“I will get her in terrible trouble if anyone finds out she helped me,” I confessed.
“Hush, there is no trouble I cannot bring her out of, and if I tell her to keep silent, she will. It will be her secret and keep her warm for weeks.” She looked me in the eye. “You will remember what you owe her.”
I promised I would.
Suddenly the door was opened, and on the threshold was an angry young man I recognized after a moment of blank incomprehension as Berrone’s brother. I dropped to my knees and hastily started picking up the pieces of the shattered amphora still on the floor.
“Berrone!” he shouted. “You’ve gotten Timos in trouble, and now he can’t dress me for dinner.”
“I’m sorry,” said Berrone. She was flustered and looked to me. If her brother noticed, we all were doomed, but he was too interested in his own problem.
“That doesn’t help me, does it? My long knife needs to be polished and honed and its sheath oiled.” He looked sly and pleased with himself. “We are to wear them to dinner.”
I swallowed, my mouth dry. I had meant to be reunited with my father. I had meant to whisper in his ear and then slip away to the stables to meet him when he left. My father was the baron’s guest, and though I knew that Hanaktos was a traitor, it had not occurred to me that he could fail to honor the most basic law of hospitality. Still, if Berrone’s brothers had been told to wear their knives to dinner, I had to believe that my father might not leave the dining hall alive.
“I—I can hone and oil it for you, master,” I heard myself say.
“Can you? Have you done it before?”
“Yes, master.”
“Come along, then,” he said. He strode away without another word to his sister, and I rose to follow him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I had expected the men to be in a private dining room on couches, my father alone with the baron and his murderous sons, but the household was eating at the long tables in the great room. My father was there, with the men who had accompanied him. Most of them I recognized; the rest I knew by their uniforms. They were scattered in ones and twos down the length of the tables, with the baron’s men on either side. None were at the head table, not even my father, an insult so stunning I was surprised he had tolerated it. He was flanked by two beefy guardsmen and looked smaller than I had ever seen him.
The head table held only Baron Hanaktos and male members of his household. His eldest son sat beside him, but the other sons were at the lower tables. The baron’s insult would work against him. As a mere houseboy I couldn’t have approached the head table, but I could easily make my way to my father.
With an amphora under my arm, I moved from man to man along the table, pouring out the wine. My father saw me drawing nearer, and each time I came to his eye, he looked away with no sign of recognition. I admired his self-control until I bent close and said, just loud enough to be heard over the roar in the room, “Baron Hanaktos means to kill you tonight.”
My father jumped as if I’d stuck him with a white-hot awl. He had watched me filling wine cups all the way down the length of the table without any idea who I was, and only by my voice did he know me. He was swinging around to look up into my face.
“Hold still,” I hissed in his ear, and he froze, either because of what I’d said or because he had succeeded in turning enough to see me over his shoulder.
“The household is wearing knives,” I said. “I will tell each of your men to be ready to fight when I drop my amphora.”
I wasn’t sure he was listening. His face was growing darker and darker. I’d seen him in a rage often enough to know that the next words out of his mouth were going to be easily audible over the roar of the room. Hastily I tipped the wine cup onto the table, hoping that anyone looking just then might have thought the spill preceded my father’s anger instead of following it.
“Sorry! Sorry!” I said loudly, and leaned in close enough as I wiped up the spill to snarl, “Hold your tongue!” under my breath.
That was something I’d never imagined doing, even in my freest flights of fancy, and my father was stunned silent. He sat motionless while I first used the cloth I had over my arm to wipe up the spill, then refilled the wine cup and pushed it into his hand. He took it mechanically, still staring at me.
“Be ready when I drop the amphora,” I said, and started to move on. His iron-hard grasp closed on my wrist, and I almost despaired, but he only emptied his cup in a single gulp and put it on the table to be refilled, his face blank. As I leaned to fill the cup, I felt a weight drop into the pocket stitched to my tunic.
