“Right you are!” a bargeman said, as the others nodded.
“Now then, sir, which side would you like to jump for and run on?” the tillerman asked.
Anrel smiled, looked up at the sky to orient himself, concluded that he couldn’t tell which way would be a better route for Lume, and then said, “I’m afraid I’m not sure which would be best, so whichever would be easier for you will suit me.”
“Fair enough, sir,” the tillerman said. “You just be ready, then. I suspect they have men on the way down.”
“I’m sure they do,” Anrel agreed. “Thank you for your concern.”
“All right, lads, both sides, best speed!” the tillerman called, and all four poles swung into position. Four leather pads thumped on stone, and the barge shot forward.
Someone shouted from the ramparts, but the thumping, the rush of water, and the increasing distance rendered it unintelligible.
Moments later the walls on either side dropped down far enough that Anrel could see over them. He looked to the right, and saw figures approaching at a run across the harvested fields.
“To port, please, Master Tillerman?” he called, as he crossed to the port bow.
“Aye, sir.” The boat’s path began to veer to the left.
Anrel looked ahead; the walls dropped to waist-high ahead, then leveled out, to maintain a surface for the poles to push against, while the ground beyond them sank lower. The fourth of the canal’s five locks, dropping it down another few feet closer to the level of the river, was perhaps two hundred yards away; he would need to be off the barge before it reached the gates. A waist-high barrier would not be insuperable if he could get close enough . . .
“Poles in to port, lads!” the tillerman called. “Get ready, sir!”
“Stop!” someone called from the right bank.
The tillerman grinned. “You heard the man, boys!” The poles began braking, rather than driving the craft forward.
That, Anrel saw, would make the jump much easier. “My thanks to all of you,” he said. Then, as the boat came to a near standstill mere inches from the port side, he leapt.
He had slightly misjudged the height, the distance, and how much the barge would give beneath him; he slammed his left knee into the stone, and his boots splashed into the canal, but his upper body draped itself across the top of the wall and he was able to quickly drag himself up and over. He tumbled to the ground, landing on the black earth of a recently harvested hay field, then untangled himself and got to his feet.
The barge was gliding smoothly onward, toward lock number four; half a dozen men, most of them in the uniforms of Naith’s city watch, were running toward the far side of the canal, shouting incoherently. More men were standing atop the distant city wall; if they were still shouting Anrel could not hear it from so far away.
The canal was not a true barrier; his pursuers could cross it easily at the lock. Anrel saw he had no time to waste and began running, with no destination in mind but simply trying to put more distance between himself and his foes.
He passed a line of trees on the far side of the hay field, and paused long enough to glance back and catch his breath.
His pursuers were at the lock, but had not yet crossed the canal, so far as he could see. The barge he had ridden was also at the lock, and some argument appeared to be taking place. Anrel did not stop to try to interpret that, but began running again, a little less desperately, across the next field.
Off to his right he could see a farmhouse, and a road and river beyond; to his left the hill sloped up to Naith’s city walls. Ahead were more fields, more farmhouses, and a patch of woods; he headed for the trees, hoping to get out of sight.
Once he reached the grove he turned right, toward the river; he knew he had to cross the water somewhere if he was to get to Lume. He was fairly certain that this was the Raish, and that if he followed it far enough upstream he would find himself back in Alzur, which would not do at all. If he could find a way across, though, and then get to the Galdin River, he could follow that upstream all the way to the capital.
As he walked quickly through the trees he straightened his belt, made sure the sword was securely in place, then brushed dust and hay from his stolen jacket. His boots were drying quickly; they had only dabbled in the canal briefly.
He debated whether to stay in the stolen watchman’s coat or change back into his own. A watchman would not ordinarily be seen outside the walls of Naith, but might be all the more intimidating because of that very fact.
On the other hand, if the word spread quickly that someone was abroad in stolen watchman’s garb, there could be little question that he was that man. In a brown coat and traveler’s hat he might match the description of the escaped traitor, but there would be room for doubt.
Perhaps he might contrive a compromise. He reached up and pulled the watchman’s cap from his head and tossed it aside, then swung his rucksack around and fished out his broad-brimmed hat, all without stopping.
The velvet coat was more distinctive than the hat, so he left that in the pack for now, but he slid the watchman’s jacket off, and drew the dagger from his boot. He had to slow his pace somewhat, but he kept walking as he first cut the epaulets from the jacket’s shoulders, and then pried the white panels from the lapels, leaving blue broadcloth. He cast aside the bits he had removed.
It was still recognizably a watchman’s jacket if one looked closely, but it was no longer so obvious. He pulled the garment back on, and hurried on, emerging from the woods onto the riverside road.
A farmhouse stood by the road just ahead on the left, a smaller structure on the right, between the road and the river; Anrel was mildly wary of passing between them, but saw no sensible alternative. He looked at the smaller building as he passed, then stopped in his tracks as he realized what it was.
It was a boat house.
