In the Eye of Heaven Part 7

One of the men nearby fished the thing from Durand's palm, tossing it for weight. "One round?" he said. "It ought to do."

"Drink up," Gol said, and then to Durand: "You look hungry enough to work, but we'll see, I think. We're hunting a thief here in Tormentil."

This got a look from every man around the fires.

"Aye, lads. We've found the root of the trouble: why it's been so hard for these folk to pay the king's tax, why the harvest has been so poor lately. Seems our own bailiff has been cheating. Fining his friends and neighbors for this and that, and none of it ever getting back to His Lordship. And this bailiff, he runs the mill as well as all the rest of it And His Lordship's peasants say this bailiff's been shorting them for two years. Every mother's son grumbling against his lord and master when it was this thieving wh.o.r.eson responsible. Poisoning His Lordship's good name. Getting folks worked up against the king. And now this thieving little oath-breaker's got himself caught with his fingers in it."

Taking a thief might be a good start."Hey!" said one of the soldiers. "I've found another one."

Just beyond the ring of fires, Heremund stepped from behind a cart.

AS THE OTHERS THE OTHERS drank up, Durand dashed off to collect his gear from the roadside. With a dozen or more armed men behind him, he no longer feared the forest. Heremund darted after him the instant Durand stepped from the camp. drank up, Durand dashed off to collect his gear from the roadside. With a dozen or more armed men behind him, he no longer feared the forest. Heremund darted after him the instant Durand stepped from the camp.

"Durand, G.o.ds, it's him!" he said, scuttling close."Who?" He thought he saw one of his bags up the track.

"The prophecy." The skald's tone was desperate. "It was Radomor."

Durand took an instant to recall.

"It was his father's court I was at!" said Heremund. "We've blundered right into it."

Durand ducked, reaching for a bag slumped in a pool of dirty water. As he caught hold of the thing, he realized that he had found his hauberk. It streamed as he wrenched it from the ditch.

"Heremund, this Radomor's practically a kinsman. I was at the wedding." He remembered now that the duke's girl had dark hair. "And he's a hero, isn't he?"

"Aye, but-"

"Nearly died saving the king at the Battle of Hallow Down," Durand recalled. The duke put on a great feast down in Acconel, and the skalds shook the rafters.

"Yes, Durand, but-"

"It's a n.o.ble house. There was a king, wasn't there?" Now, Durand argued as he stooped and plucked his belongings.

"Old King Carondas was his grandsire, Durand."

Durand threw his hands wide, his point proven. "Carondas's face is still on half the pennies in Errest. We've hunted a lord's train for a hundred leagues, and not had a sniff. I can hardly leave him."

"Lad, I don't-"

"Besides," Durand reasoned, "I've taken his money." "I saw that," muttered the skald. "You won't go hungry with this lot."

Durand was not concerned. A new man must be tried. He had most of his things by now, bedroll to iron mail all sopping wet.

"I was never going to make it to this tournament of yours, was I? And how long would I last without a penny? I'd be dead or begging before the next moon. And it's done you no good traveling with me, has it?"

Heremund caught Durand by the tunic. "It was me, boy. Don't you understand? I was the fool with the vision. I fear I've done a terrible thing."

"Heremund! You've told me yourself. He's a hero. Think. What sense does your prophecy make?"

"No, boy. It's all coming back. All of it."

The frantic skald caught sight of something in the mud, and absently ducked to fish it out. It was some kind of strap.

Durand squared with the little minstrel. The alehouse camp-fires flickered beyond him. He took a breath. "All right, Heremund. Tell me what you saw. If it was so terrible, tell me."

Heremund blinked where he squatted with the muddy strap. "I remember s.n.a.t.c.hes. Darkness and war. Gates and walls and towers. Fire. And the words. I don't know where the words came from."

At the camp, Gol was back among the men, bellowing and kicking laggards into motion.

"Heremund," Durand said, "this Lazar Gol has taken me on, straight from the wild forest. You saw it. The Powers have set this in my path for a reason," he said.

Durand reached down and took the strap from Heremund's hand. With a sucking plop, his shield burst from the mud. As Durand lifted the thing, Heremund rubbed at its face, baring stags' heads under the filth.

Down the road, Gol's tone was harsher now."They want me," said Durand.

Heremund was nodding as Durand left him and walked into the firelight.

"RIGHT," SAID G GOL. "Most of you are pie-eyed, and you'll pay later. But I'll need a few lads. So, who'll I take on this little midnight stroll?" He peered through slit eyes, then reached out, tapping a man on the surcoat. "You. And you. And you."

He stopped, turning on Durand "And you, our new friend."

Gol swaggered through the others till he stood below the crossed arms of a giant Valduran, complete with jutting beard and wide shaven forehead. "And you, Fulk An'Tinan? You're still with us, ain't you?"

