The Barrow (56 page)

As the activity in the yard in front of the King's Hall increased, so did the number of their party that emerged to observe and wonder at the growing size of their caravan. The two women were the last to appear, the hoods of their cloaks hiding their faces. Flanked by the Urweds and the squires, they were carefully helped into the coach. Leigh finally stirred then, and slipped his Book of Dooms out of his vestments, his fingers stroking the cards. He closed his eyes, and cut the cards twice, then tapped once on the top of the deck. He flipped the top card, held it up in front of his face, and opened his eyes. It showed the profile of a man in barbaric and mismatched armor, holding a sword upright in one hand and a bared dagger held behind his back in the other.
The Knave of Swords
, he thought.
The calling card of cutthroats and assassins.
He lowered the card in time to see Stjepan and Gilgwyr walk out of the great hall. Godewyn and his pack of ruffians were right behind them, festooned with weapons and carrying packs slung over their shoulders. Godewyn had a smug smirk on his face. Stjepan simply looked peeved. And Gilgwyr looked like he hadn't slept a wink either.

Leigh started to laugh quietly under his breath. “Ah,” he said out loud to himself. “I think we're finally all here . . .”

With Sirs Helgi and Holgar in tow, Arduin walked up to the men approaching the caravan and, ignoring Gilgwyr and Godewyn, he addressed Stjepan angrily. “Sir Helgi informed me that you had made arrangements for additional help. Am I to understand it correctly that
these
are the men that you have hired to help us on our journey?”

“They are, Lord Arduin,” said Stjepan. “This is—”

“Godewyn Red-Hand, at your service,” interrupted Godewyn, and he gave an exaggerated and ill-formed bow, as did several of his men.

Arduin ignored the big man and fixed angry eyes on Stjepan. “These men are common bandits,” he fumed.

Stjepan paused, a confused look on his face. “We're headed into the Bale Mole, my Lord, to dig into a dead man's barrow and rob it. Whom did you expect to help us?” he finally asked. Several of Godewyn's gang snickered at that.

Arduin looked as though he was about to strike Stjepan, and at the last second seemed to reconsider. He drew himself up and contemplated Stjepan coldly. “If any of them so much as sneezes in my sister's direction, I'll cut him in half,” he finally declared.

Arduin turned and walked back to the rest of his knights and the coach.

Godewyn looked at Stjepan and Gilgwyr and raised an eyebrow. “We haven't even started this little expedition and already I'm tired of you lot talking about me and my crew in front of us as though we ain't even fucking here,” he said. “And I think there's a part of this story that you lads neglected to spin when we were talking last night.”

Stjepan and Gilgwyr looked at each other. Stjepan cleared his throat, and indicated Arduin with a nod. “He and his sister are our patrons, and they're coming along to . . . protect their investment,” said Stjepan. Gilgwyr maintained a bland, blank look on his face.

Godewyn turned to watch Arduin mount his destrier, a toothy grin starting to spread across his face. “I've seen him fight in the tourneys, he and his brothers. That was years ago, but you don't forget quality. So you're taking a full-fledged champion knight of the High King's Court on a barrow run? And his sister?” Godewyn laughed heartily. “Oh, Black-Heart! And you told me there was no pleasure to be found on this trip!” He shook his head, chortling. “Fine with me. Some of the king's steel will be handy to have around, less bleeding for the rest of us to do. A treasure hunt like this takes a price in blood and flesh, and better theirs than ours.” He leaned in and stage-whispered to them. “And I'm sure we'll find a use for the Lady, too . . .”

Godewyn sauntered off laughing at the sky as his crew started loading their goods onto the wagons, while an exasperated Stjepan watched.

Leigh appeared at his elbow. “So we're . . . ready . . . now?” he asked, barely able to contain his laughter.

Before he could answer, Stjepan's attention was drawn to the coach; Malia had opened the window shutter on the door and she beckoned to him once he saw her. He nodded and walked over.

Stjepan looked in through a dark curtain. In the shadows of the coach, Annwyn sat with the hood of her cloak still settled over her head. She locked eyes with him, appearing fatigued and testy, but more bemused than angry.

