Exile's Return (4 page)

He had been told about the great desert to the northeast, commanded by a race called the Jeshandi, who were not like the nomads who tried to capture him. They were the Bentu, a people who had migrated from the south in Jojanna’s father’s time. Kaspar calculated that it must have been during the war which had ended with the defeat of the Emerald Queen’s army at Nightmare Ridge in the Western Realm of the Kingdom of the Isles. Olaskon intelligence had gathered as much information as they could when Kaspar’s father had been Duke, and some tidbits had been gleaned from agents working in both the Kingdom and Kesh, but what Kaspar had read left him certain that a large part of the story was never reported.

What he did know was that a woman known as the Emerald Queen had emerged somewhere to the far west of this continent of Novindus and had waged a war of conquest among the various city states, forging a vast army—which included, according to some reports, giant-sized serpent men—and had gathered a fleet for the sole purpose of invading the Kingdom of the Isles.

While no reason was forthcoming as to why this had happened, and while it defied all conventional military logic, it had still happened. Krondor had been reduced to mostly rubble and the rebuilding of the Western Realm was still underway nearly thirty years later.

Perhaps, thought Kaspar as he finished chopping wood, I’ll learn something more about it while I make my way across this land. He looked at the boy and said, “Don’t just stand there. Pick up some wood. I’m not going to carry it all.”

The boy grumbled good-naturedly as he carried as much as he could: a decent amount of kindling, and Kaspar carried as much as he was able. “I’d give a lot for a horse and wagon,” he said.

“Father took the horse when he…went away,” said Jorgen, huffing with exertion.

Kaspar had grasped the various terms for time and now realized that the boy’s father had left three weeks prior to his appearance at their farm. Bandamin had been taking a steer to the village, called Heslagnam, to sell to an innkeeper there. He was then going to purchase some supplies needed for the farm.

Jojanna and Jorgen had walked to the village when he was three days overdue, only to be told that no one had seen Bandamin. Somewhere between the farm and Heslagnam, the man, his wagon, and the steer had simply vanished.

Jojanna was reticent to speak on the subject, still hoping after almost two months that her husband might return. Kaspar judged it unlikely. This area had little that passed for law. In theory, there was a covenant among those who lived in the region, enforced at times by the nomads to the north, the Jeshandi, that no one troubled travelers or those who cared for them. The origin of this covenant was lost to history, but like so many other things even that had vanished like smoke in a wind when the Emerald Queen’s army had ravaged this land.

Kaspar deduced that this farm’s relative wealth, in cattle as well as crops, was the result of Bandamin’s father being one of the few able-bodied men who had evaded being enlisted into the Emerald Queen’s army at sword-point. Kaspar felt frustrated by the gaps in his knowledge, but he pieced together a picture of what had probably happened from things Jojanna had said.

Her father-in-law had managed to hide while many others were pressed into service for a battle on the other side of the mountains to the southwest—the Sumanu, she called them. He had benefited by finding strays from abandoned farms, as well as seed grain and vegetables. He had found a wagon and horses, and over a few months had come to this little dell and established his farm, which Bandamin had inherited.

Kaspar put the wood in the wood box behind the hut and started back across the meadow to fetch more. Looking at the tired boy, he said, “Why don’t you see if your mother needs your help?”

Jorgen nodded and ran off.

Kaspar stopped for a moment and watched the child vanish around the corner of the hut. He realized that he had given no thought to being a father. He had assumed the day would come when he would have to wed and breed an heir, but had never considered what actually being a father would mean. Until this moment. The boy missed his father terribly; Kaspar could see that. He wondered if Bandamin’s disappearance would ever be explained.

He set off to fetch more wood, admitting to himself that farm life was a great deal more arduous than he had ever imagined. Still, that was where the gods had placed them on the Wheel of Life, he considered; and even if he was back on the throne of Olasko, he couldn’t very well beggar the treasury buying horses and wagons for every farmer, could he? He chuckled at the absurdity of it all, and flexed his aching shoulders.

Kaspar looked up from his meal. “I must leave,” he said.

Jojanna nodded. “I expected that would happen soon.”

He was silent for a long moment, while Jorgen’s eyes went back and forth between them. Kaspar had been a fixture in their house for more than three months, and while at times the boy mocked him for his ignorance over the basics of farming, Kaspar had come to fill the void left by his father.

But Kaspar had more concerns than one boy from a distant land, despite having grown used to his company. He had learned all he could from them. He spoke the local language passingly well now, and he had come to understand as much about the customs and beliefs as Jojanna knew. There was no reason for him to stay and many reasons for him to leave. He had spent months moving only a few miles from where he had been deposited by the white-haired magician, and he still had half a world to travel across.

Jorgen said at last, “Where are you going?”

