Sicga receives his censure

“Don’t you think we ought to wake his valet?” Sicga asked for the second time.

Eohric whispered a sharp, “No.”

“Far as I know, if they send for His Grace in the middle of the night, they wake Osric and he wakes His Grace.”

“This ain’t about a sick horse. I need to see him at once!”

Eohric slowed as they crept farther down the cramped corridor. The candle flame guttered, whipped about by a cold draft and the reeve’s shaking hand.

Sicga whispered, “You even know which door is his?”

“Be quiet! Course I do. Look here.”

Eohric slapped the wall to their left. For a short stretch the blank wood paneling was broken by an expanse of rough stones that protruded into the passage, making it that much narrower. Sicga turned himself sideways to avoid scraping his sleeves of mail.

“That there’s the back of a chimney,” Eohric whispered. “There’s only one room up here with a fire, and that’ll be His Grace’s. And there’s the door.”

Eohric lifted the handle with exaggerated self-​confidence and shoved open the door. Only inches into its swing it cracked into something heavy on the other side and scraped it over the floor.

Sicga nearly shivered out of his skin. “Christ!”

Eohric too jumped, but once settled, he pushed on the door again and scraped the heavy thing far enough into the room that he could shove his tousled head through the crack. He pulled his head out again and turned to Sicga, red-​faced and breathing rapidly, but triumphant.

“That’s his room all right. There’s a chair in front of the door.”

Sicga wrinkled his nose. He did not like to think the Duke was so paranoid as to prop a chair against his door while he slept.

Meanwhile Eohric applied himself to the door again and slowly slid the chair into the room.

Sicga whispered frantically, “What are you doing?”

“I’m going in there, clodpole.”

More than ever Sicga wished they had awoken Osric. If the Duke blocked his door with furniture, it was evident he did not want to be disturbed.

Eohric scraped his belly in its thin woolen tunic as he squeezed through the narrowly opened door. Sicga pulled his sword tight against his leg, but though his stomach was flatter than the reeve’s, he was made awkward by his heavy boots and swaying coat of mail. He thumped and scuffled his way into the room, and concluded by accidentally tipping the chair onto two legs and letting it crack back onto four.

Eohric turned on him, sloshing hot wax from his candle. “Will you be quiet?” he whispered.

Sicga whispered back, “Why should I be quiet if we’re here to wake him?”

A rumple of cloth behind him announced a blanket being whipped back, and the Duke’s voice groaned, “What in Jupiter’s name?”

Sicga remembered himself and spun to face the bed in the corner. He stood at attention for a moment before dropping to one knee with a clank of mail.

“We beg Your Grace’s pardon, but I regret to inform you that the elf has escaped.”

“She didn’t just escape!” Eohric said. “She was freed by elves!”

Sicga bowed his head. “I accept full responsibility, lord. Nay, I demand it! It happened on my watch. I should have put a guard at the barracks. I await Your Grace’s censure. The fault is entirely mine.”

The Duke sighed and rubbed his face. “It can hardly be your fault there was no guard, since I distinctly remember telling you and Gewis none would be needed. Now get up off my floor, old man. Enact me none of your Passion Plays at this hour, if you please.”

Mortified, Sicga nodded and rose to his feet. He clung gratefully to the “old man.”

“I don’t know what a guard would have done anyway!” Eohric said. “Two elves climbed over the wall and broke her out of there! And they didn’t stop there! They broke into my house—and they stole that orphan baby!”

The Duke had been rubbing his eyes, but he let his hand drop at that. “Is anyone hurt?”

“Me and Nora are! They knocked us over to get the baby!”

The Duke’s gaze ran Eohric up and down. “She badly hurt?”

“No, lord, I pray not! But she’ll have bruises all over her by morning! And I pray she won’t lose the baby!”

“I join my prayers with yours,” the Duke said quietly.

If he meant to calm Eohric with his voice, it seemed he was achieving the opposite effect. Eohric stooped to Duke-​height and demanded, “Did you hear me? Two elves took Aia and kidnapped that baby, not a quarter hour ago! We have to stop them!”

The sound of a slam at their backs startled both Sicga and Eohric into whipping themselves around, hands raised.

No elf was behind them. Instead they faced Osric, straight-​backed and tight-​lipped with outraged dignity, and with a perfectly good, perfectly unencumbered door at his back.

“My lord.”

“Ah, there you are, old man.”

The Duke turned and strolled towards the fire. Sicga saw now that wall panels had been removed, making two rooms into one.

“It seems that I have had all the sleep I shall get tonight,” the Duke said. “I shall dress.”

“Very good, my lord.” Osric followed him into the other room. “Will you shave?”

Eohric spluttered, “No he will not shave! We have to hurry! They can’t be far!”

The Duke did not reply. Osric picked up a green robe and helped him into it, leaving him only to tie the belt around his own waist.

Eohric smacked his forehead with his free hand and sloshed wax about with the other. “Begging your pardon, lord, but this is no time for—”

For a moment he was befuddled by Osric passing by and peremptorily carrying off his candle.

