Then, around midmorning, Jerome, the heavyset man from the night before, emerged from one of the caravans. He was dressed in a brightly patterned shirt that came down below his hips and had wide, voluminous sleeves, gathered by a leather cuff at each wrist. A heavy leather belt was around his waist and Will could see the hilt of a long knife in a scabbard worn on his left-hand side. He wore black trousers and knee-high brown leather boots. Of more immediate interest to Will, he carried a large canvas sack in his hand. As he climbed down the steps from his caravan, two of the camp dogs ran low-bellied toward him and tried to sniff at it. He cursed at them and they slunk away.
“What do you suppose is in the sack?” Will asked quietly.
Alyss, lying beside him, wrapped in her brown cloak, glanced at him. “From the interest those dogs showed, I’d say it’s meat.”
“My guess too,” Will said. He had also noticed the brown stains on the sack—dried blood in all probability.
Jerome walked toward the far side of the camp, then turned and called to the caravans.
“Petulengo! Where the blazes are you, boy?”
“Coming, Jerome!” called a high-pitched voice. The door of one of the caravans slammed open and a young boy, no more than twelve or thirteen by the look of him, hurried down the set of steps, tucking his shirt in as he went. He was olive-skinned and had long dark hair, held back from his face by a yellow headband.
“Next time be ready when I tell you,” Jerome said. He was obviously not the forgiving type. “Now keep watch behind me.” He strode toward the trees on the far side of the clearing. The boy had to half run to keep up with Jerome’s long strides, and he stayed a few paces behind him.
“Wait here and keep an eye on things,” Will said. “I’m going to see where our friend Jerome is off to.”
It was easier said than done. He had to skirt in a wide arc to stay clear of the campsite, then move along the road to the edge of the far tree line. Despite losing time doing so, once he entered the trees he was confident he’d pick up Jerome’s trail soon enough.
He was mistaken. He found the boy’s trail easily enough. But Petulengo hadn’t stayed with his older companion. He was following some distance behind him, obliterating the tracks Jerome made as he twisted and turned his way through the forest. Jerome zigzagged so much that there was no way of establishing his base course and there was a distinct danger that Will would be spotted by Petulengo.
The boy was dangerously alert too. Several times, when Will made a slight noise—and it was impossible to move in total silence—the dark head would snap up and around and Will would have to freeze in place, concealed from view by his cloak and his own ability to stand stock-still.
Petulengo stayed so far behind Jerome that Will never sighted the burly Roamer. He had to be content to shadow the boy. After a short while, he realized how effective the Roamers’ system was. The boy obviously knew where Jerome was heading, so he could stay a long way behind him and effectively frustrate any stranger who might be trying to track him—as Will was doing.
After ten minutes, Will had to admit defeat. He simply couldn’t take the risk that he might be spotted—it might cost Ebony her life. Seething with frustration, he made his roundabout way back to the spot where Alyss was watching the camp. She saw by the look on his face that he had had no luck. She pointed to the campsite.
“I think I might have found our way in,” she said.
Will followed her pointing finger and saw a figure he hadn’t noticed before. It was an old woman dressed in filthy rags, her hair long and gray and unkempt. She moved around the camp, bent almost double, collecting firewood from the central wood stack and distributing it to the individual cooking fires as ready fuel.
With that task done, she filled a bucket from a large water barrel attached to one of the caravans and proceeded to distribute that as well.
It became obvious that she was nothing more than a drudge, a beast of burden in the camp. If any of the Roamers came close to her, they ignored her at best, or spat a curse at her as they passed. One of the men cuffed her around the back of the head. She shied away from him, dropping her bucket and spilling the water. Her shrill cry of protest was met by uncaring laughter from the man. As she stooped to retrieve her bucket, he kicked it, sending it rolling away from her. She scuttled after it, one hand instinctively raised to ward off another blow, sniveling and whining.
At the same time, a door in one of the caravans banged open and a Roamer woman, at least twenty years younger than the gray-haired woman, shouted at her, “Hilde! Get that water in here at once! What are you doing, you layabout!”
