Kyel reeled, feeling as if the bottom had just dropped out of his stomach and all of the blood in his body was gushing out through the hole it had left behind. What was the old man thinking, hiring Traver of all people? Just like old times! That was an exasperating thought. Kyel had the sudden urge to find a privy and empty his guts into it. This run was too important for anything to go wrong. If Traver mucked it up—
“I don’t understand,” he said slowly, forcing the words out and blinking like a bludgeoned ox. “What of the dyeworks? Who will take your business into hand? What of Ellen and the boys?”
Traver waved his hand dismissively. “She gave me the boot weeks ago. Where have you been, Archer? That’s old gossip. I thought everyone in town knew. I came home one night and found all of my things out on the street. All stacked up in gift boxes! Mum even helped her pack it all. She gave Ellen the house and the shop. My own mother! Can you believe it?”
Yes, actually, he could. Quite easily. He was just surprised Ellen hadn’t kicked the bum out sooner. The rest of the numbers added up in his head, and when they did he almost groaned. So now Traver was out looking for work, had no place to live and no coin to pay for his habits. Somehow, he’d gotten snatched up by Kyel’s own employer, who had been looking for someone to make the Rothscard run after firing the last man two days before. And now Traver was Kyel's problem.
“I’d better stable my horse,” Kyel muttered as he stood up weakly. He reached out and steadied himself against the hearth as his knees wobbled and threatened to give out beneath him. Pushing off from the stone, he walked with shoulders slumped and head bowed toward the back of the inn as images of drunken Traver disasters filled his mind.
“This is going to be great, Archer!” Traver called after him. “Like old times!”
Kyel did groan, then.
The Great Northern Road looked more like a half-forgotten cart trail in the leagues between the towns of Dansbury and Hunter’s Home. Even after almost a week of bumping along in the seat beside Traver in the front of the wagon, Kyel still found himself wincing every time one of the large spoked wheels slipped and fell into one of the ruts. He could not help but wonder if Traver wasn’t trying to bounce them around intentionally; it just did not seem possible that anyone could be that bad of a driver. Kyel thought that even he could do a better job of it. Sometimes he wondered if he might be better off walking alongside.
Even still, they were making good time, despite the bad weather they had encountered during the first few days of the journey. Kyel had slept under the wagon the first two nights, afraid that someone was going to plunder his goods in the darkness. Merchant wagons were often a favorite target for roaming bands of rogues that inhabited the wilderness in the leagues between towns. And there was rumor of deserters filtering down from the front, which did not instill him with much reassurance. He almost wished he had taken the advice of a fellow merchant they had met in Dansbury and hired a guard.
As the sun was starting to set, the road finally widened and the wilderness faded into farmland and pastures, a sure sign that they must be approaching a town up ahead. Kyel was grateful. They had left the last town, Dansbury, three days before. There, they had stayed at a decent inn where Kyel had actually managed to get a bit of good sleep between fits of Traver’s snoring. Since then, they had been sleeping under the wagon again. Kyel’s back was longing for a bed. Almost every town they had come across had offered some type of accommodations for travelers; the Great Northern Road was a major trade artery connecting the North with the cities of the South. Kyel just hoped the inn at Hunter’s Home would be a civilized one and not like the seedy Scarlet Maiden in Weeping Springs, or the boisterous Pig’s Ear in Gentry.
The sun had already set by the time Traver drew the horses up in the small town of Hunter’s Home. Kyel jumped down and stretched his legs for the first time in hours. There were not many people about; just two men by the door of the inn and what looked like a stableboy crossing the dark yard with a bucket in his hand. Kyel quickly signaled the stableboy for livery service.
He waited for Traver to climb down then made his way toward the inn. The two men lingering by the door stared at him the whole while as he was crossing the yard. They refused to move aside when he reached them, forcing Kyel to turn sideways to pass by. He found himself unable to meet their glares as he brushed between them, feeling more than a little intimidated. He had seen other men just like them in some of the towns they had passed through, and he did not like their type. Although unarmed, the two men had the look of mercenaries.
