by Daniel Ford
“Fine, dwarf. Fine. But keep your potions in their bags unless you mean to poison our enemies.”
Torvul opened his mouth as if to protest, thought better, merely nodded.
“So if you know the spot, where do we start scratching?”
Torvul pointed a single long finger in the direction of the hills, westward. “Plenty of old smuggler caves in there. Bring cargo by boat to the beach, with no tower, lighthouse, or guardpost twenty miles to north or south, walk it a day into the hills, stash it. Best way to bring goods into Delondeur, really.”
“Then you are telling us that the hills are lousy with pirates?”
Torvul snorted. “Hardly. You people like playing at war with each other so much lately, no profit in piracy. Too likely you wind up chained to a galley oar, and nobody’s got the links to spend on smuggled goods anyway.”
“I would not call it playing at war, dwarf,” Allystaire remarked coolly.
“No? Then what would you call it, spending twenty, thirty years fighting a war nobody can win over a crown nobody seems to want.”
“I agree it is senseless; that does not make it any less serious for the men and women and children who suffer and die.”
“Well it’s you lot of barons and lords who’re killing ‘em, and I tell you what, one good Dwarfish Legion from the Homes’d sweep your knights and their toy soldiers aside and set all this business aright.”
“Then where are the Dwarfish Legions now, alchemist? Misplaced them, have we? Forgot to bring them with us out of the tunnels?
Torvul’s face darkened and he practically shouted, “That’s not for the likes of you to joke about—”
Idgen Marte suddenly and improbably slapped each of them hard on the back of the head, first Allystaire, then Torvul; Allystaire had learned to stop trying to follow her movements in moments like this. She was behind him, then behind the dwarf, and if he tried to stop and plot how she went from one place to the other as fast as she did, he felt a bit queasy. With the smacks delivered, she said, “Boys, you can measure your swords later if you must. Now, attend to what needs doing. That means finding that son-of-a-bitch, Rede. Aye?”
“Aye,” they sullenly agreed, more or less in unison.
“Good. Now, have we a chance at finding them before dark, or should we rest?”
“I want to take them with light in the sky,” Allystaire said, “if possible.”
“Masterful grasp of tactics, that,” Torvul muttered, not quite inaudibly.
Allystaire merely sighed and gave a low whistle; Ardent, who had, along with Idgen Marte’s courser, drifted to the grassy side of the muddy road and begun grazing, ambled over and nudged Allystaire’s shoulder with his nose.
“He has his reasons, dwarf,” Idgen Marte said, quietly.
“You seem a sensible lass,” Torvul said. “Mayhap you can talk him into a smarter approach. You don’t attack a larger force in daylight.”
“Maybe you do not, dwarf,” Allystaire suddenly broke in, having mounted Ardent and walked the horse around to face Torvul and Idgen Marte, with the golden sunburst on his shield—a little dented from these weeks of wear and travel, but still vibrant—facing them. “Yet I want these men to know I am coming, to see me approach them openly with the Mother’s sun blazing behind me, lighting my way. I want them to know I come amongst them unafraid, and that their ruin comes with me. Men like those make honest folk fear the dark. It is time they learn to fear the sun.” Then, with a nudge of his knees, he turned Ardent and trotted off, leaving Idgen Marte smiling and Torvul scratching his expansive forehead in silence.
“And still, you doubt?” Idgen Marte murmured, turning her scarred grin at Torvul, shaking her head gently. “If you won’t believe, dwarf, you’ll just have to see.”
* * *
They made camp as unobtrusively as they could, several dozens of yards off the road and much to Torvul’s indignation, who protested the rough treatment of his team and wagon. The stands of slightly thinning and yellowing trees scattered along the road offered little protection but allowed a clear view of anyone moving on the road or approaching them, so they parked the wagon in front of a slight rise and made camp.
They were mostly silent as camp was made; Allystaire and Idgen Marte saw to the hitching, unsaddling, and care of Ardent and her courser, and the dwarf to his team. When this was done, Allystaire began the long and somewhat noisy process of removing his armor. Torvul leaned against one of his wagon wheels, arms crossed over his broad chest, tongue tucked into one side of his mouth, watching carefully. As Idgen Marte was helping him with the cuirass, the dwarf spoke up.
“I could make this a little easier,” he said, lifting one hand and pointing at the pair of them. “Make it so it’s a one-man job.”
“It can be,” Allystaire replied, “just takes longer that way.”
“Point is it doesn’t need to,” the dwarf countered mildly. “You’ve got too many redundant straps. It doesn’t need to cling to your body like a second skin. Keep it a bit loose, it’ll shed a little more force.”
Allystaire shook his head. “I knew men who believed that. Saw too many of them trip, catch on something.” With some straps free, his breastplate was off, and he bent to unbuckle his greaves. “Saw one get his loosened gauntlet caught on his swordbelt. He was still trying to tug it free when he died.”
Torvul shrugged noncommittally. “Fair enough.”
When Allystaire was down to his gambeson, he quickly changed it for a shirt and vest. Idgen Marte rummaged in pile of saddlebags and found food—a hard loaf, cheese with a thick rind—and made a hasty meal. She and Allystaire drifted a few steps away from the dwarf, who suddenly found himself busy inside his wagon.
