“We went into Gosti’s place separate, though,” Gher added. “Our idea was to tenlike we didn’t know each other. The other stealers was named Ghend and Khnom, and we didn’t even go near them—not out where any of Gosti’s people could see us, anyway—but we’d meet late at night in the stables or the hay barn to make our plans. We spent a whole winter there and got to know every log in the place by its first name. Then Althalus happened to hear a couple of old coots arguing about a back door to the barn with one coot saying there was one and the other saying there wasn’t, even though all they’d have had to do was go to the barn and look, but they was having so much fun arguing that they didn’t want to spoil it. Me and Althalus weren’t having no argument, though, so we did go look, and it turned out that the coot who said ‘was’ was right, and the coot who said ‘wasn’t’ wasn’t—except that there was a haystack piled up in front of that old door. I was the one who got to move that haystack, because Althalus told me I was supposed to tenlike I wanted to jump out of the loft into it. I wasn’t too happy that I was the one who was going to have to do all the work—except that it didn’t turn out that way at all, because all the Arums heard what I was doing, and they thought that jumping in the hay might be funner than just sitting around watching Gosti eat and get fatter. So they pitched in and helped me move the haystack, but even though I did a lot of the work, I didn’t get to jump in the hay more’n two or three times, ’cause the Arums was lined up clear out into the courtyard waiting for their turn to jump. I don’t think that was very fair at all, do you?”
Nabjor was staring at Gher with an awestruck expression. “Doesn’t he ever stop to breathe?” he asked Althalus.
“I haven’t looked too closely, but I think he might have gills or something under his collar. I’ve heard him talk steadily for two straight hours without stopping once to catch his breath. Once he starts, you’d better lean back and get comfortable, because he’s likely to go on for quite a long time.” Althalus paused. “Well, to continue, spring finally rolled around, and Gosti’s cousin told me that they always celebrated Gosti’s birthday when the last of the snow melted off, and that fit into our plans perfectly. The trails would be clear, and everybody in Gosti’s hall would be so drunk that an earthquake or a volcano wouldn’t attract much attention.”
“Beautiful!” Nabjor chuckled.
“We sort of liked it. Anyway, Gher and Khnom went to the stables to saddle the horses while Ghend and I stepped over the two sleeping men who were supposed to be guarding the strong room. We undid that latch that looked very impressive but that a child of four could have opened. Then we went into Gosti’s strong room to have a look at our new gold.”
“Was there very much?” Nabjor asked eagerly.
“More than we could carry, that’s for sure.”
“I could carry a lot of gold, Althalus.”
“Not that much, you couldn’t. It took me a while to explain to Ghend that a robbery isn’t a success until you’ve gotten away. He had wild ideas about stealing horses to carry the excess and other absurdities, but I finally managed to persuade him that staying unhung was going to be a major goal in our lives after we’d taken a few bags out of the strong room, and that attracting attention wouldn’t be the best way to achieve that goal.”
“Whatever happened to that Ghend fellow?” Nabjor asked.
“I’m not entirely sure. We split up after we left Gosti’s fort—to confuse anybody who might decide to follow us—but if they managed to get away, he and Khnom are supposed to meet us here. Back at Gosti’s fort, Ghend was telling me that he might have a business proposition for me, and I’m always interested in business.”
“It sounds to me as if you’ve made enough money this past year to retire on.”
Althalus laughed. “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself, Nabjor. Sitting around growing moss isn’t my style.”
“More mead?” Nabjor suggested.
“I thought you’d never get around to asking that,” Althalus said, holding out his empty cup.
Nabjor took their cups back to the narrow crevice between two standing boulders where he kept his mead crocks.
Nicely done, pet, Emmy’s voice murmured approvingly. You managed to mix this time and the last time together so smoothly that it’s almost impossible to separate them.
It’s a gift, Em. Always mix a certain amount of truth into your lies. Of course, according to Gher, the story I told this time is the truth and last time was the lie.
Quit showing off, Althalus, she chided.
