The Redemption of Althalus (91 page)

“And we should always tenlike we don’t know each other,” Gher added. “Don’t get seen talking to each other and like that.”

“We’ve got a whole winter to work out the details,” Althalus said confidently. “I won’t be able to help very much, because I’ll have to spend the winter entertaining Gosti and the others in that hall with jokes and funny stories. That leaves most of the work up to you three. Now we’d all better get back to the main building. We
are
being watched, and if we stay out of sight for
too
long, somebody’s liable to come looking for us.”

Ghend’s eyes were burning as he peered at Althalus in the dim light. “When this is all over, let’s stay in touch,” he said in his harsh voice. “I think we might want to talk about that business proposition I mentioned before.”

“I’m always ready to listen, my friend,” Althalus replied. “For now, though, let’s get back to the main fort before somebody starts getting curious about where we are.”

Althalus and Gher picked up their blankets and crossed the open courtyard to the main fort. “This must seem real strange to you, Althalus,” Gher said as they were spreading their blankets on the pile of hay in the corner of their room. “I mean, you went through all this before, didn’t you?”

“There are enough differences to make it interesting,” Althalus replied. “When you get right down to it, we’re pulling off a
double
swindle here. We’re swindling Gosti in one direction and Ghend in another. That should be enough to keep me on my toes.”

The weather closed in about a week after Althalus and Gher had reached Gosti’s fort, and a series of savage snowstorms with howling winds and driving snow clawed at the buildings. It was warm and dry inside, however, and Althalus entertained Gosti and his men in the dining hall with jokes and stories. He also went out of his way to become better acquainted with the towering Galbak. The big man with agate-hard eyes seemed to be habitually melancholy, and it wasn’t hard to see why. Arums are intensely loyal to begin with, and Galbak’s close kinship to Gosti greatly increased his attachment to his Chief. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that Gosti’s health was deteriorating. The fat man wheezed a great deal whenever he spoke, and he needed help to rise from his chair.

“I give him maybe two more years, Althalus,” Galbak said one snowy afternoon when the two of them had gone to the stable to check the horses. “Three at the very most. Gosti was never what you’d call skinny, but ten years of steady eating have turned him into a mountain. It’d be easier to jump over him than it’d be to walk around him.”

“He’s no midget, that’s certain,” Althalus agreed.

“He wasn’t always like this,” Galbak said sadly. “When we were just boys, he’d run and play like any other boy, but after his older brother died, Gosti realized that he’d be the next Clan Chief, and he started to indulge himself. The more he ate, the more he wanted, and now he can’t stop. He
has
to eat constantly.”

“It’s very sad, Galbak, but what can you do?”

“Not very much. He doesn’t really pay much attention to anything that’s happening around him, so I’ve been sort of obliged to take over for him. I keep a running count of the gold that’s piling up in his strong room. He doesn’t even look at his gold anymore. I give him a number every week or so, and that always sends him off into another celebration.” Galbak shrugged. “He’s fat, but he’s happy.”

Althalus altered his plan slightly at that point. Quite obviously, Gosti was not much more than a figurehead. Galbak was the real Clan Chief here, and it’d be Galbak who’d give the orders after the robbery. In some ways, that made things easier. Waking Gosti from a sound sleep might have proved to be well-nigh impossible, and trying to explain that there’d been a robbery would most likely take an hour or two. Galbak’s reaction should be almost instantaneous.

The winter dragged on, and Althalus concentrated most of his attention on keeping Gosti entertained, leaving the other business to Gher, Khnom, and Ghend. Then one night when the fire in the pit just in front of Gosti’s table had burned low, Althalus chanced to overhear an argument between a pair of white-haired old Arums.

“Yer an idjut, Egnis,” one of the creaky old warriors was saying scornfully. “There hain’t no other door in the hay barn.”

“There certainly
is,
” Egnis retorted hotly. “Course you wouldn’t know about it, Merg, ’cause you never done no honest work in yer whole life. You bin planted on yer backside right here fer forty years. I hauled hay through that back door every summer when I was a young feller.”

Merg scoffed. “You can’t remember that far back. You can’t even remember this morning.”

“There’s a back door in the barn.”

“No, there ain’t.”

“Is too.”

