So once again, he would have to tell Ka’en that he was going away.
Lifting his eyes from the lands that engendered these thoughts, he looked southward, toward the rim of the world. There was something odd about the horizon. It was darkly blue, and seemed to glisten in the sun. It was a clear day but even so, it took several minutes for Aram to realize that what he was gazing at was a vast amount of water, stretching far away beyond the limits of the land, curving over the edge of the world.
The Great Southern Ocean. He had smelled its heavy scent many springs throughout the years of his youth – now he saw it.
Vast and broad, stretching from horizon to horizon, except to the east, where the nearness of the hills trailing away toward Durck hid it from view, its sheer enormousness overwhelmed his imagination.
“Amazing.” Said Mallet.
“Indeed.” Aram answered. He gazed upon the distant wonder of deep, endless water for several long minutes, attempting to take it in, and trying to imagine what it would be like to move upon it, to visit distant, mysterious lands. Then he lowered his view once again to the obviously populated lands that lay between that far ocean and the hills where they stood.
“What land is this that I see before us?” He asked Arthrus.
“I believe that it is called Duridia, my lord, or so I have heard – once an ally of Wallensia, long ago; now the land and its people are unknown to us.”
Aram stared out at the wide green land, rolling away toward the sea between the lines of defining hills, trying to pick out places where there might be concentrations of people, towns and villages. Friends, perhaps, if contact could be made, allies. It was with reluctance that after a few minutes he turned away, and the company went back down to the road and continued southeast toward Durck.
Aram glanced over at Arthrus. “Will we arrive today?”
Arthrus nodded thoughtfully. “With the way that these horses eat up the ground, I’d say yes – we should make it to the town by evening.”
Aram looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Do we want to go into this town at night?”
“Probably not, my lord.” Arthrus admitted. “Morning – when they are usually sleeping off the effects of the previous night’s activities might be best. These men don’t spend much time in port and they tend to make the most of it when they can.”
Aram studied the hills coming up on their left. “Tell us when we’re close and we’ll find a place to pass the night off the road. Durlrang will warn us of any danger through the dark hours.”
As they progressed to the southeast, the valley began to angle more sharply toward the east and the valley grew narrower. Eventually, the hills to either side of the road were often as steep as cliffs. The stream at the valley’s center, not quite a river, tumbled over occasional small falls and ran quickly through narrow gaps in the valley. Finally, the valley became a gorge. The quality of the road lessened as it ran down toward the sea, apparently having been reduced by centuries of occasional flooding, for there was ancient, caked mud between the paving stones and some of them were missing. The air became laden with the scent of brine.
An hour before sunset, Arthrus spoke to Yvan and the great brown horse stopped. Arthrus pointed down the road to where it passed through a narrow gap. Beyond, they could see that the valley opened up and there were tendrils of smoke rising above the rocky rim.
“Durck is beyond that gap – about a half-mile.” Arthrus said. “Unless you want to go on into town after all, my lord, we should find a place to make camp somewhere nearby.”
Aram looked around at the countryside. The valley had been transformed into a steep-walled canyon, but here and there, where tributaries of the main stream exited the surrounding hills, there were indentations. Through one of these gaps, on the far side of the stream, Aram spied a tangled growth of trees jutting into view. Perhaps there was a flat area by those trees where they could camp. There was obviously plenty of water.
“There.” He pointed. “Let’s go examine that small canyon.”
There was in fact a small meadow hunched in a curve of the stream between the cliffs, just out of sight of the main valley. Aram looked it over and then consulted Durlrang.
“What do you think, my friend?”
Durlrang sniffed the air. “There is no one but us about, master. You should be safe here. I will rest at the corner of the stream. Nothing will get past me in the night.”
“Good.” Aram met the wolf ’s eyes. “If someone does come – wake me. Don’t try to stop them alone.”
“As you wish, master.”
But the night passed uneventfully. In the morning they partook of a cold breakfast and prepared to go into the town. Aram stood looking through the gap in the canyon toward the main valley as Thaniel came up.
“What are you thinking, my lord?” The great horse asked.
Aram glanced at him. “I was thinking that you and the other horses, and Durlrang as well should wait outside of town, either hidden in the hills back to the north or in one of these side canyons.”
The horse studied him for a moment. “You intend to walk into this town without my company? Why, my lord?”
Aram turned toward the east and stood with his arms folded across his chest, watching the sky overhead brighten with the morning. “There may be trouble, Thaniel – but there may not. I think that we should make every attempt to appear as nothing out of the ordinary.” He waved a hand to the southeast. “I doubt that these people have ever seen a horse. Wolves they may know, but as enemies, not friends. I see no reason to give them too much to think about.”
Aram heard the low rumble of Thaniel’s laughter. He looked at the horse sharply. “What is it that you find humorous?”
Thaniel swung his great head around. His large dark eyes twinkled. “The thought of you as being nothing out of the ordinary, my lord.”
Aram smiled ruefully. “Be that as it may – we’re just here to buy steel. I think you and the others should wait for us out of sight.”
