1.Tam and two Ironhall hands were perched on kegs around a crate, playing a game of straws.They had three layers on top of the bottle and matters were getting interesting, with six copper groats at stake.

Wolf waited until the next straw was in place. Nothing collapsed.

"Tam, good chance to you." Tam looked up warily. "And to you, Sir Wolf." "Can you guide me to Quondam in this?" The boy glanced out the window, pushed hair out of his eyes, and said, "Naw, sir. Not today." Wolf flipped a golden crown, flashing like sunlight in the gloom. The men exchanged wondering glances. Stable hands never saw gold. "Naw, sir.Too dangerous."It was Tam's turn to play. He added a coin to the stakes and chose a straw. Wolf said, "Two crowns." "Stop it!" Hogwood said at his back. "Only an idiot would go out on the moor in this weather." THE J A GU AR KNIGHTS P.

"All men are fools for gold." Wolf was conscious of other hands closing in to listen. "Not for two?"

Tam licked his lips, shook his head.

"How about four?"Wolf counted them from one hand to the other. "Four gold crowns to guide me to Quondam.That'll buy you a fair wife and a share in two oxen."

"Stop it!" Hogwood yelled."You are tempting the boy to kill himself."

"Six, then? Six crowns will rent a farm, buy a fishing boat." Clink-ing coins, Wolf looked at the others and was surprised that none of them spoke up."No takers on six? Then I'll go by myself. Greg, saddle me a horse."

"I won't!" the hostler said harshly.

"Then I'll do that myself, too. Come,Tam, you'll feel guilty all your life if I die and stupid if I don't. Name a price."

Tam was sickly pale. He licked his lips. "Make it ten, Sir Wolf ?"

Was that the biggest fortune he could imagine? "Ten it is.To be paid at Quondam gate." Tam touched a finger to the heap of straws, dropping them all. He stood up.Wolf surprised him by offering a hand to shake. "Courage becomes a man. Brains are for cowards. Follow when you dare, Inquisitor."

"Burn you!" Hogwood said."Burn your guts for tinder! Saddle one for me, too, hostler." She wheeled on Wolf. "And we'll take a spare sad-dle horse in case one goes lame, and a packhorse with food and bed-ding, you hear?"

Wolf said, "If you insist." He had been planning to do so. "See to it please, Greg." He went into the stable office to wait by the fire. Hog-wood followed.

"Finding the grownups' league a little scary, Inquisitor?""Stop babying me!I find your condescension as repellent as your morbid pursuit of danger."

"You must have done well in vocabulary class." He liked her glares. Other inquisitors he had worked with had kept their corpse faces in place all the time, and she rarely used hers. He must not start thinking of her as a desirable woman, though.That road would be scarier than the moor.

77.Dave Duncan P.

"Tomorrow morning would be safer," she said. "We'd only lose a few hours."

"Any job worth doing must be done right, which means losing no hours in this case." He risked a smile, a real smile, not the permanent fanged leer that Quintus had given him. "It really isn't that dangerous! The fog is not thick enough for us to fall off a cliff and the bogs are frozen.Tell me about dower rights."

"The baron's debts swallowed everything the King gave him to marry Celeste. If he died, his widow could claim all of whatever pit-tance was left. If he'd caught her in adultery, he could have divorced her and she'd have lost her dower rights.That's what kept your brother out of her bed."

Aha!"So his sons had motive to make sure she died first."There had to be a sane reason somewhere behind the madness.

Sweet Dolores gave him a look worthy of Vicious in one of his well-named moods. "Two middle-aged farmers struggling to keep their households fed hire a few hundred cutthroats to paint themselves brown, run half-naked through a Secondmoon freeze, break into a fortress, kill dozens of innocent bystanders, and abduct a baroness? And they keep it all secret? His Majesty's Office of General Inquiry had no forewarning of this atrocity at all, Sir Wolf !"

"The raiders departed in ships, so the cutthroats were hired abroad."

More eye-rolling. "And where did the money come from to do that?"

"Her jewels!" he said. "They took her jewelry as well!"

"Surely it have been cheaper just to poison her? And you are over-looking the club, or mace. It makes your theory absolutely untenable, Sir Wolf."

"What about the mace?"

At that point old Greg came to say the horses were ready.

