Brayan's Gold (2 page)

Arlen watched the great square in front of the Messengers’ Guildhouse as men argued with merchants and stocked wagons. Mothers moved about with their chalked slates, witnessing and accounting the transactions. It was a place pulsing with life and activity, and Arlen loved it.

He glanced at the great clock over the Guildhouse doors, its hands telling the year, month, day, and hour, down to the minute. There was another great clock at the Guildhouse in every Free City, all of them set to the Tender’s Almanac, which gave the times of sunrise and sunset for the coming week that were chalked beneath the clock face. Messengers were taught to live by those clocks. Punctuality, or better yet early arrival, was a point of pride.

But Curk was always late. Patience had never been one of Arlen’s virtues, but now, with the open road beckoning, the wait seemed interminable. His heart thudded in his chest and his muscles knotted with excitement. It had been years since he last slept unprotected by warded walls, but he had not forgotten what it was like. Air had never tasted so good as it had on the open road, nor had he ever felt so alive. So free.

At last, there was a weary stomp of booted feet, and Arlen knew from the smell of ale that Curk had arrived before he even turned to the man.

Messenger Curk was clad in beaten armor of boiled leather, painted with reasonably fresh wards. Not as strong as Arlen’s fluted steel, but a good deal lighter and more flexible. His bald pate was ringed by long blond hair streaked with gray, which fell in greasy gnarls around a weathered face. His beard was thick and roughly cropped, matted like his hair. He had a dented shield strapped to his back and a worn spear in his hand.

Curk stopped to regard Arlen’s shining new armor and shield, and his eyes took a covetous gleam for an instant. He covered it with a derisive snort.

“Fancy suit for an apprentice.” He poked his spear into Arlen’s breastplate. “Most Messengers need to
earn
their armor, but not Master Cob’s apprentice, it seems.”

Arlen batted the speartip aside, but not before he heard it scratch the surface he had spent countless hours polishing. Memories came to him unbidden: the flame demon he struck from his mother’s back as a boy, and the long cold night they spent in the mud of an animal pen as the demons danced about testing the wards for a weakness. Of the night he had accidentally cut the arm from a fifteen foot tall rock demon, and the enmity it bore him to this day.

He balled a fist, putting it under Curk’s hooked nose. “What I done or not ent your business, Curk. Touch my armor again and the sun as my witness, you’ll be spitting teeth.”

Curk narrowed his eyes. He was bigger than Arlen, but Arlen was young and strong and sober. Perhaps that was why he stepped back after a moment and nodded an apology. Or perhaps it was because he was more afraid of losing the strong back of an apprentice Messenger when it came time to load and unload the carts.

“Din’t mean nothin’ by it,” Curk grumbled, “but you ent gonna be much of a Messenger if you’re afraid to get your armor scratched. Now lift your feet. Guildmaster wants to see us before we go. Sooner we get that done, sooner we can be on the road.”

Arlen forgot his irritation in an instant, following Curk into the Guildhouse. A clerk ushered them right into Guildmaster Malcum’s office, a large chamber cluttered with tables, maps, and slates. A former Messenger himself, the guildmaster had lost an eye and part of his face to the corelings, but he continued to Message for years after the injury. His hair was graying now, but he was still a powerfully built man, and not one to cross lightly. A wave of his pen could bring dawn or dusk to a Messenger’s career, or crush the fortune of a great house. The guildmaster was at his desk, signing what seemed an endless stack of forms.

“You’ll have to excuse me if I keep signing while we talk,” Malcum said. “If I stop even for an instant, the pile doubles in size. Have a seat. Drink?” he gestured to a crystal decanter on the edge of his desk. It was filled with an amber liquid, and there were glasses besides.

Curk’s eyes lit up. “Don’t mind if I do.” He poured a glass and threw it back, grimacing as he filled another near to the rim before taking his seat.

“Your trip to Duke’s Coal is postponed,” Malcum said. “I have a more pressing assignment for you.”

Curk looked down at the crystal glass in his hand, and his eyes narrowed. “Where to?”

“Count Brayan’s Gold,” Malcum said, his eyes still on the papers. Arlen’s heart leapt. Brayan’s Gold was the most remote mining town in the duchy. Ten nights’ travel from the city proper, it was the sole mine on the third mountain to the west, and higher up than any other.

“That’s Sandar’s run,” Curk protested.

Malcum blotted the ink on a form, turning it over onto a growing stack. His pen darted to dip in the inkwell. “It was, but Sandar fell off his ripping horse yesterday. Leg’s broke.”

“Corespawn it,” Curk muttered. He drank half his glass in one gulp and shook his head. “Send someone else. I’m too old to spend weeks on end freezing my arse off and gasping for breath in the thin air.”

“No one else is available on short notice,” Malcum said, continuing to sign and blot.

Curk shrugged. “Then Count Brayan will have to wait.”

“The count is offering one thousand gold suns for the job,” Malcum said.

Both Curk and Arlen gaped. A thousand suns was a fortune for any Message run.

“What’s the claw?” Curk asked suspiciously. “What do they need so badly it can’t wait?”

Malcum’s hands finally stopped moving, and he looked up. “Thundersticks. A cartload.”

Curk shook his head. “Ohhh, no!” He downed the rest of his glass and thumped it on the guildmaster’s desk.

Thundersticks
, Arlen thought, digesting the word. He had read of them in the Duke’s Library, though the books containing their exact composition had been forbidden. Unlike most other flamework, thundersticks could be set off by impact as well as spark, and in the mountains, an accidental blast could cause an avalanche even if the explosion itself didn’t kill.

