by RW Krpoun
The Captain considered this. “Still, it comes down to killing: to rescue those....people, you must either spend money you do not have, or slay their captors. The Phantom Badgers do not engage in banditry or road-murder.” He thought for a moment. “Except for Void-worshippers, which technically is another sort of thing entirely.”
“We’re rescued slaves before, Durek, from Void-followers; what difference does the faith of the captors matter? Surely no true follower of the Light deals in slaves?”
“They do in the Suflands,” Durek pointed out. “Opatia for certain, and other realms, too, I believe.”
“That’s a different culture, and anyway, we live in Alhenland. Captain, if we keep slaves or stand by while others traffic in them, are we any better than the Felher or Goblins? Or the Direthrell, whose nations are built on the backs of slaves?” Bridget was counting on the Dwarven love of freedom; custom-bound and obedient to law the Dwarves might be, but they cherished the freedom that made their submission to law and custom their own choice. “Elonia, Starr, and I posed as slave-captives when we struck that Golden Serpent Den, and we rescued Johann from a slave-line; how is that any different than stopping this bastard from selling those twenty-two? Would you stand by if there were twenty-two Dwarves wearing chains?”
“No,” Durek admitted. “Although Humans do allow forms of slavery in their lands, which makes it a different matter for me. I do not condone slavery, Bridget; it is wrong for a sentient being to own another sentient being. Only criminals should wear chains, but this matter is tricky, complex: there is law involved, and I am not sure which course is proper. As you have pointed out, the Road crosses free lands, but I am still not sure about the correct course to follow.” The Dwarf repacked his cleaning kit and stood. “I will speak with an officer of the garrison I know and study the matter further. You will take no action until I make a ruling.”
“Yes, Captain.” Bridget watched the Dwarf stride off in the direction of the fort, and nodded to herself. She had done all she could for now.
“How did you fare?” Lieutenant Axel Uldo, the Company second-in-command, chief wizard, and her husband limped up, a handsome man of average height whose coal-black hair was thickly shot with rich silver despite the fact that he was some weeks shy of his thirty-sixth birthday. He limped because of grievous wounds he had received nearly six years before, not long after he and Bridget married; it was only in the last few months that he had begun to walk without a crutch, although he had spent nearly all of the journey either riding a mule or driving a cart, as after five years on crutches it would be a long time before his leg muscles could sustain prolonged marching.
“Promising: he didn’t say no. By the way, Picken did an excellent job scouting the bastard,” the advocate referred to Axel’s twelve-year-old apprentice who was one of eight orphans the Badgers had rescued in the same foray which had liberated Rolf five years earlier.
“He’s a promising lad,” the wizard nodded, sliding an arm around his wife’s waist. “Still, you won’t get permission before morning, so let us see what sort of privacy we can find in this wretched place.”
Durek had decided that the Company would remain at the Crossing until the morning of the sixteenth to give the troops some time to rest and enjoy what entertainment the place offered. Cooking, camp duties, and cart maintenance were allocated, rosters of passes and guard duty were posted, and the Company settled in for their stay.
Inasmuch as the primary entertainments the Crossing offered were strong drink and whores, Starr had no interest in going outside the camp’s boundaries, and had taken on most of the Corporal of the Guard watches so as to allow other Corporals more time in the fleshpots. Off duty for a change, she was sitting by the central campfire near midnight tending her battle gear with Kroh Blackhand for company.
Kroh, who went into a near-berserk fighting fury in combat, chose his ‘outside name’ from his habit of tattooing runic markings on his hands to commemorate the battles he had fought in and the various races he had slain; at a distance it appeared as if the Dwarf was wearing gloves of course lace. As other Dwarves had discovered before him, the Waybrother had learned that his causal name, which was a common enough cognomen in Dwarven society, was pronounced in the same way as the word ‘crow’ in Pradian, the language of the Empire, ‘crow’ being another name for a raven. This coincidence and the Waybrother’s explosive temper had led to not a few bar-room brawls and headaches for the Badger Captain.
