The Path of the Sword

by Remi Michaud

  Was that...? No, it could not be. He could not be so lucky.

  Curious, he crossed the muddy tract, barely noticing the horse that almost trampled him, barely hearing the irate stevedore that roared at him to watch where he was going, and stopped in front of the boarded door. It was the only shop in his field of view that was closed and he was pretty sure he knew why.

  Casually, he strolled to the mouth of the narrow alley that ran along the side of the shop and with a quick glance to make sure he was not noticed, he slipped down the dark path. Making his way to the back of the shop, very narrow from the front but remarkably long, he stepped over the stinking debris that was so common in alleys such as this. When he reached the back, he jumped the fence, making sure that he landed on his good foot.

  A shed with windows running from end to end, a small garden with a strange overhang that seemed to serve no other purpose than to keep light from whatever grew there, and a well. That was it. Nothing of interest. The shop and the attached residence would be empty. That would have to do. He needed rest. His guts were screaming at him and his ankle felt as though it had been wrung out by the world's strongest laundress.

  The back door was locked but that was no problem. Injured or not, he was immensely strong—decades of weapons training had seen to that. A solid grip, a quick twist of his wrist, and he heard a small snap. The latch gave easily and he entered into a kitchen. A haze of dust sparked in the squares of sunlight that patched the floor but except for that, the place had that indistinct colorlessness of disuse as though with the tenant gone, it had lost its soul and faded. He thought he could still smell lingering traces of cooking in the air, though only a hint remained under the mustiness. Skirting the wooden table that stood in the center of the room, he approached the door that should lead out into the front portion of the structure. The shop. If he was right, if this was the place he thought it was, then he may be in luck. Gods, he hoped he was right. He needed to rest. He needed proper care. Through the door then. He steeled himself and pulled.

  And he was right. A wave of relief threatened to unman him, to buckle his knees and leave him sobbing on the plank floor, as he stared at the cot and the counter lined with vials and jars. It was all dust covered, untouched for weeks or months. In the gloom at the other end of the room, the faint trace outline of a ragged overstuffed chair stood in front of a cold fireplace.

  He needed to see. He needed the light and the warmth a fire would provide. He would have to risk someone noticing smoke coming from the chimney of a shop that was barred. Against the side of the fireplace, a neat pile of dry wood was stacked and again, he found himself thanking his luck and the previous occupant. The fire was a quick affair to get going and with that complete, he turned back to the counter.

  Sifting through the jars, he read the labels, creating two piles. “No, no, no,” he muttered to himself, and one pile started to grow. “Yes,” that went in the other pile. “No, yes, no, no, no, yes...”

  Satisfied he had all he would need, he rifled through the drawers under the counter, pulling out bandaging and swabs, a needle and some gut that he hoped was not too dry and brittle for his purposes. Piling his booty on the cot, he sat and gingerly removed his cloak, then his tunic. Removing the dirty, makeshift bandage was the worst of it; it stuck to the damaged flesh and pulled his wound open again when he tore it off. He hissed at what he saw.

  Angry red lines, hot to the touch, radiated from the gash low on his abdomen like crooked spokes on a wheel. The gash was a ragged thing; it had endured much abuse over the last weeks. Every time it had started to close, some new movement on his part had caused it to rip open again. Now it oozed dark blood and nauseatingly fetid pus. He could not be sure exactly how long it had been since he had sustained this injury. Time had flowed together into one seamless haze as he trekked from the battle to this muddy little village.

  Sorting through the jars, he found one and, after pulling the stopper free, he downed the bitter concoction within. Probably too much, he thought, but he would need it. Working as quickly as his shaking fingers would allow, he cleaned the wound as much as he could stand, and poured half the contents of a second jar onto the wound. On contact, the liquid bubbled and hissed, turned to white foam and he grunted as pain flared almost as bad as the original wound.

  It took him three tries before he managed to thread the needle and that almost made him laugh. Sewing himself shut would be a real chore if his hands kept it up. His bald tailor friend would have cringed to see it.

