"The village women hate us, the trollops," the other said. "They give us nothing we don't take at poniard-point."
"Indeed? Such strapping stalwarts as yourselves?" The bard stroked his long chin and looked thoughtful. "It could be that I might be induced to bide the night here, if nicely asked."
The guard on the right turned and bellowed for an errand boy to go and fetch the chamberlain. While they waited, Fyadros entertained the guards with improbable tales of a halfling who attempted intimacies with a firbolg maid.
At length the great oaken gates groaned open behind them. A slight middle-aged man in a black robe stood there. He had receding dark hair, white-touched at the temples, and a wisp of mustache. A dirty, skinny boy peeked past a gate valve behind him.
"I am Whimberton," the man said in a thin voice, "chamberlain to Castle Lutwill and the ever-glorious, to say nothing of-victorious, Baron Lutwill. Who might you be?"
"He's a bard," the guard on the right said.
"He has a Wonder Horse," added the one on the left.
"I am of course Fyadros, the Incomparably Wonderful Bard, and being of generous disposition only mildly miffed at not being recognized at once, seeing what a backwater this is."
"Of course I recognize you, good Fyadros," the chamberlain said smoothly. "It was only that poor light mo-mentarily dulled my sight. What might I do for you?"
"Your guards hinted you might care to beseech me to pass the night within and brighten your dull and meaningless lives with my stories and songs, which are, it goes without saying, incomparably wonderful."
"Without saying," agreed Whimberton with a nod.
"He told us this great story," said the guard on the left. "See, this halfling fancied a firbolg wench, so he took a bucket-"
The guard on the right poked him in the ribs with the butt of his spear. "Enough! His Excellency the chamberlain don't want to hear that story! Least, not from the likes of you. You always get the punch lines wrong."
"Do not!"
"Do so."
"Be silent," Whimberton said conversationally, "or I'll have your backs scourged raw, roll you in rock salt, and heave you into the pigsty for the night."
"I could, of course, abide in night's jeweled pavilion, shaming the crickets with my songs," Fyadros said. The mare raised her head and whinnied as if in agreement.
"Be not hasty, fair Fyadros," said Whimberton hastily. For all his languid manner he liked a ribald ditty as well as the next man, and entertainment lay pretty thin on the ground, out here in the sticks of strife-torn Tethyr. "In the name of my lord and master, the ever-glorious and -victorious Baron Lutwill, I bid and beseech thee to enter these precincts, and stay and amuse us so long as your heart desires."
The bard looked thoughtful, then nodded. "I suppose I shall. Though 'amuse' is a paltry word for what I shall do to you."
"You're half-elf, aren't you?" the chamberlain asked, studying him through twilight. "We don't see many of them with such impressive mustachios."
"I have many attributes," Fyadros declared airily, "and every one is unique and wonderful. Shall we proceed within?"
"To a certainty. Follow the lout; he'll lead you to the stables."
"Ooh, I'm going to get you for this," Goldie promised sotto voce as they passed through the torchlit gate in the ragged boy's wake. "Zizzy, the Wonder Horse?"
"A spur-of-the-moment improvisation," Farlorn the Handsome replied in a murmur audible only to the mare's great rearward-swiveled ears. He gave a quick surreptitious scratch of his thumb tip to his upper lip, where the glue that held his false mustachios in place made him itch. "Now hush, lest you spoil our little game."
In her fragrant covert atop the little rise, Zaranda felt a pang as she watched the gates shut. Whom for? she wondered. Farlorn or Goldie?
"They're in," she said, sliding down the back slope on her rump.
Stillhawk rose from where he squatted, watching star reflections at play in the creek. He gave Zaranda a look, which she steadily returned. Then he jumped onto his horse and vanished into the dark.
I know you don't like it, my friend, Zaranda thought. But you're likeliest to get through to summon the others. They mustn't go astray, with Farlorn and Goldie inside the beast's belly.
She glanced back to the top of the rise, where Byador lay alone keeping watch on the castle. She fought the impulse to climb up and rejoin him. He would not gain self-confidence until he bore responsibility alone.
So she was left with her thoughts, and Shield and Chen, who would not be parted from her. She was glad for the great orc's presence. His eyes saw farther at night than any human's, and if trouble found them she could ask for no better blade, or pair of blades, at her back.
Willy-nilly, she had come to trust him as she trusted Stillhawk, though the ranger still hated the orog.
Not that trouble was likely. That very morning Zaranda and her tiny band had watched the heavy wooden gates swing open and half Baron Lutwill's complement of soldiers march forth to begin collecting the increased taxes the posted parchments had announced. With forces much reduced the soi-disant baron had also perforce decreased his patrols, which were in any event predictable, throughout the countryside. And the people of Masamont tended to keep behind heavily barred doors by night, for fear of chance meetings with the baron's men, which seldom went to the towsfolks' advantage.
Still, there remained the small and gnawing chance that they had been seen and betrayed, or espied by magic, or that a tax-collecting band, returning for some reason unforeseen, might stumble across their covert. Just such random events had altered the outcome of half a hundred conflicts, from duels to the meeting of great armies. That was why Zaranda put so little faith in plans drawn elaborately up before the fact.
She sighed and sat down. Chen looked up at her and smiled, her pale, freckled face seeming lightly self-luminous in the last lingering light of day.
"Will you let me go with you?" the girl asked.
"No. We've talked this out before. You've not yet learned enough." Though the girl had been trying, painfully hard. It was as irksome to her quicksilver nature to toil laboriously to learn as it was natural for Shield. Yet she had done so with no less dedication than the orog.
"But how will I ever become a mage if I never put what I know into practice?" Chen wailed.
"That's a fair question. You cannot. And still-the time isn't now."
Chen expelled a huffing breath and turned away. Zaranda laid a hand upon her shoulder. "Now, come. Let's review what you've learned of the incantation that sends your foes to sleep. It's not infallible, and won't work at all against foes who are very powerful or mighty in magic. Yet, day in and out, it's one of the likeliest to save your life…"
Half an hour after midnight-by which time Zaranda's nerves were drawn as taut as fiddle strings and scraped as by a bow, for fear the signal would arrive before her forces-the horses in the wood lot raised their heads and pricked their ears. They uttered no giveaway whinnies of greeting; their muzzles were wrapped in soft cloth, another trick Zaranda had learned from the Tuigan horse-barbarians.
Shield said nothing, but stood up with scimitars star-gleaming suddenly in his hands. Zaranda lifted up Crackletongue in its scabbard, which she had unbelted, and stood up more slowly.
The assault group picked its way carefully if not noiselessly through the brush. They were Protective Company volunteers and Balmeric's mercenaries, numbering fifty in all-half Zaranda's cadre-in-training among them. All had volunteered, but she didn't want to risk losing many of her best pupils; even victory could cost dearly. They had drawn lots for the honor of accompanying her.