The Robin And The Kestrel bv-2 Read online

  Then again, I doubt his mind's grown much beyond six.

  Kestrel ignored them, and moved to the front of the wagon. Robin was already there, untying the horses from the hitching post. Bad luck there; they would have to lead the horses around to turn the wagon, and the three bullies were purposefully blocking the way. The horses were well-trained, but it would be easy enough to spook them.

  "He's a Gyppo, he had ta steal sumthin'," said the second. The troublemakers moved in a little closer, blocking any escape_unless they left the wagon and horses and fled on foot. And they were trapped between the wagon and the blank wall of the Guild Hall. Even if anyone here might be inclined to help, there would be no way to see what was going on. "Mebbe he stole th' wagon."

  "Mebbe he stole the horses," said the third. "They's too good a horse fer a Gyppo."

  "So's the wagon," replied the first. "Mebbe he stole both. Hey, Gyppo! Ye steal yer rig? Thas more likely than that tale yer slut spun, 'bout Rune given it to ye!"

  Something about the bully's tone warned Kestrel that Robin's stories about Rune had brought them the trouble he feared. This fool had been no friend to Rune while she'd lived here_and he held a longstanding grudge against her, like the hen-faced woman.

  "Yah," said the third, sniffing loudly and grinning. "We know all 'bout Rune! Her mam's a slut, she's a slut, an' I reckon her friends'r all sluts, too." He stared at Kestrel, waiting for an answer, and became angry when he didn't get one. "How 'bout it?" he growled. "Ain't ye gonna say nothin'?"

  Kestrel had been watching them carefully, assessing them, and had concluded that while they were very likely strong, and probably the town bullies, they also didn't have a brain to share among them. They were slow, and moved with the clumsy ponderousness of a man used to getting his way through sheer bulk and not through skill. And the way they held themselves told him they were not used to having any real opposition. They wanted to goad him into anger, into rushing them like an enraged child. They would not be prepared for someone who struck back with agility and control.

  Still, if they could get away without a physical confrontation_

  He simply stood his ground, and stared at them, hoping to unnerve them with his silence.

  Stalemate. They stared at him, not sure what to do since he wasn't reacting to their taunts in the way they were used to. He stared at them, not daring them to start anything, but not backing down either.

  Robin made a movement toward the slit in her skirt that concealed her knife. He put his hand on her wrist to stop her.

  Unfortunately, that movement broke the tenuous stalemate.

  "Yah, Rune's a slut an' her friends'r sluts!" said the first one, loudly. "Right, Hill, Warren?" He grinned as the other two nodded. "Hey, boys, I gotta idea! We got our fill'a her_so how 'bout we get a taste'f her friend, eh? They say Gyppo women is real hot _"

  And he made the mistake of grabbing for Robin_who had fended off more bullies in her time than there were people in this village. As she launched herself at her would-be molester, Kestrel sprang at the one grabbing for him.

  Fighting off assassins for most of your life tends to make you a survivor; it also teaches you every dirty trick anyone ever invented. Kestrel turned into a whirlwind of fists and feet, and Robin was putting her own set of street-fighting skills into action. He hadn't wanted this to turn into a physical confrontation, but the bullies had forced it on him, and now they were going to find out that the odds of three large men against a tiny man and woman had been very uneven_but not in their favor.

  He kicked the legs out from beneath the one nearest him by slamming his foot into the fools knee before the man had a notion that he had even moved. The bully went down on his face and started to scramble up, putting his rear in perfect target-range. Kestrel followed his kick in the rump with one to the privates so hard that the bully could not even scream, only gasp and double up into a ball. Robin had already done the same to the fool who had grabbed her, except that she hadn't bothered to knock his legs out from under him first. And she hadn't hit him with the knee, either; he was expecting that. He had backed out of knee range, laughing. She had snap-kicked him as she had intended all along, and the laugh turned into a gasp as she put her full weight behind the kick. She had followed up her foot to the groin with a backhanded blow in his face with the hilt of her dagger that put him to the ground with a bleeding nose and a few less teeth.

  They both converged on the third bully, the one who seemed to be the leader, slamming him up against the side of the wagon before he had quite comprehended the fact that his two friends were no longer standing.

  They knocked the breath out of him, and Robin had her dagger across his throat before he could blink. Kestrel grabbed his wrists and twisted his arms back while he was still stunned, holding him so that no matter how he moved, it would hurt. And the more he moved, the more it would hurt.

  "Now," breathed Robin, as the bully's eyes bulged with fear and the edge of her blade made a thin, painful cut across his throat, "I think you owe us an apology. Don't you?"

  Kestrel jerked the bully's arms so that they wrenched upwards in their sockets. He gasped, and nodded, his eyes filling with tears of pain. Now the very fact that nothing of this confrontation could be seen from the square or the houses around it worked in their favor. So long as no one missed these fools and came looking for them, if things went well.

  Then again_they probably won't come looking for someone who might be beating the pulp out of two strangers. No one wants to know what these three are doing, I'll bet.

