“Agh!” cried the man, stepping back into the doorway light, still on his feet. Mark’s left arm was useless, but the rest of his body was intact, and the adrenaline rush made him feel powerful. He leaped to his feet and thrust his knife into the man’s abdomen. Still the attacker didn’t go down. It took a second jab to the belly and one to the exposed throat before the man fell.
Mark whirled on the leader, who had turned to flee. He slammed into the man with his shoulder, still grasping the knife with that arm. The man crashed into a wall and collapsed. Mark jumped to one side. He turned, anticipating an attack from the man he’d first wounded, only to see his back disappear down the hall. Mark pressed his senseless arm to his side.
He sagged onto the bed, gasping and pulling in as much air as his lungs could manage. He stayed seated for a minute until his breath and heart rate quit racing. The smaller man hadn’t stirred, still slumped against the wall. Mark’s arm hurt more now than initially, but he could move his fingers.
I’ll have a hell of a bruise tomorrow, and I expect it’ll be stiff for a few days, but I don’t think anything is broken. Now, what the hell was that all about? The guilds? But what would be the connection with a word sounding like “America”?
Re-sheathing the knife and lighting the whale oil lantern took some effort. The light confirmed one man was dead, and the unconscious man was the smaller of the two from the pub. Mark pulled him into a sitting position on the floor, his back to the wall. A cup of water thrown in his face yielded sputtering and groans before the leader opened his eyes.
Mark pulled his knife again and held it in front of the man’s frightened eyes.
“You’re going to tell me what’s your interest in me,” said Mark in a tone conveying certainty. “Who are you?”
The man shook his head. Whether it was to clear his head or refuse to answer, Mark didn’t know and didn’t care. He slammed the hilt of his knife into the man’s nose. The crack of broken cartilage was following by a bloody stream.
“Let’s try this again. What’s your name?”
“Ar . . . arg . . . arg . . . ,” burbled out of a blood-filled mouth.
Mark cut a piece out of the man’s shirt and held it to the broken nose, tilting the head back for about a minute. Then he pulled the head to face forward and let the man hold the cloth on his nose.
“Once more. What’s your name?”
“K . . . Kros . . . Kroswyn,” the man said, his voice barely audible through the cloth.
“Who are you? Why did you attack me?”
“C . . . Coin. Not kill you. Paying for you alive.”
“Paying? Is it the guilds?”
“Guilds?” replied Kroswyn, whose eyes and brow showed surprise. “Why would the guilds want you? It was some Narthani at the port.”
Mark sat back on his heels. Narthani? Why would the Narthani care anything about him? He knew of them and how people feared that the Narthon Empire might someday cast eyes on Drilmar. However, the conflicts between Narthon and neighboring peoples on Melosia, the largest continent, had been stalemated for a long time. He had the sense after listening to people talk that the Narthon threat had faded in Frangelese minds in recent years.
He leaned to within a foot of Kroswyn and held his knife point inches away from the man’s eye.
“Why would the Narthani be interested in me?”
“All I know is that they’re offering bags of coin for information on anyone knowing about a place called Amerika with people called Amerikans and a man named Yozef Kolsko. They’ve been spreading the word at ports in Frangel and, from what I hear, in other realms, too. We’re not to kill you or injure you severely,” Kroswyn added hurriedly, “just deliver you to them.”
Mark sat back on his haunches again, stunned. America! Americans! He had assumed he would spend the rest of his life with no one knowing where he had come from and having no one to reminisce with about home. The first year had been hard. Then, once he’d accepted his fate as much as he could, he had worked to create a life here in Frangel. That hadn’t gone well, but once he’d moved to central Frangel, away from major cities, he had become content with his life. Not happy, he admitted to himself in moments when he allowed reflection, but content. He loved his wife and child, and his livelihood provided well for them and seemed to bode well for the future. Yet he never had any doubt that this was not a life he would have chosen for himself.
