He looked smug. "I thought so."
* * *
Face flushed with bitter beer, Oren of the Orumeé leaned back and took another long pull at his pewter tankard. "Been close to a year since I've seen you, Wen'l," he said, wiping the foam from his lips with the back of his arm. "What ships you been working of late?" Think thick: thick fingers, nails short-bitten, gripping the tankard; thick, barrel-chested body; thick black beard, more hacked into shape than trimmed; thick lips; thick voice because too much drinking had made his tongue thick. Thick.
"None, for the past while." I shrugged. "Tried a hand at living ashore," I said, and went into a long and somewhat improbable story about a young wanton whose father owned a winery. I had to move the events around; it had happened a few years back and a few countries away, but that's often the way things are when you're telling a story that has the liability of being true.
"Didn't take, eh?" he asked.
I shrugged. "You know how it is. Once you get used to the feel of sliding lines burning blisters on your palms, of cold food twice a day and warm ale once, of splinters in your feet and rain in your face . . ."
He laughed. "Of a sudden roll slapping the port railing against your kidney, of sleeping in a cramped hold with a dozen unbathed sailors, of surly captains and low pay . . . ah, how could you ever give up such a life?"
"I tried, give me that."
"But it called you back."
"It always does," I said. I sipped at my own beer. I had the distinct impression that the brewer had let some of the hops pass through the digestive tract of a goat before roasting, but you can't have everything. It was cold and wet, and I was thirsty and dry.
Bren Adahan was glaring at me.
"Your friend doesn't talk much," Oren said.
"He's a mute," I said. "Made the mistake of making fun of an island witch, out Filikos way. She made his tongue go stiff, and his pecker limp," I said, I guess turning one of my own wishes into a story for the third time that night, much to Bren's discomfiture.
Rattling off another improbable tale while listening with one ear came easy. Over in the corner, two sailmakers were haggling with the captain of the Busted Jaw over the cost of a new balloon sail, while farther down the long, rough table where we sat, a trio of seamen from a ship whose name I didn't catch were involved in a long discussion of the sanitary habits, such as they were, of the mate. Farther on down was a talk about what I took to be local politics, definitely involving entry fees and tariffs, while behind us a steersman from the Teesia was engaged in a stroke-by-stroke description of how he had spent his earnings across the street.
Nothing about the Warrior, and I wasn't going to be the one to bring it up.
One easy recipe to get into trouble: plop myself down in a tavern or in the drinking room of a bordello, and ask what the Slavers Guild was up to, whether the Warrior had struck recently, and where. Repeat until somebody noticed that this Wen'l of Lundescarne (there really was a Wen'l of Lundescarne, but he was a peasant, and unlikely to be known beyond the Lundeyll markets, or anywhere more than five miles away from his cottage) seemed overly interested in the Warrior. It would be simple.
It would be somewhat less simple to explain myself to the Guild Council proctors who were the Pandathaway police force, a group of serious unsmiling young men, handy with truncheon, knife, and sword, any of whom would be more than happy to trade in the head of Walter Slovotsky for an embarrassingly large amount of gold.
So I listened as much as I could and talked just enough to get a reputation as a brilliant raconteur, and drank half a mug of beer for every beer-and-refill I ordered.
* * *
It was the fifth place that I heard something.
" . . . Pemburne, it was, that the Warrior last struck," a harsh voice somewhere behind me said. "Just days ago—we had to hold at Endeport while the local lord put some questions to some of our new hands, wondering if they might be him, traveling in disguise. You should have seen the way they surrounded us: two horsemen on the pier, bowmen behind them, a skiff-full of armsmen coming up on the starboard side, ready to board if we were to make a move. And then they took them off to see if—"
"They weren't him," a bored voice said, "or that would be the story. Get to the story, man."
To my right, Bren Adahan had stiffened, but I didn't think our companion across the table noticed, or noticed me kicking him under the table, gently enough not to draw a sound out of him, hard enough to make the point that he shouldn't seem to be particularly interested in this.
