Valder had never lived in an area where there were civilians, other than camp followers and perhaps a few traveling merchants or coastal fishermen. He had never heard of civilian rebellions and could not really picture how or why they might occur.
His lone scouting patrols through empty forests were just as alien to the southerners, of whom four of the five had never seen a forest. Also, it seemed that Azrad’s command structure was far tighter and more complex than Gor’s. When Gor had needed something done, he had pointed to a person and told him to do it; when Azrad had needed something done, he had formed a committee to study the problem and set up the appropriate chain of command. Both systems had apparently worked. In fact, as the soldiers described it, once Azrad had all his systems established, they ran themselves, leaving him free to devote his time to his own amusement, where Gor had remained closely involved with day-to-day operations.
This was all new to Valder; it had never occurred to him that there could be such variation within Ethshar, either Hegemony or homeland. He found great delight in this new learning.
When war stories began to wear thin, around midnight, Valder asked, “Why are there so many people in the city? Why doesn’t someone do something about it?”
“Where else can they go, and what can anyone do?” a soldier asked in reply. “Ethshar’s the only real city there is, and only soldiers are fool enough to sleep in tents. All these veterans want roofs over their heads, and the only solid roofs in the Hegemony are in Azrad’s Ethshar, so that’s where they go. Sooner or later, they’ll realize they can build their own, I suppose, but for now they go to the city.”
“The supplies are running low there, I think.”
“Of course they are! Even before the war ended, supplies were running low and, with all the eastern farmlands blasted to burning desert, supplies are going to run even lower until someone starts farming all this grassland we’re sitting on. What food there is is probably sitting in warehouses, rotting because the distribution system has all come apart with the end of the war!”
Valder glanced around at the darkness beyond the torchlit bridge. “Who owns all this land, anyway? Is it really free for the taking?”
Manrin, the swordsman, shrugged. “Who knows? I guess it is. After all, it was wilderness before the war and it’s been under military law ever since. The highway Azrad’s keeping for himself, but the proclamation said the rest was available to anyone who would use it.”
“Yes,” Saldan, the cook, said. “But who knows how to use it? Everybody has grown up learning to be soldiers, not farmers.”
A vague idea was stirring in the back of Valder’s mind, but he was too tired to haul it forward and look it over. Instead, he tossed the last well-gnawed rabbit bone into the river and announced, “It’s been a pleasure talking, and my thanks for the meal, but I need some sleep.”
“It’s time we all slept”, Zak, one of the crossbowmen, agreed. “Manrin’s off until noon, but the rest of us are supposed to be up at dawn. Somebody kick Lorret awake; he’s supposed to take the night watch.”
Valder left the soldiers to their own business and walked off a few yards into the darkness. He found a spot where the grass seemed less scratchy than most, curled up in his blanket, and went to sleep.
He was awakened three hours later by fat raindrops on his face. He rolled his blanket out from under him, draped it over himself instead, and went back to sleep.
He awoke again just as the first light of dawn seeped through the clouds. The rain was still falling in a thin drizzle; his blanket was soaked through and stank of wet wool. He flung it aside and stood up, still tired, but unable to sleep any more without shelter.
“Somebody,” he muttered to himself as he staggered toward the bridge, “ought to build an inn here.”
He stopped, frozen in mid-step.
“Somebody ought to build an inn here,” he repeated.
That was the idea that had been lurking in the back of his mind during the night’s conversation. Somebody really should build an inn here, convenient to the river, the toll bridge, and the fork in the highway. All the land traffic in and out of Azrad’s Ethshar and the southern peninsula had to pass by this spot. All the traffic crossing the lower reaches of the Great River would use this bridge. All boats coming down the Great River to the sea — and Valder was sure there would be plenty in time — would come past. It was almost exactly one day’s walk from Westgate, just where northbound travelers would be ready to stop for the night.
Could there possibly be a better site for an inn in all the world? Valder doubted it. Only the war had prevented one from being built here long ago, he was sure. The land had belonged to the military, and the military was not interested in inns.
Somebody should build an inn here, and Valder was somebody. He had his accumulated assassin’s pay for capital. He had wanted a quiet postwar job other than farming, and innkeeping seemed ideal. He could undoubtedly recruit all the labor he needed in the Hundred-Foot Field.
He could scarcely believe his good fortune. Could he really have been the first to think of it?
He imagined what it would be like — a comfortable little place, built of stone since no forests were nearby, with large windows and thick cool walls in the summer, a wide hearth and blazing fire in winter. Wirikidor could hang above the mantel; surely that would be close enough to him that the sword would not object, particularly if he placed his own chamber directly above, and no one would think it at all odd or inappropriate for a veteran to keep his old sword on display, even in peacetime.
He peered through the gloom and rain and tried to decide exactly where to put such an inn. The best spot, he decided, would be right at the fork, between the west and north roads. He could claim a strip of land along the roadside from there to the river and build a landing for river traffic.
