* * *
The next few hours were as confusing as they were frightening. A hurried rush, under cover of nightfall, to a nearby villa — the richest mansion Kata had ever seen in her life. Followed by. . nothing. Just what seemed like an endless wait, hiding in a side house while their escort fidgeted outside on the grounds of the villa.
Kata was able to keep the other girls quiet, but it became more difficult as time passed. She herself simply couldn't make any rhyme or reason out of what was happening. It didn't help her state of mind any when she realized that the officer and soldiers who had taken her and the other girls and the servants out of Jeschonyk's villa couldn't make any sense of it either.
"What does that crazy bitch think she's doing?" she overheard one of the soldiers mutter to another. The response was a shrug of resignation.
"Don't ask me. The sergeant just says we're to keep everyone here tonight, and be ready to get out of the city sometime tomorrow. Seems the Lady wants to make a speech."
"What? In the capital? Albrecht's goons are crawling all over the place. Is she out of her mind?"
Another resigned shrug. "What else is new? Remember that time — you ought to, it was only a few months back — she suddenly had us hauling most of the statues out of this place? In the middle of the night, as if anybody cared what she did with the stupid things?" Glumly: "Heavy they were, too. Like hoisting so many rocks."
The ensuing conversation, what little of it Kata was able to understand, seemed to revolve around the endless insanities of the guards' employer. It was not, under the circumstances, the most reassuring thing she could have heard.
But. . there was nothing she could do, after all. So, after a time, she curled up on a couch and managed to get some sleep.
When she awoke, it was well into the morning. In itself, that was not unusual. Jeschonyk had often kept her up late into the night. What was unusual was being awakened by the sound of young men shouting orders instead of an old man's caress.
She bolted upright, startled and afraid. The other girls around her had their mouths open, ready to scream.
"Be quiet, you ninnies!" Thinking quickly: "Those are the guards. Listen! They're getting ready to leave — and in a hurry. Get up!"
She led by example, dragooning the others into what passed for an organized group waiting by the door. When the door was opened, by the same officer who had taken them out of Jeschonyk's villa, they were ready to go.
The officer looked relieved. "Thank the gods, some women in the world have their heads where they belong. Come on, girls — and hurry. The crazy bi — ah, Lady Knecht — has stirred up the whole damn city. Her own escort had to fight their way back here."
The last two sentences were muttered over his shoulder. He was already well across the villa grounds, Kata and the girls trotting at his heels, heading toward the largest coach Kata had ever seen in her life. Also, from the looks of it, the most luxurious.
The door to the coach was flung open — by a woman's hand from the inside, not a servant's from without. That in itself was enough to convey the urgency of the moment. From what Kata could see of the woman herself, in the dark interior of the coach, she looked as if she normally expected servants to wipe her ass.
The officer practically flung them inside. Kata went last, making sure the other girls stayed reasonably calm, then clambered aboard and shut the door behind her. She barely had time to register the presence of an elderly man sitting next to the coach's owner — his skeletal face looking even more apprehensive than those of the girls — before she was flung onto the cushioned seat by the coach lurching into motion.
The same expensive-looking hand reached out and held her steady. "Not to worry, girl," came a cultured voice. "I assure you this coach is very well made" — at that moment the coach practically flew into the air, driven at a gallop over the little barrier in the gateway of the villa; Kata prayed the voice was telling the truth—"and I always employ the very finest coachmen."
She stared up at the woman. Nothing registered at first except a pair of very dark eyes, set closely together in a narrow face. The eyes seemed somewhat amused.
"I apologize for the unseemly nature of our departure." Kata's eyes widened. The woman was obviously from the nobility. A quick glance at the clothing was enough to tell her that much. Apologizing to slaves?
"I'm sure most people think I'm crazy to have done it," the self-assured voice continued. "Uncle Undreth here certainly does! But I simply couldn't leave Vanbert without letting everyone know — finally! — what I think of Drav Albrecht. And precisely which way he ought to be gutted."
Was she crazy?
"But enough of that." The dark eyes seemed alive with interest now, more than amusement. "Ion tells me — told me; he's dead now—"
Kata had known that must be true, but she still felt a pang of sorrow. He'd been a kindly man, and she hadn't minded satisfying his lusts. She'd have had to do the same for any master, after all, few of whom would have bothered to make sure she enjoyed herself also.