Stepping back, I reached with my free hand and hunted for what I’d felt. I knew it as soon as I touched it, his lion’s head ring, to show his men in case they didn’t recognize me, either.
Hastily I moved to the next man. I didn’t dare look toward the head table, where the baron sat. I doubted that he had heard anything of Timos’s story—there was no reason to mention something as trivial as a houseboy’s fabricated story to the head of the household—but I still didn’t want to catch the baron’s eye. I moved on to the next man, and the next. There were no ladies present. It wasn’t going to be an event for ladies.
I bent to whisper into the ear of each of my father’s men as I poured the wine, and showed them his ring, holding it in my fist and opening my fingers briefly to allow them to see it. When I’d worked my way around the table, I left the dining room. My father’s small group of men had no chance against an entire megaron. They needed to escape, and quickly. I left my amphora in a niche and ran down the flight of shallow steps outside the great room to the pronaos of the house, where the doors out to the forecourt were standing open. No one took any notice of me as I cut across to the narrow gate at the top of the ramp that led down to the stables.
The baron liked his horses, and the stables were extensive. There was a separate shed reserved for guests’ animals, and I went there first to find a stable boy. “The baron’s guests leave early. Bring the horses up.”
The stable boy was already nodding in compliance and getting to his feet when someone behind me spoke.
“Since when did you become a houseboy, slave?”
I turned slowly. It was the soldier who had beaten Dirnes and cost me the skin off my back.
He smiled unkindly. Unsure how to react, the stable boy looked from one of us to the other. I was at a standstill. I couldn’t bluff my way past the soldier, and I couldn’t bully him as I had Timos. I could attack him, but I wouldn’t win, and while we were fighting, the stable boy would run screaming for help.
The soldier knew it, and his smile broadened. “You’ll come with me to see the captain,” he said, and nodded toward the open doorway of the stable. Swearing under my breath, I walked as he indicated. As I passed outside, a dark movement at the door frame caught my eye. I stopped abruptly and said over my shoulder to the stable boy, “He’ll find out about you soon enough.”
The soldier also stopped, as I’d hoped he would, and turned back to the stable boy, who was protesting his innocence but backing away nonetheless. The soldier grabbed him by the collar and pulled him along through the doorway, where Ochto, his face obscured by a piece of cloth, hit the soldier from behind and dropped him like a sack of dirt. Dirnes, coming from the other side, was naked to the waist and had his shirt in his hands. He wrapped the boy’s head with it. There was a muffled cry, and then Ochto dropped the stable boy as well.
“Did they see us?” Dirnes asked fearfully.
Ochto shook his head.
“Get his feet,” he said.
He and Dirnes carried the soldier into the feed room. I lifted the lightweight stable boy on my own, even as I asked Ochto what in the name of all that was sacred he thought he was doing.
“Helping you,” said Dirnes.
“Why?”
They put the soldier down, and Ochto straightened to look me in the eye. “Because I know nothing about kings and princes, but I know men.”
“Are you mad?” I asked.
Ochto shrugged. “In a few minutes I’ll have to go up to the kitchens to tell the steward that you are missing. I’ll tell him that when you didn’t come in for the night, I suspected you had run off and sent Dirnes to see if you’d been incapacitated at the abattoir. I’ll say I followed him, and when we found nothing, we came back together. I doubt the steward will pursue it.”
Indeed, he would not. I had forgotten that in order to report me missing, the steward would first have to tell the baron that he’d been keeping secrets for his daughter. “Tell him”—I licked my lips—“tell him, least said, soonest mended.”
“You’ll want to find another stable boy quickly,” Ochto advised. Dirnes pulled his shirt back on and nodded to me; then the two of them headed back down to the barracks.
“Come with me!” I said after them.
They paused, even as I reconsidered. I might not live out the night, and no one knew of their part in recent events. “If you like,” I added lamely.
Dirnes waved farewell.
