When the wizard had finished addressing the snake, the creature turned its head and regarded Krunzle. The rogue thought that he had never met a reptilian gaze that seemed so knowing. He was still thinking that thought when the spellcaster's hand moved with startling speed and Krunzle felt something cold strike the front of his throat. A moment later, he felt the same sensation on the sides and back of his neck. He reached up a hand to where his short-cropped hair met the collar of his shirt and there he found both the snake's head and its tail, the creature's mouth clamped tightly down on its opposite extremity.
"That will do," said the wizard, returning to the bag what looked to be a jewel of the same shade of green as the snake's eyes. To Krunzle, he said, "Its name is Chirk. Its loyalty is unshakable, its grip unbreakable. Try it."
One of Krunzle's hands sought for the snake's neck, just behind the jaws, the other found its tail where it disappeared into the mouth. The thief gripped, pulled, twisted. Nothing happened. He squeezed with his fingers, exerting sufficient pressure to crush reptile bones, but felt only the unyielding hardness of strong metal. Then the spellcaster spoke incomprehensibly again, and suddenly the rogue could no longer breathe. Krunzle felt his blood being stymied as it attempted to reach his brain, then the room began to darken and a low rushing sound filled his ears.
"That is what will ensue whenever you depart from the path on which the master is setting you," said the wizard, "or shirk your responsibilities." As he spoke, the snake relaxed its grip. Krunzle sucked in a great breath and tried to fit a finger between his skin and Chirk, to loosen the constriction further. He did not succeed.
"And the next time you touch Chirk," said Thang-Sha, "it will char your fingers to ashes. Now," the wizard paused while his rootlike fingers compressed the middle of his lower lip, "it can be rough traveling, between here and the mountains. We had better give him faster boots." He rummaged through the bag and came up with a fat little jar whose top he unscrewed. A foul odor filled the air, but the spellslinger ignored it and scooped up a blob of the jar's waxy contents on two fingertips. He knelt and applied the stuff to the sides of Krunzle's buskins, then lifted each foot in turn to smear their soles.
"That should do it," he said, then reached again into the bag and brought out a short sword in a scabbard of scuffed brown leather. He spoke a few syllables over the weapon, then attached it to Krunzle's belt and stepped back to study the result.
The result was that the thief immediately drew the sword and applied its edge to Chirk. Two more results ensued: the weapon's blade became as limp as a girl-child's hair ribbon, collapsing to dangle over the sword's in-curved quillions; and Chirk instantly choked Krunzle to the brink of unconsciousness, only failing to proceed to full senselessness when the wizard said, "Not all the way." The spellcaster stooped to pick up the weapon and resheathed it in its scabbard.
He then addressed the thief: "The sword will serve you only in self-defense. It is, however, a well-practiced weapon; you have but to draw it and it will do the rest. As well, it will serve none but you. If it is taken from you, it will find a way to return to your grasp. But if you attack anyone, it will become as limp as you saw it a moment ago."
Eponion said, "Except Wolsh Berbackian."
"Indeed," said the wizard. He spoke to Chirk, "The sword is allowed to attack the malefactor who has seduced away Gyllana." Eponion added an amendment, and the wizard passed on the instruction, almost as an afterthought: "And anyone who offers harm to the woman."
"It is not only allowed," said the Kalistocrat, "I insist upon it. I want Berbackian's blood. Attack the dastard the moment you encounter him."
"What about," said the wizard, "the purloined item?"
"It is of small value," said Eponion.
"Still, it will do your reputation no good if you do not recover what was stolen from you."
The other man considered the point for a moment, then said, "You are right." He turned to Krunzle. "Berbackian stole an object, some sort of talisman, old and of indeterminate origin, made of base metal. Bring it back."
Thang-Sha exuded an air of quiet satisfaction. "Chirk," he said, "take note." The cold circlet about Krunzle's neck tingled for a moment.
"Wait," said the thief, his mind constructing uncomfortable scenarios. "Perhaps some of this should be left to my discretion. Suppose I come upon the debaucher and the young lady, but in the absence of the item. What if he has sold it, or lost it crossing a river? I may become embroiled in a conundrum."
