“You headed south, following her trail.”
“Aye, that I did. Weren’t no trail to follow, though. Too much time passed. Should’a gone right quick, ’stead of drowning my woes in ale. I did odd jobs, slept in fields, gleaned fruit from orchards, heading south. Fell in with some traveling field hands last summer. They had a leader, a big man, you seen him, went by the name of Lelex. Fancy name for a farmhand.”
Rothgar tried to laugh, but all the came out was a sickening, wheezing cough.
“We called him Red. End of last harvest season, Red says to us, he says he knows a hideout, up in the Alps, near a road. Says he we can tax the travelers, hunt bear and deer, live good and free. I followed him, we all did. We had money enough to buy bows an’ arrows. Merchant caravans come up the trail, we’d tax them, send them on. We’d never have come within a mile of you lot had we known you was in the king’s damn army. Red, he had big dreams, and they got bigger every month. He said you were just hired guards and’d turn tail as soon as the horns blew.”
Rothgar’s voice had sunk to nearly a whisper. Sandun, Basil, and two other scouts drew close. “Here I am, breathing out my last on this earth. Never found my darling Sally. If the Black Terror don’t grab my spirit, Sho’Ash, aid me…aid me…”
The men around him all made the sign of the spear. Rothgar breathed weakly for a time and then died.
“I wonder how much of that story was true,” Basil said as he and Sandun walked by the riverside while the scouts dug a grave.
“Do people actually lie with their final words?”
“He lied about his daughter. Acting troupes cannot take women with them. It’s the law, and it is enforced in almost every town. On my journeys, I’ve spent the night with several traveling players over the last decade. They loved sharing tales of young women begging to run away with them. Actors have creative ways to shame the girls and send them packing. Seems there are always new ones in every town with stars in their eyes and nary a thought in their pretty heads. For the players, its far better to move on to a new town unencumbered than risk being convicted for traveling with an unmarried woman.”
Sandun protested, “I’ve seen plays with women in them, and it was no illusion of paint either.”
“Ah, Sandun, you should get out more. Things are different in the big cities. Seopolis has professional acting companies. Actors are allowed to marry and settle down if they can make enough money. The licensed companies you find in Seopolis or Opomos often have the wives of actors playing roles. But if the company goes out to the countryside to perform, the women cannot go with them. My younger brother took up acting for several years, even joined a professional troupe in Thalapolis for a spell. Now he is a priest and a married man. I see him when I go north to hunt elk in the Modrokora Mountains.”
Two days passed. Once the dead were properly buried, they fished by the river, and Sandun practiced archery under Basil’s direction. As the sun was heading down the sky to the west on the third day, Sir Ako’s party returned.
Maklin, leading the mules, was looking rather hangdog. He hid under his straw hat, but eventually it became clear that he had taken several blows to the head. Sandun asked him about his face, but Maklin only grunted. Sandun caught a meaningful look from Sir Ako, and so he did not press the issue further. After they ate dinner, Sandun had a private word with the knight. “Any trouble on the road?”
“None going, none coming back,” Sir Ako replied cautiously.
“And in the town?”
“The Lord of Agitebus was off riding, but the shire reeve was happy to take custody of the prisoners. If the bandit leader lives, he will assuredly hang at the next assizes. The others can look forward to some hard years in chains, building roads.”
“And?” pressed Sandun.
Sir Ako took a deep breath. “Last night, at the Golden Horn…well, there was a bit of drinking. People standing us rounds, more than a few as a matter of fact. They were expressing their gratitude for our swift elimination of an apparently notorious group that had been harassing travelers and merchants for some months starting last fall.”
“But not sufficiently notorious for anyone to mention them to us when we passed their town four days ago. Do I detect a smell of guilt mixed with relief wafting up the road?”
“Could be. In any event, Scribe Maklin had more than enough drink, and when one comely lass, who was sitting in his lap, asked him where he was going and when he was coming back, he told her that he was going on a long journey to Serica and that he might die on the road before seeing another maiden so fair…” Sir Ako trailed off, his expression a mixture of dismay and combativeness. “Master Sandun, I tried to make amends, I told them the fellow was drunk and that we were going to collect old records from a library near Sirosfeld. This morning, I added to the misery of Scribe Maklin’s hangover with some hard knocks and harsh words. He will not make that mistake again.”