"Just his usual," the voice went on. "Although this time it was the lord's slave-keeper he killed, and he did it in the guise of a Guild Slaver. Seems a wizard turned him into the likeness thereof—"
"Oh? And what does a Guild Slaver look like? Or do you mean a specific one?"
"Who's telling the story? You or me? The lord was thinking of selling off some of his women-slaves, and turned the Warrior—thinking he's a Guild Slaver, mind—loose in their quarters for the night. Come morning, all twenty of the women were smiling, the slave-keeper was dead, drained of every drop of blood, his dead eyes and mouth wide, and the Warrior gone. I heard that he had turned himself into a raven and flew away, but that sounds unlikely." As though the rest of it sounded likely.
Bren's eyes caught mine, but I didn't nod.
Pemburne, eh? I needed a map, but that would have to wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow night, late tomorrow night, we'd be in the air. Ellegon would be able to pinpoint Jason's location, once we got close enough. Hang on, guys; I'll be there. "I think I'll have another beer."
12
Mikyn
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.
—Theodore Roosevelt
Monkeys, whether you watch them in an Other Side zoo or in a Salket forest, fight the same way every time: they start off by threatening, then escalate to pushing and shoving, and then finally get down to it. This may be a good idea for monkeys, but it's a bad idea for humans. If you learn to go from utter peace to all-out war in a heartbeat, your chances of survival go way up. Unless, of course, you pick the wrong heartbeat in which to go from peace to war, but there you have it: the right policy doesn't do you any good in the wrong situation.
—Walter Slovotsky
Ahira raised his left hand, then extended his thick index finger. Single horseman ahead, he signed. "You'll hear him in a few minutes," he whispered.
The dwarf pulled on the reins—too gently, then too hard; Ahira never quite had gotten the hang of horses—slowing his gray gelding from a sullen walk to a sullen stop on the broad, flat road.
Jason was already out of his saddle.
The road twisted along a hillside underneath broadleaved trees. Flat enough to engineer with; even where it narrowed it was wide enough for two broad carts to pass each other, albeit carefully. Flat enough for four horses to ride abreast—although that would have put the outermost rider frighteningly close to the edge. And while the wooded hills behind them were overgrown with leafy beds of fern and ivy that twisted snakelike around the bases of the huge trees, here it was not overgrown at all, as though some wizard had cast a death spell on plants that would dare to try to invade the trees' domain.
Which was not particularly unlikely, come to think of it.
It was the third time this morning that Ahira had stopped all of them, and the third time this morning that Jason and Toryn had, at that command, quickly dismounted, and moved their saddles and bridles from their present mounts to rested ones, and the third time that Jason had managed to beat Toryn back into the saddle. Jason had had good teachers, and hadn't just spent more time on horseback than Toryn had; when the riding lesson ended, it was Jason who had unsaddled and rubbed down the animal, then watered and fed it, while Toryn had probably just handed his horse over to
some slave to take care of.
So it was easily a minute before Toryn could possibly finish that Jason gripped the reins of the large roan gelding, put his foot into the stirrup, and hefted himself up to the saddle, kicking the horse into a slow canter, leaving the rest of them behind. If this horseman turned out to be a message courier from Estene, his leather shoulderbag bulging with correspondence, the way it had been the first time, or a squat Aershter whose business on the road was not apparent, the way it had been the second time, it would be simple.
Jason would, for the third time this morning, slow his horse to a walk, because approaching a stranger quickly was a threat, and for the third time this morning hold up his right palm in a universal greeting that completely uncoincidentally demonstrated that he wasn't holding a weapon, and would accept the stranger's greeting with the same nod, and then simply wait beyond the next bend of the road and let the rest of them catch up to him. The dust his horse had kicked up would help to explain why the third member of Ahira's and Toryn's party coughed into a broad handkerchief that covered "his" face.
Jason was so ready for it to be another false alarm that there was a quick heartbeat where he didn't recognize Mikyn.