“Home.”

Jorgen seemed about to say something, then he fell quiet. Finally he asked, “What will we do?”

Jojanna replied, “What we always do.”

“You need a horse,” Kaspar said. “The summer wheat will be ready to harvest soon, and the corn is ready now. You need a horse to pull your wagon to market.”

She nodded.

“You will need to sell some cattle. How many?”

“Two should bring me a serviceable horse.”

Kaspar smiled. “One thing I do know is horses.” He neglected to mention that his expertise lay in the area of warhorses, hunters, and his sister’s sleek palfreys, not draft animals. Still, he could spot lameness, smell thrush in hooves, and gauge the temper of the animal, he supposed.

“We shall have to go to Mastaba.”

“Where is that?”

“Two, three days’ walk beyond Heslagnam. We can sell the cattle to a broker there; he may have a horse to trade,” she said flatly.

Kaspar was silent through the rest of the meal. He knew that Jojanna was fearful of being alone again. She had made no overtures toward Kaspar, and he was content to leave things as they were. He hadn’t been with a woman in months, and she was attractive enough in her rawboned fashion, but the confined quarters coupled with his concern for Jorgen had kept them apart.

Jojanna alternately hoped against hope to see her husband again, then mourned him as if he were dead. Kaspar knew that in a few more months she would accept him in Bandamin’s place permanently. That was another reason why he felt it was time to leave.

“Perhaps you can find a workman who might come here to help you?”

“Perhaps,” she said in a noncommittal tone.

Kaspar picked up his wooden plate and carried it to the wash bucket. From then until they went to their respective sleeping mats, there was silence.

Kaspar, Jojanna, and Jorgen
trudged along the old highway.

They walked at a steady pace, as they had for the previous two days. Kaspar had never realized how tedious it was to walk everywhere. He had lived his entire life using the horses, carriages, and fast ships at his disposal; in fact, the only time he had ever traveled by foot was during a hunt or when taking a stroll through a palace garden. Going more than a few miles by shank’s mare was not only fatiguing, it was boring.

He glanced back to see how Jorgen was doing. The boy walked behind the two plodding steers. He held a long stick and flicked the animals with it when they attempted to veer off to the side of the road to crop the plants—not that there was an abundance of fodder, but the contrary animals seemed intent on investigating every possible source unless they were constantly prodded.

Kaspar felt anxious to move along, yet resigned to the reality of his situation. He was on foot and alone, save for the company of Jojanna and her son, and without protection, sustenance, or experience of this hostile land. What little Jojanna had told him revealed that the area was still reeling from the ravages of the Emerald Queen’s army, even though it had been almost a generation since those terrible events.

The farms and villages had returned quickly, despite the absence of most of the men. Old men and women had eked out their livings until the young had matured enough to work, wed, and have more children.

The lack of civil order had lingered; an entire generation of sons had grown up without fathers, and many were orphans. Where once a string of city-states had controlled the outlying lands, now chaos ruled. Traditional conventions had been supplanted by the law of warlords and robber barons. Whoever ran the biggest gang became the local sheriff.

Jojanna’s family had survived because of their relative isolation. The local villagers knew the whereabouts of their farm, but few travelers had ever chanced upon it. It had only been through the lucky happenstance of Jorgen’s search for the lost birds that Kaspar’s life had been saved. He could easily have starved to death within a few hours’ walk of a bounty of food otherwise.

As they walked, Kaspar could see a mountain range rising to the west, while the land to the east fell away and turned brown in the distance, where it bordered a desert. Had he stayed a captive with the Bentu he would have become a slave; or if he had planned his escape badly, he’d most likely have died in the arid lands between those distant mountains and the range of hills along whose spine this old road ran.

He caught sight of a shimmering in the distance. “Is that a river?”

“Yes, it’s the Serpent River,” Jojanna said. “Beyond it lies the Hotlands.”

Kaspar asked, “Do you know where the City of the Serpent River lies?”

“Far to the south, on the Blue Sea.”

“So I need to go downriver,” Kaspar concluded.

“If that is where you wish to be, yes.”

“Where I wish to be is home,” said Kaspar with an edge of bitterness in his voice.

“Tell me about your home,” asked Jorgen.

Kaspar glanced over his shoulder and saw the boy grinning, but his irritation died quickly. To his surprise, he found himself fond of the boy. As ruler of Olasko, Kaspar knew he would eventually have to marry to produce a legitimate heir, but it had never occurred to him that he might actually like his children. For an idle moment he wondered if his father had liked him.

