by Mel Odom
Cobner ran a callused thumb along his axe blade. “Piping halfer voices get on my nerves.”
Wick swallowed and quieted. He folded his arms across his chest. “I won’t.”
“Good,” Cobner said, “because then I’ll get to whomp you and that’ll be the end of it.”
“Oh, don’t be so hard on him, Cobner,” Hamual said. “He’s just scared. Can’t you see that?”
“I do,” Cobner agreed. “And see, that’s the last thing you want: a scared halfer is capable of doing darn near anything. Suddenly they think they’re ten feet tall and invincible.”
Hamual squatted before Wick and smiled. “Well, I like him. He makes me laugh.” The young human reached into his traveling cloak and brought out an apple. “Are you hungry?”
Wick hesitated, but his growling stomach betrayed him at the sight and smell of food. The apple was deep red and smelled oh-so-sweet. “Yes.”
Hamual gave the little librarian the apple and dug in his pockets again. “I think I have a bit of cheese in here, too.” He produced it and handed it over.
“Thank you,” Wick said. “I am in your debt.”
“There’s no debt between us,” Hamual assured him. “It is my pleasure.” He pulled his sleeves back, exposing scars on both wrists. “I’ve been a slave before myself. Until Brant rescued me.”
“It’s time to ride,” Brant said. “It will be nearly dark by the time we reach the house.”
Clutching the apple and cheese, Wick graciously accepted Hamual’s offer to help him onto his horse. Once mounted, the little librarian turned his attention to his meal, enjoying the sweet juices from the apple and the tangy taste of the cheese. It was gone almost before he knew it. Hamual let him drink from the waterskin hanging from his saddle.
They rode deep into the Forest of Fangs and Shadows. The trees and brush were so thick that sunlight seldom penetrated the leafy canopies to touch the black loamy ground. Every now and then, a strange cry or a predatory growl came from the woods around them. Wick’s skin prickled between his shoulder blades and he glanced nervously around.
His fellow travelers seldom conversed, their attention warily on the narrow game trail they followed. Cobner passed Wick’s journal to the other dwarf, who looked through it for a time, then handed it to the other, older human man who didn’t bother to look at it at all before passing it to Hamual beside him.
Hamual glanced at Wick and held up the journal. “May I?”
Wick hesitated only a moment. They don’t know how to read, he reminded himself. The secrets of Greydawn Moors and the Vault of All Known Knowledge were safe from them. “Yes,” he answered, and part of him hoped for some pleasant comments regarding his efforts. The Blood-Soaked Sea pirates aboard One-Eyed Peggie had liked his work. He couldn’t see why the thieves wouldn’t appreciate it. Although he was convinced that Cobner just didn’t like anything.
After a time, with his balance better on the horse, a decent meal in his stomach for the first time in days, and fatigue catching up to him while he was warm in the traveling cloak, Wick slept.
“C’mon, Wick. Wake up. We’re here.”
The little librarian came awake with a start, feeling someone gently shaking his shoulder. He blinked and glanced at Hamual standing beside him, barely remembering the young man’s name in his lethargy.
An owl screeched somewhere in the distance, followed by the keening howl of a stalking wolf. Night had fallen, filling the narrow cracks between the trees and brush till it looked like a wall of solid black around the clearing where the house was. Jhurjan the Swift and Bold sped across the star-filled sky.
The log house was old and gray from weathering the elements. It stood three stories tall and leaned against a tall cliff. Unless a rider was nearly upon it, Wick thought it would be all but invisible. Gray smoke furled from a crooked stone chimney but was quickly lost in the trees on the cliff above the house. A small lean-to built beside the house sheltered other horses.
“Where are we?” Wick asked as he eased from the saddle and dropped to the ground.
“Our house,” Hamual answered.
“You live here?” As Wick watched, he saw three more men step from the house. They all had the rolling gait of dwarves and carried battle-axes and war hammers. One of them carried a lantern that barely cut through the darkness.
“Only for the time we are working in Hanged Elf’s Point,” Hamual replied. He held the reins of his horse and Wick’s and led them into the lean-to.
