Pirojil slipped and fell again, trying to hold his cloak shut with both hands, and twisting as he did so that he would fall on his right side – on his dagger, further bruising his right hip, rather than on his left side, on his sword, further bruising his left hip.
Strong hands helped him to his feet, but not before what felt like half a ton of snow had managed to slide down the open front of his cloak and into his tunic. He had wrapped a thick scarf around his neck to try to keep it less cold – warm was impossible – but he hadn’t thought to sew the damn scarf to his tunic and wouldn’t have had the time to do so even if he had thought of it, and every time he had fallen, the snow had seen an opportunity to worm its way closer to his heart, and taken it.
Snow was like that.
The wind from the west had a personality, and the personality was a cruel one. It had taken the snow and turned every bump in the long road into town into a drift that was at least knee-high, and often came to his waist, and had wickedly packed the snow down with just enough force to make it impossible to wade through easily, but not quite enough to support even Kethol’s weight. Pushing straight through the drifts would have worn them out before they had made it halfway to Black Swan Road. Making their way up Black Swan Road was a matter of constantly trying to manoeuvre themselves around drifts, like three warships cruising through shoal waters, avoiding sandbars.
The streets were, not surprisingly, almost empty; though occasionally huddled figures lunged from place to place, all of them bearing bundles, and none of them stopped to try to engage Pirojil, Kethol or Durine in conversation.
Not that he really was up for much conversation at the moment. What was there to say? ‘Cold enough for you?’
They pushed on, and then it was Durine’s turn to fall, and Kethol and Pirojil’s turn to help him up. You didn’t want to stretch out your arms to push yourself up; that just guaranteed that you’d load up your sleeves with the snow.
It was good to have friends, even if they were dark, hulking shapes wrapped in their cloaks and scarves, their beards and eyebrows caked with frost and ice and snow.
Kethol pounded the wooden placard at the gate of the next house with his fist, and shook his head when it cleared to reveal a coat of arms that none of them recognized. They probably should have tried to get hold of a local guide – although who would be fool enough to come out in this at anything short of the point of a sword?
Just head up down the road into the city proper, then down High Street until you reach Black Swan Road, the idiot guard had said, and look for Baron Morray’s fox-and-circle crest on the wooden placard on the gate.
He hadn’t said that all the crests on the placards on the eastern side of the street faced toward the west, and that snow had utterly caked each of them, and it was only a sense of fairness that persuaded Pirojil that the guard probably hadn’t thought of that any more than he had, although Pirojil did try to keep himself a little warm by vivid thoughts of rubbing the soldier’s face into every one of those snow-caked placards.
Besides, they had known that the foot of Black Swan Road was opposite the Broken Tooth Tavern, and Kethol could be counted on to find any place he’d been to – especially any tavern – blindfolded.
Which was close to what this was. The sun should be high in the sky by now, he thought, and it wasn’t doing its job. Only a wan, directionless grey light managed to push half-heartedly through the storm, occasionally brightened by a flash of lightning to the east, which was always accompanied by a much-delayed, distant rumble of thunder that sounded like a growling beast.
The crest on the next placard was an unfamiliar three bezants – at least, Pirojil hoped that they were bezants – and the one after that was, thankfully, Morray’s rampant fox in its golden circle.
It took all three of them to push the gate open against the mass of snow that had been dumped behind it, and they didn’t push it open any more than they had to. The gate had been left unbarred, which made sense, since the guard shack was empty, probably as usual. The walls of a noble’s town home were not intended to keep out invading armies, after all, but more to deter thieves and give some privacy from the outside world. This one didn’t even have a walkway around the inside of it, and Pirojil wondered if the snow concealed spikes or broken glass embedded along the top of the wall, or if the thieves of LaMut were just too polite to bother a noble’s possessions while he slept.
Not that there were many thieves out today, he suspected. It would have been a poor day for burglary, for surely every noble or commoner who had any choice and a lick of sense would be in their homes, trying to stay warm.
