“That would be awful,” Keta agreed.
“Yes. It would look suspicious if I had to pull the wagon the rest of the way myself,” Ashok said. The Keeper gave him an incredulous look, trying to decide if Ashok was trying to be funny or not. Ashok let him wonder.
As the rain increased in intensity, they found a road sign pointing them toward the next settlement, only a mile away. The temperature continued to drop and darkness fell long before sundown. Ashok had gotten in front, taken hold of the yoke and half guided, half dragged the blind and scared oxen up the hill and into the relative shelter of a rocky canyon. At times the wagon would stick, and Ashok would go around to the back and push. A journey that should have taken minutes took hours against the wind and building muck. By the time they reached the settlement, tiny streams had grown into vicious rivers that threatened to tear away the small bridges leading into the village, and Thera was doing everything she could to keep their canvas from being torn off in the wind.
The village was called Jharlang. It looked like all of the other minor places they’d passed through recently. Ashok counted the lights. There were maybe a couple hundred worker’s houses, some other miscellaneous buildings, and a casteless quarter on the other side of a now flooded irrigation canal. There was a single inn, but thankfully it had a barn large enough to fit their wagon.
Keta leapt off the wagon and ran for the inn while Ashok led the team toward the barn. Whether there was room or not, he was going to make room. He was glad to have some structures taller than the wagon around. He had no idea if the Heart would sustain him through a lightning strike, but if Thera had any more jugs of her Fortress powder stashed, the resulting explosions would probably get him for sure.
Luckily, there were a couple of young casteless huddled in the barn, shivering in their rags and watching the fury of the storm through the slats. They saw him coming and prepared a spot. Ashok kept his face down as he ordered them to tend to his animals. If he was recognized, they’d surely sell him out. Or worse, start worshipping him like the fools on the barge.
Of course when he looked, Thera was no longer in the back of the wagon. She had a way of slipping off unnoticed to scout whenever they entered civilization. One of the children cared for the oxen while Ashok leaned against the wagon and waited for his companions. Now that they thought a worker was present, the casteless could no longer enjoy watching the storm, and had grudgingly gone back to mucking out stalls. Rain pounded on the roof and leaked through dozens of cracks, forming puddles in the old straw. The entire place stank of mold and dung. He’d slept in worse.
Thera joined him half an hour later. The wind had blown her hood off, her black hair was sodden and hanging over her face, and she seemed angry. She had two things for him, a bowl consisting of sausages and some unidentifiable vegetable mush, already turned into a cold soup by the rainy walk over, and a piece of paper. A single cheap lantern was the only source of light in the entire barn, so Ashok had to call upon the Heart to strengthen his eyesight enough to clearly see what was on the damp, ruined notice she handed him. Even then, the ink had run so much that it was hard to read.
The Somsak will pay a ten-thousand-note bounty for information that leads to the death of the fallen Protector Ashok Vadal.
“I never really had to concern myself with money, but that seems like a lot.”
“For that much, I should kill you myself,” Thera hissed. “You didn’t tell us the Thakoor of this territory burns with a special hate for you.”
Ashok shrugged. “I smote the tongue from the man’s mouth in a duel. He was so foul and insulting he’s lucky that’s all I did to him, but Nadan Somsak does seem petty enough to hold a grudge.”
“You cut off his tongue? And now we’re riding across his lands. You didn’t think to tell me this before?”
“If I made a list of all the men who wanted me dead for one cause or another, it would be a very long list.” That wasn’t a bad idea. Maybe by the time they reached the Ice Coast he’d be finished. It would give him something to do to pass the time.
“I expected wanted posters for you at some point. That’s no surprise, but not for that kind of fortune.” Thera looked around, making sure that the casteless were too occupied to hear her. “Inside the inn all the travelers are telling stories about you. They’re saying the Black Heart recently killed an entire prison, then murdered half a legion on a bridge, before burning a village and throwing all the women and children in the water to be eaten by demons.”