Eponion said, "My daughter's safe return is your first concern; Berbackian's death a secondary, though essential, goal; the talisman a distant third in priority."
"In case of complex circumstances," said Thang-Sha, "let it be a joint decision with Chirk, then. But Chirk's shall be the final say." He looked at Eponion inquiringly. "Does that suit?"
The Kalistocrat said, "You trust the snake?"
Thang-Sha nodded. "It has been with me for many years. I have come to rely on its abilities."
"Very well. Then send him on his way."
"Wait," said Krunzle, "I am not fit for a journey. I have been up all night being fed to trees and forced to perform feats of strength and dexterity. I suggest I retire to a well-made bed for several hours, then fortify myself with a good breakfast before going down to the docks and boarding the next packet upriver."
Thang-Sha smiled an unpleasant smile. "Your plan is rejected. You will find that servants of Kalistocrats and Tian wizards address themselves to their duties with commendable briskness."
"Just so," the Kalistocrat concurred. "I tolerate no lackadaisicality. You may rest when your labors are completed. And to my satisfaction."
"Very well," said the thief, "there remains only the question of the reward for my inevitable success." He named what he considered an appropriate figure.
It was received with a routine expression of horror and disbelief from Eponion, while the wizard composed his features into a mask of sardonic amusement. "Bidding farewell to Chirk will come to seem more than enough recompense," he said. Then he seized Krunzle's shoulders and spun the rogue around. A solid push sent him moving toward the open door. "Chirk, you know the way! Instruct the boots! Now, be off!"
Krunzle felt the wizard's hand between his shoulder blades, propelling him onward. But he soon discovered why the order to depart had not been aimed at himself but at the snake and the ensorcelled buskins. Of their own accord, his boots began to rise and fall, taking his feet and legs with them, and as he traversed two hallways and passed through a door that swung open to let him out by a servants' entrance, the pace began to accelerate. Moreover, his boots took longer and longer strides. By the time he came to a side gate in the wall, he was moving at a rapid lope.
Out on the street, the buskins turned themselves toward Lake Encarthan and soon their wearer was leaping downhill fast enough for the wind of his passage to bring tears to his eyes. Chirk, satisfied for the time being, loosened its grip enough for Krunzle to breathe freely. The rogue tugged his belt around until the sword no longer banged his left knee with every other prodigious step, and adjusted himself to his new circumstances.
He came down Enterprise Way and into Kalistrade Square, the glistening pavements of the great open space dark and empty. By now he was covering fifteen feet with each step, at a speed to be envied by thoroughbreds. He shot past the pillared Bourse with its grand statue of the Prophet Kalistrade seated on a jewel-studded throne, cleared the Fountain of Plenty in a single leap, and zipped through the filigreed ivory of the Admonitory Arch too quickly to appreciate its carved panels showing allegorical figures engaged in buying, selling, accounting, and hoarding under Kalistrade's benevolent gaze.
Past the arch, his boots took him toward the wide Promenade that ran along the shore of the bay, then turned him eastward toward where the river that the Kersites called Profit's Flow ended its journey from the Five Kings Mountains. The night was overcast, a full moon shining somewhere above the clouds, casting a diffuse light ove
r the gray waters of Lake Encarthan that stretched smooth into the distance. The lake resembled a sheet of unpolished pewter.
"Hey!" cried a startled voice as Krunzle's fast-leaping progress took him past a Blackjacket guard post overlooking the boat basin where barges from upriver tied up. The thief heard an order to halt, then the sound of boots pounding the promenade's pavement. But the pursuit soon fell behind, and within moments, he had gone past the barge harbor and reached the spot where Kerse's city wall came down to the point at which the river met the lake.
There was another Mercenary League post here. The men-at-arms, alerted by the shouts and bootfalls, were already out and ready. Krunzle could see only vague shapes, like shadows against the gray stone of the wall—then someone kindled a torch into a blaze of red-yellow flame, and someone else lit a second fire from the first. He heard a shout, in a tone of command, and now he was leaping toward a circle of light in which he could see the points of halberds, four of them, charged and leveled at him.
