Dark Lord of Derkholm (28 page)

“Buildings are up,” Barnabas replied cheerily. “Soldiers can do the rest.” He lay down, rolled over, and went to sleep again.

Cold water's supposed to do it, Blade thought. But he doubted if there was any water nearer than the river. Still, there was one thing Blade was good at besides translocation. It was easier, too. He concentrated. Shortly Barnabas began to shiver in his sleep.

“Hey! Stop that!” he muttered.

Blade concentrated some more.

Barnabas abruptly rolled over and stared at Blade with his teeth chattering. His face was bluish, but this time his bloodshot eyes were looking properly into Blade's.

“Barnabas,” Blade said, “how long has your horse been standing outside this hut?”

“Oh, ye gods!” said Barnabas. “Is the army here already? Tell your father—be a nice lad and
explain
to him, Blade!—I don't normally binge like this when I'm working. The pressure just all got too much this time!”

“Dad won't be here till this evening,” Blade told him. “You've got about six hours to get the camp finished in. You'd better get up and get going.”

“I had, hadn't I?” Barnabas agreed readily. “If you'd stop freezing me to death, young Blade, I'll get up and attend to everything. I promise.”

Blade did not believe him. It seemed hard not to trust a friend of Dad's who had been like an uncle to you all your life, but Blade remembered that Barnabas had given them no help at all with the soldiers, even when he knew Derk was not with them, and he said sternly, “I'll stop when you're standing up.”

“Cruel brat!” Barnabas groaned, and scrambled out of the bag, shaking and shivering, and got to his feet by climbing up the splintery wall. “That suit you?”

“Walk outside,” said Blade.

Barnabas swayed and got himself through the doorway by pulling on the sides of it with both hands. He leaned against the outside of the hut, moaning. “You don't
understand,
Blade. If you only knew how hard Mr. Chesney makes us work, you'd have some sympathy for—”

“I do know,” said Blade, “by now.” He took some of the coldness off, but not all of it. A sort of half chill might help Barnabas to get sober, he hoped. “There are no beds in the sleeping huts and no holes in these latrines,” he said, “and the cookhouse is only half finished. I'll come and help you in a minute.” He untied the unfortunate horse and led it away toward the river. As he went, he realized that he was feeling rushed and worried again. He was so used to the feeling and so used by now to thinking of more things that could go wrong that he hardly checked in his stride when he came crunching out of the dome and saw a group of cloaked and plumed young warriors waiting beside the three hampers. Wow! he thought. They look smart! And crunched on toward the river with the horse.

“The Emperor of the South to speak with the Wizard Derk!” one of the warriors called out as soon as Blade was near enough.

First things first, Blade thought. Barnabas's horse was half dead with thirst. Blade took it to the river and saw it start drinking before he turned and said, quite politely, “I'm afraid my father won't get here until this evening.” By that time the warriors had unfurled the banner of the empire. It flapped on a pole beside the hampers, huge and official and purple and white. Blade thought, Wow! again, as he went toward the hampers. “Excuse me,” he said as politely as he could. “I need to get at a nose bag. The horse is starving. And do any of you happen to have any coffee? The wizard who's supposed to be building this camp has gone and got drunk.”

They stared at him, nonplussed, but they moved aside from the hampers a little, shiny boots crunching in the shale. Golden breastplates flashed at the corner of Blade's eye as he hauled out a nose bag. Since nobody seemed to be saying anything, Blade said nothing either. He took the nose bag back to the horse, dragged it out of the river before it drank too much, and hitched it into the nose bag. When it had settled down to eat, he turned around.

The youngest of the warriors, the one wrapped in the large purple cloak, was standing only a yard or so away. Blade and he looked at one another. Shona's age, Blade thought. He looks rather nice.

“I—er—sent a runner for coffee,” said the warrior.

“Thank you,” Blade said, with true gratitude.

“Not a problem,” said the teenage warrior. “Our encampment's only a mile away. Much too near really. Your drunk wizard seems to have put yours in the wrong place.”

“I
thought
something was wrong. It's a bit late to move it now,” Blade said anxiously.

“I realize,” said the warrior. “But it makes it easier to confer about the battle plans. I don't want your father to hit my legions too hard. They're nearly all new men. Most of the veterans got killed in last year's tours. I'm Titus—Emperor, you know.”

“I'm Blade,” said Blade, and was surprised to find himself shaking hands warmly with the Emperor of the South.

“I liked the way you saw to the horse first,” Titus told him.

“Barnabas must have had it tied up to that hut for
days!
” Blade said angrily. “I very nearly kicked him. I even sort of did. But he was so drunk he didn't feel it.”

“I'm not sure I'd dare kick a wizard, even a drunk one,” said the Emperor.

“After this last week or so,” Blade answered, “I didn't even think about it.” He and the Emperor went and sat on the hampers, while Blade described how the soldiers tried to escape and how Scales arrived in time to stop them (or most of them). The other warriors, after a nod from Titus, sat stiffly on the shale around them. They had had a difficult time, too, Titus said. The Imperial Legions had lost their way and spent most of two days in a marsh.

“And those marsh folk just stood around and laughed!” Titus was saying. “I thought they were supposed to be on our side, but—Oh, you have company.”

Blade looked around to find a small party of horsemen splashing across the river toward them. The tall, gloomy one in front he recognized from the time he and Dad had consulted the White Oracle. King Luther. Definitely. He got up. Everyone around him sprang up, too.

King Luther swung himself down from his tall, gloomy black horse and crunched over the stones toward them. “I wondered if I'd find you here, Titus,” he said genially. He and the Emperor bowed to one another like friends, but like kings with kingdoms, too, Blade saw, watching with interest. Then King Luther turned to him. “And don't even think of putting the shivers on me this time, boy.” Blade saw Titus swallowing a laugh at this. “Where's your father?” asked the king. “What's he thinking of, putting this camp in the wrong place? My army's not going to have time to get home between battles from here.”

