The Best of Men - an epic fantasy (Song of Ages Book 1)

by Wilf Jones

  ‘There you are: mystery solved and no problems!’

  ‘I hope so, Bibron. That Rixbur is a nasty beggar and I expect he’s got a long memory.’ The thought of him made Angren scowl so much that Garaid and Bibron exchanged a puzzled look.

  ‘You really don’t like him, do you?’ said Garaid.

  ‘Forget it!’ said Angren.

  What Angren didn’t feel like explaining was the very strange intuition he had about the man. He thought it might be something to do with having robbed him, because on most nights Rixbur turned up in his dreams. Essentially it was the same dream every time: Rixbur, sweltering in his finest regalia, at a Royal Court denouncing him as a common thief. Angren found it hard to get rid of the image even on waking. Fat face red from the vigour of his attack, his whole body quivering with fury and the hat he gripped in both hands mangled as though it was Angren’s throat he held, Rixbur stood up before the King to demand a warrant for Angren’s arrest. Angren could never make out which court or which King it might be, nor ever did he hear the King’s reply, but each time the dream ended with the ranked soldiers, lining the Throneway, all laughing and jeering uproariously. He hadn’t a clue what it might all mean beyond a simple concern that Rixbur may one day get his own back. He had considered asking Seama about it but in the light of everything else that was happening to them, it really didn’t seem that important.

  Inside the tent were heaps of weapons jumbled together on tables or hanging from the wooden supports. Angren made it clear to everyone including the owner that he was far from being impressed by the merchandise, but his companions, still amused by the problem with the tent, decided he was just being grumpy and left him to it. Everyone but Angren soon found something that would suit them very well and all of them besieged Terrance for the means to pay. No one bought cheaply.

  Seama still had his sword despite his ducking in the River. It was a blade of ancient power, of great lineage and was not easily lost by reason of certain spells. But to supplement this he bought a small dagger and a light breastplate strong enough to turn a stray arrow. His glorious suit of armour now lay at the bottom of the Hypodedicus, no doubt close by the bones of his faithful Bellus and The Mule. In their memory he vowed never to wear more than minimal arms, to enter battle as vulnerable as they had been in his service.

  Sigrid was delighted to find a pair of lightweight swords as keen as razors. They were designed to be worn crossways on a woman’s back for ease of carriage and access. They looked insignificant in Garaid’s hands as he examined the fine chasing of the hilts, but frighteningly lethal as Sigrid gave the doubters a little show of her ambidextrous skill.

  Garaid himself chose a weapon that surprised them all. Such large men were often seen with great, heavy two-handed swords and were often unassailable with them. Garaid would have settled for something of the sort but dropped the idea when he found, propped up by the entrance, a powerful Aegardean mid-bow made of quality Ridderswood. He explained that he had in his youth been archery champion for all of Misin Part on two separate occasions. He admitted that his youth was some time past but claimed that it was much like riding a horse and besides there were enough swords among them already.

  The lady Titan of the company chose a more fitting battle friend: a great mace of armour crushing weight, set all about with sharp spikes. The long knife she chose was for more delicate work; a leather sling for emergencies and a cosh completed the haul. The sword-seller looked on in amazement until ‘Berta scowled at him so fiercely he retreated.

  The sailors, including the Captain, were more used to shipboard catapults than anything else but they all claimed average ability with the sword. In fact only Bibron was average and Piedoro a braggart; Edro, however, was far too modest. The gash in his right arm had stiffened his movement, despite Seama’s ministrations, but luckily he was left-handed and the whip-like blade he had chosen with great care whistled through the air quicker than sight. Angren wasn’t slow to praise him. Give him a few weeks for the wound to heal, he told anyone who cared to listen, and Edro would be unbeatable. Edro shrugged.

  ‘Do I have a few weeks?’

  ‘Well, no.’

  Piedoro laughed. ‘Just go for capable, brother, or better still stay out of the fights and keep it for the ladies, eh?’

  As the ladies weren’t listening to the exchange Edro didn’t bother to respond.

