“What? One of those? Here?” she gasped.
Genara whipped her head around, scanning the area. It simply wasn’t possible. She was on a well-traveled road. If there was another olo field anywhere nearby, surely the road would have been blocked off. Sure enough, there wasn’t another skittering brown form in sight, but that made even less sense. As far as she knew, oloes didn’t travel alone. Could this one have stowed away among their things for so long without them noticing?
As much of a mystery as it was, the larger issue was what she was going to do about it. One look at what they’d been able to do to Desmeres’s legs was more than enough motivation to avoid tangling with the monsters. Even one of them was sure to be a handful. Ideally she could put the knife to work, end the creature quickly, and be on her way. No, ideally the thing would leave on its own and she wouldn’t have to take even that risk. Regardless of what was ideal, though, the blasted thing had chosen to sit atop her cart like a gargoyle, sniffing at the air and refusing to budge.
“Go. Go, you filthy thing,” Genara said, waving her hands. “What am I doing? It hasn’t got any eyes. What good is waving going to do?”
She shook her head and muttered to herself as she walked beside one of the horses and grasped its harness. A good sharp tug and a few spoken commands got the animal walking. Genara hoped a few rattling bumps would startle the stowaway, but it remained firm.
“I’ve had quite enough furry, disobedient creatures for one adventure already.” Genara scooped up some icy show from beside the road and formed it into a ball. “Off the cart!”
Growing up in the Northern Alliance, particularly the far north of the kingdom as she had, provided a person with a handful of universal skills. The one few appreciated was a flawless proficiency with snowballs. She hurled the packed snow at the olo and scored a direct hit. It tumbled over the side and disappeared through the icy crust of the snow mounded beside the road.
She dashed for the cart and tried to climb on before the thing could recover, but it burst from the snow and ran directly toward her, galloping under the cart to reach her. Before she could react, it spiraled up her leg and around her body, heading with purpose toward her face.
After the growing tension of the long ride thus far, this was the last straw. Her usually steady and measured disposition shattered into a tizzy as the small but ferocious creature managed to get itself trapped in the hood of her cloak. Any semblance of dignity vanished behind the urgent need to get the thing away from her. She tore the cloak from about her neck and threw it to the ground, but the oloes claws had become snagged in the chain about her neck. Her fingers dug into its loose, filthy fur and she tore it and the chain free. For a brief moment she held the struggling thing before her, then heaved it with all her might into the icy stream. It cracked through the ice near the bank and disappeared into the frigid current. A few seconds passed, but it did not resurface.
Genara’s heart hammered in her ears. She gave herself a few moments to calm down, then checked herself over. Without a mirror it was difficult to tell, but it appeared she’d escaped the encounter without even a single scratch. She’d received a few smudges of what she chose to believe was mud, but washing those away could wait until she was out of the cold. She fetched her discarded cloak and shook away the dusting of snow, grumbling as she did.
“There, happy? Something’s gone wrong. A journey like this was bound to have something go wrong, and now it has, so fate has been appeased.” She climbed back into the cart and snapped the reins. “From here on, thing’s will go smoothly. … Perhaps if I repeat that a few times I’ll actually believe it.”
Chapter 6
Melorn Forest was not nearly as large as Ravenwood. It clung to the Eastern Mountains in much the same way that Ravenwood clung to the Rachis Mountains, and at their widest points each was visible from the other, but once within the borders, the two may as well have been different worlds. Melorn Forest was so dense with trees, most of it was entirely impassible by cart or carriage. They were a taller, more sparsely branched breed of tree, allowing light through to feed the undergrowth and further differentiate Melorn Woods from its shadowy counterpart to the west. Frequently, the trees grew so near to one another, and with so much thick brush between, that even a traveler on horseback would have trouble finding a way forward without straying far off course. This made it a haven for wildlife, with hunters rarely venturing much further than its outskirts. It also made it the perfect place to train a hound to track. Every corner of the woods was the crossroads of a dozen animal trails.