“You want a rush job, carrying thundersticks?” Curk asked incredulously. “What’s the corespawned hurry?”

“Spring caravan came back with a message from Baron Talor reporting a new vein; one they need to blast into,” Malcum said. “Brayan’s had his Herb Gatherers working day and night making thundersticks ever since. Every day that vein goes uncracked, Brayan’s clerks tally up the gold he’s losing, and he gets the shakes.”

“So he sends a lone man up trails full of bandits who will do most anything to get their hands on a cartload of thundersticks.” Curk shook his head. “Blown to bits or robbed and left for the corelings. Hardly know which is worse.”

“Nonsense,” Malcum said. “Sandar made thunderstick runs all the time. No one will know what you’re carrying save us three and Brayan himself. Without guards, no one seeing you pass will think you’re carrying anything worth stealing.”

Curk’s grimace did not lessen. “Twelve hundred suns,” Malcum said. “You ever seen that much gold in one place, Curk? I’m tempted to squeeze into my old armor and do it myself.”

“I’ll be happy to sit at your desk and sign papers, you want one last run,” Curk said.

Malcum smiled, but it was the look of a man losing patience. “Fifteen, and not a copper light more. I know you need the money, Curk. Half the taverns in the city won’t serve you unless you’ve got coin in hand, and the other half will take your coin and say you owe a hundred more before they’ll tap a keg. You’d be a fool to refuse this job.”

“A fool, ay, but I’ll be alive,” Curk said. “There’s always good money in carrying thundersticks because sometimes carriers end up in pieces. I’m too old for demonshit like that.”

“Too old is right,” Malcum said, and Curk started in surprise. “How many message runs you got left in you, Curk? I’ve seen the way you rub your joints in bad weather. Think about it. Fifteen hundred suns in your accounts before you even leave the city. Keep away from the harlots and dice that empty Sandar’s purse, and you could retire on that. Drink yourself into oblivion.”

Curk growled, and Arlen thought the guildmaster might have pushed him too far, but Malcum had the look of a predator sensing the kill. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked a drawer in his desk, pulling out a leather purse that gave a heavy clink.

“Fifteen hundred in the bank,” he said, “plus fifty in gold to settle your accounts with whichever creditor is lingering by your horse today, looking to catch you before you leave.”

Curk groaned, but he took the purse.

They hitched their horses to Brayan’s cart, but in Messenger style, kept them saddled and packed in addition to the yoke. They might require speed if a wheel cracked close to dusk.

The cart looked like any other, but a hidden steel suspension absorbed the bumps and depressions of the road with nary a jostle to the passengers and cargo, keeping the volatile thundersticks steady. Arlen hung his head over the edge to look at the mechanics as they rode.

“Quit that,” Curk snapped. “Might as well wave a sign we’re carrying thundersticks.”

“Sorry,” Arlen said, straightening. “Just curious.”

Curk grunted. “Royals all ride around town in fancy carts suspended like this. Wouldn’t do for some well-bred Lady to ruffle her silk petticoats over a bump in the road, now would it?”

Arlen nodded and sat back, breathing deeply of the mountain air as he looked over the Milnese plain spread out far below. Even in his heavy armor, he felt lighter as the city walls receded into the distance behind them. Curk, however, grew increasingly agitated, casting suspicious eyes over everyone they passed and stroking the haft of his spear, lying in easy reach.

“There really bandits in these hills?” Arlen asked.

Curk shrugged. “Sometimes mine townies short on one thing or another get desperate, and
everyone
is short on thundersticks. Just one of the corespawned things can save a week’s labor, and costs more than townies see in a year. Word gets out what we’re carryin’, every miner in the mountains will be tempted to tie a cloth across his nose.”

“Good thing no one knows,” Arlen said, dropping a hand to his own spear.

But despite their sudden doubt, the first day passed without event. Arlen began to relax as they moved past the main roads miners used and headed into less traveled territory. When the sun began to droop low in the sky, they reached a common campsite, a ring of boulders painted with great wards encircling an area big enough to accommodate a caravan. They pulled up and unhitched the cart, hobbling the horses and checking the wards, clearing dirt and debris from the stones and touching up the paint where necessary.

After their wards were secure, Arlen went to one of the firepits and laid kindling. He pulled a match from the drybox in his belt pouch and flicked the white tip with his thumbnail, setting it alight with a pop.

Matches were expensive, but common enough in Miln and standard supply for Messengers. In Tibbet’s Brook where Arlen was raised, though, they had been rare and coveted, saved only for emergencies. Only Hog who owned the General Store—and half the Brook—could afford to light his pipe with matches. Arlen still got a little thrill every time he struck one.

He soon had a comfortable fire blazing, and pan fried some vegetables and sausage while Curk sat with his head propped against his saddle, pulling from a clay jug that smelled more like an Herb Gatherer’s disinfectant than anything fit for human consumption. By the time they had eaten it was full dark and the rising had begun.

Mist seeped from invisible pores in the ground, reeking and foul, slowly coalescing into harsh demonic form. There were no flame demons in the cold mountain heights, but wind demons materialized in plenty, as did
a few squat rock demons—no bigger than a large man, but weighing thrice as much, all of it corded muscle under thick slate armor. Their wide snouts held hundreds of teeth, bunched close like nails in a box. Wood demons stalked the night as well, taller than the rock demons at ten feet, but thinner, with barklike armor and branch-like arms.

The demons quickly caught sight of their campfire and shrieked in delight, launching themselves at the men and horses. Silver magic spiderwebbed through the air as the corelings reached the wards, throwing the force of the demons’ attack back at them and knocking more than a few to the ground.