Sandun swore violently, “Sho’Ash’s shit! I cannot believe what you tell me. By King Pandion’s beard! I wish the fool had never come.” He took up a fallen branch and smashed it to pieces against a tree.
After breathing hard for a minute, Sandun regained a measure of calm. “It cannot be helped. The rat has slipped the sack, and there is no way to tempt it back. I guess I am partly to blame. I should have come with you instead of sitting here on my posterior, shooting at birds. I’ll talk to the young man. And do not blame yourself overmuch; no doubt you were distracted by a pretty lass with big blue eyes.”
Sir Ako smiled ruefully but said nothing.
Sandun went over to Maklin. The young man was lying down but staring up into the darkening sky. The first stars were coming into view.
“Yes, I know,” said Sandun. “I am angry with you, Maklin. Your words have placed us all in greater danger than we were in before. You swore by Saint Hurin’s sword that you would not reveal the truth of the expedition to any man unless I gave you leave. And now, not a month later, you broke your oath. You are forsworn before Saint Hurin and Sho’Ash. But although you let drink cloud your mind, I am not sending you back to Tebispoli. You will share in the increased danger you brought on all of us. I hope we outlive your stupidity.”
Looking both relieved and ashamed, Maklin started to cry. He covered his face with his hands, but strangled sobs forced their way out.
Sandun continued, gently: “I remember what it was like, after a battle, drinking in a village square, young girls at our sides filling our mugs. There are no words to describe how happy you are, because you and your comrades came through the fighting alive. You lived, while other men ran and some died. Victory is a heady wine, strong and seductive. It makes you feel like you are someone new.” He slapped the young man on his arm. “Don’t let this happen again, yes?”
“Yes, Master Sandun. Thank you.”
Sandun wrapped himself in his blanket near Basil. He quietly explained the news.
Basil was not worried. “We are almost as far from Issedon as we are from Fiodroch. It was a drunken boast in a small tavern in an unimportant town.”
“Consider this, my friend. If I were a spy, and I heard of an unusual expedition sent by the Royal Archives, maybe I would follow, days behind, perhaps a week. I arrive at Agitebus, and where do I go? The Golden Horn, of course. I’m a traveler, a peddler of tin cups maybe, I naturally ask about the road ahead. Locals talk of bandits killed, the leader waiting for execution. It’s the talk of the town. And where are the heroes going? How long before someone repeats what Maklin said? Thirty minutes? An hour? It’s a juicy rumor, probably no one believes it, but a tale worth telling, worth repeating. Going to Serica? Incredible.”
Basil grunted, “Then what?”
“Hopefully nothing. It is, as you say, a long way to Issedon. And only you and I know where the map directs us. Erimasran is a vast land. Would King Tutaos of Issedon send a thousand wild horsemen into Erimasr
an on a rumor?”
“You speak of matters beyond my ken. I think we have much more to fear from Kelten’s bandits than wild riders coming out of Issedon. Good night, brother.”
For an hour, Sandun could find no rest as his mind spun around myriad possibilities. Finally, he put another log on the embers of the campfire and then fell asleep.
A week later, they reached the Kelten Alps’ summit, and although it was covered in snow, the path was plainly marked with piles of stones and wooden poles topped with colored flags. The trail markers were placed at every bend, often less than five hundred feet apart. Despite the altitude and the snows that usually covered the pass from Dyusmon (the eleventh month) until Ostarmon (the fourth month) people traveled the route almost year round. Now that spring was coming, it seemed every day they met a group of travelers heading downhill toward Agitebus or Opomos beyond.
A freezing wind blew snowflakes on them as they stood gazing in all directions. Looking down the steep, east-facing slope, they could see stone walls marking off farmland in the valley. In the distance, smoke was rising from many places—that was the town of Triconpoli. Through the haze, they could see one end of Lake Tricon.
