"Do you fight with blade as well, Master Tycho?" one of the younger men asked.
Tycho nodded, accepted a leather mug of water and drank, then removed the practice padding. "Aye, but only to protect myself and only while on the road. Merchants and other common-travelers are permitted swords for self-defense on the road. However, we may not carry them on our persons, but only in our wagons or on pack-animals." He drank more water. "Staff and kidney knife are permitted at all times and places, and sling or bow-and-arrow while on the road or for hunting."
One of the older guards, a large man with a scar down the side of a well-bent nose, folded his arms and nodded. "T' nobles demanded that only they be permitted to carry swords at all times, as a sign of their rank, even if they had no funds and lived in a hovel that leaked more than a good peasant house. The emperors allowed it, then granted the traders and others road-right, since a man needs something smaller than a staff but longer than a hunting knife to defend himself."
Tycho nodded. "And if ye've seen some men with slings, well, yer safest standing in front of them."
Snickers and a few guffaws of agreement came from the men around him. "Like that chervi Hardo was aimin' at? I thought the beast was goin' t' come and take the sling from his hand, then teach him the proper way to use it," a short guard snorted.
"Now, now, chervi only use crossbows. This all men know," the sergeant growled, then winked.
More than a few ribald comments followed that reminder, before the soldiers returned to practicing and Tycho betook himself to his wagon. He walked slowly, cooling off and stretching his muscles as he did.
Tycho decided after only a short period of time that he preferred walking with the main wagons to being with the court. The court traveled in the middle of the Progress, ahead of the treasury and supply wagons and the spare beasts, but behind the other wagons. Instead of enduring dust every other day, Tycho enjoyed the privilege daily. At least he could rotate inside to outside of the row, and if the wind cooperated the dust thinned a little, but he still did not enjoy it. Not that any man with sense enjoyed walking ten miles a day, more on good days, especially not a man who had stayed off the road for the past four years. His body complained far more than it had on his last journey, and Tycho decided that once he returned to Rhonari, he would not go on long journeys again unless it was by sea, and even then only as far as Platport. And certainly not with the imperial Court. He missed the easy road familiarity of the merchants' caravans.
"We turn west tomorrow," Borghind announced that night. "Two days west and we will be able to cross the river, then continue south to the Moahne mouth. The cities from the east that have business and petitions for His Majesty will send them to meet us."
They heard the river before they saw it. In the past, Tycho had sailed to Platport, and so had not seen the Gheel River in spring except at the mouth and from the south side. After they camped, Tycho ventured down a small side road past some farms to see the river. He was not the only one, and he joined a group of blue clad men and women staring at the angry water. A tree bobbed past, then snagged on the bank downstream of them. The brown-grey water swirled and grumbled, a constant hissing mumble that warned listeners of the river's ire. "A little wet upstream," Tycho allowed.
"Is it?" One of the women asked. She stayed up-hill from the others, arms folded, as if cold.
"Aye. Can you see that single pole sticking up toward the opposite bank?" Tycho pointed to a limb-less trunk.
"Yes."
"That's the end of the ford. We tie wagons to that and winch them across if we have to. The pole is four feet up the bank, well away from the river proper. Or was." The river had eaten the ford and appeared to be in the process of moving a great deal of upstream downstream.
"I wager someone could get some cheap farm land, provided he fishes it out himself," a man of Tycho's age joked. Some of the others winced. Tycho turned and made his way uphill, back to the camp. He'd seen enough. And he truly wondered how they would get across downstream, if the river looked like this a few days upstream of the crossing. And what would freight rates be, if the ford even survived? He'd best send the news north, so Gerta and Ewoud could warn their teamsters and others.
"...stupid boy," the teamster ahead of Tycho snarled the next morning as they grabbed something to break their fasts before harnessing their beasts.
"Well, there's always one, isn't there? How many have slipped into crevasses and never been found?" the next man snapped. "He was warned, too, but no, he had to see just how fast the water was running."
Tycho knew exactly what had happened. "Throw in a stick or dip his hand in?"