“While you’re working?” Wick repeated, his thoughts still foggy. He’d been dreaming of Greydawn Moors, but the dreams hadn’t been happy ones. In those dreams, he’d been at the Library where he discovered he couldn’t read, and in his father’s shop where he discovered he could no longer put Ardamon’s stubborn lantern together. He’d felt very alone and afraid in the dreams, and they had continued to spin inside his head until he’d been awakened.
“Sure.” Hamual led the horses into stalls. “Thieves can only work an area so long before they are discovered and the work turns dangerous.” He stripped the saddles and bridles from the horses.
Brant and the rest of the party saw to their own mounts.
“I thought all thieving was dangerous,” Wick said.
“It is.” Hamual closed the stall doors and tossed an armload of hay into each compartment. “But it gets even more so when the local Thieves’ Guild discovers you. And the Thieves’ Guild in Hanged Elf’s Point pays tribute to Orpho Kadar.” He handed Wick his journal back.
Wick nodded his thanks and quickly tucked the book back under his shirt. “You’re not part of the local Thieves’ Guild?”
“No.” The young man’s chest swelled proudly. “We’re independents. The last of a dying breed, Brant says.”
“Make sure that little halfer stays in your sight, Hamual,” Cobner commanded gruffly as he tossed his battle-axe over one shoulder and walked toward the house. “If he gets loose in these woods, I don’t want to be tripping over his guts in the morning after whatever might catch him in the night gets done with him.”
Wick peered into the darkness surrounding the clearing. In truth, the idea of trying to escape had been immediately dismissed from his mind. If they had traveled most of the day to get to the house on horses, he had no chance of getting back to Hanged Elf’s Point on foot, much less in the dark and his having slept nearly the whole trip. And what would there be in Hanged Elf’s Point to return to? No, he was convinced that only death awaited him there.
“Before you bring him into the house,” Brant said as he passed, “get him a bath and a change of clothes. I won’t have that stink in the house when I’m trying to eat.”
“I will,” Hamual promised.
“Eat?” Wick’s ears pricked up instantly. It had been so long since he’d been properly fed that he honestly couldn’t remember what it felt like to have a full, button-bursting stomach.
“After the bath,” Brant admonished. “Then we’ll speak of what I bought you for, little artist. Though I have to admit that after seeing your so-called book I find myself somewhat enthusiastic about my decision to get you.”
“If it doesn’t work out,” Cobner promised, “I’ll whomp him good. Even the wolves out here won’t find the body.”
Now that, Wick thought, is not a cheery thought.
“You expect me to bathe in that?” Wick asked, gazing at the moon-kissed stream that wound down from the cliff overhanging the log house. Although the temperature was somewhat warmer in the mountains even after nightfall than Hanged Elf’s Point fronting the sea, the little librarian was certain he’d freeze to death in the water.
“The creek is fed from a hot springs further up in the mountains,” Hamual explained. “There’s a volcano not far from here. And I’ve heard sailors in the harbor taverns talking about some not far to the south and east that belch islands up into the ocean from time to time.”
Gingerly, Wick approached the creek. Then he spotted the low gray fog that hugged the wate
rline and swirled within the cattails and brush on either side of the stream. Heartened, he took another step toward the water, creeping down the side of the creek. He shoved his fingers into the water and found it only the slightest bit chill. “It’s not warm,” he protested.
“It’s not cold,” Hamual promised. He carried soap, towels, and a change of clothes that looked like they belonged to one of the dwarves. “And they won’t let you in to eat until you bathe. You do stink, even upwind.”
Still unhappy about the whole process, Wick started taking his clothes off. “Are there any snakes in the water?”
“No. We bathe out here all the time.”
“What about turtles?” Wick asked, hesitating. “Turtles can bite quite fiercely when they get hold of you, you know.”
Hamual sniffed the air like a dog drawing a scent. “Do you smell it?”
“What?”
“The aroma of fresh-baked bread.”