“I'm afraid Barnabas got drunk and probably made a mistake,” Blade explained.

“Then what's Derk doing
trusting
that drunk—?” King Luther began.

“Ah, here comes the coffee,” Titus interrupted.

It was in gilded picnic baskets slung on the sides of a horse and followed by a stately majordomo on another horse. There was a whole feast in there, Blade saw, when the majordomo grandly flipped the basket lids up.

“I suggest we all have some lunch,” Titus said graciously.

Blade took a gilded and steaming flask of coffee up to the camp first, where he found Barnabas shakily slogging away at conjuring bunks into the barrack sheds. “I shall have to give up drinking,” he told Blade dismally. “I've got the shivers really badly this time. Can't seem to get warm. Is that coffee? Oh,
good!
”

Blade took pity on him and reduced the chill spell by half again. But he took care to fetch a chair out from the cookhouse into the open parade ground and make Barnabas sit on it before he handed him the coffee flask. He did not want Barnabas going to sleep again.

Barnabas took the flask and swigged eagerly. He puffed and wiped his mouth and swigged again. “That's better! There's still a lot to do. And
you're
not helping.”

“I know,” said Blade. “King Luther and Emperor Titus turned up.”

“Oh. Then I let you off,” said Barnabas. “Now leave them to be royal at one another or we'll never get those latrines dug out.”

Blade was struck by an idea. “In a short while. I'll see to the digging for you. You finish the beds and get the cookhouse straight.”

“There's some toffee-nosed bard gone and parked himself inside there,” Barnabas complained. “What's he supposed to be up to?”

“I haven't a clue. Turn him out,” Blade said, and sped away out of the camp again.

Down near the river everyone was having a picnic, despite a few spits of rain falling. The majordomo bowed to Blade and handed him a gilded wooden plate heaped with smoked salmon, corn bread, and olives. “Thanks,” said Blade, at which the man looked startled, as if you were not supposed to thank him. Too bad. Blade took his plate to the hamper where the Emperor was sitting. “I say, can you spare a few legionaries to dig us some latrines?”

Titus grinned. “I don't see why not. They've been doing it every day for a fortnight now. They should be rather good at it. And they're only sitting about at the moment.” He said a word to one of his warriors, who commandeered the majordomo's horse and rode off at a canter.

King Luther laughed so much at Blade's idea that he nearly choked. Meanwhile Barnabas must have started work on the cookhouse. Conrad the Bard stalked loftily out of the dome and stood on the hill above them with his arms folded, looking considerably more kingly than the monarchs having lunch. Blade was wondering again why the man was here when Titus nudged him.

“More company for you. Here's High Priest Umru now.”

Umru was coming along beside the river on an extremely sturdy white horse, which he was sitting on as if the horse were a bench, with his legs dangling off one side. With him rode numbers of other priests in variously colored robes. “Good day,” Umru called, and raised his hands in blessing. This seemed to be the priestly version of a bow. At any rate, Titus and Luther and their followers all bowed back, at which most of the other priests made blessing signs, too. Everyone bowed again. Umru beckoned Blade with a chubby finger. “A word with you, my boy.”

Blade went over to the priestly party. While he was covering the distance, two priests in black got down and helped Umru slide off the white horse. Looking at the size of him, Blade wondered how the high priest was ever going to get back on. “Yes, sir?” he asked politely.

“You had me shivering for three hours last time we met,” Umru remarked. “Has your father, the wizard, arrived yet?”

Blade explained that Derk would be here by the evening.

“We shall wait,” Umru said. “I owe him that courtesy for putting this camp so far away on this side of the mountains. This suggests that the battles will be here, too. Is this so?”

“I don't really know,” said Blade.

“Then I must ask him,” Umru said. “But I fear these other priests with me are coming to complain. Maybe you should warn your father.” Blade looked up at them in their colored robes, staring grimly down from their horses. “From the other temples of the other gods,” Umru told him. “They do not like this idea that a god must manifest to the Pilgrim Parties.”

“That was Mr. Chesney's idea,” Blade protested. “It's nothing to do with my father.”

Umru turned to look up at the grim priests. “There, Reverences. As I told you. Will you take the boy's word and return home?”

“We shall stay and talk to the wizard,” a dour priest in a red robe replied.

Umru sighed. “In that case, can you provide us with a place to wait, my boy?”

“You'd better come and sit on the hampers,” Blade said.

“Hampers?” said the dour priest.

“Yes indeed,” said Umru. “I see an emperor and a king sitting on those hampers. Abate your pride, Cartebras, if you must stay, and sit on a hamper, too.”

“Er—just a moment,” said Blade. He sprinted uphill to the camp, past the lofty bard, across the parade ground, and into the cookhouse, where Barnabas was just setting up the tables and benches. Blade threw himself across as many of the benches as his body would stretch over.

“What are you
doing?
” said Barnabas.

“There are sixteen high priests now,” Blade said, and translocated with the lot back to the riverside. The priests disdainfully seated themselves and sat looking so grim that the happy chatter around the hampers died away.

“Forgive us, my friends,” sighed Umru, and sat, very cautiously, on the third hamper. It swayed sideways, but luckily it held his weight.

Blade began to see that it was one of those days. And here he had been, expecting it to be a day of empty waiting. The next person to arrive appeared so suddenly and quietly behind him that Blade thought he must have translocated there. But it seemed not. He was a gaunt man dressed all over in leather, who looked nearly as grim as the priests. “Chief Werewolf,” he said abruptly. “This camp is in the wrong—”