He could have argued that his old friend's thin brown beard had lightened marginally and thickened considerably since they'd last seen each other, and it certainly was true that Mikyn hadn't been nearly as battered looking in the old days, but mainly it was his eyes. They had always been Mikyn's eyes, nothing special or remarkable about them. Perhaps when Mikyn smiled, there used to be a certain something about the way they crinkled at the corners, or maybe there was something particular about the way he neither stared at nor looked away from things.
These eyes, sunken, stared out at him, holding his own without blinking, without any trace of kindness or hostility. He was Jason's age, and he had always looked older, but now he looked easily forty years old.
And there was something in his eyes. Something of determination at best, perhaps, but probably madness.
And then there was something in Mikyn's face, a flash of fear before the recognition set in, and then the suspicion.
"Jason," he said, and his face broke into a grin.
Yes.
They had been searching for Mikyn, but Jason hadn't worked out even in his own mind what he would say. It all depended on which Mikyn they found—the boy who Jason used to go swimming with at Home, the friend who was found as often in the kitchen of the Old House as in his adopted family's house, the comrade-at-arms who Jason had once let down . . .
Or the cold-blooded killer who had all of the Middle Lands up in arms.
"Damn it, Mikyn," Jason finally said. "You're a hard man to find."
The grin broadened, but the stare was the same. "I meant it to be that way." A frown. "You're looking for me?"
"Yes. Time to come in. To lay it down for a while." To have a bunch of folks who you might listen to explain to you that while the time may come to free slaves right and left, killing anybody in the way, the time isn't now, and isn't likely to come in our lifetimes.
"No. I still haven't found him, not yet. I figure that when I make enough trouble for them, they'll send him after me." He grinned wolfishly. "And until then, I free a few, I kill a few slave-owners."
Him. The slaver they'd met in Enkiar, the one who Mikyn was sure was the one that had abused him and his family, even though it was impossible, and Mikyn's plan madness even if it wasn't.
"I'm sure that'll bother them," Jason said. "Slitting their throats while they sleep. Hell, it bothers me."
A long pause. "It's easier that way. Nobody has the right to own anybody."
"Not arguing that," Jason said. "I'm arguing tactics—and I'm arguing—"
The slow clackity-clack of hoofbeats sounded off in the distance; Mikyn reached inside his cloak.
"Ta havath, eh?" Jason said. Take it easy, huh? "It's just the rest of them."
Mikyn's smile broadened when he saw Ahira, and even more a moment later. "Marnea," he said. "Well, I guess that saves me some trouble, eh?" He lifted his head. "Long time, Ahira."
Ahira clumsily reined in his horse, his head cocked to one side. "I wasn't sure you'd be back for her. Didn't sound like you," he said, dropping heavily from his saddle to the road. The dwarf stretched his broad shoulders, and rubbed idly at his backbone.
Mikyn snickered. "Just because I'm doing things my way instead of yours?"
"Something like that."
"Up yours." He shrugged. "You haven't introduced me to your friend."
A chill washed across Jason's back. What would Mikyn do? What would Toryn do? He tried to remember the exact words of the geas—
"Toryn, I want you to meet my friend and companion, Mikyn."
Mikyn looked at him strangely, but Jason wasn't about to explain that Toryn's geas applied to Jason and his companions, and he had to get Mikyn under the tent of that promise right now.
Toryn smiled. "Toryn the Journeyman, they call me."
"Ah." Mikyn nodded. "Journeyman engineer, eh? They make them quicker every day. How is he?"
Toryn shrugged. "Getting a little older every year. Still sharp as always."
"That is the way of it."
"And you? How do you like this new career of being the Warrior?" Toryn asked, his voice just too calm, too level.
Mikyn smiled. "I like it well enough. Jason's trying to talk me into giving it up for a while, with some nonsense about how I can come home and all will be forgiven, and—"
"I don't know why he'd want to do that," Toryn said, with a quick smile. "When I'm here."
Mikyn shook his head, not understanding.
