For a price, the cook had provided them not only with fresh rolls dripping with melted butter for their breakfast, but a packet of meat-pies for lunch on the road. With so little traffic about, Kestrel was able to eat with one hand and drive with the other. He enjoyed the fresh, hot bread, but Robin was in heaven over it, sensuously licking the dripping butter from her fingers until he warned her that if she continued in that fashion, they were going to have to make an unscheduled stop!
She laughed, and pouted at him, tossing her long hair over one shoulder in a flirting manner, and he growled at her playfully.
"Ah, well," she sighed. She popped the last bite into her mouth, and wiped her fingers carefully on a bit of rag. "I suppose we'd better behave. If we make an unscheduled stop, we won't get to Gradford before the gates close."
"P-precisely," he said, with mock-sternness. "One of us h-has t-to have s-some s-self-control!"
She laughed, and folded her hands modestly in her lap under the protective warmth of her coat, looking about with interest. It was a breathtakingly beautiful day, in a stark, monochromatic fashion, but there was no doubt that winter was only a breath or two away. Frost was so thick on the branches and dead, dry grasses that they looked as if they had grown white coats of fur; the cloudless blue sky held a sun that gave very little besides light. As the road wove its way onward, they passed streams that had rims of ice at the edges, and their breath and the mares' puffed out in white clouds whenever they talked or breathed. Crows called occasionally, off in the distance. The hills themselves were covered with forests of hardwood trees that had long since lost their leaves, and made a mist-like haze on the hillsides with the interweaving of their gray-barked, barren branches.
"If it looks like we can pass as 'Church-approved,' we might actually be able to play some music," she remarked, when the inn had receded from sight.
"I th-thought about th-that." While they had been hard at work on the God-Stars, in order to get themselves into the proper mood, they had polished up all the ballads about heroes of the Church that either of them knew. If nothing else, those songs were often used as teaching aids by the Priests, and singing them made a painless refresher course in theology and accepted doctrine, not to mention providing a good source of pious quotations to sprinkle over their conversation. "P-purely instrumental m-music ought t-to b-be safe, if it isn't a d-dance t-tune. And even d-d-dance t-tunes c-can b-be made s-safe."
"How?" she asked, full of immediate interest. "Oh! Of course! If we slow the tempo so it isn't a dance tune anymore, likely no one will recognize it!"
"And add l-liturgical ch-chord sequences, th-the k-kind you hear in h-h-hymns." He was very pleased with that idea; he'd already tried it out in his head, and it made even the liveliest toe-tapper sound as if it came straight from Holy Services.
She nodded, her face full of pleasure at his cleverness. Then her eyes grew thoughtful; he let her sit in silence, knowing that she was trying to work a sudden thought to its conclusion. He listened instead to the steady clopping of the mares' hooves, and the jingle of their harness in the clear, cold air. Finally, she spoke.
"Music isn't going to be forbidden everywhere," she said, slowly. "In fact, the one way to give brothels and pleasure-houses more business than they can handle is to try to forbid pleasure itself. And a pleasure-house is going to be a very good place to learn what's going on in Gradford_really going on, that is, and not just what the officials are telling people, or what street-gossip says. Musicians are probably going to be welcome there, if all the places haven't already been taken by Gradford natives."
"B-but it c-could be d-dangerous," Kestrel finished for her. "If Church officials d-decide t-to l-look for s-someone t-to use as an example. S-someone w-with n-no importance. Still. P-perhaps if w-we d-do what Rune d-did, and have t-two personae, one f-for the s-street and one f-for th-the b-b-brothel."
"Its worth thinking about when we get there," she agreed. "I have to admit I didn't think this was going to be all that important even after listening to Harperus and Nightingale_I thought this was just another bout of petty harassment, the kind we had when we first formed the Free Bards. Somethings up though, something is different this time. I don't like what I've been hearing, and I want to do something about protecting our people before it's too late."
Jonny nodded, but did not add what he was thinking.
I only hope it's not already too late.
Their sturdy mares were in fine fettle after four days of rest and good feeding, and made much better time than either of them had expected. The walls of Gradford appeared in the distance in mid-afternoon, and they had plenty of time to study the city-state during their approach.
It had been built on the top of an enormous hill (or very small mountain) and was supposed to be the oldest complex continuously inhabited by humans in the Twenty Kingdoms. The city had expanded several times, and each time it had, a new set of walls had been built to accommodate the expansion. The original structure looked to have been either a military fortress or fortified castle; probably the original Duke of Gradford's holding. Its strange, blocky, angular architecture was at violent odds with the rest of the city, and it was easily the tallest structure either of them had ever seen in their lives. It must have been at least a full twenty stories tall, and Jonny could not imagine anyone climbing all those staircases to get to the top on a regular basis. The building itself, taken over by the Duke, was supposedly a structure that had made it through the Cataclysm intact. But the Duke's line had died out, and no relative could be found to claim the holding before the Mayor of the city below his fortress had claimed independence, supported by the High Bishop.
That had been in the early days, when no one really wanted the remote city, even though it was on a major trade road. Gradford's heyday had come when enterprising souls roaming the hills had discovered rich veins of silver and copper beneath them to the east, and iron-ore and coal to the west. To the south were finds of semiprecious and precious gems; garnet, beryl, amethyst, topaz, peridot, citrine, tourmaline, moonstone, and fine, clear quartz of all kinds.
Suddenly Gradford had something to trade. And by this time, it had the blessing of the High Bishop, a strong Lord Mayor and a Council comprised of Guild Masters from every major trade. The Council immediately let it be known that they were hiring the best mercenaries money could buy, and there were no more rumors of war.
Gradford prospered and grew, but apparently the Mayor and Council never forgot that there were nobles out there who lusted for its wealth. Every building was neatly tucked inside that last wall, and all of the walls sported sentries and guards, tiny as gnats at this distance, but clearly vigilant and visible.
The road did not actually lead through the city, but rather went past the base of the hill it was built upon. Long ago the hill had been cleared of trees, to keep any hostile forces from creeping up under cover of the branches. What remained was rock; rock, and very thin soil covered with tough, wiry grass. The dead brown grass matched the sandy brown rock, the same rock that had been quarried to form the city walls, so that the city rose out of the hillside as if it had grown from the rocks themselves.
A switchback road cut out of the hillside and reinforced with more of the same sandy-brown stone led up to the city gates, which stood wide open at this hour. Hardly surprising, Jonny reflected. The guards on the walls would see enemies coming long before they were any threat, and by the time an enemy force was within striking distance, the gates would already be closed and barred.
The road was wide and even, and so well-maintained that the mares were not even sweating by the time they brought their wagon in under the enormous gates, which had clearly been built to handle vehicles much larger than theirs. There was not one gate, but several, although Jonny suspected that only the outer, wooden gates, banded and reinforced with iron straps, were ever closed at night. Behind the wooden gates was a portcullis of iron bars that dropped down from above. Behind that was another portcullis of thick stakes of wood, woven with iron straps. And behind that was a second set of wooden gates, this pair sheathed with iron plates on the inner side. Jonny suspected that there were murder-holes in the floor of the walkway topping the gates, and that anyone who got through the first set of gates would find molten lead, stones, or boiling oil or water rained down on him from above. A truly cruel trick would be to let an enemy pass the first set of gates, then drop the outer portcullis, trapping him between the inner gates and the outermost portcullis, and destroy him at leisure.