by Joseph Lallo
Three large gates stood nearly twice the height of the rest of the wall, heavy wood and metal gates hoisted high within their towering arches. At the center of the city within was a single building easily the match in size for some of the villages he'd visited. It was a castle, two small towers standing on either side of one massive one, each square in shape and reaching high into the air. The tops of the tower walls tapered together in a smooth curve, meeting in a pointed spire that bore a waving flag.
Teyn was watching a trio of thieves divide up their night's haul, after having followed them as they worked their way away from the cities walls. It was instantly clear upon first spotting them that these three were trouble. Some of the pickpockets and scofflaws he'd watched were careful not to alert their victims, let alone hurt them. Not so for the ones chuckling and counting out shares below him. Two of them were men, the sort of burly masses of hair and muscle that tended to be found hauling heavy loads from one end of a town to another for a living.
The other one was a woman dressed in clothes revealing enough to provide all of the distraction the group ever needed. Night after night, the woman would lure an unsuspecting man out into the wilderness, where her two accomplices would beat him to within an inch of his life and take all that he had, threatening to finish the job if he ever told how he got his injuries. It was a detestable thing to watch, and Teyn knew that these were tactics he would never put to use. The looks in their eyes as they descended upon the hapless victim, the unmasked glee and shameless reveling, brought back visions of Bartner and his ilk. It boiled his blood. The sooner he could take their ill-gotten gains and be done with them, the better.
After striking four victims along the roadside, the group gathered at a thicket of trees and shrubs far enough from the road to keep their fire from being spotted. Their cackling and bragging to one another about the night's haul was boisterous enough that they didn't notice the crunch of dry grass just beyond the fire's light, nor did their eyes turn to the five forms approaching on horseback. Teyn skillfully retreated to a higher branch, unsure of what would come next and unwilling to be caught in the crossfire, should there be any. The figures drew closer, spreading until they surrounded the still oblivious brigands. One horseman stopped at the trunk of the tree below him. His equipment was much like that of Dihsaad: light armor and a full complement of nets, ropes, and snares. He slowly readied a rope net, weighted at the edges and large enough to capture all three of the outlaws if well thrown.
Perhaps sensing that something was wrong, the banter among the thieves tapered off. One by one, they turned their eyes away from the fire, scanning the darkness. Before time enough had passed for their eyes to adjust, chaos erupted. A net was heaved, instantly entangling the woman and the larger of the men. The remaining thief bolted, but two horsemen cut off his path, each twirling a rope with a weighted end. He tried to turn and run in the opposite direction, but one of the horsemen released the rope in a long low arc, entangling his leg and sending him to the ground. Two horsemen dismounted, and restrained the first two criminals; two more restrained the third. In the space of a minute, the unlawful trio had been gone from smiling and preening about how clever their scheme was to spitting profanities and threats while they were dragged behind their captors.
Fascinated, Teyn dropped down from the tree when it was safe to do so, gathered what coins and valuables had been spilled during the scuffle, and followed. The men looked and acted like slave-trackers, but these three had certainly not been slaves. The five horsemen made their way toward the town, one stopping to scoop the woman from the ground and throw her across the back of his horse, while the men were dragged a good deal longer when it was clear the fight had not gone out of them yet.
When they reached the outskirts of the city, they followed a curving road around its walls until they reached one of the well-fortified gates. They passed through and approached a small courtyard with a lower wall made of the same stone, as though it was just a looping outcrop of the main wall. In his first sweep of the town, Teyn had spent little time there. The streets around it had no thieves of any sort, and the men within the walls were well-armed and vigilant. It had simply been wisest to stay away.
“Well, if it isn't my favorite rat catchers,” piped a portly and particularly sunbaked fellow. He had a carefully cropped beard that tapered along its length, making the second of his two chins seem even larger. A round hat of stiff red cloth was held on his head by a thin tan strip that wrapped tight around its base. He wore mail made with large, thick rings, and layered on top of it was a red tunic with a tan swath that began at his shoulders and narrowed a bit as it drew tight over his belly. At his belt was a simple wooden cudgel on one side and sword with a curved blade on the other. It was one of the uniforms that always seemed to be worn by the best-armed of the townspeople, and Teyn had supposed that it belonged to the “watch” that pickpockets and the like always seemed worried about. “What have we got today?”
“The roadside bandits,” answered the lead horseman. “Alive and mostly unharmed.”
This final claim prompted a fresh smattering of harsh language from the captives, but seeing the watchman put his hand to the grip of the cudgel was enough to silence them. The watchman then paced to a sign board beside the gate of the short wall and looked over one of the postings, a coarse bit of paper scrawled with the complex and flowing script of Tressor. He glanced from the page to the captives a few times, then nodded.
“Near enough to the description to satisfy me,” the watchman said. He gave a sharp whistle and spoke, raising his voice enough to be heard through the walls of the watch house. “Three to go in, and . . .” He checked the posting again. “One hundred and fifty entus.”
