"'That's the last of them. Move, now, before the dead-eaters come," the caravan master ordered. The schaef and great-haulers strained against their harnesses until they reached a trot, forcing the men to trot as well. It wasn't until they stopped that Ewoud discovered he'd wet himself. His face burned with shame, but no one said a word. Maybe he wasn't the only one. At least he hadn't soiled himself.
That night, once the animals had been seen to and the wagons locked into a corral ring, the caravan master called a meeting. "Besides Hajo, Bjorn, me, and the guards, who has weapons skills? Not swords and staff work, but other things?
One of the apprentices raised a shaking hand. "Sling and rocks, sir. For chasing birds."
Did that count? If so... Ewoud raised a hand as well. "Rat sling, sir." He'd been tolerably good last winter, but what would it do against the dark hunters?
"You have one with you?"
The apprentice nodded, "One, and I can make another if you have tanned hide."
"No sir." Ewoud looked down at the crushed grass and little rocks at his feet.
"You, make a second one. You, Skinny, practice with it. The laupen aren't the only hunters in the forest, may Valdher have pity on us as we cross her lands." The caravan master made a two-handed sign like a steep roof, as did some of the others. "We'll take the watches tonight, since we know this land. Tomorrow will be a full meeting and we will assign duties then."
Meester Hajo and the others nodded agreement. Dogald scowled. Had he been cursed, born to the Scavenger although he was born for Maarsdam? He acted like it, and Ewoud couldn't think of another god so known for foul moods and ill temper. Well there was Donwah, but She did not follow men the way the Scavenger did.
"He doesn't want to work that hard," Ewoud heard Klaas Stukken whispering to Jan later that night, as they unrolled their bedding. "My master told me that Dogald thought we'd sail all the way up the river, and hadn't planned for an overland journey."
Jan snorted, but only after looking left and right for masters and other journeymen. "I believe it. My father says that Dogald only works when he has no other choice but starvation. He leans on magic for everything he can."
Now it was Ewoud's turn to snort, but only inside his own head. Any man who depended on magic for everything deserved to have trouble. That was just laziness and not good business. Spells cost money. So did candles and hiring a rat-catcher and making your own dried or pickled foods, but paying mages for what you could do more easily yourself? Folly. Even he knew that. It did explain why Dogald had a magic-working journeyman. Ewoud stretched out with a wince. Why wasn't Hanka affiliated with a guild? That was the law, or was it?
Ewoud started to roll over. His legs and shoulders burned and ached, reluctant to move. Could he stay still for a little longer? There wasn't that much light in the sky yet. He heard and felt plodding steps, and an animal bellowed, "Mbwaaah!"
"Stop that, Arkoo, or I'll turn you into sausage." The teamster's voice shattered Ewoud's hopes. Ewoud counted to three, took a deep breath, and rolled onto his belly, then drew his legs under him. He got to all fours, then stood, feeling every joint and muscle on his frame. At least his hair didn't hurt. Ewoud went into the designated area beside the camping clearing and relieved himself, mindful of plants with large, fuzzy leaves. Everyone knew about sting leaf, and the woods here probably had their own version.
Or perhaps everyone didn't. The men in the caravan gathered around the main fire just as the first sun touched the tops of the trees. One of the apprentices kept moving, never sitting or standing still. He walked with his back arched, as if afraid of leaning and touching something, and every so often tugged the seat of his trousers away from his rear. The boy rustled and winced constantly. "No, thank you, sir," he answered someone. "I'd rather walk." Ewoud and a few others smirked.
"Right. The caravan follows Bushmaak law," the caravan master announced. "We rotate wagon order except for the fodder wagons. They come second always. Ovsta have right-of-way to water, then the great haulers. We drink upstream, and don't piss in the water. It draws water flies." Meesters Hajo and Moere, and Klaas Stukken all made faces and warding off gestures. "When we get near villages, keep any magic quiet. Some of the land-bound believe that mages are evil spirits in human form." The big man planted ham-sized fists on his hips. "And do not light any fires unless they are on bare-swept ground. The forests are dry, and if anyone of you put a pop-cone into the campfire, the rest of you have my permission to beat the fool until he sees reason or stars."