The interior of the inn was musty and dark, redolent of smoke and liquor. He had to pass through an almost palpable haze of pipe smoke to reach the other end of the room, where he found a squat and balding innkeeper polishing crockery. Kyel strode up and stopped in front of him. He decided after a minute of waiting that the fat old man either didn’t see him or was ignoring him on purpose. Kyel conspicuously cleared his throat. The man’s eyebrows shot up, but his eyes did not stir from the cup he was meticulously polishing, to perfection, so it seemed.
“What do you want?”
Kyel almost chortled as he realized why business was so slow in here. Obviously, the balding innkeeper was not cut out for the service trade. He arranged for a room and a meal as quickly as he could. Then he turned to see where Traver had gotten himself off to. He found his friend leaning against a wall by the door, staring longingly at a pair of men in the corner of the room intent on a quiet game of cards. Kyel shook his head, walking over to him.
“Come on,” he urged, tugging at Traver’s sleeve. “I’ve got us a room for the night. It’s past supper, so the innkeeper said he’d send something up.”
Traver glanced at him with a beseeching expression. “Might I borrow some coin? I’ll pay you back from my wages.”
Kyel rolled his eyes with a sigh. Traver had been behaving himself rather well the entire trip. It wasn’t as if the Elk’s Horn was a gambling den, and the two men in the corner seemed harmless enough. Reaching into his coin purse, Kyel pulled out a few coppers and dropped them into the palm of Traver’s eager hand. The way his friend’s face lit up made Kyel shake his head, chuckling mildly.
“You have a problem,” he told him as he clapped Traver on the arm.
“It’s never a problem if you’re winning,” Traver retorted wryly.
Turning, Kyel swung his pack over his shoulder and made his way toward the narrow staircase. He did not look back as he took the stairs up to the second floor. He was going to have supper. After that, he was going to bed. He considered canceling Traver’s meal, but decided that he’d better not. Traver was going to have to do an awful lot of winning if he expected to be gone more than ten minutes; Kyel had only given him five coppers.
Traver grinned at the coppers in his hand as if they were gold pieces. Brushing a wayward lock of hair out of his eyes, he turned to assess the game in the corner. The pair of men were probably regulars. Townsmen, from the looks of them. The game they were playing was a quiet one. Too quiet, by Traver’s standards; he liked a different kind of action. His coin probably wouldn’t go very far with them, but he had to start somewhere.
He kissed the coppers in his hand as he started toward them, a little offering to his Lady of Luck, the goddess Dreia. Traver considered himself a special supplicant of hers, probably a favorite by now. She had blessed him many times before in the past; why not tonight? After all, he just wanted to take in enough winnings to buy himself a few rounds of drink. That wasn’t too much to ask for. His Lady should be approving of that; Dreia was also known as the Goddess of the Vine. To Traver, that was just a fancy way of saying the Goddess of Drink, Merriment, and just about any type of Downright Drunken Revelry a man could ask for. Now, that was a deity worth venerating.
He kissed the coin again, just for added measure, as he sidled up to the table where the two old codgers were sitting, staring vaguely at their cards.
“Care if I join in?” he said by way of i
ntroduction, hooking a chair over from the next table with his foot. His smile was gleaming as he threw in his coin and plopped himself down, sprawling back in the chair and bringing his hands up behind his head.
That’s how it started.
Three hours later, it was still going.
Lady Luck had never been so good. Traver was skidding along on the roll of his life. He had graduated from the corner table long ago, moving up to a real game when a bawdy crowd of drunken mercenaries wandered in. Since then, the Elk’s Horn had turned into an entirely different sort of establishment. Word of his winning streak had gotten out, pulling people in from the street. Traver found himself the central attraction as a raucous crowd gathered around his table to watch him win hand after hand. Within the last hour, he’d been accused of cheating, counting cards, marking cards, of even dark sorcery, but he didn’t care. He was unbeatable. And the party was just getting started. More patrons continued to flow across the Elk’s threshold. The dim little greatroom was becoming crowded and boisterous.
