by John Daulton
It was his turn to laugh, and he patted the back of her hand where it still rested on his arm. “You go on down there where Jasper is, and I’ll be right back. I’ll see if’n I can’t get the major to come out and speak to me again without that counterfeiter gettin wind of what we know.” He turned to go back, but stopped.
Someone had slipped out of the tavern behind them and was in the process of mounting one of the horses tethered to the goat pen. With the darkness and the distance, Ilbei couldn’t make out who it was, but the conspicuous timing of the man’s exit coincided with the intake of breath that came from Mags. That had to be Gad Pander. This time, Ilbei recognized the horse and the shape of the man’s hood.
Ilbei quickened his strides, hoping to catch the man before he got away, but he couldn’t get there in time, not even at a run. He would have called out, but he didn’t want to draw the attention of anyone inside. Soon the man was gone, galloping into the darkness beneath the trees, headed somewhere along the steppe to the northeast.
The curious timing of the man’s getaway made Ilbei rub his beard, wondering once again and slowing his pace. He debated now whether he wanted to go back in at all. Surely the major would have noticed the man leaving too, wouldn’t he? It might have struck him odd. But then again, the major was at his hand in gambling, so no telling what he was paying attention to beyond the game. Although, a man couldn’t shark an old sport like Ilbei as fast as the major had without seeing everything—or without cheating, of course.
Ilbei waited several minutes to see if the major, or anyone else for that matter, came out, but no one did. When the thumps of the retreating hoofbeats were gone, there was once more only the dull roar of the waterfall and the muted notes of a lute and fiddle squeezing through the shutters.
Ilbei made his decision. He turned back and walked briskly down the trail, gathering up Mags as he went. He took the lead rope from her, gripping it where it was affixed to the halter just below the horse’s jaw, and he tugged both Mags and the mare along. “Come on,” he said. “Quick now.”
He hissed for Jasper to join him, signing for Kaige and Meggins to shadow them for a time in the trees, keeping an eye out for anyone following. He and Mags waited for Jasper to join them, and then the three of them moved down at a steady clip for several hundred yards. When he was satisfied he and Mags were beyond hearing of Fall Pools, he stopped and waited for Kaige and Meggins to catch up and emerge from the darkness.
“Kaige, you and Jasper take Mags back to Cedar Wood. Meggins, you’re with me. We’re goin to follow that Gad Pander feller best we can and see where he’s run off to hide. If’n me and Meggins ain’t back at Cedar Wood before breakfast after next, you three get on back to Hast as quick as ya can. Tell the lieutenant what we seen with the Skewer, and make sure to tell him to get word to the general that the major is actin strange, gamblin up folks’ money, and that there’s a counterfeit operation afoot. If’n ya can, ya tell that to the general direct. Just make sure they understand this here neck of the woods needs a whole company to sort it out, and I don’t expect that green lordlin of a major up there has anythin in hand but cheatin at cards. Out here, and with these sorts of folks, well, when they get wind of that, there’s nothin to keep Cavendis from disappearin fer good. They’ll find him a year from now floatin dead in some backwoods waterway like that old harpy was, and they’ll have had that horse of his in the stew.”
Jasper looked to Kaige, then back to Ilbei, a horrified expression tugging outward at his face.
“Oh, now I was just sayin so about the horse,” Ilbei said in response to Jasper’s apparent shock. “My gods, but you young folks is so particular about yer critters anymore. Try to take my meanin, son.”
“It’s not the horse that concerns me, Sergeant. It’s just that … well, I don’t think we should separate.” He made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was terrified. “What if Ergo the Skewer comes along?”
Mags slid her quarterstaff out from where she’d tucked it behind the pannier and said, “I can hold my own if I have to, Sergeant. I lived with the Sisters of Mercy until I was sixteen.”
Ilbei grinned. “That’s the spirit, Mags.” He looked back to Jasper. “See there, Jasper? Now if’n you’re that worried fer it, ya can dig through yer satchel there and get one of them paper spells ready just in case. Bein as Kaige can whip most any three men if’n he’s got half a chance, and between the lot of ya, well, you’ll be all right so long as ya stay to the trail. You’ll be at Cedar Wood before daylight.”
