by Victor Milán
So the sergeant thought it best to hold his tongue. Thus he marched down to the harbor, alleviating the ache in his feet and lower back with visions of the so-superior young lieutenant spending the rest of his career as a civic guard officer leading darkling-hunting patrols through the notably extensive and noisome sewers of Zazesspur.
And so, in the fullness of time, did it come to pass.
Part II
Career of Evil
It was dusk along the Trade Way north of Zazesspur. Like mauve fog, nighthawks coursed on scimitar wings through twilight and sought prey. Off in the west, clouds rose like fanciful mountains above the unseen Trackless Sea, all slate and indigo and molten copper where the last rays of the fallen sun struck them.
The lure of honestly gotten gain being almost as powerful as the other kind, several families of southern Tethir foresters, related by marriage, had banded together to purchase a number of wagons and attempt the trip through the Starspire Mountains and south to Zazesspur. The wagons were piled high with animal skins, a kind of bark used in tanning, and other vegetable stuffs for the manufacture of dyes. The great merchant caravans no longer plied the Trade Way from Amn and points north down to Calimport. And, so, if these enterprising foresters could reach Zazesspur, they could expect to reap a rich return from the city’s leather-workers and dyers.
They had made it through the mountains and most of the way to the city. Unfortunately, ill-gotten gain still had its allure. Consequently, there had come a sudden drum of hoofbeats as evening came on, and suddenly the little caravan was surrounded by a score of robbers, who swung down from horseback to menace the foresters with drawn bows. The foresters were no mean fighters themselves under most circumstances. But as their destination grew nearer, they had relaxed their guard, a process expedited by the passing around of a couple of stone crocks of berry brandy by way of celebration, now seen to be premature.
The robbers, initially elated at the bloodless capture of a half-dozen wagons, grew surly when they threw back the canvas covering the loads and found bales of bark and sheaves of dried herbs. The leader of the bandits, a burly, black-bearded ruffian clad in rude black leather garments, which summer’s heat would soon render quite unthinkable, had the makeshift caravan’s master brought before him as he stood by the roadside.
“Where are the valuables?” he demanded as Wyancott—a towheaded, middle-aged chief among the foresters—was thrust to his knees before him.
“Valuables?” the caravan master repeated as if confused. “What’s in the wagons is all we have. What wealth we possessed went to buy the wagons and the mules to draw them.”
“You mean we went to all this trouble over nothing but a mess of twigs and branches?” the bandit chieftain roared. “Are we aarakocra, to make nests for our dwellings? Produce some real wealth, and quickly, or prepare to suffer accordingly!”
But Wyancott could only shake his head numbly. The leader, scowling ferociously, drew back his arm to strike.
Then he toppled into the poorly maintained ditch beside the road and commenced to snore.
Another flurry of hoofbeats. Riders swept past along the road. From his knees Wyancott looked wildly right and left to see infantry with leveled crossbows surrounding the halted wagon train in the gloom. The marauders who held his arms let him go and hurriedly raised their hands.
A bandit atop one of the wagons uttered a defiant cry, snatched up a short bow, nocked an arrow, and began to draw upon a tall woman riding up the road toward Wyancott on horseback. An arrow smote him in the center of the forehead. He rolled off the wagon to lie unmoving in the soft spring grass.
With the exception of the rash bowman, the bandits surrendered readily. Zaranda dismounted from Goldie, glanced down at the bandit leader she’d sent to sleep in the ditch. She extended a hand to the man with the thatch of white-blond hair, who was still on his knees looking thoroughly confused.
“Up you come,” she said as he took her hand and hauled himself upright. “What’s your name?”
“Wyancott,” he said. He rubbed his jaw, rolled his tongue around in his mouth. “I thank you.”
Zaranda nodded. A mercenary with a crossbow slung across his mail-jacketed back, one of the original escorts she’d brought into Tethyr, was kneeling in the ditch and binding the bandit chieftain’s hands behind his back. The bandit chieftain snored loudly.
