Tivi's Dagger (16 page)

Until now, the snow-capped peaks had seemed
almost like proud and benevolent giants, receding as we pressed on
along the forest paths to reveal the awe-inspiring beauty of the
landscapes ahead. Now the mountains had become impossibly steep and
huddled together furtively on either side of us, shrouded in
darkened cloaks of rain as if they were whispering secretly among
themselves and conspiring to herd unwary travellers into the narrow
valley ahead. As the mists rolled down around us we found we could
not see further than the few trees that lined the path we stood
upon; the stream that followed by our side trickled idly between
fallen black boulders and broke to plunge away down from us over
dizzying drops.

Still the blue flowers bloomed where they
had seemingly no right to grow, clinging to the black shiny gravel
of the mountains’ faces with an admirable determination.

“
I remember this path,” Kari said as
we watched Kel heave Brin onto the donkey, which let out a bray of
protest. “The Pilgrim’s Rest that lies ahead is quite sumptuous in
comparison with what we’ve seen so far. My grandmother told me
something of the history of Khar Tam as we spent a couple of nights
there. It passed the time well, especially as it rained so hard
outside that I thought the whole path would surely be washed
away.”

I wiped sweat from my brow and felt
momentarily ashamed that I was so wont to complain, when an elderly
woman had taken the same route not a year before and apparently had
enjoyed every footstep. “What are these mysteries?” I asked, hoping
the answer would distract me from my aching legs and nibbling
worries of unwanted wedlock.

“
The Kings and Queens of Old Methar
resided there for more than a thousand-year,” he said as we began
to walk once more. “But even the last of them knew little of how
the city came to be. It was carved by ancient hands into the side
of the mountain itself. Even now, though it lies in ruins, it’s
truly an impressive sight.”

Kel was suddenly all ears, aroused from his
general weariness at the prospect of another history lesson.
“Carved, you say? Fascinating! It was some feat to remain a
functional city so far from the shore. Traders must have had a
difficult job to reach it.”

“
The un-named lands were not as they
are now,” Kari replied. “Before they broke away from us they were
known as Methar’s food bowl — the sprawling fertile plains which
sustained the city lying just beyond our destination, behind Thar
Mati itself. Until the theft of the Treaty which bound the lands as
one, the city had been impregnable. Before the Second Splintering,
it’s said that not one life was ever lost in Khar Tam’s
defense.”

“
Incredible,” Kel mused, as the first
drops of rain began to soak into my hair.

“
And the rain greets us once again,”
Kari said, and looked at me with a sunny grin. I smiled back,
imagining that a few days sheltering in the Pilgrim’s Rest with
Kari would not be the worst prospect in the world.

Chapter 4

The Pilgrim’s Rest was far from sumptuous
but it served well as a shelter. It was a sturdy structure on tall
stilts with bunk beds inside enough for six. The mattresses were
stiff and scratchy with straw poking through, and they smelt of
damp. There was a small table and a crude cupboard built into the
wall and barely enough room to walk more than eight paces. A box of
thick candles and kindling completed the meager furnishings,
resting on the cobwebbed floor under Brin’s bed.

The rain, which had begun as a shower of
plump drops hurled from the descending clouds, had become so heavy
that it now battered the roof and bounced high off the rocky ground
outside. Occasionally it was punctuated with gusts of wind so
strong they shook our little shelter almost to the foundations.
Outside, the donkey let out occasional miserable brays to remind us
of his objections to life in general, tethered as he was in a small
rickety stable underneath the cabin, which provided at least some
protection against the raging elements. Thankfully, whoever had
passed through before us had left some sacks of oats and hay which
were only slightly stale and which assuaged our guilt somewhat
about the poor creature’s accommodations.

Some rocks had been fashioned into a cooking
hearth near the stable; the wind ensured that any smoke blew away
quickly. With so little vegetation growing around us I had worried
about Kari’s ability to find food, but it became apparent that he’d
been saving the rice, pickles, and strips of dried fish for such an
eventuality. Even so, he was able to locate some more succulent
roots that were as tasty as their leaves were nondescript, and
against all odds, we ate well.

