CHAPTER FIVE
At the bottom of the mountain, the plains awaited. From the back of the cart, the councilman told them of his previous visits to the city, of what they might expect to find as they approached, but the youths were all exhausted, and none responded as they might have before. Together they led their nag and their cart out of the foothills, and even that land was more rolling than steep, more grassy than forested. The same wide pavestones led them forward across prairie and farmlands, past villages smaller than Haven, some too small to name even, and all sparsely populated. It was not hard for Kohel to see why. “Who would want to live in such a hole?” he asked. Not he, not down in the mud and muck, the flatlands covered in nothing but grass and grain. He preferred the mountain, preferred Haven’s station at the top of the world, and that was where he always believed he would make his life, taking his father’s place as chief, as keeper of the Crook.
Then came the city, rising out of the horizon at the end of the road, or rather, the Imperial Highway, as the flatlanders called it, even though the days of empire were long gone. Once the city had been a seat of some power, a far-reaching outpost of the last empire, but its glory days were past, and Kohel had seen little between Haven and its walls to account for the need for such a place, at least until they reached the city itself.
The city was large, larger than anything Kohel or the others had seen, and they were in it even before Kohel realized it. He had thought the city was merely the walled and spired area he had seen from the distance, but as they got closer they realized that those walls signaled only the old Imperial Keep, and that around it was a sprawling mess of low-slung buildings made of ruddy clay or rough bricks, some with light roofs and others with no roofs at all. Kohel didn’t know what to call the area they were in, didn’t know how to describe it. It wasn’t a village, and it wasn’t what he thought of when he thought of a city. What then?
“A slum,” said Pyla. It wasn’t a concept Kohel had heard of, and having it explained did little to enhance his understanding, for there was no corresponding area of Haven, no place so rundown, so full of people who had nowhere else to go, no way to fully feed or clothe or house themselves. Even the least able in Haven found a way to get by, often through the help of the others, but in the city slums there were beggars, people underfed and asking for help, and probably others worse off. The narrowing streets and filthy buildings smelled of sweat and dung, and Kohel soon found an expression of distaste upon his face that he could not wipe away.
Despite his disgust, there was also much to wonder at, for while everyone in Haven was human, that was not true of the city’s slums. Dwarves pulled dispirited-looking donkeys through the streets, gathering trash, and horned tieflings glowered from the doorways to shady-looking taverns, their scarred doors a far cry from the welcoming entrance to Haven’s own. Twice Kohel made the error of mistaking halflings for child beggars, and Pyla explained that it was a mistake often made by newcomers to the slums, and which the halfling thieves exploited to cut purses and steal other valuables.
“How can they stand to live like this?” asked Padlur, looking about their path through the streets. “So closed in on each other, and with everyone else so dangerous?”
“You will not find the rest of the world much like Haven,” said Pyla, rubbing his hands on his belly. “These people have nowhere else to go. If they did, they’d be there.”
“It’s a sad place,” said Luzhon. “I’ll be glad when we pass through it, into the nicer parts of the city.”
Kohel shook his head, seeing on Pyla’s face what he did not even have to say. “We will not be going into the rest of the city, or past the walls. The slums are where we will find those desperate enough to help us, for what we have to offer.”
The others looked stunned, but Kohel did not share their dismay. Inside the keep, he would be a villager among great men. In the slums, among the low? There he was a future chief, above the dirt and the dung, and there he would gather some fallen heroes, or else hopeful ones, with which to save his village.
The city was alive in a way they had never imagined. The streets were teeming with people. Noise came from every building: shouts and music and laughter. Vendors sold food and drink at every street corner. They sold other things, as well: flowers and jewelry, weapons and animals, crosses and orbs, and phials of liquid that promised to heal one’s wounds and mirrors that promised to tell one’s fortune. Everywhere were people trading coin for goods, and furs for coin. Everywhere, merchants stood behind tables or in doorways, beckoning and enticing passersby. And near the merchants, invariably, were larger men and women—some human, but many not—with fierce faces and fiercer weapons slung at their sides or on their backs. Danger and opportunity mixed and flowed back and forth moment to moment in every interaction. Merchants judged a customer easy prey or a confidence man at a glance, only to find themselves mistaken on a second, sharper look. A coin was spent on a dried scrap of meat, became the change given a customer a minute later, was stolen by a cutpurse an hour hence, was spent on a drink after that, and paid as wage to the same man who bought the meat that very same day. In the city, everything was in constant motion, like the flow of the river through its center.
“Where do we even begin?” asked Luzhon. “How in the wide world do we find the people we need, people we can trust, people who can help us, in this great crush of individuals?”
“We find a place to stow our gear, park our cart, and rest, and we ask, I suppose,” said Kohel. “Yes, friends?” Padlur shrugged, but did not object. Luzhon raised an eyebrow, but had no amendment to the plan. And Nergei knew he was not being consulted, so he did not say anything.
