Fires of Aggar (11 page)

“If you care to call frozen water and stone ‘land.’ That frostbitten, Fate cursed—”

“Temper, temper,” Brit tisked, twisting about to grin at Sparrow.

Gwyn laughed from her seat upon Nia.

“And just what is she chortling about?” Sparrow asked in feigned outrage.

Her partner shrugged elaborately, and in an overly casual manner turned back to her driving. Then abruptly Brit stiffened. “Gwyn’l — is Ty the one with the tattered ear?”

“Yes.”

Gwyn brought Nia forward as Brit nodded down the road. “She’s circling in kind of early, isn’t she?”

“She certainly is.” Nia jumped into an easy canter, and Gwyn went to meet her packmate.

Ty cast a quick glance up to Gwyn and the woman reined in to a halt. The sandwolf whined a soft note, ears back and eyes worried, but she trotted past the horse on towards the wagon. Her fretful demeanor urged Gwyn not to venture further down the road yet.

“We’ve got company coming,” Gwyn announced flatly as Brit came abreast of her. “Someone suspicious enough to worry about.”

“Our weaving hunters perhaps?” Brit prompted.

Gwyn shot a look at Ty to find that sneeze-like nod confirming Brit’s guess.

“So we stop and stand? Or keep moving?” Sparrow asked, more attentive to Gwyn than to the crossbow spring she was setting with hands and knee.

“Moving,” Brit answered quick. At Gwyn’s nod to continue, she suggested, “At least until we know what they want. But not you. After two days of sun, this road’s hard packed enough to make the prints vague — leastwise too vague to easily mark the time of their making. Take Nia and Ty and disappear for a bit. Leave us to the questions, if there are any. Just stay near enough to help, should we need it.”

There was sense in that, Gwyn saw. A Royal Marshal could often soothe tempers by her mere presence; she could also escalate tensions unwittingly with the mantle of her authority, if a stranger’s deeds smacked of illegality.

Sparrow sent her a grin, tucking the crossbow and an unsheathed sword into the lumps around her. Brit gave her a wink and saluted with the black coils of her flint-tipped whip. Gwyn chided herself; these two could take care of themselves. “Come on, Ty… ease back.”

The wagon pulled ahead as Nia turned her trot into a high stepping prance that would leave similar hoof prints without telling a tracker of her slowed pace. To anyone but a master of mentors, Gwyn knew there would be nothing unusual to the prints. She hoped it would suggest her horse had been inadvertently parallel to the wagon, but not necessarily accompanying it. To that end she was also careful to cut left into the woods to leave the wagon tracks undisturbed on the right. Ty followed, leaving even less of a trail behind.

Ril met them quickly, warning them of the arrival of the hunters, and Nia shifted into a quiet gait, barely bending a twig under hoof. The ruddy red and black of Nia’s hide blended with the honeywood trees as easily as did the gold and reds of Gwyn’s Marshal garb. The dull beige of the sandwolves melded into patches of stonemoss. The small band fairly disappeared into the dappled shadows altogether.

In the end, very little seemed to come of the encounter. Two of the riders appeared; Ty went scouting for the third. Gwyn hovered in the forest frustrated by the fact that the voices were too muted to hear well. Ty reappeared at Gwyn’s stirrup a split second before the third fellow appeared on a huge, brown gelding. It was disconcerting to see him coming down the road from behind. He greeted his partners, eyes shifting warily along Gwyn’s side of the woods, and even from her obscured vantage point, she realized he knew she and Nia were somewhere about.

Her body tensed, fingers toying with her sword’s hilt. He made some comment about the two bays on the lead rope behind the wagon, and Gwyn held her breath. Brit hadn’t missed his nervousness though. The older woman readily confirmed what he already knew, then seemed to embellish it with something or other and a wave at the forest. The trio laughed, made their farewells, and rode off towards Bratler’s Hoe.

Gwyn kept Nia to the trees for another full league and sent her packmates on after the strangers as a precaution. They’d all been sword carriers with fairly worn, but well-fitted clothing and gear. That in itself wasn’t unusual. The mustering out of the Ramains’ troops had begun earlier in the spring, and they easily could fit that sort of description. What was odd was the fact that they’d all been men — bearded men, in fact — and none of them had seemed attached to another. The personal space between their horses had seemed further apart than most, and certainly it had not hinted at any intimate familiarity. In a generation whose sword carriers had known so much of war, it was more typical to find comrades-in-arms staying together because they had become lovers, especially after leaving a company. It was so common in fact, that Gwyn found herself decidedly uneasy with their obvious deviance from the practice.

