The Misenchanted Sword loe-1

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  He noticed all this while fighting his way through crowds. The streets were jammed with people, going in both directions at varying speeds, clad in a fantastic variety of dress. The tangle at one intersection was such that he had to fight his way into the thick of the crowd simply to avoid being forced over the ankle-high parapet and into the canal. He was grateful that all the traffic was on foot, as horses or oxen would have made the tangle impassable.

  A few hundred feet from the dock where he had disembarked, the canalside street was joined diagonally by another, and where they met was a good-sized triangular marketplace, where farmers and fishermen were hawking their wares. At the near end three men stood on a raised platform, one of them shouting numbers to a small crowd, another wearing chains. Valder realized with a start that this was a slave auction in progress.

  He had known that such things existed; the few northern prisoners who survived had presumably wound up as slaves somewhere, and certain crimes were punishable by enslavement, but this was the first time he personally had come into direct contact with the institution of slavery.

  He wondered where the man being auctioned off had come from and how he had arrived in his present state — and just what a healthy slave was worth. He had no intention of buying one — he had no use for a slave and did not want the added responsibility — but he was intensely curious all the same to learn what a man’s life was worth in silver. He pressed forward to listen.

  He was too late; the auctioneer called out, “Sold!” just as Valder came close enough to make out what was said. He waited for a moment to see if any more slaves were to be sold, but this one had apparently been the last in the lot. The auctioneer stepped down from the platform, and the other free man led the slave away.

  Mildly disappointed, but also thrilled with the exoticism of this strange city, Valder shrugged and turned away — and nearly stepped on the tail of a tiny golden dragon, scarcely three feet long, that was being led past him on a chain held by a plump woman in red velvet. Valder stared after it; he had not realized that even newborn dragons could be so small.

  When the little monster had vanished in the throng, Valder resumed his former route, pushing his way southward through the crowd toward the inland end of the market. He had reached the midpoint of the plaza when he suddenly realized that he had no idea where he was going. He was in Azrad’s Ethshar, and that was as far as he had planned. His hope of setting himself up as a wine merchant was best abandoned, as the competition was too fierce and too well established. He was alone in a strange city, with a few clothes and personal items, a full money-pouch, a magic sword, and nothing else.

  Obviously, the first order of business was to find food and shelter. A city would have inns, certainly; he need only find them. Once he had a room and a meal he could take his time in deciding what to do. He had his whole life before him — and a very long life it might be, at that — to do with as he would and as he could. He was free, unfettered, and uncertain, with no obligations and no plans.

  He had rather expected to find inns near the docks, but none were evident. The next logical place would be near the city gates. That left the question of where the nearest gate might be.

  He reached the narrow end of the market and found himself with a choice of two streets, one heading east across the head of the canal and the other angling off to the southwest. He chose southwest and struggled onward. The crowds were somewhat thinner here, but seemed to move faster, though still exclusively pedestrians.

  Roughly five hundred feet from the intersection, the street he had chosen ended in a T, offering him northwest or southeast. He stood for a moment at the corner, puzzled, then stopped a passerby in a pale yellow tunic and asked, “Which way to the city gate?”

  The man glanced at him. “Westgate?”

  “If that’s nearest.”

  The man pointed southeast and said, “You follow this to Bridge Street, turn right, follow that until it merges into West Street, follow that to Shipwright Street, and that goes to Westgate Market.” Before Valder could thank him or ask for more detail, the man had pulled away and vanished in the crowd, leaving Valder wondering if he might have asked the wrong question. There might well be inns closer at hand.

  Still, he had directions and he followed them as best he could. The street leading southeast ended at a broad avenue after a single block; although Valder saw no sign of a bridge nor any indication of the avenue’s name, he assumed he had the correct street and turned right.

  Bridge Street, if that was what it was, seemed interminable and was as crowded as the other streets. After he had gone roughly half a mile, elbowing his way along, he reached an intersection where the avenue did not continue directly across but turned at an oblique angle. He hesitated, but guessed that this must be the junction with West Street and turned right. A glance at the sun convinced him that he was now heading due west.

  As he progressed, the nature of his surroundings altered somewhat. The shipfitters and ropemakers had vanished when he left the canal behind, replaced by wheelwrights and metalworkers, and to some extent the brothels and warehouses had given way to residences. This new street was lined with weavers and cloth merchants, tinkers and blacksmiths, carters and tanners. Valder had never seen so many businesses gathered together before; any street in this city put to shame the traveling markets that had serviced military camps.

  The buildings in this area also appeared to be newer than those right on the canal, favoring the modern half-timbered style for upper floors rather than the older custom of solid stone from foundation to ridgepole. That made sense, of course; naturally the city would have started out clustered around the port and only gradually grown inland.

  West Street, if that was in fact the street he was on, ended eventually at a diagonal cross-street; Valder chose the left turn, to the southwest, without hesitation. Quite aside from any more abstract considerations, he could hear and smell a market and, from the corner of West Street, he glimpsed the top of a stone tower that he took to be a gate tower.