Traver had lost count of the number of hands he’d won in a row. He’d never even heard of a streak this hot. The cards in his hand were like a good woman; they knew when to stick, and they knew when to leave. People started buying him rounds. After the first few tankards, Traver stopped looking up to find out who to thank. He just swished the ale around in his mouth, swallowed, and drew another card.
He stared across the table at his current opponent, a merchant down from Rothscard who’d just stopped in to buy a drink and had decided to try his luck. The cards in Traver’s hand were feeling itchy, so he discarded the highest and decided to aim low this time. That was the beauty of Knight’s Cross, the game of the moment. Low cards stood as much of a chance as high, all depending on how the hand was dealt. The merchant was dealing from three decks to prevent him from counting cards. Traver wasn’t. But when he produced a perfect hand for the second time in a row, the man folded and walked away.
Cheers went up all around the room. Onlookers were beating on the tables with their tankards while people standing behind him clapped him on the back. A woman leaned forward to give him a kiss that started on the cheek, but for some reason ended up with her falling into his lap with his tongue in her mouth. The kiss tasted like a salty twist of ale and mead, not unpleasant. Her breasts weren’t bad, either. Traver snaked a hand up under her dress to squeeze her thigh and was rewarded by a tiny squeak of surprise. He winked at her, settling her properly in his lap, then looked around for another upstart who might want to try a challenge.
There didn’t seem to be any takers.
But then one of the men Traver had played with earlier came back to sit in the seat opposite him. He remembered the dirty, unshaven face well. The man had played a good game of cards, though Traver thought he’d wiped the poor fellow out hours ago. Apparently, the man had managed to scavenge up some more coin somewhere, probably from his drunken and rowdy friends. The buxom girl in his lap squirmed a little at the sight of him. Traver draped a hand over her shoulder to steady her, although a certain part of him did appreciate her squirming.
The crowd began cheering wildly, drumming on the tabletops and stomping on the floor. Traver thought at first that it must all be for him; after all, it was his game that had drawn them in through the door. But then he saw that the faces were all angled away, toward a group of men winding their way through the press of bodies to a dim corner of the room. Through the liberal haze of ale that fogged his eyes, Traver made out the shapes of instruments in the hands of the newcomers. Minstrels! Now, that’s what this party needed.
He called the innkeeper over with a wave of his hand, ordering a round of drinks for the minstrels and telling the fat man to put it on his tab. Kyel’s tab, actually, although it really didn’t matter. He had enough coin in his pockets to pay his old buddy back handsomely. Archer was just going to have to learn that a man had to have a little bit of fun once in a while. The gods only knew, Kyel could use some fun of his own. He’d been walled up with that wife of his for far too long. The minstrels took their time about setting up and tuning their instruments, but when they finally started playing, the Elk’s Horn fairly resonated with boisterous cheers. The song was a rousing rendition of a foot-stomping jig Traver had learned as a boy.
The girl on his lap was looking at him with open invitation in her eyes. His feet were entertaining the notion of a dance, tapping out the rhythm under the table. But there was a game waiting to be played; his streak was running hot. He couldn’t quit now. He waggled his finger over the table, signaling the man to place his bet. Traver blinked, staring at the gold coin suddenly sparkling up at him from the center of the table. He had a perfect streak going, but he was far too short of coin to come up with enough to match that bet. He was going to have to fold.
Unless....
He reached down, lifting the girl up by the hips and planting her down firmly on the table. Standing up, he excused himself for a moment. His opponent merely shrugged as Traver trudged across the floor and up the stairs, feet moving unconsciously to the rhythm of the music behind him.
He knew which door was Kyel’s as soon as he heard the snoring from the other side. He had those low, throaty sounds memorized by now. He opened the door, letting himself in and stooping to grope along the wall in the dark. His hand felt the soft leather purse immediately. Just like always, Archer had stashed his coin purse right by the door against the wall. It was a stupid habit, one that Traver was constantly trying to get him to break. Anyone could carry it off during the night.