Hilde whined something unintelligible and the man who had caused her to spill the water snarled at her as well. She hobbled back to the rain barrel to refill her bucket, pursued by the Roamer woman’s sharp insults and orders.
In the Roamer camp, Hilde was the lowest of the low.
Will frowned at Alyss. “I don’t see how that will help us.”
She smiled back at him. “While you were gone, I heard one of the Roamers telling her to get more firewood. We wait till she leaves camp. Then we follow her and I take her place.”
“You have to be joking!” Will said. He looked from the bent figure of the crone, now hobbling back to the caravan with a full water bucket, to Alyss—slim and beautiful and young. “You don’t think they might notice a slight difference in her appearance?”
“I don’t think they notice her at all,” Alyss said seriously. “They don’t see her as a person, just as a piece of equipment or something to kick or cuff or curse when they’re in the mood. Don’t forget, I’ve been trained to disguise myself when necessary. If I put ash and dirt through my hair and hobble around like her, I doubt they’ll see the difference. Particularly if I swap clothes with her.” She shuddered slightly. “That’s the one part I’m not looking forward to.”
Will studied the hobbling, mumbling figure again. “You really think you can pass yourself off as her?”
Alyss nodded. “If she were one of them, I’d never get away with it. But they take no notice of her. And people see what they expect to see. You’ve told me that often enough.”
He was silent for a few seconds and she pressed home her argument.
“This way, I’ll be inside their camp. I’ll be able to listen to their conversations, and with any luck I’ll find out where they’re keeping Ebony. Or if Jerome and the boy go off into the forest, I’ll follow them. Odds are they won’t take any notice of Hilde collecting firewood. And you can follow me, at a distance. That way, you can stay well back out of sight until we find where they’ve got Ebony hidden.”
“I’m not sure,” Will said. “It might work. But it’s a big chance . . .”
“I’m willing to take it. What can they do to me? After all, you’ll be watching here in the forest if I am found out. And I honestly think it’s our only chance to find Ebony.”
“Let me think,” Will said. He knew that if he were in Alyss’s place, he wouldn’t hesitate to put the plan into operation. But he’d be risking Alyss, as well as Ebony, and he simply couldn’t make that decision.
“Better think fast,” Alyss said. “She’s leaving the camp.”
He looked up. Hilde was trudging toward the forest, a small ax in her hand and a large wicker wood carrier slung over her shoulder. She was heading for a point fifty meters to the north of where they lay concealed.
“All right,” he said, coming to a decision. “Let’s do it.”
It was easy to find Hilde. The sound of the small ax rang through the forest as she cut pieces of deadfall into manageable lengths. Will and Alyss ghosted through the trees as she slowly moved farther and farther away from the encampment. When they felt they were a safe distance away, Will stepped quietly from the trees in front of her. To Hilde, it seemed that the young man in the green-and-gray cloak had suddenly materialized out of thin air. She gasped in fright and staggered back, one hand raised in front of her face. Will recognized the ge
sture. It was one that older people used to ward off what they called “the evil eye” from strangers.
He also noted that, although she had the ax in her other hand, she made no movement to defend herself with it, nor to threaten him. Hilde’s instincts for self-protection seemed to have been dulled by her time with the Roamers.
“Relax, Hilde,” he said softly. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Who are you? How do you know my name? I’ve done nothing wrong!” she babbled, still averting her gaze from his. He looked to Alyss, standing concealed in the trees, and made a gesture: help needed here.
Alyss moved into sight now and Hilde backed away as she saw her.
“It’s all right, Hilde,” Alyss said in a soothing voice. “We’re not going to hurt you. We’re here to help you.”
Perhaps the sight of another woman gave Hilde greater confidence. Slowly, she lowered the arm she had thrown up to shield her face. She leaned forward to peer more closely at Alyss. Alyss smiled encouragingly at her. It had often been said that Alyss’s smile was a sight worth seeing, and it seemed to have a calming effect on the old woman.
“Who are you?” Hilde asked.
