Episode 6: Direction

EPISODE 6: DIRECTION

 

                Tam leaned into Princess’s hip, allowing the crowd of pilgrims to push past the cart without losing his place next to the ox.  He scanned each of the travelers with a quick glance, looking for the broad shoulders and bald head or tall lanky frame that would alert him to pursuit.  None of these pilgrims, even from behind with hoods, looked like they might be Diggs or Carter, however, and Tam relaxed muscles that had been tight from the moment he noticed the thin trail of dust rising in above the road behind him.

                “Bloody pilgrims,” Master Barstere grunted.  Tam concealed a sigh and tried not to roll his eyes.  Every single band of Brothers of the Grim they had encountered had evoked an almost identical speech from the farmer.  Wandering from town to town, begging from the locals… Tam knew the words by heart now.  “Wandering from town to town,” Master Barstere continued, “begging from the locals…”

                Tam stopped listening.  He knew the words, but all it meant to him was that Barstere thought the pilgrims should quit walking all over the gods’ green earth and settle down to a respectable trade, like farming or mucking pig pens.  As if anybody wanted to commit the rest of his life standing ankle-deep in pig shit.  On purpose.  And something about the difficulties reconciling concentrated distribution with decentralized allocations of goods, particularly perishable produce.

                Whatever.

                What mattered to Tam was that every time they passed a knot of travelers, whether pilgrims or groups of farmers headed to the market fair at Riverhead, or returning with the results of their trading, Tam’s butthole clenched up until he’d had a chance to look over each of the walking men from the corner of his eye, and make sure they weren’t the men who were looking for him.  Each day he plodded alongside Princess, picking up the smell of her sweat and shit just from spending the day tapping her flanks and shoulder with a stick, never mind tending her at the end of the day, every day took him a little bit closer to the walls of Riverhead, and the river that could take him to freedom.

                Tam’s eyes tracked the road ahead of the farmers’ train of wagons, off to the sides of the hard-packed dirt road to the treeline, and around the back as far as he could without losing his stride before returning to the road ahead of him.  Nothing.  No sign of bandits in the woods, no sign of pursuit from behind, nor of attack from before.  Tam knew he was no experienced woodsman, to be able to tell the difference between a rabbit starting from a half-concealed bush from a highwayman laying in ambush, but none of the farmers had the faintest idea what sort of trouble Tam might have brought with him.  The trouble they did know about was bad enough. 

                As if the gnarled old farmer was reading Tam’s mind, Barstere hooked his head back towards the wagon and grunted something that was out of sync with the “Bloody Pilgrims” speech.  Tam started, focused his attention on what the old man had said.  “What?  Oh, yes, she’s much the better for the time off her feet, thank you.  She’s… The delicate type, you know?”

                “City girls,” Barstere grunted.  “No stamina for the real world…  No offence, boy, I had a niece who was the same way when it came to travel and… such.”  Barstere seemed uncomfortable with Winnow’s cover story.  Most of the farmers had.  It had made such sense at the time, and the men of the village council had swallowed the tale whole, but there had been unforeseen ramifications.  Winnow had sown the seeds almost on a whim, and the butcher’s wife had taken the story and practically run through the town with it.  The lad and his woman who just showed up in town, all dusty from the road and with no luggage?  SHE’S WITH CHILD!!!  It was the salacious sort of tale almost perfectly calculated to light a town like a bolt of lightning in a dry bush.  The goodwives of the village had been kindly and solicitous of Winnow, providing for her ‘needs’, and the goodmen had treated Tam to a bruising round of drinks in the pub. 

                The upshot of all this attention had been that while Tam walked alongside Princess, soaking in her sweat and nursing a hangover the size of Magistrate Higgins’ manor, Winnow rode in the back of Barstere’s wagon, nestled in a bed of hay and surrounded by tightly-sealed wooden casks.  Each night, when the two of them bedded down beneath the wagon, separated by a respectable distance, Tam reeked of ox shit and sweat, and Winnow smelled nicely of hay and Master Barstere’s finest cider and whiskey.  Tam kept his distance respectable enough that his stink wouldn’t impose too harshly upon Winnow’s nostrils, which hadn’t seemed to mind being near his natural stink when they were running for their lives from Sol’s bandit camp.  The only contact they seemed to have was each night when he helped her down from Barstere’s wagon at the end of the day, and when, lying concealed in the dark beneath the wagon, she reached out her hand and lightly touched his, drawing from him the pain in his feet and the soreness of his body.  It was a meager diet for one who had grown used to drawing the pain of torture and battle from bodies near death, but it sustained Winnow without the need for self-harm.  That would have raised all sorts of questions that Tam and Winnow together, with his bullshit and her calm control, could not have managed without raising more trouble than they settled. 

