The Lost Stories (13 page)

This was Gilan's opportunity to launch an overhead attack, aimed at Foldar's helmet. He gave the bandit no time to bring his own sword into play but hammered a lightning-fast series of overhead strikes, forcing Foldar to raise his shield to protect himself.

One of the blows broke through, glancing from the rim of the shield and catching the bandit full on the helmet. He stumbled backward and dropped to one knee, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

“I'll give you one chance to surrender,” Gilan said quietly. “One only.”

Gilan had been trained in a hard school. He knew he was more skillful than Foldar, even with his left hand. But he also knew that a duel like this was a chancy affair. One slip, one missed step on the damp grass, could spell disaster for him. He had been trained to offer an opponent one chance to surrender. But only one.

“Surrender yourself!” Foldar snarled. He thrust forward from his semi-kneeling position, using his rear leg to propel himself at Gilan, his sword seeking for the tall figure. Gilan had sensed the move coming, a fraction of a second before Foldar moved. He saw it in the man's eyes. He caught the sword with his saxe knife, flicking his wrist and deflecting it to his right, so that Foldar spun awkwardly, exposing his unprotected back to Gilan's sword.

Foldar, trying to recover, felt a terrible impact between his shoulder blades. Then a burning pain.

“Aaah . . . aaah,” he cried, his voice weak, his mind still wondering what had just happened to him. He felt his sword drop from his fingers, which were suddenly lacking the strength to support it. Then he saw the grass rushing up to meet him.

Gilan withdrew his sword and stepped back. Foldar was facedown on the grass, blood staining the black surcoat. Gilan shrugged. Crowley had asked him to capture the man if possible. As far as Gilan was concerned, “if possible” didn't involve risking his own life.

“Perhaps it's better this way,” he told the dead bandit. “Snakes have a way of escaping.”

“SO FOLDAR'S DEAD. THAT'S A RELIEF.” DOUGLAS WAS PACING THE floor of his office as he listened to Gilan's account of the attack on the convoy.“Mind you, you took a big risk, swapping the money back to the smaller cart and sending it unprotected.”

Gilan made a dismissive gesture. “Not really. I was confident that Foldar's informant would tell him the money was in the large wagon.”

Baron Douglas's eyes narrowed for a moment as he met Gilan's steady gaze. Then, as always, they slid away from direct contact.

“Hmm. Yes. The informer. Any idea who that might be?”

“Well,” said Gilan deliberately, “aside from you and me, only one other person knew that the money was supposed to be in the large wagon.”

“Philip?”

Gilan nodded. “Exactly.”

Now the Baron shook his head sadly. “I never would have thought it! The man's been with me for years. Still, I suppose if the temptation is great enough, anyone can go bad.” He sighed deeply, obviously finding the whole matter distasteful. “I suppose we'd better have him in here, then.”

“If you would,” Gilan said.

They waited in silence for the few minutes it took for Philip to be summoned. The seneschal entered the Baron's office warily. He looked at the Ranger and at the Baron. Of course, he knew about the events that had taken place earlier in the day. He was intelligent enough to sense that he was under suspicion, as one of the few people who had known the intended whereabouts of the tax money.

“Why did you do it, Philip?” the Baron began, his voice heavy with disappointment.

“My lord?” Philip replied uncertainly. Thus far, he had been accused of nothing, although he knew that couldn't be too far off.

Gilan held up a hand to stop the Baron from saying more. “If I may, Baron Douglas?” he said, and the Baron signaled his acquiescence for Gilan to handle the questioning. He turned away, his hands clasped behind his back, a picture of betrayed trust.

“Philip,” Gilan said quietly, “what were you doing at Ambrose's house?”

The Baron swung quickly back to face them, a puzzled expression on his face. Philip's face showed surprise too. But there was no puzzlement there. He knew what Gilan was referring to.

“Ambrose?” said Douglas. “Who the devil is Ambrose?”

“Ambrose is a wealthy merchant in the village,” Gilan told him. “Philip owed him money.”

The seneschal hung his head. “You know about that?” he said, his voice barely audible.

