A Fistful of Elven Gold

by Alex Stewart

  “Not sure you’d find the Marches much of an improvement,” Clearspring said. “I was glad enough to get out of them, and I’m an elf.”

  “I was told there are jobs for gnomes there,” Drago said, and the elven woman nodded.

  “In the Barrens, at least. But you don’t look like a miner to me.” Her eyes narrowed. “You look more like trouble waiting for someone to happen to.”

  “I can take care of myself if I have to,” Drago said, matter-of-factly.

  “I’m sure you can.” Her tone became businesslike. “Clement says you’ve got the money. How much do you think passage to the Marches is worth?”

  Drago shrugged. “Couple of sovs?” he suggested. Two of the gold coins embossed with the image of the last monarch of the region, who’d been replaced by the city council in mysteriously fatal circumstances over a century before, would have got him a long way upriver under most circumstances. But these circumstances were highly unusual, and Clearspring knew it.

  “Five,” she shot back. “Take it or leave it.”

  “Three,” Drago responded, knowing how the game was played.

  But Clearspring shook her head. “I’m not haggling. You look like trouble, and I can do without that. Five sovereigns might make it worth my while to take the chance. Even then, if I think you’re putting my boat or my people at risk, you’re going over the side. Do we have a deal?”

  “We do.” Drago smiled at Wethers. “I like her too. Where did you meet? I’m guessing not at the temple.”

  “We know some of the same people.” Wethers’s tone made it clear that further enquiries would not be welcome. “I told you I’d ask around.”

  “And I appreciate it.” Drago turned back to Clearspring, and dug five gold coins from his purse. “There. Five sovs.”

  The riverboat captain’s face darkened. “That’s Marcher currency. Where did you get that?”

  “Does it matter? Gold’s gold.” Drago studied her face, which had taken on an unexpectedly harder edge. After a moment she nodded.

  “Fair point. It all spends the same.” But she still didn’t look happy.

  “I’ll leave you to it, then,” Wethers said, and Drago nodded, relieved at the diversion.

  “See you when I get back.”

  “You’d better,” Wethers said, though whether he meant to remind the gnome that he owed him a significant favor, or was really expressing concern for his safety, Drago couldn’t quite tell.

  A draft of cold air, and the muffled bang of the door, announced Wethers’s departure. As he left, two humans dressed like their skipper, apart from the blue coat marking her position of authority, slipped into the warehouse. Clearspring scowled at them. “You took your time.”

  “Sorry, skipper,” the man said, not really sounding it. He was tall, almost a head higher than Clearspring, and muscular with it; his companion wasn’t particularly large for a human woman, about the same size as the elf, but broad and stocky. Of the two, she’d be the most dangerous in a brawl, strongly centered, and with the strength to capitalize on that. “Took us a while to get the cargo stowed. Where’s the rest of it?”

  “Right there.” Clearspring jerked her head in Drago’s direction. Both sailors looked surprised.

  “Just him?” the woman asked.

  “Just him.” The elf turned back to Drago. “Well, jump in, then. We haven’t got all night.”

  “Jump in where?” Drago asked, following her gaze, and finding himself looking at an empty barrel, its lid propped up against the curving wooden sides. He shook his head. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “Fine, have it your way.” Clearspring shrugged. “Walk down to the boat in plain sight. If you’re that sure none of the people trying to kill you are anywhere around.”

  “Kill him?” The man looked at Drago with renewed interest, as though the evening was becoming more entertaining than he’d bargained for.

  The woman just stared, in sullen hostility. “What’ve you got us into this time, Skip?”

  “Nothing.” Neither of her crew appeared to believe her. “We’re going to the Marches anyway, he wants passage there. We get paid for taking him, everybody wins.”

  “Unless whoever’s after him jumps us on the way,” the man objected.

  “Which is why we keep him hidden until we’re well upstream,” Clearspring said. She glanced at Drago. “Unless you’re willing to pay double for the extra risk?”

