by RW Krpoun
“Meaning they can’t try again for a while,” the ‘slinger added. “How long, well, we’re not sure.”
“And you found out all of this in ten days?” Torl rubbed his side; he had stopped wearing the brace, but it was clear that his ribs still gave him some pain.
“It is a matter of core principles,” Hunter sighed. “The Dusmen are not students of the Arts, as I’ve mentioned before, choosing instead to use vassals for that work. When they do employ the Arts, their usage is traditionally in the manner of a battering ram: crude, direct, and raw. Knowing that, seeing what they did at the Place of Mounds, and adding in what we learned from our…movement, and now from these stones, well, we can piece it together. The research we captured from Stavodrag Venatin helped a great deal, too.”
“We are not wholly ignorant of the First Folk, as well,” Provine Sael noted.
It took me a while to figure out who Stavodrag Venatin was: the necromancer who died in the Place of Mounds.
We spent two more days in the vines, Burk and me smashing and bagging, and the educated people doing educated things. Provine Sael had still been working on Pieter’s face, and his nose was beginning to emerge from the dark eroding scar tissue, along with his upper cheekbones. Now the scars around his mouth were turning dark from the Dellian’s ministrations, and getting rough from his use of a pumice stone on them. He was a long way from looking normal, but he did look less strange than he had been; even the catch in his throat was a bit improved. Blond hair was sprouting in the rents in the scars on his scalp, and he had to have Igen keep them trimmed back to stubble.
On the second evening he directed me and Burk in loading supplies into one of the ox carts. “I do not like taking this,” he fretted as we heaved crates of the round ale-pots into the bed and stacked them. “It is at best a crude conveyance mhm. But with two pair of oxen, it should keep up.”
“If you don’t like it, why are we taking it?” Burk asked as he handed a keg of flour up to me.
“More people, more supplies needed,” he shrugged. “Not to mention nearly sixty sacks of broken stone. So if we must take an ox cart, there is no reason mhm not to fill it, especially as Torl is not sure how far it will be to the Empire. This is the best cart mhm out of a very crude lot. Oxen,” he shook his head. “Not what I would choose.”
Burk and I dragged all the stuff we weren’t taking into a big pile and set fire to it at sunset on our last day; Torl didn’t want the smoke drawing attention during the day, so we burned it at night; I thought the fire would draw attention, but Pieter positioned all the carts around the sides of the fire with the canvas from the tents strung between them. The fire really didn’t get that big, but it put off a lot of smoke, so I saw the scout’s point.
In the morning Pieter sliced great rents in the canvas we weren’t taking while Burk and I chopped through the wood axles of the ox carts we were leaving behind. We took the extra oxen along, and released them on our first noon break.
Kalos and Igen took turns driving the ox cart, and Laun rode with them, the ox-cart following our cart; after we released the extra oxen whichever sister wasn’t driving sat on the tailgate, scattering handfuls of boulder fragments in our wake.
“We’re leaving a trail a blind man could follow,” Pieter observed in the afternoon of the first day. “Ox carts mhm cut into the soil.”
“Leaving that worry to Torl,” Hatcher advised from where she sat on my shoulders. “Stick with the concern for general slaughter, like the rest of us.”
“I’m not concerned,” Burk advised.
“I’m not really, either,” the Nisker admitted. “I expect the border ahead is just as stripped of troops as it was further east. And even with the extra cart, we’re too thorny a target for renegade Tulg to bother with. They’ll be busy raiding south, free of concerns about Imperial retaliation.”
“Pieter is just hating ox-drawn carts,” Hunter grinned at his scarred friend.
“I do not like their design,” the engineer conceded. “Inefficient.”
“The Dusmen won’t come looking for their group for quite a while,” Hunter shrugged. “Or at least so I hope. We’re burning their research material as soon as both Provine Sael and I read it, so even if they caught up with us, they’ll get little for the effort.”
“What about all the copying you did in the vines?” Hatcher asked, drumming on my scalp.