As he had upon the mountain, in the woods, and then on the plains, Padlur scouted ahead through the city streets, left the others to wait in a seemingly safe square. Pyla had tasked him with finding some secure place for them to sleep, but there were few inns in the part of the slum they were in, and Padlur did not wish to roam too far, not where he knew so little of the sights and smells, the ways of those around them. On the mountain, there was nowhere he would not go, and no danger he feared too much, at least not before the coming of the kenku, whatever worse power they represented. He had seen much in his years, first at his father’s side and then on his own, but none of the skills he’d learned in the wilds applied to the city, or so he first believed.
After the first hour of wandering on his own, away from the distracting chatter of the others, he began to detect the rhythms of the streets, the ways of movement that separated the hapless citizens from the thieves and mercenaries that moved among them. It’s a wilderness here too, he thought, just a different kind. As on the mountain, there were tracks and signs, and if he stayed in the city long enough, he might learn them just as well as he had learned the habits of the mountain’s fauna and fish and fowl.
All that would have to come later. First, they needed a place to sleep, and also to gather those they hired, as well as to board their nag and cart without fear of theft. That was no easy task, but Padlur knew he would succeed, as he succeeded at much else. He was less cocky than confident, but he rarely failed to accomplish something he was asked to, and if he did it was only after wearing himself out in his efforts. He did not consider himself a leader, as Kohel saw himself, and so their relationship mimicked that of their fathers in many ways. Kohel led, and Padlur followed, and more often than not it was beneficial to both of them.
And anyway, they were friends, and always had been, even if there were some issues unresolved between them. The kenku attack in the clearing had strained their relationship, but already that strain had been there, for Padlur recognized in his friend a growing arrogance, a feeling of entitlement that had not existed there before, that existed in his father too but was tempered in the chief by some sorrow, perhaps the loss of his many brothers.
Padlur did not know how to help his friend become a good chief, or if he would even be given the chance. Kohel’s father had not elevated P
adlur’s own when given the chance, and they too had once been closer friends.
Perhaps their time of trouble would provide Padlur the chance to show Kohel that there were honorable paths to greatness. The lie they had told about the first fight with kenku had not sat well with Padlur, and while he would not betray his friend, he did hope to steer him toward better stewardship of that which he had been given to command.
“Warriors? The city is full of mercenaries, of sellswords, and arcane tricksters looking for a meal or a drink. But most should not be trusted, young ones. Offer them gold for a job and they know you have it. And when they know you have it, many know it is easier to simply take it from you than to fulfill an obligation for payment.” They had found a common house with beds and a stable. Murthee, the roan nag, was watered and fed and put away. The cart was left outside the stable—“As safe as anything else is around here,” they were assured—and their gear was locked in a room off the common house’s foyer. They spoke to the man who rented them their accommodations. “Many of the people staying with us were once guardsmen in towns that have fallen to the scourge of bandits or the invasions of the goblin races. But I can tell you, I would not suggest you speak to any of them here. A sorry bunch have found themselves to my establishment. I rent to them, and I make sure payment is always made up front.
“Go to the south end, though. Mercenaries gather at the gaming grounds and will there test their skills against one another for money and the adulation of the crowd. The gamblers pit them against each other in non-lethal combat, pit fights and brawls. You will find the battle-hardened, the naturally gifted, and the just plain cocky there pitting club or fist against one another.”
“You can guarantee our things are safe here, of course,” said Kohel.
“Of course, lad,” said the counterman.
“See that they are,” replied Kohel. “My father is the Honored One of Haven, the chief. He would be displeased if we were not made to feel comfortable and secure here in your establishment.”
The counterman cocked his head at Kohel and seemed on the verge of asking where precisely Haven was, Nergei thought. But instead he smiled broadly and held out his hand, palm up. “You have my word, young one. You—and your honored father—can count on me.”
“Yes,” said Kohel, looking down at the proffered hand and wondering precisely what he was supposed to do with it. Shake it? Offer a blessing of some sort? Tip the man? Kohel’s face tightened with confusion, and then went slack when he seemed to decide no reaction to the hand was the best course of action. Kohel nodded, and gestured for the others to follow. When his back was turned, Luzhon handed a coin to the counterman and walked out. Nergei and he locked eyes for a moment. The man began to laugh. At what, Nergei was unsure. He followed the others to the street.
CHAPTER SIX
The problem with drinking with dwarves, thought Sten, is that they never know when to stop, or how.
It had been weeks since their last work, and Sten fiddled with the leather strap spun around the end of his companion’s warhammer. The hammer sat on the table between himself and his partner who was deep into his share of a cask of dwarven stout, a powerfully intoxicating draft called “the Bellringer” by the proprietor of the Minotaur’s Horn Inn. Spundwand’s blue eyes were bleary and smiling. He lifted his glass and offered it a blessing: “Moradin, for this, thy glorious tipple, I salute you and all you command.” And at that, his glass was drained. “Sten, my captain. You are drinking me under the table.”
“I’m not drinking, Spundwand,” said Sten.
