by John Daulton
Flick, flick, flick and the hands were dealt, so quickly that everyone besides the major seemed to share in Ilbei’s awe. There was a stunned pause. The major had already lifted his cards and looked at them by the time Locke Verity gasped, “Wait!” He was too late, however, for the major was sorting his cards.
“What is it, man?” the major asked, his eyes narrowed and his tone marginally annoyed.
“You didn’t say the lady harpy’s wild.”
“Why in the name of Crown would I do that? You can’t possibly buy into this superstitious local claptrap too.”
“I am one of the locals, as you’ll recall,” Verity replied. “In a manner of speaking, anyway. And it is bad luck in this part of the world, my friend. Bad, bad luck. Especially with what befell Private Meggins there. Bad, bad luck.” He stared at his hand, head down, making a point of not looking the major in the eyes.
“Oh for Mercy’s sake,” said the major. “You make a fortune feeding these idiots up here, and your wealth is the product of capitalizing on the same backwoods idiocy that conjures up such ridiculous beliefs. Have you gone native on me or just soft in the head?”
“Things like that don’t come about on their own, Major, and you know it better than most.” He let his gaze linger on the major, then turned to Ilbei and Meggins. “Besides, there’s no sense tempting Lady Fate, is there?”
A shadow passed over the major’s face, his eyes narrowing again, but it flew off right after. He laughed. “And you call yourself a gambler. What gambler lasts a week believing in luck, curses or Lady Fate?”
“Just because I’m not so sure there’s an Anvilwrath or a Mercy up there in the heavens, waiting to come back and smite me or come down and save my soul, doesn’t mean I don’t still drop a silver piece on the altars from time to time. Only the arrogant won’t pay the ante on that pot every now and again.”
“Then you’re a fool and a silver piece poorer for it. I should hope you are able to rise above such things when it matters.”
The hunter glared over his cards at the major, which Ilbei observed but didn’t know what to make of. Verity reached into his stack of coins, then tossed out five coppers with the carelessness of a child throwing breadcrumbs to ducks on a pond. “Just play,” he said.
Ilbei and Meggins were broke in a quarter of an hour.
Chapter 11
Ilbei lay staring into the dark angle of his tent, the sun still an hour from setting another day aflame. He’d been staring up there for the last hour. He couldn’t stop thinking about that damned game of ruffs the night before. It wasn’t for the loss of a few coppers—though it had been the worth of a few days’ pay. What rung him so strange was how the major and that hunter had worked Ilbei and Meggins like they had. There was simply no point in it that Ilbei could see.
Ilbei had been cheated at cards plenty of times in his hundred and fifteen years, and he was sport enough to spot the tricks most crooked gamblers used. But those two, Major Cavendis and that Locke Verity, with his fancy black-and-green bow, were in a league of deception like he’d never seen. They’d send false signals early on, the type they likely expected a veteran player like Ilbei to see, things like glancing at their chips to bluff they had a good hand, or rubbing a forearm comfortingly, as if they had a bad one even though their cards were great. They sent false tells and then sent no tells, and then sent true tells that Ilbei ignored. By the time they’d gobbled up all his money, Ilbei was down to playing his cards without even looking up. There was no point trying to read either of them, and when he stopped trying and simply played solid ruffs, base mathematical strategy, they still won every hand. Every one. He’d left feeling pretty embarrassed, embarrassed for having had Meggins witness how poorly he’d done and embarrassed for knowing that he’d been the mark.
And the real question was: why? He wondered what the point of that game was. He wondered it more now than he had before going in. There was simply no reason for a lord like Major Cavendis to care one jot about a handful of coppers from two grunts like Ilbei and Meggins. It was the same for the coins collected from those poor sots up at Cedar Wood. Likely as not, the major had taken money from the miners up at Fall Pools too, though Ilbei hadn’t had time to ask given how easily he’d been dispatched last night. But he could fix that. It seemed important to him, so he made up his mind to ask when he asked the major what he’d learned about the bandit raids—another thing he’d not gotten around to.