“You spoke last night of my safety. So I will be
safe
on the road and into the hills, protected by this lot, protected by you, map reader?” she asked him softly.

“With that map upon you, my Lady, your life is in danger no matter where you are,” said Stjepan. “At least this way you will be rid of the map, once its purpose is fulfilled and Harvald's enchantment has no reason to linger.”

Annwyn looked at him for a long moment, her dead eyes unreadable.

“And what is the purpose of a map to the barrow of an evil wizard?” she finally asked.

Stjepan looked at her blankly for a few moments. He withdrew from the window, and reached in to close the curtain.

Azhararad.
Gladringer
. Those were not names that Godewyn had expected to hear when Gilgwyr and Black-Heart had gotten down to brass tacks. When he'd heard Gelber Woat calling out to him over the noise that the Countess was making that Gilgwyr of the Sleight of Hand in Therapoli was there looking for hard men for a trip into the Bale Mole, he hadn't figured it would be a barrow run. He'd figured that, like some he'd worked for, they needed protection while aiming for a secret meeting with strange folk from the mountains or the wild, wild west, as fit what he knew about Gilgwyr as a dealer in secrets and whispers; that would've been fine by him. Sometimes it was the eggs of the great Black Vultures up by Vulture Lake that a man might be after, prized by alchemists; for some, a chance to hunt for wyverns or wyrms and make their mark as hero-huntsmen; for others, a chance to sit on the great carved seat of what everyone called Geniché's Throne, looking out over the Vale of Barrows for a glimpse of the dead and the future.

But arguably those were for folks with a bit of imagination or ambition. For the average treasure hunter, it was a box of coin or some trinket rumored lost or buried up in the damned hills or the Wastes or the Vale, and of those artifacts there were countless options: the Horn of Palé Meffiré, that could summon ghostly knights from their graves; the three magic rings of Taran, ancient King of the Vale, that bound three of the four elements; the great black dragon-scale shield of Dyfyr, buried with him somewhere in the Vale, which no blade made by man could pierce or shatter. For other dreamers, it'd be one of the weapons of legend associated with the rough Danian west: the sword
Mhorismal
, the so-called Red Talon of the Wyvern King, a dark and barbarous blade that was said to drip poison, last seen in the Black Tower of Azharad;
Glimmerdras
, the sword of the Dragon King Petraeus of the Danias, last held by the traitor lord Brandeslas of Angharad and supposedly buried with him;
Bonebreaker
, the warhammer of King Cynan of Finleth, commander of the Daradjan forces that aided the Middle Kingdoms against Akkalion and the Empire at the Black Day Battle, lost in the Vale of Barrows by Rorik of Finleth in 1232. And on and on, up until the two at the top of the legend pile:
Gladringer
, the sword of the High Kings, forged by Gobelin to kill the Last Worm King; and
Ghavaurer
, the sword forged by Nymarga, the Devil Himself, and wielded by the Last Worm King until his last undying breath—the most cursed and evil thing made in the history of the Known World.

All of them were wild goose chases, as far as Godewyn was concerned, but smiling he took the coin and promises of the men who sought them, and smiling he led them up into the hills, and smiling he all too often picked their bodies clean when they ended up dead or dying through no fault of his own and despite all his best advice and efforts.
A fool gets what's coming to him
, Godewyn figured, and a lot of men were fools of one sort or another, particularly when they announced they knew some secret that had somehow escaped countless smarter men over the last thousand years. He'd been around, had Godewyn, not just into the bad places of the Bale Mole and the Wastes but up into the wild Highlands and the length and breadth of the Middle Kingdoms at least once or twice, and if he thought he knew anything it was how to know a man was a fool.

