coast.
Tilda could have told Dugan that he was wrong, and that these two Guilders were not here to assassinate anyone. She could have told him that their mission was more important than he could fathom, more important than his life, or Captain Block’s, or certainly her own. But there was no reason for Dugan to know any of that, and even if there had been, it was not Tilda’s place to tell him.
She stayed quiet, and Dugan took her silence as acquiescence. He let out a breath, and looked down from the balcony on the surrounding keep and courtyard.
“You saw that knight Procost give me the stink-eye?” he asked. Tilda raised an eyebrow.
“I did, but I did not know it was called the stink-eye.”
Dugan smirked. “Works though, right? That is an Imperial Knight, swearing allegiance to the Code rather than to any one Codian noble. He may be serving here but he is not a servant of the Trellanes, and I doubt he is privy to the family secrets. I hope your Captain is speaking wisely.”
“Captain Block does not speak otherwise,” Tilda said, and Dugan gave her a look.
“Sure he does, Tilda. Everybody gets worried, or angry, and they say things they don’t mean.”
“Not Captain Block.”
Dugan took a last look down on the town, and toward the great yellow mountain looming among the Girdings. He turned to go back to his own room, but said one more thing before opening the balcony doors.
“Well, then he is just wrong.”
Tilda watched Dugan leave, exiting her room for the hall to his own. She stayed out on the balcony for a while.
*
There was still no sign of Captain Block at nightfall, though Tilda and Dugan were brought another meal, this one of pork loins roasted with nuts and then glazed. Tilda agreed with Dugan’s assessment shouted across the hall that while the Dauls had not won a war in centuries, they still knew how to cook a pig.
Tilda occupied the evening hours by oiling blades, and then she cleaned all three of the ackserpi guns Block had brought along from Miilark. There was still no sign of the old dwarf, and the anxious waiting made Tilda tired. She lay down on top of the bed covers in her room, still in trousers and sweater but with her boots off, and despite everything running through her mind she soon drifted off to sleep.
Footsteps on the stairs woke her with the night sky still dark outside, and Tilda was against the wall beside her door with a dagger held behind her back by the time someone knocked. The Captain’s voice growled her name. She opened the door and found Block swaying on his feet, one eye open and one screwed shut, face waxy and a very long day’s worth of dark gray stubble on his cheeks.
“We’re leaving,” Block said, wincing in the low lantern light from the hall. “Get the bags.”
Servants, also looking groggy but at least sober, appeared on the stairs while Block lurched over to pound on Dugan’s door. Tilda dispersed the baggage among them, keeping the long, flat ackserpi case and the Captain’s kitbag for herself. Dugan came over in time to hoist the bedrolls along with his own saddlebags. Everyone followed the Captain down from the tower and back out into the courtyard. Block muttered at the eastern sky, faintly touched now with light over the courtyard wall, and weaved toward a six-horse coach waiting by the open gate. Tilda took a few rapid steps to draw even with him.
“What about our horses?” she asked.
“Sold ’em to the baron,” Block said with a slur. “Would have given them as a gift, but Trell…Trellane wanted to bargain with a Miilarkian.” The Captain chuckled and shook some coins together in a pocket.
Dugan had padded up on the dwarf’s other shoulder. “Have you been drinking this whole time?”
“A’course not. We stopped to eat once.”
Block drifted on under half-sail but Tilda had stopped and stood looking over at the dark stables. Dugan halted beside her and waited for the servants to pass.
“They’ll be fine here,” he said. “Better than fine. Hinterland Codians love their horses. Daulmen even more so.”
Tilda blinked at him and thought of the white warhorse by the tree, washed and bandaged as well as could be managed in the circumstances. Even by a man in a great hurry to be on his way.
“Thank you,” Tilda said. Dugan nodded and turned to go, but hitched a step as she added, “You are a kind man.”
Dugan looked back at Tilda and blinked, a strange expression on his face. She hurried past him and helped Captain Block lurch into the coach from a stool, while the servants secured the baggage in the boot.
The trip back through town was short, and though the driver up top was the only person to accompany them, Block answered none of the questions Tilda and Dugan tried to ask him. The dwarf rode far back in his cushioned seat, eyes closed and mouth open, swearing quietly whenever the coach bumped or jostled.
There was just enough daylight to see mist on the mountain slopes as the coach passed through an open gate in the south town wall without challenge, crossed the portage road, and swung around behind a dark inn that looked to be closed for the season. The driver parked behind a stable in a yard surrounded by a corral fence, and hopped down to help Tilda and Dugan unload. Captain Block took only his kitbag, leaving Tilda and Dugan to split all the baggage they had carried on two horses. Both bent under saddlebags, bedrolls, knapsacks and duffels. The dwarf hardly waited for them before opening a back gate and starting across a dewy meadow to the south, moving on a more-or-less straight line for a homely cottage under pine trees, beyond which the foothills immediately began to rise.
Tilda looked past the hills and up toward the mountains, which from her present position looked like an impenetrable wall. The narrow light of dawn threw sharp black shadows across their stony faces from every crag and overhang, and the forests on their lower slopes were mantled with mist off the river. Whatever form Dugan’s “secret passage” took, she hoped that it went through, and not over.
Block’s stride quickened as he moved around the derelict cottage, and a moment later Tilda lifted her head despite her bowed shoulders. She sniffed the air.
“Nine Gods,” she said. “Is that coffee? Not tea, I mean, but real, black coffee?”
“Doonish,” Dugan said from behind her. She glanced back and he grinned. “What, you think the Road Legions march on love of the Emperor alone? Why do you think we conquered Doon in the first place? Beans, my dear, not just a Channel port.”
Around the back of the cottage a camp was set in a semi-circle amphitheatre of pines. A half-dozen scruffy- looking fellows lazed about in dark leather armor, mostly around a fire pit with frying pans set out on stones. An old smoke-blackened carafe hung on a chain, wafting out the enticing aroma.
“Captain Block,” one of the figures called as he arose, and smoothly gave a bow. He had a light sword on his hip but wore no armor, only heavy clothing, polished boots, and a rich cloak. Though he was a good deal younger than the Baron Trellane whom Tilda had briefly seen yesterday, his face was similar enough that he must have been a near relative. Block squinted at him.
“Banner, was it?”
Banner de Trellane grinned. “Kind of you to remember, sir, for I left the table early to see to your arrangements. Though from what I gather, I could have returned at any point. Had the revelries not so recently concluded, I am sure my Uncle would be here to see you off himself. But I am afraid that as it stands I am the only male member of my family who finds himself ambulatory this morning.”
“Is that coffee?” Block growled.
“Ah, yes. While knowing your intent to leave us with unseemly haste, I yet took the liberty of having a small repast prepared. Enjoy it, if you please, for you’ll not get quite the same for the next several days.”
“Not to naysay your Lordliness, but we manage a’right on the Underway.”
Tilda did not see who spoke until a little man stepped out from behind Banner Trellane. She gave a start, thinking for a moment that she was looking at only the second dwarf that she had ever seen in her life.
But this was no dwarf. While only slightly shorter than the Captain, the figure now grinning at the new arrivals seemed significantly smaller, for in chest and limb he was nearer the proportions of a human than to those of the rough-hewn Mountain Folk. Whereas the Captain was heavy-featured and bronzed by the Island sun, the newcomer had a pallid complexion and an imperishably grizzled look, with a sandy beard roughly trimmed, and wide-open saucers for eyes colored a strange, almost amber hue. His nose was pronounced and nearly bulbous, tending toward a lighter pink shade than the rest of his face. He wore leather armor as did the other men present,