"Hand. The river grabbed the rest of him as well." Amund, one of the couriers, got into line as well. "Fastest thing I've seen in a year and more. One moment he was crouching down, holding onto a willow branch for balance and sticking his hand out, and then no Rohin. No splash that I heard."
"Loud as the river is, who can hear anything?" the first teamster demanded. He got his good and some hot tea and stomped off to the beasts' area.
"Boy was his cousin's son," Amund told Tycho under his breath. "No blood claim because of all the witnesses, but it will still be his duty to tell the family."
Tycho sighed and nodded. He'd seen similar happen, and on board ship? The Lady claimed a few for herself every year, as it had always been and would always be.
Two days later, Tycho handed his letters to Andrade's factor in Pechtburk. The emperor had offered him space with the imperial courier, but Tycho politely refused. He preferred some things to go through familiar means, and he trusted Andrade's men. They'd also be less likely to be waylaid or questioned by the too-curious. "Rivers are all up," Tycho observed as he paid the man.
"So I'd heard rumor. They have fixed the bridge at Moahnebrig, but raised the toll as well, for 'improvements'." Both the factor and Tycho snorted at that. "I understand that Count Richmund of Harnancourd has lost staple right?"
Tycho smiled broadly. "He lost his life as well. I saw it with my own eyes. He drew sword on His Majesty and that was the end of that. His Majesty had personally torn down the gates on the new wall Harnancourd built across the trade road a mile north of the ford, and the city priests took all the funds the count had collected in taxes and returned them to the people of the city."
The factor's pale, watery eyes grew wide, and he blinked several times. "He thought he could wall off the trade road?"
"That he did. Said he had to charge everyone ten vlaat per wagon and staple right to pay for the wall." Tycho didn't hide his satisfaction. "His Most Imperial Majesty, let us say, disagreed with the count's understanding of business, trade, and road safety, as well as disputing the late count's interpretation of just prices." Radmar would probably strike him for being so pleased, but just once, to see someone punished for being an ass as well as corrupt and greedy...
The factor smiled as well, baring crooked tan teeth. "Aye, Radmar's Wheel turns slow and fast, but it always turns."
"That it does."
The man hunted under the counter and found a packet of letters. Tycho gave him his seal, and the clerk compared it to the one on the bundle. "Yours. How far south are you going, Meester Tycho?"
"To the Moahne, unless something changes."
He rubbed under his nose. "There's rumors of strange things down by the Comb. Nothing solid yet, but a few ships have come from Chin'mai to Platport, and rumor says they saw odd things along the shore around the Moahne and south. No one can dock in Liambruu now, but a few took on water up the coast."
Tycho rested one finger aside his own nose. "All men of the sea know you can let down a bucket and bring in fresh water near a river's mouth without going ashore." He winked.
"Indeed." The factor winked back, face straight. "So all men are taught to do when the seas are too rough or shore too unwelcoming." Tycho slipped him a half silver ring in addition to the usual fee for holding messages, and left.
He walked as far as the market when
one of the northerners saw him and hurried over to greet him. "Master Tycho, you trade in hides. Come here."
Was he going to have to save someone from being cheated? Tycho sighed to himself but followed. He ought to charge a quality check fee the way some of the master weavers did at trafelds. As he wound through the booths and stalls, Tycho heard voices rising. That boded ill.
"'Tis a fake, I tell you."
An angry voice replied, "And I say no, it has to be one hide."
"Never seen a hide like that," a third voice declared.
Tycho and the north man joined the cluster of men and two women peering at a strange hide draped over a market stall. "Tycho Rhonarida, hide and leather merchant," the northman explained. "He's traveled in the south."
"Good." The man in the booth hooked his thumbs in his belt, feet shoulder-wide, chin jutting forward. "I traded for this with a sailor came up from Chin'mai by the coast of Liambruu. Says they killed it south of the Moahne. And that the Moahne mouth's changed for the better."
