by K. J. Parker
Musen tried again. The drinker caught his fist as he drew it back and crushed it until Musen squealed. Teucer froze. More than anything in the whole world, he wanted to run away, but somehow he didn’t. Nor did he join in the action. Thinking about it later, he realised that he just wasn’t a fighter. Some men are, some aren’t, simple as that.
A blaze of yellow light as the door opened, and three men came out. Musen kicked one in the knee, making him roar. A moment later, he was on the ground with two men sitting on him; there had been a heart-breaking cracking noise, as his arrows broke under him. At least that made Teucer drop his bow, though he couldn’t do much about the quiver. Then someone behind him put an elbow round his throat, levering up his chin like the lid of a jar. He wondered, quite objectively, if his neck was going to snap.
“Fucker hit me,” the drinker was complaining. “Barged into me, then bashed my head in.”
Someone had brought out a lantern. Someone else shoved it in Teucer’s face, then said, “Bring them inside.”
There must have been something happening that day, or else the people here were inveterate drunkards; the inn was packed, barely an empty place on the benches. Not an inn, of course, no travellers. Didn’t these people know how to brew at home? “Who the hell are they?” someone said.
“They hit me,” the drinker explained. “No reason. Just came out of nowhere and hit me.”
The number of people aside, it could easily have been the Poverty back home: same rectangle of scarred, glowing oak tables around the same long fire, the same roil of smoke floating just above the crossbeams of the roof, searching for the tiny flue. The same people, essentially, except that they seemed to want to kill them both. “Excuse me,” Musen said.
Everyone turned and stared at him, as though a dog had spoken rather than a human. “Excuse me,” Musen said. “Look, I’m really sorry about what happened just now, it was really dumb of me. I didn’t actually mean to hit anyone. I guess things just got out of hand.”
Nobody spoke, but Musen seemed immune to the stares. He went on, “Actually, we came here because we need help. Axle on our cart’s busted, we need a smith to fix it for us. You have got a smith here, haven’t you?”
Long silence, then someone laughed. Someone else said, “Oh yes.”
“Could you tell me where I can find him, please.”
“You just met him.”
Oh hell, Teucer thought. The drinker was the smith, the man Musen had punched. It was one of those moments.
“We can pay,” Musen said.
They didn’t seem interested. Quite likely they didn’t use money here, if they kept themselves to themselves. “Bloody wonderful,” the drinker said. “First he smashes my teeth in, then he wants me to fix his fucking cart.”
It wasn’t that funny, Teucer thought; but the villagers disagreed. They laughed till the walls shook, and then someone stood up, gave the drinker a slap on the back that made Teucer wince, and said, “You fix his damn cart for him, all right?” Whoever he was, he had the authority. The drinker, the only man among them who wasn’t laughing, nodded sadly. What cart, Teucer thought. We don’t have a cart.
They slept in the inn’s root store, with their heads on piles of empty sacks. The room smelt of damp and onions. The only way in and out was a trapdoor, and when it had swung shut on them they’d heard the sound of something heavy, probably a full barrel, being dragged on to it.
Morning took the form of a piercing shaft of light through the trapdoor hatch, followed by the return of the ladder they’d come down the night before. Teucer was so stiff and cramped he could barely stand, but Musen was wide awake, springing, bouncy. He gave the smith a great big smile. The smith had a black eye.
“How are you feeling?” Musen asked him.
The smith didn’t answer. “Where’s this cart of yours?”
“A bit of a way out of town,” Musen replied. “Probably best if you came with us and we can show you, and then you can decide what needs to be done.”
During the night, in the pitch darkness of the cellar, Teucer had tried to find out what the non-existent cart was all about. Musen had pretended to be asleep.
“What about your horses?” someone else asked. Teucer didn’t like the look of him – short man, bald, fat, broad shoulders, smallest nose he’d ever seen on a human being. Whoever he was, he gave the impression that he didn’t believe anything about the two mysterious strangers, not even that they were real.