  Isolde bought nothing. She hadn’t the slightest intention of fighting with anyone, she said, and with De Vere’s promise of a safe passage to Pars she had no use even for the daintiest piece. She marvelled at the skills and power of the other two women but, then again, so did the men in one way or another.

  Still Angren was not impressed. He was looking for his favourite weapon: the short-sword, good weight, perfect balance with an edge hard as diamonds. He looked but he couldn’t find. He clattered and pushed his way miserably through one rusty heap after another and swore throughout.

  ‘Are you looking for anything in particular, sir?’ asked the dealer, worried at the thought of losing a sale. These people were spending money like water and he wanted as much of it as he could get.

  ‘I am. And I’m not finding it. All this is just so much rubbish. Haven’t you a short-sword anywhere here?’

  The dealer was put out and almost argued back but then decided against. ‘There isn’t much demand these days, sir. Most people would rather get behind something a little more substantial. How about—’

  ‘Most people might, but I’m not most people. You’ll be telling me next the smiths don’t make them anymore. You must have something for me to look at.’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ the dealer said as if it gave him great pain. He hated saying no. ‘The last two went to your lady-friend.’

  ‘What! I said a sword not a razor blade. Don’t you know the difference?’ Angren proceeded to explain the difference very slowly, with words of few syllables and a definite air of condescension. The sword-seller refused to get annoyed and contented himself with saying, ‘Yes sir, I’m sure you’re quite correct,’ at every pause. Nevertheless, Angren did know what he was talking about and the dealer was listening to what he had to say, and eventually the light began to dawn on the dealer’s broad face.

  ‘Well sir,’ he said, scratching his chin, ‘I think I might know what you’re getting at, and come to think of it, I think I might just have one. I’d thought it a broken long-sword ground up.’

  ‘At bloody last! Let’s see it then, for the Gods’ sakes, or we’ll be here all day.’

  The dealer led Angren over to a wooden chest. ‘It’s not in the best of condition,’ he said as he opened the lock, ‘I bought it from a poor farmer and it seemed nearly as old as he was.’ He scuffled about in the box for a minute or so before he found what he was after and hauled it out with a deal of grunting and puffing as it snagged and scraped through the rest of the mess.

  Angren made a face as the rusty old blade came into view. ‘You want me to buy that? Good joke.’

  ‘But it’s just what you wanted. Needs cleaning, I grant. I’ve been meaning to get it sorted myself but you know how it is, no time for anything these days. Still it’s the only ‘short sword’ I have and I can let you have it for er… five pieces.’

  ‘Five pieces! Look I’m not sure I even want it. It’s in a rotten state. I think I’d rather have a good knife than a bad sword.’

  ‘Four pieces.’

  ‘Seriously my friend, we both know it’s a mess. If I take it I’ll only throw it away as soon as I can get something better. Maybe I could give you two and hope there isn’t any hard fighting to be done with it. Or three, if you throw in that shield over there.’

  The dealer was delighted but kept a straight face as he resignedly agreed to take just three little pieces for a stick of rust and a battered leather and steel arm shield. He saved the grin for later
when he was counting up his takings.

  Outside at last, Garaid came to talk to Angren as he examined his ‘new’ sword.

  ‘I think you were conned,’ he said.

  ‘And so do I,’ De Vere put in, ‘and I’m the one who paid for it.’

  ‘Conned? Really? You should take better care of me then,’ Angren said, and then began to laugh aloud. The others were confused.

  ‘What’s the joke, Angren?’

  ‘Oh, it’s too much. Listen Garaid, that dealer’s a fool. He thinks he’s put one over but that’s because he doesn’t know his job. As soon as I held it I knew: this is one of the best I’ve ever found. It’s perfect! Forget the rust, that’s only surface. You wait till I’ve cleaned it. I bet you I find a Glavier mark on it.’

  ‘Worth more than three pieces, then?’

  ‘I would’ve paid thirty. Just you wait.’