Now . . . were there others? If they were also castaways, he could talk to them about things he otherwise dared not speak of.
“What is it about this Amerika and the Kolsko man that interests the Narthani? I don’t think I’ve ever met a Narthani, so why are they so interested in me and this Amerika?”
“They’ve never told any details to me or anyone else I’ve talked to. The only other thing I know is I overheard two Narthani say something about a place called Caedellium. I had to ask around to find out where it was. It’s some shitty little island northwest of Landolin. That’s all I know.”
“Landolin? Christ!” Mark cursed. “That’s on the other side of the world.”
He had spoken in English, and Kroswyn looked blank at the unknown language. Mark knew where Landolin was from maps he’d studied in Tregallon and one he’d bought in Kaledon. Yet he had never heard of an island named Caedellium. He now mentally juggled distances.
If this Caedellium is west of Landolin, that puts this island about twelve to thirteen thousand miles from here in a straight line. More with travel. Shit! Why couldn’t it have been near Drilmar or at least Fuomon or one of the Harrasedic states? Isn’t anything on this damn planet going to be easy?
“Why are they interested in this, what did you call it . . . Cudelum?”
“Caedellium. Who knows why the cursed Narthani are involved with them? It’s not near Narthon. That’s all I know, I swear.”
Mark’s thoughts roiled over what he’d just heard. He needed to know more about Caedellium. Why were the Narthani so interested in the island? What was their intent for him? Did any of this relate to the guild’s search for him? He sensed that Kroswyn was a dead end. The man was obviously, and justifiably, afraid of what Mark might do to him. From what he’d heard about the Narthani—and their willingness to pay handsomely for delivery of his person—he realized that he needed to get his ass out of Landylbury. Yet he ached to learn more about this Caedellium and the man named Yozef Kolsko.
At a loss for how to satisfy the conflicting paths forward, he opted for security. He needed to get out of the city and back home. There, he would have time to plan what to do next. Time might be short. The man he’d cut had fled. Mark didn’t think the wound serious, so the man might be summoning help while Mark sat thinking. Worse, the assailant might go straight to any Narthani in the port city. They could show up with twenty men, and Mark would be at their mercy, facing a future that might not include freedom or ever seeing his family again.
“Don’t move, or I’ll gut you,” said Mark, once more showing the knife blade.
Kroswyn nodded. Mark cut strips of fabric from the clothing of the dead man, then used them to tie Kroswyn’s legs and arms and gag him.
“I’ll let you live, but if I ever see you again, I won’t be so kind. Do you understand?”
Kroswyn nodded, his relief obvious.
Mark quickly packed his gear. He stood in the doorway for several seconds, looking at the body and the trussed man. He mentally checked whether he’d left anything that might trace him home and wondered if it might be best to kill Kroswyn as a loose end. As he started down the hall, the two men from the lobby thundered up the staircase, pistols in hands. They stopped when they recognized him and lowered their weapons.
“What’s happened?” yelled one of the men.
“I was attacked in my room by three men,” said Mark.
“Must be the three that just checked in for a room,” said the man from the front counter. “Something didn’t seem right. They didn’t have baggage. One of them ran out, drippi
ng blood. Where are the other two?”
“One’s dead, and the other’s tied up in my room. I’m getting out. Is that going to be a problem?” asked Mark, not sure of the protocol for leaving dead bodies.
The two men looked at each other before the counter man sighed. “Damn. This doesn’t do our reputation any good. We’ll clean up the mess if you agree not to tell anyone what happened.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t. I’m leaving Landylbury and don’t know if I’ll ever be back.”
Mark walked past the two men, then stopped and turned.
“I left one of them tied up. I told him I’d let him live if he talked to me. He did, so I’d appreciate it if you keep my word.”
He didn’t wait for an answer and hurried down the hall, then out the front door. He headed to the stable where his horses and wagon awaited.
“Yes, yes! Stop banging on my door. You’ll wake my wife, and she’ll bitch at me for the next sixday!”