“You know where to find us,” said Ochto, and they disappeared into the dark.
So, I found another hand in the stables and told him that the horses were wanted, and then I made my way back up the forecourt of the megaron and from there to the great room.
I’d collected my amphora, and I began pouring wine again. When I reached my father, I told him of the horses and then continued working my way along the table. I’d made it only halfway when I looked up from a cup I was filling and saw Timos standing in a doorway opposite. He stepped out of sight, but he’d seen me, I was certain. There was nothing I could do except continue on to the next of my father’s men, skipping everyone between, and hoping none of the slighted drinkers called me back.
I spoke to three more of my father’s soldiers, but they were the last because Timos was waiting for me at the end of the table. He’d gone to get help and was flanked by several husky housemen. I dropped the amphora, hoping to touch off the fighting, but to my consternation, one of the housemen caught it. He then passed it to Timos, who held it tight. Strong hands gripped me and began to heave me across the floor. I drew my breath to shout, but someone covered my mouth. I tried to bite the hand that was stifling me, but its owner just ground it harder against my mouth, forcing my lips against my teeth. I dug in my heels and surged against the men, sending all of us crashing into Timos. The men holding my arms pulled me back again.
It takes more time to tell of it than to live through it. The whole great room was frozen in surprise, but I knew that at any moment the baron would recognize me or would signal his men to attack, while my father’s men hesitated, waiting for their signal, and Timos was still clutching the amphora to his chest like his lost reputation. I threw myself forward again, trying to hit him with my shoulder. Finally, he lifted the amphora high to keep it safe, and I kicked him hard where it would hurt the most. The amphora dropped.
It smashed on the tiles, and the room exploded. Benches tumbled over, and men shouted. My father’s voice rose over the rest as he shouted for his men to press for the forecourt. The hands holding me weakened, and I struggled free. My father was soon surrounded by his men and began forcing his way to the doors. There were smaller fights all over the room, but the element of surprise was no longer in the baron’s favor, and enough men knew that the horses were waiting. They had a goal to reach instead of standing their ground to fight to the death surrounded by enemies.
A man came at me with a knife, and I punched him in the face with the accumulated force of a thousand thousand shovels full of dirt. His eyes rolled up as he slowly tipped backward. Poor Timos was still crouched on the floor, and I stepped over him to grab the shoulders of another man and throw him aside. Ahead of me was someone I recognized, Hanaktos’s son Kimix. I called his name, and when he looked up in surprise, I punched him, too.
By this time the fighting had spilled through the doors of the great room and down the steps into the entryway of the megaron. I hurried to catch up, dodging between knives and delivering a blow or two when I could, but mostly just grabbing my opponents and tossing them into each other in order to get past.
Outside of those at the dinner, no one seemed to have known of the baron’s inhospitable plans. The guards in the forecourt certainly didn’t know whom to fire upon. In all the confusion, there was no organized attempt to stop us. My father and I were side by side as we raced down the steps toward the waiting horses. I snatched a set of reins from a startled stable hand and scrambled into a saddle. The gates of the court were still standing open. I turned my horse toward them as the baron himself appeared on the porch above me. Our eyes met, and in the flickering light he knew exactly who I was. He launched himself from the top of the stairs and nearly knocked me from the saddle. Dropping to the ground as the horse reared, he ruthlessly used the long knife he carried to stab the animal in the belly. The horse screamed, tottered on its back legs, and slammed to the ground. I rolled away, struggled to my feet, and raced for the gates, Hanaktos not far behind me. The gates were too far away, and there was no sanctuary behind them anyway, so I turned to face the enraged baron as he raised his knife in a brief moment of triumph.
My father rode him down. His horse’s shoulder sent the baron flying, and my father’s hand was in mine before I was aware of reaching for him, and then he was pulling me up behind him. Arrows and crossbow bolts clattered on the stones around us as we raced for the gates, and then we were safe in the darkness beyond.