Nabjor brought their cups back, and the three of them sat by the fire talking until well after nightfall. Althalus noticed that his friend had a new wench in camp. She had wicked eyes and a provocative way of walking, and he thought that under different circumstances, it might be sort of nice if they got to know each other a little better. Emmy probably wouldn’t approve, though.
After a while, Gher dozed off, but Althalus and Nabjor talked until almost midnight. Then Althalus fetched the blankets he and Gher had carried rolled up behind their saddles. He covered the boy without waking him, and then he rolled up in his own blankets near the dying fire and fell asleep almost immediately.
Gher rose early the next morning, but Althalus slept late. There wasn’t really anything very pressing to take care of, so he felt that it was a good time to catch up on his sleep. He was fairly sure he’d want his wits about him when Ghend and Khnom arrived, and a man who’s been missing sleep for a while tends to be a bit fuzzy-minded at times when it’s important for him to be on his toes.
It was about midmorning when he finally arose, and when he was going to the brook to splash some water on his face, he saw Gher seated on a log beside the naughty-eyed wench. The boy’s hair was wet as if it’d just been washed, and the wench appeared to be darning one of his socks. Althalus shook his head in bafflement. There seemed to be something about Gher that made every woman he came across automatically want to mother him. Andine had done it, and to a lesser degree, so had Leitha. Emmy didn’t really count, of course, because Emmy mothered everybody.
Althalus and Gher loafed around Nabjor’s camp for at least a week, and then one blustery day when the racing clouds overhead were blotting out the sun, Ghend and Khnom rode into camp.
“Well, finally,” Althalus said by way of greeting. “What took you so long to get here?”
“I thought you were supposed to keep Galbak off our tails, Althalus,” Ghend replied, wearily swinging down from his exhausted horse. “He was hot on our trail before the sun was fully up.”
“The devil you say!” Althalus replied. “Are you sure you stayed away from the Hule road?”
“We did everything just the way you suggested,” Khnom told him, “and none of it worked the way it was supposed to. I think that accursed Galbak’s part bloodhound. Every time we passed over soft ground, we were careful to brush out our tracks, but he followed us anyway. This has been the worst summer in my life. We even tried wading twenty miles up a river, and Galbak still followed us. How did you two get away?”
Althalus shrugged. “It was easy. We rode south a ways—leaving plenty of tracks—and then we picked a rocky place to leave the road, crossed the mountains into Kagwher, and came to Hule from that direction. We were positive that you two had gotten away clean, too. Why would Galbak follow a road with no signs, instead of the one that was littered with tracks?”
“I think he outsmarted us, Althalus,” Ghend said mournfully. “Maybe we were just a little too obvious. Evidently Galbak’s shrewd enough to be suspicious about a trail that jumps up and hits him right in the face.”
“I can’t for the life of me see how Galbak was able to get on your trail so fast,” Althalus said. “He was dead to the world when I left the dining hall. I was positive he wouldn’t wake up before noon, and when he did wake up, he should have been too sick to even care about Gosti’s gold.”
“I think we both overlooked just how big Galbak is,” Ghend said. “A big man can
soak up a lot more strong drink than a smaller man can.”
“Well, at least you two were finally able to get clear, and that’s what matters. You’re safe here, so you can sit down and relax.” He turned slightly. “Mead, Nabjor,” he called, “and keep it coming. These are the two friends I told you about, and they’ve had a very bad summer.”
Ghend wearily seated himself on one of the logs by the fire pit and rubbed at his face. “I could sleep for a week,” he said.
“This is a good place for it,” Althalus told him. “How did you two finally manage to shake off Galbak?”
“Pure luck, more than anything else,” Khnom replied. “Arums do a lot of hunting in those mountains of theirs—deer, bear, and those big stags with huge horns—so they’re expert trackers. No matter what we did, we couldn’t seem to shake them off. We holed up for a week in a cave that was back behind a waterfall, and then one of those summer storms came along—the kind of storm that even rains straight up. I’m sure we left tracks when we rode out of the cave, but our tracks were gone almost before we put them down. We made it up to the ridgeline, and after that, it was easy.”