Standing four and a half feet tall and nearly as broad with muscle, the Dwarf was the strongest Badger, with only Rolf coming close. A Badger for five years and a long-serving member of the Guardians of the Way, a Dwarven brotherhood whose simplistic creed was to spend their lives killing anything that might even be a remote threat to their race, Kroh was a well-tested veteran who had uncontestably held the position of the Badger’s deadliest single combatant since the day he had joined. With a temper as stable as a one-legged duck, a child’s patience, and a weird outlook on life, he was also the Company’s most difficult member when combat was not in the offing.
Durek tried to keep Kroh (who was a distant cousin of the Captain’s) and Starr together as much as possible as the little Threll was the only person who could keep Kroh in line outside of combat, although he was reliable under field conditions; the two had been close since Kroh had saved the Threll maid’s life in a fight with Undead shortly before she joined the Company. Surprisingly the promotion to Corporal had sobered the Waybrother a bit, at least when he was in charge of some detail or another. Certainly he never had discipline problems: no one wanted to make him angry.
Currently the Waybrother was perched on a folding camp stool toying with his axe. Like most of the heavy combatants, Kroh wore a felt-muffled breast and back plates, studded arm bracers, and a conical steel helm; his weapons consisted of dagger, dirk, light crossbow, and his Named Axe, which like Snow Leopard, was not Company property, but rather a Guardians weapon which had been assigned to Kroh. The axe, sometimes called Azaghal’s Axe for the first Waybrother which had borne it, had twenty-four gold rings upon its haft, each ring bearing the name of the Waybrother or Waysister who had borne it before (and died wielding it); when the haft was full, the axe would be retired to the Hall of Honor along with the many other Named Axes which reposed there. The weapon itself was of the classic izar style, and enchanted so that once every thirty hours or so Kroh could hurl it as if were a hand axe one-third its size; the Axe would strike as if Kroh was wielding it, and then return to his waiting hands.
Starr’s gear was vastly different as befits a scout, archer, and medium combatant: besides her yakici recurve bow and Snow Leopard, she carried two Threll-style daggers of girmek, and wore a simser shirt, Threllan ‘lattice’-style armor, made up of two layers of plates and strips of iron-hard (yet very light) iocor wood held together with cord spun from the tough, silky web material made by Titan spiders. The two layers of plates and strips were offset so that the vulnerable joints between one layer was protected by the others’ solid fronts, and the two layers separated by, and fastened to, a layer of spider’s silk that kept the pieces of wood from rattling against each other while still allowing them to move with the wearer’s body; the entire assembly was then encased within a light leather shirt. The end result was a shirt that offered the same or better protection as that of good chainmail for less weight, and without the constant noise of rings rattling against each other. In lieu of a helm she wore an enchanted torc such as Janna and Elonia wore which had initially been awarded to Kroh, but the Dwarf disdained enchantment as an alternative to good Dwarven steel, and carried a stout wood buckler to complement Snow Leopard. Starr was also a rarity amongst warriors in that she was both left-handed and fought as such.
“Are you going to go into the rest camps tomorrow?” Starr asked as she inspected the cover on her shirt, awl and leather-patching tools close to hand.
“Might,” Kroh grunted, testing a strap on his armor. “One of the tapster
s had a fair ale. You need me to pick you up anything?”
“No, Bridget got me some leather and thread, which was all I needed. It’s too nasty a place for me.” Starr was used to rough living and danger, but in truth she was still a maiden, and the comments and cat-calls she drew in such places were difficult for her to deal with. “How bad do you think the war will be?”