The Baron’s compound was on the small side, by noble standards: just a single two-storey stone building, flanked on either side by a couple of two-storeyed wattle-and-daub outbuildings. The one beyond the main building was probably the servants’ quarters, because the one that they could see dimly through the driving snow had the large doors of a stable, and probably had once housed Morray’s personal guard – you could hardly have the earldom’s Wartime Bursar travelling about without his own retinue – before most of them had been drafted directly into the Earl’s service.
The windows of the main building were tightly shuttered, and what cracks there would have been in the shutters were packed tightly with snow, but the occasional sparks from the chimneys showed that the building was occupied, although the wind and snow quickly snuffed them out, and dispersed any smoke before it had a chance to become visible.
The wooden canopy over the door provided some shelter from the wind; the three of them mounted the steps to the house and crowded into it.
Durine pounded on the thick oaken door. There was no knocker on it; presumably, guests were supposed to be welcomed at the gate, and announced somehow or other before they arrived at the arched doorway.
There was no challenge, no ‘who goes there’; the door just suddenly swung inward, and Baron Morray stood there dressed only in a tunic and trousers, a sword in one hand, and a dagger in the other.
‘Who is it?’ His expression was almost as cold as the temperature outside.
Durine took a step back and held up his hands. ‘Be easy, my lord – it’s just the three of us.’
Morray lowered both of his weapons, while Pirojil silently cursed himself for his own carelessness. Yes, it had just been Morray, but if it had been somebody else, somebody with ill intentions, he would have been able to skewer Durine while Kethol and Pirojil were drawing their own weapons.
Pirojil was getting sloppy, and that was bad. Well, at least the other two had had more sense; he noticed that Kethol and Durine had their own daggers out, held in a reverse grip along their forearms, keeping the weapons effectively invisible from the Baron or anybody else in front of them.
‘Well, don’t just stand there, letting the storm in – get inside,’ Morray said. He turned and raised his voice. ‘No need to worry – it’s just the three freebooters that the Earl has inflicted upon me.’ His voice was pitched loudly, to carry through the closed door of the mud-room and into the house proper.
They stepped into the mud-room, Pirojil closing the door behind him while Kethol and Durine took the opportunity to sheath their knives discreetly, and the other door swung instantly open.
Morray stepped through, beckoning them to follow. The mud-room opened directly onto what was probably called the Great Hall, although it wasn’t a tenth the size of the one at LaMut Castle.
The hall was filled with close to two dozen men and women, ranging in age from an ancient greybeard in a worker’s rough-spun tunic and trousers who was sitting in the big chair in front of the fire half-wrapped in a blanket, to the two sleeping babies he held as he sat, one in the crook of each arm. A vast roast turned on a spit in the main fireplace next to a huge cast-iron pot, attended to by two women in their thirties and a boy of about ten.
‘Well, get those thick cloaks off and come on inside. You can take your overboots off after you warm up,’ Morray said.
The three of them were soon seated in front of the fire. Pirojil and Durine hung their swordbelts on the backs of their chairs, while Kethol just stretched out his long legs onto a hassock – and steaming cups of Keshian coffee were brought to them without any asking.
Pirojil preferred tea himself, but hot liquid was hot liquid, and the cup warmed his numb hands and didn’t quite scorch his throat. Besides, Keshian coffee was rare this far north, and that made the drink more savoury.
Morray was halfway across the room, muttering in a low voice to a pair of thickset men, and only came back to where they were sitting when Pirojil started to rise.
‘Sit, man, sit – it’s wicked out there, and you look colder than I felt.’ Morray frowned down at him. ‘What brings you out of the warmth of the castle on a day like this?’
‘I was about to ask you the same thing, my lord.’
Morray snorted. ‘As if it’s any of your concern where I go and what I do.’
