The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle)

by M. Edward; mimulux McNally

  “It is not something that I should.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Tilda looked at her. “Do you want to talk about why you are going to Camp Town like this?”

  Claudja smiled back at her, but shook her head once. “That is not something I can talk about. Not with anyone. Sorry.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Somewhere ahead on the raft, a wug tongue-snapped what must have been a large bug out of the air, for some of its fellows hooted approval. Claudja gave a little shiver.

  “Gods, that is disconcerting. Surely there must be something we can talk about.”

  The Duchess turned and looked back toward the crates, around one of which Dugan’s feet in dirty socks were visible sticking out from the blankets of his bedroll. Claudja turned back around to look out over the water.

  “Your man…Dugan,” she said slowly. “He is not an altogether unpleasant-looking fellow. I imagine he could be somewhat presentable, cleaned up a bit.”

  Tilda snorted, louder than she had meant to.

  “I don’t think he does clean up. That is about as good as it gets.”

  Claudja looked at Tilda sideways.

  “He is a trifle afraid of you, you know.”

  Tilda felt her nose twitch. “Well, that would be because I promised to kill him if he ever touched me again.”

  Claudja raised both eyebrows.

  “It wasn’t like that,” Tilda said. “It was…complicated.”

  Claudja waited for more, but when Tilda said nothing else for a while she shrugged and turned back to the water.

  “Well. We have another week on this…floating dance floor, and days overland after that. And I did not think it would look right to bring along a book. Should you become bored enough to delve into complexities, Matilda, I imagine I will be somewhere close at hand.”

  Tilda thought for a moment, and finally gave a little sigh before she spoke.

  “My friends,” she said, “just call me Tilda.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Tilda and Claudja spent the next three days chatting, until the passenger manifest of their crude raft more than doubled. There were innumerable ways through the Vod Wilds’ streams and marshes, and only twice did the group even sight another bullywug raft, moving empty back to the east both times. That changed on their eleventh day on the water.

  The night before had been stormy and miserable, obliging Gorpal to tie up against a bank as the water rose rapidly and ran hard. The wugs went inland and sheltered among the trees but the four humans huddled shivering on the bank in a closer knot than their disparate social statuses would have permitted under any other circumstances.

  The wugs came out of the trees in the clear morning and got back underway. Gorpal directed their progress closely all day, taking advantage of swift-running streams to cut his transit time. Tilda and the others had been unable to sleep as they had all gotten soaked to the bone on the bank, but at least the wugs had let them stow bedding and extra clothes in the water-tight crates that had been emptied of food so far. The humans slept soundly and more-or-less dryly, until shouts woke them up in the afternoon.

  Six sodden men were trapped on a marshy islet in the middle of the stream, with no sign of the raft that had gotten them that far, nor of the bullywugs who had been manning it. Gorpal had his wugs pole to a stop on the opposite bank, and listened while a man shouted over to him in Daulic.

  Tilda stood next to Claudja, who translated into the Trade Tongue.

  “Their raft broke apart in the storm, and their wugs swam off. They say they can pay.”

  Looking across at the men, Tilda doubted that. The six fellows were even rougher-looking than their circumstances warranted. Hard, unshaven men who seemed to have only saved swords and a few pieces of armor from their wreck, no packs nor supplies. At length their leader held up a pouch and shook it at Gorpal. It was too far across the stream to hear coins jingling together, but the weight looked right.

  Two of the men blew shrilly through the same sort of stick-whistle that Tilda and Dugan had bought, and she had later resold, as passes for bullywug rafts. She was surprised that the sound produced sounded quite similar to the bullywugs’ weird hoots.

  Gorpal and his wugs croaked together in a circle for a few minutes, then shrugged and began to pole toward the islet. Gorpal splayed on his sopping lounge chair and opened the dripping parasol that had somehow survived the storm.

