“Bah. I’m nothing if not open-minded—particularly in this weather—but the knight won’t be, and the priest really isn’t my type.”
“Servants of the Many-Armed God are sworn to celibacy anyway,” said Caliban, returning from gathering wood. Slate felt the tips of her ears get hot and was glad that her complexion hid blushes. She wondered how much he’d heard.
Brenner, as usual, had no shame at all. “Aww. Guess that limits my options. What do you say, paladin?”
Caliban raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“What, afraid you can’t keep up with me?”
He shook his head. “I’d like to say that was the worst proposition I’ve ever received, but unfortunately, I’ve had worse.”
“Is that a yes?”
“No. Unless you can conjure up a hot bath. You don’t want to know what I’d do for a hot bath right now.”
“Well, I feel used…” muttered Brenner.
Slate patted his shoulder. “You’ll live.”
Celibate or not, Learned Edmund turned out to be the most useful of their companions. He had traveled alone, with his mules, for many days. He could tend to mules, read maps on horseback, find water, and do laundry on a rock.
And he could cook over an open fire, which was black magic as far as Slate was concerned.
He still had a hard time making eye contact with Slate, but as long as she ignored that, he was remarkably even-tempered. His earlier bitterness seemed to have passed off, and it was occasionally nice to talk to someone who did not have a sardonic comment for every occasion.
He still kept his bedroll as far away from hers as possible. He waited until she picked a spot for the night to even unload his mule. If she went down to the stream to sluice dirt off, he stayed in camp as if shackled to the fire.
Slate fought back an urge to ask how his bowels and genitals were doing. Breaking the fragile peace wasn’t worth the brief satisfaction.
Brenner slipped away from the campsite one evening and returned a few hours later, whistling, with two rabbits slung over his shoulder.
“I didn’t know you could hunt,” said Caliban, impressed despite himself.
“Neither did I. Well, not animals, anyway.” Brenner dropped them in front of Learned Edmund. “Can you do anything with these?”
“Certainly.” The scholar eyed the two bodies thoughtfully. “I have a question for you, though.”
“Yes?”
“You clearly shot this one…”
“Yes?”
“The other one appears to have been hit with a knife.”
“I threw a dagger at it.”
“You hunted a rabbit with throwing knives,” said Caliban slowly.
“Was that strange?”
“It’s certainly novel,” the paladin admitted.
A day later, tired and disheveled from bathing in streams, they found the smuggler’s road.
It was a narrow, winding track, but it was in good repair. Wagons were definitely using it, to judge by the ruts.
“That’s a good thing and a bad thing,” Brenner said, scratching at his beard stubble. “Where there are wagons, there are bandits, particularly up here, where there’s no patrols. Still, it’s the lean end of the season. The fat merchants haven’t started coming through yet, and most of the bandits are probably still wintering over.”
“That’s what I’m counting on,” said Slate. She started to kick her horse forward.
Caliban’s hand on the reins stopped her.
The paladin searched her face, brown eyes much too sharp. “You were always planning on taking this road,” he said.
Slate saw no point in denying it. “Yes.”
“That’s not what you told the Captain.”
She rolled her eyes. “Your fine captain held me down and inked a murderous tattoo on me. Forgive me if telling him the exact truth about our itinerary wasn’t foremost in my mi—ah!”
She slapped her arm. The tattoo in question, which had just bit her, eased its grip.
“I didn’t betray anyone,” she said, as much to the ink as to the man in front of her. “I haven’t done anything to jeopardize the mission. In fact, this was the smartest thing I could have done. If there’s spies in the Dowager’s palace, now they won’t know where to look for us.”
“You lied to me. You lied to all of us. Why?”
“Because three can keep a secret if two of them are dead!” she snapped.
He looked disgusted. More than that, he looked disappointed. Slate hadn’t experienced that in years. She hadn’t missed the sensation.
“They’ll notice when we don’t show up at the front,” said Caliban. “They’ll be expecting us. They’ll assume we’re dead.”
“Then think how happy everyone will be when we turn up alive!”
He didn’t take the bait. He stood there, looking down at her, his gaze cool and judgmental and remote.
“If you’d been killed, the three of us would have just walked into the war zone,” said Caliban. “Thinking that was the best way.”
“Yeah, well.” Slate shrugged. “I warned you that was suicide, didn’t I?”
He turned away. His lips were set. She could not shake the feeling that she’d let him down, and that was stupid, because she didn’t owe him anything, did she?
You got him out of his nice safe cell…
He ought to be damn grateful, then.
“Don’t pat yourself on the back too hard, darlin’,” said Brenner. “I’d been thinking there was supposed to be a smuggler’s road. And that bandits are easier to deal with than monsters.”
“See, there you go,” said Slate to Caliban’s back. “Besides, maybe this way we can find out what happened to the last group the Captain sent out. According to that last commander, they actually did go up into the hills.” Which had had nothing to do with why she’d chosen this road, but it was convenient, anyway.
“The group that no one’s heard from and is presumed dead?” said Caliban.