  Sure enough, as he rounded the next curve he found himself looking down a straight street at a market square, a very crowded market square, in the shadow of two immense towers.

  He wanted to hurry forward, as the long walk had made him impatient, but was unable to do so. The street was too populous, and it seemed that a significant part of the crowd was not moving. A good many people were just standing, not walking in any particular direction.

  He managed to force his way into a stream of people that was moving steadily toward the market, marveling at the endless throngs as he did so. He had not realized there were so many people in all the world as he had seen in Azrad’s Ethshar.

  A hand thrust itself in front of him and a voice demanded, “Alms for a crippled veteran!”

  Valder thrust the hand aside with a shudder and marched on. Beggars! He had somehow not expected beggars in this vast, overwhelming city. Of course, it made sense that they would be here. They would naturally want to go where there was money to be had, and Azrad’s Ethshar certainly had money.

  A signboard caught his attention. It depicted a huge, golden goblet with purple wine slopping over the rim, and a line of runes across the bottom read, “Food & Lodging.” Valder turned his steps in that direction, back out of the flow of traffic.

  A good many people, mostly scowling, stood around the door of the inn, but they did not interfere as Valder shoved his way through. He stepped over the threshold into the dim interior and stopped dead.

  The inside of the inn was almost as crowded as the street. The main public room, just inside the front door, was more than twenty feet on a side, but, except for a narrow path that led from the door to one end, across the hearth, down along the row of barrels, and then to the back corner where a stair and two doors led to other rooms, the floor was completely covered with blankets, displacing all the expected tavern furnishings. These blankets were neatly laid out in rectangles about two feet wide and six feet long, and on e
ach one a man or woman sat or stood or lay, each with his or her personal possessions stacked at one end. Some had nothing but a spare tunic, while others had large, unwieldy bundles. Virtually all wore the green and brown of the Ethsharitic armies.

  Startled and confused, Valder followed the path across the hearth and paused at the first barrel. The innkeeper emerged from one of the doors.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “Ah... a pint of ale, for now.”

  “That’ll be four bits in silver,” the innkeeper warned.

  Valder stared at him in astonishment, forgetting the crowded floor for the moment in the face of this greater shock. “What?”

  “Four silver bits, I said. We’ve only got half a keg left, and no more due for a sixnight.”

  “Forget it, then. What about water?”

  “A copper a pint — no change for silver, either.”

  “That’s mad! You’re selling ale for the price of a fine southern vintage and water for the price of the best ale!”

  “True enough, sir, I am indeed. That’s what the market will bear, and I’d be a fool not to get what I can while these poor souls still have their pay to spend.”

  “It’s theft!”

  “No, sir, it’s honest trade. The gate and the market are so jammed, and the roads so full, and the ships so busy with passengers, that I can’t get supplies in. We have a good well out back, but it’s not bottomless and yields only so much in a day. I understand that the taverns nearest the gate are only accepting gold now.”

  “And your rooms?”

  “All taken, sir, and the floor here as well. I’m an honest man and I won’t lie about it; there is nowhere left to put you that won’t block my path. They’re sleeping four to a bed upstairs, with six on each floor, and a blanket and a space down here would cost you a full silver piece, if I had any left.”

  “It’s all mad. Where are all these people coming from?”

  “It is mad, sir, I won’t argue that. It seems as if the entire army of Ethshar is jammed into Westgate. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s the end of the war that’s done it, of course, and I’m sure we’ll never see anything like it again. If prices come back down, I’ll retire a wealthy man at the end of the year — but who’s to say what prices will do when once they’ve started changing? The army doesn’t set them any more, so I need to charge what I can get.”

  “I have money, innkeeper, but I’ll be damned to a northerner’s hell before I’ll pay a silver bit just for water.”

  “A copper piece will do.”

  “I don’t intend to pay that, either.”

  The innkeeper shrugged. “Please yourself. I have, all the trade I need without you.”

  “Isn’t there anywhere in the city that still charges honest prices?”

  “I have no idea, really. There might be some poor fool somewhere. If so, he’s surely drained his every barrel dry by now.”

  “Well, we’ll just see about that,” Valder said, knowing even as the words left his lips that they sounded foolish. He turned and, in a petty display of temper, marched directly across the array of blankets and back out into the street, ignoring the angry protests from those he stepped over.

  CHAPTER 20

  To Valder’s surprise, he found the situation to be exactly as the proprietor of the Overflowing Chalice had described it. In fact, each door closer to the Westgate Market brought another jump in prices. The inns and taverns that actually faced on the market were indeed accepting nothing smaller than a gold bit, even for water, let alone bread, cheese, or ale. Valder estimated that his entire accumulated pay, which he had thought ample to live on for two years or more, would scarcely buy a good dinner and a night’s lodging at the Gatehouse Inn — which was, oddly, not in the actual gatehouse or even adjoining it. The gatehouse itself was in the base of one of the two towers and was still manned by the army, as were the rest of both towers and the wall. Taverns and inns faced the gate from across the broad market square, and the Gatehouse Inn was at their center.

