Green Rider

by Kristen Britain

  She pulled out a strip of dried meat. She chewed and swallowed hastily, yet savored every bit. So intent on the food was she, that she did not notice Jendara gazing at her until it was too late. The swordmaster’s eyes glinted in the firelight.

  Karigan tensed, readying herself for another blow, for more pain, for Jendara to rouse Torne. She stuffed the rest of the meat strip into her mouth, not willing to be denied one last morsel. She glared defiantly at Jendara.

  The swordmaster, however, did not twitch a muscle. She did not wake Torne, nor did she leap over to Karigan and strike her, or demand that she empty her pockets of the hidden food. She spoke not a word. She simply blinked her eyes and turned her gaze back to the depths of the night woods, her back rigid. Karigan was not about to question her motives.

  When Karigan didn’t dream of food, she dreamed of retrieving the brooch, and fantasized about what she would do with the saber if she were invisible. She dreamed also of her mother’s ring, which Jendara wore. Sometimes she dreamed that her mother chastised her for her carelessness. Other times, her mother held her in a warm embrace, the seal of Clan G’ladheon seeming to come to life behind them—the roar of the ocean, the creak of ship timbers, the cry of gulls. . . . Then she would awaken to a reality much stranger than all her dreams together. How did a simple schoolgirl ever get into such a mess?

  Travelers on the road watched the trio curiously. Torne told his story many times, Jendara sticking her knife tip into Karigan’s back lest she speak out. Torne’s embellishments, Karigan thought, were getting a little wild, and if he wasn’t careful, he would one day betray himself. One afternoon he pulled aside an old trapper riding a mule.

  “Down the road you’ll come to a terrible sight,” Torne warned the man. “King’s soldiers slain, every last one.”

  The trapper rubbed his bristly gray beard, eyes wide. “All dead, you say? How?”

  “Groundmites,” Torne said. “Surely you’ve heard of them raiding the borders.”

  “Aye, but . . .”

  “You will see. But see also, this girl.” Torne pointed at Karigan and the trapper followed with his gaze.

  “I see her.”

  “She is responsible.”

  The trapper plucked at the laces of his coarse wool shirt. “Responsible? She is? For what?”

  “The massacre.”

  “I thought you said groundmites—”

  “She led them there,” Torne said fervently. “She led the massacre, she slew many of the guards herself. And what she did to the captain . . . Unspeakable.” He shook his head.

  The trapper raised a skeptical brow and cleared his throat as if to say something, then he eyed Torne’s sword and thought better of it.

  “We take this girl, this traitor,” Torne spat the word, “for judgment in Sacor City. She eluded us at first, but we caught her, planning another raid with her groundmite cohorts on an innocent settlement.”

  “Aye, well, must be goin’. Good day t’ya.” The trapper slapped his mule into a hasty trot trailing a plume of road dust behind him.

  Torne beamed his gap-toothed grin at Jendara, pleased with his own performance. She groaned and rolled her eyes.

  Some folk Torne told the story to were all too ready to believe it, and suggested a roadside hanging for Karigan. Torne protested and declared himself a good citizen willing to let the king’s law decide her fate. She wondered what king he was talking about.

  Jendara was tiring of his stories as well. “Do you have to blather on to everyone we meet? I never took you for the minstrel type.”

  “I am not a spineless minstrel. I am being neighborly. Besides, it unsettles folks to see a girl tied up by two warriors like us. Especially when she wears that green coat.” Karigan had refused to remove it, no matter how warm the weather, for fear Torne would discover her hidden caches of food and take it away from her.

  “Well, I’m getting tired of the story. If you don’t watch yourself, you’ll overembellish and give us away. Your tongue is not nearly as glib as a true minstrel’s.”

  “My sword work is what’s glib.”

  Jendara looked away from him with a frown of disgust on her face.

  Dusk shadowed the road. A mounted figure appeared ahead of them riding at a walk, his movements smooth and fluid. Torne squinted his eyes, then unexpectedly, whooped in recognition. He ran forward to greet the horseman. Karigan’s heart sank. Immerez? The Gray One Jendara and Torne murmured about?

