The Lost Stories (20 page)

“Now start packing and get on the road.”

He made a contemptuous gesture with his thumb, jerking it toward the road. The line of Roamers broke up, slowly at first, then moving with more speed as they began to break camp and pack their belongings away. He leaned down and ruffled the fur around Ebony's ears. She looked up at him and her tail swept in a long, slow back-and-forth movement.

“Nice to have you back, girl,” he said softly. Then he turned to Alyss. “Ready to go?”

She held up a hand. “One thing I have to take care of,” she said. She looked around the camp and spotted Petulengo, lurking guiltily by the goat pen. “Petulengo!” she called. Her voice was high and penetrating and he started, realizing he had been spotted. He looked around, seeking an escape route. But as he did so, Will unslung the massive longbow from his shoulder and casually plucked an arrow from his quiver. Suddenly, escaping didn't seem like such a good idea.

Then Alyss favored Petulengo with her most winning smile.

“Don't be frightened, dear,” she said soothingly. “I just want to say good-bye.”

She beckoned to him, smiling encouragingly, and he stepped forward, gradually gaining in confidence as he realized that, somehow, he had won the favor of this young woman. Some of his old swagger returned as he approached and stood before her, urged a little closer by that smile. Underneath the ash and the dirt, he thought, she was definitely a looker. He gave her a smile in return. Petulengo, it has to be said, fancied himself with the ladies.

Treat 'em rough and they'll eat out of your hand, he thought.

Then the smile disappeared like a candle being blown out. He felt a sudden jolt of agony in his right foot. Alyss's heavy boot, part of Hilde's wardrobe, had stamped down on his instep, just below the ankle. He doubled over instinctively, gasping with pain.

Then Alyss pivoted and drove the heel of her open left hand hard into his nose, snapping his head back and sending him reeling. His arms windmilled and he crashed over onto the hard-packed dirt of the compound.

He lay groggily, propped up on his elbows, coughing as blood coursed down the back of his throat.

“Next time you throw firewood at an old lady,” Alyss told him, all traces of the winning smile gone, “make sure she can't do that.”

She turned to Will and dusted her hands together in a satisfied gesture.

“
Now
I'm ready to go,” she said.

WILL PUSHED HIS EMPTY PLATE AWAY AND LEANED BACK IN HIS chair, feeling that delightfully uncomfortable sensation that comes when you eat just a little too much of something really delicious.

Lady Pauline smiled fondly at the young man. “Would you like extras, Will? There's plenty left.”

He patted his stomach, surprised to find that it seemed to actually feel tighter than normal, as if it were straining at his clothes from the inside.

“Thank you, no, Pauline,” he said. “I've already had seconds.”

“You've already had fourths,” Halt commented. Will frowned at him, then turned back to Pauline, smiling at her. At least she didn't make disparaging comments the way her husband did.

“That really was a delicious meal,” he said. “The beef was so tender and so beautifully rare. And the potatoes! Why, they were a symphony of flavor and texture!”

“Funny,” Halt said in a lowered tone. “I didn't hear any trumpets and flutes.”

“It's kind of you to say so, Will,” Pauline said. “But I'm a professional woman and I don't actually do the cooking. Our meals here are provided by the castle kitchen. If you want to compliment anyone, it should be Master Chubb.”

“Oh . . . of course,” Will said, feeling foolish. Halt and Pauline had invited him for dinner in the comfortable apartment provided for them by Baron Arald. As two of Arald's senior, and most valued, advisers, they were entitled to a suite of rooms and the use of all the castle's services. Now that Will thought about it, he couldn't picture the tall, elegant diplomat working over a hot oven, with an apron protecting her white gown.

“Getting a little flowery with your language, aren't you?” Halt said. “
A symphony of flavor
indeed!”

Will shrugged diffidently.“I'm trying to make my language more poetic,” he admitted. Halt frowned, but Pauline allowed herself the faintest vestige of a smile. Sometimes young men could be so serious about the strangest things, she thought.