That, and they were bearded. An old custom it might be, but the Ramains’ men persisted in the style of clean shaven faces. It was an intentional attempt to foster trust, applauded by both the Royal Families and by the Council of Ten. A clean shaven face meant a man’s expressions of peaceful tidings were plainly visible for all to see. To break with the custom was doubly taboo for travelers, because they had so much contact with strangers.

In truth, this trio had been a strange lot.

The Amazon frowned, half-imagining an odd stench to their very scent. It was almost as if she were one of the sandwolves. She dismissed the illusion as fanciful, but the Fates’ corruptible presence was unmistakable. These men were not the simple travelers they alluded to be. Her copper eyes narrowed with stony resolve. She knew a predator when she met one, and she had no wish to become easy prey.

The Inn’s stable wasn’t very large, and it was very dimly lit. It got worse as twilight deepened, and Gwyn hurried to finish with the horses. After this afternoon’s encounter, none of the Sisters had wanted to leave the tending of their beasts to strangers, and Gwyn had offered to care for the wagon’s drays as well as her own three, knowing that Brit and Sparrow would be kept busy with customers demanding both news and goods. They were, after all, the first pair of merchants through from the northern areas since the Wars’ ending. Their popularity was also enhanced by the wares they had brought. Many of these folks had never seen a wagon out of Rotava and the far northwest; their parents had not yet been born when the last traders had come south with such goods.

Ril and Ty sulked near their human, moving in-and-out of the bays’ stalls and scaring the young stable hand brown with tremors as they became acquainted with things. They would be spending the night here, more as guardians of gear and wagon than as unwelcomed Inn guests. Neither of them relished being separated from Gwyn, but she would be with other Sisters so they had grudgingly agreed to remain below.

From the corner of her eye, Gwyn glimpsed upright movement in the court. She clapped the curry combs together, ostentatiously cleaning them for the sake of anyone watching, then picked up a pail and went to fetch the drays’ water. The excuse took her out to the center of the cobblestone court. She hooked the bucket to the pump head and saw a man where she’d expected to — near the corral beyond the barn’s side, where the burros and nags were over-nighting. It was a corner already sheltered in darkness, perfect for a watcher. But she was surprised by the flashing glint of glass coin and that tell-tale clink of money exchanging hands. She bent over her task, puzzled, but as she straightened to take the water back into the stables, she noted the two figures seemed oblivious of her. They moved, separating at the corral’s end. She ducked inside, found no sign of the stable hand and flattened herself against the wall to peer out again. The two figures were both returning to the commons, but one was going through the kitchens instead of the side door. As they each passed beneath the globe lantern, she saw more of their features. The bearded stranger she recognized as the rider of that big brown, the other was a local. Neither carried anything overtly. So what exactly had the bearded one been buying?

The commons held the welcoming, noisy bunch that Sparrow was accustomed to finding in taverns most anywhere. The smoke from pipes was thick, but the cubbyholes in the corners of the ceiling drew it upwards remarkably well. The scents of meats and soups were a bit odd, in an exotic way; most of the seasonings were fairly new to her. The clothing seemed vaguely unfamiliar, and she finally realized she wasn’t used to seeing such plain garb on town folk. Tunics here were almost universally made of undyed homespun. Loose jackets of oilcloth were favored over quilted jerkins or vests, but like the trousers, the colors were mostly made of red-browns or stonemoss grays.

It did explain why the few bolts of fabric which Brit had unfurled had sold so quickly. Doubtless their entire stock of material would have been bought out, if they’d wished it. She should have gotten that wedding lace in Gronday.

Her patrons across the table shifted on the bench, still murmuring to one another about the merits of the knives laid out before them. She politely hid a smile behind a cough as she saw them again speculating on this new technique of the resin-glass melt. Those knives were decidedly odd compared to the traditional, kiln-fired blackglass or the expensive steel bladed types. The melt had been created in the glassworks at Black Falls and expanded on a Changling trick for making flintless arrows. By adding blackpine resin to the sands in making the glass, a peculiar translucent-amber shaft could be formed. The edges were then tapered with clearer glass to allow a crystal sharp blade to be honed later. The results produced a resilient knife that could be dropped carelessly and not shatter, yet it cost less than a third of that rarer steel sort. It was also extremely lightweight, was flexible enough to strip along bones when skinning, and sturdy enough to carve hardwood.