“I wasn’t volunteering to go down to Cedar Wood, Sergeant,” Mags said. “I was agreeing with Jasper that we shouldn’t split up. And if we’re being honest, I’m in no mood to run away from the fight, either.” She glanced up the mountain, squinting a little, as if she were looking at something, or someone. “Frankly, my dander is up, if you want the truth. And it is my home these people are ruining, you know.”
Ilbei blinked a few times, jerking back at that response in the way people do when large flying insects have just bounced off their foreheads. Jasper’s obvious glee proved he was happy to have an ally on that front. Ilbei glanced at him, then at Mags with her quarterstaff planted firmly on the ground. His left eye nearly closed under the weight of that scrutiny.
“Well I didn’t put it up fer a vote,” he said. “This here is my outfit, and I say you’re goin back, and that’s the end of it.”
“Well, I’m not in your outfit, and I don’t want to go back. And for that matter, what am I going to do in Hast? Start over? Again? I’m tired of it. I’m tired of feeling afraid, I’m tired of being walked on, and I’m tired of feeling weak. The whole way down here just now, I kept thinking about that man up there, that idiot Ivan Gangue. I felt so stupid and pathetic, shaking there like some frightened child. And I didn’t like how it felt to have my hands tied up the other day, either. Waiting to be saved. I’m sick of waiting to be saved, sick of having my hands tied. And while I mean you no disrespect, Sergeant—you are the kindest, sweetest, bravest man I know—I’ll not be ordered around or pushed around again.”
“Well, I …,” Ilbei began, but his voice died when he realized he didn’t have any idea what to say. His mustache and beard twitched around on his face for a time, as if together they were a ratty old blanket and something was crawling around underneath. He tried again. “Thing is, Mags, it ain’t a question of whether ya are brave enough, mad enough or even good enough with that there staff. It’s a matter of speed. Me and Meggins can move along pretty quick after that feller, even with him on a horse. And we need to get to it, not pick our way cautious like. If we can find out where they’s hid, and maybe how big the outfit is, we can figure what next to do.”
“He’s going to the old ettin cave east of the scissor switchback.”
“The what?” Ilbei had heard what she said, but he needed a moment to process the surprise.
“The ettin cave.”
“How do ya know that?”
“It’s the only place near water other than the big caves where the Softwater comes out and the little one where Harpy Creek flows from. He didn’t get on the switchbacks because they start behind Fall Pools, and that’s not how his horse would have sounded as he ran up the trail. So, if he didn’t go up, then there’s nothing else that way but woods till you come to Harpy Creek.”
Ilbei’s cheek twitched some, making his beard seem to crawl in the dim moonlight. “He could have a place anywhere out there, then. Hid in the trees. Or he could work down the mountain some. Get around behind us and stay in one of them abandoned camps. Hells, he could just hide under a rock.”
“He could, but those huts were all long vacant, as you’ll recall. And as he only came to Camp Chaparral three times all year, he’s obviously staying closer to here than there, or we’d have seen him more often for sundries like I sell. But he doesn’t. He only comes by on his way to Hast.”
“I know folks what can live years without passin within a hundred measures of a big ci
ty, much less any of the Three Tents camps. The sort of people what can do without no help or nobody and do it just fine.”
“Perhaps, but he won’t do well without water, and since everything up the river was abandoned, and you and your men were all the way to where Harpy Creek comes out, then that ettin den is the only other place the water runs year round.”
“Well, why didn’t ya tell me that before?”
“Because you didn’t ask, and we weren’t going after him. We were going back to Hast to talk to your general.”
“Aye, we were. And ya were fine with goin then, too. Even seemed fine maybe stayin gone while we was at it.”
“And I might still be fine staying gone, but if I leave, I’m leaving on my terms, not … theirs.”