  "I also think it would be very wise of you to make that apology, like a gentleman, and say nothing more about this," she continued. "Don't you?"

  Frantically, he nodded, his eyes never leaving her face. The bloodthirsty expression there would have terrified a denser man than he.

  "Just a few things I want you to think about, before you make that apology," she said harshly. "You might have what you think is a clever idea, about claiming how we attacked you, after we drive off." She shook her head, as he broke out in a cold sweat. "That would be a very, very stupid idea. First of all, you'd end up looking like a fool. Why, look how small we are! We weigh less than you do, the two of us put together! Think how brave you'd look, saying that two tiny people attacked you and beat you up, and one of them a girl! You would wind up looking like a weakling as well as a fool, and everyone from here to Kingsford would be laughing at you. What's more, they'd say you can't be any kind of a man if you let a girl beat you up. They'd say you're fey. And they'd start beating you up, any time you left home."

  The sick look in his eyes told Kestrel that her words had hit home, but she wasn't finished with him.

  "There's another reason why that would be a very, very stupid idea," she continued. "We're Gypsies. Do you know just what that means?"

  He shook his head, very slightly.

  "That means that we have all kinds of ways to find out what you've been doing, even when we aren't around. It means we have even more ways of getting at you afterwards_and all of them will come when you aren't expecting them." Her eyes widened, and her voice took on a singing quality_

  And Kestrel sensed the undercurrent of music in the mind, music that could not be detected by the ears, the music he only heard when someone was using Bardic Magic.

  Robin's voice matched that music, turning her sing-song into a real spell, a spell meant to convince this fool that every word she said was nothing less than absolute truth. "We'll come in the night, when you're all alone_catch you on a path and send monsters to chase you until your heart bursts! We'll send invisible things, night-hags, and vampires to your bed, to sit on your chest and squeeze the breath from your lungs while you try to scream in pain and can't! We'll come at you from the full moon, and set a fire in your brain, until you run mad, howling like a dog!"

  The bully was shaking so hard he could hardly stand now.

  "Or_we'll wait_and one night, when you're sitting at your ease _"

  Her
eyes widened further, and he stared at them, unable to look away.

  "_ watching the fire_all alone_no one around to help you, or save you _"

  He was sweating so hard now that his shirt was soaked.

  "_ suddenly the fire will flare! It will grow! You'll be unable to move as it swells and takes on a form, the form of a two-legged beast with fangs as long as your arm and talons like razors! You'll scream and scream, but no one will hear you! You'll try to escape, but you'll be frozen to your chair! You'll watch the demon tear out your heart, watch as it eats your heart still beating, and howl as it takes you down to hell!"

  At the word "hell," a burst of flame appeared under his nose, cupped in the hand that was not holding the dagger.

  A slow, spreading stain on the front of his pants and a distinctive smell betrayed just how frightened he was. The bully had wet his breeches with fear.

  Kestrel let him go in disgust, and the man dropped to the ground, gibbering incoherently. Robin stepped back and smiled at him sweetly.

  "Now," she said, "do you apologize for calling me a slut?"

  He nodded frantically.

  "Do you apologize for calling Rune a slut?"

  His head bobbed so hard it practically came off his shoulders.

  "Are you going to keep your filthy tongue off Rune and any other Free Bard? Are you going to take your two playmates and go away, and never say anything about this again?" She smiled, but it was not sweetly. "Are you going to pretend all this never happened?"

  "Yes!" the bully blubbered, through his tears. "Yes! Oh, please _"

  "You may go," Robin said, coolly, sheathing her dagger so quickly it must have looked to the man as if she had made it vanish into thin air. He fled.

  The other two were just getting to their feet, but they had heard and seen everything Robin had said and done. And they had been affected by her Bardic spell too, just not as profoundly or immediately as the first bully. The one Kestrel had kicked helped the one with the bloodied face to his feet, and the two of them supported each other, getting out of sight as quickly as possible.

  Which was precisely what Kestrel had in mind, as well_getting away before some other variety of trouble found them! He jumped into the driver's seat and picked up the reins, giving Robin just enough time to scramble into the passenger's side before turning the mares, and heading out of the village at a brisk trot, thanking whatever deity might be listening for the thickening dusk that hid both them and their erstwhile attackers, and for the emptiness of the village square.

  "Wh-why d-did you d-d-d-do that?" he asked, as Robin arranged her skirts with a self-satisfied little smile.

  "What?" she asked, as if he had astonished her by asking the question. "Why did I use the Bardic Magic? I wanted him to believe me! If I hadn't, he'd have gotten another dozen of his friends and come after us!"

  "N-not using th-the B-Bardic M-Magic!" he scolded, guiding the mares around a tricky turn. "M-making th-them th-think w-we w-were evil m-m-mages! R-remember wh-what the Ch-church has b-b-been saying ab-b-bout m-mages?"

  "Oh, that," she replied, indifferently. "What difference does it make? He won't tell anyone anything now. He'll be sure that the moment he opens his mouth, a demon will come after him."

