Ruff glide-hopped about the yard, and a tan hound sprawled beside the entry, lifted the fold of skin above one eye, lazily watching this foreign animal.
They bargained awhile until they reached a price better suited to John’s needs—an hour’s time and thirty-five.
“Is that good?” Po inquired, when they’d left to find a bathing house and laundry.
“It’s good. I don’t know what we’ll do, though. I may have to find another horse.”
“You cannot leave Rocky with a stranger!”
He grunted. “I don’t want to either. Though he hasn’t been my horse for long.”
“That does not matter!”
He didn’t add that it would be difficult and expensive to trade him for another good mount. Po seemed to become attached to every creature whose path coincided with theirs.
He prayed they wouldn’t get adopted by an unusually large spider, a manticore or a dragon. Those would be awkward companions.
By midday it was done, Rocky was re-shoed, and they met Ruth and Shades outside the blacksmith.
At first, the conversation went back and forth like a game of tennis on Lord Wabberley’s court.
“I have a present for you, since you’ve aided me.” Shades handed John a cloth-wrapped parcel.
“What is this?”
“Two wheel-lock revolving pistols bought with battle salvage.”
“Wheel lock?”
“Latest thing. Five shots in each that fire off quicker than a woodpecker pecking, though reloading takes forever.”
“I see. Thank you.”
He unwrapped them. The guns were plain gunmetal-gray with a little engraving, a wooden stock, and a revolving fat middle. He’d never owned a gun, let alone two. “Thank you.” He raised one, aimed it at the sky and squinted past the lopsided hammer at a circling bird—not one of Ruth’s two. “I’ll try to kill some villains for you.”
Shades laughed. “Yes. I have holsters for them also. How is the horse?”
Thumbs tucked into her wide, black belt, and hip cocked, Po answered. “He is lame. The smith re-shoed him but we are not to ride or stress Rocky for four days.”
Though distracted by the legs below that belt, John coughed. “Three or four.”
“Yes.” She frowned at him. “Four, I feel is best.”
He frowned too.
“Ahem,” Ruth interjected. “We talked and found the road the Thulian soldiers, the Storyteller, and the coffin left by. They are well ahead of us, and they head for Thule, as Shades expected.”
Earlier, Shades had named the soldiers and their country to John. The soldiers traveled wearing dark, enclosing hoods that were rumored to conceal horrors—faces with tentacles writhing from the lower halves. The country of Thule was situated eastward across the sea from the port city of Taritolla. Though John had never heard of it, Po knew it from her lessons. A pity she’d forgotten everything else about Thule.
“How do we catch them with a lame horse?” John mused.
Wrapping the cloth into a neat square, his glowing eye casting a blueness on the cream fabric, Shades muttered the answer. “A caravan leaves today for Taritolla. They are looking for men to drive the wagons as well as be protectors from raiders. We could do it? The pay is low.”
John knew it for the one answer that might be a true solution, maybe felt it before the words were said. Fate again.
“Yes. Rocky could walk, unridden, unsaddled. Let us see if we can sign on.”
CHAPTER NINE
small man in a blue kaftan sitting behind a table in the local market had signed John on as a driver, and Ruth and Shades as guards. Po, he’d assessed for a long languid moment, checking her from toes to breasts to hair, but he had remained silent on the matter. He must think her John’s slave or similar. From the pursing of Po’s mouth and her menacing stare, she was thinking of saying something.
John had pulled her away in time. Best if they thought her his.
It would be even better to make it so in truth, but she was marrying Xander, who they had yet to find. Always this Storyteller was ahead of them. They needed to catch up.
The pay for drivers was a pittance, but the destination was right. Ruth and Shades would mostly be walking to spare the horses drawing the wagons, but he and Princess Po had their own wagon to drive.
Did that make it a royal wagon? The idea amused him.
The rush to leave meant that, within two hours of signing, they left the city by a gate opposite to the one by which they’d entered. Driving was easy as floating in a stream to John. He held the reins and watched everything. The caravan wagons travelled in two parallel lines. Riders trotted by, swords and spears glinting, looking for raiders and strays.
The journey to the port city would take six to seven days, and his ragtag band was already behind by several days.
They needed a shortcut.
“If we have to, will you cross the sea to find him?” He inclined his head to ask Po, who sat at the other end of the driver’s bench. She was as far from him as was possible.
“Xander?”
“Yes.” John flicked the reins, though really the two pairs of horses were going at a good pace following the jiggling rear of the wagon ahead.
Behind this driver’s seat was the cloth opening leading into the covered wagon, where a bed remained rolled out. Behind that was storage space for the trading goods, whatever those were. Carpets and clothing perhaps? What they were carrying didn’t concern him. What did concern him was travelling with Princess Po with only one bed to share. The dilemma was killing him.
He had