"So. Road names." Ewoud's attention snapped back from trying to imagine what a pop-cone looked like. It was probably safer just to ignore anything that was not a stick if he had to gather wood. "Call me Omer. The chief teamster for the ovsta is Ruck, chief teamster for great-haulers is Darmel." The men each raised a hand in turn. Ruck was the pale man in blue, and Ewoud made a mental note to ask about the dye. It wasn't the same as the night blue they had at home, and might be worth importing—if they could. Some dyestuffs didn't travel well or at all. "Skinny," Omer pointed to Ewoud with his whip, "Hajo and Moere, you earned your right, Sour," that was Hanka the journeyman, "Donder," Meester Dogald scowled even harder, until Ewoud thought his eyebrows might touch his thick lips and stub nose, "Yap, Kai, Hunb," Omer called off. The teamsters all nodded, although one especially stocky and round man with the ovsta rolled his eyes under white eyebrows and sighed. "If you don't know why we use road names, ask one of the men who does.
"We leave by sunrise and stop when the sun is two hands above the trees, unless weather says otherwise. We stop for snow and ice rain. If you think one of your beasts is ailing, speak up. We don't have time to be cutting an ovsta out of the harness if he drops dead on a bridge, and he'll do just that if he thinks you are ignoring him." Some of the teamsters snorted with laughter, and the men with great-haulers muttered behind their hands, shaking their heads. Ewoud had heard stories about great-haulers who decided to die by falling into wells or other inconvenient places, and suspected that the giant schaef, the ovsta, had learned from the birds. Or had Yoorst given them all the idea, as a way to punish men who abused His creatures? Ewoud shrugged a little—it didn't matter.
"Those who are fully trained will have weapons work in the evenings, no exceptions. If you are not yet fully trained, stay clear. This isn't the place to be learning. Everyone takes a turn at night watch, rotating each night." Jan kicked at the dirt, glowering down at the hard-pounded soil. "You complain, you get two watches or my whip on your back. You choose." No one spoke, and Ewoud looked at Omer's arm. He'd untied his cuffs and rolled the sleeves, revealing arms larger than a rolled schaef hide. "Questions?" A bird trilled, and a different one peeped in reply from a tree across the clearing. "Get moving. We need to make up for the late start."
By the time the road met the river, Ewoud had learned how to harness an ovsta, how to settle a great-hauler quickly, and could hit a squirrel two out of three tries with the sling. Rats were easier, and larger, and he still hadn't quite gotten the knack for using the sling to get squirrels well up in the trees. The apprentice could hit anything, and often did, bringing them back to add to the nightly meal. Only once did he miss, and everyone had seen it. He'd been aiming at something, and the creature turned its back to them, showing a pale brown hide with dark strips on its sides and spots down the length of the spine. "Shit!" the apprentice had squeaked and sent the stone wide. The teamsters had hurried the beasts down the road. "I'm sorry, sir," the boy told Meester Moere. "I didn't see the spots."
"What is it?" Ewoud asked. It had looked more like a very large, blunt-nosed squirrel, but without a bushy tail, and with different markings.
"A musk-vask," the teamster closest to him said, wrinkling his nose. "They smell like rotting mushrooms, and can squirt musk. Everything about them smells, including the meat, and you cannot get the smell out. Even bark tanning won't remove the stink. Leave them alone."
Ewoud decided that he could do that. Yoorst frowned on killing animals
if you were not going to use them, vermin excepted. None of the gods had patience with people who wasted their gifts. "Musk-vask. Thank you." Eating something that stank and wasn't cheese didn't sound smart to begin with, like drinking water downstream of animals or drinking smelly water.
"So. Today you see why we do not use the river to reach Kehlibar this time," Meester Moere said. The skinny man lifted the brim of his large hat, wiped his forehead, and settled the hat again. It had been black, but now matched the dusty dirt below their feet. "There are stories that the gods decreed at the end of the Time of Cold that some rivers were forbidden to men, and that the Tanper was one of them."
"Huh." The teamster sounded thoughtful. "My mother's father said it was because the Tanper's spirit wagered with Dontah and lost, and Dontah took away the Tanper's waters so she would learn proper manners."
