The Water Road (17 page)

“All right,” Antrey said, turning
over his story in her mind. She had read nothing about it in Alban’s books, nor
had it ever been the subject of Grand Council debate. Emkar could very well be
telling the truth, but she was skeptical. “I have to take your word about all
this, you know. So how did you come to be here, then?”

“Garrisons assigned to the forts
along the Water Road usually spend between a year and fifteen months there,” he
explained. “My company was assigned to our fort for the full term, a year and a
half. After we had been there for fourteen months, nearly done with our
deployment, I started to have second thoughts about things I had seen. About
things I had done. I had trouble sleeping at night. I could not eat. Where I
was once eager to leave the fort and take an expedition, I had become lethargic
and lost my eagerness. My comrades were not suffering from the same malaise.
Their continued enthusiasm for the pointless fighting with the Neldathi escaped
me.

“Finally, on one expedition, we had
a running skirmish with a small group of Neldathi across the face of the
mountain. I was crouched behind a tree, reloading, when a Neldathi arrow
slammed into the trunk right next to me. Instinct took over and I threw myself
down on the ground. I buried by head in my hands and waited until I heard other
men in my company run past me in pursuit of the Neldathi who loosed that arrow.

“I should have gotten up,” he said with
a heavy sigh. “I know that. Should have rejoined my company. But I did not. I
could not move, could not get up out of the snow as it soaked through my
uniform. So long did I lay there. Time slipped away. The next thing I remember,
it was dark. At least it was to me. My sight had gone, along with my desire to
fight anyone. Not to mention my career and my purpose in life.”

Antrey waited for a moment, to make
sure the old man had finished. “You’ve been wandering in the mountains ever
since?” she asked.

He nodded. “It is my penance for
all the blood I shed while I could see.” He stopped, as if he was fighting back
something. Then he said, “You do not believe me, do you?”

Antrey wasn’t sure whether she
believed it or not. “I have no reason to think you would lie to me, Emkar. What
you say about what goes on here, in the mountains. The way,” she paused to try
and find a delicate way to put it, but decided she could not, “the way you
acted. It does make sense in light of what I have learned recently.” Next Antrey
told him her story, from how she came to be Alban’s assistant to his death and
her own exile.

When she had finished, Emkar said,
“That explains where you have been, Antrey. But what does it say about where
you are going? Or why you are here, sharing your fire with a crazy, old, blind
man perched on the side of a frozen Neldathi mountain?”

“I suppose it doesn’t,” Antrey
said. She had stopped her story before she got to the plan she had made before
she crossed the river.

“Then why are you here?” he asked in
an insistent pleading tone. “You must have a reason to have run this way rather
than some other when you left Tolenor.”

Before answering, Antrey wondered
about the wisdom of confiding in a stranger who, quite possibly, was mad. She
decided the truth would come out eventually. Might as well start seeding it and
see how it grows. “I want them to know?” she said.

“Who do you want to know what,
young lady?” he asked.

Antrey let out a sigh of frustration,
directed towards the world at large. “I want the Neldathi to know what has been
done to them. How the Triumvirate has used them for more than a century to
assuage their own fears. I want them to know that there is no reason for them
to kill each other anymore.”

Emkar started at her. At least that
was how it felt to Antrey when the old man turned his face from the fire
towards hers. “You are lying,” he said.

“I beg your pardon!” Antrey said.
“Who are you to say something like that, after the benefit of the doubt I’ve
extended to you?”

“My intent is not to insult,” he
said in a soothing tone. “I mean that you are lying to yourself, Antrey. What
you say is good and right and a perfectly noble explanation for what you are
doing. But it does not explain the root of your desire to do it. The passion
you have, which has driven you this far, comes from something not so noble.”

“Look, old man,” Antrey said. This
had gone on too long. She stood up and glowered at him, for all the good it
did. “I’ve told you why I am here. I’ve told you what I am doing. And I’ve been
perfectly honest with you. I want the Neldathi to know what was done to them.
Nothing more.”

