The Fire Duke by Joel Rosenberg

Author:Joel Rosenberg
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 1995-05-22T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

To the House of Flame

After being marched by the Sons, traveling with the soldiers from the House of Flame was an immediate and distinct improvement in comfort. Torrie and Maggie were loaded into one horse-drawn carriage, Mom and Dad into another — and then, except for being guarded when the procession stopped for rest or relief, they were left alone while the carnage rumbled up the roads, a small detachment of Sons dropping into wolf-shape and loping along behind him.

To be sure, there were horsemen riding at the side of the carriage, and Torrie could always hear the clopping of a horse behind, which put paid to his half-formed idea of cutting through the floor of the carriage and dropping out.

No. It wasn’t time; he was beginning to think that the time for that was long gone.

The road led up through the mountains, leaving the Gilfi below and behind. At times it was narrow enough that, looking out the open window, Torrie couldn’t see the road itself, and it felt like the carriage was suspended uneasily out over the edge, needing only a wrong breath to tumble down the slope, toward the ribbon of road far below.

“Good day to you, Thorian del Thorian the Younger.”

An upside-down head, topped by a thick shock of black hair, an upside-down mouth framed with beard, peered in through the carriage window on Torrie’s side. “If I may?”

Torrie tried not to sound sarcastic. “If you may what?”

“Join you?” the stranger said, and at Torrie’s nod he reached in, fastened his fingers to the sill over the coach’s door, and entered the compartment with a single smooth nimble that let him plop down onto the seat next to Maggie, an expression of almost obscene self-satisfaction on his face.

“Branden del Branden the Youngest,” he said, introducing himself, “ordinary of the House of Flame, in service to His Warmth,” he said in Bersmal, his accent strange in Torrie’s ears. “And you are, of course, Thorian del Thorian.”

“Thorian Thorsen,” Torrie said.

“I doubt that.” Branden dismissed it with a wave. “You’re hardly a peasant, even if you affect it with dress.”

The strangeness of his accent was itself strange. Torrie had never known there was a language called Bersmal, or that he could speak it, until he had first heard it. It was like the way Uncle Hosea was with languages, and Torrie wondered if he would find himself answering in German if somebody spoke to him in German? Or in Dwerrow, if one of the Vestri spoke in his native language?

Branden sat back, removing his thin leather gloves and dropping them to one side; he reached out a hand toward Torrie, who took it, reflexively grasping Branden’s wrist, as Branden grasped his. Branden was perhaps an inch shorter than Torrie, and maybe a bit slimmer across the waist and chest — it was hard to tell, given the way his over-large shirt ballooned about his chest and arms, but his wrist was thick and muscular, like Torrie’s own, and the fingers strong — a fencer’s arm and hand.

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