“That is probably best.” Thaniel agreed after a moment.
The horses moved further up the little side canyon to where the meadow broadened a bit and they were fully hidden from anyone moving along the road in the main valley. Durlrang faded into the hills to find food. Aram and the others gathered their things and went back out of the canyon, crossing the stream and gaining the road. They turned south.
A few hundred yards below where they had passed the night, the valley narrowed to less than a hundred feet, the sheer rock walls rising overhead. The stream rushed through a narrow gap between the canyon walls, and the road hugged the western side of the stream against the cliff. The pavement here was in even worse shape than farther north and there were places where the road was very nearly gone, having come close to being washed away in past floods.
The canyon wound left and then sharply right, and the walls fell away to either side. The road angled sharply to the right along a steep slope as it exited the canyon while the stream tumbled down over a series of short falls into a narrow deep bay several hundred feet below – an arm of the sea.
There were some buildings hanging onto the steep hillsides to their left, across the stream, accessed by a wooden bridge, but most of the town was below them to the right; the dingy buildings stacked up the slope with the bulk of them clustered at the edge of the water. The bay stretched away from them at an angle to the left, toward the east-southeast, deep, dark, but calm. The high cliffs surrounding the bay and the town protected its water. Although these rocky bluffs were quite steep and fell rather sharply from impressive heights, they were nonetheless softened here and there by clumps of thick juniper-like evergreens. For a few feet above the water where the slopes rose out of the bay, the rock was stained green and the water of the bay around it shores was thickly textured with heavy green sea-plants that swayed in the slight current and were evidently anchored on the bottom of the bay itself.
There were three large ships at anchor in the bay
and several smaller ones tied to a long narrow dock that defined the limits of the town where civilization met the water. The road zigzagged back and forth down the slope twice before entering the town from the east, below where they stood, but there was also a narrow, steep footpath with rudimentary steps cut into the stony ground that dropped straight down the slope to the point where the road and town met.
The morning sun shone on the western hills above the town but had not yet touched its three or four streets, all of which were narrow and dingy. There was trash piled by many of the buildings, most of which were singlestory affairs, though one, near where the road entered at the upper edge of the town, piled untidily upward into three stories. Through the shadowed streets toward this ramshackle building came a woman, followed closely by a child, a boy, carrying what appeared from this distance to be a few sticks of firewood.
Arthrus looked over at Aram. “Durck.” He said.
Findaen grunted. “It’s not much, is it?”
“No.” Arthrus laughed quietly. “But we’re in luck. There are three ships in port. One of their captains, surely, will know how to get what we need.”
“What do we do now?” Aram asked him.
Arthrus indicated the untidy three-story. “You see that taller building?”
“Yes.” As Aram looked down upon the building indicated by Arthrus, the woman and the boy that they had seen earlier rounded a corner from an alleyway and entered a door on the east side of that same structure.
“That’s the town’s public house. They have rooms to let and they provide meals. It’s dirty and very low class – like the whole of this place – but I’ve never gotten sick from eating there. Of course, I drink a lot of whiskey, so I’m probably immune to most filth.”
Aram smiled. “Who do we see about the steel? Or do we just approach the captains at random?”
Arthrus looked the other way, at the few buildings scattered on the far side of the tumbling stream from the town, focusing on one at the upper edge of the slope, near a vertical wall of rock. He pointed.
“There’s a man that lives in that house by the rock, named Mullen. He’s the negotiator for the privateers. They seem to trust his word – though that’s probably because they would kill him if he ever cheated them.” He gave Aram a rueful look. “If anyone gets cheated here, my lord, it will most likely be us, not them.”
Aram made a dismissive movement with his hand. “I just want the metal. If the deal goes better for them than for us, fine. As long as we get the steel. So we need to talk with this Mullen?”
Arthrus hesitated. “Usually, he’s the only man I ever see. I’m such a small buyer, there’s no need to deal with anyone else, and he usually has the quantities that I need on hand. I go to his house, make the deal, and spend the night at the inn – well out of the way of any other guests, if you know what I mean. In fact, I prefer it when there are no privateers here at all – makes for a calmer situation.”
He watched the ships rocking gently with the movement of the water, and a pained expression came onto his face. “I’m afraid that such a method will not work this time, my lord. The quantities that we need –” He shrugged. “The privateers are going to want to see the money first and know who they’re dealing with.”
Aram nodded. “But this man will introduce us to the right people?”
“Yes. He sleeps late, though. We should probably give him an hour or two. No one else will be up, anyway.”
“What now, then?”
Arthrus examined the three ships in the harbor for a moment longer and then turned his attention to the town. Except for wisps of smoke rising from two or thee scattered chimneys, including the larger structure he’d identified as an inn of sorts, the village was as still and quiet as the shadow of early morning cast over it by the stony ramparts of the heights to the east. “We could go down to the tavern and have a second breakfast, a hot one, if everyone is brave enough to eat Lora’s cooking.”