A trio of younger, thinner watchmen in less impressive uniforms scurried out and dragged the captured thieves inside. A moment later a jingling sack was brought out and presented. At the sight of it, Teyn's eyes widened. Even if it was filled with copper, it represented nearly as much as he'd been able to gather since he'd begun collecting money—but it was silver. The pieces fell together in his mind. Bounty hunters hunted anyone who was free but should not be—not just slaves, but criminals as well, and they were rewarded handsomely to do it. This! This was how he would earn his gold. He already knew the face and scent of every criminal in each of a dozen towns, and if there was one thing he could do better than any human, it was track down a target.
“A bit late for you, isn't it?” asked one of the horsemen.
“Our night man is sick,” the watchman explained with a scowl.
“Anything new you can tell us about other folks you're after?”
“You know the way it goes, boys. New bounties get announced at sunrise. No one gets advance knowledge. The patriarch thanks you for your service,” the watchman replied wearily. “Now off with you!”
Teyn heeded the request along with the horseman. Sunrise would come before long, and there were preparations to make . . .
When sunrise came, Teyn managed to find an unseen place among the buildings beside the watch house and trained his ears and eyes on the door. Before long, a small crowd began to form. All told, there were less than a dozen of them, including the five from the previous night. Each new member of the gathering nodded in recognition of the others, clearly familiar with one another from countless mornings such as this. All but two of them were men, and every last one of them exuded the same aura of intimidation. Though not fully armed or armored, each had at least one weapon conspicuously at his or her belt. They eyed each other and their surroundings with measured looks, checking for danger or disrespect, and traded stories of their recent exploits.
These were not heroes. There was no sense of honor or duty to them. They were predators, like Teyn, hunters who had chosen a very special sort of prey.
After a few more minutes of waiting, the portly watchman who had dealt with the bounty the night before stepped out into the courtyard of the watch house and rattled a heavy and weathered co
pper bell that hung from a stand by the door.
“Step forward, step forward!” he bellowed with a sing-song cadence. “By decree of the noble patriarch of the city of Gallishasa, the following men and women have violated the laws of this land and are to be brought to this watch house alive to receive their punishment.”
The whole of the speech was delivered with the sort of mechanical, flavorless tone of a man who had uttered the words so many times that they had lost their meaning.
“For the crime of theft, Bultim of Denith. Brown eyes, black hair, dark skin, average height and build. He has got a scar over his left eye. Last seen near Denith. Bounty of twenty-five entus. Next, for the crime of murder . . .”
And so the list went on, one by one listing off the scoundrels who littered the streets and describing what little was known about them. Crimes like murder fetched high prices, and crimes like treason higher still. After the list of those to be brought in alive was a list of those who could be brought in alive or dead, and, finally, those to be killed in sight.
“. . . and, of course, blue-suits and mallies.”
The final words—“blue-suits and mallies”—were delivered in the obligatory manner of a thing that should go without saying. They'd almost been blurred into a single word. Teyn had to dig deep into unpleasant memories of his youth to recall precisely what was meant by blue-suits. Finally, it dawned on him. That's what Marret had called soldiers of the Nameless Empire.
In a way, it was almost comforting to know that there was another sort of person—a human—out there who shared the same level of open disdain that malthropes did.
Once the group had broken up, Teyn made his way unseen out of the city walls. The descriptions the man had given were not very helpful. They could have applied to half of the humans he'd seen that morning, but a few of the details were familiar. Combined with the accused crimes and the last location, he was reasonably certain he knew where at least three of the bounties could be found. All he had to do was get close enough to catch a familiar scent and there would be no escaping him. Finding them would be simple. As for the rest? He would soon find out.
A short sprint took him to a cluster of tall weeds beside a dried-up stream. Among them was a leather bundle he'd been storing there. Traveling among the humans was dangerous enough without being weighed down by extra equipment, so he always found a place to stash his things before venturing someplace risky. Inside the bundle was the meager but growing collection of coins and trinkets he'd accumulated, the tools he kept, the rest of his clothes, and the pair of objects he'd managed to prepare in the hours before sunrise. The first was a simple cloth sack with a string to cinch tight around the opening.
The other was the visor of an old helmet he had found. It was the sort he'd seen worn by soldiers heading north to battle, an odd cone of metal that stuck out like a beak from a faceplate with slits to allow him to see and breathe. A bit of hammering had reshaped it such that he could just wedge his muzzle into it. The result was uncomfortable and locked his mouth shut such that any speech would be through clenched teeth, but combined with the deep hood of his cloak it might just be enough to convince a human that he was one of them for a single glance. That would be enough. He had no intentions of lingering long enough for a second look.
A length of rope and a knife completed the equipment for the hunt. The rest was returned to its hiding place, and he was off.
The trip to the town that hid his prey was a long one. At his best, he could match the speed a man on horseback preferred to travel, but it was enormously taxing, and life in and around the cities had not been doing him good. There was never much in the way of hunting, and the farms and such he preferred to prey upon were all too far away. He'd been living on the meager scraps he could steal from the shops or scrounge from the trash, and it showed. Like so many other times in his life, though, he closed his mind to the hunger and pain, forcing it aside and focusing on the task. If he could not move faster, he would simply stay at it longer.