"— truly sorry, I was very fond of the old reprobate. But live for the moment, as the philosopher Yerra says, even if the Hedonist school isn't respected much these days — odd, really, since everyone practices his teachings at the same time they sneer at it — so let's follow the principle. As I was saying, Ion told me you're a Reedbottom."
Kata's brain was scrambling to catch up with the torrent of words pouring over it.
"— opportunity finally arrives to actually talk with one. So, girl, tell me: how exactly does Young Word reconcile this all-powerful Assan of yours with" — the cultured hand attached to the cultured voice pointed a long accusing finger out the window at the city hurtling past the coach—"all this shit."
Whump! Another unseen obstacle sent the coach flying. The girls shrieked; the cultured hand kept Kata steady again. The cultured voice never missed a beat.
"— All-Father, the rascal, gets away with it by blaming other gods. But I can't see where the same clever trick could do your Assan much good. 'Sees all, knows all, creates all'—that doesn't seem to leave any room for excuses, now does it?"
Kata gaped up at her. Yes. Assan save us. She is crazy.
Chapter 23
When Helga saw the first signs of a barbarian rout, she had a hard time to keep herself from cheering. As it was, she made no attempt to suppress a savage grin.
Undiplomatic, to be sure. But the hundreds of Southron cavalrymen who pounded past the huge column of the Reedbottoms and Adrian's mercenaries — heading the other way, as fast as they could drive their velipads loaded with booty — were too preoccupied with staying in their saddles to notice the expression on her face.
She was a bit surprised that many of them managed to stay mounted at all, much less at a full gallop. Some of the booty which the barbarians had seized in their ravaging forays was downright bizarre. One man was even trying to balance the brass headboard of a rich man's bed across his saddle.
All of them were overloaded, even for the heavy Southron mounts. If it weren't for the fact that Helga knew how that booty had been taken, she'd find the whole thing more amusing than anything else.
"Stupid as beasts, too," she hissed. "By the time they get back across the Wall, they'll have discarded half that stuff."
"Half, at least," responded Adrian. His own face looked sour. That wasn't because the Southron retreat was upsetting his plans, Helga knew. It was simply because Adrian wasn't really any fonder of the barbarians than she was.
Well, except for that Prelotta freak, and his mangy Reedbottoms.
Helga's own opinion of the Reedbottoms, and Prelotta, lacked any of Adrian's complexity. She understood the subtlety of his Grove-trained logic, more or less; she understood much better the cold-blooded calculations which lay behind her father's schemes. But Helga's attitude toward the southern barbarians — the Reedbottoms no less than any of the others — began with their smell, and. .
Ended there. Stinking savages.
A knot of horsemen was approaching the head of the column from straight ahead on the road. A large knot — perhaps fifty in all; heavily armored, and riding even larger velipads than most Southrons. And they were trotting, not galloping in headlong retreat.
Reedbottoms, then. Prelotta's tribesmen didn't share the usual Southron contempt for armor, and they transferred over to cavalry warfare their heavy infantry notions of fighting.
Before she could recognize the face of the man leading them, Helga knew it was Prelotta himself. The Reedbottom chief had led a party out yesterday to negotiate with the nearby city of Franness.
"Negotiate," she muttered.
Adrian heard the mutter, and smiled thinly. "In a manner of speaking. Much the way a footpad 'negotiates' with his victim. 'Your purse or your life.' "
Franness was the largest city in the Confederacy's southern provinces. Nothing on the order of great Vanbert itself, of course — say, fifty thousand residents to the capital's one million — but still quite a prize for a barbarian conqueror.
Helga had thought Prelotta's attempt to extort booty from them through "negotiation" was absurd. Everyone knew that Tomsien was coming, with a huge army of Confederate regulars. The barbarians could boast all they wanted, but every single time in history they'd come up against a large Vanbert force, the Southrons had gotten their heads broken.
The city notables of Franness knew that history as well as anyone. Franness was a walled city, with a real wall and not just a flimsy palisade. And everyone — every Confederate city notable, for sure — also knew what the penalty would be if they capitulated to the barbarians and Tomsien emerged triumphant. That, too, was a long Confederate tradition — city councils of besieged cities who surrendered before the wall was breached were subject to decimation, just as routed army units were.
That assumed, of course, that the Confederacy would recapture the city. But. . It had never failed to do so yet.