by Damien Lake
He slowly settled back into his seat, whereupon Kineta, the only person standing, faced Fraser. If learning of their next contract at the same time as her men nettled her, she kept a tight rein on her emotion. Instead, she asked, “Are you going to tell us the details?”
Fraser nodded. He spoke to the room at large. “We are not going to Nolier. Everyone, by which I mean the whole band, is going to the western border with Tullainia. Trouble is on the verge of spilling over into Galemar.”
Fresh questions greeted this announcement. Marik ignored them to lean closer to Dietrik, who showed as little surprise as he felt. He meant to ask Dietrik if he thought they would be stationed with forces serving a border baron, like Riley’s group, but Dietrik nudged his knee and flicked his eyes toward Colbey.
Marik glanced. The scout looked as he had that day in Rawlings when they’d heard those preposterous stories of horned demons running loose. His fist clenched his spoon so hard it was a wonder it did not twist the utensil into a crumpled ball. Colbey’s body had tensed to bowstring tautness, yet his blazing eyes were what caught Marik’s breath. Again he wondered if Colbey were entirely well.
“No,” Fraser said in response to several questions at once. “New reports say it’s something other than a civil war. The situation is a boiling mess. It’s not our job to sort it out. Our contract is to help the highwayguards and soldiers with border patrol and keep it on their side.”
“Keep what? The fighting, or the refugees?”
“Yeah,” echoed a different voice. “And if the Tullainians aren’t knifing each other, then what’s going on?”
“As far as we know, an army is attacking Tullainia. Our information is sketchy but it looks like a bid to take control of their kingdom.”
“By whom? Perrisan?”
“We don’t know,” Fraser shouted over similar questions. “And it’s not important in any event. We have one duty. Lockdown the border and keep the fighting, whether it is Tullainians or someone else, in Tullainia. Ninth Squad drew the straight shot. We’ll march down the Southern Road and join a garrison near the Rovasii Forest. The road will be free of most snow from the travelers, so we’ll have the easiest time of it.”
Fraser fielded no further questions, choosing instead to depart with the four sergeants in tow.
The noise level in the mess area escalated to a cacophony with the lieutenant’s withdrawal. Everyone talked about this rare winter contract. Marik spoke at a normal volume to Dietrik, which came across as a whisper with the din drowning his words.
“Looks like Riley will get extra men after all.”
“So it would seem,” Dietrik nodded. “And with us traveling directly along the road, we could end up stationed under his baron. That would be a turn of luck. The captain struck me as a man capable of leading others without killing them all.”
Marik started to make a joke about arriving and finding, in all likelihood, Balfourth ready to lead them with stalwart enthusiasm, when a horrible thought struck him a physical blow. He sat staring across the table, mouth slightly agape, until Dietrik turned around to see what had caught his attention.
When nothing appeared, he bumped Marik’s knee again. “What’s got you wiggy, mate?”
“I thought…no.”
“No? No what?”
“For a moment, I suddenly thought we might be stationed in Tattersfield. But that’s not going to happen.”
Dietrik considered his friend’s words. “Perhaps it might. From your descriptions, I would not say Tattersfield is an overly large town, but it is the largest around the northern Rovasii area. An ideal garrison location in the event of a border war.”
Marik shook his head. “The largest town in the area, yes. But it’s too far away. Too far if we’re supposed to be doing border patrols.”
“Yes, I suppose. Still, you said it is right there on the road. We will pass through.”
“Mmm,” Marik grunted through his nose. “I can keep my head down. And I can walk in the middle of everyone else.”
Dietrik laughed. “Mate! I’d wager none there would recognize you if you stopped to say ‘hello’! Your looks have changed a great deal, and you are no lad to be pushed about by them. Don’t have a care for it. But it is too bad we must leave so soon. I was hoping Sennet might finish this new sword of yours earlier than he promised.”