A passing weaver snorted. "Couldn't get much worse," he opined, then continued on, the feathers around his cap trembling with each firm step.
Tycho sniffed the dark brown hide. It smelled a little of quicklime, and he wondered if the tanner had been desperate to strip the hair off. If so, why? And how badly had the leather been damaged? The shape was of a lean, four-legged beast with a very large tail. Or was that the neck? Tycho walked around, rested his staff on the edge of the stall and lifted up the other end of the hide. This was the tail, and it had a long spike that the tanner had left attached. Tycho lifted the leather higher, careful not to touch the spike. He was glad he didn't, because a drip of something came out of it, probably a little tanning fluid or rinse water. Corruption might be brewing in that spike.
The underside looked and felt like well tanned but heavy leather. He didn't see any gouges or scrapes, and the tanner and hunter had done good work keeping the hide intact. Tycho peered closely at the places people usually stitched pieced hides, and saw nothing, no seams or stitches or glue. He felt the same areas, and nothing. The topside appeared slightly mottled under the dye, and if he got within a nose of the material, Tycho saw darker patches, almost like spots but fainter and larger. The neck had not been added to the hide, unless a mage had somehow fastened all the pieces together, and Tycho had no way to tell if that had been done. He straightened up. "To my eye and touch, this is a single hide. It could be mage-changed and pieced, but I have no way of telling. Neither have I seen the beast that wears this, but I have heard that what men take as god-signs have been reported in Liambruu, and perhaps strange beasts are one of those signs."
The seller nodded. "The priestess of Yoorst said that she had not seen such, but could find no signs of magic on it."
"If it truly came from Liambruu, it wouldn't have any magic, so that answers that." Tycho reclaimed his staff. "To me, this appears to be a single hide. I am not a mage, nor am I skilled in reading if something has been magic-touched, but I would say it is from a single beast, albeit of a kind unknown to us."
"Then what should the price be?" The man asking dressed like a nobleman's agent, or at least had money enough to show off on fine leather for his jerkin, belt, and shoes.
Tycho took a deep breath. "The priests of Maarsdam, Yoorst, Gember, and all gods hold that luxuries are not bound by just-price unless a priest so declares. The general law for all luxuries is cost plus transport plus a profit for the trader. Should he or she wish to charge more for a luxury, than he or she may. Every day goods are cost plus transport plus reasonable living."
"Yoorst and Maarsdam as my witness, so it is," the trader in the booth affirmed. "Laws here in Pechtburk add two percent for the market, and three for temple taxes to the base cost of the goods." He held up one leg of the hide, showing a temple seal. "This is a luxury hide, not leb-leather or every day, so the temple of Yoorst in Platport seals."
If he had the space and the funds, Tycho might have considered bidding on the beast, but why add load to the wagon, and have to carry and care for the hide all the rest of the journey? And without a known buyer? No, he'd scolded Ewoud for buying that hide as an exotic to hold on speculation. He certainly could not do it himself. And he did not trust that tail to return to Rhonari undamaged.
"Thank you, Meester Tycho. Maarsdam prosper you and smooth your road," the local trader said.
"And may your business go well and Maarsdam and Yoorst be with you."
Tycho looked at a few of the stalls and goods in the market, and decided that his hunch about more non-magical staples had been a good one. He saw no mage-lights, and one sign for a preservation mage with a large notice warning what the woman could not do. She appeared to be saving her skills for truly vital things like medicines, certain food-stuffs, and leather. Given the new law about magic being a near leb-good until the end of the year, Tycho felt inclined to agree with her stipulation. Why waste limited resources on luxuries when you needed food and shelter and healing?
