"Tuan did no such thing," Anselm snapped. "He defended the queen against my own uprising, nothing more—and he was right to do so, for I had broken the law."
"Had you?" Sir Orgon said quickly. "Or did you only seek to defend your age-old rights and privileges that she sought to usurp? Appointing priests on the lords' estates, sending her own judges to try your cases—woeful breaches of ancient custom indeed! No wonder you led the lords to rise in protest."
"And here is the result of that treachery," Sir Anselm snapped, "this manor, and this quiet life, rather than the headsman's axe and a narrow grave. I shall never fight against the Crown again, Sir Orgon." But envy and hatred were clearly eating him alive.
ROD CAME OUT of the woods onto the crest of a hill and pulled up, gazing down into the valley. Far below lay a tidy village, embraced by the hills whose sides were terraced into fields for farming. Those fields were green; maize already grew tall there, and at mid-morning Rod would have expected to see at least a few people out hoeing—but there was no one there, and no one moving in the village streets, either.
"Something's wrong here, Fess."
"Are there people inside the huts, Rod?"
Fess might be able to transmit on human thought-wave frequency, but he couldn't read minds unless thoughts were directed at him. Rod probed the village and found nothing. "Not a soul—and come to think of it, I don't see any smoke from the chimneys, either."
"If the hearths are cold, they have been gone for some time," Fess said.
Fire wasn't all that easy to kindle in a medieval society; peasants banked live coals to last the night and puffed them alive in the morning. Rod nodded. "Something scared them away—and not just a few hours ago, either."
"You are going to insist on riding down there to investigate, aren't you, Rod?"
"Sure am." Rod grinned, beginning to feel like his old self again—well, maybe his young self. "If there's somebody in a coma down there, we might be able to help—and if whatever scared them away is guarding the place, we should be able to draw it out of hiding."
'To fall on us with fang and claw, no doubt." Fess emitted the burst of static that served him as a sigh. "If you say we must, Rod."
"We must." Rod knew Fess was far more concerned for his rider than for himself—not that there was much that could dent the alloy body under his horsehair hide, anyway. But there were things from which he might not be able to protect Rod.
Rod intended to make sure he didn't have to. He readied his crossbow with the laser hidden in the stock. "Let's see what moves, shall we?"
Reluctantly, Fess began the plod down into the valley.
They rode slowly through the town's single street, seeing only leaves and sticks blowing in the occasional puff of wind and hearing only the banging of shutters that had come loose. "No sign of what drove them away," Rod said.
"Perhaps inside one of the houses?"
"Maybe, but I don't see any open doors, and even now I'm reluctant to break into somebody's house."
"Scruples well-advised, Rod—but there are loose shutters. You would be able to look in, at least."
"Still seems wrong," Rod grumbled, but he dismounted and walked up the beaten earth to the doorway of a peasant hut. There was no lawn, but the tenant had planted a few flowers, and Rod was careful to place his feet between the stems as he stepped up to the window. Looking in, he saw a single room with a rough table and benches near him, and in the outer wall, the fireplace that served as both heat source and stove.
"What do you see, Rod?"
"Only a tidy, well-kept room, Fess. Dusty now, though. I really should secure these shutters." He closed them, making sure the latch fell back into place as he did.
"There is another open window toward the back of the hut, Rod."
"Oh, so now I get to peek into the parents' bedroom, do I?" Nonetheless, Rod picked his way carefully around to the side of the house. There the going was easier, for the tenant hadn't planted flowers. Rod went back to the single flapping shutter, caught it as it swung toward his head, pushed it wider open, and stepped in front of it to look in.
The hag grinned at him, showing only two yellowed fangs left between leathery lips. Her hair was long, tangled, coarse, and would have been white if it had been clean. The same could be said for her dress. Her face was lined with a hundred wrinkles, and her eyes glittered with malice.
Rod recoiled, trying not to show his revulsion. "Oh! Sorry. Didn't know anyone was home."
"I am not," said the hag. "This is not my home—or at least, no more than any house."
Rod stepped closer, feeling considerably less guilty. "I hope you're not taking anything that belongs to the people who live there!"
"Only their peace of mind," the old woman said. "Only the harmony and sense of safety that used to fill this house."
Rod felt a thrill of fear—could this really be only an old woman? In the land of Gramarye, malignant spirits could take actual form—the spirits of malignity within ordinary people. He managed to ignore the fright, though, and the revulsion that came from the woman's neglect of herself, and asked, "Now, how did you do that?"
"That horse is old." The hag pointed at Fess. "See where his coat is wearing thin? Surely you can't depend on him to carry you much farther!"
Rod swallowed a smile. "Older than you think, beldame—but apt to stay in good condition longer than I will."
"Yes, your body will start to fail you in a year or two, won't it?" she said with venom, then to Fess, "Why do you obey a master who ignores your welfare, beast? Know you not that he will ride you till you founder one of these days?"
Fess turned to give the woman a bland look, but inside Rod's head, his voice said, "I believe, Rod, that she spread these sorts of lies throughout the village."
"Aren't you a little transparent?" Rod asked the hag. "How could anyone believe such obvious lies?"
The woman's eyes sparked with anger. "Not lies, old fool, but saying large and loud the sort of things people wish to keep hidden—especially from themselves."
"Lies with a kernel of truth in each," Rod interpreted—and insight struck. "But you didn't tell them to the people themselves, did you? You told the husband his wife's faults and told her his. How many times did they scoff at you? So you made the lie even bigger when you told it to them again. How many times did you have to tell the same lie in different words before they began to believe you?"
"How many times have you shied away from your true nature?" the old woman snapped. "How many times have you overlooked your lord's highnosed ways and his heavy-handed treatment? The forests should be open to everyone! The deer are the property of the peasants, not the Crown!"
"Oho!" Rod lifted his head, leaning away from the gust of foul breath and fouler words. "So you didn't stop with setting husband against wife and sister against brother, did you? You tried to set them all against the Crown!" Then he frowned. "Or was that what you really meant to do all along?"
"The Count of Leachmere still forces each woman to his bed before she marries!" the hag raged. "The Earl of Tarnhelm flogs any peasant who dares go into the wood! Duke Bourbon turns his peasants out of their cottages when they're too old to work!"
"Only when they can't do the housekeeping any longer," Rod said. "Then he moves them into one of the one-bedroom cottages he's had built for his old folk, where he has people to look after them and take care of them."
"And despoil them of what little wealth they've managed to scrape together!"
"It doesn't cost them a penny." Rod gave her a sour smile. "He figures he comes out ahead because their children can do their work without worrying about their parents. And the cottages may be small, but they're clean and well-appointed; I've seen them."