Demon Rider

'Demons! You'd been tortured.' The don seemed to be making a strenuous effort to control himself, but the outcome still hung in the balance.

'When, senor? By whom? I fell down in clear view of the others.'

The don chewed his lip. 'I don't know. I should very much like to know, though. If I give you my oath not to repeat what you tell me to anyone, will you explain?'

'Does that 'anyone' include the Inquisition, senor?'

Don Ramon's glare slowly changed to a smile, an uncomfortably knowing and menacing smile. 'Did you tell them what they wanted to know?'

That was not the question Toby had expected, but it was an encouraging one.

'Not as far as I can remember.' That felt good; it felt very good.

'Then you are a brave man.'

'If the stories I have heard about Don Ramon de Nunez y Pardo are even partly true, senor, then so are you.'

Pause. Calculation. The mood had changed now.

'Are you trying to bargain with me?'

'I require certain guarantees, senor.'

'Very well, I shall include the Inquisition in my oath, but you will tell me how your companion recognized me that first day we met.' The don had never commented on that miracle before. Obviously he had not forgotten it.

'That is part of the same story.' Toby smiled without meaning to. Whatever had happened to his intention of heading south? 'Tonight, when we camp, I shall tell you everything. I warn you, senor, that it is a very strange tale, but you come into it, and therefore I am eager to share it with you.'

To Toby's astonishment, the don laughed and leaned down to offer a hand. This time he did not want it kissed. His grip was almost as brutal as Graham Johnson's.

'For courage, then, Senor Longdirk.' He even managed to pronounce the outlandish name reasonably well. 'Tonight.'

'Tonight, senor. You have my promise.'

'Sworn on the honor of a smuggler, mutineer, and deserter? In exchange I offer the sacred word of a hidalgo of Castile.' Don Ramon straightened in his saddle and glanced back along the line. 'The siege train is lagging, Campeador. Go and find out who is responsible and have them flogged.'

Toby saluted and stepped aside. As soon as Atropos had gone by him, he wiped sweat from his forehead. Had he just put his head in a noose — or his wrists, perhaps?

Nevertheless, Baron Oreste's macabre executions were starting to make more sense. That possible future supported Toby's instinct that the lunatic don could be trusted.

Hamish would burst blood vessels when he heard of this development.

CHAPTER TWO

It was Toby's intention to drop back to the rear of the column and have his promised chat with Hamish, but every group forced him to tarry and discuss the mercenaries' news. Most of them also interrogated him closely on exactly what had happened to him that morning. He kept repeating the same story until he almost believed it himself, but none of them seemed truly convinced. Perhaps he didn't look like the sort of person who would trip over his own feet in a meadow and knock himself out. He wondered what they did make of the episode, and what they would say if some Dominican friars appeared and began asking questions about him.

Eventually he found himself trudging along beside Hamish, a few paces behind Thunderbolt. There were clouds building ahead, to the north. Was that an omen or just a sign that the weather was going to break at last?

Hamish's mood had improved. He seemed quite cheerful as he said, 'I still think you're crazy.' He often thought that.

'You believe in my visions now?'

'I think the friar's explanation makes sense, although I see a weakness in it. If he's right, you're heading right back to the torture chamber. For spirits' sake, turn around while you still have a chance! You should get out of here like a racing camel on skates.'

'I do get to Barcelona eventually, somehow. The other visions prove that. I'll try not to cut off your—'

'No, they don't!' When Hamish smirked like that he thought he was being clever. He usually was.

'They don't?'

'Listen!' He pondered for a moment, probably breaking his mental processes into small pieces that lesser minds could digest. 'If the hob is jerking you back in time, then you shouldn't know anything at all about the future that won't happen, although something very similar may. Or very different. The fragments you do remember are a… never mind that for now. The only thing you can count on is the timing of the vision. That's the moment when you come back from the future and start over.'

Toby heaved his pack higher — there was no comfortable position for it now. 'I suppose you're right. Obviously what seems like hours or days to me lasts no time at all for anyone else. One minute you see me walking along happily whistling 'The Lass up the Glen' and the next I'm lying flat and howling. From then on I'm in reality again.'

'It may only be reality temporarily, until it gets wiped out the next time,' Hamish said gloomily. 'You've seen two visions of Barcelona.'

'Possibly two visions of one future.'

'No, two separate futures. You came back twice.'

Um! Good point. 'All right. I got there twice, and I will have to arrive there eventually.'

'No! That's what I'm trying to tell you. Those visions came before the one of the Inquisition. That means you got to Barcelona twice — at least twice, because we don't know how many times the hob had played this trick without leaving you a vision. Let's ignore that tangle. First you ended up chained in a dungeon and the hob rescued you eventually — we don't know when. The second time you were Oreste's executioner, and it pulled you back again. It was on the next try that you met the Inquisition. This is the fourth time, at least, that you've passed this way. You may never get to Barcelona now.'

That took some thought. Too much thought. 'I don't see why.'

'Because,' Hamish said in the same dealing-with-an-idiot tone that his father had used on young Toby Strangerson just before he lost his temper, 'if the Inquisition episode came first, and then you got to Barcelona and were yanked back again, the Inquisition vision would be wiped out, because you saw that later than the Barcelona vision, even though you think the Inquisition thing happens in Tortosa, which you get to first. Clear?'

Toby groaned. 'I'll have to take your word for it.'

'Am I ever wrong? You foresaw the demons before Valencia, but we went through Valencia before we met the demons. We can never know what happened the first time in Valencia that didn't happen the second, except that it must have been bad. Nothing happened the second time — the time we remember — but if you had actually died there the second time, you would never have met the demons, vision or not. Yes, you apparently got past Tortosa twice, but the third time you didn't. You may never get to Barcelona!'

'Not on this try, you mean.' But how many times did he want to be tortured? Suppose the hob's rescue didn't work the next time? What of that endless loop he had discussed with Brother Bernat?

'That's why we must turn back right away,' Hamish concluded triumphantly. 'There's no other sane course. When the going gets tough, the smart get lost.'

Toby walked on.

'You don't owe these people anything, Longdirk! In fact, you're a danger to them. Brother Bernat can look after himself. Gracia is probably safer with the don than she is with you.'