Farther to the east, another line of mountains, the Arrokar Range, ascended rock on rock to meet the sky. Beyond those snowy peaks was Erimasran. Far, far beyond those peaks and invisible even from this great height, the mighty Tirala Mountains marked the eastern edge of Erimasran.
Looking back the way they’d come, they saw the great forest covering the land: a blanket of green with snowy fields peeking through clearings.
The horses began to stamp on the snow, expressing their unhappiness with this standing about and looking at scenery. Basil made quick sketches of the landscape but had no time to do more than guess at the heights of the nearby mountains. Most of the mountains near the road had been climbed; of late, men had lost their fear of the heights. The old stories of giants and dragons and Piksies had lost at least some of their power to frighten.
Taking out his farseer glass, Sandun looked at the tallest peak, south of them. He followed what looked like an easy path, up and up until, in his vision, he reached the top, and there was nothing but the endless blue beyond it.
As they followed the path down toward Triconpoli, the lake sometimes appeared between the trees to the north. It was a large lake, fully sixty miles long and fifteen miles at its widest. The path was not hard going down, though in one place an avalanche from the mountain above them had passed over the trail, which forced them to go around the broken chunks of snow and ice and take a steeper route down to the valley. It was nearly sunset when they finally reached the first farm, but everyone was eager to spend the night at the famous Bearskin Inn. So they rode along on a path that snaked between farmsteads, heading north as the pale sky became the color of rose petals. Dogs barked at them, and children came out of wooden cottages to wave at them as they passed by. The scent of burning pine logs filled the air. It seemed peaceful, and everyone breathed easier now that they were back among men and no longer alone in the wilderness.
As the night drew down upon them, the houses grew closer together and then streets appeared, paved with large pieces of granite more like slabs of stone than cobbles. Men and women, thickly bundled in furs or many layers of wool, were out walking. Most carried lantern candles; some servants carried torches for their masters, who followed them.
Sandun asked for directions to the inn and was told it was straight ahead of them. Soon it appeared out of the darkness, a tall building with a great sloped roof on both sides. The men of the expedition dismounted, left their horses and mules in the stables, and walked up the large stone stairs and into the heat of the inn.
Inside, the men of the expedition lost no time in ordering beer and roast meat. The beer they were promptly served was dark and had an unusual flavor.
“We make it w’th our own recipe. We roast the malt an’ do add barley and corn in the mash,” said the innkeeper, a large fellow with thick arms and a full beard. Sandun and Basil exchanged glances, but whatever strange grains were in the beer, it tasted fine at the end of a long journey. The roasted meat came hot off the fire on skewers of wrought iron. Sandun, as hungry as the proverbial wolf when he started eating, found he was curiously full after the first skewer was devoured. Either the beer or the exertion of the day blurred his vision.
“Aye, we have room enough for all,” said the innkeeper. “Up the stairs, the large room in the back is fer you.”
Sandun shook his head and asked with a suddenly clumsy tongue, “How did you know we were coming? None passed us on the trail.”
The innkeeper looked pleased with himself. “Och, none cross the pass without our hearing word o’ it afore long. It’s the king’s road, but it be our pass. You made no secret of your traveling, and it were most likely you were of the king’s army an’ heading to Sirosfeld. None that saw ye mistook ye for merchants.” At this, the big man laughed as though this was a very funny joke.
Sandun felt too lightheaded to attempt to explain their journey, so he left it to the others to explain their presence and went to bed.
A day’s rest in Triconpoli left all of them feeling much better. The lake was icy cold to the touch, but fishermen, seemingly heedless of the water’s wintery grasp, waded into the shallows to cast nets and haul out fish. It was beautiful, Sandun thought to himself as he sat near the lakeshore in the calm afternoon. A vast expanse of water, flat and barely moving, so different from the Great Sea with its unending waves, its ever-shifting surface flecked with foam at whiles. Down by the lake, the mountains seemed less threatening, the snowy peaks reflected in the water like shafts of light.