“D’ya want me to do anything besides find ‘em?”
Allystaire shrugged, wincing as he did, and reaching up with his right hand to rub his left shoulder. “Use your judgment. If there is no risk to the folk they have taken, do what you like. If there is…”
Idgen Marte nodded, turned, and started to walk off, then stopped and looked back to him with a piece of her bottom lip stuck under her teeth. “This feels wrong. Rede is an idiot, but not…” she trailed off uncertainly.
Allystaire sighed and pressed his eyes closed a moment. “I thought that of him as well. Yet if he has gone mad, who can know?”
Idgen Marte gave a short, sharp shake of her head, her long braid a dancing shadow for a moment. “If he had gone mad, Renard and Mol never would’ve let him leave.”
“He could have slunk away in the dark.”
“Renard would’ve had him watched.”
“You are not suggesting that anything has happened to—”
Idgen Marte shook her head again. “We’d know.”
Allystaire chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment. “Trap?”
“I’m of a mind that it might be.”
“Be cautious, then.”
She smiled faintly and said, “Careful, yes. Cautious?” She turned and walked into the growing shadows of the trees; she did not slowly fade out of view, nor was she lost in the gloaming. One moment she was in his sight, the next she had simply vanished.
“How does she do that?” Torvul had exited his wagon and casually crept up on Allystaire. “And how does she expect to find ‘em up in that warren of hills in one night? I’d expect it to take four, five days.”
“The same way I made you tell the truth,” Allystaire replied, tamping down his surprise at the dwarf’s sudden appearance, pretending to adjust his vest as he turned around.
“Your goddess, then?”
“Aye,” Allystaire replied, walking past the dwarf without eye contact.
“Look boy,” Torvul said, stomping after him doggedly, “this is a lot for an old dwarf to take in. Maybe don’t take it so hard if I don’t buy what you’re selling.”
Allys
taire stopped in his tracks and turned wearily toward the dwarf, his hands bunching into fists around his belt. “I am not selling anything. I have explained myself to you already and I do not mean to again. Doubts are yours to keep. Keep them quietly.”
“I’ve a right to speak if I’ve a mind,” Torvul insisted.
“Aye, surely you do,” Allystaire said, adding smoothly, “and I had a right to ride on and let those folk hang you but I did not. Ask yourself—what profit have I made by it?”
Torvul thought on this a while, his eyes narrowed. “You could mean to murder me and steal my links, weight, and gemmary. You know about all of it.”
“Why not let the villagers hang you and take it from them? Less trouble all around.”
“I—”
“Would be hanging if not for me. If you feel you owe me anything for saving your neck from the hangman’s noose, then by all the misery in the world, be silent with your doubts and your endless questions.”
“You’ve a point there. Fair enough.” Torvul cleared his throat, turned from Allystaire, and meandered slowly toward his wagon, disappearing inside it. He re-emerged holding a thick, well-shaped clay jug with a cork stopper plugging it, the cork held to the neck of the bottle with string. Allystaire was settling himself in front of the packs, with food akin to what Idgen Marte had eaten before vanishing. “What do you say to some Dwarfish beer?”
“Was it made by—”
“By me? ‘Course it was. Be easy. No alchemy. Just brewing. Pure art, no magic, no chance it’s gone off. I’d stake my life on it.” As if to prove the point, he thumbed the cork from the bottle and took a long swallow, then offered the jug to the seated Allystaire.
“That being the case, then Cold, yes,” he said, reaching for it and taking a long swig, sitting up straighter in startled shock at the first taste. He took another long pull, then sighed heavily. “That is proper beer. Have you any idea what passes for beer in the farmhouses around this barony?”
Torvul snorted as he took the bottle back and squatted down to one knee himself. “It’s criminal. Why do you think I carry my own?” He took a hearty swig and again offered the bottle to Allystaire. “I’ve plenty in the wagon. And more is on the way; drink as much as you like.”
Allystaire accepted the jug but took only a sip, explaining with a rueful shrug, “As much as I like and I would be of no use in the morning, I fear. I will enjoy what I can, though.”
“Been travelin’ that long, just the pair of you?”
“Since after high summer, but before its end.”
“Sleeping hard every night?”
“Most,” Allystaire said, treating himself to a smaller and more measured swig of beer and a satisfied sigh, as he handed it back. “We started with little silver and no gold and have not added to it on the way. A few nights we have been offered a hayloft or a shed. Twice, a pair of spare beds in a village inn. Once, a few weeks ago, the folk of a village the other side of the Thasryach insisted on giving us the best beds in the village.”
“What’d you do to earn such a princely gift,” Torvul wondered, grinning and not bothering to hide the faint hint of mockery in his voice. He began tilting the jug toward his lips.
“There was an infant, a boy child. His lungs were…” He searched for a word and settled on, “ill formed. The Mother’s Gift put the breath back into them and filled them out, or, filled them up, mayhap? I do not know the words; I am no chirurgeon. Suffice to say, the child will live.”
