinks I’m going to lose my temper, she stands firm anyway—unless she sees good reason to change her mind. And I think having given me a promise is a pretty good reason. But at the bottom of it all, Fess, I don’t think I’m the one who convinced her.”
“You mean the Duchess?”
Rod nodded. “Mother-to-mother communication always carries greater credibility, for a wife and mother.”
“Come, Rod! Certainly you don’t believe yourself incapable of convincing your wife of your viewpoint!”
“Meaning I think she won’t listen to me?” Rod nodded. “She won’t. Unless, of course, I happen to be right…”
It wasn’t hard to tell when they reached the border; there was a patrol there to remind him of it.
“Hold!” the sergeant snapped, as two privates brought their pikes down with a crash to bar the road.
Rod pulled in on the reins, doing his best to think like a crotchety old farmer—indignant and resentful. “Aye, aye, calm thysen! I’ve held, I’ve held!”
“Well for thee that thou hast,” the sergeant growled. He nodded to the two rankers. “Search.” They nodded, and went to the back of the cart, to begin probing through the cabbages and bran sacks.
“ ‘Ere! ‘Ere! What dost thou?” Rod cried, appalled. “Leave my cabbages be!”
“Tis orders, gaffer.” The sergeant stepped up beside him, arms akimbo. “Our master, Duke Alfar, demands that we search any man who doth seek to come within the borders of Romanov.”
Rod stared, appalled—and the emotion was real. So Alfar had promoted himself! “Duke Alfar? What nonsense is this? ‘Tis Ivan who is Duke here!”
“Treason!” another private hissed, his pike leaping out level. Rod’s fighting instincts impelled him to jump for the young man’s throat—but he belayed them sternly, and did what a poor peasant would do: shrank back a little, but manfully held his ground. He stared into the boy’s eyes, and saw a look that was intense, but abstracted—as though the kid wasn’t quite all here, but wherever he was, he cared about it an awful lot.
Hypnoed into fanaticism.
The sergeant was grinning, and he had the same sort of shallow look behind the eyeballs. “Where hast thou been, gaffer? Buried in thy fields, with thine head stuck in a clod? Ivan is beaten and gaoled, and Alfar is now Duke of Romanov!”
“Nay, it cannot be!” But Rod eyed the soldiers’ uniforms warily.
The sergeant saw the glance, and chuckled in his throat. “Aye. ‘Tis Alfar’s livery.” He scowled past Rod. “Hast thou not done yet? ‘Tis a cart, not a caravan!”
Rod turned to look, and stared in horror.
“Aye, we’ve done.” The troopers straightened up. “Naught here, Auncient.”
“Nay, not so,” Rod snapped. “I’ve still a few turnips left. Hadst thou not purses large enow for all on ‘t?”
“None o’ yer lip,” the sergeant growled. “If thou hast lost a few cabbages, what matter? Thou hast yet much to sell at the market in Korasteshev.”
“Why dost thou come North?” demanded one of the men-at-arms—the one with the quick pike.
Rod turned to him, suddenly aware of danger. He gazed at the trooper, his eyes glazing, as the world he saw became a little less than real, and his mind opened to receive impressions. What was really going on behind the soldier’s face?
He felt a pressure, almost as though someone were pressing a finger against his brain. Mentally, he stilled, becoming totally passive. He sensed the differences in the minds around him; it was like smelling, as though each mind gave off its own aroma.
But four of them were all thinking the same thought: Stop those who flee, to make Alfar stronger and greater. However, someone coming into the Duchy was very boring. He was no threat—just more potential, just one more mind that would help magnify Alfar’s glory.
But the fifth mind was alive and alert, and teeming with suspicion. A dozen questions jammed up at its outlet, demanding to be asked. Underneath them lay the suspicion that the stranger might be a spy or, worse, an assassin. And at the bottom of the mind writhed a turmoil of unvoiced thoughts, all rising from a brew of emotions: ambition, suspicion, shame, anger, hatred. Rod carefully suppressed a shudder, and bent all his efforts toward thinking like a peasant farmer. He was a rough, unlettered country man, who labored twelve hours a day on his lord’s fields, and four hours a day on his own—the four to raise a cash crop that could all be fitted into one small cart. Of course, he tried hard to get the most money he could, for all that work—the small, additional amount that would make the difference between poverty, and an adequate living for himself and his family during the winter. What did these arrogant bastards mean by trying to keep him from Duke Romanov’s fat market in Korasteshev! And where did they get the idea to act so high and mighty? Just because they were wearing leather armor and carrying pikes! Especially when anyone could see that, under the green and brown uniforms, they were dirt peasants, like himself—probably less. Probably mere serfs, and the sons of serfs.
The soldier shifted impatiently. “Tell, peasant! Why dost thou seek to come into—”
“Why,‘t’ sell m’ bran ‘n’ cabbages ‘n’ turnips,” Rod answered. “Dosta think I’d wast m’ horse for a day’s pleasure?”
The sentry ignored the question. “You’re Earl Tudor’s man,” he growled. “Why not sell in Caernarvon? Why come North all the way to Korasteshev?”
“ ‘Tis not ‘all the way,’ ” Rod snorted. “I live scarce three leagues yon.” He nodded toward the road behind him. “Korasteshev is closer for me.” He glared at the trooper—but he let his mind dwell hungrily on the thought of the prices he could get in Korasteshev. Everyone knew Duke Romanov’s barons were fighting among themselves—and the more fool the Duke, for letting them! And every peasant knew that, when armies fought, crops got trampled. Nay, surely the folk in Korasteshev would be paying far more for cabbages than those in Earl Tudor’s peaceful Caernarvon!
The soldier’s face relaxed. So, the cranky old codger’s greedy! Well and good—greed, we know how to deal with…
Rod just barely managed to restrain a surge of indignation. Old?!? Codger, okay—but, old? He diverted the impulse into suspicious fuming: Who was this bare-cheeked brat, to be asking him questions? Why, he was scarcely done suckling his mother’s milk!
He was gratified to see the young man redden a little—but the boy’s suspicion wasn’t quite finished yet. He ran a trained eye over Fess. “How comes a poor dirt farmer to have so fine a horse?”
Panic! Anxiety! The one thing that men might really blame him for. Rod had been caught. And hard on the heels of that emotion, came a surge of shame. He glanced at Fess. Eh, my wife was beautiful, ten years agone! Small wonder that Sir Ewing took notice of her…