Good Company

by Dale Lucas

  Then Rem realized what use such a high-sided wain might afford in the wilds: protection. If they were attacked on the road, a number of the company could fall back into that cart bed and use it as a fortification of sorts, the high sides affording great cover against attack.

  Knowing that the lord marshal had prepared for such an eventuality—even just to be cautious—gave Rem no pleasure.

  Suddenly Rem became aware that there was someone standing between him and the cart. It was the lord marshal, having wandered into Rem’s field of vision at some point during Rem’s contemplation of the cart and its defensive uses. The lord marshal was staring directly at Rem.

  Rem tried to decide what he should do. Smile and wave? Ignore him? Quickly lower his eyes and pretend he wasn’t being stared at, like a nervous fugitive? Finding no better options, he simply gave the lord marshal a curt, professional nod, then returned his attentions once more to his saddlebags. Seconds later, he furtively raised his eyes to see if he was still being watched.

  The lord marshal had gone about his business.

  Gods . . . what had he gotten himself into? He was about to embark on a long journey with a group of men who—by nature of their origins and duties—were the most likely to recognize him of anyone he’d met in his year since leaving home. Lycos and Erald hadn’t had many direct dealings, aside from a little trade—they’d been too far apart for anything else—but Eraldic embassies had visited the court of Rem’s father more than once in his life. If just one of these soldiers had been part of a security detail for one of those embassies . . .

  It’s time, Rem thought grimly. Indilen’s kept my secret for months now. Torval needs to know it, as well.

  After all, he might have to help me lie to these men if they get too curious . . .

  “Company, mount!” old Wallenbrand suddenly boomed. “When everyone’s ready, we ride.”

  Rem lifted himself into the saddle. The animal met his weight with practiced calmness, swiveled his head a little, then shuffled his hooves, as if impatient to be underway. Farther up the line, the Lady Tzimena mounted her chestnut mare with practiced ease. Apparently her skirts were divided for riding. No sidesaddle for that one, as for many other noble young ladies from Estavar to Kosterland. Instead the Lady Tzimena sat her horse regally, straight backed, and gripped her reins like an experienced equestrian.

  Hells and bells, Rem thought, she looks ever so regal atop that animal . . .

  Torval’s pony shuffled up beside Rem, Torval still looking quite stiff and uncomfortable in his saddle. “Seems an agreeable beast,” he said. “Tends to walk in circles if I don’t direct it, though.”

  “Better than charging off after butterflies,” Rem said.

  Everyone was ready now. All the soldiers—Eraldic and Estavari—sat their horses, save one man in Eraldic livery who perched on the driver’s bench of the supply cart. At the fore of the line, the lord marshal turned his horse round so that he could face everyone in the company. Satisfied, he gave the order.

  “Move out,” he shouted, then with a flourish, spun his horse round again and led the group toward the city’s East Gate at a brisk canter. Each rider fell in line behind him, their order clearly having been decided upon already. The Lady Tzimena and her chaperone moved in the midst of their own retinue.

  As Brekkon prepared to join the moving line, he turned to Rem and Torval.

  “You two ride behind the cart,” he said. “Keep an eye on the prisoner. Elvaris and Sandiva, from the countess’s house guard, will bring up the rear.” Without waiting for an affirmative from Rem, the young guardsman urged his horse forward. Rem and Torval waited for the cart to rumble into its place in line, then, good soldiers that they were, fell in behind the jouncing, creaking little cage on its two-wheeled cart that held their prisoner.

  The Red Raven was delighted to see his arresters and waved.

  “Bollocks,” Torval snarled. “Are we to be stuck staring at that smug bastard all the way to Erald?”