Desmeres plucked a tuft of tawny fur from a bit of bramble. The various trials and tribulations that had presented themselves since he’d acquired Dowser had kept him from truly exploring the results of the treatment he’d given Dowser’s nose. It was clear from the manic enthusiasm the pup showed when even the slightest breath of wind stirred the scents around them that his already remarkable sense of smell had been improved. Mere improvement wouldn’t necessarily do the job Desmeres required, however. And even if Dowser now sported a sense of smell utterly without match, it wouldn’t do any good unless he could be taught how to follow a specific target.
He crouched and held the fur down to the pup. Dowser practically inhaled it, then tried to slurp it from Desmeres’s fingers.
“Follow, Dowser. Follow.”
Dowser chased the original tuft for a few moments more. When Desmeres refused to let him have it, he abandoned it and turned to the bush. Within moments of snuffling at the branches he’d pricked his nose and yelped three times.
Desmeres sighed and snagged his collar, pulling the pup back before the animal could prick himself again. “Clearly if we do get you properly trained, I’ll have to keep a close eye on you to be sure you don’t fling yourself off any cliffs in pursuit of a target.”
He kept the dog just out of harm’s way and let him sniff and tug along. Within a minute, he’d found another tuft of the same sort.
“Good. That’s fine work, Dowser,” Desmeres praised, feeding him a bit of dried meat. “That’s enough for today. You’re coming along fine, and we’ve still got a long way to go.”
The pair climbed back to Desmeres’s horse and continued on their way.
“At least you seem to grasp I want you to follow a particular scent rather than whatever tickles your fancy,” he said. “We’ll definitely make a tracker out of you. But for now the good news is already know exactly where we need to go, and a former ‘North Melorn Forced Labor Lumberyard’ I’ve got marked down is a recent enough entry to Lain’s books that I’ve got names to work with. We won’t need to rely upon that sense of smell just yet.”
That was the other thing Melorn Forest had in spades: woodsmen. All around the rim of the forest, seasonal camps would pop up when the hardest freeze of winter softened into something a shade less lethal. They would fell enough trees to satisfy the needs of the locals and then pack up and retreat as the snows of the following winter began to fall. It had been going on for generations, longer than anyone could remember, and they’d not even begun to thin the overabundance of trees. It was bordering upon supernatural how resilient and bountiful the forest was. Even the rare permanent lumber camp could keep itself working year-round without leaving much of a scar on the forest.
“I suppose the mountains may be to blame,” Desmeres mused. “If the Eastern Mountains can keep a place like Entwell hidden and confound the spells of the finest wizards in the world, causing trees to grow faster and larger than anywhere else seems like simplicity itself.”
Dowser nosed his arm, trying to beg another pat on the head. Desmeres obliged him.
“At least you’ve calmed down. You were a bit of a handful back in the cart. I wasn’t sure how I was going to train you out of all that howling. Perhaps it was Genara that had you worked up.” He scratched Dowser under the chin. “I’m not sure I can fault you on that. Mark my words, though. Rare as it is to find a woman of her quality, the finer the woman, the more trouble
she can cause. To say nothing of the trouble I could cause her. And not that this weighs into your thinking, but she’s mortal. That complicates matters for me.”
The puppy’s contribution to the conversation was limited to a low, half-hearted "Wuff" when Desmeres stopped scratching before he’d had his fill.
“If one can expect to live centuries, one is ill-served by making plans that will last mere decades. Even you are a bit of a compromise. For my purposes, a dragon would have been a far better choice of tracker. But they aren’t very easy to find, and a man with a dragon is likely to stick a bit more in someone’s minds than a man with a hound. Again, not that Genara’s company has been any less effective at turning heads.”
Dowser wuffed again and buried his head in Desmeres’s cloak to get out of the cold. When the pup peered up, he whimpered, much as he did when the pair had parted ways with Genara. Desmeres patted the dog and sighed.