Godewyn had many ways to divide the world in his mind—
sharp
and
dull
;
eager cunt
and
closed cunt
;
strong
and
weak
;
lord
and
servant
and
free
;
dangerous
and
ignorable
—but above all else he'd always placed knowing who was a fool and who wasn't. Fools weren't usually dangerous on purpose; they tended to be dangerous by accident, all inadvertent-like. When he was young, he remembered being in a fortuneteller's shop with his mother, who had wanted a Reading for some reason or another. He remembered vividly the cards of the Book of Dooms that had been laid out on the table, and the image on the unnumbered Fool card had caught his eye and imagination in particular. The card had been decorated with gold leaf, with a band of writing in its ornamental borders that he could not read. But the image had stuck with him: a handsome young man wearing a jaunty coat and with a bag tied to the end of a stick and slung over his shoulder, the very picture of the casual, effortless world traveler, gazing up in joy at the bright sky . . . even as he was about to walk off a cliff. To be so intent on your destination and your dreams that you don't see the danger right in front of you; the idea had filled the young Godewyn with a kind of existential dread, and in the years since, he had seen its echo all too often in the mad and desperate faces that filled his end of the world.

He didn't care if a fool wanted to hire him; indeed, they were often easier to part from their coin than most. He just liked to identify the fools so he could minimize their danger to him and his crew. Godewyn liked to think he was a quick study, able to size up a man (or woman) in a glance or two. He liked to think it was what had kept him alive through some tough and hairy spots. Sitting in the back of a wagonload of supplies as their little caravan worked its way through faint trails north of the West King's Road and through the Scented Hills gave him plenty of time to observe his new companions. The knights were the easiest to read: brash, overconfident, born rulers and killers, masters of everything within arms' reach, typical of the Aurian specimens that he had encountered before in the east. The one called Helgi was the lead knight, and the ones named Holgar and Clodin both carried themselves like they'd one day take his place. The two brothers and the Theos and the squires were followers and crow fodder, as far as he was concerned. Godewyn hadn't lied when he said he remembered Lord Arduin from the Tournaments, even though it was a decade or more in the past; the future Baron of Araswell was born with a gift for swordplay, that was for sure, and now all that was left to figure out was whether he'd lost a step since Godewyn had last seen him fighting in the melee. A dark cloud hovered over him, but it occurred to Godewyn that a man like Arduin might not notice.

The two women piqued his interest, of course, but they were locked up nice and safe in the fancy coach and getting past all those knights was a high hurdle. That neither bothered nor offended Godewyn too much, he figured that on a trip like this there was plenty of time to figure out if they were the eager sort or the closed sort; indeed, he was already figuring closed, and unlike some men he didn't see much point in chasing after a closed cunt or trying to make it something it wasn't, so he was happy to save his energy and spend it elsewhere until opportunity to revisit availed itself. He still wasn't sure what the magician's name was, no one seemed to like to talk about or even to him; but the magician was obviously insane and obviously dangerous, so he went pretty quickly to the top of Godewyn's
Do Not Trust and Kill As Soon As Possible
list and, having been so quickly and safely defined, was promptly forgotten.

That left Gilgwyr, Black-Heart, and the young Erim for him to figure out.

Being a new (at least, to Godewyn) companion to the other two known individuals, Erim was the most interesting to him; the youth was cagey and guarded, a wall around him to prevent anyone from getting too close. He seemed confident on his horse and wore his weapons with practiced ease: a pair of point daggers and a cut-and-thrust rapier. A duelist and city fighter, then, and probably quick; he moved with an easy physical grace and seemed to watch everyone and everything with sharp, wary eyes under a furrowed brow.
Hard to surprise, unless you're on the inside of the wall
, Godewyn thought.
But then aren't we all.
Godewyn knew how to handle city fighters, they were always surprised at how fast he could move for a man of his size, but there was something about Erim he couldn't quite put a finger on, something that made him a bit uneasy that pushed Erim toward the top of the danger list. Maybe it was simply his proximity to Gilgwyr and Black-Heart, who were most definitely in the dangerous category. He hadn't figured either Gilgwyr, who he'd thought a sharp canny-too-canny operator in their previous dealings, or Black-Heart, who still made Godewyn nervous precisely because he
couldn't
figure out what his real game really was, as fools.