“Moradin curses those who let dwarves drink alone.”
“Only in that I will have to carry you back to our tent this evening, my friend.”
“Food. I need meat,” said Spundwand, raising his voice in the direction of the barkeep. The man pointed to a serving boy who approached the table cautiously.
“You can pay for a meal, sir?”
Spundwand grimaced. “A generation ago, I would’ve had your head for the cheek of such a question, boy.” The servant stepped away, holding his hands up in front of his chest.
“Please, sir—”
“You send this boy?” cried Spundwand. He stood and faced the man behind the bar. “I should topple every column in this place and let it fall down around you. You ask compensation for the privilege of feeding warriors of our caliber? Something as distasteful as money for the pleasure of our company? How dare you, sir? How dare?”
The barkeep remained silent, but he pointed to Sten and Spundwand and then pointed to the door. They were no longer welcome, and at first Sten thought to object; the barkeep was a large, swarthy man, but Sten had been fighting his entire life, and he knew that if he wanted to stay, he could make it so. He flexed his arms, cracked his knuckles, and considered. A fight there would mean another place he and Spundwand would be unwelcome in, and too much of the city had already decided they were better off without them.
Sten sighed, stood, and gathered his things. His family had once served the empire as soldiers, first in the infantry and then later in the cavalry and in the command, when there was still some empire to be served. Sten was the last of his line, and all he had to remind him of who his father had been was his sword and shield, his suit of armor he rarely wore inside the city, its bulk too much for the hot and narrow streets.
All he had were those few armaments, and also Spundwand, who had once been his father’s battle cleric, when there were still such dwarves serving in the human armies, before those long alliances were broken.
Sten led Spundwand to the door, the dwarf cursing the place with every step: cursing its chairs, its tables, its walls, its flagons—even its rags and linens. He lurched at the other patrons, and comments about the myriad unnatural possibilities in the barkeep’s pedigree. And finally, at the door, he lifted a leg and passed wind boisterously. That, the final indignation, caused the barkeep to utter his first and only word to the pair: “Out!” he shouted. And out they went.
Spundwand’s hunched shoulders and heavy steps lightened within yards of the Minotaur’s Horn. Sten rubbed his head. “You only do that when you are frustrated with me,” said Spundwand.
“I have lost my hair from the rubbing, dwarf.”
“We did not have to pay for the stout. How is this not worth a few moments of embarrassment, Captain?”
“There are fewer and fewer places in the city that we are welcome in.”
“And when we have been banned from them all, we will leave this city for another. And again after that.”
“Scoundrelly old priest,” said Sten, “there are only so many cities left.”
The pair followed a thoroughfare through the city, and then an alley to a common house, where cots and simple meals were less dear than the inns, on the southern edge of town. Inside, a half-dozen men like themselves—former guardsmen and other warriors without patrons—sat on bunks eating rice and pork. “Once I commanded men,” said Sten. “Now there is only you, and you are the most ungrateful of them all.”
“We still have our skills, Captain. We still have our hammers and our swords.”
Sten nodded, looked around the room, and stopped himself when he felt his hand moving to the top of his head. “All is temporary,” he said. And so it was. Sten had served in many of the plains cities, rising once to the post of captain of the guard in the city of Rivershoal, where Spundwand had found him, joining the guard as his standard bearer and his warpriest. How much they had lost over the years. It was a time for young heroes, not wise, battle-hardened old men. And the city—at least the parts of the city they could afford to frequent—was a city for the scheming and the sly, not the honorable and the altruistic. So because they could not turn back the hands of time, the two had learned to find an opportunity when it presented itself, and a coin when it glimmered within reach. But though they lived as well as possible, found as much humor in their lives as they could, all of it lay heavy on their hearts. Sten rubbed his head with worry, and Spun
dwand considered the terrible possibility that, though the healer’s touch still seemed to be in his hands, his god had mostly abandoned him, or at least deemed him unworthy of the charity necessary to improve his lot.
Outside the southern walls of the city, in the shadow of a great tower belonging, the locals said, to an old and powerful wizard, was a flat, open field. In the center, wooden stands six rows up surrounded a ten-yard by ten-yard square. At the edges, men with carts sold ale from huge casks. Meat turned on compact, traveling spits, sizzling over makeshift fires. Farmer’s hawked apples and pears from packs slung across their backs. And everywhere there were men with sacks of gold and papers, gathering bets from gamblers, making notes, and determining odds. The crowd was lively, and the day sunny and warm, with motes of new pollen floating in the sunlight. Forgetting the seriousness of their task, the youths felt happy for a moment, enlivened by the festive atmosphere of their surroundings.
Luzhon was the first to say it out loud: “It must be wonderful to live here.” Nergei smiled and nodded, taking in the sights and smells of the gaming grounds. Kohel, the only one not as taken with the place as they were, was the first to banish the excitement from his mind.
“Haven is our home. Haven is where we will return. And Haven is where we will live and die.”
The Last Garrison (Dungeons & Dragons Novel) Page 7