“Ah,” he said, a smile creeping
across his face. “And this, what you are doing now. This anger that lurks
inside you. Is this how you felt before you took that pikti in your hands?
Before you bludgeoned a man to death who had only done kindness to you?”

Antrey was surprised he could read
her so well without seeing her body language. “Maybe,” she admitted. “So what
if it is?”

The old man stood up, pushing
himself to his feet with the aid of his cane. “Because that is your real
motivation. That is what has driven you here, to the side of a small stream in
the snow in these forsaken mountains. Honesty means being honest with yourself,
Antrey. Admit to yourself why you are here.”

“Fine,” Antrey said, after giving
it some thought. “Maybe it’s not enough just to make sure they know what’s been
done to them. Maybe I really want them to fight back. To stop fighting each
other and strike back against those who have wronged them for so long.”

“And what would you call that?” he
asked.

“Justice,” Antrey said without
hesitation. “I would call that justice.”

“This plan you uncovered, it was
secret, was it not?”

“Yes.”

“Therefore, no one in the
Triumvirate, at least beyond the highest reaches of its leadership, has any
idea that it exists, do they?”

“As far as I know,” Antrey said.
She knew where this was going.

“And the people who put the plan
into action are long dead, are they not?”

“Of course.”

He paused so that the timing of his
final question was just right. “Then from whom is the justice that you seek to
be extracted?”

Antrey did not answer him. She knew
there was no good answer.

Emkar continued, “What you propose is
to give this information you have to the Neldathi clans, use it as a
justification for unifying them, point them at the Water Road, and see what
happens. You want to light the match that will explode this land.”

“That’s possible,” Antrey said.
“But that isn’t how it must be. There will be time enough for dealing with the
details later.”

“Hmm, better start thinking about
it right now,” Emkar said, sitting back down next to the fire. “There is a fine
line between justice and vengeance, Antrey. No one will argue that justice
should be neglected, although there will be much disagreement about what
justice actually means. But vengeance is different. Vengeance feeds upon itself
and spreads beyond the ability of one person to contain it.”

“Is this more of you speaking from
experience, Emkar?” Antrey asked as she sat back down by the fire.

“It is, my dear,” he said, sighing.
“Learn from my mistakes and do not make them your own.”

“You’ll have to do better than
that,” Antrey said. She wanted something else to back this up.

“Remember what I told you earlier
about all those soldiers along the Water Road? About how they would go out
looking for fights? Ask yourself what would motivate them to keep fighting.
Remember, I am talking about reconnaissance missions. They are not supposed to
be fighting, but they do. Why would they keep marching into those mountains
looking for blood?”

“How would I know?”

“Vengeance,” he said, leaning
almost into the fire for emphasis. “They would go back time and time again to
avenge what had happened to them or their comrades on prior expeditions. Two
forces meet in battle. Perhaps one is victorious or perhaps neither is. It does
not matter. In every battle, large or small, there is something that one side
does to the other that offends a sense of honor. A soldier sees his best friend
killed in front of him, perhaps after already being wounded. Your opponent
fights using trickery and guile, rather than brute force. Whichever side is
wronged, they swear vengeance. Often, each side swears revenge against the
other. So there are further battles, more death, and more acts of cruelty.
Vengeance feeds itself. Do you not see, Antrey? That is the nature of the
beast.”

Antrey did not answer for a long
time, sitting there and letting Emkar’s words sink into her. In truth, she had
no answer. At least none that would satisfy her, much less her inquisitor.

After several silent minutes, the
old man rose slowly to his feet, grasping his cane. He brushed off with his
free hand the snow that had clung to his legs and began to walk away without a
word.

Antrey jumped up, dashed around the
fire, and took hold of his arm. “Where are you going? It’s the middle of the
night.”

He turned his head in the general
direction of her voice. “Night and day are both the same to me, my dear. One or
the other, it makes no difference.”

“At least it’s warmer during the
day,” Antrey said. “You can stay the night by the fire and keep warm. You can
leave in the morning.”

“Your offer is very kind, but I
must decline. My fate in this world is to wander, to never linger in one place
too long.”