“Sennet will have it done by the time we return,” Marik replied, and squared his shoulders. Dietrik was right. If anyone in Tattersfield did happen to recognize him, he would die before bowing to them. He had worked hard to become a man, and would never revert for the pleasure of those pompous hicks.
He happened to glance to the side, and felt his confidence melt under Colbey’s burning eyes. The scout studied Marik. Under that intense scrutiny, Marik wondered how much of a man he had become if a simple gaze could make him feel so small and uncomfortable.
“What?” he asked, tearing his eyes from Colbey’s, Dietrik’s question having been shredded by the other shouts in the dining area.
Dietrik tapped his forehead amusedly, a small grin plastered to his face. “I asked if you intended to bid your lady love a fond farewell. Personally, I do not think it wise, because you wouldn’t get back until dawn, and the march all day would kill you.”
“Ilona!” He had never considered that! What should he do about her? Colbey’s unflinching gaze on him only made his mind stumble worse as it strove for a solution. “Oh, hells. I can’t leave without saying something!”
“Sloan will skin you if you show up for the march without any sleep.”
Marik glanced at the door, wondering how fast he could make the round trip if he stole a horse from the vale.
“Try this instead,” Dietrik suggested, writing on his palm with an invisible quill. “Write her a nice letter and leave it with Luiez. He’ll make sure it gets on to Kerwin.”
“Right!” Marik barked, slapping the table and pointing at Dietrik. “Good idea! Uh…wait.”
“What is it?”
“Damn it! We don’t have any ink or parchment or anything in here!” He bit his lip before suddenly exclaiming, “Ah! The old bastard! He’s got mountains of that crap! Right!”
With that, he leapt to his feet, ran across the crowded mess area and through the door. Dietrik laughed before arching an eyebrow at Marik’s remaining plate. He shrugged and lifted Marik’s utensils with his own, rinsing them in the wash basins before returning to their bunks.
Men drifted away when their speculations began repeating without answers. Within a half-mark, the room was empty.
Empty but for Colbey, who remained in his spot, clutching his spoon in a knuckle-whitening grip, gaze fixed on the doorway Marik had run away through.
* * * * *
They passed Kerwin’s half-constructed inn the next morning. Landon stood by the roadside while the refugees worked for their wages. Marik had hoped either of the former mercenaries might be readily available. He dashed from the column streaming past the framework to press the rolled scroll into the archer’s hands. Quick words passed between them before Marik needed to run off and retake his place. The entire band marched along the Southern Road. Individual squads would break away later to angle toward their specified destinations.
Just as well he had no time to reconsider while he conversed with Landon, and also as well that no sign of Ilona was to be found. She probably sat within her tent at that very moment, tracing invisible connections between prosperous people. Once she felt satisfied she thoroughly understood the terrain, she would be returning to Thoenar in a month or two in order to make further arrangements. Armed men passing on the road would interest her little.
If he’d had time to consider, he might have shoved the rolled parchment under his belt and made sure it never went anywhere except straight into the cook fire. Half the night he had worked hard to put words down that would express his feelings for her, at times speaking plainly, at others scribing clever turns of phrase and witty comments designed for
bardic verse.
He had slept soundly, satisfied that he’d crafted a work of art that would impress even her. Not even Churt’s morning crossbow bolt had jarred him completely from a dream where she confessed how deeply his words had touched her.
The confidence lasted until he swept his gaze over the words as he prepared to roll the scroll and seal it. What had he been thinking? Bardic verse? His appalling attempts at wit made the doggerel of Wallace Mularian, whose compositions Landon delighted in disparaging, sound like classic odes.
But the squad would leave within the mark. There was no time to rewrite it. He had not given the scroll to Luiez, thinking to throw it away, then he chastised himself on the road. Did Ilona mean so little to him that he would leave without a single word? Was she so unimportant that admitting his feelings shamed him in some fashion?
No. That much he did know.
So he made an oath to pass the scroll to Landon or Kerwin when they passed, silently praying Ilona would be elsewhere. The scroll laid his soul bare at her feet. It expressed his emotions without equivocation as he had never confessed them before, and in doing so left him naked and vulnerable to her whim. How would she react when next they saw each other?
