Several short seconds later there was a soft footstep on the rug and a short man with dark hair padded into the room. His eyes were large and watery-blue, and he kept rubbing his hands together.
“Ah, so good of you to come in my hour of need. I am Dectros,” the man said. “Brother of the Baron Bax, younger son of Baron Aedes, our late father.”
Pelekarr and the sergeants rose at his approach. “And I am Ios Pelekarr of the Tooth and Blade.” The captain bowed deeply.
Dectros motioned them all to sit once more, and joined them, pouring himself a goblet of wine which he tossed down immediately. He poured a full measure for the captain as well, but Pelekarr left it on the tray.
“What of your brother? We were told the summons were his.”
“I represent my brother in all things,” Dectros said, puffing mildly with pride. “We younger sons enjoy all the benefits, do we not? And little of the responsibility!” He chortled, pouring himself more wine with a limp and pallid hand that shook ever so slightly.
Realizing that the situation was not quite as had been reported, Pelekarr cleared his throat and fixed the man with a steady gaze. “Then, Lord Dectros, to business. You need fighting men?”
“By Mishtan’s curly beard, I do!” Dectros gulped and set his goblet down. “I own some minor holdings in the shadow of my brother’s estates, and little by little I hope to amass my own wealth. In this way, you see, I will someday be able to petition His Majesty for a title of my own.” He paused as if seeking approval from the soldiers. They stolidly eyed him back, and he went on with a slight stutter. “I have a lumber camp, deep inland. It pays steadily. Those Ostoran trees, you know—millions of ‘em! Like copper coins growing out of the ground, every one.
“My camp is well-situated, all the right kinds of trees for building and things, so I’m told. My overseer is a dependable fellow. Once in a while the quota drops a little, but we have the woodcutters flogged a few times and the supply clips right along again! Hah!”
“Your people haul the lumber out by land, my lord?” Sergeant Bivar asked, his brow furrowed. “Through hostile wilderness?”
“Mishtan, no! They cut the wood, get it into the river, and float it down to me.” Dectros’ eyes fluttered. “The White River is perfect for floating lumber. Full of rapids upstream, but between my camp and the sea it flows deep and smooth and quiet.”
“But now the lumber has stopped coming,” Pelekarr guessed, cutting to the point.
“Not a twig sent my way for a month now. Bad for business, I can tell you. My buyers are threatening to go elsewhere, the ungrateful louts.”
“Any word from the camp?”
“That’s the cursed mystery of it—not a whisper! All contact ceased abruptly some weeks back. I can’t see why they would stop, unless it is that they have been stricken with some plague or the depredations of a monster. Or the raff. But I am told the clans are still ignorant of our military fracture, and there is enough internal strife among them this season that they have not yet mounted any serious attack outward upon the settlements.”
“The calm before the storm, perhaps,” Bivar rumbled. “With most of the Kerathi troops gone, companies like ours are all that will stand between settlements like yours and a swift end.”
“My brother’s firm handling of the barbarians has always kept them at bay. Our men emptied a whole village of them several years ago.” Dectros drained his goblet and filled it again, keeping his eyes on the captain. “Ugh. Not a fortnight ago I discovered my brother’s own treasurer, Frodrig, with a secret mistress from among the raff. Would you believe it? He was letting her into the town every night, the bloody fool. We put her in the stocks for a day, after Frodrig begged the baron to spare her life. There’s been no more of such disgraceful conduct since.”
The man paused as if waiting for the captain to say something in approval.
“So you need us to go and see what’s holding up your shipments, clear any obstacles, and set things to right again. Is that it?”
“Exactly. Get my lumber coming again, however you must. I sent six men to find out what was holding things up, but they never returned. Perhaps men of stiffer spine can see the thing through.”
“It seems a simple enough endeavor, my lord. What can you tell us of where to begin?”
