So it was that Meade and his captain kept a wary eye out for trouble, and they didn’t meet the eyes of any of the surly men in the military clothes who stalked the boardwalks in their frustration and boredom. Soldiers unwillingly put ashore in an unfamiliar port with too much time on their hands and nothing to do meant nothing but trouble to the people who lived there, and Meade and Berrol counted themselves among the civilians. Two or three times Meade had seen fights break out between the soldiers and the city watch, and on Waterday he’d heard that one of the watch killed a soldier in the course of arresting him for weaponmongering or some such.
With the rumors that a new kind of Aulig was roaming near the northern border of the Whitewood, deadly horsemen from some far eastern nation that brought plague and fire with them, the combination of fear, frustration, grief and tension in this quaint little town was palpable. He noticed the resentful looks that the men of the town gave to the soldiers, and Meade had the sense that the smoldering feelings of the factions here were only one incident from bursting into flame.
With the loading of the flour this forage into the town was complete, and once out of the muddy alleys that lay about the back of the stores, they made good time wheeling the hand cart along the cobbled streets toward the waterfront. Nevermind had a very sensibly laid out city plan, Meade thought. Although there was no formal separation between the waterfront district and the town proper, the industries that did most of their commerce by sea were housed in a series of large warehouses that formed a fairly tight circle around the entrance to the piers. Two long piers stood parallel to each other, running east-west into the harbor, a placid body of water sheltered between a cliff to the north and a breakwater to the south. It had room for perhaps a hundred sailing vessels to lie at anchor, and four goodly sized ships could stand at either pier.
Of course, today was different, and had been for a week, for there were perhaps seventy or so royal warships in port, with a new one drifting in every day or so, and each one had a complement of at least fifty marines in addition to the sailors. Mainmasts were broken, stays were snapped and jibs and mainsails alike were torn or just missing. The storm had done its work on the ships, and some were missing crewmen as well. Meade found it interesting that each of the warships seemed to openly sport a ballista, a crude version of the same weapon hidden on the Sally’s High Touch, and standing in barrels near the ballistae were missiles tipped with clay pots suspiciously similar to those she carried.
Nevermind had never been built to host so many sailors and soldiers at a time, and once they crossed the line of warehouses and entered the forecourt of the harbor, Meade and the captain found themselves among a fairly dense crowd. All of the men were armed, and many wore armor, despite the fact that this was considered a friendly port. Perhaps they worried that the stuff would be stolen if they left it on board, Meade mused. Not every ship was as honest as the Touch.
The Sally’s High Touch was moored to the northern most pier, looking slightly smaller than the warships around her, if not nearly so decrepit and worn. She had weathered the storm winningly, with only a few snapped stays and one torn working jib. Berrol knew how to ride with a storm, rather than fight against it, and the Touch was a more seaworthy vessel anyway. Several of the rails on the mid-deck had been taken out, and Meade had rented a gangway from the harbormaster for their use in loading goods. The Duke of Northcraven had paid them for their flour, for silver had been the only thing he hadn’t been short of, and Berrol didn’t see any reason not to load up with goods for Mortentia City and Kancro Town. He bought spun wool cheap here, and it was still early enough in the winter to fetch a premium from tailors and cloth makers in the King’s Town. The flour, cured ham and various oddments in this handcart were the last of the provisions they needed for their journey south into friendlier, and more importantly, warmer waters.
“You there!” A rough voice called from behind them, and Meade winced. He’d had a feeling something like this was coming. “You two with the cart. Stop now.” He closed his eyes and sighed. He was less than fifty paces from the Touch among a crowd of soldiers. Berrol turned the face the speaker, and Meade turned also. The man looked to be a ship’s junior officer of some kind, unshaven, wearing a faded and wine-spattered grayish tabard of a minor house. The house symbol was a goat, poised as if to butt someone. He was walking toward them purposefully, and two men in crewmen’s woolens of the same color but lacking the house symbol walked behind him. Under the tabard he wore chainmail, and a scabbarded broadsword was at his waist.
