“I’m sitting here asking myself the same thing.”
“That’s hardly encouraging. No wonder you requested my help. You can’t plan your way into a pair of pants. This is why people think we Lords of Fortune can’t piss on the ground without somehow raising the dead.”
Bharv couldn’t argue with that either. Elim was a renowned specialist among the Lords and did her job well. The team couldn’t have snuck into the tournament without her. Even if they could have, they would’ve had to bust apart the lockbox with a rock. Elim opened it with her earring in the blink of an eye.
“No answers, then?” she asked. “You’re little better at this than your friend Herold, are you?”
Bharv looked up sharply. His scowl chased the scorn from Elim’s face and she sat next to him. Bharv finished his apple and spit the seeds out. Elim rubbed a false tattoo off the back of her hand, smudging the ink away with her thumb. Once it was gone, she rubbed her hand a minute longer.
“I’m sorry. How did it happen?”
“Arrow,” Bharv said. “Quick.”
“Were you two together long?”
“Few years. Lately, I helped Herold chase Tevinter relics that were uncovered and sent rolling in the wake of this Antaam chaos in the north. Plenty to chase. Damn horns kicked up all sorts of ancient, dangerous things up there. Some were just waiting in rich men’s vaults, begging us to recover them. Other artifacts were stolen from ruins and have been traded or sold since. You’re holding one of those. Chased this prize through three owners in two weeks. Came out of a maze of catacombs the horns discovered. Herold and I had such times in those old places. There was always some ancient curse or resurrected beast to greet us. Like boys, we were. What fun. Herold gleefully led the way, and I watched his back. I did a decent job of it, too. Until today.”
Elim gave him another moment. “We need to run, Bharv. A tournament’s worth of knights are too proud to let us escape. They will bring dogs.”
“What about our hired help?”
“The less said of him, the better.” Elim rolled her eyes, then stopped when she spotted Bharv’s red-stained shirt.
“It’s small,” he said. “Had worse.”
Bharv figured their best choice was to flee west along the Minanter, away from Starkhaven. With luck, they could reach Tantervale, lay low, then sneak out of the Free Marches once the heat eased down. North or south was into wilderness they weren’t prepared for. It was best to stick close to the farms and fishing shacks near the river. They couldn’t trust the stabled horses Bharv arranged for the day before. Until everyone was accounted for, they had to improvise.
Elim set a quick pace. She kept them just inside the trees that followed the riverbank. Branches that clipped her shoulders slapped his face, pushing leaves into his beard. For all her fancy, the elf moved over rough ground like it was a dance floor. Bharv’s daughters kept telling him he should run more. Not for any reason, not from any monster, just to end up in the same place he’d started. Good for his heart, they said. What kind of sisters agreed on everything? He and his own siblings fought like badgers.
Ahead, Elim grabbed mintroot leaves from a tree and rubbed them over her arms and neck until they were a shredded, pungent mess that crumbled from her hands. Moments later, he couldn’t smell her perfume anymore. She stopped to pick up a handful of dirt and pine needles and rubbed them on her red jacket until it was shades darker. The elf tore away her dress at the waist and revealed a pair of tights beneath. Smart, Bharv thought. Fancy enough for the Grand Tourney, but adaptable for a quick exit. Finished, she slowed her steps for Bharv to catch up. When he did, she took out the amulet. It was blackish red, darker than Elim’s dirtied clothes. Bharv considered that a bad sign. In his experience, red amulets brought trouble.
“What precisely does this artifact do?” Elim asked.
Bharv shrugged. He was told it was ancient and powerful. That was all he needed to know.
“You carry it.” Elim thrust it at him. “I don’t want a lightning bolt up my arse.”
Bharv didn’t either, but reached for it anyway. His hand was nicked and scratched from his desperate leap through that window in Starkhaven. If the amulet shot lightning, he figured it would’ve gone off by now.
Elim grabbed Bharv’s shoulder and pulled them both to a crouch. There was thrashing near the river up ahead, farther up the bank. Something stomped through the green and didn’t care who heard. A faint, deep voice floated through the trees.