                Tam had attempted only one conversation with Winnow, on their first night, and it hadn’t gone well.  Apparently, Winnow had no interest in being introduced to the source of Tam’s stink.

                “Who names an ox ‘Princess?’” Tam had seen Winnow furious, tired, amused, scared and horny, but he had never, till now, seen her… Offended? 

                “I don’t know,” Tam had countered.  “Princess seems a particularly fine name for her.  She’s sweet tempered, noble, calm and steady.  She bears her burden with a steadfast pride, and never complains.  What’s not honorable, or princess-like in that?” 

                As if to answer Tam, Princess broke wind, and relieved herself.

                Winnow gave an eloquent sniff and returned to her place beneath the wagon.

                That night, it had rained.

 

*****

 

                Diggs glanced sideways at Carter. 

                Nothing.  Carter was still walking, staring straight ahead, the sun glinting off of the bald spot on the back of his head.

                Well, most of the top of his head, really. 

                But he was still just walking.

                Silently.

                In fact, Carter hadn’t said a word since last night, when they’d agreed to take shelter in a conveniently located inn rather than rough it in the rain. 

                Nothing. 

                It was as if the big guy didn’t want to talk or something.

                Diggs couldn’t take it anymore.

                “So I was carrying this message one time, for the King in Alexandria…” Diggs started in on the time he’d first met a gnome, just for something to pass the time. 

                “She was named Myrella.”  Carter’s voice was low, tense.  Diggs was so surprised he stopped talking.  “Grew up a few villages over from me.  I ran into a group of boys casting stones at her, chased them off.  I didn’t know…  At the time, I didn’t know what she was, who she was.  Just that she was in trouble, and nobody would help her.”  Diggs glanced sideways at Carter.  He was still striding along the road, still staring straight ahead.  So why did Diggs think Carter wasn’t seeing the backside of the mule train in front of them?  “It was a few weeks later, I finally figured it out.  She wasn’t as strong as… She wasn’t that strong, the most she could soak was a broken arm maybe, but it was enough.  She was a Darkblood, a Soak, whatever you want to call it.  She could live without pain, she wasn’t that bad off, but she was never happy unless she’d taken in your hurts.  It was… difficult, trying to balance what was her real love with the euphoria from her taking the pain.”

                It was the most Diggs had heard Carter say at one go in a long time.  He could hear the pain in his buddy’s voice, but he had to hear the rest of the story.  “What happened?  Raiders?  Another man? Were there badgers?”

                Carter stopped walking, and gave Diggs an exasperated look.  Good.  Exasperated was way better than wallowing in bad memories.  “No, there were no badgers.  No other men.  It was just… It’s hard to manage a relationship when the only way to save her is for her to hurt you.  It’s not just physical, did you know?  Anger, emotions, she could soak them all.”  Carter looked square at Diggs.  “A tormented soul is candy to a Soak, but it brings no joy.”

                For once, Diggs had nothing to say.

 

 

*****

                Sol sat at his rough-hewn wooden table in his overstuffed chair, and glared at his lieutenants.  Dixon, Bonn and Rushleigh each wore different degrees of shame and defiance on their faces.  Dixon, fingering his eyepatch, was all defiance, and Rushleigh, at the far end of the table with his head low, was almost all shame.  Bonn, across from Dixon and fiddling with a tankard of rot-gut brew one of his raiders had brought in, was somewhere in the middle, embarrassed, but defying all to cast the blame on him.  How to bring them all in, and light the path to his next plan?  They had to act quickly, and they had to act together, but there was no way he could go on without calling them all to account.  Rushleigh was already as far down as a man could get right now, and Dixon was riding high on the fact that it had been one of his raiders who had spotted the missing lad, and one of Rushleigh’s who had let him get away.  How to bring them all in?

                “Bonn,” Sol started, his voice perfectly level.  Don’t give any emotion away.  Your control is your strength.  “Where are we on finding Joss?” 

                “My trackers have signs that they think are his.  Looks like he headed across the river and into the deep woods.  We know he’s not much of a woodsman, and he wouldn’t have gone far in the night.  I’d reckon we’ll have him back in a couple days.”

                Sol fingered the hilt of his belt knife, a bad old habit of anger.  “Two days might be too long.  Three is unacceptable.  If you don’t have his body in the ground tomorrow, recall your trackers and return to camp.  Rushleigh.”

