impatient bear. Even following in his tracks, Wulf could not go as fast. When Vlad stopped, he had to wait for him to catch up. “Can you hear the waterfall?”
Wulf listened. He heard a million syncopated dripping noises, nothing more… Possibly voices a long way off. “No.”
“Thunder Falls. Should be right here, Jachym says, and the others agree. The river’s not running.”
“That’s ridiculous! What can stop a river running?”
“You can. Look down here.” What he had brought Wulf to see was under deadfall, almost invisible in the gloom.
Wulf squatted down, then stood up hastily. “Bodies!”
“About three of them, we thought. That’s if you put them back together, they’d make three or a bit more. A horse and a half on top of them, roughly, and then trees on top of that.”
“No!” Wulf said, appalled. “The explosion couldn’t have done this! The powder wagons were miles away.” This was destruction on a scale he could barely imagine. Men torn to pieces?
“The explosion rattled Castle Gallant!” Vlad said with a chuckle. c0em201C; But you’re right. The gunpowder went up very close to their camp, the man says. Lech is his name, Polish. The blast did terrible slaughter, he thinks, but all he truly knows is what happened here. One or two men have gotten across, but there’s still about a thousand men bivouacking on this side tonight, so let’s you and me just creep quietly away and not provoke any nasty reprisals.”
He started to move. Wulf grabbed his steel-plated arm. “This side of what?”
Vlad chuckled. “Of the avalanche. The blast you set off shook the mountains and started an avalanche. The valley’s totally blocked with snow above the falls. A couple of hundred feet high, Lech said, but we caught a glimpse of it and I think he may be short a bit. Who knows? Avalanches start terrible winds, laddie, and this one came crashing down into the gorge. Its wind smashed everything on this side and probably on the other side, too. The debris has dammed the Ruzena.”
It had surely damned Wulfgang Magnus. “Then the lake will rise? And…”
“Not much, we decided. It’s a big lake, the men tell me. But the low point is where the river drains out, so the area just beyond the snow pile is going to fill up. The gorge will become a smaller lake, until the snow melts next summer. If the Dragon isn’t under the snow, or gone over the cliff, it’s going to be underwater, and when the dam breaks it may even get swept away. Don’t make no difference now.”
“We won?” Wulf said, unable to comprehend the scale of this disaster.
Vlad gave him a buffet on the shoulder that almost knocked him over. Luckily the giant was wearing leather gloves, not gauntlets.
“ It was you who won, sonny! Duke Wartislaw is either dead or beaten. Wulfgang Magnus, you are the greatest of us all. I couldn’t believe you were going to do what you said you would do with that bed warmer. You’ve got more stomach than a herd of cows. Maybe you were just ignorant and lucky, but that’s true of lots of heroes. You single-handedly stopped thirty thousand men and lifted the siege of Castle Gallant. I’m so proud of you I want to scream your fame to the skies, and I know I mustn’t do that. I tell you, Father would have wept with pride.”
Just a few days ago, Wulf would have burst his heart to earn such words from Vlad. Now they made him feel ill. He was doing the devil’s work.
CHAPTER 19
How many Speakers eavesdropped on that exchange could never be known. As Justina had said, Speakers could not spend all day and night Looking, no matter how interesting the subject, and they were limited to exploiting the points of view of people they knew. Very few had ever met Wulfgang, and although Vlad’s reputation as a warrior had spread all over Christendom, Speakers had little interest in soldiers. Duke Wartislaw undoubtedly had some Speakers with his army, and one or more might have survived the disaster. Cardinal Zdenek’s hirelings were certtanceion as a wainly watching events, and the Church’s huge workforce of Speakers would be keeping watch on Wulf, amassing evidence of his Satanism for future action. Justina was well known among the Saints, and news that the old bird had taken on another hire would have aroused their curiosity. However the news got out, it spread across the continent faster than fire in a powder wagon.
Justina herself was drunk, drunker than she had been in thirty years, still slumped on the bench outside her cottage, trying to get up enough energy to put herself to bed. What a disaster! Those astonishing Magnus brothers, her great-nephews. Ottokar and Anton were still shivering on the roof of the north barbican. Vladislav was apparently interrogating a prisoner in a collapsed forest… and Wulfgang was there with him! Twenty minutes ago the kid had been chalky white and ready to fall over, but he must have found some more energy from somewhere. Ah, youth!
But then her curiosity was aroused by the devastation. In a life of nigh on a hundred years, she had never seen anything quite like that. She watched as the two brothers went off to inspect something. In a few moments she sobered herself with a flash of talent and sat up straight. She heard every word of Vlad’s lecture.
God be praised!
She hurried indoors and changed into a finer cloak and bonnet. She opened a gate through limbo, emerging on a small balcony that seemed to be suspended directly below the stars. Blind until her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she fumbled her way to the solitary high-backed oak chair. She stretched out a hand to find the bell rope and tug it to announce her arrival.
Despite what she had told Wulfgang, Elysium was a real place, the former monastery of St. Pantaleimon, at Meteora, in Thessaly. Although this was not generally known, the original monks had been wiped out by pestilence more than a hundred years earlier, and the Saints had moved in. Like many other religious houses in the area, St. Pantaleimon’s was perched on a sheer rock pillar hundreds of feet high, completely inaccessible to workadays. Food and other supplies had to be hauled up on ropes. Speakers, of course, could enter and leave by way of limbo, bringing most of their food with them.
Vlad was still making his way back to the castle. Wulf was already on the barbican tower with Otto and Anton, reporting what he had seen.
Justina leaned back in the chair, keeping her eyes closed. Darkness or closed eyes made it much harder, although not totally impossible, for would-be eavesdroppers to locate her. Besides, there was nothing out there to see except sky. By daylight, this balcony looked out on the great Thessaly Plain, and some rooms had views of other monasteries on other pillars, but no nosy neighbors were close enough to realize that any dark-clad figure glimpsed at a window or on a terrace might be a woman.
The little hatch behind her slid open. Someone coughed.
“Kristina,” she said. “Greenwood. Nor angels nor principalities.” Her original name, the code word assigned by Cardinal Zdenek, and a Saints password that would fetch Lady Umbral instantly, ralels even if she were dancing with her current beau, King Edward of England.
The hatch closed.
Justina made her old bones as comfortable as possible against the oaken back and contemplated her astonishing day. She could not recall one like it in the eighty years since she was jessed.
Now she had a chance to analyze what she had just heard from Vladislav. Perhaps young Wulfgang had worked his miracle with the help of a lot of luck, but the Saints appreciated luck. Some people knew how to use luck and some did not. Luck rubbed off. He had completely changed the game.
Eventually she began to worry. She had used the “angels and principalities” code only twice before in her long service to the Saints, and Lady Umbral had always responded much faster than this. Was Justina being put in her place as a stupid, dithering, sentimental old woman? Worse, was that what she had become? Today was the first time she had ever returned to the prelate to ask for a decision to be reversed, and here she was back yet again. Voices had been raised at their meeting earlier. Had she slid into senility without realizing?
Then she was addressed from the small grille in the wall to her left. “I hope you realize,” said the familiar, faintly mocking voice, “that I was on my way to sup with the pope?”
“I hope I won’t spoil your appetite, my lady. The situation has changed.”