Marik much preferred fighting a life-or-death battle with his sword to this cringing, unarmored waiting in darkness to see if it would be a dagger through his heart or a caressing hand across his shoulders.
After delivering the scroll, for three days Marik’s legs tortured him. They did during every new journey from Kingshome when departing for a contract on foot. Exercising by walking and running and jumping never kept the muscles completely toned for the endless stress of marching until dusk. He hated being unable to maintain that level of fitness, yet only constant walking all day, every day, during the winter months would keep the muscle that firm. The flaming itch that infested his legs until they numbed always drove him crazy.
Two fighting seasons past had been the worst, walking long marks with his body still not fully recovered from cooking in the hedge-wizard’s flames. This year he might have suffered less had they departed in warmer weather as sane men would, but the cold bit sharply and his breeches agitated the discomfort. Icy needles stabbed into his limbs. The cloth constantly rubbed his legs in feathery caresses that soon made the skin feel chafed.
This was the primary cause behind his usual surly temper whenever they set out from Kingshome.
Edwin walked as he pleased, at times near Marik and Dietrik, at others off with acquaintances in different squads. Talbot usually stayed near Floroes, chatting with the huge man who never seemed put out by it. Sloan remained off wherever the other sergeants were. He only appeared before his unit when the band stopped to camp for the evening.
Though surrounded by a crowd matched only by the tournament’s press, Marik thought the road echoed without Landon and Kerwin discussing their destination or the history of the region they walked through. No Hayden matched their pace with his thumbs tucked into his sword belt, commenting on life in general. Nial and Duain, too, were gone. He hardly knew anybody in his unit any longer.
Marik fought against the depression.
Life on the road afforded him too much time alone with his thoughts anyway. Not five minutes would pass without his mind picking away at his father. Sennet had answered a handful of the many questions that had plagued him relentlessly since first setting out to find Rail. It frustrated him horribly that the answers only raised twice as many new questions to take their place. His visualization training had originated from his father? A technique that had served him so well, yet which no one else seemed to know of, let alone give credit to?
And the sword. Both his mental visualization tricks and the unique sword that could only be effective when utilized by a person of enhanced strength…it raised possibilities on which he could not begin to speculate. His mind refused to leave these questions alone to simmer in his subconscious, insisting on endlessly picking away in fruitless effort.
What usually broke his mind away from the mysteries of Rail were the sunken eyes watching from the roadside. His refusal to take the easy path, to actually pass the letter to Ilona, had awakened in him a shame when he gazed upon the shivering refugees. It was so easy to shrug them away and believe that there was nothing he could do to help them in their plight. Was their wretched misery truly none of his business? Were they so unimportant as to be trash littering the road and clogging the fields?
He saw no solutions, easy or otherwise…and yet he could not pass them off with the same ignorance as before. His own feelings sympathized with them. Equally as poignant, he knew full well that Shalla would have been stopping to help each and every one with whatever meager aid she could offer until she had far less than they. In so many ways, she had been a stronger person than he.
The band forded the Spine the fourth morning after breaking camp. With so many men, it would have taken the entire day to cross by ferry or pallets carried by rivermen. Instead the column waded into the freezing water following five half-naked men who guided their footsteps. When the first mercenaries stepped out onto the west bank, men still had yet to enter on the east. A twisting snake of arms balancing packs atop heads wound through the cold river, a human dam to block the flow.
Time insisted they press on. The men were forced to drip-dry as they walked into an increasingly frozen barony. Snow fell with greater frequency west of the Spine, and the temperatures tended to reflect that. Marik and Dietrik gripped themselves while they shivered, wishing for a blazing hearth, forcing their feet onward along the road.
A burst of swearing erupted close behind them less than a mile from the river. That in itself surprised neither man; curses and oaths were drifting from every mercenary at the rate of approximately twice a minute. What made the two look back was the long string of vile curses flowing from Cork.