“That’s them, yep.”
The line of his shoulders did not indicate that this made him feel any better.
“Could they have been killed by bandits?” asked Learned Edmund.
Brenner set off down the road. “Nah. Mark my words—anyone out on the roads this early is probably either out of money, or had gone stir crazy and is looking for excitement, and either way, there aren’t likely to be many of them.”
Actually, there were about eight of them.
They had crossbows, and they turned up in the middle of the road while Caliban was off scouting down their back trail.
Of course there would be bandits. Slate felt very calm. She didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it coming.
“So what do we have here?” asked the bandit leader. He was tall and lanky, both hair and skin an indeterminate shade of grizzled blonde.
Slate sighed. This was annoying. It probably wasn’t all that dangerous—bandits were masters of the cost-benefit analysis, and they would generally pass on a fight for a suitable bribe—but it was still one more irritation.
Worse, Caliban, and the very large sword, were still somewhere back down the road.
Well, no, maybe that’s a good thing. If I can pay these guys off before he shows up…
“I believe you’re on our road,” said the man, slouching forward and catching her horse’s bridle.
Brenner shifted a bit on his horse, an unobtrusive movement that no doubt set him up to kill several people in very short order, assuming the horse didn’t do anything untoward, like breathe or take a step in any direction. Learned Edmund had a hand on his saddlebags, ready to sell his life dear in defense of his books.
“I’m sorry,” Slate said, with carefully controlled pleasantness, “I didn’t realize this was your road.”
She could kick the bandit in the face and probably get a knife in him before he’d recovered, but then they would definitely have gotten into a fight, and that would be really irritating.
; “It is. We would hate for anything to happen to anyone using it.”
“Well, then.” She drummed her fingers on her thigh. “I suspect we can come to some arrangement.”
There were hoof beats on the road behind them. Apparently their knight had caught up with them.
“Quick!” she snapped at the bandit leader. “You’ve got five seconds to close this deal before he gets here!”
The leader blinked at her.
The hoof beats stopped. “Too late,” sighed Slate.
“Unhand…that…horse.”
Everyone, very slowly, turned to look at Caliban.
Brenner let out a single whoop of laughter, covered his mouth with his hand and dissolved into silent, shoulder-heaving hysterics.
So much for support from that quarter.
The bandit leader stared at Caliban, then turned back at Slate. They shared a moment of horribly embarrassed camaraderie—did he just say that? Should we just pretend that didn’t happen?
“Ignore him,” said Brenner, having gotten control of himself, “he has delusions of knighthood.”
“Shut up, Brenner,” Slate snapped. “And Caliban, let me handle this.”
“Madam—!”
“I said I’ll handle it.”
“Sorry, madam,” gasped Brenner, and went off again.
The bandit leader and Slate exchanged looks again. He had beer-colored eyes, and he looked about ten years older than most of his men.
“Do you ever feel like you’re the only sober person in a room full of drunks?” asked Slate in a low voice, leaning forward.
“Constantly,” he said, glancing back at the ragged line of men behind him, several of which had gotten bored and were picking at various parts of their anatomy. Crossbows pointed at the air, and occasionally at each other.
Slate glanced back at her rabble. They weren’t any more inspiring, but at least no one was picking his nose.
“Right. Well, I think we could arrange for a suitable…hmm…road tax,” she said.
He looked back at Caliban, who was glowering and running his hand over the hilt of his sword. “Fifteen.”
“Five.”
“Twelve.”
“Seven.”
“Ten—”
Caliban’s horse took a few steps forward. He opened his mouth to say something in protest, and what came out was guttural and in no human language.
“Nine, and hurry it up, my friend here is not staaaable,” Slate said, uttering the last word in a sing-song which caused the bandit’s eyes to widen even farther.
“Nine sounds good.”
Slate put her hand in her money pouch, counted out nine coins inside the bag—no sense letting the man see how much was really in there—and handed them over.
The bandit hefted the money, glanced at each member of the group in turn, then leaned forward. With his lips barely moving, he murmured “I wouldn’t normally ask this, but are these men kidnapping you?”
Slate had a sudden desire to yell “Yes!” and throw herself into the bandit-leader’s arms—he really did have lovely eyes—but she suspected that nothing would be left alive on the roadway by the time that had finished playing out.
Plus the tattoo would eat me.
“I’m beyond help at this point,” she said instead. “But you’re sweet to ask.”
He nodded to her, looked as if he might say something else, then shook his head.
The bandits melted away into the trees.
“You’re going to just let them get away?” Caliban demanded.
“Yep.”
“They’re bandits!”
“That they are.”
“They threatened you!”
“For god’s sake, Caliban, is there any particular reason you want to interrupt our trip with somebody getting stabbed? Just let it go.”
He slid out of the saddle and grabbed her stirrup. His voice came out clipped and impatient, and Slate almost didn’t register the words at first, which were “I’m sorry.”
Slate blinked. “Uh.”
“I should have been up here, not checking behind us. You could have been killed.”
