Rod shuddered. “I pity the footpad Puck catches! So come on, dear—there’s nothing to worry about. Here, anyway. Time for the road.” He grasped her waist, and helped her leap to Fess’s saddle.
“May we not fly, Papa?” Cordelia pouted. Her hands were clasped behind her back, and a broomstick stuck out from behind her shoulder.
Rod smiled, and glanced at Gwen. She nodded, almost imperceptibly. He turned back to Cordelia. “As long as you stay near your mother and me—yes.”
Cordelia gave a shout of joy and leaped onto her broom. Her brothers echoed her, drifting up into the air.
“Move out, Old Iron,” Rod murmured, and the great black robot-horse ambled out toward the road. Rod fell into step beside him, and turned back to wave to Brom.
“A holiday!” Geoffrey cried, swooping in front of him. “ ‘Tis ages since we had one!”
“Yeah—about a year.” But Rod grinned; he seemed to feel a weight lifting off his shoulders. He caught Gwen’s hand and looked up at her. “Confess it, dear—don’t you feel a little more free?”
She smiled down at him, brightening. “I do, my lord—though I’ve brought my lock and bars along.”
“And I, my ball and chain.” Rod grinned. “Keep an eye on the links, will you?… Magnus! When I said, ‘Stay near,’ that meant altitude, too! Come down here right now!”
The tinkers strolled into the village, gay and carefree, smudged and dirty. Their clothes were patched, and the pots and pans hanging from their horse’s pack made a horrible clattering.
“This is rather demeaning, Rod,” Fess murmured. “Additionally, as I have noted, no real tinker family could afford a horse.”
“Especially not one fit for a knight. I know,” Rod answered. “I’ll just tell them the last stop was a castle, and the lord of the demesne paid us in kind.”
“Rod, I think you lack an accurate concept of the financial worth of a war-horse in medieval culture.”
“Hey—they had a lot of pots.” Rod grinned down at his own primitive publicity agents. “Okay, kids, that’s enough. I think they know we’re here.”
The four little Gallowglasses slowed their madcap dancing, and gave their pots and pans one last clanging whack with their wooden spoons. “You spoil all the fun, Papa,” Cordelia pouted as she handed him the cookware.
“No, just most of it. Magnus? Geoff? Turn in your weapons, boys. Gregory, you, too—ah, a customer!”
“Canst mend this firkin, fellow?” The housewife was plump, rosy-cheeked, and anxious.
Rod took the little pot and whistled at the sight of the long, jagged crack in the cast iron. “How’d you manage that kind of break?”
“My youngest dropped it,” the goodwife said impatiently. “Canst mend it?”
“Yeah,” Rod said slowly, “but it’ll cost you a ha’penny.”
The woman’s face blossomed in a smile. “I have one, and ‘twill be well worth it. Bless thee, fellow!”
Which sounded a little odd, since “fellow” was a term of semicontempt; but Rod blithely took out a hammer and some charcoal, laid a small fire, and got busy faking. Magnus and Gregory crouched on either side of him, ostensibly watching.
“This is the manner of the crafting of it, Gregory,” big brother Magnus said softly. “Let thy mind bear watch on mine. The metal’s made of grains so small thou canst not see them…”
“Molecules,” Rod supplied.
“Aye. And now I’ll make those molecules move so fast they’ll meld one to another. Yet I must spring them into motion so quickly that their heat will not have time to spread through the rest of the metal to Papa’s hands, the whiles he doth press the broken edges together—for we’d not wish to burn him.”
“Definitely not,” Rod muttered.
Gregory watched intently.
So did Rod. He still couldn’t quite believe it, as he saw the metal spring into cherry-redness all along the crack, brighten quickly through orange and yellow to near whiteness. Metal flowed.
“Now quickly, cool it!” Magnus hissed, drops of sweat standing out on his brow, “Ere the heat can run to Papa’s hands!”
The glow faded faster than it had come, for Gregory frowned at it, too; this part was simple enough for a three-year-old.
Simple! When only witches were supposed to be telekinetic, not warlocks—and even the best of them could only move objects, not molecules.
But there the pot stood, round and whole! Rod sighed, and started tapping it lightly with the hammer, far from where the crack had been—just for appearances. “Thanks, Magnus. You’re a great help.”
“Willingly, Papa.” The eldest wiped his brow.
“Papa,” Gregory piped up, “Thou dost know that elves do ‘company us…”
“Yeah.” Rod grinned. “Nice to know you’re not alone.”
“Truth. Yet I’ve thought to have them ask for word from their fellows in the North…”
“Oh?” Rod tried not to show it, but he was impressed. Three years old, and he’d thought of something Tuan and Rod had both overlooked. “What did they say?”
“The goodwives no longer call warnings to the Wee Folk ere they empty garbage out upon the ground,” Gregory’s eyes were large in his little face. “They no longer leave their bowls of milk for the elves, by their doors. Each house now hath cold iron nailed up over its door, whether it be an horseshoe or some other form, and hearths go unswept at eventide.”
Rod felt a chill and glanced at a nearby tree, but its leaves were still. “Well, I guess no housewife there is going to find sixpence in her shoe. What are the elves doing about it?”
“Naught. There is some spell lies o’er the plowed land there, that pushes against all elfin magic. They have turned away in anger, and flitted to the forests.”
Rod struck the pot a few more times, in silence.
“Is this coil in the North so light as thou hast told us, Papa?” Gregory finally asked.
Rod reflected that, for a three-year-old, the kid had one hell of a good vocabulary. He put down his hammer and faced the child squarely. “There’s no real evidence, yet, that it’s anything major.”
“But the signs…” Magnus murmured.
“Are not evidence,” Rod answered. “Not firm evidence—but I’m braced. That’s why we’re travelling in disguise—so we can pick up any rumors, without letting people know we’re the High Warlock and Company.”
“Thou dost not wish our presence known, for fear the evil folk will hide till we’ve gone by?” Magnus asked.
“No, because I don’t want to walk into an ambush. Not that I expect to, mind—I just don’t want to take any chances.” He gave the pot a last tap and held it up to admire. “You boys did a good job.”
“We shall ever do our best, for thee,” Magnus responded. “Papa… if thou dost gain this firm evidence that thou speakest of… What then?”
Rod shrugged. “Depends. If it’s nothing major, we’ll fix whatever’s wrong, and go on to the northern seacoast for a couple of weeks of swimming and fishing. You’ve never tried swimming in the ocean, boys. Let me tell you, it’s very different from the little lake near our house.”
“I shall hope to discover it,” Gregory piped. “Papa… what if the evidence is of great wrongness?”
“Then you three boys will turn right around, and take your mother and your sister right home,” Rod said promptly.
“And thou…?”
“I’m the High Warlock, aren’t I?” Rod grinned at them. “They gave me the title. I’ve got to live up to it.”
Gregory and Magnus looked at each other, and locked gazes.
“I prithee, my lord, calm your heart,” Gwen eyed him anxiously as she laid the campfire. “ ‘Twas not the forester’s fault that we may not hunt.”
“Yeah—but the way he dragged Magnus in, as though he were some kind of criminal!” Rod folded a hand around his trembling fist. “He should only know how close he came to disaster! Good thing Magnus remembered his disguise.”
“ ‘Twas not the child’s self-rule that troubled me.” Gwen shuddered. “My lord, if thou couldst have but seen thine own face…”
“I know, I know,” Rod snapped, turning away. “So it’s not surprising he reached toward his knife. But so help me, if he had touched it…”