Its only drawback that Sparrow could see was the funny oily feeling it had. But she’d found a little leather wrapped about a handle replaced that eerie sensation with a more familiar grip.

She idly smoothed a wrinkle from the corner of the gray shammy beneath her display. It was a small selection she was offering them, less than a dozen, but she had always believed in selling tools she trusted. If it wasn’t something she’d be comfortable using herself, Sparrow wasn’t about to ask another to buy it. Brit had seemed amused at first by her adamant assertions, and it had taken Sparrow nearly a tenmoon to recognize that Brit’s smile hid a tacit approval as well.

We really were matched by more than the Council, Sparrow thought for the thousandth-some time. Her gaze swept around to Brit’s place across the room. The soft smile on her lips went cold. The foursome surrounding that center table held no resemblance to the healers that had last been there. Without thinking, Sparrow reached to roll the knives into the shammy as the fellow nearest Brit — no, it was a woman; she was too short for a male — grabbed a fistful of fabric and hauled Brit to her feet.

“Wait a bit…,” the sturdy, young woman laid a hand across Sparrow’s. Startled, Sparrow jerked about, eyes wide and uncomprehending. “We are serious about buying, just—”

A quick smile leapt forth and Sparrow suggested, “Sleep on it, Min. We’re here for all of tomorrow.”

The brawny male next to the woman, a brother most likely given that square jawed resemblance, scowled at the dismissal. His sister elbowed his ribs to silence his protest, though, as she noted the anxiety in both Sparrow’s darkening skin tones and that searching glance to the far table. The woman nodded his attention to Brit’s cheerless party.

“Skinner’s daughter and boys,” he grunted.

Sparrow tucked the bundled knives into her vest. “You know those four?”

“Aye.” He obviously didn’t like them. His sister too was nodding in somber displeasure as he explained, “They’re not the kind to name friends.”

“Trouble wanting to happen,” the woman amended succinctly.

Concern doubled as Sparrow stood, but she hesitated. Few of the clamoring folk in the commons had noticed anything amiss, and Gwyn was still absent. Sparrow felt her toes tense impatiently even as she forced herself to stand still. This was not a place to force a confrontation. It was just late enough that sufficient ale had been downed to blur judgments, yet too little had been drunk to dull tempers. If she called their challenging bluff, there’d like as not be a brawl erupting. And a free-for-all wouldn’t spare Brit by much.

“Ruffians, the whole family,” the young man muttered behind her. “All of ’em want their fun at others’ cost.”

His sister snorted in disgust. “Bile sort of entertainment, if you ask me.”

“Entertainment?” Sparrow repeated in distraction. Then suddenly the solution came, and with a bound she mounted the table, shouting, “Entertainment?!”

The commons rumbled in bewildered surprise, and even the Skinner’s kin half-turned to her.

“Entertainment!” she cried, with arms flinging wide and the great hearth fire blazing behind her. “This fellow here asked me for entertainment! Anyone else I hear?”

A hearty roar and round of applause met her. She caught Brit’s eye as the bully released her; it was working. Sparrow turned slowly for the crowd, arms still held wide, her brows lifted high with an exaggerated expression that was half-questioning, half-expectant. The people encouraged her more then, banging on tables and whistling. The artful stance, the bright yellow-orange garb — her entire demeanor promised a troubadour’s style in any performance, and as in most small towns, they relished that scarce prize.

“A tale of comedy or woe? One of truth or perchance? I know!” The crowd hushed as she dropped to a crouch and spun on her toes, eyes sparkling and darting to each face about. “A little of each, with something to teach!”

Benches and chairs scraped, dozens of feet shuffling as patrons and help alike sought seats. Those that couldn’t find chairs took up places along the walls. The four around Brit were sullenly forced to move aside as it became apparent that everyone would soon be aware of their threatening intentions, and no one was going to be sympathetic to any of their insults if it interfered with a show. But they were slow in coming to this conclusion, and Brit who had dropped into her seat at the first sign of distraction was securely surrounded by other patrons, and so the four were left to find space elsewhere.