Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (20 page)

    
Of those fourteen teamsters, six had survived.  We were a day out of Volka.  Krell felt that he could handle the extra wagon.  I could ride point into the city.  We buried our dead in shallow graves and beheaded our enemies, posting the sick trophies on poles cut from saplings as a warning both to other merchants and to other raiders.  Volkhydro had a way of taking care of itself.

    
It had been a teamster’s idea, but I didn’t argue.

    
We dragged ourselves into Volka just before the sunset, reporting the attack to the city watch.  To my surprise, they seemed genuinely concerned and sent out a patrol as they questioned us.  I must have told the story of the fight to the watch captain and his lieutenants four times before they were satisfied.

    
The lead teamster and Krell had already found lodging and I slept like a log.  The next morning we were up with the sun and had sold half of our wares before noontime.  From what I could tell, the head teamster was a shrewd negotiator and got an exorbitantly high price for Bawser’s wares.  He sold Tareen’s beer as well, although no one from that company had been left alive.

    
Tareen, you dumb, pompous bastard
, I thought.  I could imagine what had happened.  He hadn’t taken his watch seriously and they had gotten behind him.  Tareen never doubted that the world waited for him and that he had nothing to fear.  A thought like that in a place like this was a death sentence, I knew now.  His sister would have another cross to bear.  If I went back I could stand to inherit two companies, but it wasn’t an option.

    
I rode the cobbled streets of Volka to get a feel for the new city.  It reminded me of what Boston must have been like before engines and skyscrapers.  They had a busy wharf with ships pulling in and out, surrounded by a crowded warehouse district and multiple trade houses, many of which dwarfed Bawser’s.  Some were huge, with wagons running in and out of their gates and walls of stone surrounding them.  Others were no more than a hole in the wall, crowded into an alley.

    
Past this, row after row of small ships bobbed on the docks.  Smiths, tanners, handlers, restaurants, bars, jewelers, carpenters and cobblers – just as in any other city I could imagine.  Merchants and traders walked among porters and street sweepers, past beggars and the rich in carriages.  Men and women supporting themselves as best they could.

    
It seemed to me that the city had a friendly character.  People smiled and laughed, they dealt fairly with me when I got my equipment seen to and bought some supplies.  Men dressed as often in furs as in cloth, even though it was still hot out.  I uncommonly saw men bare-chested in fur breeches, and the women seemed to go in for low-cut cotton blouses with frills and long skirts of various colors.  I couldn’t help but look down a few ample bosoms, smiling when they caught me, which was most of the time.  In the taverns and the market places I saw more women like Elle, quick with a comment and only slightly slower to hit their men.  The men were rougher and the women rowdier, most likely to be able to handle them.  I also saw that many people here had dogs, though more along the size of a wolfhound or mastiff than a spaniel or terrier.

    
But it is funny what you miss in the morning.  I still missed the coffee.  Why do you forsake me, Juan Valdez?  Or toilet paper – replaced as in the Arab world with the left hand.  Hold out a gold coin in the market square in your left palm and you will be hard pressed to get someone to take it, although just switch it to the right and you are fine.  No matter what I saw or went through I couldn’t bring myself to do that.  Usually I kept a stock of handkerchiefs and my water skin handy.

    
I had made my own toothbrush out of a horsehair eyebrow brush of Aileen’s.  She had found the idea of brushing my teeth
so
funny, although she liked it that my mouth didn’t stink.  I used soap made from fat burned with lye.  It toughens your skin but it leaves you clean.  I noticed in the cities that people regularly stank and I didn’t like that.  Also being unclean in a big city is what spread diseases like bubonic plague.  Fortunately, at my size no one gave me a hard time about being clean.

    
A high stone wall and parapet ringed Volka.  A murder hole stood before the front gate and catapults in the harbor along the breakwater.  I thought that surprising.  In ancient England, many cities had walls and gates around them, but the cost of their maintenance is tremendous and the benefit questionable.  Holding the wall was more difficult than mining underneath it or ramming a piece of it down.  Sieges turned walled cities into death traps and could last for years.

    
The sun would soon set at the end of the second day, and Krell and I had found a bar.  Another thing to miss: cold beer.  The local beer tasted more like a lager - stronger but warm and a lot less refreshing.  Seeing as they offered nothing else, I was getting used to it.

    
One thing had gnawed on me about the fight with the Confluni and, without Chennog to ask, I brought it to Krell.

    
“How did Chennog know that there were just a few raiders?” I asked him.

    
Krell laughed and took a pull from his beer.

    
“How many did you think there were?”

    
Why not be honest?  “Thirty, maybe more.  I was lost.”

    
Krell nodded.  “They circle to do that to you.  You keep hearing marching feet and you get it in your head that every pair is new.  Old raider trick.”

    
“Chennog seemed to know exactly how many there were, though.”