“None of that’s true.”
“It doesn’t matter. The people here think it’s true. You’ll find no friends in these lands now.”
“Good. Criminals shouldn’t have friends.”
“It never ceases to amaze me that someone who has seen so much of the world could be so oblivious to it. We had friends. Now, they’ll give you up to this Somsak without a second thought. Most warriors here would avoid you because some Vadal criminal isn’t worth dying over, but this particular Thakoor would swim the ocean to rip out your guts, so now they’ll be motivated. You should have told me.”
Thera was glaring at him, and for whatever reason that made him want to apologize. “In the future I’ll try to notify you of things like this. I am sorry.”
That seemed to mollify the warrior woman a bit. She pushed her wet hair away from her eyes, absently making sure her scar was hidden. “There’s no indication he knows you’re here. This is just grasping at straws. If he’s willing to offer something like this, just in the off chance anyone sees you, I can’t imagine what kind of ransom Harta Vadal must be willing to pay for that sword.”
It was hard to imagine Vadal—the strongest of them all—experiencing the same fate as a tiny, poor house like Somsak or Dev, but Harta was no fool. He would pay a fortune to get Angruvadal into the hands of a new bearer. Until that happened, Vadal would be vulnerable. Ashok wasn’t sure who Omand was punishing more with this ridiculous endeavor, him, or all of Great House Vadal. It was especially cruel either way.
“I’ll be careful,” Ashok assured her.
“You’d better. There’re a lot of people like me on these roads, sharp-eyed and always looking for an angle, a whole world beneath your shiny law-abiding one. Those are the folks I would have used for checkpoints and new travelling papers, but ten thousand notes would set them up for life. Our Keeper has some money from the rebellion’s backers, but nothing that can compete with that. If I’d known you were this popular I never would have agreed to this. Freeing a lunatic from prison and getting him from one end of Lok to the other without killing half the countryside in the process, no problem I thought…I’m such a sucker.” Thera shook her head, annoyed. “You’re lucky I stick to my contracts.”
“You underestimated the difficulty, but still honor your agreements. It is the difficult tests in life that demonstrate a person’s true character.” He’d never thought he’d someday be impressed by a criminal’s dedication. Ashok gave her a respectful bow. “Thank you.”
Thera seemed a bit taken aback by that. Surprise turned to annoyance, almost as if she thought Ashok was being insincere. “Fine. Whatever. I’m soaked and freezing. I’m going to get some of that slop for dinner and warm myself by the fire in the company of my fake husband.”
“Do you not have a real one?”
“I used to…But if I ever wanted another I’ve met many who’d make for far worse company than Keta. I’d better go before he starts spouting off revolutionary nonsense to the locals.”
“Good night.”
She began to walk away, but before Ashok could begin eating, Thera turned back. “It’s so cold. Will you be alright out here tonight?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“That’s right.” There had been genuine concern there, but now she tried to be nonchalant about it. “I suppose your kind don’t feel things like the rest of us.”
Ashok shook his head. “We still feel. We just learn not to want the things we can’t ever have.”
Finding a spot that wasn’t under a roof leak, Ashok sat down and leaned his back against a wagon wheel. The food was bland. A minor inn in poor lands couldn’t afford much in the way of spices. The sausage was mostly blood and fat, and from the flavor he couldn’t even tell what kind of animal it had come from, but he was so hungry it didn’t matter, and he chewed it anyway. The fat coated the roof of his mouth and teeth and clung there, greasy.
One of the casteless was staring at him through the slats of a horse stall, looking more like a filthy wild animal than a child. He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten, but it was hard to tell since he was so thin and sickly. His clothing was nothing more than a mismatched tangle of old rags, knotted together in a heap for warmth. Is that what I looked like? The boy was neglecting his shoveling, and for a moment Ashok was concerned that he’d been recognized, but then he realized the boy was only staring hungrily at his dinner.
