The Yngling

16.

The sun was a red ball hanging two fingers above the horizon. When the guard on a gate tower could no longer see its blood-colored upper rim, he would blow a horn and that gate would be closed.

The road outside the south gate of Pest was crowded with peasants on foot and in carts, and a few horsemen, leaving the city while the gate was still open. A smaller number struggled against the current to enter. An impatient merchant threatened them with the bulk and hooves of his big gelding, striking occasionally with his quirt at some peasant head as he pushed his way, cursing, through the crowd. Just ahead of him a huge peasant in a ragged cloak half turned and, taking the bridle in a large, thick hand, slowed the horse. Incensed at the impertinence, the merchant stood in his stirrups, quirt raised. The blue eyes that met his neither threatened nor feared; if anything, they were mildly interested and perhaps very slightly amused. Reddening, the merchant sat down again, to be led through the gate at the pace of a peasant walking in a crowd.

A little inside the gate, Nils let go the bridle and turned down the first side street that circled inside the city. He had several purposes: kill Ahmed, tell Janos what had happened to Imre, and take Ahmed's psi tuner. But it would be dangerous to try to enter the palace until Ahmed was asleep. The man's psi was remarkably sensitive and alert, and he had henchmen in Janos's guard, one of them a psi. If he detected Nils either directly or through the mind of someone who saw and recognized him, he could be expected to act instantly to have the northman murdered.

Walking the streets was as good a way as any to kill time until Ahmed should have retired.

Pest was a very large town for its time, with a wall eight kilometers around. The narrow, cobbled outer street was walled on each side by two-storied buildings broken only by intersecting streets and an occasional small courtyard or dark and narrow passage. Most of the buildings were dwellings-some tenements and some the homes of merchants or artisans with their places of business. Near each of the city gates the dwellings gave way to taverns, inns and stables. There the night air was heavy with the pungency of horses and hay, the rancid odor of dried urine from walls and cobblestones, and the faint residual sweet-sour smell of last night's vomit.

Nils took a slow two hours to walk around the outer street and was approaching the gate by which he had entered, when several knights came out of a tavern. They were at the stage of the evening when their inhibitions, never the strongest, were negligible, but their coordination was not yet seriously impaired. The smallest of them, oblivious to everything but the gesture-filled story he was telling, almost walked into Nils in the semi-darkness of the street, then suddenly recoiled from the near collision.

"Peasant swine! Watch where you're going!"

"Excuse me, sir, I meant no harm."

The knight's eyes narrowed. Truly a very big peasant. "Excuse you? You almost walked into me, you stupid clod." His sword was in his hand. "I may excuse you at that, though, if you get down on your knees and beg nicely enough."

The knights had surrounded Nils now, each with drawn sword. He sensed a severe beating here, with injuries possibly serious, unless he did something to forestall it. He began to kneel, slowly and clumsily, then lunged forward, left hand clutching the sword wrist of his accoster, his right crushing the knight's nose and upper mandible as he charged over him. Stumbling on the falling knight, Nils caught himself on one hand and sprang forward again to flee, but the point of a wildly swung sword sliced one buttock deeply.

Even so, within fifty meters the knights gave up the chase. But in the intersection just ahead was a patrol of wardens, bows bent. One let go an arrow at Nils's belly. Reacting instantly, he dodged and ran on a few paces, another arrow driving almost through his thick left thigh. He stopped, nearly falling, aware that if he didn't, the other wardens would surely shoot him down. The knights behind him came on again, and Nils turned to face them.

"Wait!" one shouted. "I know this man."

And now Nils knew him, not by his appearance, for he had shaved his beard and wore jerkin and hose, but by the picture in the man's mind. He had been one of Lord Lajos's border patrol that had intercepted Nils on the river ice when he had first entered Hungary.

"You heard the clod talk," the knight said. "He's a foreigner. I remember him by his size and yellow hair. The one who escaped from the dungeon last year and killed several of the guards doing it."

"That one! Let's finish him."

"No!" The man who had recognized Nils grabbed the other by the arm. "He's worth many forints to us alive. We can take him to the palace and have him put in the dungeon for attacking a knight. He won't escape this time-not in the shape he's in. Then we'll send word to Lord Lajos. He'll want the foreigner, and he's the king's guest. The king will oblige, and you can bet that Lajos will pay us all well."

Quickly they threw Nils to the cobblestones, pushed the head of the arrow out through the back of the thickly muscled leg, and broke the shaft in front of the feathers. Then they pulled it out and stuffed pieces of his rags into the hole to slow the flow of blood.

