Transcendent (Ascendant Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  “I want him to tell me where he got my mother’s pendant,” Koren declared simply.

  “That’s all?” Bjorn looked doubtfully at his young companion. “Lekerk is a bandit, and a cruel one, to be sure. That doesn’t mean he didn’t simply buy that pendant at a market-”

  “My mother would never sell that pendant!” Koren protested.

  “Kedrun, you are young-”

  “Don’t tell me I don’t know my own parents!”

  “I’m telling you,” Bjorn said patiently, “that you don’t know everything that could have happened. Your father may have been injured or fallen ill, and your mother could have sold the pendant to pay for his medical care. Or your parents, you said you don’t know where they are? They moved away from your village?”

  “Yes.” Koren didn’t want to say any more. “I ran away, then they left.”

  “If they were traveling, their horse could have broken a leg, and they needed to buy a horse. My point, Koren, is there are many reasons why your mother may have sold her pendant. You also need to consider that successful bandits like Lekerk often act as a fence for other bandits-”

  “A fence?” Koren asked, puzzled.

  Bjorn chuckled. “A go-between. It’s criminal slang. When bandits or burglars have something they can’t immediately sell, they will sell it or trade it to a ‘fence’. The fence pays a lot less than the item is worth, because the fence later expects to sell it for a higher price later. There was a case of a fence in Rellanon, she bought up gold jewelry that was burgled from royalty. Jewelry like that is distinctive, and only other royalty can afford to buy it. So, it’s hard to sell. This fence bought up a lot of it, operated her own furnace, and melted it down into gold bars.” The former king’s guard chuckled again. “When she was finally caught, she got only a short time in jail, because she had discovered much of the supposedly gold jewelry bought by the quality folk was only partly gold. The royalty were glad to know which goldsmiths were cheating them. And the fence? When she sold the gold bars she’d made, she made sure they were pure gold. She knew what type of trouble not to get into. Sorry, I got away from my point there. Kedrun, it could be that your mother didn’t sell her pendant. But it could also be that Lekerk and his men aren’t the ones who stole it from her. You shouldn’t go getting your hopes up that you will get the answer you want from Lekerk.”

  Koren had not thought of that. He hadn’t thought beyond finding Lekerk, and somehow getting the man to tell him where he’d gotten the pendant. Koren got a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. What if Lekerk said he had bought the pendant, or got it from another bandit? How would Koren know the man wasn’t lying?

  Thunderbolt sensed his master’s reverie, and slowed to a walk. Bjorn reined his own horse in and dropped back. Koren covered his face with his hands for a moment.

  “It’s all right, lad,” Bjorn reached over and patted Koren’s back. “We find Lekerk, that’s what we do first. We can figure out the rest later.”

  “I have to know,” Koren whispered. “I have to. I have to try.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Bjorn kneed his horse back into a trot, and Thunderbolt followed. “Besides, there’s a reward for Lekerk. We could come out of this with a fat purse of coins-”

  “You can keep the coins,” Koren surprised Bjorn by saying, “I don’t want them.” Collecting a reward also risked drawing attention to himself and exposing his true identity. “After we find Lekerk, however it happens, I’m going north.”

  “Aye, Kedrun, and I’m going with you.”

  “Thank you,” Koren said simply and honestly. They rode on for another mile, each in his own thoughts, then Koren asked a question that he had been mulling over. “Bjorn, how will we catch Lekerk?” The infamous bandit had mercenaries after his head, to collect the reward money. And Duke Bargann had his own soldiers out searching for Lekerk, because the bandit lately had been preying on commerce within Farlane province. How were two people going to find, let alone capture, a skilled and ruthless bandit when so many others had failed?

  “Aye,” Bjorn smiled to himself. “I was wondering when you were going to ask that. It depends on what we find up north, but I have some ideas. Let me mull it over.”

  While Bjorn tried to think of a way to find the bandit leader who had eluded soldiers and mercenaries who had been seeking him for years, Koren thought about his other problem. In his mind, Koren imagined holding the point of his sword at Lekerk’s throat, demanding the bandit tell him where he had gotten Amalie Bladewell’s pendant. The thought of making the bandit fear for his life pleased Koren greatly. What bothered him was that, as Bjorn suggested, Lekerk could say that he had bought the pendant, or had traded another gang of bandits for it. Lekerk could tell Koren anything, and Koren would have no way of knowing whether the bandit was telling him the truth or not. “Bjorn, I know you’re thinking of how to find Lekerk. I have another problem.” He explained his dilemma.

