“Ah,” said Max, glancing at David. “That’s why you want to go to Broadbrim Mountain. You think Skeedle can help us get in to see the smuggler.”
His roommate nodded and handed over the second sheet. Putting the first aside, Max took up the decrypting lens once again.
Piter’s Folly is located in the duchy of Bryllbatha near the borders with Raikos and Holbrymn. It is named after its founder, who was ridiculed for building so remote a shelter when the troubles began. Piter is deceased (officially, he drowned; unofficially, Madam Petra had him killed), but what started as his own private haven has grown into one of the largest human settlements in Blys. There’s no official census, of course, but my contacts estimate that several thousand people live there, protected by the island’s vast moat of surrounding lake and an expensive arrangement with the duchy’s braymas. The Ravenswood Spur is the closest road. It cuts through the old Carpathians and passes close to the settlement on its way to feed into the Iron Highway that runs east toward Aamon’s kingdom. It’s a notoriously dangerous stretch of country, and the Agents must be wary of criminals—particularly as war looms and food grows scarce.
In addition to bandits, there are also Prusias’s spies to consider. Prusias trusts few of his vassals and fears treachery at every turn. The kingdom is riddled with informants, and it is unlikely that the conspicuous use of magic or force will go unnoticed. A low profile is best.
While Aamon’s armies threaten from the east, perhaps the greatest danger and most unpredictable element is Yuga. You may have heard that the demoness has devoured most of her duchy and has been encroaching upon other territories. Piter’s Folly is not far from Yuga’s own borders or from Raikos, where she is reputed to be feeding. The more skittish settlers are preparing to flee the island and move west.
This is a dangerous assignment, but an essential one. We must open up a communications channel to the Workshop and learn whatever we can about Prusias’s war machine. Perhaps Aamon and Rashaverak will eliminate Prusias for us, but they are just as likely to turn upon Rowan themselves. We must prepare for war in any event.
Sol Invictus,
Alistair Wesley
When Max finished, he stood and gazed over David’s shoulder at the map he was studying. Piter’s Folly was far away—almost a thousand miles across what had once been called the Alps and Carpathians. And winter was nearly here.
“It will take us weeks to get there,” Max estimated. “And that’s assuming the roads and bridges are open. Couldn’t we have tunneled closer?”
“Unfortunately, no,” replied David. “It’s not an easy task to create a link between our room and a distant destination. I only have several such outposts in Blys. This outpost is closest to Broadbrim Mountain, but I have another that’s nearer to Piter’s Folly. If we’re lucky, we can use it to return to Rowan.”
“What do you mean, ‘if we’re lucky’?” asked Toby anxiously.
“Assuming it still exists.” David shrugged. “The locations are out of the way, but we’re entering a war zone. There’s nothing to say that an army hasn’t destroyed it or refugees haven’t taken up residence. The outpost is in Raikos—close to the border between Blys and Dùn.”
“And Yuga,” Max reflected grimly. “Can we use this outpost to jump to the other?”
“They don’t work that way,” answered David. “Each linkage requires a lot of time and energy, and I didn’t have enough of either to establish connections between the outposts. Each tunnel is like a spoke that connects back to the observatory, but they don’t connect to each other.”
“Well,” said Toby, “I suppose you’ll have to conjure up a horse and carriage like you did when we stormed old Prusias’s castle, eh?”
“Sorry,” replied David. “No magic. Until we reach Broadbrim Mountain and can hitch up with a goblin cart, we’re either walking or …”
The squirrel monkey’s face drooped.
“I’m to be a steed, aren’t I?”
“It would be faster,” Max reflected. “A nice big horse with room for two. It’s just sixty miles or so, Toby, and the switchbacks to the Broadbrim guardstones aren’t too steep. I know this country.”
“Well, goody for you,” replied Toby acidly. “I suppose when we’re in territory that I know, I’ll be welcome to sit on your back and cry ‘giddy up!’ and ‘whoa, there!’ for a day or two. It’s humiliating. I’m a spy, not a steed!”
“Can you be both?” asked David plaintively.