“That’s insane,” Antrey said. No
point it being polite, right? “You must take some time to rest. We all do.”

“But I have rested,” he said with a
slight smile. “I rested more fully tonight, while we sat here and talked, than
I have in a very long time.” He reached over with his free hand and clapped her
on the shoulder. “What you are doing, Antrey Ranbren, is a good thing. The
Neldathi deserve to know what has been done to them. And the rest, what has been
done in their name. But do not let anger and a desire for revenge drive your
actions. Act with passion, but reflect and plan with reason and calm. These
people deserve what you can give them.”

“What is that?” she asked,
releasing her grip on his arm.

“Their future,” he said. He patted
her on the shoulder one more time and turned to leave.

Antrey watched him walk away from
her, back to the tree line from which he had emerged. But he was gone from
sight, enveloped by the black night, before he made it that far. She stood
there for a few moments, not knowing what to do. Part of her hoped he would
come back. It was nice to have company, even the company of an old man of
questionable sanity. When it became clear he would not return, Antrey walked
back to the fire, spread out her cloak on the snowy ground next to it, and lay
down. She slept better that night than any night since she left Tolenor.

Strefer’s head hurt all day. At first,
she thought it was just due to the hangover she had earned at the Broken Pikti
that still lingered over her. Slowly, however, the dull throb gave way to less
frequent, but sharper and more painful, jabs brought on by stress and
aggravation. At least she had finally found a story buried in her clippings
file that might have some legs. Trying to tie it all together, she spent the
day in the southeast part of the city, talking to people there about a nasty
gang war that might just reignite after a few fallow years.

Just as Strefer had made valuable
contacts with law enforcement, so too had she made contacts with the criminal
class. Not as many, and, perhaps, not as trusting. Given their occupation, that
wasn’t hard to understand. Still, it was just as important to get their take on
things as it was to get the official statement from the Sentinels about the
conflict. Today she had been able to connect several dots that would make the
final story flow much better.

Strefer’s apartment was across
town, in the northwest sector, about a dozen blocks from the Triumvirate
compound. When she rented it, after she first arrived in the city, she had no
idea what the various neighborhoods were like or what a reasonable rent for
such an apartment should be. As a result, she wound up with an apartment that
was small and cramped, tucked into the top floor of a three-story building in a
bad part of town. To add insult, she learned later that her landlord was
gouging her on the rent. Once she figured that out, she confronted him and let
him know she worked for a newspaper. His terms became more favorable and they
struck a much more equitable bargain. After a few years working, she could
afford someplace bigger, or at least in a better neighborhood. The hassle of
moving, combined with the misguided notion that she ought to live in the kind
of area she wrote about, conspired to keep her there, however.

By the time Strefer arrived at her
building, the sun had begun to set and the street was just barely lit by the
last light of the day. Once she stepped inside the foyer, however, it was
nearly dark, as the windows were not in the right position to benefit from the
late-afternoon sun. None of the lanterns had yet been lit. That was another way
her landlord tried to grind a few more coins out of the building. She thought
about seeking him out and complaining, but she was too tired for a
confrontation. As she waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim light, Strefer
decided that an anonymous letter to one of the local papers was in order. That
would light the fire, so to speak. Once she could see, Strefer began to climb
the stairs to her apartment.

The light was so dim by the time
Strefer reached the third floor that she could barely see. She took out her key
and aimed for the lock on her door, or rather where the lock should be, only to
have the door swing inward at the touch. It was already open. Just a crack, but
open nonetheless. Aside from Strefer herself, only the landlord had a key to
this door, but there was no evidence that he was anywhere about. It would be
just like him to come into Strefer’s apartment uninvited, although she thought
he would be better at covering his tracks.

She was certain that the door was locked
when she left in the morning. Absolutely sure of it. Locking the door was a
compulsion for Strefer, to the point that she occasionally locked herself out.
It was a result of covering Tolenor’s thriving street-crime industry. She put
her left hand on the door and swung it open slowly and silently. The light
inside her apartment was as bad as in the hallway, with just a few stray beams
of the evening sun coming through the windows. Strefer slipped her key back in
her pouch and stepped inside.