“That’ll go into a fire as soon as we have confirmed Provine Sael’s theory. Some things are better left unremembered.”
“No temptation to sell them?” Hatcher grinned.
“No,” Hunter said with heart-felt emphasis. “In fact, I would rather just burn it now. The First Folk…well, let’s just say that seeing what they thought was valuable will drive a drinking man sober, and turn a sober man into a drunkard. I’m not one for causes, as you well know, but the Elder Ones weren’t just evil: they found evil and devoted a lot of time and effort to see if they could improve on it.”
“That bad?”
“Worse. Just looking this stuff over has nearly made an honest man of me.”
“Huh.”
“Stavodrag Venatin’s notes, which we’ve already burned, indicate he could sense the opportunities and possibilities, and he was a better researcher than a necromancer. The Dusmen activating all the artifacts they could find has really stirred things up.”
“So that’s part of the Dusman plan?” Hatcher was drumming again.
“The Dusmen are children playing with fire. I wager they have no idea of the potential for disaster they have created.”
We walked in silence for a while. “Is that why you’re keeping Laun away from the information?” Hatcher asked.
“After Akel, no one outside the group gets a look at anything we’re doing,” Provine Sael answered from where she walked a few feet ahead of us.
“And in his specific case, Laun is a pure academic.” Hunter added. “His type can’t keep a secret to save their lives.”
Close to noon on the second day I was walking alongside the ox cart while Hatcher tended to Rose. I drifted back to where Laun and Igen sat on the tail gate, the girl tossing handfuls of broken stone to either side, and the Nisker was frowning at the page of a journal.
I winked at Igen, who ducked her head and concentrated on her rock-scattering; she was much less fearful that she had been in the earlier days, but she still was wary around me and Burk.
“Reading or writing?” I asked Laun.
“Hmmmm? Oh, just organizing my thoughts. Reconstructing my lost notes has been quite a challenge.” He was putting weight back on, and was visibly getting his strength back.
“I heard you were a ‘pure academic’,” I observed. “What does that mean?”
He smiled. “That means I hunt the forgotten, and return it to the custody of memory.” He chuckled. “Or so I tell myself. Essentially I seek knowledge for knowledge’s sake, rather than for personal gain or public causes.”
“Huh.” I thought about that. “So, how do you get paid?”
He snorted good-naturedly. “I am an instructor at a very old, very respected institution of higher learning, currently on a sabbatical to see what can be learned in areas which heretofore were shielded by Dusman patrols.”
I worked out what he meant. “So what have you learned?”
“Many things of moderate interest, albeit at the cost of six trusty companions.” He sighed. “Still, we all take our pay and shoulder the risk, do we not? The greatest fallacy is to believe that life has more than one outcome.”
“It’s too bad about your arm.”
He glanced at the stub. “It is a smallish price when compared to what I nearly lost. When a scholar dies, a library burns, you know.”
I pondered that. “You mean that knowledge is lost when a learned man dies.”
“I do. And you, what lore does that great skull of yours conceal?”
“Well, I am a High Rate of the Ebon Blades, a proper barracks of the old school.”<
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“An institution of considerable repute in your chosen field, I am told,” he nodded.
“Lately I have learned to read after a fashion. I am working to improve it.”
“A vital step,” Laun nodded sagely. “A man who can read has a vast vista of opportunity before him, both to better himself and to be of good service to others. I have seen you with a book; what are you reading?”
“A novel Pieter loaned me, it is about a runaway apprentice who falls in with criminals in a big city. Before that I read one about a young man who went to sea.”
“A well-written novel is a window into the lives of others,” the Nisker stroked his beard. “It can educate even as it entertains. I for one think the art of the novel is a most needed venue. Now Igen,” he poked the girl in the ribs with the corner of his journal. “Is dismissive of the lighter forms of writing.”
She ducked her head, but I thought I saw a smile before a curtain of hair hid her face.