Trusting the horses to keep to the road, we rushed downhill. At the bottom of the hill, the road divided, one part going on into the town and the other circling outside it. We stopped there, to listen for pursuit and gather our bearings. The darkness that had hidden us from enemy fire was treacherous to us as well. The horse was staggering under our weight, and my father leaned forward to thump its shoulder in appreciation. The other riders stopped beside us, their horses stamping and jostling. Several men bent to catch up the reins of riderless animals, their owners lost to the quarrels and arrows shot from the megaron or perhaps lost in the megaron before my father’s men reached the courtyard. By ear as much as by eye, I counted. Only ten of the fifteen men my father had brought were with us.
“Conyx is dead,” said a voice in the dark.
“Troyus as well.”
No one had seen the others fall. If they were wounded, they would be cared for. If they were wealthy, they might eventually be ransomed or bargained for in other ways if events went against Hanaktos. If events went for Hanaktos, they might someday be in the very barracks I had left, working for Ochto, building stone walls in my place.
Unexpectedly my father swiveled in the saddle, bringing one arm over my head and seizing me in a bear hug. His arms locked around me, and mine around him, although on my part it might have been less affection and more a result of being dragged off-balance and in great danger of falling off the horse. The beleaguered animal sidestepped uncomfortably. I tightened my hold on my father a little further, swung my leg free, and, as he reluctantly released me, dropped to the ground. My father caught me by the hand as I slipped down and held it while he looked into my face, making out what he could in the darkness.
“I will kill the man who did this,” he swore. “With my own hands I will kill him.”
I laughed. My father might kill Baron Hanaktos, but I had no doubts that the cunning slaver was long gone.
CHAPTER NINE
WE rode into the middle of the armed camp just before dawn. On foot, feeling my way through familiar fields and groves of trees, I had led my father’s men in a game of cat and mouse across Hanaktos’s land. Unable to find us on the main road, our pursuers soon retreated to the megaron. When we’d covered enough distance to hide the sound of our hoof-beats, I had mounted one of the spare horses, and we had ridden inland, first picking our way slowly in the dark and then moving faster when the moon rose.
As we dismounted, I found myself seized by my father’
s men. Grateful for their escape, they nearly squeezed the life out of me and thumped me on the back until I staggered. My father tore me free and pulled me toward the open doorway of a well-lit tent. In silhouette, I saw a man I would recognize in any light and threw myself at him in delight, shouting, “Magus, you are returned!”
“I returned?” he said. “It is you who are—”
When he stopped, I knew the light from the tent had fallen on my face.
“Dear gods all above and around us,” the magus said, staring at me. Measuring myself against him, I realized we now saw eye to eye. I had not seen him since I was exiled to Letnos, and he’d been forbidden to write to me. All I had heard of him had been rumors, first that he was an Attolian traitor, then that he was an Eddisian one, which I had dismissed as ridiculous. I had never doubted him, and suspected from the beginning that Eugenides might have had a hand in his disappearance. I hadn’t realized how much I had counted on the magus to solve all of Sounis’s problems until I realized we stood shoulder to shoulder and he was not in fact larger than life.
He grabbed me and held me tight. I had to pull myself away before I began to blubber like a baby. Fortunately he deferred to my dignity and let me go. He turned to my father. “Thank the heavens you have rescued him.”
“Backward to the facts, as usual,” my father said as he swept the magus and me into the tent ahead of him. “He has rescued us and brought us safely out of Hanaktos’s trap.”
“It was a trap.”
My father said testily, “I told you that we had little choice but to try. Hanaktos holds the bargaining power. Melenze is Ferria’s dog, and their fee for aiding us will be the Melenze–Sounis pass, which they are filling as we speak.”
From which I gathered that Melenze was assembling its army on our northern border and offering to come to save us from Attolia. No doubt they wanted the port of Haptia back as well, to be the final link in their trade route from the center of the Continent to the Middle Sea.