Torvul’s arm paused in mid lift, a single drop of dark brown liquid hanging precariously from the tilted jug’s lip. “You fixed a child’s lungs? How?”
“I already said. A Gift, from the Goddess.” He held up his left hand, palm inward.
“Your hand is a Gift from a Goddess?” Torvul carefully, slowly, set down the jug.
“I told you to leave off the doubting.”
“Fine, fine.” The dwarf had another swig of beer and set the half-empty clay vessel between them. “So when do you expect her back?”
“Idgen Marte? When she is done.”
“No worries she’ll be found out?”
At this, Allystaire only chuckled lightly, his eyes wrinkling, and shook his head. “No. None at all, in fact.”
“Could have a lot of sentries out.”
“They will not see her.”
Torvul rubbed his creased forehead with thumb and forefinger and muttered, “Lot of confidence you have in her.”
“Not confidence,” Allystaire said, reaching for the jug. “Faith.”
“Faith,” Torvul repeated, his mouth stretched into a line.
“Aye, Faith,” Allystaire repeated. He finished his swig and carefully thumbed the cork back into it as he set it down. “You could do with a bit of that yourself, I suspect.” He slowly and heavily pulled himself to his feet and walked to the nearby pile of saddlebags and saddles that he and Idgen Marte had stripped from their mounts and pack animal. He drew his hammer to his side, settled down, stretched his legs, and crossed them at the ankle.
“You sleep like that?”
“Usually,” Allystaire replied, letting his shoulders and his neck rest against the packs.
“Why?”
“A score of years playing at war will do this to a man, I suppose. Sleep well, alchemist. We will be up with the dawn, if not before.”
Torvul cringed, standing and collecting his jug, cradling it against his belly in the crook of one arm. “Dawn?”
“Not a moment after.”
The dwarf walked away grumbling in an odd and guttural language, glancing back once at the man who was already drifting into a quick and light sleep, while sitting nearly upright with a hammer under his right hand, as if he expected to jump up and go straight into a fight.
CHAPTER 28
Learning to Fear the Sun
Allystaire woke to Idgen Marte’s hand resting lightly on his shoulder as she squatted beside him. He lifted his head, blinked his eyes once slowly, holding them closed as if savoring, for just a moment, the hint of sleep that remained. Then he opened them; even narrowed and weary, they missed little. “What did you find?”
“I didn’t see Rede,” Idgen Marte said. “I don’t even know if he’s giving the orders.”
“Who is?”
She shook her head, a short but precise movement, a dim shadow against the darker blackness of the night; slowly, by degrees, starlight and a bright sliver of moon were beginning to make shapes clearer, and her face became more distinct. “I can’t tell. No proper organization to the camp; it’s a pigpen. The two guards I saw were sleeping and there seemed to be a fire for every two men. We could go tonight, right now, and scatter them.”
“I meant what I—”
“—what you said. I know. You always do,” Idgen Marte cut him off, an exasperated sigh trying to escape behind her words. She stood and said, “Dawn, then. I will lead us back to them.” She strode toward a tree, then turned back. “Something was wrong. What, I don’t know…but there was a scent. A wrong one.”
“A scent?”
She nodded, her thick braid of hair bobbing. “Aye. Go back to sleep. Dawn?”
“Dawn.”
By the time he answered, she was already climbing her way quickly and skillfully up a tree and settling into its branches. He settled back into his pile of saddlebags, shifted his tired legs and tried to ease the small knot of soreness that formed, every night, at the very base of his back. Despite that ember of pain, he eventually drifted back to sleep.
It seemed like only moments later he was opening his eyelids on the very first rays of light. The tiniest hint of chill in the air seemed likely to burn off soon. He stood, gathered up his hammer, and walked to the tree into which Idgen Marte had scampered. He gently kicked the trunk a few times with the toe of his boot, wincing as it pushed sensation back into his tingling,
sleep-deadened foot. He heard muted curses from her perch in its branches and walked on to Torvul’s wagon, where he pulled himself slowly up onto the board and rapped three times on the door. “Time we are away.”
Grumbling and guttural croaking sounded from inside the wagon. Eventually the door opened, and Torvul’s head and densely-knotted bare shoulders stuck out. “Not a civilized time to make war. Humans, always with the dawn.”
“There is no civilized time for war,” Allystaire said, his lips thinly pressed over his teeth. “Be ready in a quarter of a turn.”
“Fine, fine.” Torvul disappeared and his door slammed shut.
While he was out of sight, Idgen Marte helped Allystaire saddle Ardent and her dark brown courser, then helped him on with his full armor, sword, hammer. His shield he looped on his pommel, and lance he couched in the boot on the right-hand side of his saddle. She was already wearing her dark grey arming coat, but she slipped an iron-plated headband around her head, tugging it carefully into place above her eyes. When Torvul emerged, he was once again wearing his long hooded jerkin with its many loops and pouches and had produced a pair of weapons—a wide, broadly curved, but short stocked crossbow and a stout length of a hard-looking white wood, capped with heavy, rune-inscribed metal at the slightly thicker end. He laid these beside his driver’s seat, then produced another earthenware jug of similar workmanship to the night before, only smaller.