Later, walking with Burk while Hatcher was tending to Rose, I ventured an observation. “You and I have the biggest skulls in the group.”
Burk thought about that. “Yeah. So?”
“So that means we have the biggest brains, or the most brains. But we’re the dumbest people in the group.”
Burk frowned and rubbed his chin. “Brains are brains; I know: I’ve smashed in a lot of skulls, and they’re all just lumpy wet paste. So I don’t think it’s the amount you got that matters.”
“So how does it work?”
“I don’t know,” Burk admitted after a lengthy pause. “Maybe it’s like steel: you can’t make a weapon better just by adding more metal.”
I gave that some thought. “I bet you’re right.”
“And don’t forget, we don’t know how smart Igen or Kalos is; we might be smarter than them.”
That made me think of the two girls: they had been slaves, and now they were free, or at least they would be when we got someplace where they could be free; for now they were sort of stuck working for us. Both were skilled in a variety of domestic tasks, and although Igen always looked terrified, I thought they might do all right once they learned how to speak a real language. Both Pierter and Laun were teaching them, but I didn’t know how well they were learning.
Rose, on the other hand, still showed no prospects; she was a little better at crawling, but otherwise had not displayed any signs of independence. I thought she could at least be walking by now if she would apply herself, but she seemed content to be doted on by everyone, Hatcher and Provine Sael in particular. That sort of leadership was not going to encourage swift progress, I was sure.
It took six days for the girls to scatter the rubble that had been the faces of the boulders, six days of steadily walking south with a touch of west; the weather was good, with two short rain showers in that time, neither long enough to create problems.
Four days later we abandoned the ox cart and released the oxen; by then we had made a sizeable dent in the supplies it had carried, and just about drank all the pots of ale. I was sad to see it go, because it had allowed us to haul the little conical oven Igen used to make biscuits twice a day.
“No more biscuits,” I observed sorrowfully as we headed south, the mountains rearing to our right and the endless grassland rolling away in every other direction. “We left three cases of ale behind as well.”
“We should have abandoned it when the stone was gone,” Hatcher observed unsympathetically. “But you men had to have biscuits, potted butter, and dark ale. We must have gone through a dozen pounds of flour a day.”
“It was free.”
“Sometimes I think your two true loves are eating and fighting.”
I thought about that. “They are both good.”
“Well, I’ll be glad to be rid of a cart and oxen with Dusman brands. That can create complications.”
“With who?”
“The Burya, mountain clans who heard sheep and goats in the mountain valley and slopes in the summer and out here on the plains in the winter. They’re great raiders and thieves, with a strange sense of honor and a bad attitude towards women.”
“Are these the hillmen you claimed to have been trading with when the Legion bought the horses from us?”
“They’re related. The hillmen are actually small tribes made up of broken men, Burya who have been expelled from the main group, and the descendants of the same. But never suggest that the two are related, or you’ll be fighting.”
“What’s a broken man?”
“A Buryan lawbreaker, and they take that very seriously, since they don’t have a lot of laws. Mostly it would mean someone who stole from his own clan, particularly a weapon or a horse; a man without loyalty or honor. You can rape or even kill another man’s wife or daughter and face nothing more than a duel, but take his horse and you’re banished for life. That should tell you everything you need to know about the Burya, and plenty to spare.”
“How do you know so much about them?”
“I did some work for a guy who had Buryan guards. All they do is talk about home; I never saw a bunch of mean bastards get so homesick.”
“Do they speak our language?”
“Yes, in addition to their own. The Empire hires them as auxiliary cavalry on occasion, and they come into the western fringes of the Empire to trade periodically, more often to steal, but otherwise they stay close to the mountains and harass Tulg and Ukar. They literally worship the mountains, and love nothing better than raiding and robbing.”
“So how are we going to get through their land?”
“Superstition: they fear Dellians, and will never harm one. According to their beliefs harm or harassment of a Dellian brings a curse upon an entire clan. Niskers make them nervous, too: we’re supposed to have the Evil Eye, but it’s not as foolproof as their attitude towards Dellians.”