He grabbed the purse quickly and carried it off himself. After all, he was riding a perfect winning streak. That kind of luck just didn’t happen every night.
The minstrels had moved on to a new tune by the time he returned. Traver swung the purse by its strap as he shuffled through the packed greatroom back to his table. Halfway there, he lost his balance and stumbled into a woman, jostling her drink. Ale spilled down the front of her low-cut dress, drizzling amber droplets down the gap of her cleavage. Traver gulped an apology as he fumbled in his pocket for a kerchief. He thought about handing it to her, but then decided it would be much more gentlemanly if he simply blotted the mess up himself. The ringing slap that jerked his head halfway around actually took him by surprise.
Traver pressed a hand to his face as he ducked his head, groaning. The woman had an arm like Harlen Wood. When his vision swam back into focus, he realized that she even resembled Wood a bit. What had he been thinking? He must have had more to drink than he’d thought, because the woman wasn’t attractive at all. That one could try her hand at tavern brawling; she’d really be quite good at it.
He stumbled back toward the table, massaging his cheek and veering the whole way. It was almost time to call it a night, he decided. He was having a hard time focusing his eyes, and the sound of the room was becoming a muffled blur in his head. He hadn’t bothered counting the number of rounds he’d put down, but he knew the total was up there. He just wanted to finish this last hand and then slip off to bed, preferably accompanied.
Traver almost sighed with relief when he saw that the man was still sitting there. The girl was gone, though, which was really too bad. He staggered as he fell into the chair, thumbing the purse open enough to finger through the loose coin at the bottom. When he produced a fat gold piece with the raised image of an eight-pointed star on it, his rough-looking opponent raised an eyebrow in interest. Traver handed it over to the man, who put his teeth on it.
“A gold Silver Star,” Traver boasted, slurring badly. “Can’t go wrong with that.”
The man didn’t say anything. Come to think of it, he hadn’t said anything all evening. But he did appear satisfied by the impression his teeth had made on the coin. He dealt, and Traver eagerly scooped his cards up off the table, trying to arrange them in his hand. He lost one in the process, groaning as it twirled downward to land face-up on the table. Someone behind him started to laugh. Traver almost turned around to say s
omething obnoxious, but then his eyes focused wonderingly at the cards glaring out at him from his hand.
A perfect Fist.
Traver’s mouth dropped open, and he threw his head back and howled, stamping his feet. Slinging his cards down on the table, he reached forward to rake in his winnings as a cheer went up from the crowd. He couldn’t believe it; he’d felt certain that his Lady Luck had left him for another man.
He should have walked away then. But he didn’t.
“Let’s go again,” he slurred.
But his opponent shook his head. “Can’t do it. Sorry.”
Traver’s face screwed into a confused grimace. “What do you mean, you can’t?”
The burly-looking man merely shrugged. “I got people I owe.”
“You must have something,” Traver insisted.
“Well,” his opponent drawled slowly, “I do have my horse.”
Traver instantly brightened. A horse was good. Kyel could use a new horse. The nag he kept tied up behind the wagon was a mean-tempered animal that was becoming nastier by the day. Traver narrowed his eyes and put on his best game face, not wanting to appear too eager.
“Well, I’d have to see it,” he said slowly, trying to sound as skeptical as he could manage. Actually, he didn’t care what the beast looked like, just so long as it had four legs and a back to put a saddle on. The man looked over his shoulder and nodded at someone behind him. Traver couldn’t see who, because the smoke was thick and his eyes were hazy from the drink. His fingers were itching for more cards to be dealt. He scooped his two coins up from the table and downed the rest of his ale, waiting for the man in front of him to make his decision.
“Come on, then,” the scruffy man announced as he pushed his chair back from the table. “I don’t have the bloody beast shoved down my breeches, you know.”
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