The rest of Zaranda’s small but intrepid—she hoped—band was rounding up the demoralized bandits and disarming them. They were beginning to gripe at the realization of just how small a party they had surrendered to. Not that the outcome would likely have been different, save for more bloodshed; so intent had the marauders been on their haul that Zaranda’s group had half surrounded them before making their presence known, and likely would have completed the job had not Zaranda feared the leader might hurt the caravanner, and so put him down for his nap. But Stillhawk’s dropping of the lone man who showed fight had had a salutary effect on morale.
Which reminds me—Zaranda turned and gestured through the gloom at Chenowyn, who was trudging along the road, looking disgruntled but almost pretty in the simple white linen blouse and green linen breeches Zaranda had bought her, with her dark red hair brushed gleaming and bound back from her well-scrubbed face. She couldn’t ride a lick, and hence had been riding postilion behind Zaranda, arms locked firmly about the older woman’s waist. She was disgruntled because Zaranda had made her dismount before riding up to engage the bandits.
“Why couldn’t I ride with you?” the youth demanded as she approached.
“Because I didn’t want you to get hurt. Also I didn’t want you to get excited and turn me and Goldie into voles by accident. Now come along.”
She took Chen gently by the arm and led her to the wagon beside which lay the man Vander Stillhawk had shot. The mute ranger had his foot on the dead man’s face, pulling out his arrow. The task completed, he stood back, scrubbing the recovered missile with a handful of bunchgrass.
“Take a good look,” Zaranda said, indicating the dead marauder, who lay on his back staring sightlessly at the first stars appearing in the purple sky above.
Chen craned forward without much interest. “He’s dead,” she said. “I’ve seen dead men before.”
“Look at him,” Zaranda insisted. “You never had a hand in anyone’s death before, did you? Well, you had a hand in his.”
Chen stared at her. “What are you talking about? I didn’t shoot him!”
“No. But you were part of an armed party that engaged his in battle. That entitles you to a share of whatever spoils there are. It also entitles you to a share of responsibility.”
Chen’s face crumpled, and tear-shine was visible in her eyes, even in the dimness. “What did I do? What do you want me to do, mourn for him?”
“No,” Zaranda said. “He got what he had coming. But whether it’s something to grieve or not, taking life should never be easy.”
Chen covered her face in her hands and ran off sobbing. Her tears, Zaranda was acutely aware, were because she thought she had incurred Zaranda’s anger without knowing why, not from any emotion concerning the dead bandit. Fine job of moral instruction, there. There are reasons I never became a mother.
Stillhawk came up, laid his hand on her shoulder and gently squeezed. She looked into his dark, steady eyes, smiled, touched his cheek.
“Thank you,” she said.
She walked back to where Wyancott stood. Balmeric rode past on his chestnut gelding, placing some of the small troop to keep watch in case other bandits turned up, either from the same band or another—always a lively possibility in modern Tethyr. Stillhawk went off to help the lookouts.
Despite the seizure of her own caravan and the attendant financial difficulties, she had managed to interest the former captain of her caravan guards and seven adventurers, including four of her crossbowmen, in following her on her latest wild scheme. In all she had twelve followers, including Chen, Farlorn, Stillhawk, and Shield, who ha
d been waiting at a rendezvous point she and the ranger had arranged in advance, having themselves escaped the city without incident.
Not many to challenge the fabric of a whole country, she thought. She grinned.
“What was that all about?” Goldie asked. The mare tossed her head toward Chenowyn, who stood about twenty paces back up the road, weeping.
“My ham-handed attempt to civilize my young charge.”
“I suppose somebody had to take the little beast in hand. I just wish it didn’t have to be you.”
“Goldie, be nice,” Zaranda said. She turned to Wyancott, who was staring. “My horse talks,” she told him, as if that explained all. Then back to Goldie: “She hasn’t done anything to you.”