  In the hands of Immerez, her chances of escape slimmed considerably. But as the rider approached, she saw he wasn’t Mirwellian at all. He wore no scarlet, but a leather jerkin emblazoned with an eagle grasping a human skull in its talons. A mercenary.

  “Garroty!” Torne cried. “What chance meeting is this?”

  The other man grinned and the effect was grotesque. His face was misshapen by dozens of scars and a wad of tobacco stuffed in his left cheek. Gray-brown hair hung in a ponytail down his back. His arms were ropy with muscles and veins. The eagle and skull were tattooed onto his left forearm like an oversized bruise.

  “The Talons have given me a fortnight’s leave and I’m traveling. Good to see you, Torne.” His voice was gravelly and low. “I see you travel still in beautiful company.” His eyes drifted first to a smoldering Jendara, then rested on Karigan. “And who is this?”

  “A Greenie we’re delivering to the Mirwellians. For profit.”

  “Ah, yes. Profit.” He leaned over his horse’s withers and spat tobacco. “You are a merc’s pride, Torne, seeking profit. But you were not very good at it when I took you under my wing when you fled the city, were you?”

  “We’ve improved, I assure you.”

  Garroty snorted. “Profit is of little meaning to you except if it helps sustain you in service to your master. This smells more like politics to me.”

  “What do you know of politics?” Jendara asked. Her countenance suggested he knew nothing.

  “I know who you work for, beautiful.”

  Jendara bridled. “You will address me by my name.”

  Garroty shrugged.

  “Why don’t you camp with us tonight?” Torne asked eagerly. “We could catch up on things.”

  “Why don’t you keep going?” Jendara suggested, an unfriendly smile on her face.

  “I accept your invitation,” he said to Torne. He turned to Jendara. “Nothing could keep me away from your lovely companion.”

  Karigan wished he would follow Jendara’s advice. The Weapon’s animosity toward him made her nervous. Garroty’s easy seat on his battle horse, his ugly grin, and all too interested glances, did not reassure her at all.

  Torne and Garroty stayed up front, conversing about weapons and war, other mercs they had both known. Garroty remained arrogantly mounted while the others walked. Torne had to crane his neck to look up at his friend. Jendara strode behind with Karigan, leading The Horse in brooding silence. Karigan wondered what caused Jendara to loathe the mercenary so.

  They walked until nightfall, and settled beside the road around a little campfire. Karigan leaned against the rough bark of a pine, huddled in her greatcoat. She wanted to stay as far away from Garroty as she could, but his coarse laughter assaulted her ears and echoed down the road. He spoke of profitable campaigns his company had engaged in.

  “I tell you, Torne, some of those villages in Rhovanny are ripe to pluck, especially in the wine country. And the wenches there don’t carry swords.” He grinned at Jendara. She glared back.

  “Sacoridia is a bit too peaceful for profit,” Garroty said. “That’s what I think. There is always something happening down in the Under Kingdoms, though. Petty lords trying to reshape the map. The year has been good for many merc companies.”

  “Stick around, my friend,” Torne said. “There are those in Sacoridia who would change things as well.”

  “Maybe so, but Zachary is a strong leader. It would take a united front, maybe more, to bring him down. The governors might not like him a lot, but the
common folk do, and what the governors don’t need is an uprising among the common folk. Nothing would get done. The harvest would rot in the fields. Paper makers would stop their mills. The governors’ wealth would dwindle. Simple as that.”

  “Then what are you and your company doing here in Sacoridia,” Jendara said, “if it’s so unlikely there will be an uprising?”

  “Aah. Now we come to it. Rumors, Beautiful. Rumors, no doubt begun by your employer, and designed to create unrest. I’ve even heard of a woman who has convinced a good many common folk that Sacoridia has no need for any king at all—not enough to start a rebellion, but enough to spread dissent. And her ideas are catching on.

  “The Talons are here in case an uprising does occur in Sacoridia. It would prove more profitable than anything that has ever happened in the Under Kingdoms. Imagine, the governors uniting to bring down the king. Talk about profit! If your employer is as good as he claims, the peace Sacoridia has enjoyed for centuries will be shattered. There is nothing better than civil war if you’re a merc. Captain Heylar of the Talons has eyes and ears in the courts of most provinces. Wouldn’t hurt to encourage a profitable situation now, would it?”