Only then did she notice the
torchlight. The apartment only had three rooms. The front door opened into a
small living room, which gave way to a smaller study. In the living room, to
the right from the door, was the passage leading into the bedroom. Strefer
could tell that in the dark because of a flickering dim light that shone out of
the room, dancing like it was given off by a flame. It was artificial light,
there was no mistake, as the bedroom was on the opposite wall from the windows.
It should be pitch dark. There was someone in there. Someone who had broken
into her apartment and was looking for something. Or for her.

She heard a sound coming from the
bedroom, like a rattling or shaking. Desperate to see what was going on, but
fearful of attracting attention, Strefer tiptoed slowly into the living room.
It had been trashed and torn apart. A chair was overturned, as was the small
sofa that had sat beside it. The long table at which Strefer sometimes wrote
her stories, which normally sat under the windows along the wall, was lying on
its side in the middle of the room.

More sounds were coming from her
bedroom. Voices this time, low, muffled, and agitated. Strefer could not make
out the words, but it was definitely a conversation between two people. At
least two. She continued to slide slowly into the room, making sure not to lose
sight of the front door and her only means of escape. Sidestepping the
overturned table and chair, Strefer made her way far enough into the room that
she could see around the corner and into the bedroom. Inside she saw two
figures, large and crouched over something in the middle of the floor. One of
them held a lantern over the other’s head, providing light for whatever they
were looking at. The flame danced inside the lantern, partially obscured by the
small, unkempt, opaque windows.

To Strefer it looked like they were
going through her papers, the records of her writing, which she kept in boxes
underneath the bed. There was nothing embarrassing or personal in them, but
they did contain all anyone would want to know about her career—where she
wrote, about what she had written, and who she had written about. Not to
mention her personal notes, which often included observations that did not find
their way into the published story.

There was so little light in the
living room that Strefer did not think to worry about blocking it. It only
occurred to her when the man holding the lantern turned suddenly and looked
directly at her. She had not made a sound, but had walked directly in front of
the windows that provided what little light was present in the apartment. The
man with the lantern punched the other in the shoulder. They looked at each
other briefly, then turned their attention to Strefer.

“Where is it, you bitch?” asked the
one that had been pawing through the pages. He stood up and leered at her.

Strefer began to back away from the
bedroom towards the front door. She could run, but in the dark she might slam
into something, or tumble down the stairs, and fall into their clutches. “Where
is what, jackass?” she said, although she was sure it was the red notebook.
Thankfully, it was in her pouch on her hip, where it had been since the day she
picked it up. “And why should I tell anything to two thugs who broke into my
home?” She hoped that so long as they were talking they wouldn’t make a move
towards her.

“You know damned well, you little
shit,” yelled the one with the lantern. “Where’s the book?”

It was small consolation to Strefer
that she was right. “I’m just a newspaper reporter, guys,” she said, taking a
small step backwards with every word. They followed, equally slowly. “I don’t
write books. Not yet, anyway.”

“Don’t play games with us, bitch,”
the other one said. “Just give us the book. That’s all we want. We don’t want
to hurt you.”

“But we will if we have to,” the
lantern holder helpfully said.

“Really, I think you’ve got the
wrong girl. Some bad information or something,” she said. She slipped her hand
back into her pouch and found the key to her front door. “I don’t have any idea
what you’re talking about, honest.”

“You know, maybe she’s right,” the
one without the lantern said. “But something about her just rubs me the wrong
way. Annoys me to no end. I don’t think we can just take her word for it, can
we?”

“Don’t think we can,” said the one
with the lantern, with a quick laugh.

The time for banter was over.
Strefer hoped her path was clear of any obstacles as she turned and sprinted
the four or five steps through the still-open front door. She made it to the
landing at the top of the stairs without incident. Her pursuers weren’t so
lucky, cursing as they tripped and stumbled over the debris they had strewn
about earlier. Sensing her best opportunity, Strefer pulled the door shut
behind her and locked it from the outside. It wouldn’t stop them, but it would
slow them down.

