After weeks of travel the smoke of Whetton mingled with the dusky sky. Red clouds piled up to the west. The road forked, one branch east toward town, another to the south and Bressel. Dante led his horse east.
"Where are you going?" Blays said, jerking his head at the other path.
"Whetton."
"We're only a couple days out from Bressel."
"There's no hurry," Dante said. "I want to see what's become of the city."
Blays bit the skin around his thumbnail. "What if they recognize what's become of us? You do remember our last visit? The local hospitality of rope and high branches?"
"Last time we were here you looked like a rag wrapped around a stick," Dante said. "Look at you now in your fancy clothes, your hair cut straight."
Blays eyed him. "There were an awful lot of people in that field. Thousands, if I recall."
"If anyone gives us any trouble," Dante said, nudging his horse forward, "we'll just point them at our badges. They'll be in no rush to invite more trouble from the north. If that doesn't do it, we'll tell them about how, at great personal risk, we saved their stupid town from war."
"This will end badly," Blays declared, then rallied to catch up.
They headed down the road where months ago thousands of citizens had fled fire and battle. Today a shepherd was driving his flock to market and the pair skirted around the grungy blobs of walking wool. The outskirts of the city were hewn in fresh blond wood, offset here and there by the charred-out husks of what remained. The streets were thick with sodden ash and charcoal. The rap of hammers smacked on all sides. Masons and carpenters shouted from scaffolds wrapped around the sharp corners of damaged temples and half-constructed manors, squeezing out a few last minutes of work in the waning daylight. Men and women hurried home from market or the docks, or left the quiet warmth of their hearths for the clamor and company of a public house. Blays' mouth twitched at the signs above the pubs, the painted heads of stags or owls or an anchor tilted on its side.
"Pint?" Dante said, gazing down the street.
"As long as we're here," Blays grinned. They found a public stable and parted with some silver as their horses were led away to be groomed and fed. Blays elbowed Dante in the ribs and raced ahead through the damp chill of the early night. A fat turtle was printed above the doors of the first place he chose.
Blays flagged down a servant and they were brought mugs and ale. Dante drank slowly, pleasantly surprised to find he liked the taste. Perhaps he was getting older. When Blays wandered off to the latrine, Dante made a round of the room, holding a few brief conversations with any man or woman who looked at home.
"Drink up," he said when Blays got back.
"Suddenly there's a hurry again?"
"I have a terrible urge to go see if the inn where they arrested you was burnt down."
"If it hasn't, mind if we finish the job?"
"Let's see where the night takes us," Dante said. Blays drained his ale and they hit the street again. The laughter of men echoed through the alleys. They wandered the city, half-remembering streets they'd last seen half a year ago, their direction sense aided by a couple pints apiece. Dante kept an eye out for the boys who'd helped them then—he couldn't remember their names—but didn't see either. Probably, they hadn't made it through the upheaval; they'd had nothing to protect them even in times of peace. But they had had their wits. Maybe they lived yet, hiding under the docks, peering down from the roofs on the men who owned the streets, waiting to descend till they could take a piece for themselves.
Finally Dante and Blays came to the corner near the north end of town where they'd slept a single night. The building was gone, torn down, replaced by a few tents and a small shack. Blays spat on the dirt.
"Too bad buildings don't have tombstones," he said, giving the grounds the finger. "I have a sudden urge to urinate."
Dante peered down the street, knowing the pub the man in the Fat Turtle had directed him to had to be near. Blays finished his business and Dante headed down a cross street. Just when he thought he'd gone too far his eyes seized on the image of a four-fingered hand painted above a pub door.
"This looks as good as any," Dante said, swinging through the door. He glanced through the room, then sighed and took a seat. After an hour and two pints for him and four for Blays he was ready to try their luck somewhere else. Blays was rambling on about how they should try to get arrested again just to see if the watch had the guts when the door banged open.