Starkmoor weather could change in minutes. Compared to what had gone before, the fog was merely damp, not frigid. It seeped inside clothes like cold sweat and beaded the horses' manes.They rode in sin-gle file, with Wolf in the rear sneaking glances at his compass and grow-ing steadily more impressed by young Tam's performance. He found the 78.THE J A GU AR KNIGHTS.

P.

Newtor turnoff easily enough, lost the road once, found it again, and brought them safely to the Great Bog. From then on there were no trails and no landmarks. He began veering to the west.

"Hold!" Wolf said, riding forward. "You're going in circles. I'll lead now."

Tam's face was white as milk, his eyes wide with terror. "I'm gone lost, sir!" He knew every rock and bush on Starkmoor and had never seen a map in his life.

"No, we're not lost. We'll head southwest until we reach the coast road, then cut back east again and come to either Quondam or Newtor."

It would not be quite that simple, of course, but the only really se-rious risk was that of the weather changing. The bog was actually eas-ier going than the uplands, because the reeds and moss and general flatness had held the snow better, so there were no thick drifts hiding sudden hollows or rocks.

In a little while Hogwood rode up alongside him.

"If I'm trying to kill us," he said, "why are you here?"

She glanced sideways at him, studied the fog ahead for a moment, and finally said,"It's true, you know.You fit a pattern-your perfection-ism, like polishing your boots all the time, your lack of close friends, your deliberate courting of danger. Quintus and Warren cut you in rib-bons, I heard.You could have served your ward without having to en-dure that. People are not always aware of their own motives."

"My only motive is to guard the King. I was asking about yours."

Again a hesitation, but shorter than before. "Ambition."

"Grand Inquisitor Hogwood?"

"It's possible!" she said indignantly.

"I know.Women have been Grand Inquisitor in the past."

She seemed mollified, perhaps surprised that he knew that. "If I make a success of this assignment, I can expect to be promoted at least two grades. Maybe eventhree,Grand Inquisitor said."

They had started a conversation, which was promising. "So your family will be proud of you?"

"That remark is insulting! You are no gentleman."

"I never claim to be. Spare me girlish tears.You're doing a man's job, 79.Dave Duncan P.

so I treat you like a man.You want compliments? Very well. Few men could have kept up with me on that ride from Grandon.You're tougher than most Blades I've known."

"How sweet of you to say so, Sir Wolf! Your honeyed words will completely turn my foolish head."

Wolf laughed. "If you can discover who abducted the baroness and why, you very likely will be in line to become Grand Inquisitor.You will certainly have a wonderful future in the Dark Chamber."

"Now you know my dark secret," she said, studying him under the winnowing-fan lashes."I know your past.What of your future, your am-bition? What will you do when you are knighted?"

If Athelgar ever dared release him."Find a job. Men do not become rich in the Guard."

"That's not much of an ambition.What sort of job?"

What had she expected him to say? That he would marry and breed children? What woman would have him? "Assassin. I'm good at killing people and it probably pays well. My turn now. Why did Grand In-quisitor choose you for this mission?"

"I told you! I'm an expert conjurer. A major stronghold fell without even a warning.Howit was done matters even more thanwhodid it orwhy, Sir Wolf.Tell me why you stabbed Sir Reynard in the back."

"Tell me why it matters."That ended the conversation.

2.As daylight was fading, the travelers heard sounds of surf and crying seabirds, and soon arrived at a cliff top. By then the fog was so thick that the sea below was totally obscured, but they headed east, following tracks in the snow, until the towering ashlar walls of Quondam solidi-fied out of the murk. The battlements overhead were invisible, and the great, gloomy pile seemed big as a mountain.

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"Half an hour later and we'd have been spending the night in a snowbank," Hogwood complained.

Wolf thought he'd done quite well, all things considered. "Do so if you want to."

The drawbridge over the dry moat was down and the outer gates stood open, but he was not surprised to see the far end of the barbican blocked. Any garrison would be vigilant so soon after a massacre, even more so if the great Durendal was in charge. A voice called down a challenge.

It amused Wolf to answer with "Open in the King's name!" While he waited, he pulled out his purse.

"Tam, your wages." The boy shook his head wildly, making hair flap. "Didn't earn him, Sir Wolf. 'Twere you guided me."

"Take it."

"No, sir. Didn't earn 'im. You'd been finding th' place swifter enough witharn me." "I wouldn't even have found the Great Bog before dark,"Wolf said.

"Take it!"