The big man stopped, thick lips stiff as a dead man's fingers. Durand wouldn't have been taunting him. He had heard it said that the Valdurans had held their mountain strongholds against all comers since long before Saerdan set eyes on old Errest From their mountains, the warriors of the high pa.s.ses watched nations rise and fall like tides round an island. And besides, the man's belt could girth an ox.

"I know it's your last night with us," Gol said, "but the night's not over yet. They'll all tell you His Lordship's hired me to play captain, so I'm here to squeeze every penny. And you, my friend, still owe His Lordship a few hours."

The Valduran hardly blinked. "It should have ended on Hallow Down. We, all of us, gathered to fight Borogyn and his Heithans. A little coin in the fighting season. Now we are this man's bond-warriors, bought while his last war-band were still cooling in the earth, his every bondman slain round him while he lived. It should have ended on the Down."

Gol turned away from the wild talk of the outlander, favoring his men with a mocking look. Durand wondered how a Valduran found himself so far from his homeland.

"It'll be just strong arms on this, lads," said Gol. "Shouldn't be anything fatal. A midnight stroll. Right? Now, if we're going to find a miller, we ought to find his mill. Come on."

The grim outlander shouldered his sword.

Gol cupped his hand at his ear, listening for the stream and spinning wheel.

"This way, lads!"

They tramped through the berms and fences of the village until they found the looming mill, its wheel bashing away out of sight on some tributary of the Banderol. A curt gesture of Gol's hand had two men at the front door. Durand was pleased to see that Gol's troop wasn't all drinking and bl.u.s.ter. They moved with speed and silence.

"We've come from Lord Radomor," shouted Gol. Inside there was a slamming sound. "Break it!" Gol roared, but the door held.

Gol shoved his finger at Durand and the Valduran. "You two. Around back!" And they were off. Durand bolted around the mill, blundering through tangled bushes and a heap of eel traps on the way. There were one, two corners, and then a straight charge for river.

A gaping face appeared."Ballocks!" it said, and vanished.

Durand darted after. There was a sill of earth along the foundation next to the vast waterwheel flinging spray. The crooked bailiff had come out a back door, but Gol's men were already there-pounding at the new obstacle-before the man could turn. The bailiff was trapped between Durand and his own mill wheel.

"Come on then," said Durand, loud against the racket of the wheel.

The bailiff glanced once between Durand and the flickering blades, then-impossibly-he turned to the spinning flash and jumped. Men on the far side of the wheel roared. The bailiff soared. His foot touched a flying paddle, and he winged skyward so that, in an instant, his hands were on the s.h.a.ggy eaves of the mill's roof and he was gone.

"King of Heaven," said the knights who appeared behind Durand. "Never seen the like."

Durand scowled up at the eaves three fathoms over his head. Letting a man slip through his fingers was no way to prove himself.

"What one man can do, another can match," he said.With a breath caught in his teeth, he jumped.And missed-almost.

His foot shot down a greasy rail. There was an instant of spinning horror. His knee caught. He clung, twisted, and the wheel carried him high. Torchlight flashed on wavelets. He saw eel traps under the river's skin. Then the s.h.a.ggy eaves loomed like a bear, and he threw himself, heaving his chest over the roof's edge. The wheel under his heels looked hungry for bone.

"Champion of Heaven, teach me courage," Durand grunted.

Then he was up and peering over the humpbacked roof for the bailiff. He might have been on an empty island.

"Oh very good," Sir Gol announced from the road. "Come down you daft b.a.s.t.a.r.d." It took a heartbeat for Durand to realize that the captain wasn't talking to him. And that he must be able to see the bailiff.

Durand crawled the soggy rooftop toward the ridge. Spidery plants caught in the forks of his splayed fingers. It was a long time since anyone had paid a thatcher to mend this heap.

"Come down and give up the b.l.o.o.d.y coin," Gol continued. "Maybe I'll say I never found you. That was some trick, but the game's up, I think."

Durand peered over the roof-peak, picking out a pale shape sprawled over mold-black thatch. The man was staring down on Gol and his men.

"Come on, I'd hate to have to fire the mill, and you can't live up there forever. We've got you."

The sprawled form made no move. The thieving miller-bailiff judged that no one would be coming after him-not soon-and that Gol was going to wait a long while before burning down their master's mill.

Silent, Durand climbed to his feet.

"You should've been a sailor, friend," Gol said. "We've never seen anything like it." There was something said among the men that Durand couldn't make out-and laughing.

Durand stole down the slope of the roof, fighting against noise and bad balance. It was like walking on rotten mattresses, but he let the shouts from the street and the thunder of the mill wheel smother the little pops and crackles of the straw.

Finally, he could see over the roof's edge. Gol's men were pacing and staring up; they spotted him.