The stairway was now pitch black.
Rather than attempt to fly down the stairs and risk injury, she crept down the
stairs one at a time, but as quickly as she could. At the second-floor landing
she heard a loud thump from upstairs. Probably one of the goons slamming into
the door. Strefer gripped the railing and tried to move more quickly, her feet
slipping off the steps a couple of times before she reached the first floor.
She heard the door thrown open above her, followed by a cacophony of
unintelligible shouting.

She ran out into the street, where
there was now some light being cast by the gas lamps. There were a few other
people on the street, but none thought a woman running out of a building
warranted their attention. She looked left and then right, before running in
that direction, to the east. She needed protection. There was only one place
she could get it.

~~~~~

Strefer moved swiftly through the
streets, her escape aided by her intimate knowledge of their layout. She was
not running anymore, but walking briskly. Every few moments she cast a glance
over her shoulder to see if either of the two men in her apartment was
following her. Whatever daylight had lingered when she first came home was long
gone, replaced by the hazy glow of the gaslight and oil lamps along the street.
Identification was more difficult in that lighting. It was not worth it to
pause and really examine the faces of those who might be following her. She
kept up a brisk pace, slipping in among those on the street who moved with less
purpose.

After she had gone about a dozen
blocks in a zigzag pattern she hoped would confuse her pursuers, Strefer paused
for breath in a small public square about two blocks from the Triumvirate
compound. It was also on the edge of the part of the city that Rurek and his
underlings patrolled. It was another ten blocks to their headquarters, if she
took the direct route. She scanned the people in the square, some wandering
about, others sitting on hard wrought iron benches and enjoying the chill of
early evening. Strefer did not recognize any of the faces. She took a deep
breath and walked out of the square, towards the Sentinel headquarters.

Within minutes she could see the
headquarters, located in a building sitting on the corner of two main streets
like a great beast curled and waiting to strike. One last glance over her
shoulder convinced Strefer that she had escaped her pursuers, at least briefly.
She slowed her steps and tried to compose herself as she walked towards the
headquarters. Her heart threatened to pound through her chest, but she managed
to slow her breathing and at least appear calm. Inside she was a bundle of
nerves spiked by pure fright, urging her to keep running. But her mind told
them she needed someone to help her run, if she was to get very far. She took
one last deep breath and walked across the street.

The general public only ever saw a
small portion of the Sentinel headquarters. Two large doors on the corner of
the building opened into a small waiting room, bisected by a shoulder-high
counter. Behind the counter lay all manner of offices, meeting rooms, armories,
and holding cells. Unless one was under arrest, or the one doing the arresting,
the waiting room was as far into the building as one could get.

Strefer had been here many times
before, checking on arrest records and such. But when she walked through the
double doors this time, she noticed how similar the counter in the waiting room
was to the one in the clerk’s office in the Grand Council building. It was
small comfort to know she was physically capable of vaulting over it, although
she would not get very far once her feet hit the floor on the other side. At
least she would be apprehended by a friendly face.

A young Sentinel from the Guildlands,
Lehn, was standing on the other side of the counter, leaning over and examining
some paperwork. When the bell above the door rang, he looked up and smiled.
“Hi, Strefer,” he said, sounding genuinely pleased to see her.

“Hi, Lehn,” she said, walking over
to the counter, the bell above the door ringing again as the doors closed
behind her. She scanned the area behind the counter, trying to see if Rurek was
back there. Although several people walked through the hallway she could see,
he was not one of them. “Listen, is Rurek around?” she said as she got to the
counter. “I really need to talk with him.”

Lehn glanced over his shoulder,
then shook his head. “Not sure. I haven’t seen him around since my shift
started a couple of hours ago. He might be out on patrol. You know Rurek, he’s
not one to sit back in his office the whole shift,” he said with a slight
laugh.

Strefer nodded. She knew that was
true, but hoped tonight may be an exception to his regular pattern.