Or perhaps the inn should be right on the river? There might be some difficulty in claiming half a mile of roadside.
No, he decided, the river traffic would not be as important as the west road, since boatmen could sleep in their boats. If he could not have his landing, he was sure he would still get by with the land traffic.
How, he wondered, did one go about claiming a piece of land? Perhaps the soldiers would know, he thought. He headed eagerly for the bridge.
Not surprisingly, most of them were still asleep, but Lorret, the night man, was bored and tired and glad to talk. He knew nothing of any official methods, but made suggestions and provided a few materials.
By the time the rain stopped at mid-morning Valder had marked off his claim with wooden stakes and bundled grass, all marked with strips of green cloth, his name written on each stake and each cloth with char from the night’s cookfire. He had paced off room enough for a large inn and a good-sized stable, a decent kitchen garden, and a yard and then arbitrarily doubled each dimension — after all, if the-land was free, why stint? He had indeed claimed his landing site near the bridge, but had decided against taking the entire half mile of roadside. He did not really need it, after all, and there was no need to be greedy. His customers could come up the hill on the public highway readily enough.
That done, and with assurances from the soldiers that they would enforce his rights for him until his return, he set out for Azrad’s Ethshar to hire a construction crew.
PART THREE
Valder the Innkeeper
CHAPTER 22
Valder gazed at the room with calm satisfaction. It was almost exactly as he had pictured it four months earlier, when he had first staked his claim to the land at the fork. The windows were shuttered, since he had not yet been able to buy glass for them, and the furniture was mostly mismatched and jury-rigged, the tables built of scrap and the chairs upholstered in war surplus tent canvas, but the wide stone hearth, the stone chimney, oaken mantel, and the white plastered walls were all just as he had wanted them. A fire blazed on the hearth, keeping out the autumn chill, and a dozen lamps lighted the room.
In the rest o
f the inn, every room, upstairs or down, was taken for the night, and no one had complained of the accommodations or the fare at supper — even though the only wine he had been able to get was truly horrible, and as yet he had no ale at all. The most popular beverage was river-water filtered through five layers of canvas, surely an unheard of situation in any roadside inn!
He wondered whether he should sink a well. The river water seemed safe enough so far and did not taste bad at all, either before or after filtering, but he did not entirely trust it. There were just too many people upstream who might be pouring garbage, sewage, or poisons into it.
Getting ale and decent wine was more important, of course. He had appointed half a dozen of his erstwhile construction crew as agents and sent them out looking, in various directions, for suppliers. One was permanently posted in Azrad’s Ethshar at no pay, but with a promise of three pieces of gold if he found a reliable supplier — a sizable sum now that prices had come back down to more reasonable levels, though they were still higher than in wartime. The other five had been given expense money and scattered across the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, as the name now seemed to be, and the Small Kingdoms.
Valder’s original supply of money had given out long ago, since he had paid generously at first in the interest of speed; but even before his inn had a roof, customers had been at his door, eager to pay for a night’s shelter. He foresaw no difficulty in earning a living and paying for any improvements he might care to make. Of course, the original flood of traffic had not lasted. Within a month of the war’s end, the southbound flow into Azrad’s Ethshar had thinned to a trickle. By then, however, the northbound exodus was in full flood, as the new arrivals finally convinced themselves that the city was not the golden land of limitless opportunity.
That, too, had passed, and Valder had had a bad six-night or two when business slowed drastically. He had used it as an excuse to cut his bloated, overpaid crew in half, and then in half again. Initially, he had wanted as many men as he could find work for, since speed in construction was more important than economy, and hauling stone from the riverbed took plenty of manpower. Once the walls and roof were in place, however, speed was no longer essential, as most customers asked no more than to get in out of the rain and the cool night air. His sixty-man crew, lured by the prospect of a copper piece a day, free water, and whatever food he could find for them, was an unwanted expense.
He had been glad to be rid of most of them. A man did not require much in the way of character or intelligence to drag rocks from the riverbed to the building site and drop them in place, so he had just taken anyone who volunteered when he shouted out his offer. The interior work, furniture, and finishing, however, called for more skill, skill that most of the men did not have and could not learn quickly.
He had kept a crew of fifteen, even when that meant paying out more than he took in — he had refused to give in to temptation and had set his charges to his customers roughly at wartime levels, rather than the absurd rates that had been asked in Azrad’s Ethshar during the great confusion. He had been convinced that traffic would increase again and that the completion of the inn would prove worthwhile. He had been right. Refugees and wandering veterans were no longer arriving in any significant numbers, though a few still drifted in every so often, but merchants and tradesmen had begun to appear, bringing supplies into the city or skills and goods out. He had bought the foul stuff that passed for wine from one such commercial traveler, and the surplus-canvas had come from an enterprising young ex-sergeant who had bought up hundreds of old tents cheap when the border camps were disbanded.