Two of the scouts, Olef and Damar, tried fishing, without much success. Sir Ako left them to spend the afternoon with Sir Ledlam, the town’s military commander, a friend who’d once served in the southern army. Basil took his bow and his dog out hunting after the midday meal. Sandun wrote a report, updated his journal, and figured expenses. Soon they would be leaving Kelten proper and traveling through the wilderness of Erimasran. The thought worried him like a dog worries a rat. To calm his mind, he borrowed a pole from Damar and fished for an hour. But his thoughts would not leave the road ahead.
Erimasran had been for centuries the frontier of Kelten. Dry and sparsely populated, for several hundred years it had suffered from a lack of rain, and several towns had been abandoned. In the north, the border with Issedon was disputed; in the south, Fiodroch and Kelten had taken and retaken the fort town of Potomopolis from each other at least six times over the last three centuries. For all these reasons and more, people from Kelten rarely traveled to Erimasran. When he was young and wild, Sandun had shared a room with a young man from Erimasran by the name of Kagne. They had gone separate ways in a night filled with sudden danger, and Sandun had never seen Kagne since.
That evening, they ate the fine buck that Basil had felled up at the snow’s edge just south of the town. The beer still tasted odd, but it quenched the thirst. Many local men came to the inn to hear the latest news from Seopolis and sing songs. Sergeant Torn was persuaded to sing “Don Dory” again after the scouts described their battle with the bandits.
Upon leaving the Bearskin Inn, they rode in easy stages along the road near the lakeshore. They found it a fertile land, watered by many small streams that flowed into the lake. Smoke drifted up from cottages hidden amid the trees. High above them, cattle could be seen grazing in the alpine meadows of the Arrokars. Spring had put forth its green fingers in this land, the snows reduced to patches on north-facing slopes. New grass on the ground matched tender needles on the pines. The air smelled fresh. The expedition found small villages spaced at a half-day’s walk on the road. Out on the deep-blue lake, every morning and evening fishing boats put out and then returned with long silver fish in buckets.
Across the lake, the Kelten Alps fell in sheer cliffs right down to the wat
er’s edge. Some of the deep valleys on the western side were accessible only by boat, though they offered wonderful vistas of snowy slopes that reached up and up the top of high, sharp peaks.
Despite the harsh winters and the avalanches from snows on high ridges, the lands around Lake Tricon felt peaceful, removed from the tumult in the cities and towns along the coast. Tricon had rarely known war, as it was equally far from Issedon in the north and Fiodroch to the south. The few passes were easily defended during the summer; during the winter, no raiders could cross with any hope of retreat while loaded down with booty. Regardless of their peaceful history, the men of Tricon could often be seen practicing in groups with large bows. Gleaming war axes, long hafted and sharp, were proudly displayed along the walls of every inn. “He who would know peace must prepare for war” was an adage the people of Tricon lived by.
At one small inn, an old man spent the evening telling Sandun and Basil stories about the lake and the people who lived around it. He told them that when the Pellian Empire had first explored this part of Kelten—more than a thousand years ago—there were a small people already living here. The Piksies, they were called. Before they vanished, the Piksies told the Pellian explorers that a great dragon lived at the bottom of the lake, and the dragon kept the lake from freezing. They said it was death to take a boat out to the middle of the lake because the dragon would wake and swallow every boat that dared.
“I don’t hold no truck with the fishermen who go out near the center o’ the lake,” the old man told them solemnly. “T’aint respectful. Someday the dragon will wake and bring doom to us all. I hope I never live to see that day.” Sandun bought the garrulous man a beer and thanked him warmly when he made to leave.
It was common knowledge that Lake Tricon never froze, even in the coldest winters, but aside from that curiosity, there had been no sign of a dragon anywhere in Kelten for hundreds of years. Nor had any man seen the Piksies since the days of Kelten’s founding, though the small people lived on in stories told to every child. Some tales had it that on dark and windy nights, the Piksies came out from their secret lairs and traveled to the sea and then vanished under the waves. This was the first time Sandun had heard that they once lived around Lake Tricon.
The Burning Tower Page 5