Nabjor brought mead, and Ghend and Khnom started to relax. “Help yourselves to a bit of that haunch on the spit,” Nabjor told them.
“How much is it going to cost us?” Khnom asked.
“Don’t worry about it. Althalus has already taken care of it.”
“Why, thank you, Althalus,” Khnom said. “That was considerate.”
“Well, I did sort of invite you two to come here,” Althalus reminded him. “Besides, since we’re all so stinking rich now, the money doesn’t really mean anything, does it?”
“Bite your tongue,” Khnom said. “Did you two actually bring your share of that gold into a place like this?”
“Do I really look that stupid, Khnom?” Althalus replied. “We just took out enough for current expenses and put the rest in a safe place.”
“Oh? Where might that be?”
“It wouldn’t really be a safe place if we went around talking about it, now would it?”
A sudden flash of bitter disappointment crossed Khnom’s face before he could conceal it, and Althalus smiled inwardly. The knowledge that four bags of gold were hidden somewhere nearby and that there was no way he could find out exactly where was probably causing Khnom more pain than Gher’s bucket had.
They had a few more cups of mead and several slabs of roast bison, and after Ghend and Khnom relaxed a bit, Althalus decided that it was time to get down to business. “You were saying something about a business proposition last winter, Ghend,” he said. “Has that fallen by the wayside, or would you still like to discuss it?”
“No,” Ghend replied, “it’s still roaming around in the back of my mind. As it happens, there’s someone in Nekweros who’s holding some obligations over my head, and he’s not the sort of fellow anybody in his right mind wants to disappoint—if you take my meaning.”
“One of those, I take it?”
“He’s the one who invented ‘those,’ my friend. People who cross that one usually live just long enough to regret it. Anyway, there’s something he really wants, and he strongly suggested that he’d like to have me go get it for him. Unfortunately, the thing he wants is in a house over in Kagwher, and that puts me in a very tight spot. I’m not terribly popular in Kagwher just now. Khnom and I had a very successful season there a couple of years ago, and Kagwhers tend to hold grudges. There are a couple of fellows over there who make Galbak look gentle by comparison, and those fellows would really like to see me again.”
“I can see your problem, Ghend. There are quite a few places that I should probably avoid, too.”
“Exactly. You’re a very good thief, Althalus, so I know I can depend on you. I think you’re just the man I’ve been looking for.”
“I’m the best,” Althalus said with a deprecating shrug.
“He’s right about that, Ghend,” Nabjor said, bringing them cups of fresh mead. “Althalus here can steal anything with two ends.”
“That might be a slight exaggeration,” Althalus said. “I’ve never stolen a river. What exactly is it that this terror over in Nekweros wants you to steal for him? Is it some jewel, or what?”
“No, it’s not a jewel,” Ghend replied with a hungry look. “What he wants—and will pay for—is a book.”
“I like the word ‘pay’ well enough,” Althalus said, “but now we come to the hard part. What in blazes is a book?”
Ghend looked sharply at him. “You don’t know how to read, do you?”
“Reading’s for priests, Ghend, and I don’t have any dealings with priests if I can avoid it.”
Ghend frowned. “This might complicate things just a bit,” he said.
“Ghend, old friend, I don’t know a thing about stone cutting, but I’ve stolen a lot of jewels in my time; and I haven’t got the faintest idea of how to cook gold out of rocks, but I still manage to pick up quite a bit of it from time to time. Just tell me what this book thing looks like, and I’ll go steal it for you—if the price is right, and if you tell me where I’ll find it.”
“You probably could at that,” Ghend agreed. “I just happen to have a book with me. If I show it to you, you’ll know what you’re looking for.”
“Exactly,” Althalus said. “Why don’t you trot your book out, and Gher and I’ll have a look. We don’t have to know what it says to be able to steal it, do we?”
