Mercenaries All

A FTER FOURTEEN HOURS OF sleep I was fit as a fiddle. My companions seemed surprised by this, as they’d found me unconscious, cold to the touch, and covered in blood. They had stripped me, rubbed my limbs a bit, then rolled me in blankets and put me inside the bandits’ single surviving tent. The other five had been either burned, buried, or lost when a great white pillar of lightning blasted the tall oak that stood at the center of the bandits’ camp.

The next day was overcast but blessedly free of rain. First we tended to our hurts. Hespe had taken an arrow in the leg when the sentry had surprised them. Dedan had a deep gash along one of his shoulders, which was fairly lucky, considering he’d rushed the sentry bare-handed. When I asked him about it, he said he simply hadn’t had time to draw his sword.

Marten had an angry red lump on his forehead above one eyebrow, either from when I had kicked him over or dragged him around. It was tender to the touch, but he claimed he had gotten worse a dozen times in tavern brawls.

After I recovered from the chills I was fine. I could tell my companions were surprised by my sudden return from the doors of death and decided to leave them to their amazement. A little mystery wouldn’t hurt my reputation.

I bandaged the ragged cut where the arrow had grazed my shoulder and tended to a few bruises and scrapes I didn’t remember receiving. I also had the long, shallow cut I had made on the top of my arm, but it was barely worth stitches.

Tempi was unhurt, unruffled, unreadable.

Our second order of business was to tend to the dead. While I had been unconscious the rest of the group had pulled most of the burned, lifeless bodies to one side of the clearing. They tallied thus:

One sentry, killed by Dedan.

Two who had surprised Tempi in the forest.

Three who had survived the lightning and tried to escape. Marten brought one down, Tempi claimed the other two.

Seventeen burned, broken, or otherwise ravaged by the lightning. Of those, eight had been dead, or wounded unto death, beforehand.

We found tracks of one sentry who had watched the whole incident from the northeast piece of the ridge. His tracks were a day old before we found them, and none of us felt the slightest desire to hunt him down. Dedan pointed out he might be worth more alive if he spread word of this spectacular defeat to others who were thinking of banditry as a way of life. For once we agreed on something.

The leader’s body was not among those gathered. The large tent he had ducked into had been crushed beneath large sections of the huge oak’s blasted trunk. Having more than enough to occupy us for the time being, we left his remains alone for now.

Rather than try to dig twenty-three graves, or even a mass grave large enough for twenty-three bodies, we built a pyre and kindled it while the surrounding forest was still wet with rain. I used my skills to ensure it burned hot and hard.

But there was one other: the sentry Marten had shot and I had put to use. While my companions were busy collecting wood for the pyre I went over the south side of the ridge and found where Tempi had hidden him away, covered with a fir branch.

I looked at the body for a long time before I carried it away to the south. I found a quiet place under a willow and built a cairn of stones. Then I crept into the underbrush and was quietly, violently sick.

* * *

The lightning? Well, the lightning is difficult to explain. A storm overhead. A galvanic binding with two similar arrows. An attempt to ground the tree more strongly than any lightning rod. Honestly, I don’t know if I can take credit for the lightning striking when and where it did. But as far as stories go, I called the lightning and it came.

From the stories the others told, when the lightning struck it wasn’t a single startling bolt, but several in quick succession. Dedan described it as “a pillar of white fire,” and said it shook the ground hard enough to knock him off his feet.

Regardless of why, the towering oak was reduced to a charred stump about the height of a greystone. Huge pieces of it lay scattered about. Smaller trees and shrubs had caught fire and been doused by the rain. Most of the long planks the bandits had used for their fortifications had exploded into pieces no bigger than the tip of your finger or burned to charcoal. Streaking out from the base of the tree were great tracks of churned-up earth, making the clearing look as if it had been plowed by a madman or raked by the claws of some huge beast.

Despite this, we stayed at the bandit’s camp for three days following our victory. The stream provided easy water, and what remained of the bandits’ provisions were superior to our own. What’s more, after we salvaged some lumber and canvas, each of us had the luxury of a tent or lean-to.

With our job completed, the tensions plaguing our group faded. The rain stopped, and we didn’t need to be bashful about our fires anymore, and as a result Marten’s cough was improving. Dedan and Hespe were civil to each other, and Dedan stopped about three-quarters of his incessant jackassery toward me.

But despite the relief at our job being done, things weren’t entirely comfortable. There were no stories at night, and Marten distanced himself from me whenever he could. I could hardly blame him, considering what he had seen.

With that in mind, I took the first chance I had to privately destroy the wax mommets I had made. I had no use for them now, and I feared what might happen if one of my companions discovered them in my travelsack.

Tempi made no comment on what I’d done with the bandit’s body, and from what I could tell, he didn’t seem to hold it against me. Looking back, I realize how little I truly understood the Adem. But at the time, all I noticed was that Tempi spent less time helping me practice the Ketan, and more time practicing our language and discussing the ever-confusing concept of the Lethani.

We fetched our equipment from our previous camp on the second day. I was relieved to have my lute back, and doubly glad to find Denna’s marvelous case had stayed dry and tight despite the endless rain.

