The sentry stared—partly in alarm, partly because, even dishevelled and upset, Raven was still a marvelous figure of a woman. Crow's feet and smile lines couldn't hide her beauty. "How did he find out about your campaign?"

"Sheer bad luck—I hope." Raven limped toward the stairwell, pressing a hand to the small of her back.

"Broomsticks are even more uncomfortable than they used to be. Where's the boss?"

"In his office." The sentry held the door for her. "Good luck."

Raven went downstairs, dreading the encounter.

Her stomach sank when she saw the door was open; she didn't even have knocking to brace her. The Mocker looked up as she came in. "Failure!"

"Bad luck." Raven wished she could sit down. "I thought Gallowglass had crawled into a hole feeling sorry for himself."

"He's on the move again—the word came after you'd gone out." The Mocker glared. "Don't tell me you let him chase you off!"

" 'Let' isn't the word—he was going to clap me in an esper's prison." Raven shuddered at the thought of a team of telepaths watching her night and day, even though her cell would have been well-appointed and roomy.

"You ran!"

"Not much choice, Boss—and he figured out that I was laying the groundwork for a peasant revolt!"

"Fool!" the Mocker raged. "You tipped your hand! How could you be so stupid!"

Raven shrugged. "I didn't know who the intruder was until I saw him. Then it was too late to pretend I hadn't."

"You told him!"

"I tried to throw him off by telling him all the lords were tyrants," Raven said. She was feeling worse and worse about this report. "It didn't take him long to figure out the rest."

"So you fled! Where has he gone?"

"He said something about finding the peasants and telling them it was safe to come back."

"Finding them!" The mocker shot to his feet. "He'll see the children and old folk alone and go after the rest of them! He'll talk them out of marching against their lord!"

"Maybe he'll forget," Raven said weakly. "His mind isn't all there these days, they tell me."

"What if he doesn't forget?" The Mocker glared at her.

"The plan depends on hundreds of village bands joining up to march on Runnymede!"

"This is just one …"

"But he'll seek out more! Worse, he'll tell those brats of his, and they'll bring out an army of emissaries to meet the small bands before they can gather and talk them out of their grievances!"

"I can go talk them back into bitterness. Turn husband against wife, wife against husband, make the kids take sides, and they'll want someone to blame because their lives are going rotten. I can make them think they're worse off than ever."

"Oh, you will, you will indeed!" The Mocker pointed a shaking finger at her. "If 1 didn't need every agent I have, you'd spend a week in a hotbox on bread and water to make you more aware of your duties—but since I can't spare you, you'll go off to the mountains and tell the people there that living in a forest away from the lords only means they've given up, that the lords are barring them from the really good life! Now go!"

Raven winced; being stuck out in the boondocks, in the middle of a forest where the trees were a hundred years old and there wasn't an inch of level ground, was punishment enough. But she knew it could have been worse, much worse, and went.

The Mocker sat down, seething, even though he knew Raven could be right. Raven! What an asinine choice for a code name! But she knew the state of the situation, he had to give her that—not that he'd let her know, of course. Gallowglass's memory and attention span were both dwindling, and there was every reason to hope he'd simply forget about the encounter—but the Mocker couldn't take the chance. He picked up the handbell on his desk and shook it. One of the older agents came hurrying in. "What is it, Boss?'

"The Gallowglass," the Mocker snapped. "Raven just ran into him at that village in the south. Send five of your best assassins with your best tracker to find him and lay an ambush. I want him dead!"

"Will do, Boss!" the man said, wide-eyed, then hurried out.

The Mocker sat back in his chair and cursed Rod Gallowglass for ten minutes straight, cursed him and his ancestors, cursed him for a fool who didn't know when to quit. He should have retired while he had the chance! But that opportunity was past, and now he would pay for having aborted the Mocker's revolution thirty years before— thirty years to him, but only weeks ago for the Mocker. Nine years of work, scrubbed out in a few months! Well, it wouldn't happen again. Laser pistols would see to that, and if Gallowglass managed to spike them somehow, there were always poisoned arrows.

The Mocker smiled, feeling charitable. If Gallowglass was so eager to join his wife, the Mocker would be all too glad to help him!

THE VILLAGERS HAD left a broad trail; here and there were small household objects that had fallen out of their packs on the way. Rod picked up a variety, including some wooden spoons, tallow candles, spools of thread, and an almost-empty sack. He caught up the last one and tucked the others into it, then followed the trail on foot, gathering odds and ends as he went—not many, but definitely important to the people who had lost them. Spools of colored thread were items of considerable value in a medieval culture, especially ones with needles still tucked into them; the peasants must have been in a desperate hurry not to stop to retrieve even such treasured belongings.

Into the woods they had gone, but still with no attempt to hide their trail. Most of the loose baggage had fallen out before that, so Rod mounted and followed in the saddle, still on the watch for fallen treasures—and since his eyes were on the ground, tracking, he had no warning when something slammed into his shoulders, knocking him out of his saddle. He tumbled to the ground, then looked up to see half a dozen people jumping on him and a dozen more standing behind them with grim faces and knotted fists.

Sixteen

FESS SCREAMED, REARING, BUT TEN HANDS caught his bridle to pull him down. Others were pinning Rod's arms and legs, one was slamming blows into his midriff, another was sitting on his chest, punching his face. He would have been in a very bad situation if any of them had been older than twelve or younger than seventy.

Fess screamed again, rearing and scattering peasants, then thudding down and reaching for a woman with his teeth.

"No!" Rod called. "Don't hurt them! They've been through enough!"

Fess turned to start on the group holding Rod down, but a woman's shrill cry froze everyone. She was pointing at the sack by Rod's hand; it had fallen open, and the odds and ends were strewn about. "Look!" she cried. "That's my oaken candlestick, I know it is!"

"So he robbed our houses and came after us!" an old man snarled.

"No! I know I packed it with the others I could not bear to leave! He's brought us the things we dropped in our flight!"

The people holding Rod looked down at him, suddenly uncertain.

'True enough," he said. "I thought you might want them back."

"He's not come to hurt us!" the woman insisted. "He came to bring back our belongings!"

Suddenly the hands holding him down were helping him up. Rod felt an impulse toward honesty. "Actually, I was coming to tell you that you can go back to your homes now. The wicked woman who set you against one another has left."

"Left?' an older woman said incredulously. "But we could do nothing against her, even those of us who could see how her lies were turning husband against wife and child against mother. That Raven-woman only invented new slanders about us and accused her accusers of horrible deeds!"