Marik half-expected to find a duel about to flare up. Instead several men from the Second Unit were crowded around to listen and grin while they continued walking. Cork swore with impressive speed, colorfully imaginative curses following one upon the next. Many Marik knew. Others he had never heard before. Several, Marik would have taken pride in had he been the one to craft them.
Long after Marik thought Cork should have exhausted his breath, the man stumbled over a word. A laughing spectator called a halt and Marik noticed he held two fingers to the pulse in his wrist. “Whoa there! Hey, that was pretty sharp! Eighty-seven beats!”
“What did I tell you?” Cork boasted. “I grew up with fisher-folk! No one can top us at dressing down Fate, or each other for that matter!”
“Yeah, but the day a fisher can beat a mercenary is the day I trade my sword for a long pole and a net!” announced a second man walking beside Cork. “Start counting, Tilden.”
Tilden replaced his fingers to his pulse and gave the challenger a nod.
Cork’s adversary used a different descriptive oath to begin his litany, an interesting accusation regarding Cork’s mother and the village drunk. He delivered his outflow at a slower speed, and when he nearly stumbled, then repeated an earlier profanity, every mercenary listening called him down.
“Only sixty-four beats, Errol! Let us know how the fish are biting!”
The other Second Unit men snatched at Errol’s sword dangling from his belt, laughing and threatening to carry him back to the river. Errol beat their hands away with hard slaps. Cork beamed with victory.
Marik watched until Cork noticed him walking sideways so he could observe the scene. He gave a quick laugh which sound closer to a huff. His breath clouded into mist which obscured his half-grin.
Cork’s smile lost its edge. Marik had hoped that would not happen. Every new recruit disliked being around him, except for Chiksan, who never appeared unsettled by anything. He started to turn away, but Cork suddenly stiffened his back and returned a smile that looked strained, though genuine.
That night, Cork wandered to Marik and Dietrik’s fire.
“So, uh…I�
�ve been wondering,” Cork opened by way of introduction.
Dietrik bobbled his head as he poked at the stew bubbling in the small pot he always carried in his pack, inviting the young man to sit. The Kings hardly ever used the supply wagons that spent their lives nestled against the northern wall. Each man carried his rations and was left to his own devices if he desired a hot meal.
Cork dropped his pack across the fire from Marik, sitting on it as an impromptu chair so he could avoid enduring the frozen dirt. “You’re…well, uh…” He paused, then must have thought that might be insulting. “You’re a mage. With, uh…with magic, right?”
“Last I heard,” Dietrik commented over the pot, “that is what it means to be a mage. Isn’t a mage without magic simply a man?”
“Yes, um…” Cork scratched his head with one hand. “I guess I wanted to ask why you’re here with us instead of with other mages? And why you’re carrying a sword around? I heard from Churt that you’re the one who fought the knights that everyone talks about, but that was a swordsman!” He dropped his hand to his lap. “I mean, you were a swordsman then, weren’t you?”
“I still am,” Marik stated. Dietrik cast an amused glance at him. Marik knew exactly what thoughts his friend entertained. He supposed he might as well tell his story and see if Dietrik’s assertions regarding the newer men held any water.
Cork was clearly nervous at first, as though sharing the fire with a loan collector about to take out interest payments for gold lost gambling. Marik watched closely without being overly obvious lest he spook Cork into flight. It fascinated him, seeing the man subtly change the longer he listened.
When Cork realized he would be staying to hear a lengthy tale, he tossed his own rations into Dietrik’s pot in an effort to be polite. Dietrik interrupted long enough to berate Cork for his thoughtlessness, seeing as the stew would be partially raw if he served it when he had intended, or partially leather if he waited for the new additions to cook properly. Cork attempted to save grace by offering advice on how adding certain spices could mask any mistakes by the cook, which only annoyed Dietrik, who sharply pointed out that if any amateur chefs in the band carried a garnishing rack stuffed into his smallclothes, he doubted they would find the man before their dinner burned black.