Ahmed sat straight and intent at his desk. There could be no doubt about it; the prisoner just brought into the palace was the big barbarian, and his friends in the palace guard would not be happy about it. He had better act now. Opening a little chest on his desk he took out a sheet of parchment and hurried from the room.

Nils lay in a cell neither shackled nor locked in. One of the guard knelt beside him cleaning the wound with big, careful hands. Nils's calm gray face showed no interest in the sudden commotion down the passageway.

"The King!" a voice shouted.

"That'll do it," said the guard, standing. "He'll get you out of here."

But Nils did not sit up. He saw the king's mind clearly.

In a moment Janos stood before the cell, his voice grim with hate. "You filth! You swine! The boy would have given you almost anything, but you wanted what he would not give-his decency." Janos turned to the physician who had hurried, wheezing, behind him. "See that he's able to walk again by the next holiday. I want him to walk to the gallows. And I want him strong enough to take a long time to choke-he'll learn how Imre felt being strangled."

For a moment more he glared at Nils, then turned and walked swiftly away.

Janos stood at his window, staring unseeingly into the early June dawn. In his grief and bitterness he had not slept. Yet he was past the peak of it and could think again. He had liked his big barbarian guard and had never sensed his weakness. But you couldn't know what a barbarian might do.

There was a rap on his chamber door. He turned.

"Yes?"

A guard opened it apologetically. "I could hear you moving around, Your Highness, and knew you were awake. Sergeant Bela would like to talk to you."

"At this hour? What about?"

"The barbarian, Your Highness."

The king stared at him with narrowed eyes. "All right, let him in. But you and Sandor stay with us."

Bela was ushered in and dropped immediately to one knee. The words began to pour out. "Your Highness, I've heard what has been said about the barbarian-what you have been told. And I've talked to him." Without a pause he told about the friendship between Nils and Imre, their joking closeness, of being with them continously on the barge and of his farewell to them in the City of Kazi. "And Your Highness, I know it's not true. He couldn't have been that way without some of us seeing some sign of it and speaking of it. He just couldn't have done it. It would be impossible for him. He says that Kazi himself had Imre killed, on a whim. And it's true, Your Highness; I know it. By my life I swear he is telling the truth!"

"Shut up!" shouted Janos. "By your life, eh? Guards, take this lunatic out of here and lock him up." The shaken guards put the points of their swords to Bela's chest, and he stood.

"I swear it, Your Highness," Bela said in little more than a whisper. "Nils is telling the truth. He doesn't know how to lie."

The door of Ahmed's chamber opened quietly and Janos' two guards stepped in and to the side. The king entered behind them and walked up to the cot of the sleeping Sudanese. Drawing back the blanket he placed his dagger point at Ahmed's throat, laying his hand on the dark arched brow so the man would not lift his head abruptly.

"Ahmed. Wake up."

Ahmed awoke fully alert at the words and knew his danger instantly. He touched the mind of his own bodyguard, fading in death outside his door. The king's mind was cold and hard, and he knew that this time it could not be cozened.

"You said the letter came yesterday. Why didn't you show it to me until tonight?"

"As I said, Highness, I couldn't bring myself to give it to you at first. I knew how terrible the news would be for you."

"Liar! You have never had a merciful thought. And why did Kazi send it to you instead of to me?"

Never a merciful thought. He is almost right, Ahmed realized. Not for many years. The Sudanese was suddenly tired and didn't particularly care what happened to him, but he answered anyway, sensing it would do no good.

"He sent it to me so that I could use my judgement as to whether or when to give it to you."

The king's eyes were slitted, his grim face pale in the dawn light. "The barbarian has said that Kazi had the boy killed. How do you answer that?"

"The barbarian lies."

Janos' voice dropped to a hoarse undertone. "And do you remember what you told me after you first looked into his mind, early last winter?"

Ahmed simply looked at the king, too tired to answer. He felt the mind explode at him in the same instant the blade plunged in, watched in dim and heavy apathy as his body first stiffened, then slowly relaxed. It… could… not…

Tears of release and grief washed down the king's cheeks as he spoke to the dark corpse. "You said he didn't lie-that he wasn't able to lie. Now I know who the liars were, and have been all along, and I sent my son, the boy who was like a son to me, to be killed by him."

He turned to his guards, who stood with their jaws hanging in gross astonishment. "Get this carrion out of here," he rasped. And pointing to the corpse of Ahmed he added, "And see that that one is fed to the swine."