Tycho returned to the imperial camping area. He'd been invited to join the nobles within the walls, but fair weather and open air appealed to him. The high water had brought miasmas into the city by sending river-water into cellars and fouling some of the wells. Night air might chill a man but it rarely made him sick the way miasmas could. He'd heard some priests say that they drew disease and poison out of the soil, where it festered and grew worse over time the way a boil on a man's skin did. Others believed something in water blended with air if the water remained still for too long, or seeped into soil too-long dry. Tycho personally suspected it came from rotting things in the soil and at the edge of water that breathed their foulness into the air. After all, every man and women of any sense knew that if you heated water until it turned over and over in the pot and boiled, it drove the poison and miasmas out, no matter the color or other flavors. And wise men and women didn't drink water downstream from dead animals or tanneries, or water a man could not see through. If a fish could not swim in it, man should not drink it without letting it sit, then boiling it.
The creature though... Tycho mulled the hide over and over. A long neck like a great-hauler but thinner, four legs and hair like a schaef, with a thicker hide like the ovsta. And that strange tail. What sort of creature carried a stinger in its tail instead of its head? And then only some birds that sipped from trumpet flowers, or those nasty biting things that swarmed the marshes in midsummer had stingers close to the one on the hide. Tycho found a stick and drew the shape of the beast in the dirt and considered it, then scratched it out. He'd have cut off the stinger and used the hide rather than trying to sell it as a luxury. On the other hand, he was the one who had carried that whitefish hide all the way to Milunis six years ago. And it had been worth the labor, that once.
The next day the emperor called for Tycho. Another hide had appeared, this one brought by priests. That news made Tycho unhappy. He followed the messenger to where the emperor held court in the law chamber of the local prince's town palace. "His Highness is away," the servant on duty said. "This way." He led Tycho past too many tapestries of poor quality and worse taste, so gaudy that they almost made the merchant wish he could not see color. If they looked so bright in the shadows, what might they do in daylight? Probably blind Rella of the Lights herself and drive the sun from the heavens.
Tycho entered the room and went to one knee. "You may rise. We need your expertise."
Tycho stood and blinked. Something long with scales draped the end of the table. He inhaled and regretted it, unable to hide his grimace. The thing had not been tanned, or at best half-tanned by a brand-new apprentice with a head-cold. Tycho approached the table reluctantly, wishing someone could open the shutters and let in more air before the miasma made all of them sick. Even sweet-herbs wouldn't soften the pong. Tanned, the beast had not even been skinned! No wonder it stank. Whoever killed it had cut off the head, then let the rest alone. Four claws as long as Tycho's second finger graced each of four feet. Th
e dark, scaly skin shone with a faint iridescence, as if someone had rubbed it with oil. A thin, round body four-times as long as wide tapered into a slender tail, again with a barb or stinger on the end. "Your Majesty, honored Fathers," he nodded to three priests. "I have not seen the like before. The tail is very much like a hide I saw yesterday in the market that may have come from Liambruu, but the body and hide are quite different."
"It reminds us of a laupen, save that laupen are longer of leg and thicker of body, and hunt in packs, never alone. Nor do they have tails of that kind," the emperor said. He stood and everyone moved away from the beast as he inspected it again. Hugan remained backed into the farthest corner of the room, paws over nose, and Tycho thought that the cat was wiser than his master. "No, laupen have feet for running on dirt and snow, not narrow toes like this."
The priest of Yoorst did not look pleased. "The farmer who brought this to the temple in Plaatport said it had been harrying his schaef. He and his sons had to use fire to blind it, then chop the head off with an ax. The head is like a serpent, but thicker and without poison fangs. He nailed the head to the door of his winter shed, to warn off others of its kind." The priest did not sound optimistic. "The eyes had a white cover, and white membranes. It might have gone blind, or be a sound hunter, although such are not known in these lands."
"We have heard of such, but again, not in these lands, only in the far sand plains to the south and east of Liambruu, and even then in legend only." The emperor did not sound pleased. "Honored Father, could the gods be sending new beasts into the world as a sign?"
The priest of Yoorst shook his head, as did Korvaal's Daughter. The tall priestess had grey hair and wore green, with a green gem in silver as her pendent of office. "No, Imperial Majesty. Our oldest records speak of animals known to men but moving out of season, or moving out of their customary ranges. Northern birds seen far south, or wild great-haulers moving as far north as the Moahne, but nothing truly new."
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