“Olasko is a seafaring nation,” said Kaspar. “Our capital city, Opardum, rests against great cliffs, with a defensible, yet busy harbor.” As he plodded along, he continued, “It’s on the eastern coast of a large—” he realized he didn’t know the word for continent in the local language, “—a large
place
called Triagia. So, from the citadel—” he glanced at them and saw that neither Jojanna or Jorgen looked puzzled by the Keshian word “—from the citadel, you can see spectacular sunrises over the sea.

“To the east are table lands and along the river are many farms, quite a few like your own…”

He passed the time telling them of his homeland, and at one point Jorgen asked, “What did you do? I mean, you’re not a farmer.”

Kaspar said, “I was a hunter,” a fact he had already shared with the boy, when he dressed out a slaughtered steer to hang in the summer house—as he thought of the underground cave with a door they used to store perishables. “And I was a soldier. I traveled.”

Jorgen asked, “What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?”

“Traveling.”

“Like this,” he said. “A lot of walking, or sailing on a ship, or riding a horse.”

“No,” said Jorgen, laughing. “I mean what were the places like?”

“Some like these Hotlands,” answered Kaspar, “but other places are cool and rainy all the time…” He told them of the nations around the Sea of Kingdoms, and talked of the more entertaining and colorful things he had seen. He kept them amused and distracted until they crested a rise and saw the village of Heslagnam.

Kaspar realized that he had expected something a bit more prosperous, and felt disappointed. The largest building in sight was obviously the inn, a two-story, somewhat ramshackle wooden building with an improbable lime-colored roof. A single chimney belched smoke and the establishment boasted a stable in the rear and a large stabling yard. There were two other buildings that appeared to be shops, but without signs to herald their merchandise. Kaspar was at a loss to know what one could or could not buy in the village of Heslagnam.

Jojanna instructed Jorgen to herd the two steers into the stable yard while she and Kaspar went inside.

Once through the door, Kaspar was even less impressed. The chimney and hearth had been fashioned from badly mortared stones and the ventilation was poor; as a result, the establishment was reeking with the odors of cooking, sweaty men, spilled ale and other liquids, moldy straw, and other less identifiable smells.

The inn was presently unoccupied, save for a large man carrying in a keg from somewhere at the rear of the building. He put it down and said, “Jojanna! I didn’t expect to see you for another week.”

“I’m selling two steers.”

“Two?” said the man, wiping his hands on a greasy apron. He was a thick-necked, broad-shouldered man with an enormous belly, and he walked with a rolling gait. He bore a handful of scars on his forearms, exposed by rolled-up sleeves, and Kaspar recognized him as a former soldier or mercenary. He could see that under the fat lay enough muscle to cause trouble.

He looked at Kaspar as he spoke to the woman. “I don’t even need one. I’ve got a quarter still hanging in the cold room and it’s aged pretty nice. I could maybe take one off your hands, stake it out in the back, then slaughter it next week, but not two.”

Jojanna said, “Sagrin, this is Kaspar. He’s been working at the farm for his keep, filling in for Bandamin.”

With an evil grin, the man said, “I expect he has.”

Kaspar let the insult slide. The innkeeper looked like a brawler and while Kaspar had no fear of any man, he also didn’t go out of his way to court trouble. He’d seen too many of his friends die needlessly in duels as a youngster to believe that there was any profit in borrowing trouble. Kaspar said, “If you can’t use the beef, we’ll try the next village…” He looked at Jojanna.

“That would be Mastaba.”

“Wait a minute,” said Sagrin. He rubbed his hand over his bearded chin. “I don’t have much by way of coin or trade goods. What do you have in mind?”

“Horses,” answered Kaspar. “Two.”

“Horses!” echoed Sagrin with a barking laugh. “Might as well be their weight in gold. Some Bentu slavers came through here a couple of months back and bought two of mine, then came back the next night and stole the other three.”

“Who else has horses to sell around here?” asked Kaspar.

Sagrin rubbed his chin as if thinking, then said, “Well, I’m certain you won’t find any up in Mastaba. Maybe downriver?”

Jojanna said, “You know that traveling downriver is dangerous even for armed men, Sagrin! You’re trying to scare us into making a better bargain for you!” She turned to Kaspar. “He’s probably lying about there being no horses in Mastaba.”

As she turned to leave, Sagrin’s hand shot out and he grabbed her arm. “Wait a minute, Jojanna! No one calls me a liar, not even you!”

Kaspar didn’t hesitate. He reached out, grabbed Sagrin’s hand, and pressed his thumb hard into a nerve below the other man’s thumb. A moment later he pushed the heavy man, and as Sagrin resisted the push, Kaspar grabbed his dirty tunic and pulled. Sagrin stumbled for a moment and then his old fighter’s reflexes came into play. Rather than landing hard, he rolled to the side and came up, ready to brawl.

Instead of attacking, Kaspar stepped away and said calmly, “I’ll have my sword in your throat before you can take a step.”

