Page 162 of Swordheart
“Horses are not magical and they cannot run for hours at a stretch. Particularly not when ridden by an elderly, sedentary scholar.”
Halla was forced to acknowledge the truth of this. They had stopped at an inn, asking for information, and found that, while three days ahead of them, Bartholomew and Nolan had stopped very early in the day.
“Three of ’em,” said the innkeeper, when Zale had pressed her. “Old fellow and a young guy, and their bodyguard. Face like thunder on that one.”
“But unhurt?” asked Halla.Oh, it’s a stupid question, he can’tbehurt, at least not for long.
The innkeeper cocked an eyebrow at her. Halla could read her thoughts easily enough—is this woman a jilted lover, come looking for the man who did her wrong?
“He’s an… uh… family friend,” said Halla. “The older man. We heard he got into some trouble with bandits, you see, and I worried…”
The woman’s face cleared. “He looked fine. Young fellow had taken a beating recently.”
“Oh dear.” Halla tried to keep her face composed. She could venture a guess who had administered that beating.
So Bartholomew is the wielder, then.
Somehow that made her angrier. Bartholomew knew her. He had been Silas’s great friend. He’d even helped her. He knew how much she hated Alver, he knew what Malva was like, and he’d stillabandoned her to their mercies without a second thought to get his hands on the sword.
She sat on the wagon seat as they drove on, mile by mile, and fumed.
“Twisting your whiskers, fish-lady.”
“What?”
Brindle gave her the annoyed-but-patient look that he usually did when a human was failing to understand something obvious. “Twisting your whiskers. Hurts and doesn’t help, but a gnole keeps doing it.”
“Oh.” Halla sighed. It did feel a bit like that, now that he said something. “You’re right. I just can’t seem to stop.”
To her surprise, Brindle leaned over and licked her cheek. “A human will get her mate back. Be easy.”
Halla flushed, as much in surprise as embarrassment. “He isn’t… I mean, I don’t know if he’s… not that I wouldn’t like him to be, but…”
Brindle rolled his eyes. “Humans can’t smell.”
Halla waited politely, but apparently this was a complete thought, and Brindle lapsed back into silence.
They stopped that night near the Drunken Boar inn, far too late to worry about cooking dinner for themselves. Halla looked up at the sign and thought grimly that she had once been so excited to see that sign, several weeks and an eternity ago. Now it seemed like she was cursed to follow this road back and forth until she died.
“I’m not dead, am I?” she asked Zale. “This isn’t the afterlife and we’re following this road forever, are we?”
“I don’t think so,” said Zale. “I must believe that the Rat would intervene. At least on my behalf, and I’d put in a good word for you, too.” Halla grunted, then thought,I sound like Sarkis,and then tried very hard to think of something else.
She and Zale went inside to pay the innkeeper for use of his pump and fodder for the ox, and to purchase what was left of the evening meal. Potatoes and pork drippings, which were delicious even when lukewarm.
“Na’ worries,” said the innkeeper. “No rooms tonight anyway, thanks to these gents.” He nodded across the common room, to where three “gents”—one of them a woman—were sitting at a table. They were all tall and well-muscled and they radiated a sense of purpose, and something else… Halla couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she felt like she was standing near a stove.
“Oh,paladins,” said Zale, sounding affectionate and resigned all at once. One of the gents lifted her tankard.
Halla looked more closely and saw the closed eye symbol on the tabards. Paladins of the Dreaming God. Of course. That would explain why all three were rather relentlessly pretty in a chiseled heroic-statue sort of way. The Dreaming God was well known for His taste.
Zale approached them as if they were colleagues, which, Halla supposed, they were. The three paladins pushed out a chair for the priest and another for Halla. She took it, feeling a bit embarrassed. Widowed housekeepers from Rutger’s Howe did not usually sit down with demonslayers.
Zale clearly felt no such compunctions. The priest introduced Halla—“My client”—and then the four launched into a discussion that sounded less theological and more like temple gossip. Halla drank her small-beer and ate her food and did not try to contribute until the talk turned to things she understood.
“It’s been a mess,” said one of the paladins, leaning back in his chair. “Since the Clockwork Boys got turned off, all the demons that were running the damn things jumped… well, you know. Five years and we’re still cleaning up the mess. The last one got into a swineherd, near as we can tell, and then his own pigs killed him. Then it jumped to the biggest sow and went off and hadbabies. Of course, nobody calledusin until there was a whole army of demon-led pork on the hoof.”
Zale and Halla both winced.