So stirred was he by the emotions of being sorely whipped that he finally gave up on the sun ever rising and got up just for the sake of having something to do but think. He found old Hams working up the cook fire for the morning meal, and he spent some time helping him prepare it, lugging wood and water and toting flour and potato sacks. The work helped him clear his head. He was shoveling the last few coals onto the lid of the castiron roaster he’d buried for Hams when he saw Decia leave the major’s tent and skulk back to her own. His first instinct was to go grab her by the ear and drag her out of hearing range of the camp, wanting to give her an earful on camp morale and the consequences of sleeping within the company, but he snuffed the impulse.
He was no longer in command here. He decided it might be better if he took it up with the major instead, though he knew how that would go as well. Cavendis was too young for his position. Too damn young. Ilbei couldn’t figure how a man like that could get a commission, much less as major. He should know better than to act that way. It was out of keeping with reality. Sure, some of the young lords weren’t as prudent or wise as the career officers were, but for the most part, they still had honor to uphold and reputations to make. A record of malfeasance and issues amongst the troops would not set well within the workings of high-blooded families. It just didn’t make sense. And this major couldn’t be figured for either competence or idiocy. He seemed to swing between both extremes, convincing Ilbei the man wasn’t what he seemed.
Ilbei watched the young soldier slip back into her tent and shook his head. He didn’t know her or her sister very well, but he hoped she was the tough type and wouldn’t be too let down when Cavendis was done with her. The way her sister, Auria, had sung the first night off the rafts suggested that one had a gentle soul. He could only hope Decia was the hardier of the two.
Ilbei turned toward the cook fire and had hardly made five steps toward it when Cavendis called him by name. He turned back. “Yes, sar?”
“A word, Spadebreaker.”
Ilbei set the coal shovel down and went to where the major stood outside his tent. Cavendis stretched as he stared down through a gap in the trees, out over the misty green pines sloping off toward the northern spur of distant Gallenwood. The sun outlined the brushstroke limbs of the nearer treetops and trimmed them with golden light that gleamed like the edges of newly sharpened knives.
“Spadebreaker, you’ve done good work,” the major began. “And I’ve made a point of commending you and your men in my report.”
There was a note of finality in the remark, which struck Ilbei as curious despite his soldierly reflex ejecting a tactical “Thank ya, sar.”
“Have your men pack up camp and head back to Hast. Your job is done here, so there’s no point lingering any longer, burning up the local hospitality. I’m sure the presence of Her Majesty’s army is felt as an imposition out here.”
The lines upon Ilbei’s forehead told the story of his confusion, but his mouth shaped an acceptable response. “Yes, sar. I’m sure it is, sar.”
“Very well, then,” said the major. He turned to reenter his tent.
“Major, sar, if I might …,” Ilbei began. He waited for the major to turn around, which the man did, making no effort to hide his irritation at having to do so.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Sar, I’m not sure as we’ve put the issue of the highway robbers quite to rest. I’ll be asked fer my report upon our return, and, frankly, sar, I don’t have much to tell the general but that there’s been a pause in the criminality. I wa
s told I was to find and apprehend said villains or bring back heads to prove the banditry was done.”
“Well, it’s done, Sergeant. I sent the pigeon yesterday. The boats will be here tomorrow morning to take your people back.”
“But, sar—”
“I won’t argue with you, Sergeant. Her Majesty hardly needs to spend a fortune paying her soldiers to fish, hike and go off exploring caves after a problem has been solved. If you need some time off for recreation, put in a leave requisition like everyone else. If there are no more robberies, then the mission is finished. Chasing the perpetrators across the continent of Kurr is a job for the constabulary, not the Queen’s regulars.”
“But, sar—” he began again. The major cut him off a second time.
“You heard me, Spadebreaker. No highway banditry, no mission. You have your orders. Don’t make me rewrite my report. I’d hate to see you lose another stripe.”
“Yes, sar. As ya say, sar.”