  Bjorn thought for a long while, considering and discarding ideas in his head. “Kedrun, I don’t rightly know how to get Lekerk to tell the truth. Here is what I can tell you; if the man thinks telling the truth will get him further into trouble, he will either tell you nothing, or lie about it. You need a way for the man to think that telling you the truth costs him nothing. Or, better yet, that telling the truth will benefit him. I don’t know how to do that, either, except, hmm, the one thing that motivates a bandit is the prospect of money.”

  “He could tell me anything, and I’d have no way to know he isn’t lying,” Koren complained.

  Bjorn scratched his beard and thought. They covered a quarter mile before the former king’s guard spoke again. “Unless you tell him you already know most of the story, you only need him to fill in the details? Kedrun, whatever story you cook up for Lekerk’s benefit, he can’t ever suspect that pendant belonged to your mother. If he thinks you believe that he harmed your parents, he will know anything he says to you will be at great risk to his life.”

  After many days of riding, Koren thought he had a way to get Lekerk to talk, and to assure the bandit told him the truth. He discussed the plan with Bjorn, and Bjorn had congratulated him on coming up with a clever idea. Bjorn himself would not reveal his own plans for finding Lekerk. “Kedrun, it depends on what we learn when we get to Hellvik. There’s a Farlane army garrison there; it’s a safe bet they have been in the thick of the hunt for Lekerk. If the garrison commander has had no luck finding Lekerk, well, I’m expecting he’ll be open to listening to some new ideas.”

  The village of Hellvik existed for two reasons. The duke of Farlane had established a garrison there for his army, where there was a substantial bridge over a river. While most villages were centered around farmland, the generally rocky and swampy soil of northern Farlane province did not encourage farming, other than hay to feed cattle and horses. The ducal army post was there to secure portions of the important east-west roads across Farlane into Winterthur, and the north-south road that came down from the dwarf lands. When Bjorn approached the army post, stating that he was a mercenary hunting bandits, the soldier told Bjorn that the commander was in the field and would not return until the following morning. Bjorn left with the impression that mercenaries were distinctly unwelcome in Hellvik.

  The village had only one tavern, a rough, well-worn place with, according to the soldier, bitter beer and skimpy portions of beef stew and roast chicken. Bjorn took Koren in past the low front door to find the only late afternoon customers were four dwarves. By the empty tankards of beer on the table in front of them, Bjorn guessed the dwarves had started drinking early that day. They were also bored, and seeing newcomers perked up their interest. “I’m Barlen,” one dwarf said as he stuck out a hand. Barlen was more than a head shorter than Koren but powerfully built. Like almost all dwarf men Koren had seen, Barlen had a well-groomed, long beard, although Barlen’s beard was not adorned with beads or any other ornamentation. Though there were streaks of gray in Barlen’s blonde
beard, Koren thought the dwarf looked youthful. Koren cautioned himself that he knew little of dwarves.

  Bjorn shook the dwarf’s hand in a grip strong enough to generate respect but not inviting a contest. “I’m Bjorn, this one here is Kedrun. We hear tell the beer here is bitter, and the food portions small?”

  “Small? Shameful is more like it,” Barlen scoffed. In a low voice, he added “slip the serving girl a few coins, and you’ll find a reasonable amount on your plate. She also will tap the better cask of beer for you.”

  “I’m grateful,” Bjorn nodded, and just then, a serving girl came through the doorway from the kitchen. Following Barlen’s advice, Bjorn ordered one beef stew and one roast chicken dinner, beer for himself and water for Koren. He slipped two copper coins into the pocket of the girl’s skirt, and she smiled knowingly.

  “What’s your business in this miserable part of the world?” Barlen asked as he propped his boots on a table, and took out a pipe.

  “We’re bounty hunters and we’re looking for a bandit; Lekerk is his name. There’s reward money in it,” Bjorn explained.