The Baron now stepped forward, stopping only a meter or so from Philip, dominating the smaller man as he sat slumped, head down, unable to meet his Baron's gaze. “So you took money from Foldar to betray your fief?” he said. “To betray me?”

Philip looked up now, anguish and bewilderment on his face. “Foldar?” he said.“I never took money from Foldar, my lord. I swear it.”

“Then how did you pay your debts?” the Baron demanded angrily, and again Philip's head sank. He opened his mouth to reply, but Gilan beat him to it.

“He stole it from the tax money already collected,” he said, and both men looked at him in surprise.

“He what?” the Baron asked, a second before Philip managed to reply.

“I never meant to keep it. I always intended to repay it! I swear. And I did repay it.”

“I know,” Gilan said. He looked now at the Baron. “For the past few months, Philip has spent his nights working for Ambrose and some of the other merchants in the village. I watched him the other night when he came back from Ambrose's with a large sack of money. He put it in the treasury. It was in a rather distinctive white sack, and I saw it when I loaded the money onto the cart the other night. I wondered, then: If a man was planning to help Foldar steal the tax money, why would he bother to replace the money he'd already stolen?”

“But . . . what did he do for these merchants?” the Baron asked, mystified.

Again, Philip looked shamefaced. “I was helping them with their accounts. Their record keeping was very sloppy and they were all paying far more tax than they were obliged to. I showed them how to reduce their taxes. They paid me for my services, and when I had earned enough, I replaced the money I'd borrowed from the treasury.” He looked pleadingly at Gilan. “It was all perfectly legal, I swear.”

Gilan hid a smile. “Perhaps. Whether it was ethical is another matter. You could be said to have a conflict of interest, being the person responsible for collecting the tax in the first place.” He turned back to the Baron. “The fact is, my lord, Philip isn't our traitor.”

“Then who is?” Douglas asked.

Gilan fixed him with an unblinking stare. After a few seconds, the Baron's eyes dropped. Then Gilan spoke quietly. “You are, my lord.”

“Me? Don't be ridiculous!” All the bluster was back in the Baron's voice now.“Why would I betray the fief, and the kingdom, to Foldar?”

“The usual reasons, I suppose. Money probably figures among them. And I suspect that you were secretly in league with Foldar, and Morgarath, during the rebellion. Perhaps Foldar was threatening to expose that fact if you didn't help him. I'm sure it'll all come out at your trial.”

“Ridiculous!” Baron Douglas shouted, as if volume somehow equated with innocence.“How could I be in league with Foldar? I've never met the man!”

“So you told me when I first arrived,” Gilan said. “And then, the other day, you said to me: ‘Those eyes of his are enough to send shivers down your spine. They're cold and lifeless, like a snake's.' A strange thing to say if you'd never met him.”

The Baron glanced desperately around the room, looking for a way to escape. His eyes fell on his dagger, lying on the desk, and he lunged for it.

But Philip was quicker. He lunged forward as well, scooping up the heavy inkwell and throwing it, and its contents, into the Baron's face. Douglas staggered back, clawing at his eyes, trying to rub the heavy black ink out of them.

“You would have seen me hang for your crime!” Philip shouted. The Baron finally cleared his eyes so that he had partial vision. He found himself staring down the length of Gilan's sword. The Ranger smiled at him, but there was no real humor in the smile.

“We'll leave for Castle Araluen this afternoon,” he said. “I rather hope you try to escape on the way.”

This time, Douglas managed to hold Gilan's eyes. What he saw there made him quail. He decided then and there that there would be no escape attempt. Gilan took a pair of leather-and-wood thumb cuffs from an inner pocket and tossed them to Philip.

“Put these on him, would you?” he asked. The seneschal nodded, then hesitated.

“Who'll be in charge here when he's gone?”

Gilan raised one eyebrow. “For the moment, I suppose you will be. After that, we'll have to see. Just try to make sure the King gets some tax from this fief, would you?”

Philip nodded several times as he busied himself securing the Baron's hands behind his back with the cuffs. “Of course. Everything he's entitled to.” Then he couldn't resist a slight smile. “But no more.”