‘Meaning no offence, my lord,’ Pirojil said, ‘it is precisely our concern, by order of Earl Vandros, himself. We’re supposed to be guarding you –’
‘On a day like today, I hardly think that the streets of LaMut are crowded with Tsurani assassins,’ Morray said. ‘If any such exist, which I very much doubt. Yes, I’m not the only baron who was guided into LaMut by auxiliary troops. You should hear Verheyen complain – and he does complain, to any who will listen – how his own soldiers being put into the Earl’s service has meant that he is left with barely a corporal’s guard. But I don’t see any of the others’ guards lounging about their rooms, or … interrupting their sleep.’ He gave Kethol a quick glare. ‘But that discussion is for another time, I suppose – the reason I’m out here is that word was sent to the castle.’ He gestured towards the far wall. ‘When the storm hit, a bolt of lightning apparently hit the roof of the servants’ quarters. Probably would have burned the whole building down if the storm hadn’t put the fire out, but as it was, an attic beam fell and broke through into the second storey, and right now the whole building is probably frozen solid.’
Pirojil nodded. ‘So your man was asking your permission to move the servants into your – into the main house, because of the storm?’
‘Hardly.’ The chilly expression was back on Morray’s face. ‘If he’d been idiot enough to let good servants freeze to death while waiting for permission to bring them out of the cold, I’d have done worse than release him from my service, I can tell you that. No,’ he went on, his expression softening as his gaze left Kethol and returned to the two babies sleeping in the old man’s arms, ‘he was just reporting to me that he had moved them all in here. I felt that it was my duty to at least see that things were well here. As well as can be expected under the circumstances.’ He shook his head. ‘Which isn’t very good – I doubt that we’ll be able to move the servants back into their quarters until spring, and we’ll probably have to rebuild the whole house before they do. With Enna and her babies installed in my own bedroom here, I’ll more than likely have to spend the next months living in the castle and not have a moment of privacy under my own roof until summer, if then.’ He shook his head. ‘And is that enough information for you? Or should I tell you that I was tempted to curse my own father for pinching the coppers and having the outbuildings built of wattle and daub, instead of good stone, as well?’
There wasn’t really any answer for that, and the Baron waited only a moment before grunting his irritation.
‘If you three had not rushed out into the worst storm I’ve ever seen, in another hour or so you would have found me back in the castle, at my account books, where I belong.’ He glared. ‘And you’ve done a fine, fine job of delaying my return. I’ve just sent servants to procure some dry clothes for the three of you, and I’ll have to wait until you’ve warmed yourself and changed before I head back, or you’ll come chasing after me and freeze to death, won’t you?’
‘Well, in truth, when you leave, we will come with you, my lord,’ Pirojil said, nodding. ‘It’s our job, after all, though I’m sorry to put you to so much trouble.’
Morray snorted. ‘Oh, just drink your coffee.’
He turned and walked away. Catching the eye of the cook, he gestured towards the three of them, and to the food cooking in the hearth. The cook nodded, and the Baron left the room, his manner as officious as always.
Pirojil just shut up and drank his coffee, and looked from Kethol to Durine, and back to Kethol.
Durine shrugged, and Kethol smiled.
It was just as well, Pirojil decided, that they had been paid to protect Baron Morray’s life, rather than, say, killing him.
He would have done it, of course, but he would have been unhappy about it.
Pirojil found, much to his surprise, that he was actually getting to like this baron.
The trip back up the road to the castle was even worse than the trip out had been.
If anything, the storm had intensified. It was impossible to tell how much of the snow was new, and how much was simply being picked up by the wind and thrown at them, although during the few moments that Pirojil stopped to try to catch his breath, he could see the snow banks almost melt and then instantly reform and grow in the wind.
It was dangerous to stop, even for a moment; his toes had long since stopped hurting, and were almost feeling warm now, and that meant that frostbite was only minutes away.
