“That’s what my father used to call these nights,” Marcus added.
“My grandmother, too,” Erik said.
“Perhaps my father and your grandmother hail from the same place,” Marcus suggested with a smile.
“Doubtful,” Befel muttered, but Erik heard him. The sidelong glance he saw Marcus give them said he had heard as well.
“I suppose not,” Marcus agreed, and Erik saw Befel give the big man a worried look.
“While my family is from the Yeryman Steppes, just east of the Southern Mountains, where other gypsies originally hail from is as much of a mystery as any. Some say the Isuta Isles. Others say Wüsten Sahil or the Jagged Coast. I wonder why it matters.”
“Isn’t it good to know where a man is from?” Erik asked.
“I suppose,” Marcus replied with a shrug, “as long as you remember it doesn’t define that man.”
“What do you mean?” Befel asked, seemingly less truculent.
“Men defined me by my birth,” Marcus replied. “I was born to gypsies, in a village of gypsies, and so, even from a young age, men figured me to be like most gypsies they had known—a cheat, a liar, a thief.”
“That’s not right,” Erik said.
“Aye, perhaps,” Marcus replied. “But, I am all those things—and worse . . .”
“Worse?” Erik asked.
Marcus nodded. “I’m a murderer.”
“Really?” Erik could feel his face twist in confusion, and he sensed Befel stiffen beside him.
“Aye,” Marcus replied. “You could say I embraced the label men gave me. I think most men do that. You were born to farmers, so you’re expected to farm. When a boy is born to a miner, so he is expected to mine. When another is born to a rich father, so he is expected to act like other rich men . . . well, I think you get what I’m saying.”
“Yes, I do,” Erik replied, and he could see his brother nodding in agreement. “And being labeled a gypsy means you’re a liar and a murderer?”
“It means that’s the label we gypsies have earned ourselves, and many of us are good at following that label. In fact, I excelled in it. You see, when people throw rotten vegetables at a gypsy, when they spit on a gypsy, that gypsy just leaves. He or she takes what gold they have swindled and goes. Fighting back is bad for business. I was bad at business. Much to the chagrin of my father, I fought back all the time. The problem . . . I was good at fighting.”
“Most people would fight back, I think,” Erik said.
“Perhaps,” Marcus replied, “but I was so good at it, a nobleman from West Kilish noticed me. He had actually come to run my father off his lands. I beat his men—killed one of them. When he saw me beat a half dozen of his men, Lord Reyloz offered me something I wish to this day I had turned down.”
“What did he offer you?” Befel asked.
“Gold,” Marcus replied. “He offered me gold and women and a lavish life if I agreed to fight for him.”
“I don’t understand,” Erik said. “He wanted you to fight as one of his personal guards?”
“Oh no,” Marcus replied shaking his head. “As a prizefighter, in the fighting pits.”
“What are those?” Erik asked.
“Men—rich men—will come from all over to watch two other men fight,” Marcus explained. “They will pay money, bet on which one will win, bet on which one will die. Many men bet on me. I made Reyloz a lot of money. I made myself a lot of money.”
“And you killed many men?” Befel asked, seemingly not sure if he should be in awe or scared.
Marcus nodded slowly. “Aye. Many men.”
“And yet, here you are, leading this caravan that seems all but the typical gypsy caravan,” Erik said, clearly puzzled himself. “You simply decided to change?”
“Not so simple,” Marcus said and then fell silent.
Chapter 14
EVENTUALLY, MARCUS PRODUCED A LARGE, clay jar and drank from it. He handed it to Erik, and the young man smelled it. It stung his nose and churned his stomach, but out of respect, he took a small sip. That simple swallow seemed to burn away his throat, and Erik coughed hard.
“Brandy,” Erik croaked, handing the jar to Befel. “Strong brandy. Stronger than Uncle Brent’s.”
Befel too took a drink and still grimaced despite managing not to cough.
“Why not simple?” he asked, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth as he passed the jar back to Marcus.
“I made more money and then decided I wanted to leave the employment of Reyloz.”
“He just let you leave?” Erik asked, “After making him all that money?”
“No,” Marcus replied, “but eventually, he let me go—when he realized his life depended on it. I began lending money to poor farmers, pimping street girls, and selling urchin street boys into slavery. I became a king in Goldum.”
As Erik watched, the large man spoke, and he noticed a glimmer at the corner of the gypsy’s eye, a tear perhaps. Other men—even himself—speaking of gold and women and being a king, would have smiled and laughed and relished such a thing.
But he only feels remorse, Erik thought. There is no memory of pleasure.
“I became even wealthier,” Marcus said. “But wealth is no good to a dead man, and many wanted me dead.”
“What did you do?” Erik asked.
