Levin came down the stairs. One of the doors on the third floor was open, and behind it, he could see D'seell. She looked bleary-eyed and worried.
"Hullo, D'seell." He said cheerily. "Busy night? You look tired."
She whispered something, and Levin strained to hear.
"Come again, darling?" He had almost passed her room on the way down. He did not have much time to spare her, not if he wanted to catch the boat before dawn.
"Don't go downstairs, Levin." She hissed.
"Sorry, my love." His voice was light-hearted as he swiftly descended the stairs. "I've no time for morning lovin', I'm bound to sail with the tide." He quoted an old sailor's song.
He was halfway across tavern's main floor when something in her tone of voice finally made an impression. He stopped and looked up the stairs, but she had closed her door. Warned, he quietly walked to the front door, and opened it slightly. In the market place, four men stood in the predawn shadows. One, taller than the rest, was looking keenly in his direction, a hand on the hilt of a scabbarded longsword on his hip. The men were not setting up stalls or moving goods, they were just loitering there. They were waiting. He saw them a moment before they saw him, looking out. They moved toward him as one man.
Levin had the sensation of the world sinking in on him as he ran across the tavern floor and remounted the steps, three at a time. He heard tavern’s door behind him slam inward, and the thunderous rattle of heavy feet across the thick wooden planks of the floor. D'seell made a small noise behind her door as he passed it. He raced upward.
He did not think and he did not reason, he just ran.
Elithea had barred her door. He threw his entire weight against it, wrenching two heavy bolts from the wall as the bar fell away. Elithea's shocked, frightened and somehow knowing face vanished into her bedroom. She dropped the bar on that door just as Levin reached it, and despite his best effort, it would not open.
He tore one of the swords from the wall even as two men, waterfront thugs by their look, shoved past each other to come at him. Each carried a long knife. One of them had no teeth, the other was missing an eye.
He lunged into the basic forms without thinking, taking one-eye under the chin. It was hard to say who was more shocked by the action, Levin or the man whose throat he'd just opened. One-eye sank to the floor gasping, trying to hold in the blood all-too rapidly escaping through his fingers. His knife clattered useless to the floor.
"Hyew din't thay he could fence!" Toothless complained to an unseen companion beyond the door, even as a sweep of Levin's blade forced him back. Levin's weapon gave him an insurmountable advantage against the man's long knife, and Toothless plainly knew it. He pressed the man back to the door, preventing the others behind him from entering the room.
"Get out of here!" Levin's voice cracked as he yelled, something that had not happened since his voice changed.
"Stand by, you fools!" Denjar's voice was like iron. "I'll handle this."
Toothless scrambled backward, even as Levin's blade pierced his forearm. Levin's following stroke was intercepted by a steel longsword, and behind the blade came Denjar, a master of the blade, bitter in his anger.
Levin was no blademaster, and the man coming into the room plainly was. Levin closely parried two swift strokes and backed away. Denjar took his measure, thrusting aside Levin's counterstrokes with disdainful ease.
"It is time to die, Lord D'root."
Levin said nothing, for his attention was all on the tall man's weapon. In four more strokes, Levin was bleeding from four small wounds, each of which would have been fatal but for desperate, last-second parries. This was no friendly match, and the man behind the blade was clearly intent on killing him without undue ceremony. The basic forms would not keep the blademaster's weapon from killing him for long, and Levin saw the confidence in the other man's eyes.
"A blood curse on you!" Levin screamed the words, even as he saw the blademaster readying the blow that would end him. "A blood curse from family D'root!"
For a split second, Denjar's eyes widened, and he hesitated. Levin sprawled backward and then spun toward the shuttered window. It was an expensive thing, made of pure Longwalk glass. Splinters of wood and glass dug into his flesh as he threw himself through it.
He fell forty feet before the cold and dirty water of Jagle Bay closed around him.
Chapter 9: Entreddi Caravan, Encamped off of the Dunwater River Road
Jecha threw the flimsy wagon doors open and they rattled angrily against the garishly painted side of family Haila's wagon. She came down the narrow stairs in a rush, skipping several of them in her impatience. The ground stung the bottoms of her bare feet.