Dectros rubbed his hands vigorously, then wiped them on his thighs. He leaned forward with flushed face and wine-laden breath. “Yes. Yes, you see, the lumber camp is in a valley among the woodlands due west of here, you simply follow the river until you come to a great northerly bend. It’s well fortified, from what they tell me—at least it should be, considering the investments I’ve made in it. You can’t miss it.”
“Which way did your own men take, these six that you sent?”
Dectros shrugged. “I have no idea. Never been there myself, not in person. But the surest way would be to follow the White River; the camp is built literally on the very riverbank.”
Bivar grunted. “The river curves south to come out by Craya’s land, Captain. At the confluence with the Southwhite by Painlock Fold. It would be swifter if we cut across country in a straight line to the west from here.” The sergeant left unsaid that the company, after their last campaign in the service of the sly baroness, would just as soon stay clear of her entirely.
“I am sure that you are more than capable of that task,” Dectros agreed. “And Mishtan knows time is short. I’ll level with you, Captain: I have certain creditors, and this misfortune could not come at a worse time. They’re making things hot for me, and my brother is no help at all. He’s away right now anyway, pestering the governor for a mining grant. I need that lumber, and I’m willing to pay a bonus if you accomplish your task within two weeks.”
“Well,” Pelekarr said, “before we come to talk of bonuses, let us first speak of pay.”
“Certainly. I am prepared to pay up to four hundred silver when the job’s done. Another hundred if you return within two weeks with good news for me.”
Pelekarr shook his head, and Bivar snorted. “We know nothing of what we’ll be facing. If my men hear a rumor of plague, it’ll be a hard time getting them near the place. I need more to convince them.”
“I never said plague! A mere possibility, an idea—that’s all. For all I know, the raff burned them out!”
“Certainly,” Pelekarr explained, “the lack of recent reports could mean anything. It’s a perilous venture. We’ll be out there all by ourselves with no support. I say six hundred silver, with another two hundred for bonus if the job’s complete in two weeks’ time.”
Dectros held his goblet to his forehead. “Ahh, you beggar me! Eight hundred? Have I not mentioned my debts? Eight is too much!”
“The risk is great, my lord. You heard my sergeant’s ominous words; for all we know, the barbarians are gathering against us even now.”
“Five hundred, then, and six if you make the bonus!”
“Six and seven hundred I will do, if you pay ten more for every man I lose.”
“You have upwards of seventy men, do you not?! That would put us at over a thousand!”
“If I lose that many, my lord,” Pelekarr observed drily, “I won’t be coming back at all, and you won’t have to pay me anything.”
Dectros nodded. “Yes, that’s a point.” He sighed. “Six hundred, then. I pray you lose not a man.”
“I share your prayer, lord. Let us see, then, half up front of the six hundred is three hundred. Upon receipt, we are ready to travel tomorrow at daybreak.”
Dectros gave a shaky little laugh, and poured another half-goblet full. “Therein lies a little problem, Captain. Just a little one. I had hoped to secure an amount from my brother’s treasury, but I seem to have fallen from his good graces as of late, and with the trouble the king’s man in Belsoria is giving him over the mining claim, he wrote that he isn’t in a position to cover this expense for me at the moment. Upon your return, no doubt, things will have—”
“Sir, if
there is no pay, our company can do little for you,” Pelekarr said firmly. He now began to see why the two girls had been sent in before the meeting, and the offered wine. “You understand that we are mercenaries, working for hire under our own charter?”
“Certainly, yes. It’s just that, as of late, with the troubles here in town and my lost revenues—”
“What troubles, lord?”
“Apologies, I misspoke. I simply mean that I feel the loss of my lumber money keenly.” Dectros scowled, then swallowed and hesitatingly changed tack. “Perhaps, then, you would accept a stake in the lumber enterprise itself, to get your men moving. This camp has always been regular in its shipments, I assure you, until recently. Every few weeks I see new monies out of it.
“The profit from the sale of the lumber is nothing exorbitant, but it is steady money. Fifty silver, on good shipments, sometimes as little as thirty. Perhaps, if we could say, a… six percent portion of the sale price on each shipment? Would that be sufficient compensation for the work entailed in getting shipments going again?”
