by Gregory Ashe
Chapter Sixteen
Dag cleaned his knife on the priest’s robe, the blood invisible against the dark red cloth. He dropped the robe over the man’s naked body, not out of any sense of modesty, but to cover the wounds he had inflicted. Cuts, burns, long strips of torn flesh. Messier than the job on Pariscius. Much messier. Dag clenched his fists and forced the injuries out of his mind. He had treated the same kinds of wounds to his own son’s body, once. It was hard not to see Fawda’s face as he looked at the priest.
That was good in a way; anger against the Apsians, against what they had done to his son, made Dag’s own actions slightly more palatable. Flies swarmed in the thick scrub brush of the plains, and more clustered on the priest’s body in black, shiny knots where the wounds had not yet scabbed. Dag sheathed the knife. It had been easy to catch the priest, still drunk. Almost as easy to smuggle him out of the village in the dark.
Dag had not been able to go back to the slaughterhouse. The thought of seeing Pariscius’s body again was too much. He had found a sheltered spot on the plains and let the priest scream. It had taken the drunk a long time to understand why he was being questioned.
It wasn’t difficult to understand, really. The priest was the last one to see Trenius, the only one who had a chance of knowing his route, his disguise. A wasted effort, Dag thought in disgust, leaving the body behind in the straggling bushes. The priest had known no more than Dag, really. His mind must have broken early, for he said the Apsian lord had traveled north to Aqeur. Once they broke, they would say anything to make Dag stop working. It was another reason he disliked torture.
The man might have been the practitioner. It was hard to say. If he was, Dag’s route to Trenius Evus was clear now. If not—well, nothing had changed. That meant on to Apsia. Dawn had broken a good hour past; it was time to be moving.
On the road, perhaps a mile from the bushes, a train of wagons rolled south. Dag hurried forward, seeing his opportunity to catch a ride and, if he were lucky, to hear news of Trenius Evus.
He unhobbled his horse and rode to catch up. Men, unshaven and dirty from travel, glared up at him as he passed the rear wagon, and more than one had a hand on a sword or club. Dag kept his distance from the men and the wagons, though, and slowed his horse to a walk; no reason to antagonize men he might be traveling with.
“Who’s in charge?” he asked a hunchbacked man with a massive club at his side.
The man spat and tilted his head forward. “Next wagon.”
Dag rode up next to the wagon, ignoring the dirty looks of the two men—brothers, judging by their identical thick brows—who walked along side it. “Looking for someone in charge,” Dag said.
One of the men jerked his head, and the other jumped onto the tailgate of the wagon and poked his head inside. After a moment, he dropped back to the ground and kept walking.
“Well,” Dag said, “What did he say?”
“She,” said a woman’s voice, “said she doesn’t like Jaecan riding along the south road.”
A dark-haired woman, with skin almost as dark as a Jaecan’s, stuck her head out from between the wagon flaps. She eyed Dag for a moment and then emerged from the canvas fully to sit on the tailgate. She was large, verging on stout, and wore loose brown trousers and a stained white shirt. Odd clothes for a woman, but then, she was Apsian. The scars on her hands, and one along her jaw—an almost invisible white line—told Dag she knew how to carry herself.
“Don’t see a lot of women doing this job,” Dag said.
“Don’t see a lot of Jaecan who want to talk before they rob us,” the woman said.
“I’m not Jaecan,” Dag said. “I just live up near Aqeur, got a bit of their language on my tongue, that’s all.” He prayed to Ishahb she would believe him. A part of him doubted the god heard the prayers of torturers. Still, it didn’t hurt to try.
“Hm,” she said. “Alay, go find Chin and get him over here, got someone from his home town for him to meet.”
One of the brothers—the one who had gotten on the wagon—trotted up the line, shouting for someone named Chin. Dag leaned back in his saddle. He had prepared for this, after all; spent some time in Aqeur, getting to know the city, before he moved on to find Evus. He needed a story, after all. Peace between Jaegal and Apsia was all well and good for the merchants, but people in the border towns remembered the war. Still, Dag felt himself clenching his fists as the well-named Chin, his most prominent feature jutting out in front of him, arrived.
“Aqeur, huh?” Chin said, without greeting. “What part?”
“South side of the Squid,” Dag said. “Brew-tan.”
“Oh yeah? What’s your family in?”
“No family,” Dag said. “All of them dead, except me. River Guild brought me up.”
“River Guild, huh? Why you on the road, then?”
Dag pulled back his sleeve to show the scars on his forearm. “Got plenty more like that to match on my back.”
“What’d they do you for?” Chin said.
“Drinking,” Dag said. “Fell off the boat one night when I was supposed to be on watch. They fished me out, gave me my walking pay, and I’ve been dry since. Well, at least dry on the outside.”
The stout woman smiled at that, but Chin just stared at Dag.
“They paid you even after you fell off the boat drunk?” she asked.
Chin shook his head. “He means them scars. Walking pay, guildmen call them. Get discharged, get your walking pay, and get out of town. Otherwise you don’t work.” He grinned then, revealing teeth almost as big as his chin. “My own da got his walking pay, so I spent three years on a shack up the Aqeur River. He liked to impose his own tariff, if you know what I mean.”
Dag grinned back at him. “Smart man.”
“He was until he was caught,” Chin said. He gave a nod to the woman, then to Dag, and walked back up the line.
Resting her hands on her knees, the woman leaned forward and said, “What do you want, since we’re not going to kill you?”
“I’m heading to Apsia,” Dag said. “I could use some company. Plains are a bad place to get caught up alone.”
“I think we can find a place for you,” the woman said. “Name’s Matta. Get up there and find Chin, he’ll give you something to do. You got to work your way, if you’re going with us. Food, but no coin. You joined up too late for that.”
