The Sea Peoples(94)

He seemed to be enjoying the conversation far too much, and to find the whole complicated business of men and women rather amusing.

“Put the poor bastard out of his misery,” Toa urged.

The silent communion between the two women ended with Thora nodding and making a sweeping gesture that said: Go ahead.

Pip bowed and pointed at her, and Thora made the same gesture.

“It’s her,” they said in chorus.

Distantly, John heard a clatter. Then he realized it was the clatter of his own plates as he fell. Two faces looked down at him in concern, then cleared. The grin on Pip’s face was, if possible—

“Our prepotent sire has fainted,” she said. “All those Victorian novels they made me read at Rockhampton Girls Grammar School finally come in useful, or would if I had any smelling salts . . . I wonder what smelling salts were?”

“And remember,” Thora said. “Toa was right. Our real bodies aren’t here.”

They each gave him a hand and heaved him upright; getting up in sixty pounds of armor wasn’t all that difficult when it was well-distributed all over your body, but he felt as if he’d been hit behind the ear with the proverbial sock full of wet sand.

“How . . . how . . .”

This time both women laughed instead of grinning. “Oh, Johnnie, do you really need to ask that question?” Thora asked.

Pip sighed. “The oldsters say rubber products just aren’t as reliable as they were before the Blackout . . . the Change.”

Thora’s tone grew pawky. “Don’t worry, Johnnie. I’ll look after it—literally.”

He felt an ignoble rush of relief, because if she’d appealed for his aid and acknowledgement he wouldn’t in honor have been able to deny it to her . . . and his child . . . and . . .

Oh, God pity me and forgive my weakness, the complications!

Fortunately Bearkillers, even the Catholic ones, didn’t look on such matters the same way Associates did. He hadn’t a clue how Deor’s folk did, but the scop didn’t seem too disturbed.

“And so will I for the babe,” Deor said, and paused to look him in the eye. “On that you have my word as a Godulfson. My oath-sister’s child shall be as mine.”

A wry grin. “It’s the closest I’ll come to being a father—closer than I expected, in fact. My brother the lord of Mist Hills has offered us land. If—it’s an if the size of mountains—we make it safely back to Montival, we’re going to take it of him, put an end to our wanderings save for visits in the neighborhood and raise horses and grapes. And it’s out of the way, and likely will be even when you’ve a fine son or strapping daughter twenty years from now. Eventually the child will have to know her heritage. But what I can do until then, I will do.”

John managed to wheeze: “Thank you,” as they took up the trudge again. “You’re a man I would trust with that.”

It could have been much worse; if the women had both been Mackenzies, they might have expected him to move in with the pair of them, a thought which evoked feelings of horror and horrified attraction at the same time.

“And don’t worry. I won’t tell your mother if you don’t want me to,” Thora said.

“Neither will I,” Pip said.

He hadn’t thought of it in those terms, and felt another rush of relief before the fear, which was odd but seemed to make sense. His mother most assuredly was Catholic and was an Associate, and in her way notably pious. Bringing home a wellborn Anglican Rite bride like Pip was one thing, even if they’d had to find a priest on their own and arrived with wedding bands and a baby. A royal bastard on the other hand . . .

Oh, God, the political complications! I hadn’t thought of that! Why does fun have to be so serious?

Anonymous Nobleman X wouldn’t have to worry; a gift to the mother, possibly some patronage down the road, and that was it. The second in line to the High Kingdom and the heir to the Protectorate . . .

Visions of court faction in his middle years sprang into his mind and made more sweat run into the lining of his helmet and his arming-doublet.

“I warned her too, Your Highness,” Deor said.

“It was an accident!” Thora said.

Deor smiled at her, then sobered. “Best indeed if nobody beyond us four . . .”

He looked at Alan and continued pointedly: “Us five ever knows. Men could die on bloody fields and houses burn otherwise.”

The Boisean smiled crookedly. “I barely know my own name right now, sir,” he said. “And besides . . . if this is where you say it is, who would believe anything I said I’d learned here? For what my promise is worth, I’ll keep my peace . . . and even I don’t know what it’s worth.”

Deor laughed. “You have a point, Alan of Thor’s Stone.”

John flogged himself back to alertness; in a way it was almost fortunate he was in this place of peril and horror.

Almost.





CHAPTER NINETEEN


BETWEEN WAKING WORLD AND SHADOW

After a while a horse-drawn cart approached them, growing from a dot in the dim distance until it was visibly a four-wheel vehicle. That was reassuringly familiar, though at home he’d have expected two horses, and it was making an odd whining noise, not what you got from ungreased wheels. The driver looked roly-poly; as they drew closer John realized that he was round except for the cloth-cased stick-limbs, and the same lemon-yellow color as the tunic and hood he wore. He looked at them and giggled as he drove by; once he was close you could see that the harness was sewn onto the beast, which wasn’t exactly a horse. But it wept blood and whimpered as it pulled.