Klout leapt on a mule and dashed away down the road. But at the village limit, he reined in, turned back, and faced me, weaving complicated symbols in the air while he chanted something inarticulate.
Frisson took the next verse from the stack and called out,
The mule disappeared, and Klout slammed down, hard, on his tailbone. His verse broke off into a yell of agony-and the numbers caught up with him. He leapt to his feet with a howl, then ran hobbling away, hand pressed over his tailbone. The numerals shot after him, buzzing like mosquitoes, catching up with him, and away he went, surrounded by a cloud of the figures of his own deception, bleating in pain until his shouts faded away.
All of a sudden, the village was awfully quiet.
Then yells of joy burst out all around us, and the peasants came charging out to hoist Frisson, me, and Gilbert up on their shoulders. They paraded us all around the square, singing our praises in terms that would have made Roland and Arthur blush.
"Did I do well, then?" Frisson called anxiously to me from his seat on the neighboring pair of shoulders.
"What do you think they're praising you for?" I shouted. "You did great! And thanks, Frisson-for saving my hide! What's left of it, anyway! " He took the hint and got busy crafting a verse that would get rid of my integer rash.
The peasants had just about gotten the celebrating out of their systems by the time Gruesome came waddling back, grinning, whereupon they put us down, backed away, and got down to the serious business of trying to find something for the troll to eat.
They fed us, too, as it turned out-with their usual peasant shrewdness, they had managed to salt away a few staples that not even Klout and his soldiers had found. As darkness fell, full and replete, Frisson and I rolled up in our blankets with Gruesome already a snoring hill and Gilbert standing watch.
They fed us again in the morning, and we were hard put to refuse any of it. We managed to set off without being totally foundered, but the only one who had really avoided overstuffing was Angelique, and I could have sworn that, if they'd been able to see her clearly, they would have found a way.
Our breakfast was beginning to settle, and we were beginning to pick up speed, when we came to the circle. The road met another at right angles, but instead of the two crossing at your average plussign-shaped intersection, they all ended in a ring-shaped track, for all the world like a traffic circle. I stopped, frowning.
"Awfully advanced traffic engineering, for a one-horsepower culture. How come they don't just let the two roads intersect?"
"Because," said Frisson, "that would make a cross, like to that on which our Savior was hanged."
I seemed to feel the air thicken at the mere mention of words that were forbidden here, but I did my best to ignore it.
"It was a crossroads once." Gilbert pointed. "The newer grass, growing where there once was beaten earth, is some small part browner than the old. Look closely, and you can still see the sacred sign.
The air seemed to thicken even more with foreboding. I looked closely, and sure enough, I could just barely make out where the old intersection had been. "Getting a little fanatical, aren't they"'
"I assure you, it would have inhibited the power of the queen and her henchmen," Angelique's voice murmured, though I could scarcely see her.
"Well, we do need to get across it, if we're going to keep going," I said. "Let's go, folks." I stepped out onto the circle, turning to my left.
Just then, a man wearing black velvet with a dull silver chain rode out of the woods and into the traffic circle. There were a dozen armed men behind him, so I could just barely hear him shout, "Halt!"
He shouldn't have bothered; I'd stopped already and was feeling in my pocket for the sheaf of Frisson's latest poems.
"Fool, turn!" the man in black barked. "Would you break the queen's law by going with the sun,"' I stared at him.
" 'With the sun'? What are you talking about?"
"He speaks of the direction in which you were walking, Master Saul," Frisson said in a low voice.
The head honcho barked, "Go widdershins! Against the sun! Thus is it commanded of all who come to a road-circle!" I stared at him for a long moment, then shrugged and turned around. "Okay, so I'll go from west to east-counterclockwise, if you insist. Big deal!"
"Hold!" he shouted again. "I like not your manner of speech."
"Well, you've got a pretty lousy accent yourself." I looked up, frowning.
He narrowed his eyes and moved his horse closer, glaring down at me. I stood my ground, beginning to feel mulish.
"Odd clothes, odd speech, insolent manner." He looked up at my companions. "And accompanied by a troll." Back down at me. "You are he who has been curing witches of their deadly ills, are you not?"
"Only two." I definitely did not like the way this was going, especially since his men were making a lot of noise rattling their sabers as they drew them. "What's the big deal?"
"Know that I am the reeve of this shire!" the man snapped. "Word has come to me that you bilked the queen of tax money yesterday, and raised your hand against a bailiff into the bargain!"
"Self-defense," I snapped, "and what's so bad about curing the sick? "
"Have you a permit for it?" he returned. I stared. "A permit saying I can cure people? What is this, the AMA? "
"The queen has ever banned the curing of a witch on her deathbed! None who had her license to cure would ever dream of doing so! Nay, and worse-you have encouraged them to repent, to break their bonds with Satan!"
"Breaking bondage is definitely what I had in mind." His sword whipped out. "You had no right, nor license! You shall cast a spell this instant, revoking those cures you have worked-or you shall die!"
Chapter Twelve
Gruesome rumbled, and the soldiers had to quiet their horses. They started looking nervous.
I waved my group to be still and said to the reeve, "Can I see your license for breathing?"
He stared. "What license?"
"For breathing," I said, impatiently. "if you have to have a license to get well, you must have to have a license to breathe! Hasn't the queen gotten around to informing you about it? Show me your license!"
"There is no such thing!" he snapped.
"Ah-ha, you don't have it!" I waved an admonishing finger at him.
"Everybody who lives in this country lives at the queen's pleasure, right?"
"Well ... aye"
"Any heart that's beating, is beating because the queen lets it beat, right? "
"Well ... aye, but "
"Then anybody who's breathing is only breathing because the queen lets them! Because the queen gives them license! So where's your license to breathe?"
"I... I have not any - - ."
"No license to breathe? And you trying to lay down the law! Where do you get off telling me to stop curing people just because I don't have a license' If you really think that makes sense, then you stop breathing-because you don't have a license!"
That shut him up, and I thought he was just staring at me, until his face got red. Then I realized, all of a sudden, that his chest wasn't moving.
"Master!" the soldiers cried, and started forward. Gilbert drew his sword with an entirely unnecessary clatter, and Gruesome growled loudly as he stepped up.
The reeve fell off his horse.
I leapt forward and caught him just as the soldiers shouted. They started forward again, but hesitated, seeing him in my hands.