"You see," he said, "I'm not just Jason's associate—I'm a Journeyman—"
—of the Slavers Guild, Jason completed in his mind. Of course.
He had been one step too slow, and Ahira with him. Toryn's geas prevented the slaver from attacking any of them—unless and until one of them attacked him. It did not prevent him from telling Mikyn that he was a Journeyman of—
"—of the Slavers Guild, partnered with Jason and Ahira with their agreement."
Ahira was already moving, his feet pounding on the ground with a thump-thump-thump that sounded too slow, too late to be any good.
He reached Mikyn's side just as Mikyn's sword was clearing its scabbard. A short leap, a squat, and the dwarf launched himself into the air, knocking Mikyn from the back of his horse.
Jason eased himself out of the saddle. Mikyn was no match for Ahira's dwarven strength.
Toryn's hands had never come near the hilt of his own sword as Jason stalked toward him. "You had your warning, young Cullinane, from the dwarf," he said, ignoring the grunting and groaning. "As much fun as it's been to travel with you, you didn't expect me to not follow my orders, did you?" He held out his hands palms up. "Even if I hadn't wanted to, I was under geas for that, too, although one cast by a wizard of rather smaller stature than Vair the Uncertain. Voluntarily undertaken, you understand; the Guildmaster was afraid that I would find your companionship too agreeable, knowing what a sociable fellow I am."
Marnea was looking daggers at his back, and it was all Jason could do not to draw his own sword. Toryn was probably as good with a blade as his swagger suggested, but Jason wasn't unfamiliar with it himself.
"You will stay where you are," a harsh voice cried out.
Hoofbeats sounded from beyond the bend, a rapid pounding that slowed as the horses—Jason was sure it was at least six, maybe seven—came nearer.
Jason turned, toward where Ahira and Mikyn were still wrestling on the ground. Beyond them, sealing off any escape that way, three bowmen stood, arrows nocked, a fourth man holding their horses.
Lord Pelester, mounted on a huge white gelding, rode around the bend, trailed by a troop of half a dozen mounted soldiers, two with long lances pointed at Jason and the others, four with longswords naked in their hands.
"I was fooled once by a supposed slaver, Journeyman Toryn," he s
aid. "I resolved not to be twice so fooled," he said. "You will all put up your weapons and surrender, or you will die where you are."
* * *
He was a young boy again, sitting in front of a campfire, listening to old Valeran hold forth. Not that it was any hardship to listen to his teacher talk endlessly, the voice hoarse from too many years of shouting commands to his troop.
"The thing of it is," the grizzled old warrior said, "that you always want to hold a little back. It's like keeping a reserve in battle: if it all goes to shit—and boy, more often than you'd like, it all goes to shit—you need something extra, to get you out.
"So you don't go all-out, because when you do that, you're going to fall down out of breath when it's all done, leaving yourself vulnerable. And you can't count on it being done in a few moments.
"So be careful, and don't go all-out. Unless . . ."
Jason had first learned not to walk into a line like that, and then, when he was older, not to leave a line like that hanging. "Unless?"
"Unless it's right. Then from flat-footed idleness you go into all-out action, without a breath, without a blink."
* * *
Without a blink, without a breath, Jason dove for the trees, drawing his sword as he did. Bowstrings thrummed.
13
Ambush
The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cats' teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice.
—Mahatma Gandhi
God, give me the strength to change that which can be changed, the strength to change that which probably can't be changed, and the strength to change that which can't possibly be changed. Hey, if You can't work miracles, what the hell good are You?
—Walter Slovotsky
They jumped us just outside the Inn of the Spotted Dog. I had about five seconds' warning.
You do this long enough, and if you survive, you develop nerve endings far beyond the envelope of your skin. It's not paranormal, although I can't always say what it is, and it's never, ever an excuse for not paying attention to your surroundings. Dead men don't pay attention to their surroundings.
Guardians of The Flame: To Home And Ehvenor (The Guardians of the Flame #06-07) Page 47