  “Fine.” Drago clambered into the barrel, and crouched down. It seemed quite roomy, all things considered, and, not for the first time, he was grateful for his stature. The wood smelled faintly of apples, and he inhaled appreciatively.

  “Comfortable?” Clearspring asked.

  “Not particularly.”

  “Tough.” She dropped the lid in place, tapping it home with an expert hand. Some of the staves turned out to be warped with age, admitting a few glimmers of light, and a modicum of fresh air. Drago put an experimental eye to the nearest, but his field of vision was so restricted he might just as well not have bothered; nothing could be seen except shadows, and occasional flickers of movement.

  After a moment or two the barrel shifted, accompanied by grunting and muffled curses from the deckhands, swayed uncomfortably for a moment, then came to rest with a jar and a muffled bump. After that a slight rocking motion began, accompanied by a faint regular squeaking. From that, and the occasional semi-audible comment from one of the three people walking alongside, he inferred that the barrel had been hoisted onto a handcart, which was now being wheeled to the docks.

  After just long enough for Drago to become numbed to the continuing discomfort, there were some more abrupt shifts, a sudden falling sensation, and a loud thud, which shook the wooden container. Disconcerted, he scrambled to the crack and peered through it again, seeing nothing; even his exceptional low-light vision was unable to make out anything but shadows and darkness.

  “Stay quiet,” Clearspring instructed in an undertone, which echoed slightly, then silence fell, broken only by the faint sound of retreating footsteps. A moment later there was a muffled, reverberating bang, and the darkness outside the barrel intensified.

  “Great.” Drago pushed against the lid, finding, to his complete lack of surprise, that it failed to move.

  He considered his options. He could probably break out, given time, but that would make a lot of noise. At the very least Clearspring would object to that, quite possibly refusing to go through with the deal, and he didn’t exactly have a lot of alternatives. If the elf and her crew had meant him any harm they’d have made their move by now; the fact that they seemed to have stowed the barrel in the hold of her boat would indicate that she intended going through with their deal, at least for now. Better to wait, and see what happened.

  In the meantime, he might as well eat the bacon bap.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Is she always that friendly?”

  Eventually, to his own vague surprise, Drago fell asleep; something he only became aware of when he was jerked out of an unpleasant dream of being attacked by a swarm of rats, which merged into a large, vaguely humanoid form that flowed around him like liquid and began crushing and suffocating him at the same time. Two or three heavy blows shook the barrel, and he struck out by reflex, only remembering where he was as his elbow thudded into the surrounding wood. The impact jarred up his arm, leaving it tingling, and making him feel sick to his stomach.

  “Rise and shine.” The lid of the barrel disappeared, revealing the grinning face of the male human sailor. “Skipper says it’s safe to come up on deck now, if you feel like it.”

  “Why not?” Drago responded, trying to stand, and belatedly discovering that every joint he possessed seemed to have locked solid during the night. After a moment, the sailor reached down a helping hand, which, after a moment of his own, Drago decided to accept.

  “Have you really been sleeping?” the man sounded amused and impressed, in roughly equal measure, as he half helped, ha
lf lifted Drago out of the barrel.

  Drago nodded. “I’ve had a busy few days,” he said, trying to ignore the audible crackling as he unkinked his neck, and looking at his surroundings with interest. As he’d surmised, he was in the hold of the riverboat, which seemed full of neatly stacked boxes and barrels. A few smaller packages were stowed in nets fastened to the inside of the hull. Fore and aft, bulkheads ran the full width of the boat, more narrowly nearer the bow; here a small door gave access to the fo’c’s’le, just below a pair of hammocks, in both of which rested a small bundle of personal possessions. Drago assumed that this was where the crew slept. About half the ceiling area was occupied by a cargo hatch, covered with a wooden lid. Forrard of that, where the hull began to curve inwards, a ladder led up to a smaller hatch, half uncovered, through which thin gray daylight was dribbling into the crowded space.

  “You and me both,” the man said, in a reasonably friendly manner. “But with less of the life threatening here,” he added, after a moment’s thought. He turned to the ladder. “Coming?”