"Be right back," Dante said, threading past tables and outstretched legs to intercept the man who'd just entered. He stood behind the brown-bearded figure and tapped him on the shoulder. "Time to meet your maker, you villain."
Robert Hobble turned and punched blindly for Dante's head. Dante sidestepped the blow, then jumped forward and grabbed the man's collar. Robert screwed up his face, eyes leaping between Dante's.
"Lyle's soiled drawers," he said with beer-thick breath. "You made it? Did you really do it?"
"It's done." Dante heard bootsteps behind him. He stepped aside.
"No thanks to you, you cowardly son of a bitch," Blays said. He brushed past Dante to face the old friend Dante'd been hunting since they stepped foot in Whetton.
"You'll understand some day, you filth-mouthed pup," Robert said, lips and eyes creased with a smile. He staggered forward and crushed Blays up in a hug. Blays' chin rested on the man's shoulder and he gave Dante a strange, knowing look he'd remember years after Blays had gone but would never be able to understand. At times he thought he saw gratitude in that look, but at others it could have been betrayal. Sometimes he saw nothing in it but a confusion so faint it was barely there at all, like the face of a man who's forgotten how it had ever felt to be young.
Robert unclinched, laughing and clapping his hands. "This calls for a round. Many rounds. Rounds until they get the picture and roll the keg right up to our table."
Dante hunted down a servant and let her know she had some lively stepping in her future. When he returned to the table Robert was already yammering on at Blays.
"So much has happened, boys," he said, draping one hand over the back of a chair and pointing at them with the other. "Came back and the place was a battlefield. I rallied a few of the fellows I knew to help retake the town and what do you know, they made me a captain!" He flicked a tri-colored badge on his chest. "How long are you here? Got time to hear a few of my stories before you start boring me with your own?"
"I think I know how all of yours start," Blays said. "'There I was, rum-soaked as the bottom of the barrel, when all of a sudden—'"
"It's like you were there!" Robert said, reaching across the table and giving him a knock on the shoulder.
"We'll be here for a while," Dante said. "For the moment there's nothing more."
They settled in to the warm smoke of the hearth, the earthy smell of simmering stew, the stinging taste of bitter ale. Around them men came and went and argued and joked. Dante bent down to his pack and made sure the book was still there. He was a young man in a strange world. Some day he would take his place among the black, but for now the book was his. Just as much, Robert would be there whenever he took the time to find him; for Blays, he couldn't imagine what could drive them apart. Dante leaned back on the solid wood of his chair, listening to the raucous calls of the crowd, to Robert's beery words and Blays' guarded laughter. His ears soared with the sounds of all those who still lived.
1
They would know his treason in two hundred feet.
The wagon jolted over a snow-covered hole, shaking the swords in its belly. Down the path through the pines, six soldiers waited, laughter drifting on the icy air. Dante's blood ran as cold as the snows. The soldiers stood across the road astride their horses, red shirts glaring from their chests, straight swords hanging from their hips. Their mounts were lean and travel-worn and snorted gouts of steam that mingled with the mist. The wagon rattled again. One of the men pointed down the path. Dante swore. It was too la
te to turn back.
Blays leaned in to the driver. "Stop the cart."
"What are you doing?" Dante said.
"Stopping the cart."
"Should I stop the cart?" the driver said.
"Only if you don't want to get punched," Blays said.
The cart's wheels skidded in the snow-mucked dirt. Dante pitched forward, grabbing his wooden seat before he spilled into the road. Down the way, the riders stared.
"Well, that ought to throw them off our trail." Dante twisted in his seat to gaze at the muddy wagon. "What do we tell them? That we're taking these arms to Narashtovik?"
Blays rubbed his mouth. "Those swords are seven feet long. They weigh twelve pounds. What are we going to tell them, they're bound for the race of giants it isn't treasonous to arm?"
"Well, then think of something."
"I'm trying."
