Gellor was dressed in much the same fashion as Gord was, with a belt bearing longsword and dagger girding his loins. Gord noted that he too had a fat purse, and wore a long neck-chain, but Gellor’s chain was of golden links and roundels and bore three deep blue sapphires each flanked by a pair of smaller diamonds. Gord opened his mouth to utter a comment about rank bribery, but his companion stifled it by waving a finger at him and winking with the eye that should not have been there. Gord thought the gesture was growing more than a bit tiresome.
“Let us be off, Captain Gord!” said Gellor with vigor. “We have far to go, and much to speak of as we ride!”
Chapter 23
True to the constable’s promise, a pair of magnificent warhorses awaited Gord and Gellor in the outer bailey of Castle Blemu, saddled and ready, each black stallion held by a liveried groom. These were not the huge and muscled destriers of cavaliers and fully armored men, but the leaner and smaller mounts favored by those who desired swiftness and endurance. Saddlebags of provisions were topped by the leather cases containing the finery each of them had worn the past evening. As Gord was mounting, a small page scurried out of the great hall and ran to stand at his stirrup.
“Your pardon, sir, but my mistress, Lady Evaleigh, bade me fetch you this on your departure,” the page said, and he held up a small casket of engraved and embellished silver for Gord’s taking.
“Where is your mistress?” Gord demanded, accepting the box but not bothering to look at its contents.
“Oh, sir, she went off to His Lordship the Count’s villa in Knurl, yesterday it was…. But before she and her ladies departed, she told me most sternly to see that I deliver this to you,” the lad said, pointing at the silver coffer.
“Very well. It is delivered.” Gord nodded toward the boy, tossed him a copper hastily dug from his purse, and wheeled his horse to follow Gellor, who was already heading for the gate.
The two of them passed through the gate in single file, and Gord held a position slightly behind Gellor as their mounts trotted out onto the road. He wanted a bit of privacy while he examined Evaleigh’s gift, and Gellor seemed to understand this.
The box was quite pretty and valuable. Gord thought that, even being in used condition as it was, it would bring an orb or more in some fine shop. It was old, and had been crafted in a form Gord had never seen before. It took him a couple of minutes to find which petals and carven flowers to press and move to release its catch and allow the lid to slide back. The coffer was lined with velvet material of a deep violet hue, which surrounded a small scroll and something wrapped in silk embroidered with sigils. Gord dropped the reins and took out the scroll. His mount slowed to a walk as his eyes took in what was written thereupon:
“My dearest Gord,
“I shall always bear your memory in my heart, just as I shall always remember our time of love together. If troubles surround me, all I needs do is recall your sweet face and brave deeds, and my world brightens. Ours was a love which could not be. Forgive my weakness, I implore. Understand my father’s ill-advised ire. Think of me fondly, with tenderness and affection, now and then as you rise to fortune. As for me, I shall make the best of what sad and cruel fate metes out. I pray for your happiness and safety always, and send my dearest of thoughts with you, My Champion.
“Always, Evaleigh.”
These words, soft as they were, did nothing to dilute the bitterness in Gord’s heart; in fact, he reacted in quite the opposite way, and he found himself thinking of Evaleigh as a liar and a bitch as he roughly thrust the scroll back into the box and picked up the parcel of silk. In its folds was the little necklace of silver links with the milky amulet depending from them-Evaleigh’s dearest possession, the dweomered pendant given her by her elven great- great-grandmother.
This gift had an entirely different effect on Gord from the way he had felt just after reading the scroll. His attitude toward Evaleigh softening with every passing heartbeat, he fastened the chain around his neck and tucked the amulet under the stiff leather and padding of his doublet. Then, instead of hurling the missive she had written to him away in a crumpled ball, as he had originally thought to do, Gord flattened it and tucked it into the small inner pocket of this same garment. After placing the silver box within a saddlebag, he spurred his stallion so as to get even with Gellor’s mount, trying his best to put Evaleigh out of his mind for the moment-he had much to learn from his traveling companion, and it was high time to start doing just that!
Gord’s saturnine expression and lugubrious spirits were soon uplifted by Gellor’s tale. He admitted to Gord that while he was indeed a member of Stoink’s guild of thieves, and a well-respected member of that and other bandit communities as well, he had other identities. Yes, Gellor admitted, he did on occasion serve Archbold as an agent and spy; however, his liege was not the King of Nyrond by any means, but rather his cousin, Belissica, Her Noble Brilliancy, Sovereign Countess of Urnst. In fact, Gellor said laughingly, he even performed favors for his more distant cousin, Karll, Most Lordly Grace of Duchy Urnst!
All of this left Gord speechless. Gellor observed his dumbfounded visage, roared with mirth, winked his newly grown eye, and laughed still more at the perturbed reaction this gesture got from his companion.
“I must begin where we parted company,” said Gellor as his chuckling subsided and he wiped tears of laughter from his eyes, “and then you will understand better what has transpired.” The thief and noble then began a tale that enthralled Gord so thoroughly that he failed to notice that Gellor was leading the way away from Knurl toward the ferry to the west bank of the Harp River.
He related how the sovereigns of Nyrond and other allied and friendly states spent much in human and monetary resources to be apprised of the plots and politics of their unfriendly and hostile neighbors. The Bandit Kingdoms, as these sovereigns called the lands of the Free Lords, were of particular interest-but then no more so than the doings of the Hierarchs of the Horned Society, the dealings of Tenh and the Theocrat of the Pale, Aerdian schemes (whether those of the Overking or the Malachite Throne of Rauxes), and so forth.
Although Evaleigh’s capture and the subsequent ransom demand from Boss Dhaelhy were not great matters as far as statecraft went, King Archbold desired intelligence on what followed these events, for he suspected that his vassal, Count Dunstan of Blemu, was overweening in ambition. The question was: Would the count send forth to Stoink the ransom required for his daughter’s return? The sum being demanded was so great as to pauperize the count, or so it was thought, and it was well known that he was no doting parent.
If the ransom was not paid, Archbold’s reasoning went, then the king’s suspicions about Dunstan would be allayed; this would mean that he did not have the resources to bring about his daughter’s release, or else he did not possess the desire to see her freed. In either event, this was not the sort of behavior that would engender respect for the count from other heads of state-and such respect was a necessary component of any plan the count might have to assert the sovereignty of his small domain. But if the ransom was handed over to Boss Dhaelhy, the king would do well to heed the warnings he had received about the count’s hubris.
“Then you came along and spoiled things!” Gellor said as they came to the vessel moored beside the river bank. “Let us get aboard this ferry, and I’ll continue my tale.”
“Yes, let us,” urged Gord, now caught up in the story and left in suspense as to how he had intervened in the plots and machinations of crowned heads.
“The problem was, everyone was watching for a company of the count’s men escorting the gold for his daughter’s ransom,” Gellor resumed, skirting the issue of how Gord disrupted any scheme but that of Boss Dhaelhy. Gord urged him to get on to that point, but Gellor simply smiled and continued the line of discourse he had begun.
He explained how the Boss of Stoink, several other interested parties of that ilk, Gellor himself-and even Evaleigh! — had spies watching for ransom-carriers from Blemu. The captive girl, it seemed, had used her charm, and possibly a bit of her magic, to suborn at least two of Lord Mayor Dhaelhy’s hirelings or servants. For the sake of both her peace of mind and her physical safety, she, more than anyone else, wished to know news of her impending rescue.