And, since we were no longer slinking about, I played. For a solid day I did little else. It had been nearly a month since I had made any music, and I’d missed it more than you can imagine.

At first I thought Tempi didn’t care for my music. Aside from the fact that I’d somehow insulted him by singing early on, he always left camp when I brought out my lute. Then I began to catch glimpses of him watching me, though always from a distance and usually at least partly hidden from sight. Once I knew to look for him, I discovered he was always listening while I played. Wide-eyed as an owl. Motionless as a stone.

On the third day, Hespe decided her leg could stand a little walking. So we had to decide what was going to come with us, and what would get left behind.

It wasn’t going to be as difficult as it might have been. Most of the bandits’ equipment had been destroyed by the lightning, the falling tree, or exposure to the storm. But there were still valuables to be salvaged from the ruined camp.

We had been prevented from making a good search of the leader’s tent, as it had been crushed beneath one of the huge branches of the fallen oak. Over two feet thick, the fallen limb was larger than most trees in its own right. However, on the third day we finally managed to hatchet enough of it away so we could roll it off the wreckage of the tent.

I was anxious to get a closer look at the leader’s body, as something about him had been nagging my memory ever since I saw him step from the tent. And, in a more worldly vein, I knew his chain mail was worth at least a dozen talents.

But we didn’t find any sign of the leader at all. It gave us a bit of a puzzle. Marten had only found one set of tracks leading away from the camp, those of the escaped sentry. None of us could guess where the leader had gone.

To me it was a puzzle and an annoyance, as I had been wanting to get a clearer look at his face. Dedan and Hespe believed he’d simply escaped in the chaos following the lighting, maybe using the stream to avoid leaving tracks.

Marten, however, grew distinctly uneasy when we didn’t find his body. He murmured something about demons and refused to go near the wreckage. I thought he was being a superstitious fool, but I won’t deny that I found the missing body more than slightly unnerving as well.

Inside the ruined tent we found a table, a cot, a desk, and a pair of chairs, all shattered and useless. In the ruined desk there were some papers I would have given a good deal to read, but they had spent too long in the wet, and the ink had run. There was also a heavy hardwood box slightly smaller than a loaf of bread. Alveron’s family crest was enameled on the cover, and it was locked tight.

Both Hespe and Marten admitted they had a little skill at opening locks, and, since I was curious about what was inside, I let them have a go so long as they didn’t damage the lock. Each of them took a long turn at it, but neither met with any success.

After about twenty minutes of careful fiddling, Marten threw up his hands. “I can’t find the trick for it,” he said as he stretched, pressing his hands against the small of his back.

“I might as well have a try myself,” I said. I’d hoped one of them would trick it open. Picking locks is not the sort of skill an arcanist should pride himself on. It didn’t fit with the reputation I was hoping to build for myself.

“Will you now?” Hespe said, raising an eyebrow at me. “You really are a young Taborlin.”

I thought back to the story Marten had told days before. “Of course,” I laughed, then shouted, “Edro!” in my best Taborlin the Great voice and struck the top of the box with my hand.

The lid sprung open.

I was surprised as everyone else, but I hid it better. What had obviously happened is that one of them had actually tripped the lock, but the lid had been stuck. Probably the wood had swollen as it lay for days in the damp. When I’d struck it, it had simply come loose.

But they didn’t know that. From the looks on their faces you would think I had just transmuted gold in front of them. Even Tempi raised an eyebrow.

“Nice trick, Taborlin,” Hespe said, as if she weren’t sure if I were playing a joke on them.

I decided to hold my tongue and slid my set of makeshift lockpicks back into the pocket of my cloak. If I was going to be an arcanist, I might as well be a famous arcanist.

Doing my best to radiate an air of solemn power, I lifted the lid and looked inside. The first thing I saw was a thick, folded piece of paper. I pulled it out.

“What’s that?” Dedan asked.

I held it for all of them to see. It was a careful map of the surrounding area, featuring not only an accurate depiction of the curving highway, but the locations of nearby farms and streams. Crosson, Fenhill, and the Pennysworth Inn were marked and labeled on the western road.

“What’s that?” Dedan asked, gesturing with a thick finger to an unlabeled X deep in the forest on the south side of the road.

“I think it’s this camp,” Marten said, pointing. “Right next to that stream.”

I nodded. “If this is right, we’re closer to Crosson than I thought. We could just head southeast from here, and save ourselves more than a day’s walking.” I looked at Marten. “Does that seem right to you?”

“Here. Let me see.” I handed him the map and he looked it over. “It looks like it,” he agreed. “I didn’t think we had come that far south. We’d save at least two dozen miles going that way.”

“That’s no small blessing,” Hespe said, rubbing at her bandaged leg. “That is, unless one of you gentlemen would like to carry me.”

I turned my attention back to the lockbox. It was full of tightly wrapped cloth packages. Lifting one out, I saw the glint of gold.

There was a murmur from everyone present. I checked the rest of the small, heavy bundles and was greeted with more coins, all gold. At a rough count, there were over two hundred royals. While I’d never actually held one, I knew a single gold royal was worth eighty bits, almost as much as the Maer had given me to finance this entire trip. No wonder the Maer had been eager to stop the waylaying of his tax collectors.