Wide eyes greeted her appearance at the fire.
"Who was throwing bones on the capper's table?" She demanded angrily. The two dozen assembled Entreddi, wiry dark men in colorful silks and witchy women beringed and bangled, looked at the aged seeress with a mixture of fear and surprise. Hasty denials in musical patois greeted her demand. Only Cadmo and little Deanna remained silent, looking at the fire, at their elders, at anyone but her. Her ancient eyes, one milky and blind and the other clear and sharp, focused on the two culprits immediately.
"You!" Her voice was a bullwhip in the night. She grabbed Cadmo by the ear, forcing tears to flow in grimy streaks down his ten-year-old cheeks. "Come with me!"
Deanna's hope that she had escaped her great grandmother's wrath shattered when the old woman turned her clear eye toward the little girl. "You too, Deanna!"
"Grandmother, they are just children…" Mama Luskia cautioned, but one fierce glare from the old woman cut her off midsentence.
"Children you should have been watching, Luskia!"
Cadmo's feet only lightly touched the ground as Jecha nearly wrenched his ear from his head. "I told you never to touch anything in my wagon." She growled. Deanna, only six journeys old, began to bubble up her face in terror of the old woman's wrath, even as she dragged her feet behind her brother and great grandmother. She dragged the wretched boy up the stairs and into the grand wagon, slapping the doors out of the way. She threw him bodily to his knees in front of the low table, forcing him to see the evidence she had found there. Five cubed dice, yellow with age and use, lay on the table.
The dice had no numbers, only symbols, symbols as ancient and fundamental as the Entreddi themselves. Three of the dice showed skulls. Deanna dragged herself up the stairs with great reluctance behind her great grandmother.
"Who threw these stones?" Jecha demanded again, in a voice that would brook no insolence.
"We…we…b b both d d did…" Cadmo began. "We were just playing, gamma…"
"These stones!" Jecha pointed at the top of the table. "Who threw these stones? Who was the last one of you to touch the dice?"
"It was me, gamma." Deanna whimpered, her voice barely audible. She wished she could disappear into the shadows of the wagon. "I throwed them last."
"Were you standing or sitting?" The old woman demanded.
"S..s..sitting, gamma."
"Where were you sitting, which way were you facing?"
Deanna indicated a place on the floor. "Sitting there, gamma." Her voice began to catch in the slight hiccup that preceded a full-scale assault of tears.
"Did you touch the dice after you threw them?"
"I d..don't remember, gamma."
Cadmo spoke up from under Jecha's palm. "Gamma, you're hurting my ear…"
"I'll hurt more than your ear, boy." Jecha replied hotly. "I'll have the skin off of you, by Marten's ghost if you don't remember. Did you, either of you, touch the stones after they were cast?"
"I picked up one off the floor, gamma." Cadmo said. "I put it back with the others."
"Which die did you pick up, Cadmo? How was it lying when you picked it up?"
"I don't remember, gamma… I think it was the one with the knife." He pointed to one of the dice on the table that was not showing a skull. The face it presented was a symbolic rep
resentation of a short sword. "I don't know if it was a knife when it was on the floor."
Jecha shut her eyes and willed herself to be calm. "When you put it back on the table, did it move any of the other dice?" Cadmo nodded, the action painful and awkward since she had not yet relinquished his ear. "Do you know which dice it touched?" Cadmo shook his head from side to side. Finally she relinquished his ear. He rubbed the side of his head gingerly.
"Come here, both of you." Jecha demanded. The two children stood in front of her. Suddenly and brutally she slapped both of their faces, hard. The twin cracks of the flat of her palm were audible outside of the wagon, and mama Luskia paled visibly as she nervously waited for her mother to be through with her grandchildren. Little Deanna's head turned under the blow, and the girl began to wail.
"If I ever catch either of you touching anything in this wagon again I will switch you until you bleed, do you understand?" Deanna blubbered uncontrollably, but managed a weak nod. Cadmo, still stunned from the blow to his cheek but valiantly biting his lip and trying not to cry, managed a weak reply in a choking voice.