“—f-​f-​for robes, and—and—shaving!”

The Duke turned, one brow raised, and one hand busy rolling up the cuff of a sleeve. “Then let us not waste any time discussing such mundane matters. Tell me what happened.”

He nodded at Osric, who walked back towards the bed.

“They got into the barracks through the loft,” Eohric explained shakily. “And why we left a ladder up there I do not know! They must have used it to climb down and help the elf out, and then they used it to climb back out of the loft!”

The Duke sighed and stepped over to his washstand. His weary face in the mirror was flanked by Eohric’s candle and the taper Osric had lit.

“It had not occurred to me,” he said, “that the ladder could be reached without the help of a ladder.”

Sicga began hesitantly, “Well, lord, Gewis did say—”

The Duke shot him a quelling look. Sicga flushed and glanced guiltily at Eohric. But Eohric was not paying attention to either of them.

“Oh my God, he is making the bed!”

Sicga turned to see Osric smoothing the rumpled blankets back over the mattress.

“Osric,” Eohric said, his voice trembling with strain, “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to leave the bed unmade for once in your God damned life! His Grace needs to dress at once!”

Osric straightened and turned, but he made no other notice of Eohric. His face was blank.

“I shall want to ride,” the Duke said lightly.

“Very good, my lord.” Osric crossed between the Duke and the two men with nary a glance to either side.

The Duke looked up at the men’s reflections as he filled his washbasin from the pitcher. “And then what happened?” he prompted. “Did they use the ladder to scale the wall as well?”

Eohric swallowed and with difficulty returned to his original subject. “I don’t know about that ’cause I didn’t see it. But gone she is! But then they came back to get the baby. And, lord!” He stooped and spoke in a hushed, shaking voice. “You know how they got past the bar on my door? They burned a hole through the wood with their magic, and stuck their hands right through!”

He shot out his arm and twisted an invisible bolt.

“What can we do against folk like that?” he whimpered at the Duke’s reflection. “What can we do against magic?”

Osric emerged from the far corner, brushing off a pair of boots. The Duke glanced aside long enough to cluck his tongue and give a slight shake of his head, and Osric turned back into the corner.

“Forgive me if I have misapprehended you,” the Duke said, looking up at Eohric’s reflection, “but what is left for us to do? Why should they return?”

“For—for—any reason why!” Eohric spluttered. “To kill us in our beds! To rape our wives! Lord, you don’t understand! One of those elves was a red-​headed giant! And the other one—” He stooped and spoke in a strained whisper again. “—was an ugly little bastard with long white hair!”

In the mirror the Duke’s brows could be seen drawing together in a frown, but he said coolly, “I understand that white hair is common enough among their people.”

“With scars on his cheek?” Eohric demanded.

The Duke bent and splashed his face with water. At Sicga’s side Eohric waited, tense and shaking.

The Duke patted his sparkling face with a towel and looked to Osric. “Those will do,” he said of the boots Osric was holding. “Osric, I should like hot water to wash with.”

Osric bowed. Eohric exploded.

“My lord, this isn’t bath time! We have got to go! They have horses! I saw them ride off towards the river!”

The Duke dried his neck and folded his towel. All the while his gaze seemed locked on Sicga’s reflection more than Eohric’s.

“Towards the river, you say?” He turned away from the mirror. “Sicga, did you see anything?”

“Well, lord, I—”

Now that unblinking gaze was locked on Sicga’s actual face. The Duke’s head slowly tilted to the left. Sicga began to catch on.

“—I thought I heard them riding north towards Bernwald.”

“What in the hell?” Eohric howled. “You told me you didn’t hear nothing!”

“Well I wasn’t sure…”

“That’s it!” Eohric kicked aside the chair that stood before the door and turned back to face the others. “You all can take your baths or make your beds or whatever you got planned—I’m going after them! They broke into my house! They threatened my family! I’m going to find them—”

The Duke barked, “Sir!”

The occasions when the Duke took that tone were so rare and so terrible that Sicga jumped and cringed guiltily, though it was well apparent whom the Duke was addressing.

“You,” he said, pointing at Eohric’s middle, “shall go home and get properly dressed to ride.” He let his arm fall. “Then you shall await me there. And I submit you may most profitably spend your time by comforting and reassuring your wife. Tell her I shall call upon her later this morning, and in the meantime ask her not to describe the elves she saw. She will understand better than any of us how unfortunate it would be if any persons in a delicate condition should be alarmed by such unnecessary details. I think you will need say no more.”

The Duke turned away from them all and padded across the rug to the fire, head bowed over the sleeve he was rolling.

“Sicga, rouse Gewis and the men who were to have first watch. They too shall be rising early this morning. Osric, I wish to wash with hot water.”

Sicga bowed, though the Duke could not have known it except by the clinking of his mail.

Osric took the candle they had brought in and shoved it into Eohric’s hand. “Your candle, gentlemen,” he intoned, dividing his censorious stare equally between the two of them. “I shall follow you down.”