"Because treason, as it turns out, isn't one of those look-the-other-way crimes. Except for people who attend the execution of the traitors, because you really don't want blood splashing into your eyes or—"
"I know!" Blays said. The redshirted soldiers kneed their horses, starting down the rutted road. Blays lowered his voice to a hiss. "I've got a solution: a whole lot of murder."
Dante shook his head hard. "If a troop of the king's soldiers turns up dead in norren lands, do you think that makes the norren less likely to be invaded and massacred by the king?"
The soldiers' hooves clopped closer. "Well, think fast."
Dante's mind spun in circles. Forty feet away, the soldiers slowed their mounts to a walk. Their gazes lingered on Blays' swords. Dante gritted his teeth. "I can try to disguise them."
"The swords?" Blays whispered. "What are you going to do, put wigs on them?"
The riders were too close to respond. Dante extended his mind to the nether, the shadowy substance that lurked within all things. Few could even see the nether. Those who commanded its power could change the shape of the world, mending the wounded or killing the firm. As a last resort, Dante would turn it on the king's soldiers pulling to a stop in front of the halted wagon. If they hid the bodies well enough—and the cold pine forest was bleak enough to conceal an entire city of the dead—there was the chance, however fleeting, the soldiers' deaths would be blamed on the snows or the bears instead of the norren Dante was trying to free from the king's yoke.
For now, though, he had a better idea.
The lead rider had a permanent squint; winter lingered on its deathbed, but his face was tanned and chapped. It was the face of a man who'd spent most of his forty-odd years in the wilds confronting strange men. He jerked his bristly chin at the wagon. "What are you carrying down the king's roads?"
"It's a surprise," Blays said.
"Surprises are meant to be opened." The man gestured two of his men around the back of the wagon. "Rip it apart."
"There's no need for that." Dante hopped down from his seat. Two of the mounted men drew swords with the whisper of steel on leather. Dante held up his hands. "I'll open it for you. It's just a little wheat. Nothing wrong with a little wheat, is there?"
"That depends on what's under the wheat. More wheat? Or something shiny and silver?"
"Who would bake bread out of silver?" Blays leapt down from the wagon to join the others at the back. "You'd break a new chamber pot every morning."
The man didn't look his way. "Some like to hide their coin beneath their grain. To muffle the annoying clink, no doubt. Not to avoid King Moddegan's taxes."
"No doubt," Dante muttered. He focused his mind and sent the nether winging to the wagon, coating its contents in a thin layer of illusion. A soldier pulled aside the oiled canvas, revealing long boxes stacked high. He lifted one of the lids with a squeak of wood. Instead of revealing the long killing steel of swords, the soldier stared at a box piled high with dusty brown wheat.
Dante held his breath. The soldier gazed blankly at the grain. He nodded. Dante willed him to turn away, to drop back the canvas and go on his way.
Instead, he plunged his hand into the fake grain.
Steel clanked. The man screamed and yanked back his hand. Blood flowed from a gash across three of his fingers. In a panic, Dante let the nethereal illusion fall away. The shucked wheat disappeared, replaced by the reality of the seven-foot swords filling the box.
The commander's mouth fell open. "Weeping wounds, what is happening here? Where did the wheat go? What are you doing with a cartload of norren swords?"
Dante flung up his hands. "Well, you see—"
From beside the road, a voice rumbled like falling stones. "We're taking them away from norren clans who would put them to no possible good use."
Dante whirled. A lean and shaggy bear stepped from the pines, seven feet tall and dressed in travel-worn deerskin. He jerked back from the monster, drawing the nether to him in a dark rush. The bear smiled. Dante cursed silently. The man was a norren, of course: impossibly tall, with thick shoulders and an even thicker beard that rose to just below his eyes. Coin-sized ears poked from his thicket of hair. No matter how many days Dante spent among them, their sheer inhuman size could still catch him off guard.
"I am sorry I was gone for so long, my lords," the strange norren said. "Is everything all right?"