  Karigan listened to this with wide eyes. Much more was going on in Sacoridia than she had ever dreamed. Did this sort of speculation always go on, or was there really a threat to Sacoridia’s peace? There was always intrigue—the Berry sisters had said as much. Intrigue was as much a game in real life as it was on a board. But surely, threats to the king were not commonplace. Nor the threat of civil war.

  “You expect mercenaries can encourage the governors in civil war?” she asked Garroty. His smile was feral in the dancing light of the fire. It made her feel like dinner, and she was sorry she had drawn his attention.

  “So, the Greenie speaks.” He leaned to the side and spat. “Of course we seek to influence what would be in our best interests. Civil war means work. Work means profit. Men of the Talon Company are wise in the ways of such things. They merely encourage the governors to do what is right. And should they do what’s right, Talons will be strategically placed to negotiate contracts with the highest bidders. It’s more convenient to hire a company of well-trained soldiers than to raise a rabble army of commoners.”

  Karigan shook her head. Outsiders were trying to create a civil war in Sacoridia for profit. As the daughter of a merchant, she understood the nature of profit, but at what cost? The very idea was gruesome.

  Quite suddenly, she felt an urgent need to reach the king with the message F’ryan Coblebay had entrusted her to carry, but she was caught up in a hopeless situation, held captive by two swordmasters, and now accompanied by a seasoned mercenary.

  MIRWELL

  Warm air flowing through an unshuttered window cleared out stale air which had accumulated in the library chamber throughout the lengthy northern winter. What a change mild air was, and for once without that damp, chill wind.

  A bee droned along the flowered vine growing just outside the window, and the air smelled of fresh green things and lilacs. The square of sky framed by the window was brilliant and clear. On such days, it was said, you could see Mount Mantahop of the Wingsong Range from the fortress gate towers. Mirwell scoffed at that—in all his years he had never seen it. The range was just an indistinguishable line of nubs and bumps far, far away on the horizon.

  He sipped from his goblet of rhubarb wine and stared into the embers of the day fire, allowing the wine to warm him from inside. Despite the influx of summerlike warmth, the old stone fortress was dim, and if you weren’t careful, in a perpetual state of damp and mildew. Mold grew in the dark corners which his servants battled constantly with soap and scrub brushes.

  The damp made his bones ache. He could never seem to keep warm, not satisfactorily anyway, and he suspected it was unhealthy to reside in the dank fortress. His personal mender advocated he leave his library chamber and soak up the sun outside, but there was too much to do. This was no time for catnapping in the sun.

  The efficient Beryl Spencer sat across from him in a straight back chair, her nose buried in half a dozen sheaves of paper. She must be nearsighted. He would have to look into getting her fitted for a pair of specs, but he hated the idea of wrecking her lovely oval face with glass and wire. Besides, the lenses would no doubt cost a pretty fortune.

  “The clan is presently headed by Stevic G’ladheon,” she said. “It was his only daughter, Karigan, who provoked Lord Timas. She hasn’t been seen or heard of since running away.”

  “Tell me about the clan,” Mirwell said, intrigued by how Beryl’s scarlet uniform deepened her rosy, healthy cheeks.

  “It’s based in Corsa. No surprise there. Corsa is home to many merchant clans due to its outstanding deep water harbors. G’ladheon invests heavily in shipping, but is not a dominant holder in any single ship.”

  “Wise of him. The more diverse his holdings, the less risk to his fortune. He does have a fortune, doesn’t he?”

  Beryl looked up at him with those pale green eyes of hers, glistening like the gems that were her namesake. “Stevic G’ladheon is perhaps the single wealthiest person in all the provinces. Last year’s Merchant Guild’s Year End Reckoning had him the highest grossing member.”

  “Therefore, not a man to anger if his wealth is any indication of his influence. What does he deal in?”

