by Max Keith
But this journey was not normal. He’d sat there in the early afternoon sunlight, rubbing very idly at his erection and staring over at the sprawled Chiara, her legs spread haphazardly from underneath the shapeless brown dress, her cloak twisted around her body, her mouth wide and loud with snores that, he now realized, had woken him up. At that point he’d still thought her poxed, so there hadn’t been any real desire there, but still she was a woman, and a young and comely one at that, and he’d understood bleakly that there might come a point, perhaps a week or more hence, when the pox might just be worth the risk.
How much worse, then, now that he knew she wasn’t infected.
He and Franx waited for her now, her footsteps lighter behind them even as her breath rasped. Drinn was listening for stumbles, for a young lady really shouldn’t be stumbling yet, nor for several more hours. She stopped short when she saw them, though, her head cocked quizzically in the darkness. “What is it?” she asked shortly.
“Nothing.” The mage’s voice was as calm as normal. “Need water? The brook below is flowing strongly; it should be fine.”
“I’m all right.” She got herself under control with a long sigh. “Obliged to you both, for the boots,” she said suddenly. “I’m doing much better.” Drinn looked away; no question now that when he took some of the stuff from her pack, he couldn’t ever let her find out. She rolled her shoulders in the straps. “Are you two waiting for something, or would you care to get on?” She sniffed once, then was off down the rock-strewn hillside, planting her feet with care as she moved off into the night. The men exchanged a glance before they followed, and the march went drudging on.
The owl found them not much past middle-night, swooping noiselessly toward Franx’ shoulder and deciding, instead, to just perch on the top of his rucksack. “Ah!” Franx grinned. “Welcome back, my friend.” He turned his head to listen as the bird’s beak started clacking. Up ahead a little, Drinn’s nose was suddenly bothered by the fading scent of cheese.
“Is he daft?” Her voice was low and near, and shamefully thrilling. “Has he begun talking to himself already?”
“Oh. No, it’s his familiar. A lot of mages have them; his is an owl.”
“Ah.” The girl leaned her hand calmly against his shoulder as she stretched out one of her legs. “I wondered what that owl was all about. So, what, does it hunt for him?”
“Sometimes.” Drinn tried to keep still for her. “As I understand it, a mage gives his familiar some of his powers and then the familiar helps him out with things.”
“Hmm.” She sounded like she had to try hard to sound interested. “And, so where does one find a magical familiar?”
“One buys it.” Drinn staggered slightly as she stopped leaning on him. “Poildrin spent a fortune on that one. He found it at the Palace and bought it off a dying mage.”
She paused. “Uh, if the mage was dying,” she wondered, “then why did he need the money?”
Drinn gazed sharply down at her. “What the fuck are you talking about, woman? A man always needs money.” He frowned. “As I recall, he had a few weeks left after that. No doubt he spent the gold on beer and whores, as any sensible man would.”
“Huh.” She thought about that. “I wouldn’t. How much gold, do you recall?”
Drinn crinkled his brow. “I was just trying to remember that.” It had been many years ago now. “Sixty mergansers, perhaps?”
He heard the gasp. “That’s the same as sixty imperials!”
Drinn shrugged. “I don't know. It’s what the Princess pays me in about two months, I think, or perhaps a bit less time.”
“No shit.” He felt keen eyes on him. “You’re rich.”
“Hardly. That’s two months of work, of course, of jobs. If we’re just lying around at her Tower, we just get to spend.” The Princess was a tightfisted bitch, quick with deductions when things on the job did not go precisely as she wished. “I… I spend a lot,” he admitted. “Never saw the point of keeping it. I’m a warrior,” he shrugged. “I could die anytime.”
“If you say so.” Chiara’s mind was elsewhere. “I wonder… No. Never mind.”
“What is it?”
“Well, sixty imperials. Where I come from, that’s a quarter of a year’s bed and board, perhaps even a third. It’s unimaginable wealth.” He turned to glance at her, only to see her staring up at the mage. “He gets paid more than you, it seems.”
“He does,” Drinn confessed, “but then he saves it, too.”