Elim sighed. “Panzstott. Apparently, he’s talking to himself.”
“Sounds like a bear. He must know we’re being hunted.”
“He makes even you look sharp. Leave him to get picked up by the guards. Nothing he could tell them worries me. You didn’t tell him too much of your background, right?”
Bharv shook his head. “Might know something about what happened at the Grand Tourney, though. Why it stunk. When’s the last time you saw him?”
“He was running in the same direction as us, just on a different path. I saw him charge past a memorial of some sort. There were flowers all over it and a flame in the middle. Idiot nearly knocked the whole thing over.”
Bharv remembered the memorial. He’d stopped there on the way in. “Flowers were for Jacques Gallais, the Chevalier who won the last pompous tournament.”
“I heard he was dead,” Elim said.
“I heard he was murdered.”
More thrashing and cursing carried along the riverbank. Panzstott would draw attention soon, from their pursuers or something worse lurking in the river. There were stories.
“Where did you find him?” Elim asked.
“Came recommended in Tantervale. Looks the part well enough.”
Elim withered him with a glare. “You hired him for his muscles, requested me for everything else. What precisely do we rely on you for?”
Bharv studied his boots. “My specialty is escapes. Exit strategies.”
She gawked at him. “You couldn’t find your way from a horse’s head to its arse.”
“Yeah. Today isn’t really a career highlight.”
Their heads snapped around as barking echoed behind them. The hounds had their scent. It was back to Starkhaven, then, chained in a cell while another artifact was lost to stuffy fools and their boring collections.
“The river will hide our scent,” he said.
She eyed the water. “There are good reasons to stay out of the Minanter.”
“I got better ones to go in.”
Bharv knew it was a bad idea. First rule of escapes—never go in until you knew every way back out. The Minanter roiled around their boots as the two Lords of Fortune waded into its current. The riverbed was rough with rocks and thick with plant stalks and vines. The spring rush was too muddy to see more than a foot down. The water rose to their knees and overwhelmed any sound from Panzstott ahead or the dogs behind. Bharv grit his teeth against the icy river. He’d taken colder baths. Still, they couldn’t stay in the water long. It was too disastrous a day to get frost in their joints. Elim gasped as the water reached her waist, then stopped dead. Her long jacket floated in a red circle around her.
“Something moved,” she said.
Bharv looked back at the riverbank as they pushed through the rushing water, where he expected a Starkhaven scout to stare back at him.
“Bharv,” Elim hissed. “We have bigger problems.”
“Just branches.” Bharv searched the bank for Panzstott. “Nothing to worry about.”
Frigid, brown river water erupted into Bharv’s face as something black and slimy exploded from the water. He threw his arms up as wide, leathery flaps hugged him and slapped against his back like his oldest friend. Something hissed and hot flecks spattered his face. The thing was muscular, squeezing him. His elbows clacked together. His knees ground into each other as his kicking feet left the water.
“You’re wrong again!” Elim yelled.
A wide, round mouth opened in the underside of the creat
ure, like a tin of rotted meat lined with teeth. Raytooth, Bharv thought. Too bad he already spent all his luck back in Starkhaven. The great ray yanked Bharv upward with its thick, segmented tail planted in the riverbed. Bharv swung sideways, then upside down. The ray screamed into Bharv’s face as it dragged him across the river’s surface, his body rolling and plunging as he tried to breathe. His hair plastered against his face, over his mouth. The ray spat in his eyes. Fangs like needles.
Bharv closed his eyes. Francesca. Melindarah. Sandrine. Bellaclare. They’d have to survive the coming times without him.
The flaps suddenly loosened, and he slipped through the stink until the creature only held him by one leg. He gasped for fresh air. Through the river’s churn, he glimpsed Panzstott swinging a greatsword into the ray’s tail, sending forth another bloody spray. The big man’s armored sash flashed in the sun. Hissing, the ray chomped at Bharv, but the movement freed his leg and he fell into the water, the beast’s whipcord body lashing against him. Fangs clicked against Bharv’s boots as he scrambled through the muck, desperate for the bank. Something latched onto his arm and he recoiled.