“Nothing but increase my burden,” the mare said primly. “And she rides, I might mention, with the grace of a sack of coal. Come on, Randi, allow me to blow off a little steam. I don’t have anything against the girl, really—and I, at least, have not been giving you grief about your orc.”
“Orc?” echoed Wyancott.
As if on cue a clamor rose from the other foresters: “Betrayed! ’Ware orcs! Run for it, boys!”
The forest folk were pointing at Shield of Innocence, who stood keeping guard over the prisoners, his scimitars in his clawed hands. His hood had fallen back in the battle, revealing his great head in all its tusked and snouted glory.
“Settle down!” Zaranda cried. “He’s with me.”
A young caravanner glared at her. “Decent folk don’t have truck with no orcs! You’re evil, just like him!” Several of the others cried assent. Zaranda was glad they hadn’t yet gotten their weapons back.
“He’s not evil,” she said. “He’s converted to the worship of Torm—see his medallion? Besides, I don’t see what his beliefs or mine have to do with anything, inasmuch as we just rescued you. Or don’t they practice common courtesy in Tethir Forest nowadays?”
Wyancott rubbed his nose with his thumb. “She’s right,” he said.
His followers subsided into watchful silence. “Thank you,” Zaranda told him.
“So what happens now?”
“We each go our separate ways,” she said. “However—”
His narrow features closed. “I reckoned there was a however.”
“There usually is. We find ourselves in possession of your goods train. We are happy to be able to restore it to you—but we did save you, at risk to ourselves, and we must eat like any others. So I think a recovery fee of ten percent would not be unreasonable.”
“That’s naught but highway robbery!” protested the young forester who’d objected loudest to Shield.
“No,” Wyancott said. “Highway robbery was a moment ago when you had a dirk prodding you in the ribs, sister-son. Like as not it would be well and truly stuck between them now, were it not for these folk.”
He looked at Zaranda. “You have the right of it. It’s a small enough price to pay, seeing as we thought to be left with nothing at all.”
“What ho, Zaranda!” cried Farlorn, who was likewise guarding the captive bandits. “Are we to carry off stacks of dried animal skins and sheaves of bark on our backs? Not to mention that the hides stink worse than your young apprentice did when first you brought her home.”
Chen gave off sniffling to glare at him. Zaranda found herself half hoping the girl would set his hair on fire. The bard was far too skillful with words to wound with them accidentally.
“I think,” Zaranda said, “we can come to far more satisfactory terms.”
Thereupon she declared the bandits’ possessions forfeit, by way of compensating the Tethir foresters for their pains. The outlaws proved to have a few coins among them. Their weapons were of generally poor quality, though several swords showed promise that a good cleaning and whetting would render them more than serviceable, and the leader had been armed with a fine spike-headed mace and poniard. Their horses, while not exactly prize destriers and coursers, were valuable enough.
Wyancott, however, was more than happy to trade the spoils from the bandit band for the share of his goods Zaranda had claimed as recovery fee, even though everyone agreed that they were worth more than ten percent of his cargo.
As the weapons and oddments of armor were bundled together and loaded onto the confiscated horses, Zaranda approached her captives, who were all awake and mobile now, standing in a resentful clump in their loincloths and ratty, foul chemises. Farlorn was playing a little game with them, tapping a bandit first on one shoulder with his drawn rapier, then on the other, making him pivot his head frantically from side to side to see what was touching him. Finally he let his blade lie firmly against the bandit’s panting neck. The foresters laughed hugely at his expression when he saw what lay against his jugular.
Zaranda glared at the half-elf. Farlorn shrugged, laughed, and put away his sword. “I just thought to lighten the spirits of our newfound friends,” he said. “That is, after all, my stock in trade.”
“What will you do to us?” the bearded bandit leader demanded.
“You didn’t kill anybody,” Zaranda said. “So we’ll not kill more of you.”
Some of the foresters grumbled at this. Wyancott shouted them down.
“What I’m going to do,” Zaranda said, “is let you go, with a warning: Do not molest this caravan again, and do not seek to follow us. If you do, I’ll burst your lungs inside your chests.”