“Can I help you?” Captain Berrol said, crossing his arms over his chest and putting on his best business voice.
“Where are you taking them provisions?”
“I’m taking them onto my ship, sir.” Berrol replied. “The Sally’s High Touch out of Kancro Town.” He nodded toward the vessel. Several soldiers and sailors had stopped the almost nothing they were doing to watch the exchange, and when Meade looked to the Touch he saw that Jemms was coming down out of the rigging while looking at them.
The goat-man shook his head. “Naw. That’s needed for the war. I’m going to have to requisition that off you.” Meade put the handles of the cart down on hearing this and turned to face the man.
“If you have a writ of requisition and recompense, certainly.” Berrol replied mildly, but the expression on his face said that he knew full well the man didn’t. “The price is twenty-five silver marks. That’s what I paid myself.”
“There’s a war on, an’t you heard?” The man replied, and Meade could tell he’d had a few too many drinks. “Everbody has to do their part. You two can jest hand over them goods and be thankful I don’t ask the Admiral to take a look at yer manifest.”
Berrol’s face was cold. “I see. So you are on duty today? You go and fetch Admiral Ismarins straightaway, then. I’m sure he’ll be happy to find one of his officers in his cups. Of which ship are you captain?”
The two men with the drunk officer stepped up to side him. “Listen here, old man. You are a civilian, see? You don’t understand how things work in a war.” He put his hand meaningfully on the hilt of his sword. “It’s a state of ‘mergency, an’ I don’t have time to go bothering the Admiral with this. Just you do yer duty and give over.”
By now several members of the Touch’s crew were coming down the gangplank, and Meade saw with an uneasy glance that Elo and Hankin O’Kundrell had armed themselves. The last thing that any of them needed was for bloodshed to start, and Hankin in particular had a temper. He saw that he needed to end this confrontation as quickly as possible. He stepped forward toward the officer with his hands upraised, as if to talk.
“I’m sure we can all be reasonable men here.” He said, purposefully stepping in closer than was comfortable, his chest almost touching the other man’s. When the officer stepped back with a slurred oath, he tripped backward over Meade’s foot and started to fall. “Whoa, you seem a bit unsteady! Let me help you.” He said, reaching out his hands as if to steady the man, but landing a powerful uppercut with his right while he seemed to catch the man with his left.
While he suspected that several of the bystanders could see or would at least suspect what he’d done, the officer seemed unable to speak, staring with dazed eyes at Meade leaning over him solicitously. He looked up at the two crewmen the man had brought with him. “Why, has this man been drinking?” He asked, as if shocked. “I think he’s had too much. Maybe you two lads can help him back to his quarters.” He lowered the man to the ground, then looked around the gathered crowd. He shook his head at them.
“Strong drink.” He said, in a paternal voice. “Lads, this is what strong drink can do to you if you aren’t careful.” By then the rest of the crew had arrived, and with a few hard looks directed at the two crewmen from the fallen officer’s ship, they took charge of the hand cart and escorted the captain back on board the Touch.
“That was neat work.” Berrol commented, once Meade was back on board and ordering the crew
to cast off and begin the process of making their way south. “Neat and fast.”
“Aye, captain.” Meade replied casually. “The fellow was throwing his weight around. Probably got sent into port to secure provisions and spent the silver on drink. Then when things turned out to be dearer than he’d reckoned on, he got desperate. Probably figured us for soft merchants.”
“It’s a dangerous business, what you did.” Berrol admonished gently. “Might have gotten out of hand in a hurry.”
Meade shook his head and smiled a bit. “Nothing to worry about, captain. I took his measure the moment I laid eyes on him. He was lower gentry, if’n he was gentry at all, and them two with him weren’t going to side him once I saw the boys coming. They didn’t have the stomach fer what they were attempting.”