  As expected, it was not a pretty job, though not too painful thanks to the jar of painkiller he had drunk. The stitches were an irregular criss-cross that any healer's apprentice would have scoffed at but at least they held. They would do.

  The painkillers were starting to make him drowsy. The room began a lazy spin and he had to blink several times in rapid succession to clear his vision enough to finish what he had started. Knowing he was too far gone to try anything as complicated as making a poultice and wrapping bandages, he settled on carefully putting his supplies back on the counter that seemed to continually dodge him.

  That completed, he lay on the cot and let the drugs take their natural course. He inhaled deeply, smelled the musty air, the sickly-sweet acridity of the lingering pus, and the bitterness of drugs. By the time he exhaled, he was unconscious.

  * * *

  He woke slowly, clawing his way up from the depths like a man buried alive. When his eyes opened, it was dark. Terror gripped him. Was he blind? Was he having a nightmare? Then he remembered. The shop. His fire must have gone out. That was all. No need to panic. Disgusted with himself, he raised his sore body and winced as the stitches in his abdomen stretched.

  The pain was less. It was there, but it was duller. Pressing his fingers against the taut flesh of his gut, he was relieved when there was not so much heat. He...

  The painkillers were still addling his mind. He was getting ahead of himself. First things first. He needed to rekindle the fire. Groaning, he rolled off the cot, staggered over to the fireplace. It was still warm, but the last of the embers had died out. That meant he had slept the night and probably most of a day through. Wonderful.

  He did not need much fire this time. Just enough to inspect and wrap his wounds. He needed to be off. He needed to find a certain man. A man he had never seen. At least he had a name. A few discreet inquiries around town had pointed him to a woodworks and a tavern. Due to his injuries, he had not yet been able to follow up on those leads but he planned on rectifying that today.

  In the light of the fire, he inspected his wound. He had been right. The angry red lines were beginning to dissipate. They were still there, but they were definitely less distinct. There was still some off color ooze too, but the smell was less. He felt his hopes rise. Perhaps he was not too late.

  More burning, bubbling liquid, more sizzling pain. Small price to pay, really. While the fluid still bubbled white in the wound, hissing audibly, he soaked a small cloth in stuff from several jars and applied them to his abdomen. Next came bandaging. It took him three tries to manage to wrap the long swath of linen around himself so that it did not bunch or slip off. When he did, he tied it and stood up. It was not perfect but it was a damn sight better.

  Immediately, he noticed that he was able to stand straighter. Not completely straight, to be sure. But it felt good to have that little bit of extra mobility. It was an assurance that he was healing. Another assurance was his hunger. He was nauseous from it. He had lived with his nausea for weeks but that was illness caused by injury and infection. This was the good, clean protest of a gut that cried out for nourishment.

  And that answered the question he had been asking himself for the past ten minutes. Where would he start his search for this man? Why, the tavern of course.

  With a smile, he gathered up the remaining jars and stuffed them into a small sack he found. Slinging that over his shoulder, he hitched his sword more comfortably on his hip and strode into the kitchen and
out into the early evening air.

  Finding the tavern was easy. The rambling structure was like almost every other tavern he had seen in his time. The main room looked the same too. A bar, benches, fire pits; it was as if someone had designed the blueprint for the perfect tavern and every would-be tavern keeper from that point on was given a copy.

  There were only a few patrons in the tavern. Meal time would be starting up soon and then things would get a little rowdier. For now, things were still quiet, and that gave him relatively few targets. Two men sat on rickety stools at the bar and the barkeep, another of those fat balding men wearing a stained apron—he wondered momentarily if there was a blueprint for that too—was wiping tankards with a dirty rag.

  Food first. He approached the bar but the well built man with a bandage on his right stopped him up short.

  “A short, injured man is asking about me. Thanks. I'll keep it in mind.”

  He was drunk. With a disgusted sigh, he quietly approached and listened to more of the conversation.

  “You should. Don't know what he wants but...” The smaller man on the right trailed off meaningfully.

