Lord of the Changing Winds (12 page)

So it had taken longer than Bertaud had expected to put the company together, but they traveled more quickly than he’d anticipated once they got underway. Even Diene rode astride with no thought for a carriage. The hoofbeats on the hard earth of the road seemed to hold muffled words in their rhythm, words that could not quite be made out but held a nameless threat: Peril, they said. Danger. Hazard ahead. Bertaud cast an uneasy glance at Diene, but the mage had her face set sternly forward and did not seem to hear anything amiss in the beat of the earth.

The road past the Sef had been raised above the land, so that snowmelt drained away to either side and left the surface of the road dry. Casmantian builders had been hired to guide the work on the road. With the magic those builders had set deeply into it, the road shed the rains of spring and summer as though it had been oiled. Thus it was a road on which a company could swing along at a great pace, in good heart, with energy left for the men to sing—which they did: Rude songs that Jasand pretended not to hear, and Diene not to understand. Spearheads flashed and swung above the ranks of soldiers like silver birds; each seemed to call out a single word as it flashed, and the word was
battle
. Most of the men also carried bows, unstrung for travel in damp weather, and the smooth curve of each bow whispered a long, low word of arrow’s flight and fall.

Feierabiand was much longer from north to south than it was wide, as though it had long ago been squeezed thin between its larger and more aggressive neighbors. The road from Tihannad ran east along the shore of the lake to the much larger Nejeied River and then turned south along the river; it was raised and broad all the way to the bridge at Minas Ford and then south to Terabiand on the coast, for a good deal of traffic flowed along that route. If one followed the smaller Sepes River straight south from Minas Ford, one would find a narrower, rougher road leading to Talend at the edge of the southern forest. But the forest was not a welcoming place for men, and Talend, perhaps drawing some of its nature from the forest, liked to keep to itself, so that rough track was sufficient for the small amount of traffic that moved along the Sepes.

Bertaud wondered whether anyone in the north would yet have heard a whisper of their coming, if the griffins had crossed the mountains farther south and encroached upon Talend. But then, there was no good pass south of Minas Ford; the mountains near Talend were tall and rugged. And besides, he could not imagine that griffin magic would accord well with the natural magic of the great forest.

There was some traffic here, both on the road and the river, merchants and farmers and ordinary folk about their ordinary business. A courier went past riding north at a collected gallop, her white wand held high in her hand to claim priority on the road. Jasand held up his hand and his men pressed to the left side of the road to let her pass.

“What news, I wonder?” Bertaud said to the general.

Jasand shrugged. “We might have stopped her and asked. But we’ll be at Minas Ford soon enough and find out for ourselves.”

“You don’t want to turn off toward Minas Spring?” Diene inquired, guiding her tall gelding nearer the men.

“Minas Ford is hardly farther. And we can stay on the main road all the way,” said Jasand. “Good roads are not to be disregarded, esteemed mage.”

“Certainly not by me,” Diene said equably.

Jasand grinned at her, so that Bertaud realized the old general was happy to be on campaign again, even a little campaign against griffins rather than a proper company of Casmantian raiders. An open road before him and a hundred spears behind… for Jasand, this was a simple vacation from the sometimes tedious court life in Tihannad. His confidence was catching, so that Bertaud felt some of his own tension ease away into the pleasant day. Maybe dealing with the griffins would indeed be that simple; maybe there would be nothing difficult or confusing or controversial about it. He could hope for that, at least.

It was about sixty miles to Minas Ford from Tihannad. Still, if they pressed fairly hard, they should come to the town of Riamne by evening. Then it would be an easy enough day’s ride tomorrow to Minas Ford, leaving the men with energy for fighting. If it came to fighting. With luck, it would not. Better if Diene could speak to the griffins. And if Bertaud was called on to speak to them himself, in the king’s voice? What, he wondered, would he say? Probably Jasand had the right of it; probably better to enjoy the ride and let the coming days arrive at their own pace.