“That's fair enough,” Gilan resheathed his sword and took Douglas by the elbow, shoving him toward the door. As they went to exit, he looked back at the seneschal, who was kneeling to mop up the spilled ink on the office floor.

“I've heard that the pen is mightier than the sword,” Gilan said. “But I never knew the inkwell could be mightier than the dagger.”

THE TRADING BOAT WAS ESSENTIALLY A GIANT RAFT—A FLAT deck built across half a dozen large logs that provided flotation. Bundles of hides, wool, grain sacks, flour and cloth were stacked in the middle of the deck, covered by tarpaulins. Behind them, a deckhouse provided shelter for the small crew. The skipper stood on a steering platform at the stern, equipped with a long sweep oar that served as a rudder. There were four other oars—although at the moment only two of them were manned, keeping the boat moving slightly faster than the slow current of the Tarbus River. In addition, if the wind was favorable, a stumpy mast and a square mainsail could be hoisted.

It was an efficient way to get the goods to the market at the river mouth. The alternative was a three-week overland journey by ox cart. Even allowing for the twists and turns in the river, the trading boat would make the trip within five days. The farmers and millers of Wensley, and half a dozen other villages along the river, found it a more convenient way of selling their produce. The riverboat captain would pay them for their goods, then sell them at a profit down the river. The producers might receive less than the market price, but they were also saved a lengthy, arduous trip, during which their goods might be stolen from them.

Theft was one of the dangers faced by the riverboat traders as well. Recently, there had been a sharp increase in the activity of river pirates preying on the traders. As Halt had commented to Will, “It seems whenever someone has a good idea like this, other people simply can't wait to rob them.”

The riverboat was coming to a sweeping bend in the river. The skipper and the oarsmen heaved mightily to keep the ponderous craft out in the middle of the flow, avoiding the protruding sandbar of the left bank. Clumsily, the raft swept around the bend, at an angle to the flow. The helmsman worked his long steering oar to straighten his craft, calling on the oarsmen to pull in opposing directions—one forward and one backward—for half a dozen strokes, until he was satisfied that they were aligned with the flow once more. Let her get out of alignment, he knew, and before too long they'd be slowly spinning in the current, out of control. Then it would take an even greater effort to get the boat back in the correct position for the next bend.

Once the boat was traveling straight again, he called to the oarsmen—his two sons—that they could relax. They resumed their earlier gentle stroke. Then he tensed as he saw movement in the reeds along the right bank.

“Oswald! Ryan!” he shouted. “Oars! Look lively now!”

He had barely completed his warning when a long, narrow boat emerged from the reeds and headed toward them. She was packed with men—he estimated fifteen at least—and pulled eight oars. He leaned on the tiller, angling the boat back toward the left shore, while his sons heaved on the oars again.

There was no chance that they could outrun the other boat. His only chance was to beach the raft before they could board it, then escape into the trees. They might lose their cargo that way, but not their lives. The crew of the other boat were all heavily armed and all yelling threats and abuse at him.

Their leader stood in the prow of the boat, brandishing a long sword. “Heave to!” he yelled. “If you keep running, we'll kill you all!”

The skipper of the riverboat shook his head at the threat. The pirates would kill them anyway, he knew. In the past months, the bodies of a dozen riverboat traders had washed ashore along the river. Their boats and their cargoes had never been seen again.

“They're cutting us off!” he called, although his sons could see what was happening as well as he could. The fast pirate craft was angling toward their bow.

Then a voice from under the tarpaulin covering the cargo replied quietly, “Get your boys back astern then. Tell us when the pirates come aboard.”

The skipper nodded. “Oswald! Ryan! Leave it now and get back here!”

The two muscular oarsmen needed no second bidding. They left their oars swinging in the rowlocks and scrambled back to the steering platform, arming themselves with heavy studded cudgels that were lying handy. Without the oars to propel her, the boat began to rotate slowly again and the skipper wigwagged on his oar, pulling left, feathering it and pulling it left again, to straighten her.