  Towsan was not pleased. The knight shouted at the wug captain who only waved a dismissive, webbed hand. Claudja put a hand on Towsan’s arm and the two spoke at length, the knight obviously wanting no part of the ruffians while the Duchess’s words sounded more sympathetic.

  Tilda looked at Dugan who was frowning at the six Daulmen with his arms crossed. She started to ask him a question in the Trade Tongue before remembering to switch to Codian.

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m with the knight. I don’t like the looks of this bunch.”

  “They look like you,” Tilda said.

  “Exactly.”

  The wugs poled to a stop while still several yards off the islet and Gorpal hopped to the edge of the raft. The wug slapped its blue hands together and held them up to make a catch. It croaked expectantly.

  The lead man had hard gray eyes and a brown beard made patchy by scars on his face. He glared at the wug but ultimately shook roughly half the coins out of the pouch and into his hand, more silver than copper but no flash of electrum or gold. He shoved the loose coins in the pocket of a cloak with a shredded hem, worn over a stout breast plate of scale mail and chain. He knotted the pouch and tossed it at Gorpal. The wug caught it and felt the weight in its open palm. Gorpal’s cupola eyes drifted over the six men, some of which had filthy cloth bandages and slings around their heads and arms.

  Their leader shouted at Gorpal in Daulic, as did Towsan. The man started shouting at the knight, who shouted back, but Claudja again put a hand on Towsan’s arm and spoke softly.

  The bullywug did not seem to listen to either of the men, but came to its own decision. Gorpal waved a hand, and the wugs poled closer to the islet.

  *

  With the six new men aboard, the next night and day on the rafts was a good deal more tense than those previous.

  Towsan talked the Duchess into her shelter among the boxes, and there she largely stayed. Tilda and Dugan kept exclusively to the rear raft as well while the six rough men stayed on the one in front, huddling together in the middle except when Gorpal’s wugs cooked the large number of fish they now pitched out of the water for meals. The old knight and the leader of this new band of Daulmen, if that was what they all were, glared at each other all day long.

  Dugan tried to talk to any of the new fellows in Codian but none of them gave any sign of understanding him, nor of any particular interest in being sociable. Dugan suggested Tilda keep away from them altogether, and she agreed. She was definitely garnering some looks from the ruffians, but not of a kind that could be called friendly.

  The six men had all collapsed in sleep on the first night, but on the next they rotated watches. One man stayed awake while the others lay down around the warm coals on the cooking surface, for they had no blankets. Claudja emerged from her shelter well after nightfall and lit a candle, which she kept behind the crates out of view from the front raft. She spoke to Towsan, who had been standing at icy attention all day. The knight’s tone was hard, but his voice exhausted. Claudja was firm, and finally the old knight walked stiffly to his bedding.

  Claudja looked from Tilda to Dugan, and spoke in Codian.

  “I assume you two are willing to take shifts at watch during the night?”

  “Of course,” Tilda said.

  “We will, but the fellows won’t try anything until we land,” Dugan said. Claudja looked at him.

  “Do you think they have recognized me? Or Gideon?”

  Dugan shrugged. “I doubt it, but it doesn’t matter. They are desperate. I know the look.
”

  “They will attack us?” Tilda asked, and Dugan nodded with complete confidence.

  “You are a Miilarkian, and they will figure you have money. Maybe enough to replace everything they’ve lost.”

  “But I am a Miilarkian!”

  Dugan gave a sour smile. “You are also outnumbered, and way out in the Wilds. This is not the sort of place where international incidents have any meaning.”

  Tilda glared across the rafts at the slumbering men, and the one fellow who was awake and stirring the coals. His face was orange and ugly in the flickering light.

  “I will take the first shift,” she said. “I am not tired.”

  Claudja squeezed her arm. “Wake me when you are. Dugan, I will wake you before dawn. We will let Gideon sleep through if he is able.”

  “Tell him what to expect when we land,” Dugan said. “Should be the day after tomorrow.”

  With that, Dugan felt his way out of the candle light and over to his own bedroll. Claudja looked at Tilda over the flickering flame, and Tilda felt she had to say something.