  That remark drew a laugh from all four of the dwarves. “Lekerk?” Barlen broke up with laughter. “You two and a hundred others are seeking that reward money. The four of us,” Barlen used his pipe to point to the other three dwarves, “having been looking for him more than two months. There were a dozen of us until last week; the others gave up and went home last week. We’ll likely be following them soon. Our coins are running low, and our luck ran out before we got here. With only four of us, we dare not take on Lekerk’s band.”

  “You’ve had no luck at all?” Koren asked anxiously.

  Barlen frowned. “Does bad luck count? No, we haven’t seen hide nor hair of Lekerk the whole time we’ve been here. And we have covered roads in every direction.”

  Bjorn lowered his voice. “Your bad luck had some help, I think?” He looked toward the door to the kitchen.

  “Mmm,” Barlen leaned forward across the table. “That’s what I’ve been thinking. Our friendly local bandit has spies everywhere. Including,” he glared at Bjorn, “people who say they are mercenaries hunting him.”

  “We’re not spies,” Koren said hotly.

  “Calm down, there, my young friend,” Bjorn put out an arm to hold Koren back.

  “He is young,” Barlen observed. “You would have me believe the two of you plan to capture or kill Lekerk, by yourselves?” He laughed. “Your friend Kedrun here isn’t old enough to drink beer. How are the two of you going to find Lekerk, let alone take on him and his gang?”

  Bjorn leaned forward again. “The two of us aren’t.” he looked around the table. “The six of us are.”

  “Ho!” Barlen slapped the table as he chuckled. “You have great ambitions, or you think me a fool. One is amusing, the other insulting.”

  “Ambition? Aye, that we are.” Bjorn unbuttoned his shirt and pulled down his left sleeve to expose a tattoo. “I was a king’s man. Those days are past, but I know how to fight. And Kedrun here, he’s a berserker.”

  “Strong words,” Barlen mused, but the dwarf had been clearly impressed by Bjorn’s tattoo.

  “Kedrun will best any of you with a sword,” Bjorn boasted confidently. In the evenings, he had watched ‘Kedrun’ practice shooting arrows, setting up targets at impossible ranges and hitting the targets every time. “We have time before our food is ready, would you care for a wager?” He took a silver coins from a pocket and slapped it on the table.

  Barlen’s eyes grew wide from seeing the shiny silver coin. “What type of wager?”

  “Bjorn, is this really necessary?” Koren whispered. Barlen had drawn a circle on a tree with white chalk; the bet was that Koren could put five out of five arrows in the circle. The circle was the size of Barlen’s outstretched hand, that is, it was not big at all. The tree was uncomfortably far away, and there was an unpredictable, gusty wind that afternoon. Besides the four dwarves, a half dozen villagers and two soldiers had gathered to watch the show; none of them thought Koren had any chance to win the bet.

  “It is. You can, uh, do this?” Bjorn asked nervously. Perhaps he should not have let Barlen pace off the distance, it was quite far.

  “Yes,” Koren hissed, annoyed. He had not doubt about hitting the target; the difficult part would be putting a couple arrows just inside the circle; to conceal his true uncanny skill. With the wind throwing off his aim, it took him five minutes to put all five arrows inside the target circle, because with each arrow he had to wait until it ‘felt right’ to release the bowstring.

  “Mmm,” Barlen grumbled. “Well, everyone gets lucky.”

  Koren did not bear the insult well. “Do you wish to see me do it again? For double the money? Or more?”

  Barlen ignored the entreaties of his fellow, who were eager to get their precious money back. “No, you’ve shown your skill,” he looked at Bjorn in an unfriendly manner. “Is this what you do? Pretend to be bounty hunters, and fleece unsuspecting honest folk out of their money?”

  That remark angered Koren. “We are hunting for Lek-”

  “Hold, Kedrun,” Bjorn advised. “Barlen, you can keep your coin, if you’ll hear us out. I’ll even buy you a beer,” he offered graciously.

  Barlen made a sour face. “I’ve had enough beer for one day, but my fellows will be grateful for it. All right, you’ve proven me wrong once today, I’ll listen while you spin your tale.”

  An hour later, Barlen was forced to admit that Bjorn had a plan, and it was as good a plan as any. “I’m willing to try it. You’ll need the army here to cooperate.”

  “Aye,” Bjorn grimaced. “The soldier I talked with was not welcoming to mercenaries and bounty hunters.”