“Is not.”

Gosti was snoring loudly while Egnis and Merg continued to spit “is toos” and “is nots” at each other.

There was a way to settle the argument, of course, but Althalus decided not to suggest it. The two old codgers were having fun, so why spoil it for them? He rose quietly to his feet instead, and went to have a look for himself.

There was hay piled against the back wall of the barn, and Althalus scrambled up onto the stack and felt around under the hay. After a few moments, he found what he was looking for. Evidently, Egnis had been right. Althalus could feel a round pole that passed through a fair-sized hole in a jutting plank. He fumbled around some more, and he finally found the other one. Then he took hold of the pole and pushed it first toward one side and then toward the other. It slid back and forth quite easily. “Well, well, well,” Althalus murmured softly to himself. “Isn’t
that
interesting?” Then he climbed down from the haystack, brushed himself off, and went looking for Gher.

He found the boy in the kitchen, pilfering.

“Let that go for now, Gher,” he instructed. “Go find Ghend and tell him that I’d like to speak with him.”

“In the stables again?”

“No, let’s meet in the hay barn instead. There’s something there that’s going to make things a lot easier for us.”

“I’ll see if I can find him,” Gher said promptly.

“Do that,” Althalus said, rather absently taking up a piece of bread and dipping it into a pot of still-warm gravy.

It was no more than a quarter of an hour later when Gher led Ghend and Khnom into the hay barn.

“What’s afoot, Althalus?” Ghend asked. “Has something gone awry?”

“No, actually we’ve just had a stroke of luck. I happened to overhear an argument between a couple of old men.”

“What a peculiar way for you to pass the time,” Khnom said. “What were they arguing about?”

“This barn, actually,” Althalus replied.

“How can you argue about a barn?” Ghend asked in a faintly derisive tone.

“They probably didn’t have anything better to do. Anyway, they were busy remembering ‘the good old days’ the way old coots usually do, and somehow the question of barn doors came up. One of them said there was only one; the other insisted that there were two. I came out and had a look for myself, and it seems that the second coot was right. You see that haystack against the back wall?”

Ghend peered at the wall in the dim light. “Barely,” he said. “You should have brought a torch here.”

“In a hay barn? That’s a quick way to attract a lot of attention, Ghend, old boy. Anyway, I climbed up that stack and stuck my hand down through the hay. There’s a bar that runs across that back wall, and nobody I’ve ever heard of bars a blank wall. If there’s a bar, there’s a door, and if we can get that door open, we
won’t
have to carry our newfound fortune out through the front gate after we
find
our newfound fortune.”

“That
is
a bit of luck,” Khnom agreed. “That’s one of the things I’ve been a little worried about.”

“Judging from the condition of the logs in the walls here, this barn’s probably several generations older than the log palisade around the fort. This is only a guess, but I think Gosti’s people built the palisade
after
gold was discovered back in the mountains and the price Gosti charged to cross his bridge went up just a bit. There was no need for a palisade before that, because there wasn’t anything here to steal. Now there is. The hay in that stack is old. The newer hay—last summer’s crop—is up in the loft. I’m just guessing, but I suspect that haystack’s been there for several years—probably since before they built the palisade. Since the barn wall was already there, they probably just included it in the palisade. There wouldn’t have been much point to building a new wall where one was already in place, but Gher can go outside tomorrow to play in the snow or something, and have a look. If there
is
a door—and if we can get it open—we can lead our horses out
that
way and be long gone before anybody knows that we aren’t here anymore.”

“That’s another reason to wait until after the snow melts before we visit Gosti’s strong room,” Khnom said. “Tracks in the snow are a dead giveaway. I think our chances of success just doubled.”

“Play in the snow?” Gher objected.

“Make a snowman or something,” Khnom suggested. “Little boys do that all the time, don’t they?”

“Only if they don’t have nothing better to do,” Gher retorted. “I’d rather spend my time learning how to steal stuff. I don’t think I even know
how
to make a snowman.”

“Take Khnom with you, Gher,” Althalus suggested. “He’ll show you how it’s done.”

“Thanks, Althalus,” Khnom said in a flat, unfriendly tone.

