"B-b-breakfast… "

The colossal trees were fading as the small but comfortable bedroom my host had provided returned.

"Breakfast is on the table. The-the, uh… "

Oreb appeared to shrink. "Good place!" He practically crowed it.

And then, "Fish heads?"

10

Untamed Talents

Mora, Oreb and I went in to breakfast then. No doubt Torda went to her morning duties, whatever they were; I did not see her again until shortly before I sacrificed. Fava must have gone to Soldo, if she has not set off to gather more of her kind to hunt me down. Wherever she went, she certainly was not at breakfast with us today.

Here I ought to jump ahead to dinner. The two young men who were to carry the letters I had written for Inclito ate with us, and we were all much too interested in talking to them for anybody to suggest the story game. One was raised in Blanko; his name is Rimando – it means "delay, " he tells me, and was given him because his mother carried him for almost ten months.

"If I'd known that, " said Inclito, "I'd never have accepted you. You'll be half the morning just getting the saddle blanket on."

The other is the mercenary whose story Inclito told; his name is Eco, and I saw him nod to Inclito when I came into the dining room.

"They'll ride for Blanko to take my letters to Novella Citta and Olmo, " Inclito explained to his mother and daughter. "It'll be dangerous. They know, and every god knows I do. But they're going to do their best to get through, aren't you, boys."

Both young men nodded.

"The Duko's troopers are on their way to fight us already?" my host's mother asked me. "That was what you saw when you sacrificed?"

"As I told you, madam."

"We've got to believe it, " her son said. "But if the gods had told Incanto the Duko wouldn't move for another month, we'd have to believe his troops had started anyway. We can't afford the other. You got to stay off the main roads. You got to stay off the little side roads as much as you can. You want grass under his hoofs whenever you can get it."

Thinking of Green, I added, "And leaves above your heads."

"That's right. Stay out of sight. Move fast, but not so fast you wear out your horse." Inclito paused. "I don't think you're going to get a chance to change horses, but do it if you can. Lead him uphill wherever it's steep. Give him a little rest."

Speaking for the first time, Mora said, "They should be riding this minute."

Her father shook his head. "They rode out here. For today, that's enough. Let them get a good meal now and a good night's sleep. There's good big stalls and clean straw for the horses, water and oats and corn. Tomorrow they go as soon as the sun's up."

Turning to Rimando he explained, "Decina's going to wake me up. Decina's my cook. She goes to sleep right after dinner and gets up early. I'll wake you up, and you, too, Eco. I'll see you off."

They nodded, and I gave Inclito what I intended to be a significant glance.

"Both, we don't want you killed. We don't want you dead, understand? If they try and stop you and you can get away, fine. But if you can't-" He raised both hands.

Mora asked, "Do they have needlers?"

Rimando shook his head.

Her father said, "We can't spare even one for this. No needlers, no slug guns, no swords. They're too heavy anyway. We want them to get away, not fight."

Decina herself came in as he spoke and transferred the huge roast on the spit to a great pewter platter fit for it; she set it down ceremoniously before Inclito, who stood and took up a fork with which he might almost have pitched hay and a carving knife with a blade as long as my forearm. "Holy meat. Don't anybody swear or talk against the gods while you eat it, it's not polite."

Eco, seated between Inclito and his mother, asked me whether the victim had been a steer.

I shook my head. "A young bull, fawn with a black face. Do they sacrifice steers in your town?"

"I think so."

"Perhaps they may, customs differ. In my own-and much more in Old Viron – no animal that had been maimed in any way could be offered, just as no private person sacrificing at home was to offer a loaf from which a slice had been taken or wine after he had drunk from the bottle."

Salica said, "You're not a patre, Incanto? I know, I asked you before."

I smiled at her. "No, I'm afraid not. Nor am I an augur, which is what we call them. Our canons permit sacrifice by a sibyl when no augur can be found, however, and sacrifice by a layman-or a laywoman, for that matter-when no augur or sibyl is present. Such sacrifices are nearly always private, carried out before a small shrine in the giver's own house."

"I see."

"I felt that this one, which was to take place in your son's presence and on his property, with the sacred fire upon an altar of turfs I built myself, could reasonably be considered a private one."

"Only the family attended, " Salica explained to Rimando and Eco. "My son, my granddaughter, and I. "

Mora added, "And Torda."

"That's right, Torda to help Incanto with the knife and the blood."

Inclito had been carving a thick slice while we spoke. "You're the main guest, Incanto, and you sacrificed him for us. Hold out your plate."

I did not. "Half that or less. Less, as a favor."

"Rimando? Here you are." Inclito cut a smaller piece and gave it to me.

Eco told Mora, "In Gaon, where I was before I came here, they still sacrifice heifers to Echidna, but they won't eat the meat themselves."

"The gods got the head, all four feet, and some other stuff, " Inclito remarked as he laid a thick slab of beef on Eco's plate. "They said that was all they wanted, and we could have the rest."

"The people of Gaon do not abstain from beef and veal because they think them unclean, " I explained, "but because they think them too sacred."

Rimando paused in the act of cutting his meat. "But the gods told you that the horde of Soldo has already set out to invade us? That's the important point. What gods were they, anyway?"

"The Outsider and the sea goddess of the Vanished People, " I told him. "I don't even know her name, and perhaps no one does now."

Mora smiled mischievously. "You could ask your neighbors."

I smiled back. "The Vanished People themselves, you mean? I'll try to remember."

"Fava didn't believe in them, " Mora told Eco. "Fava's a friend of mine who was staying with us until this morning."

Rimando said, "I've got her old room. She seems to have left behind a good many of her belongings."

"She'll be back for them eventually, I suppose."

I added, "Or she'll send for them, Mora. I would think that more likely."

Mora nodded.

"Why did you choose those two?" Rimando asked me. "Isn't there a god for war?"

"A goddess, " I told him absently, "and several minor gods, as well."

Salica said; "Don't make him talk, please. He doesn't eat enough as is."

Eco asked Inclito, "Didn't the gods have anything to say about us?"

There was a pained silence, broken at length by Rimando. "I believe I understand. One of us won't reach his destination. Or is it that neither of us will?"

"Fish heads?" Oreb had flapped through an open window to reclaim his post on my shoulder. I passed him up a scrap of meat, and Mora asked, "If I try to feed him, will he take it?"

"Probably. He likes you."

She cut a considerably larger piece from the slice on her plate and tossed it across the table to Oreb, who caught it in his beak and flew to the hearth to tear it into shreds of manageable size.

"I'd like to know, " Rimando challenged us all with his eyes, "precisely what these gods, two gods I've never so much as heard of, had to say about us. I don't believe in them. Less even than your friend believed in the Vanished People, if that's possible." (This last was addressed to Mora.) "But I want to know. It's my right, and Eco's too."