Tam flinched and held out a large and grubby hand, into which Wolf counted ten gold crowns. "This is for courage. The King has lots more where it came from."

Hogwood sniffed. "You are liberal with your sovereign's gold, Sir Wolf." Wolf did not reply. Did she think they were not being watched? The story would loosen tongues and speed feet in his service.

The great gate creaked open far enough to admit a horse and rider. Wolf led the way through, into a bailey so depressingly huge that no end to it was visible, just towers and ramparts fading away into murky Sec-ondmoon dusk. Men-at-arms in leather and steel closed in around. Re-senting their suspicious glares, he dropped flatfooted into the slush to splatter them, then turned to see if Dolores needed help.

"Oh, an excellent choice!" Grand Master pushed through the throng and thumped his shoulder."Welcome, brother Wolf ! You bear the king's writ?"

Lord Roland was still tall for a Blade and bore his years as if he had 81.Dave Duncan P.

thrown away a score of them. Age had not withered him. He wore an opulent sable cloak and a wide hat with osprey plumes, both of which would have attracted admiration in Greymere itself, and yet he made such garb seem totally appropriate even in that remote medieval strong-hold. He had moved fast to be there and greet the newcomers, for he was noticeably dry in a company well wetted by the fog.

Wolf saluted. "Grand Master, may I present Inquisitor Hogwood? She was sent to investigate these odd events you report. Regard me as senior henchman."

Lord Roland bade her welcome, doffing his fine hat to bow, but his eyes were as bright as a pigeon's.

"Before I turn over my highly ques-tionable, self-proclaimed command here, Inquisitor, I should probably inspect your commission."

Hogwood gave Wolf a what-do-you-expect look. He produced the warrant, which Grand Master unrolled just far enough to read the name on it. He returned it with a knowing smile.

"As I said, an excellent choice. And young Tam Trevelyan! In this fog? Laddie, I never believed your dad when he bragged you could find your way over the moors blindfold and backward.Well done,Tam!

Walt, see he is made welcome." He glanced up at the gloom, then at Wolf and Hogwood."You have earned a fireside carouse, both of you, but there is one thing you should see as soon as possible."

Hogwood said, "Then lead on, my lord."

Lord Roland guided them through muddy slush, between de-crepit sheds and paddock fences. They passed the looming mass of theGreatTower that Lynx had mentioned and the glazed windows of the baronial living quarters, slate-roofed, quaint, and shabby. Quondam had stood guard on its cliff for centuries, but the world was passing it by. However massive the great curtain wall, Athelgar's Destroyer General could batter a breach in it now in a few days.That was not what the intruders had done, though.

They had known a better way.

"What news of Lynx,Wolf ?"

"He is well, Grand Master, thanks to Master of Rituals's skill at commanding elementals. He seems likely to recover completely."

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"I am joyfully moved to hear that. I did not dare to hope. The Baron?"

"Intrepid has not conceded the battle yet."

"He is a wonder." Roland chuckled and led the way up a long stair to the top of the wall, where only a low and rickety railing separated them from a forty-foot drop to the courtyard. On the outer side, two steps led up to the battlements. Wolf went up and leaned out between merlons, but saw nothing but fog.

Surf rumbled very far below him. He followed the other two, walking along the rampart, noting that the slush had been well trodden.

In places the walls were capped by outlook turrets, crenellated and corbeled outward like swallows'

nests to give the defenders an unob-structed field of fire. Grand Master halted when he reached the nearest.

"I don't suppose you can see, but the invaders came up the cliffs just below here.Their tracks were obvious when I arrived, straight up from a small beach called Short Cove. It would be a hard climb even on a dry summer afternoon, a path to tax goats."

Hogwood said, "Then straight up the walls, too? Human flies?"

"No. From here they went around to the gates and in through the barbican.There is a narrow path around the base of the walls, not one I should care to try at night."

"So treachery opened the gates?"

"Perhaps."

"Someone must have lowered the drawbridge and raised the portcullis," she insisted.

Grand Master nodded. "But one picket was killed up here on the battlements. He was thrown off, or fell over the rail-or jumped, perhaps-and died when he hit the courtyard. So the matter is not that simple.When the invaders withdrew, taking the Baroness, they very sen-sibly followed the main shore road down, which is much easier.And that was that.They took all their boats away, despite the men they had lost."

"How many men?"Wolf demanded. "How many boats?"