Mark stopped pounding the door and waited for the stable owner to unlock and open it.
The owner recognized him. “What couldn’t wait until tomor—”
“Sorry, but something urgent came up, and I need to leave Landylbury.”
The grizzled man sighed. “All right. Give me a minute to dress, and I’ll be out to help hitch the horses to your wagon.”
“That’s something I need to talk with you about. I don’t really need the wagon anymore, but I do need three riding horses. Good ones. I’ll trade you my wagon and its horse team.”
The owner’s eyes narrowed. No one came to his home in the middle of the night wanting to swap a solid wagon and two strong draft horses for riding horses unless there was a reason that could play to his benefit.
“I’ll have to check the wagon and horses again, but you’ll need a saddle and other gear. You’d have to add six hundred soldors.”
The dickering on price commenced and continued after the owner threw on a coat and they walked to the stable. Mark didn’t have time for the endless arguing over prices that seemed ingrained in the Frangelese. He gave the man silver coins worth five hundred soldors. The tack was used but in good shape. The horses were adequate—they only needed to survive to get him home.
An hour later, Mark knocked on another door. The night was still an hour from first light. Minyn Lustor wasn’t as annoyed as the stable owner had been, but he was surprised.
“Kaldwel? Haven’t seen you for months, and why come calling this early?”
“Sorry, Lustor, I need to make some purchases, and it can’t wait for your normal hours. Can you open your shop? It’ll be worth your while.”
“Well . . . sure. Meet me at the front door.”
Mark walked from the rear of the building, where Lustor lived in an adjoining house, and waited at the street door of the firearms shop. Heavy bars over windows and a similarly barred door were set into timbered walls. No one broke into the shop easily. Lustor once recounted that the few who did try had met an unpleasant fate from the heavily armed owner and his sons, none of whom had any compunction against shooting intruders.
With a clang of metal, the door swung open. Luster turned to light the lanterns. One of his sons stood aside, holding a double-barreled musket shotgun. He and Mark nodded to each other. Then, satisfied that his father’s customer was who he claimed to be, the son disappeared into the dark workroom behind the now illuminated displays.
“I won’t ask why the urgency,” said Lustor. “I expect it’s trouble and not something I want to know about.”
Mark ignored the statement. “I need a number of firearms—to start with, two of those double-barreled shotguns like your son brandished, plus shot packets and powder. Also, four pistols that would stop a man but that a woman could handle. They should use the same caliber shot. And that double-barreled pistol you showed me last time I was here and tried to sell me. I didn’t need it then, but I do now. Is it still for sale, and do you have more than one?”
Lustor called out to his son, presumably still in back, to bring out the shotguns. He then pointed to a display case of pistols. “Pick out your single-shot pistols. The others are locked away. They’re still hard to make, so they’re expensive. I have two ready to sell.”
“Can we work out an agreement? The shotguns and pistols for the remaining time of our agreement on the rifles you made for me?”
Thirty minutes later, the shotguns, pistols, shot, and powder were wrapped in waterproof leather and tied on the two horses he wasn’t riding. The weight was compensated for when Lustor swapped silver coins for gold. Mark usually took payment for hides in bulkier silver, which was less conspicuous to spend than gold. Now, Mark’s fear of drawing attention with gold coin was less important than ease of transport and concealment.
He rode at a steady but unhurried pace until mid-day. He estimated he’d covered thirty miles from Landylbury to the top of an escarpment. There, he sat watching the road behind him. The horses were tied next to a spring. He’d fed them a portion of grain from the sacks the stable owner had provided. Pausing would let him observe whether anyone was in pursuit. He still wondered whether he should have killed the leader of the three men who’d tried to capture him.
An hour passed. Two hours. Traffic on the road had slackened the farther he got from the city, but at thirty miles there were occasional wagons and riders: farmers bringing goods to sell or returning home, single or multiple riders traveling for whatever reason, freight wagons loaded or empty, heading in both directions.