Kroh was commonly judged to be one of the Company’s experts on any combat-related subject, having been extensively trained as a Waybrother, and having both plentiful experience and an instinctive ‘feel’ for fighting. “Bad. The Hand won’t have another opportunity like this for decades, perhaps centuries, and their leadership knows it. The last time, the Ostwind War, was rough: they reached Sagenhoft and laid siege to, crossed the Ascendi to invade Arturia, and traversed the length of the Bloody Road before they were beaten back. If they had waited for Sagenhoft to have fallen before crossing the Sea things might have gone different, but they got impatient and didn’t secure their rear before driving further west. They won’t make the same mistake again. Of course, the nations of the West won’t, either: Arturia and the Empire have troops in the Realms already, and there’s an Imperial Legion five days behind us which will garrison the Road to prevent the Hand from using it like they did last time. There’s a lot fewer nations in the Realms now, too, the area has unified a lot in the years since the Ostwind, down to fourteen now, most of good size. And even though Arbmante is busy with power-shuffles and internal coups, part of the Hand’s army will have to stay behind and watch them, just in case.”
“Do you think Arbmante might work out its problems in time?”
“Nope. Their ruling class poured every spare shilling they had into Alantarn, and when the hold mutinied it discredited every leader in power and all their protégés; it will be a decade or more before they sort out their internal problems, unless someone is stupid enough to invade. Their power-factions might be feuding, but its dagger-work and intrigue, not military action. Arbmante’s military might is unchanged, other than their leaders are too busy looking within to care about what happens elsewhere.”
“Will we win?”
“I don’t know; the Hand has been planning for years against this possibility, and ever since last spring when Alantarn declared its independence they’ve been preparing in earnest. They’ve Cave Goblin and Felher allies in the Thunderpeaks, as well as vassal-forces from nomad, Orc, and Goblin tribes from across the Blasted Plains, plus their own battle-tested armies, all gathered under a single command. The armies they face will be from the fourteen Realms nations plus the Empire and Arturia, so unity of command on our side will be chancy. The key to the whole mess will be Sagenhoft: it’s the biggest port on the Ascendi Sea: if the Hand can take and hold it, they cut the Realms in half and threaten the eastern terminus of the Road; without that port and the Road the Empire and Arturia will have to withdraw their forces across the Ascendi, and without outside help the Realms fall. Of course, our side knows that, too, so it won’t be a stroll in the sun for the Hand. Any way it goes, it’ll be long and bloody. The Hand’ll fall on the Realms like a tide of steel.”
“Oh.” The little Threll concentrated on polishing Snow Leopard’s scabbard. She had fought in many engagements with the Badgers, including some good-sized fights against Goblins last summer, but the scale of the coming war frightened her badly; there would be thousands of warriors on the battlefields, whole armies, vast enchantments, and slaughter on a huge scale. When it was over the world would not be the same, nor would she, and that was hard for a member of a long-lived race to cope with; Humans seemed able to deal with changes that took place in mere weeks or months, but for a Threll, change was normally a much slower business.
Chapter Four
After a breakfast of oatmeal, fried mush, and salt pork had been served those Badgers who were on pass were inspected and allowed to leave the camp, while those who remained behind set about the various household chores allotted to them or simply rested, knowing that there were plenty of long days and hard marching coming ahead. Once she was done with her own duties, Bridget sought out her Captain, whom she found sitting by the main camp fire studying a map. “Good morning, Durek; have you come to a decision?”
“Yes, in fact I have: if Reille is a slaver, then you may lead Company forces in a very quiet elimination, but if he is merely a dealer in indentured servants, you are to leave him alone.”
The advocate scowled. “I don’t understand: there is no difference between the two.”
“Not to you, but there is in the eyes of the law as it holds at either end of the Road. If Reille keeps his dealings within the scope of the laws regarding indentured servitude, then he is not to be molested, but if he is operating outside that law, then you may eliminate him and liberate his stock.”
“I...see; I’m going to have to prove that he gets his stock from illegal sources, then,” Bridget said slowly. “And the best way to do that would be to try to sell him some outright slaves.”
“Exactly, just as we pretended to do to those Golden Serpent types. If he ‘buys’ them, or at least agrees to, he’s fair game. I’ll leave the operation up to you, but I want the entire business to be kept extremely quiet; slaver or not, if we eliminate him I don’t want a lot of fuss.”