Sagrin saw a man standing confidently, his sword still at his side. He hesitated for a moment, then whatever fight he had left in him vanished. With a grin he said, “Sorry for my temper. It’s just that those were hard words.”

Jojanna rubbed at her arm where he had grabbed it. “Hard, maybe, Sagrin, but you’ve tried to get the better of Bandamin and me before.”

“That’s just trading,” said the stout innkeeper stepping forward, his hands held with palms outward. “But this time it’s the truth. Old Balyoo had the one extra mare, but the old girl’s spavined, and not even fit to foal, so he might have put her down already. Other than that, horses are harder to find around here than free ale.”

Kaspar said, “What about a mule?”

“You mean to ride a mule?” asked Sagrin.

“No, I want it to pull a wagon and a plow,” said Kaspar, looking at Jojanna.

“Kelpita has a mule he’d probably trade for the price of a steer,” said Sagrin. He motioned to the bar. “Why don’t you fix yourselves up with something to drink while I go ask him?”

Jojanna nodded as Jorgen entered the inn, and Sagrin left, tousling the boy’s hair as he passed. Jojanna went behind the bar and poured ales for herself and Kaspar, filling another cup with water for Jorgen.

Kaspar watched as they sat at a table, then joined them. “Can you trust him?”

“Most of the time,” she answered. “He’s tried to take advantage of us before, but as he said, it’s just bargaining.”

“Who’s Kelpita?”

“The merchant who owns that large building across the road. He trades down the river. He has wagons and mules.”

“Well, I don’t know much about mules, but in the army—” he paused “—the army I was with for a while, they used them instead of horses for the heavy hauling. I do know that they can be difficult.”

“I’ll make him work!” said Jorgen with youthful eagerness.

“How much will the steer bring?”

“What do you mean?” Jojanna looked at Kaspar as if she didn’t comprehend.

“I’ve never sold a steer before.” Kaspar realized that he had little idea about the cost of many items. As Duke he never paid for anything out of his own purse. The gold he carried was for wagering, brothels, or to reward good service. He had signed documents allocating the household budget for the entire citadel, but he had no idea what his housecarl paid to the local merchants for salt, or beef, or fruit. He didn’t know what food came as taxes from his own farms. He didn’t even know what a horse cost, unless it was one especially bred as a gift for one of his ladies or his own warhorse. Kaspar started to laugh.

“What?” asked Jojanna.

“There are many things I don’t know,” he said, leaving his meaning ambiguous. She looked at him pointedly and he elaborated. “In the army other people—quartermasters, commissaries, provisioners—made all our arrangements. I just showed up and the food was there. If I needed to ride, a horse was provided.”

“That must be nice,” she said, her manner showing that she didn’t believe him.

He considered what he did know about the prices of luxury items, and asked, “How much does a steer bring in silver or copper around here?”

Jorgen laughed. “He thinks we have coins!”

“Hush!” snapped his mother. “Go outside and find something useful to do, or at least play, but go outside.”

Grumbling, the boy left. Jojanna said, “We don’t see coins here often. There’s no one making them. And after the war—” he didn’t have to be told what war; all references to “the war” meant the Emerald Queen’s rampage “—there were many false coins, copper with silver painted on them, or lead covered in gold. Sagrin sees a few from time to time from travelers, so he has a touchstone and scales to tell the true from the false, but mostly we barter, or sometimes work for one another. Kelpita will list what he’s willing to exchange for the steer, then consider if it is worth a mule. He might want both steers in return.”

“No doubt he will,” said Kaspar. “But that’s negotiating, isn’t it?”

“He has what I want, and doesn’t have that much use for a steer. He can only eat one so fast.”

Kaspar laughed, and Jojanna smiled. “He’ll then trade it to Sagrin who will slaughter and dress it out, and Kelpita will be able to eat and drink here for a while at no cost, which will please him and vex his wife. She doesn’t like it when he drinks too much ale.”

Kaspar waited without making further comment. Again he was visited by the thought that Olaskon peasants must lead similar lives. In Olasko there would be merchants whose wives grew bitter when they drank too much ale, ex-soldiers who owned run-down inns, and little farm boys out looking for someone with whom to play. He sat back and reflected that it was impossible to know each and every one of them. He barely recognized half the household staff at the citadel, let alone knew their names. But even so, he should have been mindful of what kind of people looked to him for protection.

He was visited by an unexpected rush of sadness. How little care he had given. A torrent of images swept through his thoughts, much like the dreams he had experienced.

“What’s wrong?” asked Jojanna.

Kaspar looked at her sideways. “What?”

“You’ve gone all pale and your eyes are brimming with moisture. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said, his voice surprisingly hoarse. He swallowed hard, then said, “Just an unexpected old memory.”