  “Just ignore him,” Rem said. “And don’t let your temper get the best of you. We want him to reach our destination in one piece, don’t we?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  They left by the East Gate because they were a large party, bearing both a prisoner and a great many supplies. Such official contingents, carrying bonded cargo, had to leave via the East Gate to satisfy Yenara’s many customs and immigration regulations. Once beyond the gate and the city walls, their column took a side road that bent southward and joined the snaking line of the Embrys River, meandering through the bustling suburbs that had sprouted up like toadstools in the lee of the city’s defensive walls and through the haphazard growth of shantytowns and cheap grogshops beyond. That road—narrow, muddy, really no more than a well-beaten path—ran roughly parallel to the north bank of the river, bending southeasterly. The city receded at their backs, a line of hills rose far off to their left, northward, and the bristling treetops of low-country forests effaced the horizon directly before them. At one point in their progress, as the last of the outer shanties fell away and the untamed countryside asserted itself, Rem turned his horse from the path to try to get one last, long look at the city that he’d called home for almost a year now. There, nearly a mile behind them, Yenara brooded, ageless and silent, sprawling across the line of the flowing Embrys, largely obscuring the misty blue vastness of Hatarau Bay on its far side. Her three high hills peeked over the walls like the humped backs of slumbering dragons, scaled with villas and close-packed town houses, horned and spined by sleek towers and glowering tenements. The old keep and the civic council halls crowned the sharp knob of Founder’s Hill in the foreground, lording over it all, eternal and implacable.

  It was a lovely view and filled Rem with a strange, dual-pronged pang of both dread and sadness.

  You’ll be home soon enough, Rem thought. Two weeks. Maybe three. Four at the outside. You’ll be back in Indilen’s arms, walking the streets with Torval at your side. You’ll be back to the drudgery of being a watchwarden and the pleasant sameness of mornings or evenings drinking at the King’s Ass.

  Soon enough. The time will fly by. You’ll see . . .

  He nosed his horse round and spurred it, rushing to rejoin the train.

  On they went.

  By midday, when the sun was highest, they were well into the countryside, the only signs of civilization being a few scattered freeholders’ houses widely spaced among tilled fields and unmowed meadows, all bounded by ill-tended hedgerows marking the old land plots. It being late spring on the cusp of summer, many of the fields were rife with low green shoots and sprouts, indicating that soon enough, the crops would start to rise and the planted fields would start to look like proper farmland.

  “Why are we going south?” Torval grumbled, rocking uncomfortably atop his shaggy little pony. “I thought the Ethkeraldi was to the northeast, around the Kaarten?”

  “It is,” Rem said. “But the road that runs through it peels off of the road we’re on right now. If we want to meet it, we’ve got to go south before turning northeast and eventually entering the forest. But, of course, before we get to the forest, we’ve got to climb into those hills”—Rem indicated the rolling green slopes, patches of woodland, and bald, rocky outcroppings that snaked along the northern horizon—“traverse the valley on the far side, and cross the Kaarten River. We won’t enter the Ethkeraldi proper for another four or five days.”

  “No wonder my people prefer to stay home,” Torval said, punctuating his statement with an impatient huff. “Everything’s so blasted far away from everything else. I remember our journey down here, from the mountains. The scale of it all—the vastness—never really sank in because we’d only travel for a day or two at a time, then stay where we could for as long as we could. A little crossroads trade post, towns, villages . . . Osma and the children and I might stay for months or years, earning wages and saving until we felt it was time to move on to the next place.”

  “I’m guessing,” Re
m said, “you came by the Pilgrim’s Road. That’s farther east. Stretches from the icy wastes of Kosterland all the way to the red hills of Estavar. There are more settlements along the Pilgrim’s Road, not to mention greater safety and less rugged terrain. I took it myself, when I came south.”

  “South,” Torval said, staring off into the distance over his pony’s crown. “From Hasturland.” The animal’s ears were wiggling to drive away a cloud of gnats.

  Rem looked to his partner. There was something in the dwarf’s voice that he didn’t care for. An incredulity. An unspoken intimation.

  Torval stared back, half smiling, as if challenging Rem. “From where you grew up as a groom in a lord’s house,” the dwarf recited. The timbre of his voice made it clear: he knew the story well, but he didn’t precisely believe it.