They headed north. Toby had become a shaggy black horse, and as the disgruntled smee cantered up the road, Max found his sense of adventure returning. The air was cold but bracing, bending the tall grass and the wild thistle as winter settled over the land. The sun was rising, trying to peek from behind a jigsaw canopy of crowding storm clouds. Occasionally its golden rays streamed through to warm the gray landscape and give it a dreamlike quality. The road was empty; the only sounds were those of the wind and the steady clip of hoofs upon the ancient Roman stones.
By early afternoon, the land became hillier, the grass growing in thick tussocks as the road wound through stands of spruce, ash, and poplar. Even the smells became familiar to Max as they neared his old farmhouse. Ahead he saw its stone chimney peeking from behind a hilltop.
“Let’s have a look,” Max said, glancing back at his roommate, whose cramped expression had not changed since morning.
“It might be inhabited,” chattered David, his face blue with cold.
“I’m sure Toby could do with a rest. There might be food. And I know there’s clean water nearby.…”
“If you insist.”
Toby was more than ready for a rest. As they slowed to a trot, the smee was snorting and sucking at the air, trying to catch his breath while steam rose off his flanks. Dismounting, Max and David stretched their aching limbs and led the grumbling smee around a wooded hill where they could approach the house from a less exposed position.
“I’ve really got to get into training,” grumbled Toby. “Too much roulette.”
“Shhh …,” said Max, creeping forward to peer through a gap in the fragrant pines.
There was the farmhouse, but sadly not as Max remembered it. Its red door had been kicked in and the shutters torn away while the wind rippled over puddles in the animal paddock. The windows were dark, and it appeared that much of the roof had burned away in a fire. A feral cat was lounging in the doorway, yawning and cleaning its fur.
“It looks uninhabited,” whispered Max, motioning the others to follow.
The three emerged from the woody fringe of the farmhouse’s clearing, stepping through the small orchard where Toby turned up his nose at the fallen remains of rotted fruit. The paddock was empty, except for the scattered bones of two sheep. Max glanced at the dark stones of a nearby well, remembering the pulpy, giggling monster that had lived in its depths. Toby was ambling toward it on weary legs.
“Don’t water there,” said Max quickly. “There’s a lake nearby. I’ll just look inside and then we can go.”
He soon regretted his decision. The cat darted inside as he approached to poke his head inside the door to see the ruins of his former home. The farmhouse had been ransacked, everything of value broken or carried away by scavenging humans or goblins or whatever else had happened by.
“Not quite as you remember it,” said David sadly, coming up beside him. The boy peered his head inside at the wet, warped floorboards and the frosted mold. “I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Max without much conviction. “I was stupid to hope it would be the same. I’m surprised it’s still standing.”
“At least we got them out,” said David, referring to Isabella and the children. “We’d never have done so without Mr. Bonn. He was a funny one.”
“A kind and thoughtful imp,” Max mused, recalling Prusias’s secretary. “Who’d have thought they exist? I hope he’s okay.… He was a good friend. I first heard about Yuga from him. ‘Patient Yuga,’ he called her.”
r />
“I’ve heard that tale,” said David. “The imps revere her. These days she might require a different nickname. Yuga’s not so patient anymore.… Holbrymn is a wasteland.”
“Have you ever seen her?” Max wondered.
“Just a glimpse once or twice through the observatory when scrying was still possible. Never in person, thank God. You think Mad’raast was big? Yuga’s the size of a hurricane—a living, breathing, ravening storm that stretches to the horizon.”
Max shook his head at the image’s mortifying scale. Toby ambled up, chewing on a mouthful of grass from an old haystack by the paddock.
“What do you say, Toby?” said Max. “Can you do another thirty miles?”
“In thirty miles, do I get to cease my role as Shaggy the Bucktoothed Wonder?”
“For the night at least,” Max assured him. “If you can go thirty, we’ll reach Broadbrim Mountain and my friend will have you lounging in a wagon and eating chocolates all the way to Piter’s Folly.”