Much as I’d looked forward to an opportunity
to rest, the situation quickly became intolerable. Brin was barely
able to walk and spend most of the time lying glumly on his bed
with his ball-shaped ankle — now a dark kaleidoscope of grays,
purples and yellows — propped up on his precious box. He spoke
little, only forced into social contact on the occasions when Lana
crouched down on the floor beside him and whispered to him until
his face cracked into some resemblance of a smile.

“
I’ll wager you ten gold pieces that I
can make your brother laugh before this journey’s end,” she told me
before we retired on the first night, and I agreed to the deal
quickly, feeling certain my coin would be safe. At least such
endeavors would provide some semblance of sport for Lana while we
waited for the rain to cease. Confinement had never suited her and
she quickly became irritable after three days standing on her
tiptoes and staring out at the sky as if she could will the clouds
to disappear with the power of her mind. Only Kel didn’t seem to
mind the interruption of our pilgrimage, hunched over the table
with his back to my brother, filling his roll of blank parchment
with his neat looped writing.

Three thick oaken barrels sat beside the
entrance ladder to catch rainwater; it was certainly the one thing
we had no lack of. I was pleased at least to be able to shave, but
not so keen to do as Kari did and simply stand naked outside to
wash in the freezing rain that poured in an almost constant stream
from the cracked guttering on the roof.

“
These mountain people are crazy,”
murmured Lana, peering out of the window to catch a glimpse of our
guide in all his naked glory. “I would rather wear these same
clothes every day and reek for the rest of eternity than do what
he’s doing.”

I stood behind her and stared at Kari as he
turned his face to the rainclouds, hair plastered to his face. His
prick had shriveled somewhat in the cold but he was still a
magnificent sight, almost bursting with life as he wiggled and
laughed while Lana jammed her fingers into her mouth and emitted
some ear-splitting wolf-whistles. Kari grinned and rubbed a shard
of soap about his armpits and scrubbed his pale skin until it was
pink, before retreating out of sight to stand with the donkey in
the dryness of the stable where he’d presumably left his
clothes.

“
You should not be ogling him so,”
Brin muttered from his bed. “It’s indecent.”

Lana chuckled. “Why not? He’s a
gorgeous specimen of a man, Brindar, and he does not mind the
appreciation. And besides there’s precious little else to look at
in this dismal box. Perhaps if you were to remove
your
clothes, I would stare in
another direction.”

Brin scowled even harder and shifted in his
bed so he was facing the wall, thus signaling an end to his
participation in that particular conversation. I sighed with
momentary pleasure. My brother was ill used to interacting with
women and Lana’s casually flirtatious manner was not making his
transition into the real world any easier.

To ease the boredom, I helped Kari with the
cooking that night, which meant that I occasionally moved things
around as he chopped and hummed and stirred and told me of all his
favorite dishes. We snatched a couple of kisses now and then but
feared to do more. It was maddening to be so close and yet unable
to touch him as I wished. At night I lay on my mattress, wriggling
to get comfortable upon the straw that poked through the material
and into my back, thinking of our afternoon at the Vanishing Lake
until my balls began to ache.

Even the sound of Kel’s quill scratching
across the paper began to grate, until on the morning of our fourth
day I could stand the confinement no longer. As my companions
slept, I got up and grabbed the shovel that hung on the door and
pushed it open.

“
Where are
you
going?” Brin demanded, his voice groggy with
sleep.

“
I go to empty my arse, brother,” I
snapped. “Do you wish to accompany me to provide
instruction?”

“
You disgust me, Nedim,” he said, and
taking that to mean a “no”, I stomped outside and slid down the
ladder. Mud splashed around my boots and leathers but they were so
far gone by now that I didn’t care anymore. Then I looked around
and a huge smile broke across my face. The rain had finally stopped
and the clouds were thin and white once more. I was no expert in
the weather conditions of Methar but the heat of Lis was born into
my bones, and I could almost smell the sun’s efforts to reach
through to us.