"Yes, gamma." When she turned away from them they bolted, Cadmo pushing little Deanna off of the stairs in his haste to escape. This gave the little girl the impetus she needed to increase both the volume and the tenor of her shrieks. Her mother grabbed her protectively, if belatedly.
Jecha, suddenly exhausted, fell weakly into the seat next to the capper's table and looked at the dice. She dropped her head to her wrinkled palm. Something like despair filled her. Deanna had the gift, of course, so it was a true throw.
Three men came, one or more of them probably a master swordsman, although maybe no such damn thing, and death rode with them. The wagon wheel on the fifth die mocked her with its unanswered question. Which way had the dice fallen in relation to the wheel? Would their coming be the death or the salvation of the family Haila?
Jecha cursed impotently at the silent stones.
Chapter 10: Aelfric and Haim on the West Dunwater River Road
By midafternoon Aelfric and Haim came to the branching of the Dunwater River Road. They stopped to consider where they would go.
The wider and more traveled branch turned westward and was called the Orrville Road, for eventually, after meandering across over a hundred sparsely populated miles of Orr Duchy, it reached the prison city. To the right the road continued to follow the track of the Dunwater River, passing among thickly wooded hills through a few isolated hamlets until it reached the border of the Domain of Diminios. Aelfric was for Orrville, but Haim spoke against it.
"You don't want to go to the city on the lake, lord Aelfric." Haim spoke with certainty. "Nobody traveling ever has any luck there. Them that ain't born and raised there winds up in the mines for certain."
"Nonsense." Aelfric replied. "The Duke of Orrville is a harsh man, but fair by all accounts, and loyal to the king. If we want to get away from Elderest's men patrolling the river, the only way to go is west and away from it."
"Those words don’t mix, harsh and fair. A man is one or a man is the other. Besides, you won't be seeing the Duke of Orrville if you go to Orrville." Haim replied knowingly. "The duke makes his money from the mines, and his lads is always on the lookout for some fresh young men to pull his silver out. They'll find a charge to trump up on you and toss you in the Blackhill. That's even if we get to Orrville, which likely we won't. Them as owns land along the road makes their own laws, and without you being someone they know, they'll jail you just to get your horse. It ain't like you can go along taking on lordly airs and talking like a highborn, neither. They'd soon know who you were and get word back to Elderest. You can bet there's a price on you."
Aelfric considered the halfbreed's words. "Maybe it is as you say, Haim. By the way, you can stop calling me 'lord'. If we are travelling as free men, you'd better just stick to calling me Aelfric. If we take the river road, won't it be easier for the duke's men to find us?"
"Maybe and maybe not." Haim looked thoughtful. "If you would put up your sword and find some common clothes, it’s possible you could pass as a simple workman. Not with that fine stallion, though. He's a war horse plain to see."
"I won't give up my father's horse."
"You'd better sooner than too late. You can wager that every sellsword along the Dunwater'll have word of that horse by next week. The ranchers along the Orrville Road would seize you just to take it from you, to say nothing of the gold you’re carrying."
"Who says I'm carrying gold?" Aelfric eyed Haim suspiciously.
"You said it yourself, when you talked about paying me for pulling you across the river. Aside from that, any poor body like myself is on the lookout for gold. Poor folks can practically smell it on you. Most of them are a lot less honest than I am, too."
"Well, where would we go from here if you had your wish, honest Haim?"
"If I had my wish we'd fly on a king's eagle out of here and up to Northcraven. But I ain't likely to get that wish granted, am I? So barring wishes and such, I'd say we trade your horse for a couple of stout freeman ponies, ride like damn hell up the Dunwater and beat Elderest's men into Diminios. There's always work for them as can ride in Diminios, and plenty of folk in Silver Run who won't ask no questions about where you're from."
"Silver Run?" The words left a sour taste in Aelfric's mouth. "A haven for the lawless. I've heard there are more whorehouses than churches in Silver Run."
