Judith said nothing, but one of her eyebrows lifted a fraction.
“The stupid armor-plated bastard saved my life, okay?” said Davith. “And I’m not saying I like him, but…” He made a frustrated gesture that was somehow both meaningless and surprisingly eloquent.
“My god, Davith, is that guilt I’m hearing?” asked Marguerite.
He glared at her. “I try to pay my debts. Besides, there’s something you’re forgetting.”
“Oh?”
His annoyed expression vanished under a broad smile. “You’re going to want to move fast, and I know for a fact that I’m the only one here who knows how to take care of a horse.”
FIFTY
“THIS PLAN IS FAR TOO COMPLICATED,” muttered Shane, looking over the battlements atop the single tower. “It has too many moving parts. Plans like that fail too easily.”
Wisdom leaned against the stone beside him. “Probably,” it agreed. “Are any of them fixable?”
The paladin sighed. It was an odd thing, but when he looked away from Wisdom, his body did not register the presence of another being beside him. His eyes and ears said that the demon existed, but his skin and his nerves did not.
“Probably not. What do you plan to do if they kill me before I get back to you?”
“There will be an archer stationed up here to shoot this body,” said Wisdom tranquilly. “That, at least, I can plan for. And if the archer is lost, I will dash myself against the stones. But I would prefer to have you do it.”
“Thanks,” said Shane. “I think.”
Wisdom grinned at him. “Take it as a compliment, paladin. Very few people are chosen to kill a god.”
Which put him in mind of Lady Silver and Beartongue and the Saint. He hoped that Wren would be able to carry the news to the Temple of the Rat in his stead.
She’ll do it. You know she’ll do it, as long as she has breath in her body. Worry about something you can control instead, like our defenses. What little there are of them.
Five of Wisdom’s people were staying behind with him to present the illusion of a force defending the castle. Shane had been surprised to find Erlick among them.
“You’re staying?”
“Got a cousin taking my niece,” the older man said, clearing his throat. “She’s good with kids. An’
just good in general. She’ll do right by her. Better’n I would. I ain’t…I ain’t good at that sort of thing.”
“But—”
Erlick met his eyes, and Shane saw the dead light in them and closed his mouth.
The other five were much the same. One older man with a pronounced limp, who slapped his bad leg and said, matter-of-factly, that he was in so much pain that it would be a relief. Shane could see
something seeping through the bandages on the man’s foot and knew better than to ask. Two middle-aged women with eyes like Erlick’s, who only grunted, and one very old grandmother who said that she was about dead anyway but by god, she could still put an arrow in a man’s eye, just see if she couldn’t.
The fifth was a young woman named Kasha, who had too-bright eyes and the hard, hacking cough of a consumptive. Wisdom informed him that she was to be the archer stationed on the roof.
“The plan may go badly if she has a coughing fit when she’s supposed to be shooting you,” Shane warned the demon.
“Have faith,” Wisdom said, and laughed at the look the paladin gave her.
IT TOOK LESS time to reach Wisdom’s keep than it had to leave it, partly because they had horses, partly because they were driven by panic. Their pace was limited mostly by Wren’s mount, who was, without question, a plowhorse. Marguerite was fairly certain that Davith hadn’t left money for it, and glumly added horse-theft to the tally of their crimes.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Davith said when she asked. “I told them I was taking it on the authority of the Dreaming God, and that the paladins behind us would make good.”
“That’s not any better.”
“On the contrary, it’s marvelous.”
Judith, who seemed as humorless as a stone, actually snickered, so Marguerite gave up. It’s not like we can get in any hotter water with the temple. They must know that we’re going to warn him.
It’s a good thing they don’t have access to divine horseflesh, or we’d be in so much trouble right now.
As it was, they used the horses badly, and Marguerite felt badly for it. “I will make it up to you,”
she told her mount. They alternated walking and trotting, getting off to walk alongside, over and over, as long as daylight lasted. The hills were green and rolling and beautiful and Marguerite hated them for it. “When this is over,” she said, “I am going to find a forest. Or a desert. Or the ocean. Anything but this.” A marmot whistled at her in alarm. “Sod off,” she told it.
Wren snorted. So did Davith. Judith smiled her small smile that did not rearrange any of her facial features in any way.
Somehow, after an eternity, they found themselves at the river that marked the edge of Wisdom’s territory.
“Right,” said Davith. “How are we going to approach them, anyway? Seeing as the last time, a bunch of people got turned into pincushions.”
“White flag,” said Marguerite. She dug out a handkerchief that had been white once and now might, with charity, have been called grubby cream. “I’ll need a flagpole.”
“Ah, yes,” said Davith, looking around the landscape. “I’ll just cut one from one of these many,
many trees, shall I?”
Judith, more practical or at least less sarcastic, dismounted and chopped at one of the scruffy bushes that clung to the river’s edge. The resulting flagpole was about two feet long and less than half an inch thick. Marguerite felt as if she was waving a toy flag at a parade. Nevertheless, she hoisted her flag high as they approached the keep. And here’s hoping that white flags mean peace here, and not, “We’ve come to murder everyone down to the sheep.”
No one shot them. That was, she felt, a positive sign.
They drew up in front of the large double doors and waited.
And waited.
“Do you think they know we’re here?” asked Davith.
“They know,” said Judith flatly.
They waited longer. The stone walls were too thick to hear activity. Marguerite scanned the outbuildings, looking for signs of life. They can’t have moved, can they? I mean, the demon must know that the Dreaming God’s people will be coming, so moving might be sensible, but…
She had just started to run through the ramifications of having stolen horses from the Dreaming God’s temple in order to aid and abet a demon, only to find no demon to aid and abet, when one of the doors opened and Shane strode out to meet them.
HE LOOKED SURPRISINGLY WELL. The demon apparently hadn’t been torturing him. The blue hollows under his eyes were deeper, and he’d stopped shaving and now had a few days growth of badger on his face, but he didn’t have the half-dead look that, say, the possessed bull had had.
Shane walked up to Marguerite’s horse, caught her stirrup, and she gazed into his eyes, feeling her heart melt, feeling I love you waiting on her tongue, and then he said, in horrified tones, “You can’t be here!”