“No,” Ghend agreed, “I guess you don’t at that.” He rose to his feet, went over to his horse, reached inside the leather bag tied to his saddle, and took out his black Book. Then he brought it back to the fire.
“It’s just a leather box, isn’t it?” Gher observed.
“It’s what’s inside that’s important,” Ghend said, opening the lid. He took out a sheet of parchment and handed it to Althalus. “That’s what writing looks like,” he said. “When you find a box like this one, you’d better open it before you steal it to make sure it has sheets like that one inside instead of buttons or knitting needles.”
Althalus held up the sheet and looked at it, feigning a look of blank incomprehension. “Is this what writing’s supposed to look like?” he demanded. “It looks to me like meaningless scrawling.”
“You’ve got it upside down,” Khnom told him.
“Oh.” Althalus turned the page and looked at it blankly for a while. “It still doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
It was all he could do, however, to keep from throwing the dreadful sheet into the fire. The Book of Daeva was not something for the faint at heart, and some of the words on the page seemed almost to leap into flame right before his eyes. “I still can’t make any sense out of this,” he lied, handing the sheet of parchment back to Ghend, “but that’s not important. All I really need to know is that I’m looking for a black box with leather sheets inside.”
“The box we want is white,” Ghend corrected as he reverently replaced the sheet in the box. “Well,” he said then, “are you interested in the proposition?”
“I’ll need a few more details,” Althalus replied. “Just exactly where is this book, and how well is it guarded?”
“It’s in the House at the End of the World over in Kagwher.”
“I know where Kagwher is,” Althalus said, “but exactly where in Kagwher is this place?”
“Up north. It’s up in that part of Kagwher that doesn’t see the sun in the winter and where there isn’t any night in summer.”
“That’s a peculiar place for somebody to live.”
“Truly. The owner of the book doesn’t live there anymore, though, so there won’t be anybody there to interfere with you when you go inside the House to steal the book.”
“That’s convenient. Can you give me any kind of landmarks? I can move faster if I know where I’m going.”
“Just follow the Edge of the World. When you see a House, you’ll know it’s the right place. It’s the only House up there.”
> Althalus drank off his mead. “That sounds simple enough,” he said. “Now, then, after I’ve stolen the book, how do I find you to get my pay?”
“I’ll find you, Althalus.” Ghend’s deep-sunk eyes burned even hotter. “Believe me, I’ll find you.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You’ll do it, then?”
“I said I’d think about it. Now, why don’t we have some more of Nabjor’s mead? I seem to have come into some money here lately, so we can afford to have a good time.”
They talked and drank mead until well after sundown, and after a while, Nabjor began to yawn rather ostentatiously.
“Why don’t you go to bed, Nabjor?” Althalus suggested.
“I have to mind the store, Althalus.”
“Just mark the side of the crock, Mister Nabjor,” Gher suggested. “Put a line where the mead is now and another line where it is in the morning. That way you’ll know how much we drank. I can carry their cups to them.”
Nabjor threw a quick glance at Althalus.
Althalus nodded, and then he winked.
“I am just a little tired,” Nabjor admitted. “You gentlemen wouldn’t mind if I left you to take care of yourselves, would you?”
“Not a bit,” Khnom told him. “We’re all old friends here, so we won’t start brawling and breaking up your furniture.”
Nabjor laughed. “I’d hardly call a few peeled logs furniture,” he said. “Good night then, gentlemen.” He crossed the clearing to the roughly built hut where he slept.
Gher took over the chore of bringing mead to the men at the fire, and Althalus soon noticed that his mead had been watered down noticeably; he suspected that the mead Ghend and Khnom were drinking had also been altered, but not with water.
It didn’t really take very long for the doctored mead Ghend and Khnom were drinking to begin to show some results. They’d been exhausted when they’d come into camp anyway, and the mead Gher was serving them soon pushed them over the edge. The fire in Ghend’s eyes grew dim, and Khnom began to sway from side to side on the log where he sat. After two more cups of the doctored mead they both slid off the log and began to snore.
The Redemption of Althalus Page 81