From a hillside north of the town of Nevermind, on a muddy road that cut across the face of it, three cloaked riders on shaggy ponies with odd and foreign-looking saddles and gear watched the harbor. “I know that ship.” Said Levin D’root aloud and wonderingly.
“There are a lot of ships there.” Kuljin observed drolly. “You want to be more specific.”
“The one taking sail southward. The small merchantman.” In truth the ship was only small in comparison to the hundred pace long war ships that sat in various stages of repair around her and through which she was weaving her careful way. “She’s called the Sally’s High Touch, and a finer vessel never sailed. I learned to sail on her.”
“Didn’t you accidentally beach the last ship you sailed?” Fyella asked innocently.
“Aye, well.” Levin’s voice had improved somewhat as had the mobility of his mouth, but he was still raspy from the ravages of the pox. “I didn’t say I was a master at it.” Kuljin merely laughed.
For eleven days they had traveled, the ponies stolen from the Sparli making travel easy, for the shaggy little beasts seemed at home in the wintry weather. Smaller than Mortentian horses, the Sparli ponies were still quite strong, and their broad and slightly oversized hooves made easy travel over snow and through mud and rough terrain. Much of Northcraven was still covered in snow, but in many places it had begun to melt in a burst of unseasonably warm weather. Of course, only a Thimenian would call this warm, Levin mused, as the cold wind crept beneath his cloak and gave his chainmail an icy feel whenever he had the poor luck to brush his skin against it.
Three nights ago they had ridden by starlight, avoiding the clusters of campfires and tents that dotted the countryside here and there by making their stealthy way through a band of light forest. When the sun rose they found themselves south of the Sparli held territories, having somehow missed New Brinnvolle altogether, but back in lands tenuously held by Mortentia. A day later they came to the king’s road that ran east to west from Walcox to Nevermind.
The companions that they had rescued from the cages at Holdberg were for the western road, but Levin decided that he would go east instead, following in the tracks of many hundreds of refugees who were making their weary way to Nevermind.
“But Walcox is where your brother won his battle.” Fyella had said.
“Aye, and the main word there is battle.” Levin had replied. “Everywhere we go there’s talk of rebellion and war and battles, if not the Sparli, then it’s the king’s men, or my brother’s men, or the rebels. Eastward there’s no war, at least not yet, and if rumor is correct, Nevermind is on the way to the forgotten kingdom, if such a place can be found.”
“But shouldn’t you go to your brother?” Kuljin had insisted.
“I would if I knew where he was. But every person we talk to tells a different story. There are some say he’s still at Walcox, but more saying that he’s taken his army north to fight at Northcraven City. I don’t fancy a long journey through a war-ravaged countryside in midwinter chasing after rumors. I’m of a mind to find this forgotten kingdom, and let the world forget about me and I’ll forget about the world for a while. At least until summer.” Of course, unspoken was the consideration that Kuljin faced danger wherever he went in Mortentia on account of his race, and that the forgotten kingdom offered his best hope of sanctuary.
“It’s no difference to me.” Fyella had said, and Levin supposed it was true. Her family was lost to the Borni, after all, and Levin and Kuljin represented her only means of support and protection, not that she needed much. Her various travails had toughened her up substantially.
So eastward they had traveled, with their three Sparli ponies for riding and two more to carry their burdens, chief of which was the gold they’d had from the Borni ship. It was a princely sum, but they had to be very cautious to keep it concealed. Levin’s ruined face and eyepatch seemed to do wonders at turning away curious eyes, and the longswords the two men carried certainly helped also. They avoided taverns, finding that arriving at dusk at a farmhouse with a handful of silver coins served them very well in obtaining a meal and warm beds, and without the risk of crooked innkeepers or highwaymen finding out what they carried.
Each time they left the places where they stayed before dawn, indeed before even the cocks had crowed morning, so that they outran any rumors of them that might have followed. In truth the precautions they took were not necessary, for the war had put many people out of their homes and on the road, and there were many travelers who looked to be easier prey than they were.