  “Might as well,” Drago said.

  The first thing which struck Drago as his head emerged from the hatch was a strange smell, which sliced its way into his sinuses and made him sneeze. Only after some time had gone by did it begin to dawn on him that this was fresh air, unfreighted with the familiar odors of Fairhaven, and therefore not to be trusted. The second was that there were no buildings looming over him, just the broad expanse of the Geltwash all around the boat, a rippling greenish blue, in stark contrast to the grayish sea water and brownish sludge of the city canals. About three hundred yards to the right, open fields studded with trees and the occasional barn or farmhouse scudded past, full of swaying stalks of grain almost as tall as Drago, the broad-leaved tops of some root vegetable he didn’t recognize, or grazing livestock.

  The opposite bank was almost three times farther away, but the landscape there seemed much the same: broad, flat and cultivated almost to the horizon, where a faint gray line could have been either a bank of cloud or low-lying hills. Pretty much every farm or hamlet they passed seemed to have a wharf or a landing stage, at which a couple of dinghies bobbed; occasionally they were joined by a riverboat like the one he stood on, loading crops to be conveyed to the city to satisfy the insatiable appetite of its inhabitants. Though he’d always known intellectually that Fairhaven was supported by an agricultural hinterland, it had never occurred to Drago that it was so large, or so apparently prosperous.

  From his vantage point on the deck, Drago could see roughly a dozen other vessels, unremarkable riverboats for the most part, strung out along the river ahead and behind the one he was standing on. All the boats on this side of the water were heading in the same direction, bow waves creaming as their spread sails sent them slicing through the downstream current, the ones following the other bank making for the estuary and the waiting wharves of Fairhaven.

  Reminded of his home, Drago glanced aft, where the human woman glared sullenly at him from her post at the tiller. Beyond her, he could see only a bend in the river, and still more of the ubiquitous farmland.

  “Getting homesick already?” Clearspring asked, noting the direction of his gaze, and ignoring the answering shake of his head. “Wait until we reach the next bend.” Sure enough, a moment later the woman at the tiller moved it across, the riverboat turned to follow the curve of the bank, and a longer view down the river appeared behind her. In the far distance, beyond the meander, a low ridge line of roofs and towers briefly appeared, before being occulted again almost at once.

  “I didn’t realize we’d come so far,” Drago said.

  “That’s what happens when you sleep in,” the deckhand said. He turned to Clearspring. “Snoring his head off when I opened the barrel.”

  “Well it wasn’t like I had anything else to do,” Drago pointed out. “Did I miss breakfast?”

  “Of course you did. Tide turned well before sunup.” Clearspring indicated the sun, now well above the horizon, with an impatient wave, presumably in case Drago hadn’t seen it before and didn’t know what it was.

  “You left in the dark?” Drago asked. It was possible to sail at night, he’d heard, but only a skipper in a real hurry would risk it, and it seemed a strange thing to do if Clearspring wanted to avoid attracting any attention.

  “Course not.” The deckhand seemed highly amused at the idea. “We left at first light, though, to get as much out of it as we could before it starts ebbing again.”

  “And we didn’t get nearly enough for my liking.” Clearspring spat over the rail, the blob of saliva gliding smoothly astern in the rippling water. “It’s on the turn already, so it’s only just balancing the current. We’ll be losing way before long.”

  “Not so much as you’d notice,” the deckhand said. He glanced down at Drago again, and grinned. “No one can read the water like the skipper here. The Rippling Light’s the fastest boat on the Geltwash.”

  “Not quite,” Clearspring allowed, with a tolerant smile at the deckhand, “but we can move when we have to.” She glanced back at Drago. “Go with Greel if you’re hungry. He’ll find you something to eat.”

  “Anything for you, Skip?” the deckhand asked.

  Clearspring shook her head. “I’m fine.” She leaned on the rail, the conversation apparently at an end, then added “See if Hannie wants a bite too. Then take the tiller, give her a break.”