The bailiff must have seen the same thing. He twitched then, spinning onto his back, and Durand realized he wasn't in a good position.

He felt the bailiff's hands on him. The man's boot swung up for his guts-a wrestler's throw with a wild six-fathom fall at the end for Durand if he couldn't get loose.

They were locked together. For an instant, he and his victim were poised on the brink, then Durand's strength won out, and he wrenched the bailiff's shoulders off the roof and into the air. Durand's smile twisted, and he shoved the man up, pressing him high.

Gol's boys smiled up. A few flapped their hands, beckoning.

"Right," said Durand, and, with a chuckle, he pitched the fugitive down into a trio of laughing soldiers.

When he got down, the lads were shoving wineskins in his face and clapping him on the back.

"You, friend, are the most fearless squirrel in all the Atthias!" announced the blond soldier, Mulcer, who had squared off with the Rook. "Who needs ladders? He's a one man siege tower, this one!"

Gol laughed with the rest, before the whole lot of them rounded slowly on the bailiff.

"Where is it then, eh?" Gol said. "We went to a lot of trouble to get our hands on your neck. You think we're going to let you go without wringing the money out of you?"

They had circled the bailiff.

"Right boys," said Gol. "Let's hear what he has to say." Two men caught the bailiff's arms and held him tight. "The money's mine, Lordship," said the bailiff. One of the men jerked his fist back, but Gol raised his hand. "No. I want to hear this." "A man's allowed to save," answered the bailiff. "Clever."

"It's true!" the bailiff protested. "How'd you come by it all?" "I get a share, don't I?"

Gol tapped his temple. "Ah. Now there's the trouble. You forget. I know what you're paid. It ain't enough, friend. Not nearly."

"Lordship, it were never that much!"

"But I've seen it, friend. Or as good as. Your little friends in town are telling tales. A penny here. A penny there." The bailiff's eyes hardened for an instant. "Don't you worry just who now. They lined up to do it. n.o.body likes a bailiff. Or a miller. Especially one with his thumb on the scales. Buying short measure. Stealing the sweat off their backs. Fining them blue. A bit of advice: When you've been stealing pennies from your neighbors, you don't want to go jingling them under their noses, friend. They tend to remember. You'd have done much better robbing your master and spreading it about a bit. We'd never catch a man at that." He rapped a knuckle heavily against the man's breastbone. "Where's the money?"

"Let me go, and I'll tell you where it is.""So you do have it," concluded Gol. "And you know where.""Let me go.""Where?"

"Out the back. For G.o.d's sake. There's a bag. Please. I shoved it up an eel trap and rolled the lot into the river."

Gol glanced up to Durand and a couple of the others who went and pulled up all the traps, finding nothing but a half-dozen lashing eels. When they splashed back, Gol was squatting like a stone by his prisoner, and there was a rumble from the village road. For an instant, the glitter of Gol's eyes was the only motion.

Then there was a pounding.

From the dark came a tall stallion and a storm of cloak billowing about the shoulders of a horseman like a giant Durand and the other trap-pullers stood dripping as the horseman's cloak settled, like great wings folding. He was bald as a skull, and a beard bristled round his lips. This was Lord Radomor. Some old wound-the one he took for the king-had hitched one shoulder, but he still had the look of a man who could tear up trees with his bare hands.

Gol drew himself up to face his master, but risked a quick look to Mulcer.

The blond man shook his head. "Nothing."Gol muttered, "b.a.l.l.s," and bowed low to his lord."Lordship!" Gol said.

Radomor's voice rumbled: "Is this the one?" The lord's stallion seemed to have caught his master's mood. It looked ready to leap out of its skin.

"Aye, Lordship," said Gol. "It's him. He's admitted as much."

Radomor's dark eyes glinted as he turned on the thief, but then for a long time he said nothing. The bailiff was blinking, straining.

"You robbed them in my name," said Radomor. "You cheated and swindled and stole and poisoned, all the while saying 'Speak to Lord Radomor. It is he who cheats and swindles and breaks you. It's he your children should remember in their curses.'"

The bailiff twisted, pinioned on his knees as his lord loomed from horseback. "No, Lordship! I swear it!"

"Swear nothing! You've broken oaths that set your soul at hazard, and now you would say more? You put treason in their hearts. I heard their rumblings in my father's hall, far off in Ferangore. Men speaking against taxes. Men speaking against their lord, and their duke, and their king in Eldinor."

Radomor turned to Gol. "Has this man returned what he has stolen?"

Gol spread his arms. "He has told us where it's hid, but there's nothing-"

Now the prisoner lashed like a gaffed fish. "G.o.d. It was there! I swear it!"

While the others jumped to restrain him, Sir Radomor's naked skull only tilted a degree or two.