Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [92]
Peter spotted one fat, squat goblin soldier at the open gateway, stationed so that he could release a single rope and thereby send the iron bars crashing down to close off the passageway. Another two gob troops, armed with curved horn bows, paced the tower top, three stories above them.
Peter paused the cart while still out a ways from the tower and walked once around it, as if inspecting how its contents might have shifted during the ascent. As he did so, he gave a single offhand thump against the largest pumpkin, nestled deepest into the cart’s bed. Then he took Gertraud’s guide rope once more in hand and proceeded the remaining thirty feet towards the checkpoint.
All the way up the hill, Peter had silently practiced all of the possible answers he’d give to as many questions as he could anticipate. He also made a few grim decisions on how he’d conduct himself if the guards got too curious about the cart and its contents. In his years of thieving, he’d practiced often with various weapons, until he was familiar with all of them and an expert with some. He could place a thrown dagger within an inch-wide circle, from nearly twenty paces. But he’d never once had to use a weapon in earnest. However, when Bo’s life is at stake, he’d decided, I’ll kill anyone I need to and not shed a tear of remorse afterwards.
All of this he had in his mind when he approached the gate, but the bored goblin guard simply waved him through, without making him stop, or asking him a single question. Fifty yards further down the twisting road, they’d circled three quarters round a giant pillar of rock and were well out of sight of the guard tower. Peter thumped three times on the big pumpkin and then helped Bo climb out of it, and rub life back into her cramped limbs.
“That feels grand,” she said, as Peter massaged her legs. “Don’t stop.”
“You smell like pumpkin pie,” Peter said. “I dearly love pumpkin pie, especially the way Queen Gisela used to make it for me, back in the Brotherhood. You’re making me hungry.”
“We’ll have a proper supper in town,” she said, “including as much pie as you like. We deserve a small celebration, before looking for the Tenacious and her captain.” According to the information they’d purchased, at a dear price, the three-masted trading ship Tenacious should be anchored at SonnenSee until the end of October, at which time it would make sail in its last voyage of the year, bound for its winter port. But along the way, or so they were told, the captain could be bribed into making a brief side-trip, crossing a patch of magic-impregnated sea that connected to the seas of a much different world — the world of sanctuary they’d heard so much about, over the years. Anchoring off a nearby shore that was sometimes an island and sometimes part of a vast continent, they’d be put ashore to find their new lives in a new world, while the Tenacious sailed off to complete its appointments back in the Hesse.
“Well isn’t this a fine picture,” someone said, startling the couple. “I set off looking for one old score to settle and find two. Fortune is indeed my sweetheart.”
Both Peter and Bo came instantly alert, as a tall, slim figure appeared from around another bend in the road ahead of them. The newcomer was dressed in tunic, hose and a long coat, all of many discordant colors. He had long brown hair and a beard of the same shade. Both were so wild and tangled that they looked as if they’d never known the touch of a comb. The man carried a flute of deep red wood, and he had a mad and predatory look in his dark eyes.