The major spun back and vanished into the shadowy confines of his tent, and Ilbei went back and checked the coals on the small oven he’d buried near the fire. He shoveled a few more coals over the top and then stared down at them for a while, not seeing the red glow or the ash of their edges so much as what he saw in his mind: a panoply of contradictions whipping by. Hams saw him doing it and ventured over after a time, concerned that Ilbei might be having trouble with the roaster somehow.
“It ain’t right,” Ilbei said as he saw Hams’ feet move into his field of view.
“What ain’t right?” the old cook asked.
“The major done ordered us back to Hast.”
Surprise lifted Hams’ wiry eyebrows like rising bread. “They catch the bandits somehow? Bounty hunters, maybe? The local boys?”
“No. Nobody caught em, near as I can tell.”
“Well, how we going to go back to Hast and tell the general that? He’ll just march us straight back and dock us the tug fees.”
Ilbei tugged absently at his beard. “I wish Hanswicket had said somethin about this Cavendis showin up. There’s somethin squirrely about him that I can’t make out. But he’s ordered us back, and there ain’t much I can do. I can’t hardly order him to show me his orders so as I can check the seal.”
Hams laughed. “No, you damn sure can’t.” He shrugged and went back to the other side of the fire, where he began laying strips of salt pork into an enormous rectangular pan that he had set on rocks above the coals. “So what are we going to do?”
“Go back,” Ilbei said. “Major already sent fer the boats. I’ll talk to the lieutenant, and he’ll push it up the chain to the general if’n it matters to em I suppose. I sure hate leavin these folks up here with no help if’n that Ergo the Skewer feller comes back, though. That one feller is up that creek all by hisself, and them two women are in that Camp Chaparral with nobody to watch over em at all, and one of em sick with some kind of dead harpy disease. We told em we’d come back with helpful magic if’n we could.”
“Well, didn’t Jasper have some scrolls for that? He did something to Meggins last night as I heard.”
“He did. But he made it sound like he ain’t too sure what was wrote on it will do any good. He’s got some others he can try, but I expect he don’t figure they’ll do fer much neither. Worst is, we said we’d come back, and that’s a hard piece fer me to chew on, leavin off without so much as sendin word.”
“Well then, why don’t you take a few of the boys back and at least offer to bring that one feller and them two women back to Hast, where they can treat the sick one right. We can have the boats wait for you where that creek runs in.”
“Ain’t any faster goin down the creek to meet up than us just cuttin straight across to Hast,” Ilbei said. “But other than that, I was thinkin just the same. Them bandits may have run off, and they may not have, but we ought to at least make the offer of escort. Plus, that water ain’t no good fer em to be drinkin. If nothing more, we have to tell em that much, so as they don’t all die off. Question is clearin it through the major there.”
“Don’t clear it unless you want to be told you can’t. He already ordered us back. But did he say how you had to go?”
“He sent fer the boats.” Ilbei liked where Hams was steering the plan, but Ilbei was a firm believer in the essential nature of the chain of command.
“Aye, he did. But did he order you onto them? Way you told it, he ordered you back to Hast. Sending for the boats was more for convenience.”
The corners of Ilbei’s mouth twitched, first one, then the other, then both together, rising into a grin that cut through the tangle of his mustache and beard like ground beneath a plow. “Hams, you’re a genius as sure as you’re ugly as a bucket a’ guts. And right is right.”
“Aye, it is. Such is the good cut of a technicality.”
“Better than the bad ones, that’s sure. Suits conscience and duty the same. I’ll send most of em back with ya, though. Them boats leavin empty won’t do fer appearances.”
“You gonna take them boys you brung yesterday, then?”
“Yeah, they’ll do fine. Kaige will make fer a fine pack mule, and Meggins is a good sort in a fight, and a thinker too.”
“How ’bout young Jasper? Seems a bit jumpy to me.”
“He is, but he’s got his usefulness. Unless ya figure you’ll need him more on the way back. There was that ratty water nymph down there what near got us all killed.”
“We’ll have a whole boat crew with us, and we know about her now. You take the wizard. He needs the outdoor time anyway, shake the book dust off of him and grow himself a pair.”