  Before noon De Vere and Isolde rode out of town while the others took a little more time over their packing. Terrance had gone ahead on a fast horse to find more funds, to set Isolde on her way back to Ayer and to start a few wheels in motion along the proposed route. Seama and the rest of the company left Fletton in the early afternoon, adopting an easy pace for the benefit of their newly shod mounts, and taking their chance to relax a little along the way. The sun shone benevolently upon them all day through into a pleasant moonlit evening. It was not until dawn that the rain found them.

  PASSING THROUGH

  Banya’s Harbour 3057.7.30

  It was a cold evening for summer. The sun was an hour gone and the cloudless sky had let all the heat of the day escape. The driftsman sat upon one of the prop timbers that held together the three mile sand bar. A chill downriver breeze made him shiver. He drew on his thin green bind, as if for warmth, and breathed out the smoke with a self-pitying sigh. His was a hard life. Oh, it could be worthwhile collecting drift, he wouldn’t deny it. Like a travelling merchant, the river carried with it the wealth of all the lands it passed through. Any man willing to pay the price of honest toil might discover treasure in that flood. It could take a hundred years, for all the driftsman knew, but boulders that became pebbles would be rolled, inch by inch, down from the mysterious mountains that he had never seen, and some of them would end up on his bar. And in the Hypodedicus any stone, any lump of rock could carry a diamond, or emerald or some other precious gem. Usually it would not, but it could.

  Banya’s Harbour was originally a bay hollowed by the swirling currents of the river but as Gothery became established the port became busier and the limited harbourage overused. Gothery’s answer was to build a dead-water. This was done by driving thirty-foot timbers into the silty flats that paralleled the coast north of the port. The sand and mud between was dragged and dredged and piled onto the wooden bar, and then the river was let in. Over the years the Hypodedicus helped scour the channel but it was constantly maintained by the harbourmasters against the possibility that the silt would build up once more. They had lately built mighty water gates at the down-river end with which they could regulate the depth of the docks, and they had plans in hand to build a similar barrage at the head of the channel.

  Let them. The driftsman didn’t care. The bar was his home and his business. He patrolled it, day after day, picking up anything the river would leave him, certain that sooner or later he would land a prize worth the waiting. Meanwhile, there were good times when he did well enough and times when he was starving poor, but overall he managed to scrape a living if only by selling firewood.

  Today he was hungry. He was going through a bad patch where pickings were poor and so was he. When hungry he often walked out along the bar to sit and watch upriver. It didn’t matter much that night had fallen as he wasn’t expecting a find, but he could watch the red harbour light shine on the waters and think of what might be.

  The man on his post stiffened in a heartbeat. Splashing! A commotion nearby made him consider a fish supper, or, to judge by the noise of it, seal steak! He peered out. The whinnying surprised him. ‘Not seals then,’ he muttered. And then his searching eyes found them. There in the red glow, floundering in the mud, in a tangle of limbs and leather straps, three poor beasts cast up by the uncaring river, and set to change his life.

  ‘Neptis’ scruffy beard!’ he cried in delight, ‘Horses!’

  He wasted no time in rushing back to his shack where he roused the boy and grabbed the long rope. Together, man and boy a practised team, they lassoed the biggest of the three and pulled and strained, the driftsman all the while screaming at them in his excitement. The big horse kicked and pushed and grunted its way to solid ground and behind came the other two, attached to the first by a tether of sail rope, one on its knees in the mud and the other on its side and not moving. They were all exhausted, man, boy and beast, but the driftsman didn’t care: he had gained such a prize for his efforts and he knew there was more to come. If it was sail rope then it must have been used on board ship to keep the horses in order. And if a ship had gone down and the horses had drifted this way… He was dizzy with the possibilities. Other flotsam was bound to follow, may already have come to ground. With any luck, and it was about time he had some, they were in for a busy few days.

  He inspected his find. One horse was dead: long drowned. He wondered, fleetingly, whether the meat would still be fresh but then turned up his nose and forgot about it. On dry land the biggest of the three seemed gigantic and weird in the red light, but stranger by far was the other odd creature that now stood, shakily, between the living and the dead. The driftsman had never seen a mule before. Both survivors were sick with the cold and fatigue, but the driftsman rubbed his hands in glee: the sickness would soon wear off and fit and well the pair would be worth a fortune.