"That's so." Haim grinned broadly. "Seventeen taverns, ten whorehouses and only one church. It's a town bound for the Abyss, certain. Still, if you want to get lost, Silver Run is the place to get lost in. It’s a good place to get out of in a hurry, too. If we can get to Silver Run we're as close to bein' in the clear as you can bet on."
"So what is between us and Silver Run?"
"Four days riding, half a score of little towns you never heard of and a lot of empty road. The good thing is that the road is mostly forest between here and there, and no one's likely to see us from boats on the River."
Finally persuaded that there really was not much of a future on the Orrville Road, Aelfric reluctantly turned to the narrower way, a mere cartpath really, following the broad Dunwater north. They walked for several miles as the afternoon ebbed away, taking no breaks and eating nothing, for neither had brought food. This late in the spring the sun remained in the sky well past suppertime, and they passed through a land of light forest and shaded lanes leading to distant farms and hamlets. The road they were on was indistinguishable from the many roads that branched off of it, and only the fact that the river bounded them on the eastern side kept them from taking a wrong turn. It was twilight before they spotted the first collection of lamp lit buildings along the road. A weatherworn sign cut in the shape of a pig proclaimed the little village to be Candleton, although scarcely more than two or three families could have occupied it.
Warm yellow lamp light spilled out onto the single unpaved road running through the town, and in the dim blue shadows of coming evening Haim could see an unprepossessing tavern. "You'd better stay out here, Aelfric."
The warm light and the smell of cooked bread so enticed Aelfric that he began to protest. "They'll be looking fer two of us, milord, and you sure ain't dressed like no commoner. I'll get us a bite and you some proper freeman clothes. Some blankets, too, if you got the silver."
Aelfric handed Haim ten silver marks. It was far more than the items should cost, but Aelfric had it to spare.
"I'll make change, milord." Haim said, not without sarcasm.
Haim skirted the outskirts of the town quickly, taking care not to be seen. He then walked right up to the tavern looking like nothing so much as the worn, heavy-footed freeman that he was. He entered the town from the north road, wanting to leave the impression that he was traveling south.
He'd left the lordling Aelfric out in the shadows south of town with instructions not to go anywhere, though he doubted that he had the sense to listen. He expected at any second to hear him co
ming in the front door. If he did, Haim vowed that he would simply disown the fool.
It had been a foolhardy thing to do, rescuing the highborn youth from Elderest's men, and already Haim regretted it. He wondered what type of foolish notion had brought him to do it. Most likely it was as he'd said, just the chance to see fat Loseth humiliated and tongue-tied at the end of the ferry line. It was surely a fool thing to get killed over.
The tavern's main door hung on old hinges, flung wide to the night, and Haim walked through it casually, liking the warm firelight and the simple homeliness of the place. In a town this small everyone would know everyone else, and he knew he was marked as a stranger the minute he entered. Only three men sat in the glow of several yellow lamps. The room was furnished simply, with chairs and several small tables that looked to have been made by the innkeeper himself. The innkeeper, a nice fat fellow -Haim didn't trust a thin innkeeper- sat at the same table as the other two. They were plainly local fellows, a silver-haired grandpap stooped with ague and a plain, middle-aged sort. They were farmers by the look of them. The innkeeper stood and met Haim halfway across the floor.
"Whot can I get you, yong fallow?" His mouth was thick with the strong accent of Orrville Duchy. "I'm Gailus Candle. We've rooms to let for four pence. The common room's a tuppence."
"I'm moving on tonight." Haim replied casually. "I've got to be down to D'rut by tomorrow night."
"Ach, the horse races, den. Gombling mon air you?" The innkeeper asked, too casually. The others with him looked at the floor, pretending not to listen. A gambling man might have some silver to part with, and Haim noted with some amusement a stack of well-worn tiles on a table nearby. He knew better than to get roped into a game of chance with people he'd never met, though.
"Nay, wish I was. What I am is a man looking for work with the Lord Mayor. I've a too-slow racing stallion camped in the brush and I've hope he's looking for a huntsman."
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 8