"Boots?" he said, then, "Chirk?" He didn't know what answer he expected. In any case, he received none. The ensorcelled buskins carried him relentlessly on, the metal snake dozed around his neck, and four Blackjackets waited for him to come out of the murk and into their torchlight so they could spit him like a roasted capon.
There stood the Rivergate, its heavy portcullis of iron-braced timbers blocking the opening. And before that, a ramp leading down to the water, at its top the Mercenary League's fastboat on its wheeled dolly, standing ready to be put into the water to deal with any mischief in the harbor. And beyond the boat, the halberds: six of them now, and two more torches lit and put up high in the sconces to either side of the guard post's door.
"Wait!" said Krunzle, to anyone who cared to listen. But no one did. As he reached the top of the ramp and came into view of the rank of Blackjackets—he saw the surprise on their faces—the boots swerved him downward. In two strides he was at the foot of the incline, and the buskins came together just long enough for both of them to lift him into the air.
His flight followed a long arc out over the water and he had sense enough to take a deep breath and put his arms out in front of him so that his hands cut the water of the bay and made a hole for the rest of him to dive into. He went deep, his boots kicking powerfully, and the water was black. Krunzle could not tell which way was up, down, or sideways. A stream of bubbles escaped from his mouth, his lips pushed back and aside by the speed of his passage.
The pressure in his ears increased—I'm going deeper!—then his still-outstretched hands encountered a deep layer of slime and saturated soil. A moment later, he felt something hard slide along his back, and realized it was the fastboat's keel even as the shock caused him to open his mouth and gasp. But the bay's cold water got no farther than the back of his throat, because the bronze snake instantly tightened its grip around his neck. The constriction made Krunzle think his head was going to pop open, but not a drop of liquid reached his lungs.
And now the pressure eased, as did the metal noose around his throat. The boots kicked again and the thief shot knee-high out of the Profit's Flow, to splash down again.
"What's that?" came a voice from somewhere behind him. Krunzle rolled over onto his back, the buskins now thrashing the water, propelling him powerfully upstream against the flow of the current, and saw the portcullis backlit by torches. Two Blackjackets were at the bottom of the ramp, extending their lights over the water. One of them said something to the other, but by then Krunzle was already out of earshot, the top of his head parting the river like a poorly designed ship's bow.
He did not know how long he traveled in this way, though he grew increasingly cold as the mountain-fed river chilled his limbs. He was carried past Kerse's eastern suburbs, past the straggle of sheds and wharves along the river's shore. The few and scattered lights gave way to blackness and he knew he had reached the semicircular belt of farmland that cupped the city against the bay. A little farther on, the boots steered for the bank and brought him to the foot of an incline of rough earth—some farmer's boat launch, the rogue thought.
He crawled, soaked and shivering, up the muddy slope, the buskins pushing him until he rose, staggering, to his feet. Immediately, he was moving swiftly through the darkness again, the cold night air rushing by and chilling him to the marrow. "I need to stop and warm myself," he said, but neither snake nor buskins heeded him.
During one leap, he tried to raise a leg so that he could pull off its boot, but the leather clung to his foot like a sodden limpet. Chirk gave him a warning squeeze. Shuddering, teeth rattling against each other, the thief wrapped his wet arms around his wet torso and endured the chill as best he could. Somewhere along the way, he lapsed into a dull-minded doze, which eventually became sleep.
He returned to awareness to find himself leaping along a dirt-and-gravel road that followed the river's winding path. On its other side, the track was bordered by fields alternating with patches of mixed forest. He saw no signs of habitation except a fortified farm on the other side of Profit's Flow, its fields running down to the distant shore of the river. It was soon behind him.
The sun was better than a hand's-breadth above the distant mountains to the east, and growing warm enough to take some of the chill from his limbs. His clothes were mostly dry from the constant rush of air past and through them, but he was still bone cold. And hungry. His evening meal of bread and cheese and olives was but a memory.
"I must eat," he said. "Take me to where I can find nourishment." Not that he had any funds to buy it. His last coins had gone the way of his knives and garrote. He would have to improvise, but on such occasions he seldom came up wanting.