  “Will do.” Greel, who somehow seemed more of a person now that Drago knew his name, beckoned the gnome across to a small superstructure, set aft of the main hatch. It was divided into two, widthwise—a roughly square room facing the bow, with a table, a bunk, and a couple of chairs, and a small galley, which seemed well equipped to Drago’s inexperienced eye, behind it. The table held a couple of mugs, an unwashed plate, and a peculiar-looking map, in which the outline of the river was extensively annotated, and most of the landscape surrounding it left blank. “Know how to cook?”

  “More or less,” Drago said. The principle seemed simple enough, although he normally had enough cash in his purse not to have to put any of it into practice. One of the many reasons he never left the city if he could help it. “Put something on the stove. If it’s runny it’s raw, if it’s black it’s overdone.”

  “Hm.” Greel looked at him for a moment as if wondering whether or not he was joking, before deciding correctly that he wasn’t. “Go and ask Hannie if she wants something. I’ll handle the food.”

  “Right.” Drago made his way along the deck, compensating automatically for the minute shifts underfoot, which seemed much less pronounced than on the smaller boats he was used to. Hannie watched his approach without noticeable enthusiasm, her usual scowl remaining glued to her face. “Do you want something to eat?”

  “Wouldn’t say no,” she conceded, a trifle warily. She leaned into the tiller a little, adjusting the boat’s course by a minute fraction. “Hungry work, this.”

  “Looks it,” Drago agreed. He turned to wave affirmatively at Greel, who disappeared into the galley. “Been on the river long?”

  “Long enough,” Hannie said. “Born on the water, hope to die on it too.” She looked down at him narrowly, a little more of her previous wariness coming to the surface again. “But not yet awhile.”

  “Me neither,” Drago agreed, with his friendliest smile.

  “I know. Skipper said. That’s why you’re here.”

  “Something like that,” Drago agreed. The full story was too complicated to precis, even if he felt like sharing it, which, under the circumstances, would probably not be a good idea. He decided to change the subject. “How long have you been crewing for her?”

  “Couple of years,” Hannie said, looking faintly surprised that he knew how to make conversation. “Greel’s been with her a bit longer.”

  “Sounds like she gets on well with humans,” Drago commented. That struck him as a little unusual, and in his profession the unusual was generally not to be trusted. Most of the elves h
e’d encountered would have alienated human underlings to the point of resignation, if not altercation, within a couple of months, never mind years.

  “Pretty much everyone,” Hannie conceded. “Just elves she has a problem with, generally.”

  “Why’s that?” Drago asked, but Hannie just shrugged, and adjusted the position of the tiller another inch or two.

  “You’d have to ask her,” she said, the shutters coming down again.

  “Maybe I will,” Drago said, turning away in response to the appetizing aroma of hot bacon. Greel was approaching, two fresh filled baps in his hands, and a trace of grease around his mouth mute testament to the ephemerality of a third.

  “There you go,” the deckhand said, handing the hot snack to Drago, and turning to Hannie, who took the second gratefully. “Skip wants a hand taking in the sail when you’ve finished that.”

  “Murfle furg.” She swallowed an overlarge mouthful, and relinquished the tiller. “I’ll get right on it.”

  “Good.” Greel took her place, and watched his crewmate bite, chew and swallow with all the finesse of a troll at a smorgasbord. “Been getting acquainted with our passenger?”

  “Sort of.” Hannie swallowed the last mouthful of her second breakfast, belched loudly, and trotted across the deck to where Clearspring was doing something Drago didn’t quite grasp to a tangle of ropes.

  “Is she always that friendly?” Drago asked, taking a bite of his own bacon butty. The contrast with Edna Cravatt’s parting gift could hardly have been stronger.

  Greel grinned. “Which one do you mean?”

  Drago shrugged, his eye on both the two women. They worked well together, so far as he could see, adjusting the sail with an easy rapport and a minimum of conversation. “Either of them.”

  “No.” Greel shook his head, leaning into the tiller, and sending the boat curving neatly around the next bend in the river. The boom swung over, Clearspring and Hannie avoiding it with ease of long habit. “You must be quite the charmer.”