  Over the next two days he rudely nursed the two beasts back to something like health, and the boy helped him without being asked. The lad was quite taken with the poor animals and spent every spare moment he could with them, grooming and stroking and communicating, without words, kindnesses the driftsman would never have thought to offer. The boy was a deaf-mute but somehow the animals spoke to him and he spoke back. His gentle touch became more persuasive than the driftsman and his stick, and saved them many a blow.

  Because now the work began. The man had already located most of the booty. He had found good ship timbers, smashed in places but still useful; an assortment of clothes and packs; a barrel of salt beef; a water-tight and buoyant chart box, with the charts intact; and perhaps thirty more pieces well worth the salvage. The horse and mule did hard labour hauling out and transporting, the boy helped with the cleaning and the driftsman began to count up in his head the value of his hoard. He could not have been happier.

  Beasts of burden were a luxury but he began to wonder how much it would cost, in food and lost profit, to hold on to the mule after their current work was done. The charger was a tremendous worker too but the driftsman couldn’t keep that one. In a few days he would take his wares to market and she’d undoubtedly be the most profitable part of the haul. Of course, all horses were expensive but this creature was special. They’d go to Astoril and the Stralli market. That was the way: it was a long haul to the capital, and he had not made the journey more than a handful of times in his life, but the situation demanded it. Prices there were bound to be better than in Banya’s Harbour. The charger would pay his way for years to come, and with the mule to pack and a fine horse to ride upon the journey wouldn’t be so bad. Not so bad at all.

  But on the fifth evening the driftsman had only just tied up his charger alongside the mule for the night, a mind full of the plans for the trip and plans for a wealthy future, when his chances of a good price simply upped and left him. The huge beast lifted her head as though listening to something and then reared up snapping the ancient leather strap that held her. Free, she paused to bite into the rope that restrained the mule and tugged it loose, and then,
without any sort of farewell, the pair of them cantered away.

  The driftsman was stunned by this unlooked for display of independence but after a moment the enormity of his imminent loss shocked him into action. He gave chase, his panic giving him strength, and with lungs straining and the effort making his head swim he launched himself at the trailing rope. The attempt was useless. The animals increased speed and, with a yelp, he had to let go. The rope had burned his palms and he fell to his knees in pain and despair. A week past he would have been happy with a bit of good meat and some bush baccy but now, with a hoard still in hand that would keep him in means for more than a year, he felt that he had lost the world. His dream of another life had slipped through his fingers and nothing would be any good ever again.

  The Lyndons, Makerfield 3057.7.30

  Roddy dipped his brush into a bucket of water. Sally, Isolde’s old pony, had taken to rolling around on the rough ground under the poplars that lined the long lane, and unfortunately the wood pigeons had taken to using these same poplars as their preferred place to rest and to drop. As a result the old girl was covered in hardened pigeon crap and it was Roddy’s job to do something to get it all softened enough to brush out.

  He didn’t mind. Roddy liked straightforward jobs that didn’t need too much thinking about: he found it satisfying to see what was needed, to get his tools together, to set to and then keep going until the job was done. And he couldn’t help thinking that was what life was really about. Some people, though, just didn’t see it in the same way. No matter how much he respected his employers in a formal way, he couldn’t understand them at all. Old Mr Robarn was mostly at home these days, to be sure, writing his poetry and drinking too much beer, but Roddy couldn’t help remembering all the stories his mam used to tell him about the Master’s adventures. She seemed to think all the intrigues and the politicking exciting somehow. Roddy just looked upon it as toff’s work: nothing at all to do with him or his family or his kind. Sometimes it made him angry to think about it. They were dangerous folk, the Robarns, anyone could see that, but somehow Roddy had convinced himself that, so long as he kept his head down and put in his hours, all the stuff they got involved in would just pass him by. Roddy the handy man, that’s all, and happy to be it. Or he had been.