His statements were not acknowledged, unless the buskins were already doing all that could be done to put him within reach of food. He folded his arms and watched the land and river rush by. Off to his left, high above the northern horizon, something large was flying in a lazy circle. After a couple of circuits, it broke its cycle and angled toward him.
"Chirk," he said, but he needed say no more. The boots lengthened their stride and put on more speed. The thing in the sky began to fall behind, then it wheeled and soared on a thermal current, rising to resume its patient circling.
The sun was now two hands high, the morning well warmed. Ahead, Krunzle saw that the river curved to follow a narrowing valley. He had been passing open pastures on his landward side, backed by steep, pine-forested hills. But where the river bent, the trees came down almost to the water's edge, leaving only the strip of road and a few feet of bank. He noted, too, that the river also temporarily lost its freedom—someone had built a lock here, for the convenience of the flat-bottomed barges that hauled freight between Kerse and Highhelm.
Krunzle's spirits rose. A lock should mean a lock-keeper. A lock-keeper meant a cottage, and a cottage meant a pantry. His mouth watered. As if they had a mind of their own that ran in concourse with the thief's, his buskins began to slacken their pace. His leaps became bounds, became steps, and all at once he was walking along the road at a pedestrian's pace.
The road entered the long curve. Krunzle craned his head to see farther round the bend, looking for the smoke of a chimney. Now, the lock's downstream gate was in full view; a few steps later, he could see the upstream works. But no cottage, not even a booth. The bargemen must have to turn the windlasses for themselves.
His mouth dried, and his spirits laid themselves back down where they had been languishing. Then he saw movement: out of the woods stepped three men—no, two men, he soon corrected himself; the third was surely a half-orc—who ranged themselves across the track, the big one in the middle.
Krunzle looked left, right, behind. No help in sight. "Time to run," he said, because he could see that the trio did not wait for him with empty hands. But the boots kept marching him onward. They stepped forthrightly up to the three bandits—for Krunzle knew an ambush when he saw one, having participated in several, and from both sides of the dichotomy. He trie
d one more time to turn and flee, but the buskins were as if nailed to the ground.
The man to his left was lean and wiry, an Osirian by the look of him—a first impression confirmed when he spoke in the languid accent of that southern land. "Traveler!" he cried, in a tone that said he was glad to see Krunzle. "Well met this morning!" He gestured companionably with the short recurved bow in his left hand; a black-fletched arrow was already nocked to the string of twisted sinew, held against the bow's leather-wrapped grip by the Osirian's forefinger.
Krunzle looked to the one on the right—surely an Ulfen, by his long-limbs, braided yellow hair, and leather-bound leggings. The man said nothing, only smiled to reveal teeth much the same shade as his braids as he resettled the long-bladed sword that rested, unsheathed, against one shoulder.
The half-orc, for that was what the middle one unquestionably was, also said nothing—as was to be expected. The thief knew that half-orcs preferred to make their statements nonverbally, though in a way that rarely left the recipients in any uncertainty as to the meaning. He was leaning on a hip-high—chest-high if compared to Krunzle—cudgel of fire-hardened ironwood into which were set palm-sized fragments of pale chert, chipped to a razor edge.
"I have nothing," Krunzle said.
The Osirian's thin lips turned down in a moue of disappointment. "Now, here we are, just at the very beginning of our acquaintanceship, and already you mar its companionable spirit with a fib." He raised the bow so that the arrow pointed at Chirk. "I see a rather nice torc around your neck. Is it gold?" He peered at the snake. "No, perhaps not, but the workmanship appears exquisite. Tian?"
"I do not possess the thing," said Krunzle. "It possesses me. Still, it makes a fascinating tale, which I would gladly trade for breakfast."
The Osirian now looked at the traveler as if Krunzle had revealed himself as a teller of poor jokes. The Ulfen spat and flexed his shoulders so that the sword's blade bounced against the muscle. The hulk in the middle of the road said and did nothing, but his hard, dark eyes did not depart from Krunzle's face, and his expression left the thief in no doubt as to whether or not he had won the half-orc's affections.
Song of the Serpent Page 3