Pelekarr turned and exchanged a glance with his sergeant. The captain wasn’t impressed with Dectros, but the idea of a steady, recurring stream of revenue had suddenly struck him as having promise. Whatever the lumber camp produced wouldn’t float the company for more than a day or two, but it could be the beginning of a stronger source of money to the Tooth and Blade. Money coming in every few months regardless of what other jobs the company found. A gleam in Bivar’s eye said he was thinking the same thing.
Pelekarr turned back to Dectros. “It is possible. But we would need a much larger portion of the sales if we are to take on this potentially hazardous mission without up-front pay. Let me think.”
Dectros rubbed his hands and scowled desperately as Pelekarr made a show of calculating in his head.
“This is my offer: twenty-five percent of your monthly proceeds, delivered to us in Dura by your agent within one week of the sale. And we reserve the right to have a member of our company present at the market to keep a record.”
Dectros swallowed and wiped a hand across his brow. “The terms are reasonable enough, I suppose. But twenty-five percent, sir, it reduces the enterprise to nothing! Perhaps ten…”
“We can come down to twenty, then, but no less. The venture simply won’t be worth it for us any other way.”
Dectros looked at the window, then down at the floor. “Perhaps fifteen?”
“Twenty percent, sir,” Pelekarr said, putting a little bronze in his voice. “And the ten silver, upon our return, for every man lost, in addition to the six—and hopefully seven—hundred. Is that agreeable to you, or shall we be on our way?”
“Yes, yes! Twenty percent, then,” agreed the sweating little man. “It will set me back years, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.”
“Good,” Pelekarr said. He waited for a moment, but Dectros didn’t move. “Well, fetch a quill and some parchment, man. We’ll write it up and sign it here and now.”
Dectros jumped up from his chair as if burned and hurried away, bawling for a clerk.
Bivar grunted. “Can’t say as I like dealing with these barons, sir.”
“Nor I, Sergeant,” Pelekarr replied. “Nor I. But a constant inflow of money… that might be worth a gamble. A surer bet, I think, than whatever Damicos hopes to drag out of the interior. We’ll move out at dawn tomorrow and see this through as swiftly and safely as we can.”
CHAPTER 7: AT THE EDGE OF THE MAP
Damicos reached Garrim at the tail end of a long day’s travel on the southwestern roads of Ostora. The hamlets they’d passed during the march had each seemed smaller and more desperate-looking than the last, but Garrim was a step up again. It was smaller than Dura but more spread out, a trapping and mining town with no frills.
The infantry captain rode his charger just ahead of the column, observing men carrying bags of heavy rock between buildings on the dirt streets, while open warehouse doors revealed men on stools arranging chains and nets. A burly woman with a scowl on her face crossed the street right in front of him carrying two large bronze felling axes on her shoulder, freshly cast and sharpened. And at a tavern up the street two men stumbled through the doorway into the dust of the road, struggling and swinging at one another.
“Looks like our kind of town,” Damicos told his vanguard sergeants with a whimsical cock of the eyebrow. Hundos and Kalabax laughed, eyeing it all with the interest of professional soldiers in new terrain.
They made their way down the wide, muddy main street to the tallest building, a three-story wooden structure with a sign hanging slightly askew above the front door: Garrim Hostel. Straightforward enough, Damicos thought, if a little blunt.
He dismounted with Hundos and Kalabax, ordering Lieutenant Stonehand to take the company west of town and await him there.
“Maintain discipline, Leon. I don’t want the men coming into town yet. If this pans out, perhaps we’ll let the boys loose tonight.”
“Aye, sir.”
Inside the hostel was cool and dim. The dark wooden ceiling was low and the floorboards uneven, but the furniture was sturdy and polished. Behind the bar a fat man stood, pouring ale from several jugs back into the cask it had come from. He was dressed in a dirty apron and a thick buckskin shirt, and was balding, with pale red curls around the sides and back.