“No harm done?”
“It will not happen again, madam.”
What do I say to that? “See that it doesn’t?” “No, really, don’t worry about it?” What will shake him out of his martyred knight mode?
She settled for a nod. He rode practically at her stirrup for the rest of the day, one hand always on his sword. She wasn’t sure if she was comforted or worried or just annoyed.
He’s miffed because I lied about which route we were taking, and now he’s mad at himself because he was off sulking and I could have been killed by bandits. I swear, the man looks for ways to beat himself up. It’s like some kind of weird hobby.
It was a surly group that made camp that night. Caliban was either still grim over not having killed the bandits, or still feeling guilty over not having been there to defend them from the bandits in the first place. Learned Edmund had finally snapped and yelled at Brenner, who’d yelled back, until Slate had yelled at both of them.
They all sat around the fire, nursing mugs of tea and their respective grievances.
“How far do you think it is to Anuket City?” asked Learned Edmund finally.
Slate shook her head. “There’s no way to tell. We don’t know where we joined up to the smuggler’s road, and it’s not really marked on the maps. At a guess—probably a week or more to Archenhold. That’ll be the first sort of civilization we’ll reach.”
“Gonna be a long week,” muttered Brenner, sliding a glance at Caliban through hooded eyes.
“Indeed,” said Caliban, returning the assassin’s glance with a steely one of his own.
Slate put her head in her hands and entertained a brief fantasy of leaving them all to rot, going back down the road and finding that bandit leader and seeing if he wanted to get nice and drunk together.
Her tattoo twinged. Apparently it had no concept of daydreaming. She slapped at it irritably.
When she looked up again, Caliban was watching her. She met his eyes squarely—Yes, I might have been thinking something that jeopardized the mission. Want to make something of it?
He looked away instead.
Slate sighed and figured she’d throw her guard dog a bone. “Archenhold’s not really allied with Anuket. I mean, they are, but they like to pretend they’re a sovereign nation. We can send word back to the Captain once we get there, if you’re that worried that he’ll think we’re dead.”
Caliban nodded, still not meeting her eyes.
When they went to sleep that night, her last sight was Caliban sitting up still, running a whetstone down the length of his sword, although whether he was watching her or watching over her was anybody’s guess.
Chapter Eleven
They kept traveling.
There are practical considerations that arise when four people live in close proximity for very long. All the little questions need answers, like who did the dishes and who got the firewood and whether they could spend a morning beating clothes against a rock before they set out, because nobody owned anything clean to their names.
They dealt with it in their own ways. Brenner griped. Caliban brooded. Learned Edmund prayed.
Slate contemplated their approaching deaths with an increasingly unhealthy relief.
There was also another consideration.
There are only so many bushes in any given stretch of forest, and Slate’s bladder wasn’t helped by the pounding her nether regions took on horseback daily. She was starting to think that you could judge a man’s character by how he reacted if he tripped over you attending to a call of nature.
Brenner would grin like a shark and saunter off, whistling. Caliban would say, “Excuse me,” turn around, and walk off in the other direction. Learned Edmund would turn six shades of scarlet, gabble out something, trace a hurried sign of protection and fall over himself while retreating.
Likewi
se, there was the matter of changing. Sooner or later you had to put a different shirt on, and no one ever stayed out of the campsite for nearly long enough.
Brenner would watch and offer commentary. Caliban would turn his back politely and stand with his hands clasped behind him, and would even act as a lookout in case Learned Edmund wandered by, since the priest would again turn scarlet, make another sign of protection, and fall over—and that was only amusing the first couple of times.
Slate wondered occasionally if this would be any easier if there was another woman in their motley band, or if it would just make for twice as many unfortunate encounters. It would have been nice to have someone to lock eyes with and sigh occasionally. Slate considered herself enlightened, but there were still times when she wanted to throw her hands in the air and scream, “Men!” and then stomp off and kick something.
She did not do this, mostly because it would have confirmed all of Learned Edmund’s fears. It was a near thing, though.
She was dead certain they got into belching contests when she was away from the campsite. She wasn’t sure if she was grateful they were sparing her, or irritated that she wasn’t invited.
Oh, well. Just a few more miles to Anuket City, and then it’ll all be moot anyway…
* * *
They were half a week out of Anuket City when the storm hit.
The first raindrops weren’t much, but they fell from a sky that boiled like lead between the leaves.
Caliban drew his horse up, and the rest of them followed suit.
“That doesn’t look good,” Brenner said.
They all studied the sky. Lightning flickered off in the distance.
“I’d say we should take shelter,” said Learned Edmund, “but we’re near the Vagrant Hills right here, and I hate to leave the road.” Caliban grunted.
“What’re the Vagrant Hills?” asked Slate.
The knight looked around. “Forests and low hills, more or less. We don’t want to wander into them.”
“Why not?”
“You know how magic makes you sneeze?”
“Sure.”
“We’d probably have to tie you to the saddle.”
“Lovely.”
Clockwork Boys: Book One of the Clocktaur War Page 14