Wick sniffed, and this time he did smell the bread. The faint yeasty odor made his stomach growl. “Yes.”
“Lago bakes it fresh every second or third day,” Hamual said. “Today must have been one of his baking days. And only a month ago he found a beehive in the forest. He mixed the comb with butter till it’s as sweet and creamy as you please.” He smiled in anticipation.
“Honeyed butter?” Wick said. He stepped out into the stream and took the soap. He washed quickly. Even if the thieves killed him in the next hour, he would die with a full stomach. It was something at least. But even as he worked the soap into a lather, his curiosity remained aroused. “You said you were a slave and Brant rescued you?”
“Yes.” Hamual stayed at the top of the ridge leading down to the stream, keeping watch over the forest. “My father got into debt with his gambling and sold me to goblinkin slavers. Brant freed me from that. He also took Sonne in. She was living on the streets as a cutpurse until the night she crossed a pair of elven merchants.” His young face darkened. “They were despicable. Both were mercenaries filling Samarktintown with the bodies of the local population who rose up against their employer. We were barely able to get her away from them before the elves did for her. Brant chose all of us, and we all chose Brant when the time came. I’d never had a true family before, Wick, but I have one now.”
Hamual’s words, spoken with quiet and honest conviction, touched Wick. When he’d first met Brant, the man had scared him. It was nice to know that there was another side to him.
“He’s a good man,” Hamual said.
“For a thief?” Wick asked.
“We’re all thieves,” Hamual said. “It’s the only trade we’ve found that supports us and allows us freedom from being under some lord’s protection. You take a lord’s protection, you also take his burdens and goals on as your own to die for. None of us have found a lord we’d be willing to die for.”
“What about Brant?”
There was no hesitation in Hamual’s answer. “I would die for him, and I know that he would die for me should the time come for it.”
“How many of you are there?” Wick scrubbed soap through his hair and beard. Truth be known, it felt good to do so.
“Twelve, counting Brant himself. We lost two men to the Thieves’ Guild swords less than a week ago. That’s how we knew they were aware of us.”
“Then isn’t it time you were getting out of Hanged Elf’s Point?” Finished with his bath, Wick stepped from the creek and took the towel the tall young human offered.
“We are,” Hamual said. “But Brant is certain we can pull off one more job before we go. Until he found you, he was ready to give up on that. But now—” The young man shrugged. “We’ll see. Brant is a very careful man.
“Except when he gets obsessed with other people’s secrets,” Wick said.
“Then,” Hamual agreed, “Brant gets really, really dangerous. It’s as if he doesn’t even recognize risk any more. That drives Cobner crazy.”
Although the clothes he’d been given were dwarves’, Wick found they didn’t fit well at all. He had to roll the shirtsleeves and pants legs up, and the clothing still bagged on him outrageously. He felt like, and was sure he resembled, an orphan child. He sat at the long table that filled one of the rooms in the log house and helped himself to the wonderful dishes that had been prepared and laid out.
At first, the little librarian had been timid about joining in, wondering if Brant would consider the food simply another torture he could use to get at the secrets Wick wasn’t willing to share. So he’d casually helped himself to the buttercrunch sautéed turnips, braised wild onions, the roasted cucumbers steeped in vinegar pepper, the thin vanilla crepes rolled around generous dollops of fresh-picked raspberries, and washed it all down with huckleberry tea. When no one said anything, he went back for more, adding spiced and smashed sweet potatoes covered in walnuts, yeast rolls two at a time, carrot and garlic pudding, green beans, peas, and slices of cantaloupe and sawtooth melon picked clean of the vicious barbed seeds that gave it the name.
Talk was sparse during the meal, and Wick enjoyed that as well. It was good to dine with people who knew that a meal was a meal and conversation was conversation, and that the two shouldn’t needlessly be commingled. Dining with the band of thieves was almost like dining among dwellers. Except that dwellers wouldn’t possibly kill a fellow diner once the meal was finished.