He looked up in surprise at the soldiers. “Gor, I haven’t seen any of you types this far south in a few months. What brings Kerath’s finest into my humble establishment today?”
“Let me wash away the road dust with some of that you’re pouring,” Damicos said.
The barkeep sent a half-full jug sloshing towards him, followed by a gourd drinking cup. Damicos took a long drink, then passed the jug to the sergeants. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he let out a gusty sigh. “Any work for a free company around these parts?”
The barkeep snorted. “Always, but Garrim’s coffers aren’t too deep. Headman might hire a few of you to hunt down some saber-cats. There’s a manticore killed a farmer down by Thunder Creek.”
Damicos nodded. “And what’s this I hear about an expedition getting ready for a push inland? That just talk, or is there something to it?”
The innkeeper turned his back on the captain and bellowed into his kitchen. “Drip! Get out here.”
A skinny boy emerged, wiping his hands on a towel.
“Git upstairs and ask Mister Jamson to come down, he’s got visitors here to speak with him.”
The boy nodded and passed through an archway, then disappeared quickly up the winding flight of wooden steps that wrapped around one corner of the small common room. They creaked mightily, but his footsteps soon faded into the upper hallways of the building.
“Jamson’ll be down directly,” the barkeep told the soldiers gruffly. “He won’t shut his gob about his expedition. Always talkin’.”
“How long has this Jamson been around?” Damicos asked. “Have we come too late to get involved?”
“Nope,” the barkeep replied, continuing his chore of pouring ale as if nothing could move him from behind that bar. “It’s been over a month, now. Meets with a lot of people. It seems that—well, I ought to let him tell ya. Here he comes.”
More creaking footsteps descending the staircase announced the arrival of both the boy, Drip, and a tall man wearing a brocaded green coat and polished black boots that reached halfway up his brown breeches. Finer clothes than Damicos had seen in Ostora, at least outside of Belsoria, yet they were of a foreign cut.
The fellow had gray hair and looked to be about twenty years Damicos’ senior, but he stepped lively and his arms swung with an easy manner that showed he was as ready for action as any of the infantrymen. He had a hawk-like nose and shining blue eyes with a gray-brown beard closely cropped. He approached, hand held out, smiling wordlessly.
Damicos took the hand, felt the strength in the grip, and smiled back. “Captain Damicos of the Tooth and Blade free
company, sir. We’ve come about the expedition.”
“Damicos.” The man’s smile split into a wide grin, showing white teeth. “I’m Uhl Jamson, and happy to meet you, Captain. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Damicos cocked his head. “You… heard of our coming? We only left Dura this morning.”
“Well, no, but I’ve been waiting all the same,” the man replied. He motioned to a nearby table. “Let’s talk.” They each pulled out chairs, Jamson propping a boot up on the table’s edge with elaborate casualness.
He leaned back and folded his arms. “I had faith that someone would turn up sooner or later, in answer to the call of adventure.” He fixed Damicos with a conspiratorial glare, his eyes twinkling with excitement. “The fates, they’re smiling on us. See?”
He tugged at a thin black cord around his neck and produced a short necklace from inside his shirtfront. Suspended from it was a small collection of colored stones, varying in size and shape. Damicos thought he spied an animal fang in among them. The stones appeared to be rough, uncut gems.
“D’you know what that is?” Jamson asked.
Damicos shook his head, and the man looked down at the tangle.
“Well, these ones are charms from different lands, which I have used to secure the pleasure of the three Fates, especially Dalica,” Jamson said. He separated one green stone from the rest, hanging by a little gold link. “But this one here, this is what I pulled out of the interior. It’s the key to where we’re going.”
Damicos was no jeweler, but by its size he judged the stone to be worth perhaps thirty silvers. A nice piece, but nothing he hadn’t seen around the neck of many a fair lady in the larger towns along the coast. And he’d seen larger and better polished ones in Kerath, by far. “Perhaps you’d better start from the beginning, sir, and tell my sergeants and I exactly what the situation is and what your expedition entails.”
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