The last stretch of road had been the most dangerous, for the eastern edge of the Whitewood Forest bordered that road to the right and the sea to the left. Several times they found places where travelers had been murdered on that road, for the Whitewood was alive now with bandits, highwaymen and men made either desperate or bold by the war. The soldiery of the king was not to be seen anywhere, for they were all either marching to war against the Auligs or marching to war against rebels, and there was no law but that which a man carried with him.
Still, they had ridden through the night to avoid camping near the dangerous woods, and so it was with weary horses and tired bones that they looked upon Nevermind for the first time, and chanced to see the Sally’s High Touch leaving the harbor on the late morning tide.
“Headed south for the winter, I guess.” Levin said at last, when he tired of watching her.
“Smart. Although this is hardly cold yet.” Kuljin was not bothered by the wind, for things would be much colder this season in Khumenov. The three of them rode together to the open town gates, but the guards were watchful and suspicious.
“Where did you get them ponies?” A fresh-faced and young looking guardsman demanded. “What is your business in Nevermind?”
“We took them from a band of Auligs in a battle near the town of Holdberg.” Levin replied, and the guardsman looked up at him. His face registered shock at Levin’s appearance.
“What in seven hells happened to you?” The man spoke without thinking, and it was obvious he regretted the question, but Levin answered him.
“We’ve all three been through the pox.” He answered truthfully. “But that’s been over a month back, and we haven’t died, so it’s not likely to kill us any time soon, and none can catch it of us. Tell me guardsman, is there an inn that isn’t full in this town?”
“Not likely. And if you’ve had the pox, I can’t let you pass the gates nohow, and it don’t matter how long it’s been. That’s orders from the lord mayor and the prior both. Point of the matter is, I’m supposed to tell you to go back north of the Whitewood.”
“A foolish order.” Fyella said with a sour twist to her mouth. “If your lord mayor thinks he can keep the plague from crossing the Whitewood he’s a fool. There will be hundreds coming around this town or through the forest, and this only makes things harder for them. This is the safest road south, and you condemn those driven from their homes to becoming prey for bandits in the woods.” She rode up beside Levin and looked down at the guardsman.
“Aye well, maybe ‘tis foolish or maybe no. That’s not my place to guess, I reckon. But the order stands, and ‘tis my charge to enforce it.” He looke
d uncomfortable under her gaze. “You lot will have to turn back.”
Levin eyed the weary ponies and saw Fyella’s shoulders slump in disappointment. “Is there an inn nearby outside of the city?” He asked finally.
“There’s a farmstead called the O’Daniss place about a league back north. West of the main road on a track that runs to the south of a ridge with a large black stone on its head. If you look for the black stone you can’t miss it. ‘Tis said that they take in boarders.”
“It’s in the wrong direction.” Fyella complained, once they were out of earshot of the guardsman. “Surely you don’t mean to travel back north.”
“It’s just one night, Fyella. One night and then we’ll slip around the town through the woods. There’s bound to be a good trail we can follow. If there are bandits in the forest it will be their bad luck, not ours.”
Chapter 96: Aelfric in Redwater Town and Points North
Aelfric’s limbs felt heavy and his eyelids kept trying to shut on their own, and the cold was creeping through his chainmail and his gambeson as if trying to freeze his heart. And well it might, he thought to himself. For the past half an hour Tuchek’s scouts had been trickling into the town of Redwater, and he had taken their reports himself. The mission to destroy the boats had cost him nearly half of the scouts for the Silver Run Army, and even more significantly, Tuchek.
From what Manderin had said, Aelfric had little doubt that the seemingly indestructible scout captain was dead, deliberately putting himself in a position from which he could not escape so that others could, and many of those others were now staggering back into the town where the army was camped, waiting on today’s hard march.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 127