"Where have you been?" Dante improvised.
"I thought I heard the call of the Clan of the Whipping Reed," the norren said. "They hunt these woods. I didn't want them to hunt us as well."
The commander squinted up at the norren. His hand moved to his sword. "Who are you?"
"My name is Mourn," the norren said. "But I doubt that is what you mean. What I am is the slave of these fine men. I am sorry if I startled you."
"Got your papers?"
"I'm sorry, we left our office in our other wagon," Blays said. "He's registered in Yallen. That's where we're taking these swords."
The commander stared at the blades gleaming in the winter sun. He shook his head hard enough to dislodge his own squint. "You said you were hauling wheat. I saw wheat."
"I am a hedge wizard," Dante lied. "You see?" He snapped his fingers; the wheat materialized atop the swords. Another snap, and it disappeared. One of the soldiers swore. "The primitives in the clans look at me as a god. Much easier to convince them to turn over their arms when you've got divine right on your side."
"And you think you can trick us as easily as the savages? What are you trying to hide?"
"In the Norren Territories, steel is worth more than gold." Mourn leaned forward as if disclosing a secret. "The king's own soldiers have been known to sell swords back to the same clans they confiscated them from. It's a sad thing. Except for the soldiers, I suppose, who now have the money to finally make themselves happy."
"I've heard of that," one of the redshirted soldiers nodded. "There's no law out here except what we enforce."
"That's right," said the commander. "So who authorized this?"
"Lord Wallimore of Yallen," Dante lied smoothly. He patted his pockets. "I have his writ right here." Paper crinkled from his doublet. He removed the sheet. It was a purchase order for raw iron from a border-town, but before he unfolded it, he overwrite it with a flick of nether. The illusory note was brief, to the point, and concluded with the signature of the nonexistent Lord Wallimore.
The weathered commander read the note, nodded, and passed it back to Dante. He jerked his head at the soldier's bleeding hand. "Your deceit hurt one of my men."
"I'm sorry about that. Keeping our country safe carries constant risk." Dante frowned and drew on the nether again. This time, he sent it flocking to the wounded man's hand. The wave of shadows washed away the gash like a trench dug below the tideline. "Better?"
The man yanked back his hand, shaking it. "Tickles!"
Dante turned back to the commander. "Does this square us?"
He squinted between Dante, Mourn, and the wagon. "You're doing the king's will. Now get these arms out of here before a clan cuts your throat and carves your bones into s
pears."
"You got it," Blays said. He leapt back into his seat behind the driver, who'd watched the exchange without a word.
Dante gestured to the norren. "Come along, Mourn."
As Dante slung himself in beside Blays, Mourn climbed up on the running boards, tilting the carriage under his weight. The driver flicked his reins. The horses leaned forward, yanking the carriage behind them. Dante unclasped his cloak and shucked it off his shoulders. Despite the freezing air, his skin was as hot as a stovetop.
He didn't look back at the disappearing soldiers. "What just happened?"
"Our quick-thinking slave just saved the day," Blays said. "Hey, that reminds me. When did we get a slave?"
"I'll ask him the moment I stop shitting my pants. Do you have any idea how close that was?"
"They couldn't prove we're bringing this stuff to the norren."
Dante snorted. "Which wouldn't have stopped them from arresting us for treason and torturing us until we revealed Narashtovik's spent the last five years funding armed norren rebellion."
"Maybe not." Blays patted his swords. "But these would have stopped them from living, which would have put a bit of a damper on any arresting and torturing."
"And left us with a pile of corpses to deal with instead."
The wagon bounced between the pines. Dante glanced over his shoulder. Given that norren men's beards grew like spring grass, it was tough to gauge their age, but Mourn looked no younger than himself—early twenties, perhaps. Mourn caught him staring and nodded back.
They spoke little over the next couple miles. Sunlight trickled through the pine needles, pale and bitter. Soon enough, the light dried up like morning rain.
The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy Page 46