All through the night he traveled, and long into the day. He slept sparingly, and only when travel carried too high a risk of being seen.
In time, he found himself in the “town” of Rell. It was a simple little cluster of buildings—a tavern, a place of worship, and a market. In the capital, it would have been little more than a forgotten street corner, but here in the country, it provided the bare minimum that the locals needed. A similar crossroads could be found at the center of dozens of such communities across the landscape, each proudly bearing a sign post informing passersby of where they were and where the next such place could be found.
Long before reaching the town center, Teyn had picked up the scent of his quarry. Perhaps the man was not aware that he had been marked for capture, or perhaps he didn't care, because he had taken no precautions to hide himself. He was sitting out in the open, reclined in one of the wood and canvas chairs set up outside the tavern, not seeming to have a care in the world. Teyn found a safe place to lie low among the roadside weeds and kept an eye on him. The sun was still high in the sky, and the man was too exposed for Teyn to strike, so the malthrope was left with time to consider how it was possible that this man could be behaving as he was. The price on his head had been measured in gold, whereas the other bounties were all in silver entus. As far as Teyn could tell, none of the other hunters had come for this man, despite the fact that for a mounted bounty hunter he wasn't more than a few days from the capital, Gallishasa.
The concern fluttered across his mind that he may have tracked the wrong man. One by one, he pulled to mind the descriptions. A gold ring with an opal. A tattoo of thorn vine wrapped around his right wrist. The little finger of his left hand missing the last knuckle. This was certainly the man, someone who the watchman had called “Duule of Sarrin.” Finally, Teyn shook the concerns away. It had become clear that trying to figure out the workings of the human mind was far beyond him.
The hours crept on. Now and again, a man or woman would ride down the road, speak to Duule briefly, drop some coins into his hand, and leave with instructions given in terms too vague to be anything but code. There was certainly something strange about him. For one thing, he seemed a bit old to be capable of the magnitude of crimes necessary to earn so high a price. Black hair was giving way to gray at the side and baldness on top. His skin had the leathery texture of a man who had spent his life in the sun, but his posture and attitude suggested it had been years since he'd worked an honest day's labor. He simply dozed in the sun, waking to deliver orders and accept payments, until evening came. Then he made his way to the stable adjoining the tavern and mounted a rather expensive-looking horse. Teyn followed.
Duule took a leisurely ride down one of the dusty roads that ran beside the fields of a sprawling farm. In this part of Tressor, there was seldom a frost, even this deep into winter, and thus crops of all sorts could be grown year-round. This particular field was overgrown with wheat that should have been harvested ages ago. It now stood tall and dry, bending stiffly with the breeze. After a few minutes of riding, he went over a gentle rolling hill, such that the city center was no longer visible. He then took a subtle glance around, and when he was satisfied that he'd not been followed, he guided his horse into the fields, rustling the wheat as he went. It was a remarkable method to avoid being followed, Teyn had to admit. Anyone trying to sneak after him would make a great deal of noise trying to move among the dry grain, and a quick search for swaying stalks would betray precisely where the unwelcome guests were hiding.
Of course, Teyn had learned to follow deer and rabbits, and the most cautious human was nothing compared to a nervous woodland creature. He slipped among the stalks, moving when the wind blew, disguising his motion as little more than the results of an errant gust. As he made his way deeper, the scents of at least three men and horses concealed among the tall stalks gave him still more reason to move with care.
His bounty emerged, after a meandering trip through the grain, into a patch of
field that had been kept clear. Not long afterward, the rustle of wheat announced the arrival of six men and two women, each bearing heavy bags. Teyn sniffed the air and realized he knew half of them from his time spent observing nearby towns. In fact, as they stepped into the fading light of the sun, no fewer than three of them matched descriptions that the watchman had given. He took note, reminding himself to return and follow their trails once his current target had been delivered to the watch.
“Nice and prompt today. Good. Good,” remarked Duule, with the tone of a noble addressing his subjects. “And the earnings seem to be improving. No trouble with the law, then?”
“Never for very long,” replied one of the lesser thieves, a greasy young man with a smile that made Teyn's skin crawl.
“That's right,” proclaimed Duule. “And as long as you continue to pay me, there never will be trouble. My boys will make sure of that. Now, unless any of you have got something that needs to be said, give me my money and move along. It has been a long day, and I'm certainly not leaving while any of you are here to follow me.”
With the grudging obedience of a group that would gladly put a knife in his back if they thought they could get away with it, each of the subordinate thieves dropped their bags of coins and disappeared into the wheat. Their superior watched them slink away and kept a watchful eye and a vigilant ear until he was sure they were truly gone. Satisfied, he hopped down from his horse and pulled open each of the bags, surveying the contents with a smug smile. His mind was fully on the heaps of copper and silver, gathering the smaller sacks and combining them into larger ones, keeping a running tally, and portioning out which coins would be spent on business and which on pleasure. It was a precious drop in his defenses. Teyn tensed. The three men he'd smelled among the stalks as he approached were still near, and he now realized that they could only be bodyguards; if he struck, they would be upon him in no time, but this was the best opportunity he would have to make his move.