Riamne was a town of timber and brick with cobbled streets and tall, narrow houses. They reached it just as the last light failed. It had two inns, both of which were filled to capacity. Jasand had his men set up their small tents in a field outside the town, which they had to do by the light of lantern and moon. The general had his own tent set up among them. Bertaud displaced a well-to-do farmer and his family from the best room of the nearer inn and installed Diene there instead.

“Though I shall go back to the fields myself,” he said, smiling. “Jasand’s tent is large enough for two, and if he will stay with his men, I hardly think I should set myself up here. Fortunate woman, you are affected by no such concerns. You will be comfortable here?”

The old mage touched the mattress with one fragile hand and glanced around at the spare furnishings. She gave Bertaud a caustic glance at his question, though he had made sure his tone was entirely innocent. “Yes. Certainly. Or, if not, I should hardly dare to say so after your comment, young man.”

She had been a tutor to both the king and then later to Bertaud himself, when he had been a boy at the court of the old king. Then, Bertaud would never have dared predict the familiarity with which he spoke to her now. He grinned and offered a slight bow.

Diene lifted an eyebrow at him, moved slowly across the room, and sank with a sigh into the sole chair it contained. “It needs a cushion,” she remarked judiciously. “But it will do, since it is not a saddle. It has been years since I traveled even so far as this, you know.”

“I know.” Bertaud collected a pillow from the bed and offered it, with courtesy only a shade exaggerated. “Do you need assistance to stand, esteemed Diene?”

The glance this time was even more acerbic, but the old mage suffered him to help her to her feet. Bertaud arranged the pillow in the chair, and she settled back down with a nod of satisfaction.

“I will do very well. Will you join me for supper here? Or do you feel constrained to join the men for that, as well?”

“I think I need not go so far as that.” The men carried rations that were adequate, but hardly up to the standards of a good inn. “I shall have the staff serve us here.”

“To avoid the curiosity of men,” said the mage, her dark eyes sliding sideways to meet his.

Bertaud inclined his head, quite seriously this time. “To avoid the crowd and the noise. You may tell me more about griffins, esteemed Diene, as we in fortunate Feierabiand have never been plagued with the creatures. You may advise me on what the king’s voice should say to them, if we should speak.”

The mage half-smiled. “I hardly know what advice to give. I will tell you the lines of poetry I know that hold fire and red dust and the desert wind—I hardly expect you will remember anything of your youthful studies, hmm?”

Bertaud flushed and laughed. “Little enough, esteemed Diene, begging the pardon of my esteemed tutor!”

Diene nodded in disapproving resignation. “Young men so seldom care for the poetry and history we so painstakingly draw out for them. Well, I will tell you poetry, then, and you may tell me what intentions the king should have toward griffins.”

“Other than that they depart?”

“I hope,” said Diene, “that it proves so simple.”

So did Bertaud. Fervently.

The village of Minas Ford, when they arrived there, hoped so, too. There was an inn, small but pleasant, and perhaps half a hundred families who lived within a day’s walk. Some, wary of griffins, had evidently gone north to Riamne, and others south to Talend or west to Sihannas at the edge of the Delta. But many had stayed. They were happy to see a troop of soldiers with the king’s standard flying before them. This was clear even though they refrained from pressing forward toward the new arrivals.

“But a hundred men aren’t enough, young lord,” the innkeeper said earnestly, holding the bridle of Bertaud’s horse with his own hands. “There are a good many griffins in those hills, lord, begging your pardon, and they’re big, dangerous creatures.”

Red dust stirred under the hooves of the horse as it shifted its feet. It was nervous. Its ears flicked back and forth, listening to sounds a man could not hear. The breeze that moved through the courtyard of the inn had an odd, harsh feel to it.

“The king hopes there are not so many,” Bertaud said neutrally, dismounting with a nod of thanks for the innkeeper’s assistance. “And we all hope not to fight them, however many there may be. Have you seen them yourself?”

“Not I, lord—that is to say, just as they fly over now and again. But Nehoen and Jos and even Tesme have all been up there looking for Kes, and they say there’re a gracious plenty of them up there.” The innkeeper gave the horse to a boy to take to the stable. The boy had to weave a path past the onlookers to get it there.