Kethol took the lead, and constantly turned to be sure that the others hadn’t got lost. Even when the wind didn’t pound directly against the eyes, it was only possible to see a few feet in the storm, and any tracks that they had made on their way to the Baron’s residence had long since been shattered and broken in the storm. Durine was next, with Pirojil insisting that Morray follow close behind the big man. For once, the Baron didn’t complain, at least not aloud. And with Morray following Durine, the big man’s bulk sheltered the Baron from the worst of the storm.
Pirojil brought up the rear, using both hands in the constantly futile battle to hold his cloak close together and keep the storm out. Heating the cloak by the fire had been a mistake; within a few steps of the front door, it had been sodden with melted snow, and had easily tripled its weight with the accumulation of snow and ice.
At least coming out to Morray’s residence, they had been mainly moving east, with the storm, no matter how hard it bit and snarled, at their backs. But now they were going into the wind, and it struck them directly in the face, as though it was attempting to stun Pirojil, then peel his cloak away, and freeze him where he stood.
The climb up the hill to the castle was the worst of it, but it didn’t feel that way, for although the castle road was totally exposed to the wind, and snowdrifts twisted across it like giant buried snakes, Pirojil could turn his face away from the wind for several steps in a row, and let the cowl of his cloak catch the worst of it.
The best thing about it was the thought of what lay inside: warmth, currently a vague concept as the wind drove ice into every pore it could reach. Each step seemed to take longer, as though Pirojil was trapped in some sort evil spell that let him get ever closer to the shelter of the gate without quite reaching it.
He trudged on.
But, after an eternity of moving first the right foot, then the left, then pausing for a moment to draw a breath, an open door appeared ahead. At last he was running, like the other three, across the courtyard with legs so numb that he would have sworn but moments ago they were barely fit for walking, much less running, revelling. Then they were inside. In the frozen-but-warmer-than-outside mud-room, the four of them sagged down onto the benches, panting like dogs.
‘Would you consider doing me a great favour, my lord?’ Pirojil finally asked, when he was able to choke out the words between gasps.
‘That would depend, I suppose, on the favour you ask of me,’ Morray said, gasping almost as much as Pirojil.
He reached down for a moment, as though to unlace his overboots, then sat back, bracing himself agains
t the wall, looking like a man in his sixties, at least. The wind had sapped all the colour from his face, and left his moustache and beard and even his eyebrows encrusted with ice. He had pulled off his gloves and started to pick at the ice with his fingers, then covered his ears with his hands, and for a moment Pirojil thought that Morray was trying to say that he wouldn’t listen, but then realized that the Baron was just trying to warm his frozen ears.
‘Well, out with it, man.’
‘If there’s any further word from your residence – or if anybody suggests that you go outside in this storm – would you be so kind as to say something to the effect of “please deal with it, and I’ll come out and see when you’ve finished with it after the storm has passed”?’
Morray nodded, and almost smiled. ‘There’s some wisdom in that,’ he said, as he finally bent forward to unlace his overboots. His numb fingers gave him trouble with the knots. ‘There’s some wisdom in that, indeed.’
Lady Mondegreen beckoned Kethol over to where she was standing next to Langahan and Folson, and some other noble that Kethol didn’t recognize.
He should have taken another route across the Great Hall, probably. The Great Hall was bisected down the middle by the long table, which had been extended by several smaller tables brought down from the attic.
‘Kethol, I hear you had quite an adventure this morning,’ she said.
‘Well, my lady, I’ve had better times, and that’s a fact.’
The tip of his right ear was still numb – it would be interesting to see if it healed itself, or rotted off – but his full complement of fingers and toes were working, although it was still very painful to walk.
At Morray’s insistence, Father Riley, the Astalon priest, had taken a look at the three of them and finally pronounced them fit – but only after insisting that they all spend at least a few minutes with their bare feet in an oaken tub filled with aromatic water that the priest kept hot by repeatedly inserting a red-hot iron poker from the brazier, muttering something as he sprinkled more herbs from a leather pouch.