“The trouble is, we won’t be able to pawn off any of our Badgers as ‘slaves’; Reille will spot a warrior a mile away,” she mused, tapping her chin. “Any suggestions, Captain?”
“You’re a bright lass, Serjeant,” Durek grinned. “I have confidence in you.”
It took the lithe advocate only a few minutes to sketch out a plan, but the detail-work took considerably longer, as is always the case. Fortunately, being a well-organized Company, the pass rosters quickly determined which of the Company had been outside their camp to date, and more importantly, who had not.
“I still think you ought to use Henri,” Axel muttered as he examined the used coat his wife had purchased for him. “He’s the Company’s expert on whores.”
“I did consult him, but he has spent far too much time carousing in the rest camps wearing his Company insignia; Reille or one of his men might well have noticed him. You haven't been out of our camp since we moved in, and we need to use Badgers who won’t be known as Badgers,” Bridget explained for the second time. “I need your help in this: we need to hire four whores to pose as illegally obtained captives whom we will offer to sell to Reille, and the person who does this must not be known to be a Badger either when he rents the girls or when he tries to sell them to Reille.”
“We’ve all got our special needs,” the wizard leered. “We’ll discuss mine later.”
Bridget shook her head, muttering.
Rolf had decided to accompany Kroh into the rest area, and the two Badgers had, after a careful survey of the various stalls and sellers’ wares, ended up in a drinking establishment which consisted of a large tarp-roof stretched over a dozen or so trestle tables knocked together out of green wood. Ale was relatively cheap, and both were soon working on a tankard of fair quality.
“I would like a roast chicken, but the prices are much too high,” Rolf observed, eyeing a vendor across the dirt path that ran in front of the bar. “I hope the war won’t affect all prices this way.”
“Might,” Kroh grunted. “There’s going to be a lot of extra mouths to feed in the Realms for the next couple years.” He dug his tinderbox out of his pouch and began the process of lighting a candle. When the candle-stub was lit, he extracted a thick brown cigar from a tooled leather case and snipped the end, dunking the other end in his ale before puffing it alight. Living underground meant living with damp air, and many Dwarves suffered from some sort of breathing problem because of it. Usually teas made from the tabba bush or the occasional pipe-full of the cured leaf would dry the breathing passages and give lasting relief, but for the more severe cases eating a paste from the plant's sap or chewing the dried leaves was the only remedy. Kroh suffered from the most extreme ca
se, and as a child had suffered strangling attacks that brought him to the brink of fainting. Heavy doses of tabba paste had stopped the attacks, and after reaching adulthood he had taken to smoking cigars made from the dried leaves to hold the shortness of breath at bay. He hadn't had an attack in decades thanks to regular consumption, and in fact several Healers had advised him that the condition had been cured by the plant's smoke, but he continued to smoke out of habit, and out of a secret fear that the attacks would return if he stopped. He wasn’t alone in his consumption of the helpful leaves: Durek smoked them in a pipe out of the habits of childhood, and Arian smoked a thin, crooked form of cigar known as a cheroot.
The two were soon joined by Corporal Barthel ‘Bulldog’ Gayton and Senior Badger Emory “Mad Dog’ Bohmlerz, both of Gold Platoon. Gayton was a stocky man of average height and sandy hair, a solid, reliable Badger who derived his nickname from his steely determination and his habit of making a growling grunt when irritated. Bohmlerz was a tall, slender man with dark hair and a jutting beak of a nose, a quiet Badger whose ferocity in combat and his ability to project authority on the parade field had won him his Company name.
Their conversation was limited; none of the four were much given to speaking, at least until someone else got the discussion started, so they sat and drank, watching the passing crowds and exchanging the odd comment or observation. The little open-air drinking establishment was a busy place, with plenty of coming and going, loud talk, and the clatter of game-pieces or dice as patrons gambled. Its ‘front’ faced a busy path that cut through the rest camp’s ‘business district’, so there was plenty of traffic to watch pass by if talk or gambling were not to a customer’s taste.