“I know, Dowser. I know.”
#
They continued onward, weaving though gaps in the trees in order to keep a roughly northeast trajectory. It was nearing evening when they came upon a rare sight in Melorn Woods, a well-maintained road. He’d been hoping to find it, as he remembered making use of it when he and Lain had dealt with the prior owners of the camp. The amount of effort that had gone into carving out this one wagon-wide strip of land was mind boggling. Chopping down countless trees had only been the start. The worst of it was certainly the clearing of the stumps that had been left behind. Even with crushed stone and sawdust tracing an arrow-straight path through the thicket, it was visibly a constant battle to keep it clear. The trees had closed in around the path, like soldiers forming ranks. Branches hung over the path and interlinked. It seemed less like a road through a forest and more like a tunnel bored through a mountain.
The light of the cloudy sky filtered through the arch of branches, giving Melorn a dose of the same twilight that Ravenwood was known for. This compounded the eeriness of traveling a path that ran as far as he could see in either direction without another soul in sight and only the merest glimpses through the wall of trees. Still, even ground and the certainty that a road this fine could only lead to the lumber camp he was after made for swift travel. By the time the sun was fully setting that evening, he could hear the sounds of saws and axes combined with the constant ripple of a fast-moving river.
He came to the end of the road. A wooden arch made from artfully hewn logs and branches marked the gateway to the camp. Ages ago the workers had carved the word ‘Lumber’ into it, though relatively recent chisel marks and the fact that word was well off-center suggested there had formerly been other words which had since been removed. Beyond it lay the lumberyard. Finding a bustling, industrious facility in the heart of a primeval forest was disorienting. A few dozen paces in any direction and Desmeres would find himself more likely to meet a bear or a wolf than someone who walked on two legs, yet here sturdy log buildings and tall, smoky chimneys stood amid the hum of activity that wouldn’t have been out of place in a marketplace.
A large, mostly clear courtyard formed the center of the camp. Ice and sawdust had formed into an uneven and oddly springy surface that gave his horse trouble, so he dismounted to lead it. Long orderly rows of carefully stacked firewood lined one side of the courtyard. Stacks of longer, rougher planks came next, then slabs and eventually whole logs. A wide river rushed along at the far side of the yard, turning a massive, ice-encrusted wheel attached to the largest of the buildings. Perhaps twenty workers rushed about, hauling heavy loads, swinging axes, and going about the dozens of other tasks that went into producing something as simple as a length of pine. Though they came in many shapes and sizes, the workers all had a few things in common. Their clothes were thick and rough, heavily patched and mounded atop what had undoubtedly been the worn remnants of the previous year’s outfit. They wore the wild, scraggly beards of people who hadn’t the time or resources to devote any effort to appearance. This was humanity in its roughest form, and not a dwarf or elf could be seen. Unless she was hiding, he failed to spot a single woman among them as well.
Desmeres’s appearance did not go unnoticed, but he had to wait several minutes before any task could spare a worker long enough for someone to greet him. When a host finally stepped forward, it was a man with more gray in his beard than the rest. He had a thick woolen cap on, and the sparseness of the hair poking from underneath suggested he was mostly bald. He stepped forward with his hand extended and a wrinkle at the corner of his eyes that suggested a friendly smile was lurking somewhere behind that beard.
“Welcome! Name’s Stromann. And you are?”
“Desmeres,” he said.
“Fancy name, son,” Stromann said. “You got some elf in you?”
“A fair dose. You must have a keen eye. Most people don’t notice it nearly so quickly.”
“You haven’t got barely a whisker on your face, but you’ve got that road-weary look to you. Only folk I know who can ride for two weeks and still barely need a shave are elves. We don’t see too many new faces around here, and most of them have empty carts waiting to haul out some fresh-cut timbers. Except for the ones dim enough to try to run a barge up this rocky excuse for a river.” He glanced at the puppy under Desmeres’s arm. “Fine-looking hound you got there. Vulbaka?”