“What about the rest of us?”
“You serve a Dellian, you’re protected. You can still end up in a duel or brawl, but they won’t mess with us much.”
“Let me choose a people’s superstitions, and I wouldn’t care who writes the laws, or the songs, either,” Laun’s head popped up from the bed of the cart.
“What?” I was caught off guard.
“A quote by a famous philosopher,” the Nisker explained. “It points out that traditions and beliefs generally carry more weight than law.”
“Oh.”
“Have you dealt with the Burya?” Hatcher asked Laun.
“I have on several occasions, most recently on my way north. I will guess that given our composition, this group will see duel challenges.”
Provine Sael, who should have been out of earshot ahead of us, stopped and waited for the cart to catch up. “What do you mean by that?”
The bearded Nisker nodded towards me. “Your lads: there is small chance a Buryan would let an opportunity to face a brute of such size pass unfulfilled.”
The Dellian sighed. “Wonderful.”
“Are there many brutes among them?” Hatcher asked.
“Very few, to my knowledge,” Laun stroked his beard. “The Buryan ponies are small, and they live on horseback. The Burya are a short breed of Men, and they delight in nothing more than vanquishing those taller than themselves.”
Provine Sael shook her head.
Ten days south of the Dusman camp Torl reported that Buryan scouts had found us, but had showed little interest. The next day we saw distant mounted figures watching us from western rises.
“Their herds are in their summer pastures in the mountains,” Laun noted, shading his eyes to study the distant figures. “Since we are led by a Dellian we have nothing to fear in terms of robbery.”
“How can they tell we have a Dellian in our company?” Burk asked.
“Tracks,” the one-armed Nisker explained. “A good tracker can tell race and gender by the tracks one leaves.”
“Huh.” I looked at Provine Sael’s feet, but they just looked like small booted feet to me.
“There’s a Buryan gathering in the foothills, maybe a day and a half to the southwest,” Torl reported when we gathered for supper that evening.
Provine Sael poked at her plate of greens. “Should we avoid it?”
“We have business in the mountains, so we might want to make an appearance and pay our respects. Dellian-led or not, we’ll be heading in the direction of the summer pastures, and that will excite Buryan interest.”
“If trading is possible, there are a few odds and ends mhm we need,” Pieter noted.
“There will definitely be trade opportunities,” Laun said. “The Buryan hold several Gatherings over the course of the summer; it is an opportunity to meet with traders from elsewhere, for marriage pacts to be made in order to ensure that each clan’s blood remains strong, the settling of disputes, and various entertainments.”
“I thought they would be up in the mountains looking at the backsides of sheep,” Hunter took a swing from his flask.
“Gatherings are a time of truce from raiding,” Laun explained. “The herds will be left in the care of younger boys and a few warriors while the rest of the clan goes to the gathering. The Gatherings this summer will be especially well attended because the border has been stripped of Tulg and Ukar, relieving the clans of concerns of defense.”
“I would have thought that the Imperial Army would have hired any excess warriors for service as auxiliaries,” Provine Sael said.
“Not this year,” Laun shook his head. “The clans will wait and see how the fighting goes this year, and then hire on with whomever appears to be winning.”
“They would stand with the Dusmen against the Empire?” Provine Sael was shocked.
“The Buryan are not a people over-burdened with principles,” Hatcher observed. “Or much else of moral value.”
Chapter Fourteen
We saw a Buryan patrol the next day; they passed us heading east with a purposeful air about them, never coming closer than a hundred yards. They were sun-scarred bandy-legged men riding short, shaggy, and tough-looking horses, each with his head shaved except for a patch on the back of the skull, which was braided into a queue. They had curved sabers and ornate hard quivers at their hips, with cases for their bows, straight-bladed sabers, fighting axes, and a second quiver hung on their saddles. They wore scale shirts, but didn’t appear to have shields or helms.