“Don’t mention it,” Althalus replied grinning. “I want you two to check that outside wall
very
carefully. We don’t want to wait until
after
we’ve done what we came here to do before we find out whether or not we can open that door, now do we?”

Khnom sighed. “I guess not,” he said.

Althalus pushed on. “Now, then, after we’ve finished up and slipped out through that back door, I think we’d better split up. Gher and I’ll go south, and we’ll make sure that we leave a lot of tracks. The ground’s soft in the springtime, so we shouldn’t have much trouble churning up the trail that runs south on this side of the river. Ghend, you and Khnom go north, but stay
off
the trail. Ride north back in the brush a ways so that there won’t be any tracks on the trail. Gher and I’ll gallop through any villages we come across and make all kinds of noise.”

“You two’ll get yourselves caught and hung,” Khnom warned.

Althalus scoffed. “Not a chance. I know of a rocky stretch on that trail, and there
won’t
be any tracks there. That’s where we’ll turn and go on up into the mountains. Gosti’s people won’t even know we’ve left the main trail. They’ll keep going south, and by the time they wake up, Gher and I’ll be a long way away.”

“Why are
you
taking all the chances, Althalus?” Ghend asked suspiciously.

“Because I’m better at this than you are. I know that
I
can get away with it;
you
might not be able to pull it off. Just keep on going north up into Hule. Then ask anybody you meet how to find the camp of a man named Nabjor. Gher and I’ll meet you two there. You mentioned a business proposition of some kind a while back, and I think I’d like to hear more about it—
after
we’ve finished up our business here.”

“One steal at a time, right?” Khnom suggested.

“Exactly. Let’s get this one out of the way first.
Then
we can talk about the next one.”

C H A P T E R     F O R T Y - F O U R

T
he winter plodded on until it was finally spring, and by then the thieves knew every corner of Big Belly’s hall intimately. All that was left to do now was wait for the snow to melt.

Althalus began to make excuses for frequent trips out to the courtyard, since he’d arbitrarily selected a snowdrift in a nearby mountain pass as a signal. “When that one disappears, so do we,” he’d told his fellow thieves.

It might have been sheer coincidence—although Althalus had become reluctant to use that word—but Galbak advised him that the clan customarily celebrated a certain event every spring. “Gosti was born in the early spring,” Galbak said. “We Arums don’t really keep very close track of days and months the way lowlanders do, so we celebrate Gosti’s natal day when the last of the snow melts off those hills across the river. It might not be very precise, but it’s close enough, I suppose.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Althalus replied piously, pulling up the hood of his wolf-eared tunic.

“Are you cold?” Galbak asked.

“I’m getting a little draft on the back of my neck, that’s all.”

It was about a quarter of an hour later that the four thieves met in the stables. “Is something wrong?” Ghend asked.

“No, just the opposite,” Althalus replied. “I was talking with Galbak a while ago, and he tells me that it’s customary here to celebrate Gosti’s birthday, and as it so happens, the big party takes place when the snow melts off the surrounding hills. When an Arum says ‘celebrate,’ he’s talking about some fairly serious drinking, and the timing couldn’t be much better for us. By sunset, there won’t be a sober Arum in the fort, and by midnight, they’ll all be snoring and so stupefied that the fort could fall down around their ears and they wouldn’t even notice.”

“It’s made to order for us, isn’t it?” Khnom said with a broad grin. “
Our
celebration starts just after theirs comes to an end.”

“And they’ll all be too sick the next morning to chase us,” Gher exulted.

“It’s a peculiar sort of birthday present,” Ghend said with an evil grin, “but it
will
make this birthday one that Gosti won’t ever forget.”

“He’s been good to us,” Althalus observed, “so we
do
sort of owe him
something,
don’t we? The preparations should take them about a week, and that’ll give us plenty of time for
our
preparations. The back door of the hay barn might not be quite as important now, but let’s go ahead and use it anyway. There’s not much point in riding through that village outside the walls if we don’t have to. We’ll want to leave tracks on the ground, not in some wide-awake villager’s memory. Oh, there’s something else, too. After a winter of lounging around in this stable, our horses are probably going to be a little frisky, so we’ll want to ride that out of them before the big day rolls around. We’ll be in a bit of a hurry, I expect, so we won’t have the time to explain things to our horses.”