Ashok looked down at the bowl, then back at the starving child. He stood up.
The boy instinctively cowered and the other casteless rushed over to protect him. Ashok was so used to not paying attention to their kind that he’d not noticed this one was a girl, a few years older than the boy, and in just as sorry a state. She dropped her shovel, grabbed hold of the boy, and began dragging him away. “So sorry! So sorry!”
“Stop,” Ashok ordered.
The girl did so, but she was shivering uncontrollably. As she stared at her bare, blackened and filthy feet, she stammered “Brother didn’t mean to look at you, worker sir. Please don’t beat him.”
She was honestly terrified. Ashok had seen such quivering fear before, but normally only on battlefields or before an execution. Her fear was contagious enough that it was making the horses and oxen shift nervously in their stalls. “Be calm. I’m not going to beat anyone.” He set the bowl on the fence. “Here.”
“Oh…” The girl looked at the food with a nervous, pained expression, but didn’t approach. On the other hand, her brother must have had more hunger than fear, because he snatched up the bowl and ran away. He crouched in the corner and began to eat. The back of his rag shirt fell open, revealing that his skin was covered in old lash scars and fresh purple bruises.
“When was the last time you were fed?” Ashok demanded.
“A few days. I will trade for the food.” Resigned to her fate, the girl seemed to melt in defeat. The fear had been for her brother, not for herself. “Do what you want to me, but please don’t hurt me too much, because I still have more stalls to clean.”
“What? No.” Ashok felt like someone had just slapped him in the face. “That’s…No. Nothing like that. There’s no trade. The food is yours. It is a gift.”
She clearly didn’t understand the concept.
“You did a good job caring for my oxen. Just go eat.” Suddenly flushed and unexpectedly angry, Ashok went back to his wagon.
The girl fled.
Ashok watched the casteless children eat the vile slop as if it was a great hall feast. Their overseer was obviously neglecting them, but that wasn’t against the Law if they were doing a bad job. Starvation was a legally acceptable punishment, and he’d never really thought about it before. Ashok had experienced the weakness and pains of hunger, but nothing like this. He spied a pile of old grain sacks and some flea ridden blankets and realized that was their bed. These two didn’t even rate a place in the casteless barracks.
You see that, Ashok? That’s your law. That’s what you’ve been defending.
“Shut up, Keta,” Ashok muttered to the priest who wasn’t there.
There were almost no memories left of his life before Angruvadal other than scrubbing blood from a stone floor, but he remembered that he’d had a mother who had loved him. These children didn’t even have that. The entirety of the Law was memorized, imprinted deep into the fiber of his being, and he could cite nearly any line, so he knew there was nothing technically illegal here, yet it still seemed…unjust.
And that gnawed at him.
Mind made up, Ashok got into the back of the wagon. He had a thick wool blanket that made sleeping beneath the wagon bearable. He took the blanket, a sack of dried fruit, and another of jerky, and carried them over to the children’s sleeping area. The untouchables watched him, nervous, as if he was going to loot their pathetic belongings. Instead he dropped the goods there, walked back to his wagon, found the driest spot possible beneath the wagon, and tried to go to sleep.
Chapter 38
Ashok woke to the sounds of children screaming.
He may have been an outcast, but a man didn’t just forget twenty years of training. Protectors always ran toward the sounds of trouble. With a reaction that was automatic and unconscious, he rolled out from under the wagon, buckling his sword belt as he went. The animals were all looking in the same direction, ears erect and curious. The noise was coming from outside the back of the barn. Ashok threw open the double doors and walked into the freezing light.
The first rays of the sun were just intruding into the canyon, but the reflection was stark and bright. It must have dropped far below freezing during the night because the torrential rain had begun freezing as it struck, building in ever increasing layers, until the entire valley had been coated by the ice storm. Everything was frozen and slick. Beautiful clusters of ice hung from branches, so heavy that the trees were bowed and lopsided. After the freezing rain had tapered off and the ice world had been dusted with fresh snow. Having left his boots beneath the wagon, his bare soles crushed the snow and stuck to the ice. His toes began to sting with the cold.