“Is there any reason for this sudden interest in things poetic, Will?” she asked.

“Well,” he said, “it's about my speech for the wedding.”

“Horace and Evanlyn's wedding, you mean?” Halt said.

Will nodded. “As the best man, I have to propose a toast to the bride and groom.”

“As you did at our wedding,” Pauline said, smiling at the memory.

“Exactly. And I want it to be special. Because they're both such good friends of mine.”

“The speech you made at our wedding was definitely special,” Halt said. He too could recall the event clearly. He had been impressed and touched by Will's simple affirmation of love and affection for them both. The fact that he mentioned it now was clear proof of that. Halt had spent his life concealing his feelings from the world at large. He rarely allowed his emotional side—which he called his mawkish side—to show.

“I've been working on the speech,” Will said. His hand went unconsciously toward an inner pocket in his jacket. “I wonder if you'd mind having a listen to what I've got so far . . . ?” He left the question hanging, looking from Pauline to Halt and then back again.

“How could we refuse?” Pauline asked. So young and so serious, she thought to herself.

Halt glanced quickly at her. Too late, he had tried to signal her to find a graceful way of refusing to listen to the speech. She was a diplomat after all, he thought. Graceful refusals were her daily stock-in-trade. He sighed softly. Will was already smoothing out several sheets of paper from his pocket. He looked up at them to see if they were ready. Pauline leaned forward in her seat and nodded encouragingly. Halt raised his eyes to the ceiling.

Will took that as a signal to proceed. He cleared his throat several times, smoothed the paper a few more times and frowned as he read ahead, committing the first few lines to memory.

“You' ll understand,” he said, “this is just a first draft. It's by no means the final wording that I'll be using on the day. I'll probably go through it and change it here and there. I mean, I'll definitely go through it, and when I do, I'll probably change it here and there . . .”

“Of course,” Pauline said, and gestured for him to proceed. He cleared his throat again.

“Getting a cold?” Halt asked innocently, then winced as Pauline kicked him under the table. Even wearing light evening slippers, she packed a wallop, he thought, leaning down to rub his calf muscle.

Will looked up from the speech, his cheeks flushing. “No,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“Ignore him, Will, dear,” Pauline said. There was an underlying steely note in her voice that Will didn't notice. Halt did, however. He had known this woman for many years and decided that silence would be his best option for the next few minutes.

“Very well . . . ,” Will said. He cleared his throat again. Finally, he began.

“It is with the greatest fulsomeness of heart that I—”

“Whoa! Whoa! Bring the ship back to the shore there! It is with the greatest
whatsomeness
of
what
?” Halt asked incredulously, his plan to remain silent suddenly forgotten. Will looked up at him, flustered.

“Fulsomeness of heart,” he repeated. Then he checked the text in front of him once more. “Yes. That's right. Fulsomeness of heart.”

“And what on earth does ‘fulsomeness of heart' mean?” Halt asked. He glanced at his wife and noticed that she was concealing a smile.

Will made an uncertain gesture with his right hand. “Well, it means . . . you know . . . a lot of . . . um . . .
fulsomeness
. . . in the heart.”

Halt continued to stare at him, uncomprehending. He shook his head, so Will tried again. Now he was more than flushed, Pauline noticed. His cheeks were aflame.

“It means I'm happy. Very happy,” Will said eventually.

“Then why don't you say ‘I am happy, very happy'?” Halt asked.

Will shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Well, that would be a little”—he searched for a word, then found it—“prosaic, wouldn't it?”

Halt's eyebrows shot up. “Prosaic? First it's funsomeness . . .”

“Fulsomeness,” Will said, through slightly gritted teeth. Halt ignored him.

“Now it's prosaic. I'll be butted by a billy goat if I know what that means!”

“Don't be colorful, dear,” said Pauline. “It means ‘ordinary.' ”

“Oh, so I'm ordinary, am I?” he challenged Will. “And when did it become a crime to use words that people could understand?”