  Rem drew a deep breath, then slowly blew it out. About ten yards ahead of them, the Red Raven lounged in his cage on its little two-wheeled cart, his gaze facing forward but his ear clearly cocked toward the two watchwardens riding in his wake. For all Rem knew, the man could be lost in thought, not hearing a single word that passed between them . . . or it was just possible that he could overhear their conversation. One couldn’t exactly whisper to one’s riding partner while in transit, after all.

  Rem took a quick glance behind them. Two Estavari guards, Elvaris and Sandiva, rode ten or twenty yards behind them. There was a third, Rem knew, currently nowhere to be seen. That one brought up the rear—a scout of some sort, sweeping their wake and watching for any unwanted followers. Again, probably too far to hear anything clearly, but there was always the chance . . .

  Rem turned back to Torval. “I’ll make a deal with you,” he said. “I’ll tell you the truth of it—the absolute truth—before we reach our destination. Provided there’s a good time for it.”

  “A good time?” Torval said, as if insulted.

  “I trust you,” Rem said. “Implicitly. With my life. You know that. But I can’t trust anyone else in this party. And while there is no shame in what I’ll tell you, there is still hazard in it. I can never forget that, especially not in such . . . mixed company.”

  Torval nodded, understanding Rem’s reasoning. “Fair enough,” he said. “And lad, please don’t misunderstand . . . I never meant to force you—”

  “You’re forcing nothing,” Rem said, trying to smile but knowing that it probably looked a little wan, a little sad. “You’re family now, Torval—one of the two people I love and trust most in this world. Indilen’s known the truth for some time now. In light of that, I shouldn’t keep it from you any longer.”

  “Sing for us,” someone said.

  Rem sought the source of the voice. It was the Raven, still reclining in his cage as casually as a lord on a divan. He was looking out through the bars, wearing that smug, satisfied half smile of his, chewing on a piece of straw.

  “What was that?” Rem asked.

  “I said, sing for us,” the Raven answered. “I love the riding songs of the Hasturfolk. ‘O Merrily, We’ll Canter On’ . . . ‘Over the Hills and through the Dales’ . . . ‘Hail and Farewell to the Ladies of Rhaim.’ Surely a bonny lad like you, working all his life with horses, should know a few? Have pity . . . it’ll be a long trip.”

  “Not much of a singer,” Rem answered, his voice sounding too loud in the wild stillness where only the tumbling waters of the river and the hitching winds made any sound.

  “I’ve got it,” the Raven said, now shifting his body and sitting up on his knees. “ ‘The Last Light of Eve.’ That’s a fine one!”

  Rem knew exactly what the man was intimating. He didn’t care for it, nor for the bent smile on the prisoner’s face. “That’s a court song,” Rem said curtly. “I heard plenty but I never bothered to learn them.”

  “Never bothered,” the Red Raven said. “Maybe you’ve just forgotten?”

  They were in sparsely populated farmland when the sun declined at their backs and the lord marshal gave orders to make camp for the night. The lord marshal’s forward scout—a big, dark, broad-shouldered bruiser named Croften—was sent to the nearest farmhouse to make sure the holders knew they meant to camp in peace and posed no threat, and the rest of them bent to their work.

  The site chosen was a fine one—a little clearing surrounded by a few lonely alders and sycamores, within sight of the willow-choked Embrys banks, tilled fields stretching beyond a low line of hedgerows to the north. The two troops of soldiers—Eraldic and Estavari—went to work with surprising efficiency, as though a plan for preparing camp had been arrived at before they’d ever departed Yenara. While two soldiers—one of each party—set about digging a firepit and encircling it with stones, another mismatched pair disappeared into the brush in search of firewood. Those not bent to the fire saw to their mounts. Rem and Torval unhitched the Red Raven’s cage cart from the supply wagon, rolled it to the farthest edge of what would be their encampment, beside a pair of stunted laurels, and left it there. Concurrently the supply wagon was unloaded and a small, modest pavilion raised for the Lady Tzimena between two cottonwoods.