There were six people there, but the screaming had stopped, apparently because a man was holding the noisemaker’s face down in a water trough. From the ragged clothing and rail-thin limbs, it was the casteless girl who slept in the barn. She was struggling against the attempted drowning, thrashing against the strong hands mashed against the back of her head. The casteless boy was there as well, calling out for his sister and struggling against the men holding him back. The boy was silenced when one of the men grabbed a handful of rags and hurled him against the wooden fence. The boy collapsed, sobbing.
The four men were worker caste, mostly young, all large and strong, with big arms, callused palms, and thick necks. Three of them were wearing the insignia of the miner subcaste, and the big knives on their belts were considered tools rather than weapons, but they’d open a man’s guts either way. The last was the oldest, with hair that had gone white and muscle that had turned to fat.
Ashok analyzed all that in a heartbeat then demanded, “What’s going on here?”
“This is my inn, and this little fish-eater stole from one of my guests,” the old one shouted to be heard over the gurgling and splashing child. “Drowning her should send a message to the rest.”
He wasn’t a Protector anymore. This was none of his affair. He had orders from the highest levels of the government. Getting involved here would only draw unwanted attention. The correct thing to do would be to walk away.
“Let her up.”
A miner pulled the girl back by the hair. She heaved and gasped. The trough had been frozen over too, but from the fresh cuts they’d broken through the ice with her forehead. Diluted blood ran quickly down her face. The boy called his sister’s name, but a miner shoved him over with his boot, sliding him across the ice.
“My apologies for waking you up with all the noise, honored guest.” The innkeep didn’t want to chase off any customers, but a man in the mood to murder had very little patience. “But she’s mine and she stole. Law says I can do what I want.”
The Law didn’t care what anyone wanted. “What did she steal?” Ashok asked, already suspecting the answer.
“A blanket and some food. We caught her round back passing out good meat to some of th
e other fish-eaters. You’d best check your wagon, merchant.” One of the miners laughed. “They’ll rob anything not nailed down.”
This altercation was his fault. “There’s been a misunderstanding. Those things weren’t stolen. I gave them as a gift.”
“The hell you did. Who gives away good stuff to untouchables?” The innkeeper yanked the girl around by her wet hair. She fell hard, curled into a ball, and covered her face. “Ah, trading a little skin on the side now, are you? I’m surprised you thought this one was worth that much. Well, she’s mine, so I should have gotten paid for that, not her. Not passing it on? Law says that’s stealing either way.”
Ashok ground his teeth together until the muscles of his jaw ached. Sensing his mood, Angruvadal didn’t even bother suggesting how to kill these fools. They weren’t worth the sword’s effort. “Don’t try to quote the Law at me, you ignorant swine.”
The miners shared nervous glances. They’d just come out here to participate in the fun of drowning a disobedient untouchable, and hadn’t expected a fight. “Easy, friend. No need to get riled up over the likes of these,” the youngest of them said.
“You want to speak of Law?” The cold air did nothing to calm Ashok’s anger. He crunched across the ice, heading toward the innkeeper. “The Law says overseers are supposed to provide adequate sustenance. They’re nearly starved to death, with a fat ass like you in charge that tells me you’ve been stuffing your face with their rations. These untouchables belong to your Thakoor, who places them as he sees fit. They’re owned by your house, not you. They’re not to be used up and thrown away stupidly by some pathetic scum like you.”
“You keep running your mouth, you’re likely to get hurt,” another miner warned. Technically, a merchant was of higher status than they were, but they were in a backwoods village, in the middle of nowhere, behind a barn, with no witnesses. Status didn’t mean much in such situations. They’d seen he had a sword at his side, and were eyeing it nervously, but there were four of them, and one of him. And after all, it wasn’t like anyone expected a merchant to really know how to use a sword.
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