  Beryl scanned her papers. “Textiles and spices mainly. Some lumber and paper. Much of his trading is done inland via river cog and wagon train. He has strong ties with Rhovanny, and has even traded ice in the Cloud Islands. Very clever of him to find such a market in the tropics. According to some of your relations, my lord, he doesn’t venture often into Mirwell Province.”

  “No wonder I’ve heard little of him. Do any of my relations consider him a threat?”

  “No, my lord. Though, just in case, they traced some of his personal history. He is the clan founder—Clan G’ladheon has existed for some twenty years.”

  Mirwell snorted. “A bought clanship, I’ve no doubt.”

  “G’ladheon worked hard for it, starting with small merchant families to learn the trade. He’s intelligent to have accumulated such wealth over so short a time.” Was that admiration in Beryl’s voice? “Here’s an interesting bit of information. About thirty-five years ago, he served on the merchant vessel Gold Hunter, which used tactics of questionable legality during peacetime to acquire goods for trade.”

  “Explain.”

  “The crew practiced piracy, my lord. Mostly around the Under Kingdoms. They wreaked havoc with the sugar and tobacco trades.”

  Mirwell raised his brows.“More interesting by the moment. Any idea of what capacity he served as on this vessel?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “What became of the ship?”

  “It was sold and reregistered as SMV Avren’s Pride, and became something of a coastal scow transporting granite and lumber. It was lost somewhere in outer Ullem Bay fifteen years ago.”

  “I see no immediate threat from this G’ladheon fellow.” Mirwell sipped his wine. It was just the right amount of dry balanced with sweet. It did not rival the fine vintages produced in the lake country of Rhovanny, but in a pinch it would do. Vintners couldn’t seem to grow grapes in Sacoridia’s sandy soil, so cider and fruit wines served as staples. Unless Rhovan was to be had, of course.

  “Good work, Spence. Keep the information on hand just in case he turns into an overwrought father. Should he cause us trouble, I’m sure our good friend aus-Corien of the Under Kingdoms would be interested in hearing about him. And we may have our own uses for the information.”

  “Yes, my lord. Anything else?”

  Mirwell rubbed a sweaty hand on his thigh. He could think of countless “things” she could do for him. He felt a certain thrill at the idea of what she could do for him tingle all the way down to his loins. Would voicing his desire wreck her fealty and efficiency? Or, would it bind her closer to him?

  Phaw, randy old man, he thought, n
ot displeased by the response of his libido. But she was too effective as his aide and he feared ruining her devotion. Should she make the first advance herself, however. . . .

  She never would. He was a grizzled old man and she was more intent on making a place for herself in his court hierarchy with pure hard work. She had moved swiftly up the ranks during her term in Sacoridia’s regular militia, and had given it all up to serve her governor and home province. The chance she had taken paid off, and here she was working her way up in his own provincial militia. Ambition was a trait Mirwell admired, and honest ambition rare enough.

  Ah, well. At least I can enjoy my dirty thoughts.

  “My lord?”

  “Eh?”

  “Anything else?”

  Now she must think him a dotty old fool leering at her like that. “Send in Amilton,” he said, then amended, “Prince Amilton.”

  “Very well, my lord.”

  Mirwell watched after her with longing and regret, and observed how her every movement was graceful, yet held a stillness like a deer in the woods: alert but calm, and not prone to excessive motion. She reminded him of the Weapons, but their movements were always precise and lacking beauty.

  Ah, if he were a younger man, then maybe, but now he must set aside his thoughtful maunderings and get on with his great work. The glory of his clan was more important than anything else, and Amilton had been insistent about seeing him today. Mirwell had put him off all morning, and most of the afternoon. By now, the prince would be angry enough to spit venom.

  “There are ways,” the governor told the bear head mounted on the opposite wall, “of showing who is in control. Subtle ways, mind you.”

  The bear had once exerted her control on him in a none-too-subtle way. It was she who had maimed his right side. He had been careless during the hunt, had gotten between the mother and the cubs. The bear mauled him, and it was perhaps his injuries which had prevented him from siring another son, though he was always certain to blame his wives. He could not be perceived as weak in any of his ventures. Too bad the wife who bore Timas had been so short and mean. The boy had acquired her temperament and size.