Ewoud felt his eyes bulging a little with shock and shook his head, blinking. Donwah would never do such a thing, and she controlled all rivers as well as the seas. There were no river spirits... were there? Perhaps they were like city gods, and some rivers had them but not all? He stopped the thought almost before it finished. His father had seen the gods grow angry, and Ewoud didn't want anything like that happening. The road provided more than enough excitement, and if half the rumors about the vlee were true, keeping the masters and the other traders happy would be difficult enough without unhappy deities making their displeasure known.
They reached the river later that day. The road turned into the trees, and several of the men watched the shadows carefully, hands never far from slings, bows, and other weapons. "At ease," Ruck called. "The river folk keep laupan and other animals away."
"And the two-legged animals?" Meester Dogald whined.
"You'll see."
Not too much later, Ewoud smelled rotting meat. Something large had died upwind of them. He hoped it wasn't in water. Omer had made them remove a dead something from a stream once already. The he remembered Ruck's words. Dead. Two-legged animals... Ewoud's mouth went dry.
The river people didn't just cut off a person's head and hang it on the city gibbet as a warning, oh no. A weather-blackened body swung from a frame beside the road. Large birds with bare heads watched from the trees. Pieces of a second body lay on the ground under a frame on the opposite side of the road, and Ewoud saw marks on the bones where the dead-eaters had gnawed and torn the legs and hip-flesh. Whoever it was had deserved what he'd gotten, but to hang the entire body? That was a little extreme, unless the man had killed blood kin or travelers under refuge. If he'd been a traitor, he'd have been dismembered, unless they did things differently here. Ewoud shrugged. Break the laws, get punished, that all men knew.
Ruck pointed to the remains on the ground. "She drugged a merchant from the tribes to the east and stole his goods, and his coat and boots."
"Why kill her, instead of branding her and giving her to the man as a life-servant to pay off her debt?" Meester Dogald sounded as puzzled as Ewoud felt. "Had she done this before?"
"No. But her brother dragged the tribesman out and left him beside the wood-house. He might have died of cold if an early fisherman had not found him and called the watch. As it was he lost fingers and toes." The teamster spat. "Theft's one thing. Leaving a man to die in the cold without coat and boots? Her brother confessed, and she hung. That satisfied blood price."
Fair's fair, Ewoud mused. She intended the trader to die, and she paid with her life. It made good sense to him, and he tucked the information away with other laws he knew. Taking someone as a life-servant after they'd tried to kill you didn't sound very smart, and he wondered what Meester Dogald was thinking. His father had given Ewoud a long and detailed lecture on why men should not have bodily congress with angry or god-smote women, detailed enough that Ewoud's privates had tried to crawl back inside his gut from sheer terror.
The caravan passed through Tanperhead and stopped at a trade inn on the opposite side, outside the town walls but within the protection of the town's watch. After helping unload one of the wagons carrying some items specifically for merchants in the town, Ewoud followed Meester Hajo and his journeymen down to the banks of the Tanper. The town of Tanperhead wasn't directly on the river, but covered a small hill. A road led down onto a flat area that held a market space and a wooden temple well above the river's current reach, then continued to the river. Ewoud didn't see any docks or boat-slips. But the teamster had mentioned fishermen.
"Oh," one of the journeymen said. Four men waded in the waist-deep river, three dragging something just under the surface, one holding the end of it to make a large V in the water while the fourth man flipped a paddle back and forth, slapping the river. Had it misbehaved? Ewoud covered a grin with one hand. The water ahead of the third man seemed to churn, and the paddler called something and pointed the flat tool toward the point of the V. The others hurried together, closing the end of whatever they held, and Ewoud wanted to slap himself on the forehead. It was a cinch net, or close to one. They had driven fish into it, and now they closed the mouth of the net. Indeed, all four men began struggling, dragging the net toward shore, and two boys waded out to help them heave the wriggling mass onto dry land. The man with the paddle began grabbing fish and tossing some into barrels and others back into the river. The boys took over holding the net and kept tension on its sides while the fourth man walked his end in toward the sorters. The three sorters made quick work of the contents of the net.