“I said before, I'm trying to make this speech memorable,” Will said.

Halt slumped back into his seat. “It'll be memorable, all right,” he muttered. “For years, people will say,
Remember that speech Will gave that nobody could understand?
” Then he waved a hand for Will to continue. “Let's hear some more of it.”

Will shuffled his sheets of paper and began over again. “It is with the greatest fulsomeness of heart—”

“Heard that already.”

“Halt . . . ,” Pauline said warningly.

“That I stand in your illustrious presences on this most auspicious of felicitous occasions to render praise and adulation to two of the most revered and cherished companions of my youthful years.”

“Good grief,” Halt muttered, earning himself another sharp kick in the calf.

“It would be contumelious of me not to recognize the—”

“No! No! No!” Halt said, waving his arms across in front of his body. “That's enough! No more!”

“Is there a problem?” Will asked haughtily.

Halt rolled his eyes. “Yes, there's a problem! You sound as if you swallowed a dictionary and then threw it up!”

“Don't be coarse, Halt,” Pauline said, and the gray-bearded Ranger subsided, muttering to himself. Will appealed to Pauline.

“What do you think of it, Pauline? You're good with words.”

Pauline hesitated. She loved this young man as if he were her own son and she would never willingly hurt his feelings. But she couldn't let him continue with this overblown nonsense.

“Do you think the language might be a little . . . florid?” she asked tentatively.

Halt snorted, looking away, out the window.

“Florid? It's positively purple in the face!” he said. “It sounds like something Baron Arald would say!”

Will looked at him, a stricken expression on his face.“Oh, surely it's not as bad as all that,” he said.

Halt merely turned to him, raised an eyebrow, then looked away again.

“Will, you spoke so beautifully at our wedding. Just do the same again,” Pauline told him.

But he shook his head. “Everybody says that. But the thing was, nobody was expecting much from me then. Everybody will be expecting so much more this time. Besides, this is a royal wedding, so the speech will be recorded in the annals. It has to be special.”

“Gorlog save us!” Halt said.

Pauline turned to him curiously. “Who exactly is Gorlog, dear?” she asked.

“He's a northern god. I borrowed him from the Skandians. He's very useful if you want to blaspheme without offending people.”

“Other than Skandians?” she suggested, but he shook his head, grinning.

“No. They don't mind. They don't like him very much.”

Pauline nodded, filing that piece of information away, then turned back to Will.

“I have a suspicion that you might be trying too hard, Will,” she said. She pointed to the sheets of paper on the table before him. “Why don't you take another look at it and simplify it a little?”

Will pursed his lips doubtfully. He could ignore Halt's criticism, he thought. Halt had no sense of poetry in him. But Pauline was a different matter. Still, he had spent hours laboring over these words and he was reluctant to abandon them.

“I'll think about it,” he said finally.

Halt snorted yet again. He seemed to be doing a lot of that this evening.

“Just ignore him,” Pauline said to Will. “You know what he's like.”

“Yes,” Halt said. “I'm sorry I've been so contumentulous.”

“That's contumelious,” Will told him.

Halt smiled a wolfish smile. “Yes. That too.”

Pauline patted Will's hand gently. “As I say, just ignore him. I'll speak to him later,” she added ominously. Will glanced in his old mentor's direction and saw something that surprised him. Something he had never seen before.

The smile was gone. Halt was afraid.

WILL HAD SPENT AN UNSUCCESSFUL AFTERNOON HUNTING.

Jenny had expressed a need for fresh venison in her restaurant, and he had been happy to try to oblige her. But as he knew, sometimes even the most skillful hunter can come home empty-handed. In a way, that was part of the fascination of hunting. The only deer he had seen in a long afternoon had been a young doe and her fawn, obviously still dependent on its mother.

He had smiled at the pair and shooed them on their way, laughing quietly as they bounded off into the trees.