  "N-now," Kestrel retorted. "You kn-know the m-magic w-wears off! H-how l-long b-before he t-tells a P-p-p-priest?"

  "So what? We're never coming back." She had something cradled in her skirts; a moment later, he heard the distinctive clink of coins. "Hah!" she said, in the next moment, as the wagon jounced a little. "We actually came out ahead!"

  "Wh-what?" he yelped. He knew exactly what that meant; she'd not only beaten and terrified those bullies, she'd picked their pockets. "Y-you d-d-d-didn't!"

  "Of course I did," she said, calmly, taking the coins and pouring them into her belt-pouch. "Why not? They deserved worse than that! Didn't you hear them? I'll bet those louts absolutely terrified Rune while she lived here! They should be grateful that I was in a good mood! I almost made the three of them eunuchs while I was at it!"

  "B-but _" he protested. "Th-that m-makes us n-no b-better th-than th-they are!"

  "I don't think so." She folded her arms stubbornly across her chest. "I think we were simply the instrument of proper justice."

  "B-but _" He gave up. She would never admit she was wrong, even if he managed to convince her of it_and even if he did, she would only think he was worried about the possible consequences. That wasn't what made him so upset, but how could he make her understand that she had just acted in as immoral and irresponsible a manner as the Church claimed Free Bards were?

  How could they honestly refute the claims of the street preachers when they actually did what the street preachers said they did? Even though they had been provoked_

  Never mind. Right now, the best thing he could do was drive. Maybe this would sort itself out later.

  He hoped.

  Darkness had fallen by the time they reached the next building on the road. The Hungry Bear inn_distinguished as such by the sign over the door, a crudely painted caricature of an animal that could have been a bear_or a brown pig_or a tree-stump with teeth. The sign was much in need of paint. The inn was much in need of repair.

  Even in the fading twilight and the feeble flame of a torch beside the door, that much was all too obvious. It was clean, superficially at least, but so shabby that Gwyna would have passed it by without a second thought if they were really looking for a nights work.

  But they weren't, so when Kestrel pulled the horses to a halt outside the front door_which didn't even have a lantern, only that crude pitch-and-straw torch_she hopped down to see if she could find the innkeeper.

  She had barely one foot on the ground before a round blob of a woman dressed in clothing more suited to a coquettish girl came hurrying out to see if they might be customers.

  As she came out of the darkness of the tap room and into the flickering light from the torch, Gwyna felt her eyes widen in surprise. Was this Rune's mother?

  She must be_certainly the lavish use of cosmetics, and the straw-blond hair, the low-cut blouse and the kilted-up skirt matched Rune's descriptions. But if this was Rune's mother_either Rune's memory was horribly at fault, or the woman had doubled, or even tripled her weight, since Rune had left!

  "Welcome to the Hungry Bear," the woman said, her eyes taking in their equippage, and probably evaluating it to the last penny. "My name is Stara, and I am the innkeeper's wife_how may I serve you?"

  Well, that certainly clinched it. This was Rune's mother, and she had evidently managed to wheedle, connive, or blackmail her way into more than Jeoff's bed.

  Well, Rune was right about that much. And since I don't see any other helpers around, I suspect they either can't afford more help anymore, or no one will work for them. So Rune was right there, too, in thinking Stara would have turned her into an unpaid drudge, given half a chance. If Rune had stayed, she'd have found herself shackled to this shoddy inn for the rest of her life, with music taking second place to whatever her mother wanted her to do.

  "We are musicians, Innkeeper," Robin said, in a carefully neutral voice. "We hadn't really expected to find an inn here, but we usually offer our services in return for a room and a meal _"

  Not that I'd sleep in any bed you had anything to do with. You probably haven't washed the sheets in months.

  The balding and middle-aged innkeeper himself appeared at the door as Robin finished her little speech, but he held back, diffidently saying nothing, quite obviously very much the henpecked husband. Stara looked them over critically, and her eyes sharpened with mingled envy and greed at their prosperity. No one who drove a rig like theirs, new, and well-made, would be an inferior musician or poor....

  And given the general air of abandonment, when Rune ran off, most of the business went somewhere else. There should be at least a handful of customers in there, and the tap room is empty. I don't smell anything cooking, either, which means they don't get enough customers of a
n evening to have a regular supper ready.

  So, if they stayed, there'd be an empty tap room, a poor meal and a cold and musty bed. And given what had just happened back in the village_

  It probably wouldn't be a good idea to stop here. No matter what else I could find out about Stara. I think I've seen enough to tell Rune all she needs to hear. Enough to make her glad that she got out while she could.

  "Uh_Stara _" the innkeeper said, timidly. "We don't know these people. We don't know anything about them. Remember what the Priest has been preaching? These people aren't wearing Guild colors. So many of these free musicians sing that licentious music, that music that makes people do sinful things _"

  Stara started to wave him to silence, but it appeared that on this subject, at least, he would not be henpecked. He raised his chin and his voice stubbornly. "You know very well how sinful we were when that daughter of yours was playing her music here! And every night the tap room was full of people dancing, singing, taking no thought of their souls _"