would we save very much time if we went
straight on across the Tamul Mountains to reach Sepal? We
thought we’d catch a fery or some trading ship there, go across
the Sea of Arjun to Tiara and then ride on down to Saras. It’s
only a short way from there to Verel.’
‘i’d advise staying out of the Tamul Mountains, my friends.’
‘Bad weather?’ Tynian asked him.
That’s always possible at this time of year, Corporal, but there
have been some distirbing reports coming out of those mountains.
It seems that the bears up there have been breeding like
rabbits. Every traveler who’s come through here in the past
few weeks reports sighting the brutes. Fortunately they all run
away.’
“bears, you say?’
The Tamul smiled. ‘i’m translating. The ignorant peasants
around here use the word “monster”, but we all know what a
large, shaggy creature who lives alone in the mountains is, don’t
we?’
‘Peasants are an excitable lot, aren’t they?’ Ulath laughed,
draining his tankard. ‘We were out on a training exercise once,
and this peasant came running up to us claiming that he was
being chased by a pack of wolves. When we went out to take a
look, it turned out to be one lone fox. The size and number of
any wild animal a peasant sees seems to grow with each passing
hour.’
‘Or each tankard of ale,’ Tynian added.
They talked with the now-polite official for a while longer,
and then the man wished them a good journey and left.
‘Well, it’s nice to know that the Trolls made it this far south,’
Ulath said. ‘i’d hate to have to go looking for them.’
‘Their Gods were guiding them, Ulath,’ Tynian pointed out.
‘You’ve never talked with the Troll-Gods, I see,’ Ulath
laughed. ‘Their sense of direction is a little vague – probably
because their compass only has two directions on it.’
‘Oh?’
‘North and not-north. It makes finding places a little difficult.”
The storm was one of those short, savage gales that seem to
come out of nowhere in the late autumn. Khalad had dismissed
the possibility of finding any kind of shelter in the salt marshes
and had turned instead to the beach. At the head of a shallow
inlet he had found the mountain of driftwood he’d been seeking.
A couple of hours of fairly intense labor had produced a snug,
even cozy little shelter on the leeward side of the pile.
The gale struck just as the last light was fading. The wind
screamed through the huge pile of driftwood. The surf crashed
and thundered against the beach, and the rain sheeted horizontally
across the ground in the driving wind.
Khalad and Berit, however, were warm and dry. They sat with
their backs against the huge, bleached-white log that formed the
rear wall of their shelter and their feet stretched out toward their
crackling fire. ‘You always amaze me, Khalad,’ Berit said. ‘How did you
know that there’d be boards mixed in amongst all this
driftwood?’
‘There always are,’ Khalad shrugged. ‘Any time you find one
of these big heaps of driftwood, you’re going to find sawed
lumber as well. Men make ships out of boards, and ships get
wrecked. The boards float around until the wind and currents
and tides push them to the same sheltered places where the
sticks and the logs have been accumulating.’ He reached up and
patted the ceiling. ‘Finding this hatch-cover all in one piece was
a stroke of luck, though, I’ll grant you that.’ He rose to his feet
and went to the front of the shelter. ‘It’s really blowing out
there,’ he noted. He extended his hands toward the fire. ‘Cold,
too. The rain’s probably going to turn to sleet before midnight.’
‘Yes,’ Berit agreed pleasantly. ‘I certainly pity anybody caught
out in the open on a night like this.’ He grinned.
‘Me too,’ Khalad grinned back. He lowered his voice, although
there was no real need. ‘Can you get any sense of what he’s
thinking?’
‘Nothing specific,’ Berit replied. ‘He’s seriously uncomfortable,
though.’
‘What a shame.’
‘There’s something else, though. He’s going to come and talk
with us. He has a message of some kind for us.’
‘is he likely to come in here tonight?’
Berit shook his head. ‘He has orders not to make contact until
tomorrow morning. He’s very much afraid of whoever told him
what to do and when to do it, so he’ll obey those orders to the
letter. How’s that ham coming?’