Ilbei laughed and clapped Hams on the shoulder. “You’re not off the mark with that. Not by a hair.”
Chapter 12
For the sake of appearances, Ilbei and his little troop went through the motions with the rest of the camp, packing it up and heading downstream as if they were all on their way to meet the boats that would row them back to Hast. Once beyond the range of the major’s eyes and ears—the major having stayed behind with assurances that Locke Verity would be his companion until a boat returned to take him back to Twee—Ilbei and his squad were free to turn toward Camp Chaparral. The plan was simple and just as Ilbei and Hams planned it: check in on the sick woman and her kind keeper, Mags; put the patient in Jasper’s care; and then head up Harpy Creek to where the one miner was. They would offer him their protection, then head for Hast in compliance with the major’s command. Ilbei bade Hams goodbye a measure down the Softwater, promising they’d only be two days at most behind him. With that, they were underway.
The day brewing was to be as hot as the one before, and the journey was only made marginally easier by the fact that they’d been there before. Despite the heat, they made decent time, and as they came over the ridge that looked down on the five buildings of the camp, the sun was barely blazing noon.
“I wish their water wasn’t full of harpy rot,” Meggins said after a draught of warm water from his waterskin. “If mine gets any hotter, it will just be steam.”
“They got company down there,” Ilbei observed as he, like Meggins and the rest, caught his breath after cresting the ridgeline. He sat on his heels, leaning against a rock and watching as a man came out of Mags’ modest business and began tying down the leather covers on a pair of panniers weighing down one of three packhorses. It was impossible to make out much detail about him given that he had his hood pulled up against the heat and that the heat itself rippled the air as it rose from the ground beneath his feet. “I bet that’s that feller what Mags was worried about, fearin he might be dead.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Jasper said. “Perhaps he’s brought back a doctor to help the sick woman. If we can discover what the disease is actually called, my next set of scrolls will be more useful to anyone else who might suffer similarly. I realize it is customary for the uneducated to slap whatever word they want onto whatever set of symptoms comes along, but healing is a discipline. In fact,
forty years ago, there was an epidemic that swept through Pompost and Norvingtown that the locals were calling black-eyed fever, but it turned out not to be that at all, and instead they discovered it really was a malady called—”
“Jasper, by the gods, ya make more noise than a dragged bag of pans. If’n I have to hear a whole ’nother sermon on black-eyed fever—and after just survivin that hour-long racket on extract of prickly pear—I fear I may have to kill one of us, me or you. Not sure which yet, but I’m thinkin it’s most like to be you.”
“Please make it him, Sarge,” Meggins said. “I’ll carry your gear to Hast if you do it now.”
“Sermon? What sermon?” Jasper asked, ignoring Meggins entirely. “A sermon requires a topic of religious nature, or at very least a moral one. I certainly made no claims about prickly pear in the context of morality or faith. Not even as academic discourse pertaining to religion, morality or deities, why, I—”
Meggins came up behind Jasper and placed his hand over his mouth, gently, but firmly, silencing him. “Sarge is right. You talk too much. Put a cork in that yawning saucebox of yours before I hold you down and Sarge beats the wind out of you. Maybe Kaige can pull your head off after.”
Jasper looked indignant, sending a silent plea to Kaige with his eyes. Kaige shrugged. “I don’t mind listening to you so much,” he said. “I won’t pull your head off, neither. Though, Sarge got the final say-so.”
Jasper rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he said. Although given that he spoke it through the filter of Meggins’ filthy hand, it sounded more like airee aw, which suited Ilbei fine.
They climbed down the slope, weaving through the manzanita brush, and once again made their way into the tiny imposter of a town. “Miss Mags,” Ilbei called as they came even with the first of the shacks, the very same in which the madwoman with the craze had been anesthetized. “It’s Sergeant Spadebreaker come back to speak with ya, if’n ya happen to be around.”
The man with the packhorses checked the cinch on the saddle of his lead horse but didn’t look up at them when Ilbei called. Ilbei saw his head move enough to allow a sideways glance from beneath his cowl, but the fellow made no motion to acknowledge them.