“They’ll be fine,” Musen said.
“I wouldn’t leave my horses out standing in their traces all night.”
Musen smiled at him. “You didn’t give us much choice.”
The suspicious man looked at the smith, who shrugged. “Might as well go and take a look,” he said.
“Suit yourself.” The suspicious man turned to Teucer. “The bow,” he said. “What’s that in aid of?”
“Bandits.” The first thing that’d come into his head. He regretted it instantly.
“No bandits round here.”
“Good,” Teucer said. “In that case, with any luck, our cart might still be there.”
The suspicious man was coming with them. Teucer wasn’t happy about that, but Musen was horrified; he tried not to show it, but Teucer could see fear, just this side of terror. “Please,” Musen said, “don’t put yourself out on our account. We’ll be fine.”
The suspicious man gave him a nasty grin. “No trouble,” he said.
They stopped by the forge, where the smith filled a big canvas bag with tools. “You,” he said to Teucer, “make yourself useful.” The bag was very heavy and didn’t have a strap or a handle.
They walked for a long time, uphill, all the way up to the crest where they’d first seen the village. “Not far now,” Musen called out. “Should be somewhere right here.”
Teucer winced. The smith was scanning the bare, open moor. “Should be able to see it by now. Where is it?”
Oh well, Teucer thought. “It’s gone.”
The suspicious man was looking at him, he could feel it. “Is that right?”
“It was right here,” Musen said. “Someone’s stolen it.”
The smith looked blank. Behind him, Teucer heard the suspicious man say, “You’d have thought there’d be tracks.”
Don’t say anything, Teucer thought. But Musen said, “Tracks?”
“You’d have thought so,” the suspicious man said. “I mean, here’s this cart with a busted axle. In order to get it away, they’d have had to come up here with another rig and chains, and dragged it away on three wheels. There’d be ruts, from the end of the busted axle digging in. You’re sure this is the right place?”
“Here or hereabouts,” Teucer said. “Sorry, we don’t know this area as well as you do, obviously.”
“There ought to be tracks,” the suspicious man said. “If there was ever a cart.”
The smith, meanwhile, had had enough. He grabbed his bag of tools out of Teucer’s arms, turned round and stumped off back the way he’d just come. Musen started after him as though the two of them were linked by a rope. “You know what,” he said, his voice a little bit higher than usual. “My uncle’s a smith.”
“Really.”
“Yes, he is. A master blacksmith. But he keeps his hammers at our house. On the third floor.”
The smith stopped and looked at him. “You what?”
“On the third floor,” Musen said. “Where I live. That’s where he keeps his hammers. And his anvil.”
The smith frowned. “Oh,” he said.
“There’s five floors in our house,” Musen said. “At Merebarton.”
“If you say so.” The smith walked away, rather faster than before. Musen didn’t follow. He looked drained, as though he’d just used up the last of his strength, and the look on his face was very sad. Musen hasn’t got an uncle who’s a smith, Teucer thought. And they live in an ordinary house, one floor and an attic.
“I don’t think there ever was a c
art.” Teucer had forgotten the suspicious man for a moment. “I think that was all bull, so you could get out of town.” He looked at Teucer, then at the rapidly diminishing figure of the smith, charging downhill. If there was to be a fight, it’d be two against one, and all over before the smith could get back and join in. “Just piss off, the both of you. And don’t come back.”
“We won’t,” Teucer said eagerly. “I promise.”
The suspicious man shook his head one last time, then ambled off down the hill without looking back. Musen was still rooted to the spot. “Musen.”
“What?”
“Have you gone crazy or something?”
“Don’t start.”
“Why the hell did you tell them—?”
“Don’t start.”
Teucer looked at him. On the one hand, Musen could easily have been the death of both of them; if the blacksmith hadn’t been so eager to get home, they’d have been frogmarched back to the village, and things could quickly have turned very bad. On the other hand, without Musen he’d probably be dead already, back at the river or out somewhere on the moors. He hated to have to admit it, but Musen was his side, the entirety of the remainder of a tribe of precisely two, lost in the wilderness. “Look,” he said, “just tell me what’s going on. Please?”