  With the Raven secured, Rem decided he would educate Torval on the care of horses, starting with immediate water and forage. After he showed Torval how to remove his pony’s saddle, the two led their mounts down to the river and let them stand for a good long while, munching on the high grasses and drinking their fill. As they watched and waited, Rem and Torval treated themselves to an afternoon snack of salt pork and barley bread, then slaked their own considerable thirsts and wet their faces to wash off the dust of the road. It was in the midst of this quiet and welcome respite that they were joined by a pair of their traveling companions.

  “And here I thought we’d found a quiet corner,” someone said, yanking Rem and his partner out of a lovely silent reverie.

  Torval and Rem turned toward the voice to find two of the Lady Tzimena’s female soldiers. They were the two who’d ridden at the tail of the party through the day, young Sandiva and her partner, Elvaris. As Rem and Torval watched, the women led their horses to the water’s edge just a few feet away. Rem sized them up at a glance: tall, trim Elvaris, clearly at home in her armor and scarlet tabard; short, stocky, baby-faced Sandiva, seemingly playacting—a brash girl dressed up for a masque in her big brother’s uniform.

  “We thought the same,” Torval said to the young woman. “Apparently we were wrong.”

  Sandiva smiled crookedly as she stepped away from her now-drinking horse. “He’s a grumpy dwarf, isn’t he?”

  “You have no idea,” Rem said, almost to himself.

  “I have a name,” Torval said to her.

  “Well, I don’t know your name,” Sandiva countered, clearly trying to sound friendly but just coming off as childish.

  “So ask him,” Rem said.

  The young lady rolled her eyes. “Fine. What’s your name, good dwarf?”

  “Torval,” the dwarf said.

  “And I’m Sandiva,” she said. “And this is Elvaris.”

  “We know,” Rem said. He didn’t dislike her . . . he just missed the silence that he and Torval had been enjoying before she arrived. He studied the two of them. Elvaris was taller, darker, with a long face and sharp features, her black hair woven in a tight braid that trailed down her back. She might look severe, even gaunt, but for the glint in her dark eyes and a curl at the corner of her lips that suggested both prowess and playfulness—the quiet confidence of a first-rate warrior. Her companion, Sandiva, wore her hair down, untied, but had it cut to shoulder length. She was clearly quick to laugh and jest, but Rem sensed that all her laughter was only a mask for fear and uncertainty. She was clearly the youngest member of the Estavari company, and probably the least sure of herself.

  I know you, Rem thought, smiling a little. Masking all your fear and insecurity with jests and mock bravado. Gods, I’ve been you.

  “Fine,” Sandiva said. “Now we all know one another. I have a question.”

  “And that is?” Torval
asked.

  She indicated his pony. “What’s it like, riding on that over-sized mouse of yours?” She laughed at her own jest. Rem caught Elvaris shooting a doubtful glance at her partner, suggesting that she didn’t find it so funny.

  “I’ll be happy to tell you,” Torval responded, “if you’ll first tell me what it’s like being an oversized mouse way up there in a horse’s saddle.”

  Elvaris snorted, as did Rem, in spite of himself. Sandiva stared, not getting the joke. Then, suddenly, a bright smile split her face.

  “Oh, he’s funny!” she cried, clearly delighted by Torval’s insult. “Did you hear that, Elvi? The dwarf is funny!”

  “Funnier than some,” Elvaris said quietly, then knelt by her drinking horse. Before bending to get herself a handful of water, she winked conspiratorially at Rem.

  As Elvaris knelt and drank, Rem found himself suddenly staring at the sword sheathed at her hip. Sandiva was chattering at Torval about one thing or another, and a quick sideward glance told Rem that the dwarf was being patient and indulgent, but did not care for her boisterous company or brand of humor. That all mattered little, though, because Rem’s attentions were focused on Elvaris’s blade—specifically its beautifully tooled hilt, grip, and pommel. The handle was wrapped in a leathery material with a strange, pebbled texture to it, while the crosspiece and pommel bore elegant, distinctive lines and engraving that suggested an uncommon level of care and meticulousness in its creation.