“I left Goldum,” Marcus replied. “I went to Amentus.”
“The Golden City?” Befel asked. “Was it there that you stopped your life of crime?”
Marcus shook his head. “No, my friend. It was there that I truly saw the most gold coin fall into my coffers. Even the Golden City has a dark underbelly since, where things are illegal, they are more valuable. I did many of the same things I had done in Goldum, but eventually, I was arrested. In the dungeons of Amentus, I experienced true horror.”
Marcus paused to drink, but in his reverie, he never thought to share the jug.
“For two years, I suffered daily beatings, rape, and starvation, but eventually I was released. But now I was poor again, nothing to my name but the rags that barely covered my ass.”
“What did you do?” Erik asked.
“At first, I went home,” Marcus replied, “and with my father’s blessing—once I was strong and healthy again—I took a wife, and I planned to take two of his wagons and do what most gypsies do, go from town to town, entertaining and cheating people out of their money.
“That is when you met Nadya?” Erik asked.
“No,” Marcus replied. “My first wife, Silora. We had two children—a boy and a girl.”
Marcus stopped. Erik could now undoubtedly see tears falling from the man’s eyes. He took a hearty draught of his brandy. The tears collected in the man’s black beard, and the wetness shimmered in their campfire’s light. Erik thought he could see Marcus’ lips moving. He thought he heard him speak names, names he was unfamiliar with, but names nonetheless.
Perhaps they are the names of his wife, his children, Erik thought.
“They killed them,” Marcus said softly.
“Who?” Befel asked.
“My wife and my precious boy and girl,” Marcus continued. “They killed them. Men not even worth the dirt on their little feet. They took them from me. They burned my wagons. They slaughtered my horses and sheep and pigs.”
“Who killed them?” Befel asked again.
Marcus shrugged. “I don’t know. The militia of some town I had crossed. The guards of a lord I had cheated. Only the Creator knows. And when I went back to my father, I found he and my mother dead and the small steading I grew up in burned and destroyed. I sat where my father’s home had been for three days, cursing fate and the world and anyone in it. I sat there with no food, no sleep, and I meant to sit there until I died. What good was it to live with nothing? But one morning, the dizziness of thirst and hunger filling my head, I heard the call of a donkey in the distance, and beyond the still smoking timber of my father’s village, I saw a man on a small horse leading a donkey. He was an older man, plump and short with a gray beard and a head mostly bald. He had a kind face and wore only a gray robe tied with a bit of chord. He didn’t even wear sandals.”
“He sat with me for three days, never asking my name and never asking why I sat. He just stayed beside me, handing me bits of bread when I would take them, and a bowl of fresh water when I seemed thirsty. Then suddenly, at sunrise on the fourth day, sitting there, he told me he could see pain on my face.
“He told me that he did not know why I sat there so troubled, but he told me this was not the end. He said there were others like me, with pasts that they would rather forget, and that the Creator had a purpose for me. He told me that I was to gather others and, instead of going from town to town lying, stealing, and cheating, we were to spread a message of hope through our song and dance, through our stories. We were to offer a message of greater purpose beyond this life, of greater glory or riches than we thought we could ever achieve.
“I suggested that this would only allow fate to steal from me again, but he argued that fate was a fool’s explanation for the unknown. He said that we choose our own paths, and there are consequences for those choices but, if we listen, the Creator does have a plan for us.”
Marcus drank again, and now seeming less lost in his memories, he smiled at the boys and passed over the jug.
“So yes, he has a plan for me. I never found out that man’s name, and after I finally slept that night, in the morning, he was gone. As soon as I said my final goodbyes, I did what he told me. I found others like me who had grown tired of hurting and cheating. When enough of us had gathered, we formed a caravan, and we do exactly what that man said to do. We go from city to city and town to town. We sing our songs, sell our goods, and put on plays. We make an honest living and try to spread a message of hope, hope beyond this life.”
Erik looked down for a moment, and that’s when he saw it—sitting across Marcus’ lap—a giant, curved sword, sharpened on one side, with a large, golden handle and a guard meant to cover the man’s hand as he held the weapon.
“Spreading a message of hope with a sword like that?” Befel accused, having seen it too.
Erik gave his brother a hard look, but Marcus only chuckled.
“Not everyone wants to hear a message of hope,” Marcus replied. “Certainly, many do not want to hear a message of hope from gypsies.”
“So you fight them?” Befel asked. “You fight them if they won’t listen to you?”
“Oh no,” replied Marcus and shook his head with a laugh. “My fighting days are done, although this falchion—a gift from a man in Tyr—surely harkens to those lost days. But I must protect my family. Sometimes, people are very insistent on us leaving their lands or cities.”