That was hardly surprising, really, but he had somehow not expected it. He had not been thinking clearly; the need to escape pursuit had driven much of his usual common sense from his head. Now, though, the boat-house presented an obvious opportunity. He quickly circled around until he found a door.
It was locked, but that was no real obstacle for a desperate man with a dagger and a good pair of boots; he kicked the door hard enough to loosen the lock, then used the knife to pry it open the rest of the way.
The dim, damp interior held two small boats—a flat-bottomed skiff, suitable for fishing in the shallows or gathering frogs along the bank, and a somewhat sturdier rowboat.
Anrel smiled as he sheathed his dagger; then he hurried to the rowboat. It was heavier than it looked, and he was unable to lift it, but he did manage to drag it to the edge of the boat house floor and heave it over the side.
There were two pairs of oars resting on the tie beams overhead; he slid one set down and lowered them into the boat, then climbed in after them. A few minutes later he was rowing out onto the Raish, and discovering that working the oars was more difficult than it looked, and required the use of muscles from which he did not generally demand much. Still, he was able to keep his craft moving and under control, which was all he required. He turned the little boat’s prow to starboard, heading downstream toward the confluence of the Raish and the Galdin, ignoring the few other boats in the area—most of which were barges bound to or from Naith.
He had an uncomfortable moment when a search party came hurrying along the road along the riverbank not more than a hundred yards away, but while they saw him, they did not recognize him in his traveler’s hat and altered jacket.
One man did pause to stare at him, and Anrel released one oar long enough to wave cheerily. He was fairly sure they would not expect a desperate fugitive to do anything like that. They would also not expect such a fugitive to head downstream, back toward the canal mouth and Naith, rather than fleeing farther upstream, toward Alzur. It seemed unlikely that they would identify this boatman as their quarry.
Besides, even if they did realize who he wa
s, they would need to find a boat of their own to come after him, and if he saw that happening he would pull as hard as he could for the far shore and resort to his feet once again. He wondered whether he should have disabled the skiff when he had the chance, but decided he had been right not to bother—it would have wasted time, and would have left evidence that he was not just an innocent man who happened to be on the river when the city guards were searching for an escaped traitor.
After the first party let him go by, each subsequent patrolling guardsman seemed that much less menacing, that much less likely to raise the alarm and send pursuit onto the river—after all, if the man in the rowboat was anyone suspicious, wouldn’t the others upstream have stopped him?
So Anrel was able to row calmly past the canal mouth, past barges heading into Naith, and out onto the Galdin, where he turned his little boat upstream and rowed as hard as he could, trying to cover as much distance as possible while the light lasted.
18
In Which Anrel Makes the Acquaintance
of Certain Travelers
Anrel had rowed for as long as he could see, well after most of the other boats on the river had anchored or put ashore, and had then made for the northern bank, where he secured his vessel to a tree, curled himself up in the bottom, and went to sleep. He awoke with the sunrise, retrieved the oars, and continued his journey up the Galdin.
He rowed as much as he could, but sometimes found it necessary to tie up and rest his arms; he deliberately chose to make these stops as far from any town as possible, instead using overhanging trees or farmers’ fishing piers as his anchorage. He ignored the growing discomfort in his belly; he had not eaten since the previous midday. He did not want to risk going ashore to find food yet. Instead he rowed on.
This gave him plenty of time to think, as rowing a boat up the Galdin did not require a great deal of his attention; the motion, while vigorous, was simple and repetitive, and the river was wide enough and slow enough that traffic and current were of almost no concern.
He found himself wondering what he had done. He had risked his life to defend a man who was already dead. Nothing he had done would benefit Valin; that worthy’s soul had already joined his ancestors in the afterlife, and would be judged entirely on what Valin himself had done in life, not for anything Anrel did in his behalf.
It was possible that his actions would seriously discommode Lord Allutar, and might therefore punish him for Valin’s murder, but even that seemed unlikely. Really, the more he thought about it, the more Anrel saw his speech as an empty gesture, a meaningless act that would do nothing to improve anyone’s circumstances, and which had made his own situation desperate indeed. When he was planning it, and when he was speaking, he had thought of it as a tribute to Valin’s memory that would create a brief stir and nothing more, but now, looking back, he realized it had been far more than that.
He had started a riot—unintentionally, but nonetheless, he had started a riot. He had delivered a speech that Lord Allutar and his minions would almost certainly label seditious or treasonous; the authorities in Naith had been surprisingly tolerant of young men talking rebellious nonsense in taverns, but those same words delivered from the First Emperor’s statue could not be so readily ignored.
What’s more, he had assaulted a watchman, stolen his uniform and sword, and commandeered a barge. Even if his speech was dismissed as meaningless, he had assaulted a watchman.
And he had stolen a boat.
He was a criminal; there could be no real argument. He had committed real crimes in his determination to ensure that Valin’s words were heard. He had not planned to commit assault or theft or impersonation of a watchman; it had all just happened as he proceeded from one step to the next.
It might well take considerably more than a few days for this to blow over. He might need to pay fines, at the very least. He might need to throw himself on the notoriously skimpy mercy of the magistrates in Naith. He might need to convince his uncle to beg for his life—and even that might not be enough.