  “Thanks.”

  Luck smiled on Mikal for the second time in two days. This was him. With a smile, he sat on the stool beside him and called out to the barkeep, “An ale and a trencher!”

  The barkeep nodded and gestured that he would be over shortly. He turned his attention to the man sitting beside him. Short cut black hair with stripes of gray, dark eyes that would have been at home on a falcon or a hawk. He was a solid man. Not too tall, but well muscled. Even drunk, he moved with a certain fluid grace. This man had been a soldier at some point, and unless the painkillers were still screwing with his thoughts, he would guess cavalry. Not so skilled as he himself was, but still a solid opponent and not one to take lightly.

  “You Daved?”

  Instantly, the other man tensed, training and instincts taking over, preparing him to fight in a heartbeat. His weight shifted slightly, putting his balance a little more on center, a little lower. His arm pulled in, almost insignificantly, but enough to maximize his defenses. All this, the man did in the blink of an eye, and surreptitiously enough that if the eye was untrained, it would not have noticed. All this the man did, and probably barely registered it himself for they were the motions of long-ingrained instinct.

  Mikal was impressed.

  “What's it to you?” the man asked warily.

  “I'm looking for Daved. I have news of his son.”

  That had the desired effect. The man's face fell open and Mikal could almost see the fumes of alcohol pouring out of his system.

  “I'm Daved,” he said.

  He smiled. “Perhaps we should find a more private place to speak. My name is Mikal.”

  Chapter 51

  Perched precariously on his stool, he stared blackly at the worn counter top that stretched from one end of the tavern to the other. His thoughts were muddled, flighty and oozing all at once. “Probably the five ales I've had,” he thought wryly. “Probably why I can't seem to keep my balance on this bloody sliver of wood he calls a stool.”

  It did not matter. His mood was not a good one and a little drink would not kill him. Besides, it helped to dull the pain in his hand.

  “'Nother round?” asked the flabby barkeep, eying his empty tankard meaningfully.

  “Sure. Why not?” Daved said and fished out a copper piece. The barkeep, Karn, knew his customers. He knew when they wanted idle chatter and when they wanted to be left alone. With a sympathetic glance, he thunked down the fresh ale, and returned to the other end of the bar and wiping tankards with his filthy rag.

  He was not one for heavy drinking. When he came in here, generally with a few of the other laborers from town, he would stop himself at two tankards. Maybe three if the day had been particularly strenuous. Today was different. Today, thoughts of his son were especially strong. He thought often of Jurel of course. Adopted or no, he was Daved's son.

  On a normal day, he did his work, cutting lumber at the woodworks for old Gaffrey, stacking the hewn planks neatly in piles sorted by type and length, and when he was done, he would go and have a drink or two and think about his son. But today was different. Thoughts of Jurel were so strong, he imagined that if he closed his eyes and reached out, his son would be standing there, indignant that his father was pawing at him.

  Hewing the wood was dangerous work. The teeth of the massive circular saw were sharpened so that one mistake, one slip, could find a man short a few fingers, or a hand. Out of sheer, unmitigated luck, he had escaped with no more than a deep gash in the meat of his palm. When old Gaff had come running at the sound of Daved's exclamation, he had been visibly—and rightly—upset.

  “What the damn?” he had bellowed. Daved had shown him the injured hand and Gaff had shaken his head. “You know better than that, Dave,” he had shouted. “How the blasted blazes did you manage to pull such a bone-headed blunder?”

  Daved would have been furious with the man if he had not been so furious with himself. “By being an idiot,” Daved had responded.

  Gaffrey's voice had dropped to more moderate tones and his look turned sympathetic. “Thoughts o' your boy?”

  With nothing to do but be honest, Daved had nodded.

  “Tell you what. You're no use to me today. Get that bound up and go drink yourself into a stupor. It'll help.” Then he had cackled and the sound was strange coming from such a large man. “For today. Be back tomorrow if you're up to it.”