“My name is Alyss, and this is my friend Will,” she said, indicating the young Ranger. Hilde glanced at him, all the suspicion and fear returning to her face as she did so. Alyss continued quickly. “Tell us, Hilde, why are the Roamers so cruel to you?”
It was the right approach to take, Will realized. It immediately placed Alyss on Hilde’s side. The old woman sniffed, wiping her nose with the ragged end of her sleeve.
“Cruel? Ay, that they are. Beat me, they do. And curse me and kick me. And I try to do my best for them, but I’m old now. I can’t move as fast as I used to. I try, but I’m too slow and they beat me.”
“But aren’t you one of them?” Alyss asked. She took the old woman’s hand gently in her own and Hilde looked up at her through teary eyes, eyes whose color seemed washed away by age.
“One of them? No. I’m Gallican. Least I was. When my man died, the village had no further use for me. Wanted the farm, you see. They threw me out with nothing. Left me to die. The Roamers took me in. I was grateful at first, but after a while, I wished they hadn’t. Might have been easier to die. Been with them now for . . .” She paused and a vague look came into her eyes. “I don’t know how long.”
“Why do you stay with them?” Will asked, and she looked at him. By now she seemed to accept that if he was a friend of Alyss’s, she had nothing to fear from him.
“Where else could I go?” she said.“Nobody wants an old woman. It was stay with the Roamers or starve.” She laughed suddenly, a harsh cackle that had no humor in it. “Not that they feed me well. It’s scraps for me—anything that’s not good enough for the dogs.”
Alyss and Will exchanged a quick glance.
“The dogs,” Alyss said. “The dogs in the camp?”
“Aye. Those too. And the oth—” She stopped, a fearful gleam in her eyes. “Yes, the dogs in the camp,” she amended quickly. With an enormous effort, Will prevented himself from looking at Alyss again. He looked away casually, as if he hadn’t noticed Hilde’s stumble.
“Why don’t you run away?” Alyss asked.
Hilde looked at her as if the question was insane. “How? Where would I go? I’ve got nothing. If I tried to run away, they’d come after me and drag me back. Old woman like me can’t run fast. Nothing I can do. I’m stuck with the Roamers and I’ll have to make the best of it.” Her voice was heavy with the inevitability of her predicament.
“Hilde,” Alyss said slowly, “if you could get away from the Roamers, would you want to?”
“Well, of course!” Hilde replied eagerly. Then reality claimed her once more. “But how? I can’t run. And what would I do if I did get away? No, it’s foolishness to even think of that.”
“We’d help you,” Will said, and she looked at him suspiciously.
“Why would you do that?”
“Let’s just say we have a score to settle with these Roamers,” Will told her.
She wavered. The idea of escaping her current life was an attractive one. “But what would I do?” she asked.
Alyss answered this time. “We have a friend who owns a restaurant. I’m sure you could work for her. It’ll be a lot easier than what you’re doing and nobody would kick you or curse you.”
“But you’d have to work,” Will warned her, and she turned her gaze to him.
“I’m not afraid of work,” she said. “I don’t expect handouts. But pay me a little, let me have a little to eat and give me somewhere warm to sleep . . . that’d be like heaven.”
“I’m sure Jenny would give you plenty to eat,” Will said. “And she’s an excellent cook.”
“We’ll give you some money for now,” Alyss said. “And Will can take you to another village to wait for us. We have horses, so he’ll take you far enough to be safe from the Roamers.”
Hilde wavered still. “You’re sure this friend of yours will give me a job?”
Alyss nodded emphatically. “If we ask her. Yes. It’ll be light work and you’ll have a good life, Hilde. And, to seal the bargain, you can have this fine dress of mine.”
Hilde’s eyes opened wide at her words. The dress was a simple enough one, but it was made of good quality wool, soft and warm to the touch. And it was unpatched and clean and in infinitely better shape than the rags she was wearing.
“But what will you wear?” she asked.
Alyss gestured to Hilde’s ragged skirt, blouse and shawl. “I’ll trade for your clothes.”