Dag nodded and, at the look of surprise on the woman’s face, he cursed himself. A real sellsword would have argued for at least a little coin. Nothing to do for it now. “Call me Dag,” he said. “I’ll go find Chin.”
Angry glares from the brothers followed him, and he could feel Matta’s stare as well. He found Chin and discovered that most of his work was to keep an eye out for bandits. “Plus helping out with the horses and wagons,” Chin said. “Isn’t bad work, not for a River Guild man. I never got a chance to sign on with them, on account of my da.”
“Bad name,” Dag said.
“Yeah,” Chin said. “Hard to get past that one.”
Chin tried several times to engage Dag in conversation about Aqeur, and Dag found his answers growing weaker and weaker, until he finally put a stop to the questions with an angry comment about hating the river city. Chin eyed him as well, after that. If things kept up like this, Dag felt he would be lucky to get to Apsia with his throat intact.
His first night, Dag made up a bedroll at a fire with Chin and a few other men he had met over the day—Apsians one and all, and not one who didn’t seem half ready to jump him at the first sign.
Excusing himself, Dag found a spot in the darkness and relieved himself. Everything about the caravan set him on edge. The men were far more suspicious than normal sellswords, and if Dag were any judge of things, they were also far more dangerous than any ordinary caravan guard. That could mean any number of things: too many run-ins with brigands already, although none of the men were wounded; the men were brigands themselves, but if so, they were going the wrong way to unload t
heir merchandise quickly; or the last, and most likely—they had something to hide.
It was none of his business; what did it matter if they were smuggling something? Dag would disappear when they got close to Apsia and be through the gates on his own, and they could risk their own necks if they wanted to. He felt a nervous itch along his backbone, though, and Dag swore under his breath. He wouldn’t be able to sleep until he saw what they were carrying. Curiosity. That’s what got me into this bloody mess in the first place.
When Dag returned to the camp, he kept low to the ground and circled the wagons. He saw one man standing guard, but he was a good dozen yards from the wagons, and he stood facing the plains.
On his belly, Dag crawled the last few yards to the base of the wagons. He came up into a crouch on his knees and carefully lowered the tailgate, breath held until it lay flat. Not a sound. Dag glanced over his shoulder. The guard still stood looking out onto the plains. If he got close enough, he’d make out the open tailgate and come investigating.
Slowly, Dag shifted his weight into the wagon, praying to Ishahb that the other guards would be too tired to hear the creaking boards. He crawled in and planted his feet where the wood did not squeak.
In the darkness of the wagon, without even the light of the stars, Dag’s hands felt around, tracing the shapes of crates and barrels. He finally found one without anything sitting on top of it and ran his hands along the edges. Nailed shut.
He drew his dagger and wedged it between the pieces of wood. Gently, he pried the lid open, itching at the whisper of metal on wood as the nails came free. With only canvas between himself and the rest of the world, Dag felt exposed. The lid lifted.
Gently, Dag reached into the box. Metal and glass. Jars. He pulled one out and took it to the back of the wagon and held it up to the weak starlight. A viscous amber liquid oozed back and forth as Dag rocked the jar. He unscrewed the lid and smelled it. Honey.
He recapped the jar and returned it to the box. Dag’s hands continued searching. He found long squares of wax wrapped in cloth to keep them from melting together, and jar after jar of honey, but nothing to warrant the suspicion he had met with in the camp.
Footsteps sounded near the wagon and Dag froze.
“Racio, you out there?” someone called from the other side of the canvas. After a silence, the man continued, “Well, Matta says bring it in; you’re too far out there.”
More footsteps. Quiet. Dag let out his breath slowly. He squeezed one arm between the jars and the wax tablets until his fingers met the bottom of the crate. With a grin, he withdrew his arm and set about unpacking the crate as fast, and quietly, as he could. The bottom of the crate was less than a third of the way down. Meaning there’s something else in there.
The pile of honey and wax took up less space than he had expected, and Dag had no problem lifting out the false bottom. He reached in again and felt a sharp pain. He drew his hand back; he had sliced open a finger on something.
More carefully, he reached in again and found the edge of a blade. He traced it the length of the crate. A longsword. Ghiyn steel, to judge by the edge, although he couldn’t be sure in the dark. What were they doing smuggling Ghiyn steel? The weapons from the capital of Jaegal were legendary, but Apsians could not carry anything larger than a dagger without purchasing a permit—although Dag had heard one Apsian man say, with a smile, that, like everything else, the only true law in the city was the golden law. Smuggling weapons meant black markets, but the kind of men who could afford Ghiyn steel would be able to buy it from a normal trader.
He had been gone too long, he realized. Dag replaced the false bottom and repacked the crate. As gently as he could, he tapped the lid back into place, praying to Ishahb that no one would notice the loose nails.
Listening for movement, Dag positioned himself at the edge of the wagon. He heard nothing and so he pulled back one of the canvas flaps. No one.
In one movement, Dag slid off the tailgate and onto the ground. He crawled under the wagons for a good twenty yards before emerging near the cluster of trees where he had relieved himself and making his way back to camp.
His finger throbbed from the cut, and Dag took care to keep his wounded hand in the shadows as he took his place near the fire again.
Chin, already lying down, opened one eye and said, “Thought you’d decided to try your own luck. Jump the boat, you know?”
“No,” Dag said. “Rough stomach. Besides, I didn’t jump off my boat, remember? I fell.”
“Well, careful you don’t fall off here. No walking pay here, just the long sleep.” Chin closed his eye.
Dag barely heard the man. Weapons, Jaecan weapons, smuggled into Apsia. That reeked of revolt, of bloodshed in the streets. By the sacred flame, what was going on? More importantly, what had Brech gotten him into?
