Demon Rider

and vineyards and cut down trees by the thousand, but even they could not reduce a fertile land to a total desert, so there were still pickings to be had. He had been living on onions and fruit. He hated oranges.

Back to the book. In his father's house were many books. Zits, but he was homesick! Homesick for books, for Ma and Pa, for Eric and Elsie, for soft rain and soft, peaty drinking water, and brown soil. Anything but this red, burned wilderness. He had left home to see the world. He had wanted to see life but had witnessed too much death. For three years he and Toby had been hunted by the Fiend's agents — Brittany, France, Aquitaine, Navarre, Castile, and now Aragon.

The puny fire shot up a few sparks. Having nothing to cook, Hamish had claimed a fire would be a defense against the feral dogs prowling around. Toby had agreed solemnly, although he had known perfectly well that Hamish just wanted to read. Somewhere not too far away, a dog howled. He shivered. Nasty noise! Those brutes hunted in packs. They were dangerous. His stomach rumbled a surly reply. Back to the book.

Then a man cried out. Hamish was on his feet in an instant with his staff in his hand and no recollection of picking it up.

'Toby! Toby?'

Toby wasn't there. His blanket was, and his staff, so he could not have gone far.

Hamish scrambled over the wall, out of the cellar. The moan came again. He headed toward the sound, feeling his way carefully with his staff until his eyes adjusted to the starlight. Another groan…

Toby was a few yards off — flat on his back with his hands above his head and his eyes shut — not asleep, then, because he always slept facedown, which he claimed was all Hamish's father had ever taught him in school. He appeared to be unconscious. Again?

Demons! For three years Hamish's recurring nightmare had been to wonder what he would do if anything ever happened to Toby — anything permanent. Normally the big lunk seemed indestructible, but twice in the last few days he had passed out for no apparent reason.

'Toby! Wake up! Toby!' Sick with alarm, Hamish grabbed a shoulder and tried to shake him. Easier to shake an oak tree. He lay down and put an ear on the big man's chest and was reassured to hear a steady Dum… Dum… Dum… He was alive, anyway.

'Uh?' Toby said. A huge shiver ran through him. His eyes opened. 'Hamish?'

'Who d'you expect, you big ape — Baron Oreste?'

Toby frowned and did not answer.

'What's wrong?'

He winced. 'Cramps. Can you move my arms?' He grunted with pain as Hamish took his arms and rotated them to a normal position at his sides. 'Now help me up.' That was easier asked than done, for he weighed tons, and he gasped a few more times as Hamish heaved him into a sitting position.

'What by all the spirits is wrong?'

'Told you — cramps.'

'Why? Why cramps? What happened?'

Gingerly Toby raised one knee. 'I just spent a night in a dungeon.'

Hamish discovered that his fingers were wet. There was blood on them.

* * *

It made no sense at all. Back at the fire they inspected Toby's scraped and bleeding wrists. The blood had run up his arms to the elbows. His hose were bloody, too, and when he removed them, he displayed ankles almost as bad. Worse, though, the cloth was only blood-soaked, not shredded like the skin underneath. How had he managed that? It had to be gramarye.

'It's the hob's doing!' Hamish said, and was annoyed at the shrillness in his voice. 'Why is it mad at you now?'

'Don't think it is. Tell you in a minute. I was going to the spring. I had the water bottles.'

Hamish went back out to find the water bottles. He took them to the spring beside the burned cottage. As he was filling them he raised his head and sniffed. Roast pork? Impossible! He went back to the cellar and watched in frustration as Toby washed the blood from his wounds.

'We should bandage those!' But they had nothing to use for bandages. They could tear up a shirt, but their doublets were made of coarse hessian that would scrape intolerably in the heat of the day.

'They'll be all right,' Toby said. 'Just scrapes. Better to leave them uncovered. Then I can pick the maggots off. I told you these visions were more vivid than your average daydream.'

Hamish did not believe in the visions. He thought they were delusions. 'What did you see this time?' He added more twigs to the sputtering little fire.

For a dawdling moment it seemed he would get no answer, then Toby said, 'Barcelona. The water there tastes terrible.'

'What happened to your wrists?'

'Manacles. I was in jail.' He peered up at the stars. 'How long was I gone? How many pages?'

'Not many. I wasn't reading much. Ten minutes at most.'

'I was in jail a lot longer than that. Look, I'd better wash these clothes before the blood dries any more.'

Hamish took the hose from him. 'I'll do it. And your shirt, too.'

Normally any hint of mothering provoked the big man to bull-headed stubbornness, but this time he muttered thanks and meekly stripped. Still moving as if every joint hurt, he stretched out on his blanket and covered himself. 'I'll tell you when you get back.' He must be in much worse shape than he was admitting.

Hamish headed off to the spring. Three times in a week Toby had passed out cold and wakened up babbling about visions. The first time he had talked of a tent in the woods, a knight, and beautiful lady. Then a man in a city street. Now what? He thought the visions were prophetic, but that was plain impossible. Since leaving Scotland Hamish had read every book about spirits, demons, gramarye, and hexing he had been able to lay his hands on. He had spoken with every acolyte who would spare him a minute. He knew as much about spiritual powers as anyone except a true adept could ever know, and one of the things he had learned was that seeing the future was impossible. Not even the greatest tutelary could ever foresee the future.

Not visions — delusions! Madness.

As he was rinsing the garments, his belly rumbled again, louder than ever. A month to Barcelona? How many oranges could a man eat in another month? Oranges and sometimes dates, although most of the palms had been cut down, and onions, and… and roast pork?

Demons! His mouth was watering like the Fillan in spate. He scrambled all the way to his feet and sniffed. He was not imagining it. Someone was roasting pork somewhere upwind, and not very far away, either.

He went back to the cellar, laid the wet shirt and hose on a prickly bush to dry, and then sat down crosslegged. 'Tell me. They hung you up by your hands?'

Toby was sitting up, wearing his doublet, wrapped in his blanket. 'Nothing so crude. Baron Oreste has more subtle methods.' He grinned more surely this time, more like his own self.

'Oreste? He's in Barcelona?'

'He was in my dream.'

'That was no dream!' Hamish squeaked. 'You mustn't go to Barcelona if he's there!'

Toby frowned and looked mulish, which he did very well. 'I suppose that would be charging the bull, wouldn't it? Does this mean that you believe in my visions now?'

Oh, demons! 'No, I don't believe in visions, not yours, not anyone's.' The only thing Toby's visions might mean was that the hob was finally driving him out of his mind, and Father Lachlan had warned him of that years ago. Or the hob itself was going crazy, locked up in his mind. It wouldn't make much difference, would it?

'Then there's no problem!' Toby smirked at outwitting Hamish Campbell. 'No reason not to go to Barcelona? We can talk about it in the morning. Nice town, Barcelona. Roomy dungeons, all the latest torturing machines. I didn't see you there. You didn't miss much.'

'Tell me about the second vision.'

'I've told you a dozen times.'

'Tell me again!'

'You sound just like your father. You want me to pull down my britches and bend over, domine?'