I juggled numbers in my head, converting the contents of the box to a more familiar currency and came up with more than five hundred silver talents. Enough money to buy a good-sized roadside inn, or an entire farmstead with all the livestock and equipage included. With that much money you could buy yourself a minor title, a court appointment, or an officer’s position in the military.

I saw everyone else making their own calculations. “How about we share a little bit of that around?” Dedan said without much hope.

I hesitated, then reached into the box. “Does a royal each seem fair to everyone?”

Everyone was silent as I unwrapped one of the bundles. Dedan looked at me incredulously. “Are you serious?”

I handed him a heavy coin. “The way I see it, less scrupulous people might forget to tell Alveron about this. Or they’d never go back to Alveron at all. I think a royal each is a good reward for us being such honest folk.” I tossed Marten and Hespe a bright gold coin each.

“Besides,” I added, tossing a royal to Tempi. “I was hired to find a group of bandits, not destroy a minor military encampment.” I held up my royal. “This is our bonus for services beyond the call of duty.” I slid it into my pocket and patted it. “Alveron need never know about it.”

Dedan laughed and clapped me on the back. “You’re not so much different from the rest of us after all,” he said.

I returned his smile and pressed the lid of the box closed, hearing the lock click tightly into place.

I didn’t mention the two other reasons for what I did. First, I was effectively buying their loyalty. They couldn’t help but realize how easy it would be to simply grab the box and disappear. The thought had crossed my mind, too. Five hundred talents would pay my way through the University for the next ten years with plenty to spare.

Now, however, they were considerably richer, and they got to feel honest about it. A heavy piece of gold would keep their minds off the money I was carrying. Though I still planned on sleeping with the locked box under my pillow at night.

Second, I could use the money. Both the royal I had tucked openly into my pocket, and the other three I’d palmed when handing out coins to the others. As I said, Alveron would never know the difference, and four royals would cover a full term’s tuition at the University.

* * *

After I secured the Maer’s lockbox in the bottom of my travelsack, each of us decided what we would scavenge from the bandits’ equipment.

The tents we left for the same reason we hadn’t brought our own in the first place. They were too bulky to carry. We took as much of their food as we could stow, knowing the more we carried, the less we would have to buy.

I decided to take one of the bandits’ swords. I wouldn’t have wasted the money to buy one, since I didn’t know how to use it, but if they were free for the taking....

As I was looking over the assorted weapons, Tempi came over and gave a few words of advice. After we had narrowed my options to two swords, Tempi finally spoke his mind. “You cannot use a sword.” Questioning. Embarrassment .

I got the impression that to him, the thought of someone not being able to use a sword was more than slightly shameful. Like not knowing how to eat using a knife and fork. “No,” I said slowly. “But I was hoping you could show me.”

Tempi stood very still and quiet. I might have taken it for a refusal if I had not come to know him so well. This type of stillness meant he was thinking.

Pauses are a key part of Ademic conversation, so I waited patiently. The two of us stood quietly for a minute, then two. Then five. Then ten. I fought to stay still and quiet. Perhaps this was a polite refusal.

I thought myself terribly savvy, you see. I had known Tempi for nearly a month, learned a thousand words and fifty pieces of the Adem hand-speech. I knew the Adem were not bashful about nudity, or touching, and I was beginning to grasp the mystery that was the Lethani.

Oh yes, I thought I was terribly clever. Had I truly known anything about the Adem, I never would have dared to ask Tempi such a question.

“Will you teach me that?” He pointed across the camp to where my lute case lay, leaning against a tree.

I was caught off guard by the question. I had never tried to teach anyone how to play the lute before. Perhaps Tempi knew this and was implying something similar about himself. I knew he was prone to subtly layered speaking.

A fair offer. I nodded. “I will try.”

Tempi nodded and pointed to one of the swords we had been considering. “Wear it. But no fighting.” With that he turned and left. At the time I took this for his natural brevity.

The scavenging continued throughout the day. Marten took a good number of arrows and all the bowstrings he could find. Then, after checking to see no one wanted any of them, he decided to take the four longbows that had survived the lightning. They made an awkward bundle, but he claimed they’d be worth a heavy penny when he sold them in Crosson.

Dedan grabbed a pair of boots and an armored vest nicer than the one he was wearing. He also laid claim to a deck of cards and a set of ivory dice.

Hespe took a slender set of shepherd’s pipes and tucked almost a dozen knives into the bottom of her pack with the hope of selling them later.

Even Tempi found some things he fancied: a whetstone, a brass saltbox, and a pair of linen pants he took down to the stream and dyed a familiar blood-red.

I took less than the rest of them. A small knife to replace the one I’d broken and a small shaving razor with a horn handle. I didn’t need to shave that often, but I’d gotten into the habit while in the Maer’s court. I might have followed Hespe’s example and taken a few knives as well, but my travelsack was already unpleasantly heavy with the weight of the Maer’s lockbox.

This may seem a little ghoulish, but it is simply the way of the world. Looters become looted, while time and tide make us mercenaries all.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 847