Suddenly feeling a lot happier, I crept
around behind the solitary tree, dug a small hole, and relieved
myself in every possible way, culminating in a fast but satisfying
emptying of my balls. It was refreshing to feel the wind around my
nether regions and I was whistling to myself as I filled in the
hole when I found myself distracted by footsteps, and turned to see
the amused face of a blond-haired dwarf.

“
By the Gods!” I exclaimed, hand on
heart. “You startled me.”

“
Obviously,” he said, looking down at
my unlaced britches with a twitch of his luxurious moustaches.
Behind him on the path was a cart drawn by two dappled ponies which
whinnied and stomped their hooves on the stones. The contents of
the cart lay in sealed barrels and boxes lashed to the vehicle with
sturdy rope. Two other dwarves lay idly among the cargo, chewing
tobacco and staring at me from under floppy, wide-brimmed
hats.

They did not seem perturbed by the thought
of sharing the cabin with us and made themselves at home inside
pretty quickly. I tried to help clear away our belongings but it
was a vexing task and it was clear that there was not enough room
for us all unless we were to share bunks. Brin looked particularly
put-upon as he struggled to get his boot back on. “One more night,”
he muttered, clearly unhappy. But Lana was overjoyed to see the
dwarves and chattered brightly, naming all her dwarven friends in
the hope of finding a mutual acquaintance as we shuffled our
blankets around to make room for the cabin’s new occupants, who, it
transpired, had been trading beyond Methar’s borders in the
un-named lands.

That revelation brought a collective gasp
and we froze in our endeavors to gape at them, shocked.

“
The affairs of men mean nothing to
us,” said the one with the magnificent moustaches, who had
introduced himself somewhat reluctantly as Fiernot. He gestured to
the cart outside. “Nor do the affairs of dwarves matter to men. We
go where we please, for there is not a language in the world that a
bag of coin cannot speak.”

“
But what lies beyond Methar? What do
the lands look like?” Kel cried, almost frothing at the mouth with
excitement.

The dwarves looked at each other and
shrugged, and the two who had been lazing in the cart left us to go
about stabling the ponies, clearly uninterested in idle
chatter.

Fiernot removed his hat, revealing a shiny
pate, and gave a theatrical shrug. “They look like any other lands,
albeit a good deal flatter than this one. What does it matter? We
didn’t go there to sightsee. Some people near the border had
interesting things to sell and we traded with them, but ventured no
further, for the plains are scarred with the endless battles of
men. More importantly, there is not an ale to be had within a
hundred-mile of Thar Mati.”

“
But how did you get past the
outposts?” Kari asked.

“
See these feet?” Fiernot pointed at
his substantial boots which were almost worn through at the toes.
“Ah, young one, I jest. It’s a tedious job guarding an outpost and
one that’s enlivened greatly with a few bottles of
firewater.”

“
Tivi’s warriors would never accept a
bribe!” Kari exclaimed, incredulous. I smiled to myself as once
again the practice of life came up short against all the theory my
lover had learned from his studies. Sighing with pleasure, I took
in his wide eyes and animated features — all knowledge and
innocence at once, wrapped up in the most gorgeous of
packages.

Fiernot chuckled. “It must be a puzzle to
you, then, how the warlords are able to slip by the outposts. It’s
easily done if the guards are already unconscious, Tivi’s warriors
or no.”

“
Never mind that,” Lana cut in,
fishing in her pack for her purse. “I’ve a tobacco pouch that needs
filling, and some coin to spend. What have you got?”

Fiernot scratched the back of his head as
his moustaches sprang upwards, revealing crooked teeth stained an
unfetching shade of orange. “Now you’re talking!”

I managed to escape my brother’s watchful
gaze for a few moments to purchase a bottle of the firewater
Fiernot had spoken of, a rare and strong dwarven alcohol derived
from potato and flavored with spices and cinnamon. It was a small
act of rebellion, even though I doubted I’d have the chance to
drink any of it. But knowing it was in my pack made me feel a
little more in control of my life, as if I was an adult man once
more and not a supplicant pilgrim forced to do his brother’s
bidding.