Despite Aram’s anxiousness to accomplish his business, there seemed to be no real alternative to Arthrus’ suggestion and he realized that it might work to his advantage to get to know the town better anyway, so he agreed. Rather than following the road downward as it angled back and forth across the slope, they dropped straight down the steep, narrow footpath, regaining the road at the lower curve of its last switchback, and entered the town from the east. The inn was the second building on the left, its doorway fronting immediately onto the dirt street. The kitchen was at the near end of the building, on the east. There was a sizeable column of smoke rising from the chimney and evidence of movement inside.
Arthrus led them through the main door into a long, narrow, dark hall, filled with wooden tables and chairs. The only light came obliquely through two grimy windows fronting the street, there were no lamps lit along the walls, and as the sun had not yet risen high enough to look down onto the town, the room was as gloomy as it was untidy. Several of the tables had apparently been knocked askew and some of the chairs were tipped on their sides, a few were broken. Arthrus glanced at Aram with a wry smile on his face.
“I told you, my lord, this is not exactly a civilized town.”
Aram looked around. They were alone in the darkened hall. Through an open door to his left, toward the morning, there was artificial light and sounds of activity. “I don’t care what these people do or are like, Arthrus, as long as we get what we came for.”
Arthrus straightened one of the tables near the feeble light provided by one of the windows and then stood the overturned chairs around it upright. “You all might as well sit, my lord. I’ll go into the kitchen and see if Lora is prepared to feed us. I’ll tell her we’ll pay. Money speaks with the loudest voice of all in this place.”
They sat and Arthrus went through the doorway at the east end of the hall, returning in a few moments with a very thin woman, clothed in what appeared to be odd bits of rags. The middle part of her spare body was heavy with unborn child, swollen belly low and distended as if she could give birth at any moment. Her hair was dark with unnaturally light streaks of color running through it. Either that or it was actually light in color but very dirty – Aram couldn’t tell.
She looked around at them, meeting every eye for just a moment, her expression dour but cautious. “Fish or eggs.” She said.
Her soft voice was raspy and rough-edged, as if she expelled a fine spray of dust and sand with each word.
“No pork.”
But then her eyes fell on Findaen’s handsome, open, and friendly face, lingered for a moment, and suddenly there was light in their previously lightless depths. She smiled at him, her caution gone. “You can have pork, my lovely.”
Findaen smiled back at her, genial and easy. With his hand he indicated Aram. “My lady, if I were to eat pork, and my prince went without, there would be hell to pay. Would you do that to me?”
She swung her gaze around to Aram. “Prince, is he? Well, that’s a hoot, isn’t it? We don’t get many princes around here – just those who think they ought to be treated as such. They are always wrong.” Her eyes grew flinty. “And you’re the one paying, my lord?”
Aram inclined his head and forced a smile. “And I pay well.”
“Alright.” She returned his nod and then turned to smile again at Findaen. “Pork and eggs it is, then, all around.”
“Actually,” Arthrus interjected, “I’ll take the fish.”
She served a breakfast that, for the state of the place, was surprisingly good, all the while being especially attentive to Findaen who despite his natural good humor eventually found her concern to be something of a strain. There was hot, steaming kolfa, as well which, though watered down, was drinkable.
Afterward, she cleared the dishes away and then came to stand near Aram, extending one thin bony hand. “Time to pay, my lord.”
Aram looked up from his chair. “What do I owe you, madam?”
She gazed back at him stolidly. “You claim to pay well. Why don’t you deci
de what to pay, and then I’ll decide just how well it really is?”
“Fair enough.” Aram thought about it for a moment and then looked across at Arthrus and Findaen. “We might as well stir things up a bit.” He said. Reaching inside his shirt, he produced one of the golden monarchs, held it up to the thin light and then dropped it into her palm. “Is this well enough?”
Her eyes went wide and startled. “But this is –?”
“Yes, madam,” Aram nodded solemnly, “it is.”
She pulled her eyes away from the gleaming gold and gazed at him in wonder. “I can really have this?”
“It’s yours.”
She stared at the wondrous disc in her hand and then her eyes grew furtive. She peered around in suspicion, at the men seated by her and the shadowed corners of the room. Her body slowly stiffened, making her belly appear even more pronounced as her fingers closed over the monarch. She brought her attention back to Aram and gazed at him with stark fear welling into her wide eyes.
“They will kill me.”
“Who will kill you, madam?” Aram asked.
“Burkhed and his men.” Her eyes, frightened and wide, flitted away from him and focused on the door at the far end of the room, beyond which a stairway rose up and out of sight into gloomy regions above. As she stared into this shadowed doorway, the fear devolved into terror. “When Burkhed and his men discover that I have a monarch, they will kill me and take it.”
“Who is this Burkhed?”
She bobbed her head toward the unseen bay beyond the back wall of the inn without taking her eyes off the dark stairway. “Those are his ships in the harbor. He and some of his men were here last night. They’re upstairs sleeping it off now.”
Aram glanced at the doorway that troubled her so. “And did they pay well?”
Kelven's Riddle Book Two Page 34