“You’re going to just leave us like this?” the bandit leader cried. “Unarmed, naked, and with our hands tied behind us?”
“That’s about the shape of it, yes.”
“What about poor Fleebo, lying there dead?” another bandit asked.
“Would you care to join him?”
Balmeric sidled up to her and put his head against hers. “Scum like this run in bigger packs,” he muttered from the corner of his mouth. “We could maybe get their pals to go ransom on ’em.”
“Perhaps,” Zaranda answered quietly. “But with some of your men double-mounted on mules, we’re not much faster than this wagon train. I don’t want to look back to see a troop of kettle-head heavy cavalry riding up our tails.”
The mercenary officer pulled a thoughtful face and nodded.
The bandit chief was looking thoughtful too. In his case it was a pained expression. He was a man who didn’t readily harbor more than one thought at a time. A new idea had clearly forced its way into his head and was grinding around in there.
“Why are you really letting us go?” he asked.
“So you can do what our friends in the caravan will likewise be doing,” Zaranda said. “Spreading the word that the Star Company, Protective Services Extraordinaire, is open for business.”
The village consisted of a sparse collection of blocky houses. Though it overlooked the not altogether mighty Sulduskoon River, where it bowed away from the eastern tag end of the Starspire Mountains and the forest of Tethir toward Ithmong, it lay far enough inland that little rain fell, so that instead of the stone and brick walls and pitched tiled roofs of the coastal zone, the buildings had adobe walls and flat roofs.
When Zaranda led her little mounted band into the midst of it on a sun-drenched morning a few days after her escape from Zazesspur, it showed no more sign of life than if it had been abandoned at the time of the fall of Castle Tethyr. The houses were closed up tight with stout wooden shutters. The doors were shut. No pigs, dogs, or even chickens were to be seen on or among the buildings.
“All of this is clear evidence that they need us,” Zaranda commented aloud as they reined up in the village common, which was bare, packed earth but for a great spreading oak tree planted many generations before at one edge of the common. “No village is that poor.”
“What are we doing here, anyway?” demanded Chen, riding behind her.
“Patience, and you’ll see.” She raised her voice. “Knock, knock!”
For a moment nothing but the wind slapping the mud-brick walls answered her. Then: “Go away,” a querulous voic
e emanated from the nearest house, muffled by the shutters. “We’ve nothing left worth stealing.”
“If I were a determined thief, I wouldn’t believe that for a minute,” Zaranda said. “But we aren’t thieves. We are here to discuss trading with you.”
“And what have you to trade?”
“Protection.”
Another moment, and then there was the scrape of a bar being withdrawn from a door. A squeal of ill-lubricated hinges, and a weathered gray man stepped out, blinking, into the sunlight.
“We could never afford to pay a band as large as yours to guard us,” he said in tones of real regret.
“That’s understood,” Zaranda said. “That’s not what I’ve come to offer.”
A brown-skinned, solemn little girl clad in a ragged smock appeared in the doorway to clutch at the elder’s burlap chemise and stare bug-eyed at the intruders. He waved her back inside.
“What then? Will you sell us arms? We have no skill at using them.”
“Indeed we have arms to sell you, but that’s not all,” Zaranda said. “We would teach you how to use them as well.”
“Leave off, Osbard!” a female voice cried from the house behind him. “She speaks madness! The bandits will kill us if we try to resist.”
“Not,” Zaranda said, “if you kill them first.”
Despite the dearth of trade in the interior of Tethyr, the village was just managing to straggle along the raw edge of subsistence. Which meant that they were still able to leave some of their acreage fallow, rather than being forced to plant it all, trading off the chance of starving in the future when the land was exhausted against the certainty of starving now. Zaranda stood facing her troops across a field being rested, with the stunted, sunburned remnants of last year’s bean crop still underfoot.
“You know, Randi,” said Goldie, who stood behind her mistress and watched the proceedings with interest, “it’s not too late for us to turn bandit ourselves.”