  Strangely, the north and south sides of the market were completely open, marked only by a drop in the level of the ground, and Valder could see the city wall stretching off into the distance. Paralleling it, but a hundred feet or so in, was a broad, smooth street, also stretching off out of sight. In the rough depression between the wall and the street were no buildings, no structure of any sort, but more blankets like those in the Overflowing Chalice — hundreds upon hundreds of them, each with its occupant. These, Valder realized, were the veterans too poor — or too frugal — to pay for space in an inn or tavern. Several, he noticed, were crippled or wounded, and most were ragged and dirty.

  After he had inquired at a dozen or so inns without finding food, drink, or lodging at a price he was willing to pay, Valder found himself standing in the middle of the market square, surrounded by the milling crowds. To the north and south were the homeless veterans on their pitiful blankets; to the east were the incredibly priced inns; to the west was the gate itself, fifty feet wide and at least as tall, but dwarfed by its two huge towers. He suddenly felt the need to talk to someone — not a greedy innkeeper nor a wandering, aimless veteran, but somebody secure and sensible. Without knowing exactly why, he headed for the gatehouse.

  The towers, of course, were manned by proper soldiers, still in full uniform, and Valder found himself irrationally comforted by the sight of their polished breastplates and erect carriage. Three men were busily directing the flood of traffic in and out of the gate, answering shouted questions and turning back everything but people on foot, but a fourth was obviously off duty for the moment. He was seated comfortably on a folding canvas chair, leaning up against the stone wall of the gatehouse.

  Valder made his way over and leaned up against the wall beside the soldier. The man glanced up at him but said nothing, and Valder inferred from this that his presence was not unwelcome.

  “Has it been like this for very long?” Valder asked, after the silence stretched from sociable to the verge of strain.

  “You mean the crowds? It’s been going on for two or three sixnights, since they announced the war was over. Nobody knows what to do without orders, so they all come here, hoping somebody will tell them.”

  “It can’t keep up like this, can it?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so — sooner or later everyone will have come here, seen what a mess it is, and given up and left again.”

  “I expect a good many will stay; I’d say this is going to be a very large city from now on, even more than before.”

  “Oh, no doubt of that; they’re already laying out new streets wherever they can find room inside the walls.”

  “Is anybody doing anything about all these people?”

  “Not really — what can they do? We have orders to keep out horses and oxen, to reduce the crowding in the streets, and Azrad did have free blankets issued, so that nobody would have to sleep in the mud, but that’s about it. There just isn’t anything to do with them. There’s plenty of land outside the walls if they want to go farm it, and I suppose there will be work for builders and the like, but beyond that, I don’t know what’s going to happen to them all. I stayed in uniform for a reason, you know; the army may be rough at times, but it’s secure, even in peacetime. Someone’s got to watch the gates and patrol the borders and keep order.”

  “You said the overlord gave out those blankets?”

  “That’s right; that was intended to be the entire supply for the whole Ethsharitic army for the next three years, and they’ve been given away to whoever asked for them. Need one? We’ve got about twenty left, I think.”

  “I might, at that, unless you can tell me where I can find lodging at a reasonable price.”

  “Friend, there isn’t a place in this whole city where you can find cheap lodging except the Hundred-Foot Field and the barracks, and the word is that the penalty for civilians sleeping in the barracks is a hundred lashes — and you re-enlist. And not as an offi
cer, either, regardless of what you were in wartime.” “Seems severe, but I know better than to argue. What’s the Hundred-Foot Field?”

  “You walked right past it.” He gestured vaguely toward the market. “That’s the space between Wall Street and the wall. The law says you can’t build there, ever, in case the army needs the space to maneuver or move siege machines — but the law doesn’t say anything about sleeping there on a blanket or two in warm weather. Even during the war, we usually had a few beggars and cripples who slept there, and now it’s jammed full of these damned veterans, all the way around the city — or so I’m told, I haven’t checked. I never go south of Westwark, nor more than a few blocks into Shiphaven.”

  “I don’t know my way around the city, but I take it those are neighborhoods?”

  “That’s right; even without these veterans, the city was already too big, and it’s more like a dozen little cities put together — Shiphaven and Westgate and Westwark and Spicetown and Fishertown and the Old City and the Merchants’ Quarter and so forth.”

  “I hadn’t realized it was so big.” Valder glanced back at the mobbed marketplace. The crowd seemed to be thinning somewhat — or perhaps the fading light just made it appear to be. He realized with some surprise that the sun was below the western horizon, and the shadow of the city wall covered everything in sight. He still had not eaten, and had nowhere to stay the night.

  “Ah — how many gates are there?”

  “Three, though they’re planning to put in a fourth one to the southwest.”

  “Are there inns at all of them?”

  “I suppose so, but Westgate gets the most traffic. This is the main highway here, going through this gate, the road to Ethshar and Anaran and Gor and the northern lands, while the other gates just go to the local farms on the peninsula. I think most of the inns must be here.”