“Well, we’d better get going,” he said to the horses thirty feet away. “Nothing so far. We’ll stop again tomorrow when we get to the top of the Balgorn Pass to check for anyone following.”
He’d always had the habit of talking to horses, first on his family’s ranch and then in Frangel. At home, it was a point of laughter within the family. Here, it was just the oddity of a man speaking to empty space in a foreign language.
After giving each horse another double handful of grain, he saddled a different horse this time and tied the packs on the other two. Before mounting, he took one last look north toward the city . . . and stopped. A cluster of horses had just come into view about a mile distant. It took five minutes before he got a count of twelve riders and three pack animals. At fifteen minutes, he believed a large rider had one arm in a sling and a smaller rider had something covering the middle of his face, as if they’d suffered a wounded arm and a nose injury. He didn’t believe in coincidence. It had to be the two men from the night before, and now with ten comrades.
I should have killed them, he thought, bitterly. Definitely the one I let go. He talked like the leader.
There was no way they’d tracked him, not on the roads and through multiple forks. They had to have found out his name and where he lived from someone at the pub. Maybe the Ostyns. Maybe another patron he’d spoken with on previous visits. It didn’t matter from whom. They were coming for him—meaning whatever price the Narthani were willing to pay was significant.
If he’d had one of his “doomsters,” the name he’d given the destrex rifles, he’d be tempted to discourage them. With its longer range and striking power greater than anything they’d carry, he could pick them off out of their range. A couple of men with fist-sized holes all the way through their bodies might stop them, but maybe not. Enough gold could overcome any hesitation, and even if these men turned back, there could always be more later.
He briefly considered ambushing the party, perhaps with help from Toodman and friends, but that would put them in danger during the ambush and from later Narthani agents. Even with the doomsters, the help of other men, and picking a spot to trap his pursuers, he couldn’t be sure of getting them all after endangering people he cared about. What had happened in northern Frangel still weighed on him.
That left the problem of what to do. He couldn’t turn such men back forever, and there was no safe haven at home. If the Narthani wanted him badly enough, they might send hundreds after him. He felt angry
and bitter. After all that had happened in the first years, he thought he’d settled into what the rest of his life would be. And now this. He would have to move again. No, not just move, but run. Run away from Narthani agents. Where to? Could it be in Frangel? He’d already moved south, away from the major cities. He needed to go where he might not be known, maybe far into the south where few people lived—for good reason. No, he would have to leave Frangel entirely. For the first time since hearing the word Amerika, he acknowledged the nagging thought he’d tried to suppress. He had to get to “Caedellium” and find out what was there.
Time for a leisurely pace was over. He transferred all the packs to his own horse and one of the others. The third horse would travel light and be the least tired when he needed it. If the opportunity occurred, he would look to buy fresh horses on the way. He had to get home as fast as possible. The riders were an hour behind him because climbing the road up the escarpment was slow going with its winding switchbacks. He would push the horses and rest as little as possible. If he was lucky, he would cover the 340 miles back home a full day ahead of the ten men—perhaps two days, if all went well.
Maghen Kaldwel had spent the afternoon with friends—Leesta Toodman and four workers’ wives—preserving what Mark insisted on calling figs, instead of the nurster fruit’s correct name. She could never get a satisfactory answer for why he had to use a different name. It was just one more unexplained trait she had come to accept, a minor annoyance in exchange for such a fine husband.
As she walked from the ranch owner’s house to her family’s cottage, she shifted two-year-old Alys to her other arm. She noticed that she’d missed cleaning off a spot of nurster juice from her elbow. The preserves would be shared by all the ranch’s families.
“Mama. ’Orses,” called her daughter, who hadn’t mastered all sounds yet. Maghen looked behind to check what Alys saw. She raised a hand to shade her eyes from the sun. It was a rider pulling a single packhorse. A rider whose shape looked familiar.
Passages Page 35