“We’re going home,” Musen said. “That’s it, that’s all there is to it. And when we get there, I don’t ever want to see you or talk to you again. Got that?”
Teucer breathed in deep and let it go again. “Sure,” he said.
“Good. That’s just grand.” Musen was turning his head slowly, reading the landscape like a page. “This way.”
“What?”
“Home. This way. You coming, or what?”
They had no food, no water, even their knives had been taken from them. In every direction, the world was ridiculously big. Assuming they could find a spring or a pool, they had nothing to carry water in. “All right,” Teucer said. “Wait for me.”
The next day they found a river. Whether it was the same river as the one they’d started from or a different one entirely they had no idea. According to Musen it wasn’t on the map. By rights it shouldn’t even be there. But it lay in a shallow-sided green combe, with head-high bracken and dense hedges of briars. There were dragonflies, and kingfishers. And fish.
“I know how to do this,” Musen said. “Stay back and keep absolutely still.”
Musen lay on his stomach in the shallow water, on the edge of a deep pool, his arms out in front of him just under the surface, palms turned upwards. Teucer couldn’t see how anyone could keep that still without being dead. Just as he was about to drift off to sleep, Musen suddenly lifted his arms, arched his back and hopped to his knees. Something flashed in the air; “Catch it!” Musen yelled, and Teucer found himself diving at the glistening shape, closing his hands round something slippery, which squeezed out between his palms and landed thrashing and jack-knifing on the grass, a foot or so from the water. Musen hurled himself at it, his boot clouting the side of Teucer’s head, and whooped for joy. He’d caught a trout.
Musen also knew how to light a fire with two sticks and a clump of dry moss. They spitted the trout on a dogwood shoot and turned it slowly over the fire until the skin was hard and black. It was mostly bones.
“How do you do that?” Teucer asked.
“Mostly it’s just patience,” Musen said. “You keep really still, and when the fish swims right over your hand, you flick it up in the air. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Teucer spent the rest of the day failing to learn, during which time Musen caught four more trout trying to teach him. “You’re just stupid,” he said eventually, and Teucer didn’t have the heart to contradict him.
Teucer woke up out of a dream about picking apples and opened his eyes.
It was still pitch dark, but there was a light, three lights, moving. He poked around with his foot until he located Musen, who woke up with a snort. “What?”
“Lights,” Teucer whispered. “Over there.”
They were two days away from the river, and it was the first time they’d spoken since they left it. “So?”
“So they must have food, and water. And that noise is cartwheels. Listen.”
“So?”
“Fine,” Teucer said. “You stay here. See you back home.”
He started to get up, but Musen grabbed his ankle and pulled him down. “All right,” he said. “But we’ll wait till morning and catch them up. We can’t go barging in on them in the middle of the night.”
Fair point. “All right,” Teucer said. “We’ll follow them, and as soon as it’s light we’ll go and talk to them.”
“Oh, for crying out loud.” Musen got to his feet. “Just keep the noise down, will you? And if they’ve got dogs with them, it’s your fault.”
Dogs hadn’t occurred to Teucer, but it was too late to back down. “They won’t have dogs,” he said. “Trust me.”
They had dogs. Five of them, big dogs, huge dogs, long and thin and growling horribly in the first red light of dawn. Musen and Teucer stopped dead, realising they were now part of a very delicate mechanism. The slightest movement on their part would release the dogs, who’d tear their throats out before they could do anything at all. The carts, meanwhile, had stopped. Men jumped down. They were holding spears.
“Over here,” someone called out. Then someone else whistled. That was all, and the dogs turned and trotted away, as if to say that it had all been in fun.
Maybe a dozen men, wrapped in dark cloaks with hoods, holding spears. “Who the hell are you?” one of them said.
