‘You speak in riddles, Wolfgar.’
‘I’m a bard, that’s part of the trade at times. Do you like this Ass-you?’
‘Asayaga.’
‘Do you like him?’
Dennis looked at Wolfgar in surprise. ‘Your questions are addled.’ He regretted the word even as he said it.
Wolfgar, however, chuckled. Then, coughing, he leaned over, gasping until he finally caught his breath. ‘You respect the way they fight, I know that. I heard some of your men speak of it last night before they settled in – grudging praise for the Tsurani skill in battle.’
‘They’re good. At least they’re good in a stand-up fight in the open. Catch them by surprise in the woods and you have them every time, but a stand-up infantry against infantry and you’d pay a terrible price. I think we’d have been overwhelmed retreating up here if it hadn’t been for them. There weren’t fifty arrows left in my entire command, my men were collapsing from the cold and exhaustion.’
‘I dare say the Tsurani are saying the same about you right now. They know they’d all be dead back at poor old Brendan’s Stockade if you hadn’t wandered in. They know as well your skill in the woods: they respect it, and deep down they fear it. So we have two sides here who both respect and fear each other.’ Wolfgar laughed. ‘Damn, how the gods love to play jokes. I’ve seen marriages like this – hell my third one was damn near identical to what you now got. So now you’re stuck with each other.’
Dennis nodded. ‘If I can keep the peace.’
‘You will. That Ass You, or whatever it is he calls himself, you could find worse allies out here. Hell, better an enemy you can trust than a friend you aren’t sure of. Try and extend your agreement. But damn my soul, if you can’t, take your argument somewhere else: I don’t want my long house turned into a slaughter pen.’ He hesitated and looked over at Dennis with a calculating smile. ‘But then again, your rotting bodies piled up outside my gate might buy off the Dark Brothers when they finally show up.’
Dennis started to reply but Wolfgar held up his hand.
‘I might be a renegade bard with a price on my head, but I honour old memories, Dennis Hartraft.’
Dennis said nothing for a moment then finally he looked up. ‘Your story? I haven’t heard a damn thing about you since the King’s warrant for your head was handed to my grandfather. Hell, I was still just a stripling then.’
Wolfgar laughed. ‘Twenty years. That’s what I get for composing bad verse about the pustulating sores on the royal buttocks.’
‘Well it never would have started if you hadn’t been seen jumping out of the window of the favourite royal consort,’ Dennis replied. ‘Prince Rodrick, now our King, is as you may have noticed, mad, or so they say. That woman was his favourite. Of all the women to stoke your lust.’
‘I’d prefer to think that my troubles arose from art rather that lust.’
‘I remember the day a squadron of royal troops arrived, angry as hornets, figuring our place would be where you’d choose to hide out.’
‘I don’t bring trouble on to friends.’
‘My grandfather laughed so damn hard when he heard the story he swore he’d fight the prince himself if you came to us.’
‘Like I said, I don’t bring trouble on to friends.’
‘So what happened then?’
‘I decided it was wise to make my precious body scarce. I have an aversion to hangings, drawings and quarterings, and worst of all the litigators – if you can afford one – you have to put up with first before they get around to the punishments. Damn leeches, drain the last copper out of your coffer with their fees and you wind up dead anyhow. I couldn’t work. That fornicating son of a dung-eating proprietor of a knocking-shop who calls himself a King these days had his agents everywhere. So there I was, a victim of me own fame, unable to work, and all because of a beautiful doxy, and a sore on the royal backside she had told me about.’
Dennis laughed. ‘You brought it on yourself. He might have let it pass, I mean the tumbling of his consort. He threw her out of the palace the following day. Admitting the truth—that he had been cuckolded – would have been embarrassing. Oh, you’d have been dodging assassins for a while, but it would have finally blown over. But to compose that epic poem, dedicated to all the prince’s failings in bed and the sores on his backside was more than anyone could stand.’
Wolfgar chuckled. ‘It was a good piece of verse.’
‘They still sing it,’ Dennis said with a smile, ‘though far from the King’s Palace in Rillanon.’
‘Well, after that little fiasco I figured it was time to go to a land where royal warrants couldn’t find me. I tried to take ship to the southern lands but the dockyards were crawling with royal agents and snitches that would sell me for a few pieces of silver so I headed north instead. ‘That is where I met my precious Roxanne, on the road not far from here.’ As he said the name the old man smiled wistfully. ‘Had my heart on the spot she did. She was a fortune-teller, a true wizard with the picture cards, the reading of entrails and cracked bones. She was travelling with a merry band of vagabonds and thieves, and there was always room for a minstrel in their company.
‘Said I’d be hanged if I didn’t stay with her, and so I did. Ahh, there was a time in my sin sodden youth when I thought I’d never worry for the companionship of a lovely woman, but at that age, to find just one more like her was a blessing. So we jumped the fire-pit together as they say, and soon thereafter she smiles and says we need to find a place to raise our family.’
Again he laughed wistfully until a coughing fit doubled him over. The seizure passed and he wiped the spittle from his chin.
‘It was Roxanne who knew of this valley. Her little band of performers had found it years before: it was one of their secret hideouts and she led me here. We settled in; our two daughters came, and life continued, free, I might add, of any royal warrants and grasping lawyers looking for their fees. Free as well of the asinine wars that kings just love to get their people slaughtered in while they hide out in their palaces.’
‘Daughters?’
Wolfgar smiled. ‘Two lovelies they are.’
‘Where?’
Wolfgar laughed. ‘With a hundred hungry wolves at my gate last night, do you think I’d show my most precious treasures? I had them hide in the woods till things were settled. They came in with the other woman and children after your men bedded down for the night and slept in the servants’ quarters. When the boy on watch came in reporting your arrival I knew we couldn’t hold out against a hundred heavily-armed troops and was expecting the worst. We have a couple of small stockades up in the forests in case of trouble. This place is deliberately, out in the open. Bait, almost.’
‘Why didn’t all of you go up in the woods and hide?’
‘Would you? Too many signs that we were here. Someone had to stay behind and lead you to believe that all of us had been taken.’
Dennis nodded. ‘Where are the men?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t see a dozen here capable of bearing arms. All the rest are oldsters like yourself.’
‘The men?’ and Wolfgar shook his head. ‘Roxanne’s people are wanderers. If they’re in trouble, a warrant on their heads, they’ll come here for a year or two to hide out, then they move on. One year we might have less than thirty living here, another year it might be a hundred. Most of the performers found ample riches working the army in the west. Those lads brighten up a great deal at the sight of a pretty woman dancing to the songs of a talented bard. The jugglers and acrobats get a copper or two also.’
‘And a couple of purses vanish from the crowd, as well, I warrant,’ suggested Dennis.