Elim wiped her sleeve across his eyes. “A minnow and nothing more.”
Bharv wrenched around and saw the raytooth’s severed flaps sink beneath the water around Panzstott. Loops of the creature’s tail went limp and floated away. Bharv breathed again. He pulled ropes of thick ray slime from his beard. All four of his daughters said he should quit this life before it killed him. They agreed a lot.
“I don’t like fish.” Panzstott sheathed his weapon. It disappeared behind his thick neck. He pulled up the hood on a cloak that looked like a child’s blanket tossed over his wide shoulders. Angry barks sounded behind them again. Too close. “I don’t like dogs.”
They abandoned all secrecy and ran, splashing through the shallows as clear targets for a skilled archer. Bharv did his best, but fell several strides behind. He yelled at Panzstott, “What’s ahead?”
“Waterfall.”
Of course. There was always a waterfall. The bridge always collapsed. The unlocked tomb always had spike-hammer traps. What fun could possibly be had if they did not? How could one feel young if they’d never dangled from their fingertips over a roiling mass of darkspawn? Herold had been full of good questions like that.
“How big a fall?” Bharv asked.
“Not far, but far.”
Didn’t have to be a long drop, he told himself. Just enough that the horses couldn’t follow, that the hounds wouldn’t jump. Not long enough to kill him, preferably. Ahead, the Minanter churned against a ridge before spilling over the other side. Little tremors shook the ground as horses entered the river in pursuit. Bharv stumbled on wet rocks. Voices yelled behind him.
At the last moment, Panzstott turned with a child’s fear plain on his face. He shook his head. Beside him, Elim looked alarmed. “It is not—”
A Starkhaven arrow hummed past Bharv and flew between the elf’s head and Panzstott’s chest. Bharv leaped forward and slammed into Panzstott like hitting a wall, then spun into Elim, cutting off her warning as the three toppled over the edge. Cold air rushed across Bharv’s cheeks and he slapped against the water sooner than he expected, sooner than he could pull breath. The world faded in a blurred, muted crush of water, rocks, and weeds. As the river swirled, he grabbed at the pocket with the amulet, planted a boot, and pushed until his head broke the surface. He gasped. “That wasn’t so—
“Hold on!” Elim yelled, and then somehow they were over the edge again. Impossibly, the sky swung beneath him a second time, and the air rushed by once more. A longer drop than the first. Bharv had time to think about his daughters’ good advice he didn’t take. Then the water again. Flat on his back this time. His breath rushed out of him. Bharv sunk deep, his heavy boots pumping for riverbed that wasn’t there. He clawed to the surface and took half the world’s air in his first gasp.
“Are we done falling?” Panzstott gasped.
“I think so.” Elim hacked up river water.
Bharv rolled onto the bank like a sack of drowned rats. He wiped the mud from his smile. Above him, Elim wrestled with her mouth before she laughed, which squeaked like pulling a cork from a bottle.
“Told you,” he said. “Master of escapes.”
Panzstott shook his head and turned away. “Lords of Fortune are crazy.”
“Still have it?” she asked.
Bharv patted his pocket.
* * *
They could breathe while they walked, at least for a bit. The Minanter bath would cover their scent while the guards and knights searched for a way down. But once the hounds gained enough ground, even the river wouldn’t help. Starkhaven could afford good hounds. Bharv flexed his arms inside his stiff, dirty jacket. His boots squished with every step. Birds in high branches chirped loudly as they passed, determined to give them away.
Elim didn’t wait with her questions. “What happened at the tourney, Panzstott? What did you see?”
The big man’s eyes went wide. He had eyebrows like wild, forgotten hedges. “Everyone got mad so fast. You said to watch the tent from the corral. And I did. Then everyone got mad. I saw you running. I ran in the same direction.”
Elim waited a moment. “That’s all? The entire story? That isn’t helpful.”
Panzstott looked crestfallen. “That’s all that happened. I ran.”
Bharv kept his mouth shut, but he knew. Panzstott was about as good a liar as Bharv’s youngest daughter.
Elim changed tactics. “What do you have planned with your share of the money?”