Hilde frowned, puzzled by the idea. “Why would you want to wear these?”
Alyss allowed herself the ghost of a smile.
“Believe me, I don’t want to. But it’s sort of necessary for what we have in mind.”
7
EVEN THOUGH HE HAD SEEN ALYSS’S SKILL WITH DISGUISES before, Will was startled by the transformation. She had cut her hair shorter to match the length of Hilde’s. Then she’d rubbed earth and ash into it so that it was matted and gray and tangled. Her face was darker and it was lined and worn, seemingly with age. It was only when he looked closely that Will could see it was the result of skillful makeup. Alyss, like all Couriers, never traveled without a makeup and disguise kit. It was one of a Courier’s most valuable tools of trade.
But the most telling part of the deception was her perfect adoption of the older woman’s body language. Alyss had observed her closely throughout the morning and she had copied Hilde’s crouched, subservient body position exactly. She moved the same way, hobbling bent over, eyes down and with a sideways, shuffling skip. It was in their favor that Hilde rarely made eye contact with any of the Roamers. But even if Alyss did, Will was almost certain they would never notice the substitution.
In addition, she was wearing Hilde’s stained and tattered clothes and that completed the picture. She smiled at Will as she emerged from behind the screen of bushes where she had changed. She held the ragged clothing out, keeping it away from her body as long as possible.
“This is the part I like least of all,” she said.
Hilde, for her part, was delighted with her new green dress. She paraded around the small clearing in the forest, muttering admiring phrases to herself. Will guessed she’d probably never owned such a fine piece of clothing in her life.
“Now,” said Alyss, “I suggest you take Hilde to that village we passed through yesterday morning. Put her in the inn and come back here. In the meantime, I’ll take her place in the camp.”
But Will shook his head. “I’ll do that tonight,” he said. “First I want to be sure that your disguise holds up. Hilde and I will be watching from the trees, just to make sure you’re all right.”
“I’ll be fine, Will,” she reassured him.
“Then there’s no rush to get Hilde away. If they fall for your disguise, they won’t go looking for her, will they?”
She smiled. She liked that he was concer
ned for her safety, even though she was totally confident in her ability to carry off the impersonation. She reached out a dirt-stained hand and touched his.
“You’re right. And I’ll feel safer knowing you’re watching.”
Alyss’s confidence turned out to be well founded. When she hobbled back into the camp a few minutes later, laden with the firewood that Will had collected while she changed and disguised herself, none of the Roamers showed the slightest interest in her.
As the day wore on, they would shout at her from time to time, setting her to some menial, difficult or unpleasant task that they didn’t want to do. On several occasions, when she was intentionally tardy in carrying out their orders, she was punished with kicks or cuffs to the head. She reacted exactly as she’d seen Hilde do— cowering away, whimpering in pain and fear and trying to cover her head with her bent arms.
It was a masterful performance. Watching it, with Hilde dozing contentedly some meters farther back in the forest, Will felt his lips compress into a tight line each time Alyss was struck. He marked down the Roamers responsible. Once this was all over, he thought grimly, he would be carrying out a little retribution for those careless blows.
As the afternoon passed, he realized that Alyss had carried off the deception and he began to relax. He woke Hilde as dusk drew in. The old woman had not had such a long, uninterrupted rest in years and she woke reluctantly.
“How’s the lady managing?” she asked, and he smiled reassuringly at her.
“Perfectly. The Roamers have no idea you’re gone. Want to see?”
He led her carefully forward through the trees and she crouched in the shadows watching as Alyss hobbled around the camp, dumping stacks of firewood by each fireplace, then lighting the fires for the evening meal’s preparation. Hilde was fascinated to observe her alter ego at work. On one occasion, when one of the Roamers threw a piece of firewood at Alyss, hitting her on the leg, she winced in sympathy. Eventually, Will touched her arm and they withdrew into the trees, heading to the spot where the horses were tethered. She hopped along beside him, bent-backed and awkward. But after a while, she looked up at him, a hint of a smile on her lined face.