After the merchants had come the farmers bound for market and the would-be farmers searching for land. As yet, the farmers were few and their produce unimpressive, and the would-be farmers were invariably poverty-stricken, but Valder was sure that within a year that would change dramatically. The war had not ended until well after planting season, after all, so that crops had not been planted on schedule.
Now his income once again exceeded his expenses, though not by as much as he might have liked. He had cut his payroll once again by dispatching his six agents. Of the nine men who remained, seven were making other plans. One had taken a fancy to the river and was waiting for a berth on a barge. Another was saving his pay and working odd jobs for guests with plans to become a brewer, which pleased Valder quite well, as that might assure him of a supplier. The other five were still vague, but three had been foresighted enough to stake out claims on land in the vicinity while the opportunities were still there, and all were among the cleverer and more skilled of his original group; Valder had no doubt they would find suitable work when the inn was finished.
One of the two men planning to remain was Tandellin. Valder had been utterly astonished to find his old friend among the mob in the Hundred-Foot Field, and delighted as well, and had wasted no time in signing him on with the other volunteers. Sarai had been with him, and, although she was too small to be of any real help in hauling stone, she had helped out considerably on lighter jobs. She had been the only woman on the site, and some of the other men had grumbled mildly about her presence and exclusive attachment to Tandellin, but there had been no serious problems involved.
Only after three days of work had the couple been willing to admit that they had followed Valder, taking the next ship after his, rather than turning up in Azrad’s Ethshar by sheer coincidence. Tandellin would give no reason, but Sarai explained, “You always seemed to know what you were doing, and nobody else did. The moment you had your pay, you were gone, as if you actually knew where you were going to go and what you were going to do. We had been sitting around for three days arguing, without coming up with a single idea we could agree on, until you left — then we agreed to come see what you were doing, and here we are.” She shivered. “Things looked pretty bad there in the city, when we lost track of you.”
It came as a surprise to Valder that he had seemed to know what he was doing, as he certainly had not thought he did, but when he said as much, Sarai simply pointed out that everything had worked out well enough.
Valder had to agree with that.
Tandellin and Sarai were not the only ones to follow Valder’s lead. His inn acted as a spark or a seed; once he had claimed his piece of land, others took to the idea, and farmhouses were abuilding all along the highway between the bridge and the city. Customers told him that other inns were springing up, as well, further up the road.
He was pleased by that, particularly by the proliferation of farmers determined to plow under the grassland. He had gotten by at first by hunting small game and fishing, or by buying what others caught, but his supplies were always low. Some food came down the highway or the river, mostly fruit from the orchards around Sardiron of the Waters, in what had been the southwestern part of the Northern Empire, and Valder bought what he could afford of that to augment his catches. He suspected that people were starving in Azrad’s Ethshar, though he knew supplies were reaching the city by ship. If farms were in production all along the highway and throughout the countryside, that would change.
For the present, he was getting by, and the future looked bright, with the inn built and paying customers in every chamber. He was well pleased as he looked about the dining room. Wirikidor hung above the fireplace on pegs driven into the stone; he smiled at it. He had no intention of ever drawing it again, and looking at it now only reminded him of the unpleasantness he had left behind and how lucky he was to be free of it and doing well. He had never thought he would be fortunate enough to outlive the war, but here he was, alive and thriving, and the Northern Empire was no more than a memory. The sword’s enchantment might complicate his life eventually, with its supposed grant of immortality but not freedom from harm, but that was far from urgent. He enjoyed being an innkeeper, able to hear the news of the world from his guests without leaving home.
A knock sounded, though everyone else in the inn had retired. Valder turned and hurried to the door, hoping that, late
as the hour was, the new arrival would be someone selling something he could use. He would settle for a customer willing to sleep on the dining room floor, though.
Two men stood on the threshold, wearing the tattered remnants of Ethsharitic uniforms, huddled together against the cold wind. As yet, no snow had fallen this year, and the locals assured him that often years would pass without a single flake in this region, but winter was assuredly coming and the winds were cold, even this far south.
“Come in!” Valder said, trying to conceal his disappointment. Ragged as they were, these two were not likely to be selling anything, nor to have enough money to be worthwhile as customers. Still, an innkeeper had obligations; everyone must be made welcome.
The two entered. One made directly for the fire on the hearth, but the other hesitated, staring at his host.
Disconcerted, Valder stared back. Something was very familiar about the man. Undoubtedly they had met somewhere before, but Valder could not place where.
“I know you,” the man said.
“Valder the Innkeeper, at your service,” Valder replied. “Welcome to the Inn at the Bridge.” He saw no reason to deny his identity if the man did know him; but on the other hand, he was not in the mood for reminiscing about good old days that had, for him at any rate, been relatively miserable. Calling himself an innkeeper made clear that he lived in the present, not a nostalgic, glorious past such as many veterans seemed to prefer.
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