He beamed. “I’m gonna find my sister. Lady I know is gonna help.”
“Your sister?”
“Lady will help me. She’ll find my sister after I give her all my money in Tantervale.”
“Right.” Elim threw Bharv a glance. Panzstott hadn’t mentioned a lady, sister, or any woman when Bharv hired him in that toilet of a bar in Tantervale. The man took up two tables by himself and that was the only qualification necessary. Don’t push it, Elim, Bharv thought. Let him get there. To her credit, the elf shifted strategies again.
“Where are we headed? Surely we are running somewhere.”
Bharv shrugged and stopped walking. Time to say it, he supposed. “Only Herold knew that. We’re selling to someone he trusts. He never said who.”
Elim drew a knife Bharv didn’t know she had, muttered to herself, then sheathed it again. “Stupidest words I ever heard, and I rarely hear any other kind.”
Bharv frowned. “What do you want? Blueprints of the plan? Never made them. Herold and I usually just lit something on fire and tossed it on the pile. I don’t know the buyer’s name so the guards can’t squeeze it out of me. Two people know, that’s twice the chance to ruin the job. You know, I should be the one giving you the strange look. My way is the Lords of Fortune way and—
“Your way is falling down a lot.”
“Don’t fight,” Panzstott said softly.
“—it’s done fine so far. Every great story in Rivain ever told. Done us well against the damn Antaam and the Venatori. Best treasure hunters in all the world and all the caves beneath it. We only needed you—”
“When your way wouldn’t work.”
“Why’d you come down here with us worms, anyway?” Bharv asked. “Slumming?”
“I’m exceptional at what I do. You shouldn’t need any other reason.”
Panzstott stepped between them. “Herold said we would give the amulet to a squire. I heard him talking.”
Elim snorted and looked horrified she’d done so. “No squire can afford that amulet. Not if I am negotiating.”
Bharv furrowed his entire face. Something Herold once drunkenly said about a squire …
Elim gestured to a high point on the riverbank. “Panzstott, go see what lies ahead. You’re tallest.”
Bharv and Elim waited until he was out of earshot and both opened their mouths to talk. She beat him to it. “Stop your childish
ness. We have larger, dumber problems. What lady is Panzstott talking about?”
Bharv gestured in futility. “I don’t ask hired thugs about the women in their lives. We needed someone who picks his teeth with table legs and Panzstott wanted coin. The perfect partnership. We shook on it, then we drank. Could be sticky, but who cares what he does with his cut? If he’s being conned, it’s not on our backs.”
“Panzstott had a hammer when we snuck into the Grand Tourney. Now he carries a bright shining sword across his back. Where did he get it?”
“Might’ve picked it up fighting his way out of Starkhaven.”
“Possibly. I need a closer look.”
“Just don’t piss him off until we can avoid him stepping on us.”
“Perhaps you fear him.” Elim pushed stray hairs behind her pointed ear. “I’m full of surprises. Come. We must move, even without a direction.”
Each step he took with no sign of their trackers made Bharv feel lighter. If he closed his eyes, this could be a walk with his daughters in the wilds near their Rivain home. He could hear them racing through scattered leaves, bouncing off each other, and laughing loud enough to be heard in Ferelden. Clumsy as drunks, they all were, even still. Looks from their mother, and feet from their father. Wasn’t the same without the smell of salt, though. Bharv’s farm was on the Rivain coast and his daughters were never more than a day’s walk from the ocean. He’d never seen them without salt in his nose. Without it, the memory was never enough.
He swallowed down the worry that thoughts of his daughters often brought up his throat. The violent business between the qunari and Tevinter was still well away from his farm, but only fools believed in the strength of borders scrawled on a map. Safety could be snatched away even by slight winds. Chasing relics across Tevinter, he and Herold had witnessed firsthand the children and families wounded by the northern battles. They’d passed several makeshift hospitals with thin walls that bulged with fresh patients. Real wartime shit. It was difficult to walk away from. For two days after, Bharv nearly had to drag Herold south. He kept looking back and Bharv didn’t need to ask what misery was on his mind.
Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights Page 34