“Sixty golden imperials,” she went on softly, unable to let it go. “That’s a great many whores for an old mage.”
“Or just one whore. If she does a very, very good job,” Drinn pointed out. Ciara chuckled dryly.
“I could be that kind of whore,” she reflected quietly. “For sixty pieces of gold? I wouldn’t even hesitate. Oh! That’s, you know, if I wasn’t afflicted,” she added hurriedly. She chuckled again. “Hell, Drinn, even you’d probably give it up to an old mage for sixty in gold.”
He wasn’t sure if she was joking. He wasn’t sure she was wrong, either. But he hadn’t finished constructing a response before Franx came gliding down the hillside. “We’ll pause by the stream. Owl says it’s fine. We’ll have some lunch, then cross and keep going till dawn.” He caught Chiara’s stare. “What?”
“Nothing.” The girl whirled and began moving quietly down the hill.
* * *
Three more nights passed before they finally ran out of jerky and sausage, which was about what Franx had planned. This was two nights longer than the tents had lasted, flung aside with much other excess baggage; a man who spends his days carrying everything he needs soon finds he needs little. But he still needs food. So when at last they halted, taking shelter among some big rocks in the looming shadow of the biggest peak they’d yet seen, the men crouched to figure out what to do.
“I’ve seen nothing in these streams but small fry. Tiny little fish, of no real consequence.” The mage shrugged. He was a good fisherman, but only when there were fish to catch. Drinn frowned.
“You’ve heard the game in the night, of course.” Of course; the area seemed full of deer, by the sound of it. “I’ve only got three arrows, though, and no heads to make more. That’s if I could find some straight ash and if your owl would lend me some feathers.” He looked down. “And then we’d need a fire either way.” They both frowned. A fire meant smoke, and smoke meant risk even though they were well away from Much Ormold.
Worse, they had other problems closer at hand. The rising sun showed, very far to the west, a broad looping shimmer of the River Traxel. Its eastern reaches, though nearer, were invisible in mist and distance, but they knew that the big town of Wynsse lay on the river, close to their path.
Wynsse had been the Duke’s objective when his army had left Lammorel, which seemed so long ago now that it might as well have happened in another lifetime. It was the timber center of the Central Rump, a place of perhaps ten thousand souls, and it was also the place where the 4th Legion made its home. It would doubtless be patrolling the entire region. They’d both seen watchfires in the night, usually just one or two down on the highroad, usually as they neared the end of their marches. Franx thought it might be the Duke.
“We’re fucked, I’d say.” Drinn looked doubtfully over to where Chiara had disappeared to have a shit. “There’s no chance she knows a way around Wynsse, of course.”
“Of course. If she’d been the guide we needed, we wouldn’t be anywhere near here now.”
“Do you know a spell?”
“A spell?” The mage laughed. “To do what? Make the city disappear? No, Drinn, I don’t. I can perhaps cast something that will change our appearance, make us look like Imperials, but we already do. And worse, I can do nothing about our packs, our weapons. We look like roaming vagabonds, Drinn, because we are roaming vagabonds. No spell will take care of that.”
“Of what?” The girl had come back while they were talking, and she looked b
oldly at them with her dark eyes hard. She sensed the tension. “Something about me?”
“Well.” Franx glanced at Drinn, then faced her. “It’s like this, Chiara. We hadn’t planned on being in this part of the Empire, so we’ve got no way to get past Wynsse.”
“It’s an issue.” Drinn was nodding soberly.
The mage smiled slightly. “I’m sure we’ll come up with something,” he encouraged, “but in the meantime we need to think about food this afternoon, too.”
“Wynsse is a shithole,” Chiara said dismissively. “My uncle says so.” She studied a fingernail, broken in the night. “He lives there,” she added casually.
A silence. “He what?” The mage stared intently, and Chiara matched him.
“Everyone’s got to live somewhere,” she pointed out, “and he lives there.” She scraped the nail across her teeth to smooth it out. “I was wondering when you two idiots would ask me about Wynsse.”