"Don't men usually net running fish at night, sir?" The journeyman sounded a little puzzled.
Hajo spread his hands a little. "Some fish come upstream by day, and it could be that larger hunters follow the smaller fish. I wouldn't want to be in the water at night if a school of sea-fangs were following crook-jaws to their spawning grounds."
"Ah, me neither, sir." Ewoud agreed with the journeyman, who had eased a little farther away from the water.
A swarm of women now surrounded the barrels, haggling with the fishermen and carrying the still-squirming fish away in baskets. Some of the women stopped at an enormous table made of rough planks set onto old barrels and bits of wood, and cleaned the fish right there. Ewoud decided once more that staying on the good side of the fish-wives was a good thing, no matter where the fishwives lived. Their knives flashed as silver as the fish, and soon fish guts and heads littered the ground. The instant the last woman left the table, cats and dogs swarmed the terrace, squabbling and devouring. One especially small dog carried off a large fish head, pleased with the world, his tail cocked at a jaunty angle.
"And so you see why we cannot always bring boats up the Tanper," Meester Hajo said. "When it flows deep enough for cargo boats, it floods miles wide and very fast, often with ice chunks in it. In summer it may dry enough you can cross without moistening your ankles, and miasmas bake out of the mud. The opposite problem of the Moahne, correct, Ewoud?" The trader turned and looked at Ewoud.
Ewoud gulped, scrambling to recall. He'd been admiring one of the women's legs as she climbed the steep slope. "Ah, that is, yes sir. The rocks in the Moahne make rapids and falls that require, um, that is, eleven portages to go downstream, and the flow is so high at all times that there are no true banks, but a deep gorge from Moahnebrig almost to the sea." Was there something else? He couldn't recall.
"Correct. I have seen the mouth of the Moahne once, and that was sufficient to persuade me that the elders were correct about not trying to float anything down the stream." Meester Hajo adjusted his hat once more. "It is always better to learn from other people's mistakes, especially their fatal mistakes."
The road followed the river for two more days. Broad stretches of muck spread out upstream of the town, and marsh-grasses replaced brush. Clouds of blood-sucking little flies swarmed out of the grass at dawn and dusk, and both men and animals huddled in the smoke of the fires. The men's sweat attracted other pests, tiny black gnats that covered anywhere a drop of salty sweat appeared. A few snakes rustled through the grass, leaving trails that
soon filled with water in the dark brown mire. It smelled like a sun-heated tidal flat coated with rotten eggs and fish guts in high summer, and Ewoud was not the only one to rejoice when they turned uphill, away from the river. No wonder his father never traded at the vlee, if this was what the way was like in fair weather. In fact, the more Ewoud saw, the less he liked the idea of trading in furs, if men had to endure miasmas, muck, and laupen every year, even the masters.
That night as they ate the evening meal, one of the teamsters repaired a great-hauler harness, splicing a heavier strip of leather into a worn spot. As he did, he said, "My father's mother said that a priest of Sneelah told them once, many years ago, that during the time of the ice, the lands of the Tanper and other rivers north of the Kanegat Hills kept snow on them all year. They are so new that Dontah made new beds for them, and even so, some of the river spirits preferred to remain elsewhere, leaving the waters unattended."
Hanka, the mage-journeyman, reared back as if he'd been slapped. "That's blasphemy. Nothing like that ever happened, because rivers belong to Donwah, not to any other."
The teamster pointed with the blade of his long knife. "You're quick to curse what you don't understand, boy."
Meester Dogald stood up. "Hanka, check on the wagon." The journeyman snarled but obeyed, stuffing the last of his meal into his mouth and slouching off into the darkness. The teamster snorted and shifted his grip on the knife. As he did, Ewoud saw something strange on the pommel, a piece of something that glowed.
"Um, sir? May I ask a question?"
The teamster raised one thin eyebrow. "Can I stop you?"
Ewoud flushed and looked down. "Your pardon."
The wood in the fire popped a few times, and the wiry man sighed, "Get on with it, boy, before I die of old age."
The flush burned Ewoud's face harder and he squeaked, "Er, that is, ah, um, sir, what is it that glows on the pommel of your knife?"
Imperial Magic Page 4