    
Krell nodded.  “I thought there were about seven.  Likely Chennog did, too.  One of them had a limp; another had a purse full of coins.  You just hope they are all circling and you count out how many pair of feet you hear until that one comes back around again.”

    
“And the one archer?”

    
Krell smiled and drank again.  He looked at me, a kind of gritty wisdom in his eyes now as he instructed me.

    
“All of the arrows came from the same direction.”

    
Now I nodded.  It seemed so simple now.  I could hear the jingling purse in my mind, and I could imagine that all of the arrows came from the same place. 

    
Right then the head teamster found us.  His job was to sell the wares that we had brought to his town.  Once there were no more security issues, he took charge of us.

    
“Bawser will be well pleased, lads,” he said.  The teamster had excited eyes and a light step. He couldn’t contain himself enough to sit with us.  “Tareen’s father, too, though maybe not so much so.”

    
Krell shrugged, and then lifted his beer mug.  “I think we can all agree to tell him that his son died well, with a sword in his hand, and that we owe him our lives.”

    
“Though almost the opposite is true,” said the teamster.

    
“Better he should have been hiding under a wagon,” I added, looking him in the eyes.

    
He bristled, but let it go.  “Done and done,” he said, and Krell and I drank.  “Bad enough a father should outlive his son.”

    
“Agreed,” Krell and I said in unison.

    
“Can you two be ready to return at first light?”

    
Krell nodded.  I sighed.

    
“What is it?” he asked.

 
   “I will not be returning,” I said, simply.  “I have business elsewhere.”

    
The teamster’s jaw dropped.  Krell looked at my profile, sitting next to me at the bar.  “Bawser will not like that.”

    
“I don’t think I will have to explain it to him,” I said.

    
“So, what do we tell him?  You know he won’t hold your pay for you.”

    
“I can be paid out of profits from the sale.”

    
The teamster shook his head.  “I have no authority to pay you, and most of the money was taken in note, Rancor, against Bawser’s debts here.  It would do no good for us to be sacked on the way back to Myr, especially when we are so many men light.”

    
“What about the money from the beer?”

    
They were quiet.  Krell looked at the teamster, who looked at Krell.  Finally he sighed and handed me a pouch.  It felt heavy as I took it.

    
“There, then,” he said.  “Though Tareen’s father will be no friend of yours for having robbed him.”

    
“Bawser can repay him out of my wages,” I said.

    
“I think that you were not paid
that
much,” Krell grumbled.

    
It occurred to me then that he had given me the entire profits from the beer wagon.  Seeing as they had sold the wagon itself and the horses too (we had no one to drive it) these were considerable.  I estimated that I had over two hundred gold coins there.

    
I could have split it with the two of them on the spot and helped them derive some story of how the beer shipment had been lost, but who knew if they would keep the deal?  I also wouldn’t be surprised if the teamster hadn’t kept some out of the sale himself.  I didn’t know the value of a vat of beer, but the vats themselves were huge.  Six draft horses and a wagon weren’t cheap.  Besides, there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t say that I had taken the money no matter
what
I did.

    
So, screw it.  Terok had lost his son, had his daughter deflowered, all for one man who had then stolen the profits from his beer wagon and then left without saying goodbye.  The profit part wouldn’t make him hate me any less.  I stood, nodded to the two of them, and walked out of the tavern to go get my horse.  I didn’t want to be too near the inn where the rest of the team stayed.  War didn’t bring me here to run for man of the year.

    
“Passage to Outpost IX fer you and that big colt, aye?” the toothless man asked me.  He looked about eighty, with thinning gray hair and permanent squint lines around his eyes.  More likely he was ten years older than me.  He stood at the brow, or gangplank, of a fat merchant ship.  The ship rode low in the water, obviously carrying a good trade in supplies to the Island of Trenbon.

    
“Yep,” I told him.

    
He looked me up and down, obviously put off by my armor.  Blizzard pawed the ground, his steel shoes grating on the cobblestone wharf.

    
You usually don’t see a wharf made of cobblestone; they are wood or packed earth with a heavy retention wall.  Debris from the sea and slops and such things as commonly come off of ships will slime the cobblestones and make them unsafe.  Wood will absorb these and dry; even though it deteriorates it is a lot safer.  Volka must spend lots of money and man-hours at night cleaning her wharves. They looked almost new.

    
He looked under Blizzard.  “Has he his sea legs?”

    
“I doubt it,” I said.  Why lie?

    
“I don’t want no stallion to kick hell out of my hold.  It is two days with fair winds to Outpost IX, an’ I can’t have him up on the poop, neither.  He’s a hazard to my other passengers and crew.”

    
“He’s a calm horse,” I lied.  I had never seen Blizzard pick a fight with another stallion, but he kicked, he bit and he made his presence known.  Blizzard might look at lesser horses with disdain, but he had no problem going after people.