“Promise chocolate and you’d better deliver,” sniffed the smee. “This road is hell on my hoofs. I almost miss being limbless.” With a shudder, the horse spit out the hay and tossed his head. “Very well—a gulp, a trot, and then some rest. Let’s get this over with.”
After drinking his fill from the lake, Toby was once again cantering down the roadside. As dusk settled over the landscape, the mountains loomed ahead, their snowcapped peaks obscured by dark clouds gathering at the summits. More than once, Toby slipped on the wet road whose stones were growing icy as daylight waned and the temperature fell.
“How much farther is it?” he gasped, slowing to a hobbling walk. Leaning forward, Max saw that the smee’s lips were flecked with frothy spittle, his breath coming in desperate, sputtering puffs.
“I think you’ve done enough for one day,” said Max, swinging his leg over and helping David down. He gazed up at the sky and heard the low rumble of thunder from the mountains. The temperature was still dropping, and Max worried that they might be in store for freezing rain. Squinting ahead, he tried to estimate how far it would be to Nix and Valya’s. He doubted the vyes still lived there, but he hoped their villa would be in better repair than the farmhouse. “I think it’s another six or seven miles to a house I know. We can gut it out or we can make camp now.”
“A roof trumps a tent,” declared Toby, walking slowly in a circle.
David nodded but was rubbing his behind and looking peevish. The sorcerer was not accustomed to riding for hours at a stretch, but rather strolling along at his own pace. David was perhaps the most traveled person at Rowan, but journeys via magic tunnel were undoubtedly less taxing to his behind than hours spent riding bareback atop a cantering horse.
“I’m happy to walk for a bit,” he grumbled, loosening the straps on his pack.
“Cloak-and-dagger’s fun, isn’t it?” Max needled, looping an arm around David’s narrow shoulders. His voice dropped to an urgent whisper. “Look! I think there’s our double agent at the cafe up ahead. Not the waitress—the man smoking a cigarette. Don’t stare! I’ll stake it out; you get ready to drop the briefcase.…”
“That’s hilarious, Max. Truly.”
Grinning, Max turned to address Toby when something caught his eye.
There were riders on the road behind them. At such a distance, they seemed little more than bobbing black specks, but there were many. They were still a good ways off, but they appeared to be riding swiftly.
Max spoke sharply. “Off the road! Toby, take a smaller shape. Quick, quick, quick!”
Seconds later, Max, David, and a gray hare hurried off the road, crossing a narrow strip of dead grass and slipping into the woods. The light was already fading, and Max silently wished David would be more careful as the boy blundered through bracken and branches, cracking leaves and twigs underfoot. When they were a hundred yards in, Max brought the group to a halt.
“You two rest up here,” he whispered. “I’m going back to have a look.”
“Don’t let them see you!” hissed Toby.
“Thanks for the tip.”
David gripped his arm. “Remember your shine,” he cautioned. “If they’re spirits …”
Max nodded. He’d already thought of that and was bundled up not only to ward off the cold but also to minimize the chance that any spirit would glimpse his aura. In his cloak, he carried a mask of dark fabric whose only opening was a narrow band across the eyes. Slipping it on, Max pulled his hood down low and stole through the twilit wood back toward the road.
He selected a mountain ash some twenty yards from the roadside. Taking hold, Max climbed high enough to count the riders but stayed low enough to remain hidden by the branches of a neighboring spruce. As the rain began, Max watched and waited.
The showers were sporadic, but whenever the clouds parted, the moonlight revealed a potentially lethal minefield of watery slicks and icy stone. Max could now hear the horsemen coming.
They had not camped at nightfall as he’d hoped but continued at full gallop even as shadows fell over the land. Whatever their purpose, it was urgent. Edging forward, he peered out into the darkness to see if the riders had lit any torches.
When he saw none, Max knew they were not human. No man or woman would ride so hard in such conditions without so much as a torch to light their way. The riders were getting closer now, the ground thundering at their approach.