  Daved had grunted his thanks and after getting his hand stitched at Magan's, he had taken his employer's advice.

  It was early evening and he was five tankards into a rip-roaring drunk, the kind of drunk that often ended with one waking up with a blazing headache, a mouth filled with dirty straw, surrounded by iron bars and completely oblivious as to how that had happened, and about to start on his sixth when Janks, dusty as ever from his work over at the mill, took the stool beside him.

  “Hey Karn! Round over here!” he called, waving his hand over his head.

  “Hang on, you lout,” came the good-natured holler.

  The tavern was quiet. Only a few patrons sat huddled over trenchers, stuffing steaming venison into their mouths between conversation. They did not need to shout but it was a nightly ritual with those two. When Karn thumped a tankard in front of him, Janks took a long swallow and sighed contentedly, with a foamy mustache dripping into the corners of his mouth. Karn did not move.

  “Put it on me tab, Karn.”

  “Like hell. You owe me damn near what this bar is worth already.”

  “Wha-?” Indignant, Janks stared at his friend with wide-eyed innocence. “I paid that last week!”

  “Yeah, sure you did. Maybe the guards will believe you,” Karn smirked at him.

  “I'll pay you tomorrow. Is that good enough?”

  With a laugh, Karn walked away. “You're gonna break me, Janks.” This was all part of the ritual too. Karn knew Janks would pay up at some point. He always did.

  “Bloody thief,” Janks muttered angrily. It was spoiled by the sparkle in his eyes. Turning serious, Janks glanced at Daved. “How you doin Dave? I hear you had a accident today.”

  “Just a scratch.”

  “Oh? Magan was sure that you were a hair's breadth from losin your hand.” He gestured to the white bandages wrapping Daved's hand from fingertip to wrist. “Looks to me, she was right.”

  “You know Magan. She would tell you a splinter was a tree.”

  “Mayhap,” Janks conceded and took another long pull of ale. “But it ain't like you to mess up like that. You okay?”

  “Aye Janks. I was stupid. Lost in my own thoughts and it cost me. That's all.”

  “Your kid?”

  He had not been in town long. Only a few weeks, but the townsfolk were a nice bunch. And chatty. He had told Gaffrey that his son had gone off to join the army after their farm's new owner had made it clear that he did not want him around
. He himself had tendered his resignation shortly afterwards. The story was true enough that it was easy to remember and had very few inconsistencies to raise suspicions. The day after he told Gaff the story, everyone knew. Everyone sympathized with him; many had seen their grown children go off to make their own way, after all. Within a week, his reputation as a fastidious worker spread and he had cemented his status in town. Finding friends had been easy.

  Finding out that Kurin had already been gone more than a week, presumably with Jurel in tow, well, that had been more difficult.

  “Aye. My kid. Stupid of me.”

  “Well, no matter. I'm sure he's doin fine. If he's anything like you, he'll be an officer before the week is out. Then it's all easy sailin for im. I'm sure of it.” Finishing his tankard, he gestured to Karn who rolled his eyes and drew another. “I heard somethin else though,” Janks said in a low conspiratorial voice, scootching his stool forward until he was only a handspan from Daved.

  “Aye? You're wife was found in another man's bed again?”

  Janks guffawed. “No. Not tonight. That I know of anyway,” his eyes sparkled for an instant then dimmed and he was serious again. “Listen Dave. Tanner up t'other end told me someun's been askin fer you. Some short feller but wide like a bull. Walks with a hunch and a limp like he's hurt or somethin.”

  “A short, injured man is asking about me,” he said in a monotone. Daved was not too certain that he cared. His work on the sixth tankard was progressing apace and his head was full of cotton for it. “Thanks. I'll keep it in mind.”

  “You should. Don't know what he wants but...” He left the thought unfinished and stared meaningfully at Daved as though he thought Daved's own imagination could fill in the blanks. Daved's sodden wreck of an imagination. The same imagination that would soon start to forget what his name was. Nice fellow, Janks, but none too bright sometimes.