Gradually, Brant, Sonne, Hamual, and the others sat back in wonder as they watched the little librarian eat. Wick saw awe on all their faces and tried to ignore it. If this is to be my last meal, then let me enjoy it. Two weeks of starving at the hands of goblinkin slavers was too much to forget.
“I swear,” Lago said in quiet wonderment, “the little halfer’s going to burst himself before he gives up that plate, he is.”
The other thieves laughed, and Wick pointedly ignored them.
Lago, the little librarian had discovered, was an interesting fellow. He was an elderly dwarf who’d grown old and bent, but he was an excellent cook. He liked to sing old drinking songs while he cooked and baked and served out. His voice boomed and filled the small log house.
Only Cobner was able to eat more than Wick, even though the grumpy dwarf had started before the little librarian. Wick was convinced that Cobner hadn’t eaten all that he had out of hunger, but rather out of spite. And when he finally pushed his plate away as well, Cobner didn’t look happy about having eaten.
Wick was in that nice area between being totally sated and on the verge of being miserable.
“Now this here’s a story,” Lago said as he and Hamual cleared the dishes from the table, “to tell your grandkids, it is. When have you ever seen such a little man eat so much at a single sitting?”
“Never,” Sonne exclaimed, folding her hands together and staring at Wick in delight. “I don’t know if he’s going to be able to help you out much with your puzzle, Brant, but he’s going to be entertaining.”
“We don’t need entertainment,” Brant said, standing up from the table. “What we need is elucidation. Let’s talk in the main room.”
Sleeves and pants legs flopping loosely, having to keep one hand on the pants to keep them up because he had no belt, Wick followed the thieves into another room on the lowest floor of the log house.
The main room was large and spacious. Three long couches and several chairs filled the open area before the large fireplace where a well-laid fire burned merrily. Brant seated himself nearest the fire, then took a huge, fragrant pouch from a small chest at his feet. The chest also held several pipes.
“Do you smoke?” Brant asked.
“Yes,” Wick said at once. He gratefully accepted the pipe, a filling, and then a light from his host-captor. The little librarian settled back into a couch between Hamual and one of the other big dwarves, feeling incredibly small and almost lost among them.
“As you know,” Brant said, “we’re thieves. But we’re independent thieves, not owing allegiance to any king or any flag. The world is chaos
these days, and finding a place to settle down where a man can feel safe from oppressors is all but impossible.” He lit his pipe and puffed, showing great satisfaction. “So we have become a family in our own right. We came to Hanged Elf’s Point three months ago, and we set about our business with professionalism and pride. Unfortunately, Orpho Kadar controls the local Thieves’ Guild, which is incredibly large and successful. You see how this can be a problem?”
Wick puffed on his pipe contentedly, hanging on every word. No one at the Library had ever known real thieves, and he knew if he survived and got back there the things he could learn could be fascinating and enlightening reading.
“Do you know how a Thieves’ Guild works?” Brant asked.
Wick took the pipe from his mouth, watching how everyone in the room turned to look at him. Cobner scowled at him evilly, leading the little librarian to believe the big dwarf was only waiting for him to prove himself unworthy of Brant’s attention. Wick cleared his throat. “Not so much how, but I think I understand why.”
“Tell me what you know,” Brant encouraged.
“Every king, lord, or ruler knows anytime they get a large group of people into an urban setting that this leads to the development and growth of an infrastructure of those who prey on that urban area,” Wick expounded.
Cobner’s scowl deepened.
“Exactly,” Brant agreed, nodding to himself. “Go on.”
“Once this criminal element becomes established inside the city,” Wick said, recalling the structure of Forbish Hagladen’s Treatise on Merchant Cities and Purveyors of Opportunity; or Tales of the Shadow Prince, “and such an occurrence can’t be completely thwarted, the rulers have only two choices to make.”
“And they are?” Brant asked.
“They can elect to take the strongest measures against these thieves and black market dealers,” Wick said. “However, if they choose to do that, they will soon find themselves locking up a great many of their populace as well, because easy money is a great temptation. And work comes and goes inside the city, not always enough to feed a man and a large family. If the rules stays with that course long enough—”