“Full-blooded, if the breeder is to be believed.”
“They as dumb as I’ve heard?”
“He hasn’t proved himself to be one of the more brilliant creatures I’ve associated with.”
“Still, good nose on them. I know hunters like them. You a hunter?”
“I have found myself doing a bit more hunting than I’d ever expected to, hence the hound, but mostly I’m a collector.”
Stromann scratched his head. “A collector? What kind of a collector would find his way out here?”
“Today I’m looking for Marten-spores.”
His host whistled through his teeth. “Marten-spores? From them flat mushrooms?”
“I’ve only ever seen illustrations, but that sounds accurate.”
“You may have come out here for nothing, Desmeres.”
“There aren’t any nearby?”
“Not nearby, no. I think one of my boys said something about spotting a few over to the southeast, but that isn’t going to do you much good.”
“Why not?”
“There’s a bad curse over that patch of land. Ax heads come off, oxen buck and lose control. Bad spirits about.”
“I see. Funny how the most valuable things tend to wrap themselves in misfortune. Would any of your men be able to lead me there?”
“We’re all a bit busy at the moment, but even if we weren’t, I wouldn’t bet on finding one of my boys willing to traipse all the way up there just to have a branch fall on his head for his trouble.”
“Naturally there would be proper compensation.”
“You may not believe this, but we don’t have much use for money around here. Food and shelter’s taken care of by the forest. I make sure my boys have all the booze and such they need to stay in good spirits. Just about the only thing these fellas are liable to spend their money on are trips to town, and what with nothing else costing them, what they’ve got in pay is plenty for what they’re after.”
Desmeres smirked. “I think you may be underestimating the power of gold.”
“No, son. I think you may be underestimating just how superstitious a fella can become, tucked away in Melorn as long as most of us have been.”
“Ah. Now superstition I can believe.”
“If I remember right, you being a collector, those spores won’t do you much good. They wear out pretty quick. May as well take a handful of this sawdust and say it’s Marten-spore, for all the good the real stuff will do you.”
“I’ve got some uses in mind that would have a longer shelf-life,” Desmeres said, reaching into his things to select a thick book. “Believe it or not, an associate of mine and I spent some time here a few
years ago, and it’s possible some of your men may remember that day.”
“Could be, I suppose. Plenty of us are lifers. Took the job back when there wasn’t much of a choice. No sense you flipping through that book there in the cold. Let’s get inside. Since you’re itching to spend some money, we may as well treat this like a proper business deal.”
Stromann led him to the large and unpleasantly fragrant stable for him to tie up his horse. A small but well-built office of sorts sat at the opposite side of the camp, no doubt to keep it from the smell. As Stromann opened the door and lit a taper in the smoldering fire to prepare the two oil lamps, Desmeres had to admire the professionalism on display. It wasn’t an office worthy of the capital, for instance, but it was easily the match of anything he might have found in the smaller cities. A desk, predictably built of quarter-sawn pine, formed the center of the room. A handful of matching chairs, each a masterpiece of carpentry, sat around it. Assorted other furniture filled the room. Each was of similar quality and no doubt served the dual purpose of stocking the office and serving as a sample of some of their more expensive handiwork.
“Please, have a seat,” he said.
Desmeres sat and set his book atop the desk. Stromann stiffly took the chair opposite him. Dowser set about the task of romping first around Desmeres’s feet, then around Stromann’s, then back again. Lacking as the pup was in grace, the round trip took quite a while.
“Oooh,” Stromann said. “It feels good to get the weight off. Now what you got here?”
“Agreements,” Desmeres explained, leafing through the pages. “Certificates of debt.”
“You a debt collector?” Stromann said, for the first time bearing a less-than-charitable expression.
The Redemption of Desmeres Page 28