“So I see.” Ilbei looked in turn to each of his men. Kaige was clearly content to go anywhere. Jasper was clearly not going to be content anywhere they went. And when he got to Meggins, he saw a smirk on the wily soldier’s face that made him look as if he held the winning hand of cards, which, this time, Ilbei supposed he did. “Ya can wipe that damn grin right off yer whore-born face,” Ilbei said, but Meggins’ smile did not abate.
He turned back to Mags, who continued to stand her ground, her quarterstaff planted like the flagpole of resolute femininity. Ilbei never could account for the ways of women.
“Fine. But if’n ya get killed real long and awful, just remember I tried to tell ya that ya shoulda gone back to Cedar Wood. All of ya.”
“We’ll remember,” Meggins said. “Now can we go? He’s already way ahead.”
Ilbei paused long enough to fix Mags with a frown, but she stepped out from under it and took Meggins by the arm instead. “This way, Mr. Meggins. He’ll be up this way.”
Ilbei’s frown lingered awhile longer, but in a benign sort of way, like the gray clouds that trail the worst part of a storm. The woman had spirit, he’d give her that. And, if he allowed for the truth of it, this was her home. He’d have stayed too.
Chapter 19
They made their way up the mountain, cutting directly through the woods on an angle Mags assured them would get them to the old ettin cave. Meggins stepped into a spring snare forty minutes up the hill, and after they’d finally cut him down, they’d been forced to go even slower than before.
An hour more passed. They crept through the darkness, blind but for rare patches of dim moonlight and a small radiant circle of their torch, which sent long shadows out from the trees around them like the black spokes of a wheel turned inside out. Finally Mags bade them stop. “It should be very close. We might be able to see their fire, if they have one.”
“Wait,” Jasper said. “You said this cave we’re going to is an ettin cave. Twice, you called it that, the first time referring to it as an old ettin cave, the second as simply an ettin cave. So is it an old ettin cave, in that the cave is old and an ettin lives there, or is it just a cave in which ettins used to live in days of old, but live there no longer? And I suppose as a third option, I should ask if you meant that it is a cave of indeterminate age but in which lives an old ettin—that option being only slightly better than the first, and markedly worse than the second. So which is it?”
Exasperation escaped from Ilbei in a short grunt. “Jasper, I swear, son, if’n ya don’t grow a spine soon, you’re like to collapse in on yerself. There ain’t no damned ettin, or folks would have said so long before, and a pack of highway robbers wouldn’t be the first time they called the army up here.” He looked to Mags for confirmation.
“I’ve never actually been in it,” she admitted. “But this close to Fall Pools, someone would have said something by now.”
“Well, that’s not very reassuring,” Jasper said.
“What’s a ettin?” Kaige asked.
“It’s nothin, that’s what,” said Ilbei. “Now let’s go. Meggins, put that torch out so our eyes can adjust.”
Meggins extinguished the torch, and for a time they all stood in the silent darkness.
“Ettins are two-headed giants,” Jasper said. “But that’s all right. We’ll just pretend that isn’t important and stand here in the darkness trying not to smell like meat.”
“How big of giants?” Kaige asked.
“Jasper, if’n ya answer that, I’ll tie that flappin tongue of yers in a knot and cork yer pipe with it. Not one more word. Same fer you, Kaige.”
“There,” came Meggins’ hiss through the darkness some distance up the slope. “I see it. West a spell. We’ve come back up and found the cliff again.”
Ilbei and the rest followed the sound of Meggins’ voice, and soon they too could see the sheer wall of the steppe rising suddenly out of the trees, gently curving in either direction, though in the darkness, none of them could see its upper edge. Ilbei found Meggins and put his hand on the man’s shoulder. He looked around the tree behind which Meggins had placed himself, and sure enough, some two hundred paces along the base of the rock face there was a flickering glow, a panting tongue of golden light licking out into the trees.
“Well, they didn’t bother to hide from us,” Meggins said in a low whisper. “So they either didn’t think we’d come or don’t care if we do.”
“Or else there’s an ettin in there preparing the cook fires for the meal we’ve come delivering,” Jasper put in.