They passed like a wild hunt from a child’s nightmare. The figures were armored, chain glinting under the moon as they hunched over swift, champing steeds whose decaying bodies revealed their sliding bones and trailing strings of sinew. There were dogs, too, rotting, ravenous war hounds that bounded alongside the horses, braying into the night. Scores of deathknights galloped by, a spectral company girded for war and racing east toward the front. Several bore Prusias’s standard—a border of wheat sheaves encircling three gold coins. For an instant, Max glimpsed it fluttering in the moonlight and then it was gone—fading into the gloom as the company hurtled past and was swallowed by the mists at the mountain’s foot.
Returning to David and Toby, he found them huddled behind the trunk of a fallen tree, looking cold, wet, and miserable.
“Wh-who was it?” chattered the smee, half burrowed in David’s cloak.
“Soldiers of Prusias,” replied Max. “They’re not searching for us—they’re riding too fast. I’d guess they’re outriders or cavalry heading off to the war with Aamon.”
“What should we do?” asked David.
“I think we should press on,” said Max. “If the horsemen are outriders, there may be an army or some larger force coming up behind us. We don’t want to get caught up in that. We’ll stick to the woods and hike up into the mountains until the terrain gets too steep. Then we’ll have to return to the road—it’s the only way through the higher passes.”
“So we’re to have no roof?” moaned Toby. “No fire or a proper supper?”
Max shook his head. “Sorry. Not tonight at any rate. I have some jerky if you want.”
“Jerky,” sniffed the smee disdainfully. “I might as well chew your boot.”
David coughed into his cloak, a convulsive wheeze that shook his entire body.
“Let’s get going, then,” he wheezed. “The ground is freezing.”
For hours they felt their way through the woods, walking from one moonlit patch to another. Toby had become a lynx to better see in the dark and guide them through the close-pressed firs and spruce that blanketed the foothills. It was hard going, but Max was grateful for the forest’s cover. More than once, a wind came howling through the treetops as fell spirits flew past in the night, their ghostly cries fading as they tore through the mountain passes on some unknown errand.
By dawn, the three had climbed high enough for the trees to thin. The freezing rain had departed, but a cold mist lay about the hills. The air was rich with the smell of pine and resin, the branches sagging with ice. Max stopped to check on David’s progress.
/> Rowan’s little sorcerer was leaning heavily on a walking stick as his feet stumbled along, some twenty yards back. Throughout the night, David had not uttered a peep of complaint, but anyone could see he was flagging. Max set down his pack.
“Sun’s coming up,” he observed, pointing at the range’s golden rim. “I’d say we have another five miles, most of it road, before we reach the guardstones. We’ll need energy for the final push, and I’d say it’s foggy enough to risk a small fire. Get comfortable and I’ll make breakfast. Are your socks wet?”
Coughing into his fist, David nodded wearily and eased down to rest his back against a tree.
“Put on fresh ones,” said Max. “We’ll dry the others and your boots by the fire.”
Without magic, a fire would take some doing. The nearby wood was soaked through and Max had to scour for some drier sticks beneath the branches of a dense fir. Using pinches of lint as tinder, however, he soon had the wood hissing and then crackling with flame. Sitting down, Max rummaged through David’s pack, finding a string of sausages and half a loaf of Marta’s bread wrapped in crinkling brown paper. He soon had the sausages cooking in a small skillet. Toby practically hovered over the pan, licking his lips and sniffing at the sizzling pork until a drop of fat spattered on his whiskered chin. Yowling, he jumped back and settled by David, who was rubbing his stocking feet.
The three wolfed down their breakfast, sopping up the skillet’s grease with the remaining bread. Color had returned to David’s face and even Toby appeared companionable. Standing, Max gazed down at the mist-veiled road and up at the shrouded peaks.
“I think we should head downhill. The terrain only gets steeper ahead. Once we’re back on the road, we need to move quickly. Do you think you can do that?”
David nodded, but glanced anxiously at the ugly blister on his instep.
“Let’s bandage your feet,” Max suggested, digging for a roll of clean linen. “As soon as your socks get wet or start to rub, let me know and we’ll stop and change to others. It’s no good toughing it out and allowing it to get worse—you’ll only slow us down later. Toby, do you think you could manage a mule for a short while?”