* * *
“Must say,” her uncle told them during a late dinner the next night, “we’ve got an embarrassment of mages about today.”
The man was large and avuncular, dangerous in the way that many big, strong people are; he did not know his own strength, and had already broken a bean-pot through his clumsiness. His wife, a tiny lady named Sharna whose face was graven with long suffering, had silently swept up the pieces.
They’d made their way into the town thanks to great stealth and the poor vigilance of the town’s gate-guard, who had been embarrassingly easy to shoot with an arrow. Franx had been very much against this idea, thinking it would draw undue attention, but Chiara had assured him there was little to fear. “Police, soldiers, guards; they all get killed as a matter of course here,” she shrugged. “My little brother murdered a magistrate once, a couple years ago. Know what the other magistrate did? Shrugged and said it served the fellow right, being stabbed by a twelve-year-old.” She’d swept up the last of the rabbit leg the owl had fetched for them. “Nobody will pay any attention, as long as you don’t kill an officer.”
And she seemed to be correct, as well. The owl, keeping watch the following morning, had reported the unfortunate guard had been found by a pair of his fellows, who had done nothing more than remove the dead man’s valuables and tip his corpse off into the dry moat. “Life’s cheap in the Empire, right enough,” Chiara had muttered. “Slavery might be an improvement.”
Bann, the uncle, had seemed pleased if slightly shocked to see his niece, particularly in the company of a mage and a warrior. She’d told him she was on the run from her father, and that the men were simply travelers met by the way; the story they’d all agreed on was that Franx was a messenger, delivering dispatches from the Capital to the Southern Rump, and that Drinn was his protector. To preserve the illusion, the warrior had nicked the dead guard’s helmet as they’d crept past his corpse; they just had to hope nobody would demand to know why an Imperial soldier wasn’t in a tunic.
“Being on the run from your father is no great crime, whatever the law may say,” Bann had groused as they’d all sat around waiting for dinner. “That man’s an absolute shit. Brelle was an idiot for marrying him. Got the pox, you say?”
“Yes, uncle.”
Bann grunted. “She always was a slut.” And that was that.
But the man’s dinnertime comment had interested Franx. “An embarrassment of mages, Master Bann?”
“Oh yes.” The big brewer had leaned dangerously back in his wooden chair, chewing thoughtfully. “It was around noontime they came by, or nearly. Came to talk to Sharna.”
“They seemed nice,” Sharna muttered.
“Nice! A damned Firemage shows up with a squad of soldiery, woman, they’re not being nice.”
“What were they looking for, pray?” Franx had put on a Northern Empire accent, and was doing it rather well. Drinn, who had no real gift for acting, was mostly grunting.
“Why, for you I suppose.” Bann blinked down the table at them. “For a Shadowmage, anyway, though one from the Realm. And his companion, a warrior, also from the Realm.” He finished chewing, looking attentively back and forth between the two of them. “You’d be called Frank, Sharna tells me.”
Poildrin, who’d given his name as Nikobar, sighed. “Franx, actually.” He flickered a shrewd glance up and down Bann’s big frame. “You’ll keep quiet about us, I take it. In return for some coin, perhaps.”
“Perhaps.” The brewer nodded as though he’d expected this. “Was wondering when you’d get to that.”
“They’ve only got that money from the Realm, uncle. With the ducks on it.” Her eyes flitted around the room. “They’ll kill you if they find you with fucking duck money.”
“Watch your fucking mouth, girl.” Bann rolled his eyes. “This is your fault, for bringing them here in the first place.” He did not seem very angry, though. “I’ll take your money, mage, but not your company past tonight. At morning I’ll take you in my cart across the River and that’s that. Whatever you two are doing with my niece, you can just keep on doing; I want no part.” He reached for more bread. “But I always liked her ma, our Brelle. So you’ve nothing to fear from me.”
Something was bothering Franx. “How did the Firemage know to come here, to your house?”
“Caught on to that one, did you?” Bann glared bleakly at Chiara. “You remember Pede, our Jill’s son? I met him when I came up to visit your ma when you were, oh, ten? Eleven?”