  “Oh, ignore them. The soldiers here all want to get the reward money for themselves, and they’d be welcome to it, if they were willing to go more than a mile from their soft beds. The commander is a name named Cramer, he’s a good one. He took over here from the previous commander two months ago, and he’s had his men actually out escorting caravans, and patrolling the roads for bandits. He captured a gang of bandits in his first month, a small gang that was more of an annoyance than a threat. Since then, Lekerk must have gotten the word, and he’s made himself scarce. We know Lekerk is still around here somewhere; at least once a week a group of wagons goes missing, or survivors straggle to Hellvik and report they were robbed by Lekerk.”

  “They know it is him, for sure?” Koren asked eagerly.

  Barlen chuckled. “He makes no secret about it, Kedrun. The man boasts about how feared he is. He wants everyone to know he is the great Lekerk. He even has a name for himself. ‘Scourge of the North Woods’, he calls himself,” Barlen said with disgust.

  Bjorn nodded. “He thinks a lot of himself. A man like that needs to be taken down a peg or two. Does anyone have a rough idea where he is now?”

  Barlen gestured with his pipe to the four corners of the compass. “North, south, east, west? No one knows, except Lekerk himself. Me and my band, we certainly searched all over. We’d be south of here, and come back to find he hit a caravan to the west. It’s like chasing a ghost. He has too many spies everywhere, is what I think.”

  “Including in the Farlane army?” Bjorn asked. “The local garrison here?”

  “That’s more than a bit possible,” Barlen said morosely. “Likely that’s why we weren’t able to get even a single clue to help us find Lekerk. I can say this new commander, Cramer, he’s cracked down on the garrison here. When he takes a patrol out, he doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going beforehand, and sometimes he doubles back and goes the opposite way after he’s left Hellvik behind. He’s had at least a measure of success, we know he disrupted Lekerk’s operations; made him move his base once. Rumor has it, Lekerk is annoyed enough to put a price on Cramer’s head. Our commander here surrounds himself with a chosen group of people, and trusts no one else. His life depends on it.”

  The next day, after Captain Cramer returned
to the garrison, Barlen took Bjorn over to see the soldier, and introduced the two men to each other. “Any luck?” Barlen asked, hoping Cramer had not already killed or captured Lekerk. Or, almost as bad, driven the bandit gang far away from Hellvik.

  “No,” Cramer answered with great weariness. “Two days out there, and nothing! All we found was an old campsite, a firepit long gone cold, and the campsite was only big enough for a handful of men. On our way back, we escorted a caravan that wasn’t attacked, so there’s that, I suppose.” He took off his boots and rubbed his aching feet. “Duke Bargann is not going to be pleased with me.”

  “We may be able to do something about that,” Bjorn offered. “You can only take your men in one direction, we can cover another.”

  “The six of you?” Cramer asked skeptically.

  “No,” Bjorn said with a smile. “We’ll need more than six.” He explained his plan.

  It was a sign of Cramer’s desperation for results that he did not immediately dismiss Bjorn’s idea. “That’s all you need?” He asked with sarcasm.

  “No, Captain,” Bjorn continued. “We’ll need two of your wagons. And, paint. Some bright paint, several colors.”

  “Paint?” Cramer asked, intrigued. “Why?”

  “Because,” Bjorn pointed to the battered Farlane army wagons. “To catch a thief, you need bait. Anyone can see those two wagons do not belong to rich merchants.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Teregen was a fair-sized town, located at the junction of two rivers. One of the rivers flowed down from Burwyck, allowing the army contingent to float swiftly down to Teregen aboard barges, rather than walking the entire way. Despite Kyre’s determination to reach Teregen ahead of Captain Jaques, the ducal army commander already had his soldiers, horses and equipment unloaded from the barges and ready to march by the time Kyre arrived. Kyre’s delay had been because a bridge to the south had been damaged in that spring’s flood, and with the war taking priority of manpower and material in Tarador, the bridge had not yet been repaired. Kyre, Falzon and Carter had been forced to wait for a very slow ferry to carry them across, with Kyre fuming at the delay. His mood was not improved when he saw Captain Jaques was riding at the head of the army column, under a banner that bore the Falco family crest.