He might never be able to go home to Alzur again.
He would take shelter somewhere, he told himself—in Lume, perhaps, or some convenient town. He would use a false name, and write letters, asking friends and family for their assessment of his situation. It might not be as bad as he feared.
Or it might be even worse. Depending on just how much damage the rioting had caused, and how determined the landgrave and his magistrates were for a scapegoat, he might even now be the subject of a manhunt, with a death warrant sworn out against him by Lord Neriam.
He might well have thrown away his entire life in his attempt to make Lord Allutar regret Valin’s death.
Logically, he should not have done it. It had been a foolish, romantic, impulsive thing to do.
And he knew that given a chance, he would almost certainly do it again. Anything less would have been a surrender to the appalling Lord Allutar, and a disgrace to Valin’s memory, a betrayal of their long friendship. Allutar had killed Valin to silence him; therefore, justice had required that Valin’s voice be heard.
Alas, that it had fallen to Anrel to speak with that voice, saying words he did not believe and sacrificing his own well-being in the process. If there had been some other way to avenge Valin—well, Anrel had been unable to think of one. He was no assassin, to take Allutar’s life in revenge, nor a thief to take anything else in compensation—or at least, he told himself, looking down at the boat, until yesterday he had not been a thief.
But he had learned to speak persuasively in the court schools, and had done his best with the skills he had.
Now his greatest regret was that he did not have greater skill with a pair of oars.
He shrugged. If he had indeed thrown away his old life, he would need to make himself a new one—but he still had hopes of salvaging something from the old, if he could find refuge in his familiar haunts in Lume and somehow make contact with his uncle.
By midday of that second day on the water, though, Anrel knew he could not possibly row all the way to Lume. He had covered only a few miles, but his arms were losing their strength; he needed food and water and rest. He had nothing to eat, and his only water source was the river itself; every so often he strained a little water through a handkerchief into his hand, removing the worst of the contaminants, and drank the result, but that was not really satisfactory. He had hoped the boat’s rightful owner might have left a few supplies hidden somewhere aboard the craft, but a careful search had found nothing; the boat had been completely empty when he stole it. There was no water, no preserved food, no fishing gear.
What’s more, people on docks and other boats seemed to be taking altogether too much interest in him; some appeared to be referring to papers of some sort, so Anrel guessed that his description was being circulated.
Since no one pointed and shouted, and no boats came rowing out after him, he suspected it wasn’t a very good description. Still, he thought that putting ashore anywhere densely populated would be unwise.
Staying on the river indefinitely was not possible—he did need food and rest. And he did not think sleeping in the boat again would be safe; he had managed it without incident the first night, but he could not rely on doing so again. He might well wake up to find himself looking up at guardsmen holding one of those papers.
Because of the stares and papers, he intended to go ashore somewhere more or less uninhabited. That proved surprisingly difficult; the banks of the Galdin seemed to hold an amazing number of villages. He was scarcely ever out of sight of a town, and when he was, the river’s shores were still lined with farmers’ fields that would provide no cover, and which had mostly already been harvested, which meant they would do little to feed him.
Finally, though, when the sun was low in the west, a cluster of trees appeared on the bank ahead, and Anrel steered for this promising destination.
Much of that promise faded when he got close enough to see why no farm or village occupied this
spot, though; the ground, what there was of it, appeared to be black muck. Still, it was somewhere he could go ashore unseen, even if it meant wading through mud and perhaps ruining his boots.
He ran his boat as far aground as he could, digging the oar blades into the muddy river bottom to gain the last few feet; then he clambered overboard, and after some awkward splashing and floundering managed to find solid footing on half-buried tree roots under knee-deep water. He was able to work his way up out of the water, pulling the boat after him. In fact, he contrived to heave the boat out of the water entirely, and drag it behind two trees that were growing close together. He stowed the oars carefully, then turned his steps inland, intent on finding food. Perhaps a few nuts, even some low-hanging fruit . . .
Unfortunately, the grove he had landed in was comprised mostly of ash and willow. Exposed willow roots provided decent footing, so the black mud was less trouble than he had anticipated, but these trees produced nothing edible.
The sun was down now, and shadows were gathering; reluctantly, Anrel concluded that he would need to find other people if he was to obtain any supper. He had deliberately chosen his landing to be as far away from any villages or farms as possible, but he knew that was not actually very far. If he could find his way out to a road he could claim to be an ordinary traveler. He had plenty of money for a room and meal at an inn.
Explaining how he came to be wearing a watchman’s sword might be a little difficult. He looked down at the weapon, trying to decide whether it was distinctively a watchman’s sword, and did not reach a firm conclusion. He told himself that he would abandon the sword if necessary, but hoped it would not come to that—a weapon might be useful.
Even when he had moved out of sight of the water he could orient himself easily by the sunset’s glow reflecting from the river; that golden light still filtered through the trees, and guided him as he trudged up the bank at an angle, still moving upstream.
A Young Man Without Magic Page 18