Khalad drew his dagger and used its point to lift the lid of
the iron pot half-buried in embers at the edge of the fire. The
steam that came boiling out smelled positively delicious. ‘It’s
ready. As soon as the beans are done, we can eat.’
‘if our friend out there is down-wind of us, that smell should
add to his misery just a bit.’ Berit chuckled.
‘I sort of doubt it, Sparhawk. He’s a Styric, and he’s not
allowed to eat pork.’
‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten about that. He’s a renegade, though.
maybe he’s discarded his dietary prejudices.’
‘We’ll find out in the morning. When he comes to us
tomorrow, I’ll offer him a piece. Why don’t you saw off a few
slices of that loaf of bread? I’ll toast them on the pot-lid here.’
The wind had abated somewhat the following morning, and the
rain had slacked off to a few fitful spatters stuttering on the
hatch-cover roof. They had more of the ham and beans for breakfast
and began to get things ready to pack. ‘What do you think?’
Berit asked.
‘Let’s make him come to us. Sitting tight until the last of the
rain passes wouldn’t be all that unusual.’ Khalad looked speculatively
at his friend.
‘Would you be offended by a bit of advice, my Lord?’ he asked.
‘Of course not.’
‘You look like Sparhawk, but you don’t sound very much like
him, and your mannerisms aren’t quite right. When the Styric
comes, make your face colder and harder. Keep your eyes narrow.
Sparhawk squints. You’ll also want to keep your voice low
and level. Sparhawk’s voice gets very quiet when he’s angry and
he calls people “neighbor” a lot. He can put all sorts of
meaning into that one word.’
‘That’s right, he does call just about everybody “neighbor”,
doesn’t he? I’d almost forgotten that. You’ve got my permission
to correct me any time I start to lose my grip on the real Sparhawk,
Khalad.’
‘Permission?’
‘Poor choice of words there, I suppose.”
‘You might say that, yes.’
‘The climate got a little too warm for us back in Matherion,’
Caalador said, leaning back in his chair. He looked directly at
the hard-faced man seated across from him. ‘i’m sure you take
my meaning, Order.’
The hard-faced man laughed. ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied. ‘I’ve left
a few places about one jump ahead of the law a time or two
myself.’ Order was an Elene from Vardenaise who ran a seedy
tavern on the waterfront in Delo. He was a burly ruffian who
prospered here because Elene criminals felt comfortable in the
familiar surroundings of an Elene tavern and because Order was
willing to buy things from them – at about a tenth of their real
value – without asking questions.
‘What we really need is a new line of work.’ Caalador gestured
at Kalten and Bevier, disguised with new faces and rough, mismatched
clothing. ‘A fairly high personage in the Ministry of the
Interior was in charge of the group of policemen who stopped by
to ask us some embarrassing questions.’ He grinned at Bevier,
who wore the face of one of his brother Cyrinics, an evil-looking
knight who had lost an eye in a skirmish in Render and covered
the empty socket with a black patch. ‘My one-eyed friend there
didn’t care for the fellow’s attitude, so he lopped his head off
with that funny-looking hatchet of his.’
Order looked at the weapon Bevier had laid on the table
beside his ale-tankard. ‘That’s a lochaber axe, isn’t it?’ he asked.
Bevier grunted. Kalten felt that Bevier’s flair for dramatics
was pushing him a little far. The black eye-patch was’ probably
enough, but Bevier’s participation in amateur theatricals as a
student made him seem to want to go to extremes. His intent
was obviously to appear dangerously competent. What he was
achieving, however, was the appearance of a homicidal maniac.
‘Doesn’t a lochaber usually have a longer handle?’ Order
asked.
‘It wouldn’t fit under my tunic,’ Bevier growled, ‘so I sawed
a couple of feet off the handle. It works well enough – if you
keep chopping with it. The screaming and the blood don’t bother
me all that much, so it suits me just fine.’
Order shuddered and looked slightly sick. ‘That’s the meanest
-looking weapon I’ve ever seen,’ he confessed.
‘Maybe that’s why I like it so much,’ Bevier told him.
Order looked at Caalador. ‘What line were you and your