Bertaud tilted his head in interest, glancing out at the crowd. “Nehoen? Jos, Tesme, Kes?” Jasand and Diene had come up silently to listen.

The innkeeper bobbed a quick bow. “Kes was… Kes is just a girl, lord. She had… she has some skill with herbs, and she can stitch a cut or set a bone. A man came and asked her to come, and she went up into the desert to help somebody who’d been hurt. Before we even knew there was a desert.”

Bertaud marked the past tense uncomfortably avoided in this answer. “And she has not returned?”

“No, lord. So we went looking, some of us. All of us, at the first. Tesme—that’s Kes’s sister, lord—Tesme kept searching. For days. And Nehoen. Nehoen is a gentleman of this district, lord, an educated man, not the kind to stretch the truth out thin, if you understand me. If he says
at least fifty
, he doesn’t mean
five and their shadows
, lord. He… well, lord, I think he promised Tesme he’d keep looking, so as she wouldn’t keep going up there herself. And Tesme’s hired man, Jos, he stayed out a long time and went up a long way, but even he, well, I think he maybe doesn’t expect to find her, anymore.”

“I see.” What might pass for educated in a little village like Minas Ford, Bertaud did not inquire. But the innkeeper seemed honest. Bertaud said, “Can you find these good folk for me? We would greatly desire to speak to them before we ourselves go up into the mountains. Which we shall, early tomorrow, I expect. Ah, and I trust there is indeed room in your inn for us?”

“For the lady and some few of your men more, lord, if you please; we’ve little enough business just now, but, as you see, it’s not a large inn. And I’ll send my girls out with word you’d like to speak with those as have seen the griffins.”

Bertaud nodded his thanks and headed for the welcome comfort of the inn, not forgetting to offer his arm to Diene, who was finding it difficult to walk after two days on horseback but was trying not to show it.

“Fifty?” Jasand muttered on his other side. He shook his grizzled head in doubt. “Do you find that likely, my lord?”

Bertaud shrugged. “Likely? I want to see the men making the claim. You should ask, is it possible? And of course it is
possible
. And if it is true, General?”

“Then I would wish for more soldiers. Though come to it—” Jasand said consideringly, “—even in the worst case… I would set the men I brought against even a
hundred
griffins, my lord, if necessary.”

Bertaud knew Jasand was right to be confident. The soldiers of Feierabiand had never been able to afford the luxury of incompetence in either their ranks or their officers. Only a clear and continual demonstration of Feierabiand skill in the field, along both the river border with Linularinum and the mountain border with Casmantium, made room for the central of the three countries to remain untroubled. And Jasand did not need to mention his own record or reputation. Though Bertaud might have wished some part of the general’s experience had been against griffins. Or that they had, aside from mage’s poetry, a Casmantian advisor handy to offer counsel on the creatures. But he said merely, “We shall hope these townsfolk can give us a clear idea of what we shall meet.”

And, indeed, the men who came that evening to tell what they had seen in the mountains, Bertaud judged, might, in fact, be credible witnesses. The woman Tesme had not come, but Nehoen and Jos had evidently been close by the inn.

The hired man, Jos, was a plainspoken man who did not seem given to exaggeration or flights of imagination. And by his dress and manner, Nehoen was undoubtedly a wealthy man by the standards of the region and probably an even more creditable witness. Both men were clearly seriously worried about the missing girl and the griffins.

“Kes went up the mountain to assist someone who had been injured,” Nehoen said, giving Bertaud the respectful nod due his rank, but with the straight look of a confident man. “The same day the griffins were first spotted, lord. A man came to find her. Seemed to know she has a talent with healing, for all he was a stranger to the district. No knowing who he really was.”

“A mage, or so they say,” Jos put in grimly, with a wary glance at Diene. “
I
didn’t see him.” And blamed himself for his absence, by his harsh tone. Or everyone else, for letting her go.