“That time you beat up my dad.”
“That’s the one. Well, Pede was with that Firemage.” He glanced among the three of them. “Looking for you too, they were.”
Drinn looked anxiously over at Franx, wondering just how they were now supposed to get anywhere but dead. This was news so abysmal that it defied logic, a series of shitty coincidences so unlikely that it would have been impossible to believe if a storyteller had said any of it.
“Pede?” Chiara was staring wide-eyed. “My cousin Pede?”
“In the Legions now, the fucker. Had his fill of fishing, I guess. Wanted to see the world. Well, he’s seen me now, at least. Sharna cursed him for bringing that mage here, and she slammed the door in their faces.” Bann did not seem to like the government much.
Sharna spoke up with surprising heat. “Thieving, raping louts, all soldiers.”
“Truth,” Drinn couldn’t help nodding. Franx looked courteously over at Sharna.
“You did not, by chance, catch the mage’s name, madam?” The little woman blinked back, clearly shocked to be addressed as madam.
“Why yes, in fact. He called himself Akker, Akker Mim, I think. He wasn’t happy to be gone, but I know my rights.” She sipped daintily at her tea. “He can go fuck a horse, for all I care.”
Drinn nodded, remembering the watchfires Franx had noticed on the highroad these past few nights. Clearly, an angry Duke was not a pursuit they needed to be worried about. “Any idea where they went, this Mim and his little Pede?”
“And eight or nine others, too,” Sharna pointed out. “With horses, mind. I expect they’re at the Barracks, other end of town.”
“We can’t stay here tonight,” Drinn casually told Franx. “You know that, of course.”
“Of course.” The mage studied the brewer. “Other than the bridge over the River, under your beer-cart,” he began, “do you know of any other way we could get out of town?”
Bann laughed grimly. “You much of a swimmer, mage?”
“Why go over the River?” Sharna shrugged. “Just go round.”
Franx and Drinn glanced at each other again. “Madam?”
“The springs of the Traxel are about three leagues up into the mountains, or a bit more.” She scooped up another spoonful of peas. “I grew up there, didn’t I.”
“You did?” Chiara was impressed.
“I just said it, you stupid bitch,” Sharna sighed, rolling her eyes. “This is your mess we're in now, girl. I’ll not get thrown into the snakepit for your sorry ass, so whatever gets you out
of my house soonest is what I’m after.” She turned back to Franx. “I’ll draw you a map. There’s a bunch of mountain villages up there, woodcutters’ places mostly, and a nasty road to serve them.”
“A road?” Drinn tried to keep the excitement out of his voice. “A road south?”
“For some ways,” Sharna allowed, “but ‘tis no highway, or at least it wasn’t when I was a girl.”
Franx looked down at the table, thinking hard. “Four times what it takes to burn paper, plus a bit more,” he murmured across the table to Bann. “That’s how hot your fire needs to be to melt gold. I expect you know a man with a small furnace?” The brewer just looked back confidently. “So you melt our mergansers and make them into something else. You’ll forget we were ever here, I expect.”
“I expect.”
“We shall get ready to leave, then.” They still had clothes they’d hoped to wash, but there was nothing for that now; Franx was in his next-best robe, while Drinn had put the tan trousers on instead of the beige. Chiara was in russet, of a thinner cloth than her brown dress. “Obliged, Madam, for the food.”
“Of course.” She was already up, rummaging for some charcoal to make a map with, and in the sudden bustle Drinn pulled a wary Bann aside. “Sir,” he began quietly, “you wouldn’t know if, perhaps, there are whores to be found? Where we’re going?”
The brewer nodded knowingly. “How do you think I met Sharna?” Before Drinn’s smile grew too broad, though, he raised a quick finger. “But that was then, this is now. The Governor has outlawed whoring in the Central Rump.”
“No!”
“I know, right? Near four years ago now.” The brewer sighed. “Outlawing whorin’. What’s next, outlawing food, or air? He’s a self-righteous cunt, is our Governor. A religious fellow, apparently.”