“Hush, you,” Ilbei said. “Now, all of ya stay here a spell. Meggins, you and me, let’s go have a look. Swing wide.”
They went downhill a ways and crept from tree to tree, keeping to the absolute darkest parts of the woods. When they came close enough to look inside, they saw a large opening, twice as tall as it was wide, big enough for four mounted men abreast to ride through. A small stream of water, hardly a half span across, ran out from the middle of it and disappeared into the woods, heading northeast. Inside was a large chamber in which sat two men before a large fire built in a pit. Both men had cloth tied around the lower half of their faces, over nose and mouth, and both appeared to watch something in the fire reverently. Ilbei realized that the man on the left was working something with his foot, though whatever it was lay out of sight behind the stones banked around the fire. The man’s knee moved as it might have were it working the pedal of a spinning wheel.
Ilbei dared to creep up the hill, darting from tree to tree, to get a better look. Meggins shadowed him. They knelt and watched silently.
The men inside mumbled to one another as they stared into the fire, too far away to be heard clearly, and not speaking loudly enough to project. At length, first one then the other pulled what initially looked to be long black rods from the fire. They raised them up, then turned at the waist, without standing, and swung the hot ends around, revealing crucibles at the end of each rod, not very large, but glowing red hot from the flames. They tipped the contents out and, from Ilbei’s perspective, appeared to pour it onto the rocks around the fire. When that was done, they leaned down and each pulled something from a wooden box that sat between them on the ground. Whatever they took out, they then dropped into the still-glowing crucibles. In the smooth movements of a practiced activity, they turned back and plunged the ends of the long black rods into the fire. The man on the left began working his foot again.
“What do you suppose that’s all about?” Meggins asked, his voice so low it was hardly audible.
“They’re meltin somethin,” Ilbei said. “And I don’t expect it’s anythin other than part of that counterfeitin enterprise we’re onto. We’ll need to get inside fer a better look.”
“Want me to get closer?”
“No, let’s get back to the others. I don’t like leavin them two fools together too long alone, lest they work up a disaster of some kind. I doubt poor Mags could keep em from it.”
Meggins nodded that he agreed.
When the group was reunited, Ilbei laid out his plan. It was simple, relying on numerical superiority: there were two men and five of them. Meggins and Ilbei would go in first, Meggins with his bow at the ready, and move aroun
d toward the back of the cave. Kaige and Jasper would come in, Jasper with an offensive spell in hand. Ilbei would bind both men hand and foot, while Mags would stay at the cave entrance, just inside but well behind the rest, her role to make sure nobody came in from behind. Ilbei expected her to protest, to insist on a more frontline role, given her newly acquired bellicose attitude, but she did not.
“Ya stay where we can see ya, Mags,” he said. “Don’t go out lookin around.”
She nodded that she understood, content to have a part.
They crept together to the edge of the cave, weapons out and Ilbei with four short lengths of cord tucked into the back of his pants to bind the men as prisoners. When they were near enough, Jasper drew out his small hand mirror and angled it so that it caught the reddish firelight bouncing off the inside of the cave entrance. He used the light to illuminate the inside of his satchel of scrolls. He rummaged in it for a while, the rustling of the parchment tubes making Ilbei cringe, certain the men would come charging out at any time.
Jasper extracted a scroll, slid its ribbon off, then reshouldered the satchel. He dropped the small mirror into a front pocket on the bag and nodded to Ilbei that he was ready.
Ilbei looked to each of the others in turn, and all nodded likewise. He straightened, for he’d been crouching, and then he and Meggins went in.
They could hear the breathing of a small bellows as they rounded the nearest edge of the entrance, and upon stepping into the bright orange firelight, a wave of heat washed over them. The man at the bellows, for that’s what the movement of the man’s foot had been, gassed the fire twice more before he realized that Ilbei and Meggins had come in. He grunted, which prompted the other man to look up, though slowly, as if waking from a daydream, the sort brought about by hours of monotonous work in a very warm place. It took him a moment to realize what was happening, and his eyes widened as his companion’s had. He opened his mouth to say something, but Ilbei stopped him.