  “I am sorry.”

  Claudja lifted an eyebrow.

  “I am supposed to be protecting you,” Tilda said. “If Dugan is right, I am the one putting you in more danger.”

  Claudja gave Tilda’s arm another squeeze. “We are in it together, Tilda.”

  The Duchess blew out the candle and moved back into her shelter. Tilda sat facing the front raft with her back to a crate, not even leaving a silhouette against the dark sky. Several bullywugs slept at the edges where the two rafts met while Gorpal and a few others were still awake, pushing away from the banks whenever the current of the stream drew the rafts near it, moving on toward their destination even in the dark.

  Tilda watched the men change their watch twice, looking over each of them closely and wondering if she could kill them if she must. She did not doubt they could kill her. She woke Claudja very late only after feeling herself begin to drift off, and neither said a word before Tilda settled down to several hours of terrible dreams.

  *

  No one roused Tilda in the morning. She came awake slowly at first until memory of where she was made her sit up swiftly and scramble to her feet.

  Claudja and Towsan were sitting at the rear end of the raft with their backs to her, which was strange. Tilda turned around. Three bullywugs were poling along while a few others still slept. Dugan was relaxing on top of one crate with his back to another, comfortable and calm.

  No one else was on board. There was a pile of armor and swords on the front raft, along with some boots. There was blood all over the planks.

  “What…?” Tilda gasped. Dugan looked over and nodded at her.

  “The man on watch fell asleep. The wugs cut their throats and rolled them overboard.”

  Tilda stared at him.

  “When?”

  Dugan shrugged. “Don’t know. The Duchess let me sleep through.”

  Claudja had stood and walked over. She had tired bags under her eyes but her features were set and calm.

  “You…you saw it?” Tilda asked, and Claudja nodded.

  “Six of the wugs crept up on them together. In unison. It was quick.”

  Tilda looked around at the wugs. They had been on the raft for more than a tenday and in that time Tilda had come to regard the creatures as harmless, and almost comical. Alien, certainly, but in no way threatening.

  “Why would they do that?” Tilda asked. Claudja answered in a low voice.

  “They are Magdetchoi, Tilda. Monsters.”

  Dugan chuckled, and it was not a pleasant sound.

  “Not like us humans, right?”

  Tilda looked back at the front raft. It was amazing how much blood had come out of six men and she almost felt sick.

  “How exactly do we know they are not going to do the same to us? Why haven’t they already?”

  “Because,” said the Duchess of Chengdea. “They do know who I am.”

  Claudja went back over to Towsan and Tilda tried not to let her gaze drift back to the stained red planks of the raft ahead. Dugan was still looking at her.

  “I know what you are thinking,” he said, and Tilda turned to him. “You are wondering why, if the wugs were going to do the fellows all along, why they waited for a watchman to doze on the second night. Nobody kept a watch the night before.”

  “I was not thinking that,” Tilda said, and blinked. “But I am now.”

  Dugan gave a smile that was no more pleasant than his dark chuckle, and sent a meaningful glance toward the Duchess before turning back to Tilda.

  “And you wonder why I don’t trust nobles.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The river which emptied into the Norothian Channel at Souterm was called the Red at its delta, but where it arose in the Girding Mountains far to the north it was known as the Blue. The name changed where the river cut through a ridge of chalky hills that stained its waters. The hills were also called the Red and they stabbed knife-like deep into the Vod Wilds on an east-west line, rising above the tangled masses of life that thrived there. The section of the Red Hills west of the river on the Codian side was much smaller, hardly amounting to a knob on the end of the blade’s hilt. It was on this knob that the Codian town of Galdeez had been, or rather was still in the process of being, built.