“We’re lost,” Teucer replied, before Musen could open his mouth. “We haven’t eaten for days. Please will you help us?”
Another man said, “Got any money?”
“Yes,” Musen said. He stooped, pulled off his boot, shook it out over his outstretched left palm. Four silver coins fell out, like dandruff. Where did he get that from, Teucer wondered; then he recalled Musen trying to steal his boots by the river, and thought, Oh.
“All right,” said a third man. “But you’re not riding on the carts. You’ll have to walk.”
“That’ll be fine,” Teucer said quickly. Then he added, “Where are you going?”
“Spire Cross.”
“That’s good,” Teucer said. “So are we.”
The carts were full of weapons; also armour, helmets, clothes, boots, belts, pots and cooking utensils, a few mattocks and spades. There were eighteen of them in all: fourteen men, four women. The men walked.
“How do you know where to go?” Teucer asked.
“That’s easy.” The man was called Iser; he was short and thin, like the rest of them. “We just follow the cavalry.”
Teucer nodded, then asked, “Which side?”
“Doesn’t matter. We keep our distance, and watch out for crows.”
Yes, Teucer knew about that. “Don’t they mind?”
“The soldiers?” Iser shrugged. “We keep our distance. They don’t like us much, but they don’t go out of their way to bother us. And we save them a job, burying the dead. Soldiers don’t like doing that. It’s a sort of a deal. We bury them, we get to keep the stuff. And the quartermasters love us, of course. Shortages of everything, these days.”
Teucer remembered the two mail coifs Pilad had bought. He’d thrown his away some time ago. “Must be hard work,” he said.
“No kidding. We’re just a small outfit. It’s the big contractors who get the big battlefields, where the real money is. We just do little skirmishes.”
Teucer nodded. “What breed are the dogs? I’ve never seen any like that before.”
Iser laughed. “Oh, they’re all sorts. But very good for finding places. You need a good dog in this line of work.” A thought struck him; he went silent for a bit, then looked straight ahead and said, “You could do worse.”
“What?”
“You and your mate. You could do worse than join us.”
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For a moment, Teucer didn’t understand. “What, Musen and me?”
“Sure. If you don’t mind digging. Got to be better than wandering about starving.”
He could see Iser’s point. Musen was a head taller than the tallest of the men, and Teucer was nearly a head taller than Musen; and the men weren’t just short, they were skinny. Arms like sticks. “No,” he said. “Thanks, but we’re on our way home. We’re farmers, we’ve got homes and families. We can’t just go wandering off.”
“Then how come you’re out here?”
Iser wouldn’t have asked the question if he hadn’t already guessed the answer. Not exactly difficult. After all, he and his people had just buried a large number of practically identical bodies. “It’s really good of you to offer,” Teucer said. “But I’ve got to get home, as quick as I can. They’re going to need me.”
Iser looked at him, as though he’d just said something really stupid. “And what makes you think your home’ll still be there when you get back?”
“He could be right, at that,” Musen said. “I mean, the last thing we know is, their cavalry’s roaring around the place killing everything that moves. God only knows where they are right now.”
The light glinting on distant metal had to be Spire Cross. They stood and stared at it for quite some time.
“Well?” Teucer asked.
“I’m thinking.”
They’d left Iser’s caravan at dawn. The debate was, should they bypass Spire Cross, as Musen had originally planned, and go straight home, relying on the provisions and directions Iser had given them and hoping the enemy weren’t between them and Merebarton; or should they head for the relative safety of the camp and look for an opportunity of slipping quietly away once they were satisfied it was safe to proceed?
“Spire Cross,” Musen said.
“But you said we should go straight home,” Teucer pointed out. “You said—”
“Changed my mind.”
Food, Teucer thought, and a blanket to sleep under. Not to mention the sheer unimaginable bliss of being with people who weren’t Musen, “They’ll send us off to the war,” he said. “Do you really want that?”