“If we speak of the same Creator,” Erik said, “my father always spoke of him as a god of peace. Fighting and war are sin.”
Marcus nodded.
“Aye, there is truth to that,” he replied. “But do you believe the Creator wishes you to just stand by while other men beat your children, rape your wife, steal your possessions, and kill your friends?”
Erik paused a moment.
“I don’t know,” he finally replied. “I guess I never thought of that.”
“It is wrong to pick a fight, to go out and seek violence,” Marcus said and then patted his great sword, one that looked like it could cut down one of the Blue Forest’s great oaks or elms better than any woodman’s ax. “But when a man comes looking to hurt your family, the lesson they receive may be a very hard one.
“I may be wrong—and if I am, I pray the Creator forgive me—but I believe my past has equipped me with the ability to protect those who are weak and less fortunate. And I will continue to do so, with great fervor until my last breath.”
Erik saw Befel sit back, a satisfied grin on his face.
“Well,” Marcus said with a clap on Erik’s shoulder, “I would encourage you to go to bed, but I will sit here with you as long as you are awake and watch the mysteries of the Blue Forest on a Demon’s Night.”
Chapter 15
THE CANDLE GLOWED DIMLY, THE only light in the windowless room save for the single torch hanging on a rusted, iron sconce next to the door. The flickering firelight cast shadows along the stone walls like specters coming in and out of sight. The smell of smoke from both fire and pipe permeated the air and thickened it with the same haze one might find on an early winter morning after a heavy rain.
The heavy oak door opened, and the four men sitting around the simple square table rose, wooden chair legs scratching against the stone floor. The light from two more torches flooded into the room, and then disappeared when the door shut. Facing the doorway, each man touched his right fist to his left breast, and steel touching steel signified their guest did the same.
A gauntleted hand rose through the shadows, signaling the four men to retake their seats. Despite an empty chair, the visitor stood, his white tabard and rank—four gold cords and four golden suns sewn across the right shoulder of his outer garment—almost hidden by the room’s darkness.
“Perhaps we could spare a bit more light, Amado.” A hard voice. Not mean or cruel, just toughened over time.
“Yes sir, of course.”
A man with short-cropped hair, so dark it proved barely visible in the shadowy room, stood from his chair and grabbed the lone candle. He put the flame to another torch hanging on the wall opposite the door, and the pitch caught immediately and flared up, chasing some of the shadows away.
Amado, a younger man in his early twenties, blinked rapidly in the new light and looked to his superior.
“Thank you, Amado,” the older fellow said, and Amado gave him a quick bow. The visitor, Darius, with neat gray hair and a stern, clean-shaven jaw looked around, the brighter light gleaming faintly off the mail of steel plates on his arms and the helmet tucked neatly under his left arm.
He made eye contact with the four men, nodding slightly to each of them. They returned the favor with a smile. He remained standing but placed his helmet in front of him, the plume of white horse’s hair spilling over the pointed visor like a waterfall onto the table.
Darius gave a half smile. His face, the perfect mix of loyalty and humility that comes from the true soldier, told a tale of sacrifice and se
rvice. The weight of his stare, his blue-gray eyes the color of cold iron, might have been enough to break a man, but these four knew Darius well enough. They knew he commanded with a just hand and an even mind, and they knew that those eyes were filled with anticipation.
“What news?” Darius asked.
“The messenger will be in Finlo by the end of the month,” a taller man replied. With narrow shoulders and a crane’s neck, he stood before he spoke and, afterward, bowed. His clothing of dark, woolen robes did not reveal him as a soldier—none of the four men in the room wore more than a dark cloak, trousers, and a simple cotton shirt—but all four were commanders in their own right, even young Amado.
“Is the messenger traveling to Finlo so odd?” Darius asked as he smoothed a wrinkle in his white tabard. He picked at a stray string on one of the gold cords sewn across his right shoulder.
“Several hundred fools a month spill into that city,” he went on, “wishing to sail east to Golgolithul and fight for the Lord of the East. Is it so strange that his seneschal would visit and make sure things run smoothly?”
“Yes, Lord Marshal, I think it is odd,” the taller, skinny man replied, rubbing his pointy, cleft chin nervously.
“And why is that, Callis?” the General Lord Marshal Darius asked.
“The Lord of the East cares nothing for these young men migrating to his country,” Callis replied with a hint of disgust in his voice. “Certainly not enough to send his steward to the other end of Háthgolthane. The minute these young men step off their ships or step foot through the gates of Fen-Stévock, he slaps them in a leather jerkin, gives them a broken shield and a rusty sword, and sends them across The Giant’s Vein without a minute of training.”
“You disapprove?” Darius asked, his mouth turning into a tiny smirk.
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