  There had been a town on those hills for centuries but it had long been a sleepy place far upriver from the thriving city now known as Souterm, a place to where the products of rural farms were gathered to ship downstream. With the Codification of Doon forty years ago and the extension of the Imperial Post Road the town was now a booming place, with new shops and homes springing up on the hills so swiftly that several proposed sites for city walls had been consecutively overrun. The wall was not a priority for despite the proximity of the Vod Wilds, Magdetchoi raids here were few as the river cut through the hills in a sharp, deep channel that was almost a canyon.

  The spot where the Imperial authorities had allowed the Shugak to erect a ferry dock and a cluster of hide tents in which they did the business of selling passes and licenses was below the hills and to the south. Nesha-tari’s band did not have to enter Red Galdeez at all, much to their leader’s relief. At her direction Zebulon Baj Nif handled the transaction for passes with the hulking hobgoblins, while Phoarty and Amatesu went ahead into town only to buy provisions for what would be around two additional weeks on the rough Shugak road.

  There were no swamps nor bayous in this region of the Vod Wilds, only the hills across which hobgoblins had hacked out a trace road through the wilderness. The trace was so bad that even the baggage cart was problematic, for the obstinate straight-line route dropped and climbed hills without an awful lot of forethought. The group was obliged to spread the baggage in heavy packs among them. Zeb got the worst of it as the Minauan now carried his crossbow, a massive weapon with a heavy hand crank for reloading. The bolts it shot were the size of long tent stakes, making even the ammunition a burden.

  Despite the ruggedness of their way the group made decent time as Nesha-tari set a brisk place, continuing to march out in front. When they camped at night she went well out into the thick forests at the base of the hills to sleep on her own, typically high in a tree. Shugak hobgoblins selling water for wine prices along the way warned against straying from the path, but not even Uriako Shikashe made much of a fuss when she went out by herself. The samurai seemed to recognize that in her present state Nesha-tari Hrilamae was likely the most dangerous thing in the darkness of the Wilds.

  Zeb and Phin made the journey mostly in silence for even with Nesha-tari keeping her distance, and knowing what they now did about her, both could still feel the tug of her presence. They tried to look at their feet while walking, but several times one or the other took a spill as their gaze drifted up and settled dreamily on the flitting beige figure far ahead on the rough trace. The other would help the fallen one up, and the two would exchange a long look and shake their head
s.

  Phin had worries about Camp Town. Once there he was set to separate from the rest of the group, and to leave Nesha-tari. Thinking about it made his palms clammy, and his breathing quickened until he felt lightheaded. Abverwar had given the wizard a disciplined mind, but the woman (if that was the right word) had invaded it. Phin’s morning meditations were becoming ever longer by the day, for it was an effort for him to muster the concentration necessary to memorize his spells. Only the hard, physical effort of the march on the Shugak trace gave Phin any relief, for he collapsed so exhausted at the end of each day that his sleep was as deep as the dead. So deep that not even the dreams roused him from it, though there were a lot of dreams. They were all about the same thing.

  Phin was starting to think he might have to ask Amatesu to club him unconscious again before he would be able to let Nesha-tari walk out of his life.

  *

  After nine days the trace road left the Red Hills, or rather the hills sank into marshy ground while the trace continued straight across it. This was only possible because suddenly, for miles, a wide causeway ran above the fens to either side, lying on a true line due east. The causeway was surely not the work of the hobgoblins for in places the grass growing over it had been so trampled by adventurers over the last months that the dirt had given way, revealing a stone road made up of many different types of rocks all fitted together as smoothly as the finest city street. None who noticed it in passing thought it could have been the work of anyone other than the ancient Ettaceans, the Builders of Vod’Adia toward which the road led.

  A day later the causeway ended at a new line of hills, and only the rude trace road marked the route again. This range in the midst of the Wilds was if anything worse than the Red Hills, with steeper sides and sharper peaks giving little purchase for plants and thus a greater air of desolation. For more long days the path rose and fell though in at least three places there were signs that a higher road had once existed here, for a rubble of ingeniously cut stones that had once been the supports of bridges cluttered the bottoms of deep gulches through which the trace ran.