                The miserable man lifted his head and met Sol’s gaze.  Interesting.  Sol had expected red-rimmed eyes and tears, but Rushleigh looked more tired than anything else.  “Sir.”

                Sol cleared his throat, changing on the fly what he had been about to say.  “What do we know about where they went?”  There was no need to indicate who “they” were.

                “Headed west towards the main road, then looks like they followed it north.  If they’re together, and they seem to be, I expect he’ll break off the main road and hit the first village they come to, and try to talk their way into passage.  Boy’s got a mouth on him, and he could talk a sparrow off her eggs if you gave him time.  Where they’ll go from there I’m not sure, but Diggs and Carter are on the trail.”

                Sol hadn’t expected Rushleigh to be this prepared, or this deep into the mindset of the escapees.  Maybe he was worth more than the carpenter’s apprentice-turned-bandit he seemed to be.  “Good.  I didn’t know you’d given orders to Diggs and Carter.”

                “Nobody gives orders to Diggs and Carter.  But I saw Diggs’ swords and bow are missing, and Carter’s taken his sword and pack.  One of my trackers said he found a couple of boot prints, might have been made a couple hours after the escape, and, well, you know about Diggs and the Darkblood.”

                Sol tried not to take offense at the implication that Diggs and Carter were beholden to nobody, because the fact of the matter was that they were, in fact, beholden to nobody.  The two men had showed up in camp a year and a half ago, helped out with some raids, and made themselves Sol’s unofficial right hand...s, but they were part of no squads and followed only the orders they felt like following.  “Well done.  This might not be a total disaster after all.”  Dixon, who had clearly been waiting for Rushleigh to get called down hard, looked disappointed.  Sol swung his glare to the other side of the table.

                “You, however, were responsible for making sure that the two of them had no opportunity to leave the camp.  Was that the best you could do?  A sorry excuse for a raider who couldn’t manage what an ancient wineskin with legs could and a couple of thugs walking the perimeter?  I expected better from the former leader of the Band, Dixon.” 

                “Kiss my ass!”  Dixon rose, slapping the table with one hand.  The other jabbed at Sol’s face.  “You think we’ve got the king’s army here to run patrols?  We barely have the men-“  Dixon glanced down.  It had taken that long for him to register the feel of the impact on the table the instant after he’d slapped it.  Sol’s knife quivered between his middle two fingers.  Sol hadn’t moved except to jam the knife in the table.  All three men knew that Sol carried more than one knife. 

                “Sit. Down.”  Sol’s voice was tightly controlled, and the softness with which he spoke made it all the more intimidating.  Dixon sat.  “We have an opportunity, one which we have little time to exploit.  Whether or not we get Joss’s body back, or Diggs and Carter take their time chopping that little weasel into little bitty bits before dragging back my Soak, we have the chance to score a raid so big we could ride out the rest of the summer on the takings before having to look for resources again.  Maybe even retire.”

                Dixon was still fuming, and Bonn was hesitating.  Again, Rushleigh spoke up, anticipating part of Sol’s plan.  “The boy’s master.  The magistrate?”  The story of how the boy had deflowered the Magistrate’s daughter practically from under his nose had spread throughout the camp within minutes of the telling of it, and the lad had earned a sort of incredulous respect from the various raiders.  Only Rushleigh seemed smart enough to put the pieces of the puzzle together. 

                “One theme recurred during our conversation: the magistrate prefers to lock his treasures away than allow them to see the light of day.”

                Bonn was trying to jump on the thinking bandwagon.  “You want to break in to his safe room, loot his gold?”  Apparently, thinking wasn’t working for Bonn tonight.

                “The daughter.”  Dixon was fine with the thinking, when he wasn’t trying to politick against Sol.  Amateur.  “He’d pay a king’s ransom for her, if we took her away unharmed, and he had reason to think attack would end with her hurt.”

                “Correct.”  Sol had called Dixon down, but he wasn’t going to lie about Dixon getting the plan right.  Sol still hadn’t taken the knife back.  Chastised, but not forgiven.  Not yet.  “The magistrate does well to protect himself and his… treasures.  His judgments rarely make everybody happy, and a magistrate’s guard sees more action in a month than the typical palace soldier sees in a year.  Of course, the usual is more along the lines of angry farmers with pitchforks, but a ten-foot wall is a ten-foot wall, and men with armor and bows on top of that wall would be too much for our little band.” 

                Sol met each of his lieutenants’ eyes.  Good, the promise of loot and a plan appealed to their most basic instinct: greed.  It was an instinct he knew well, and nurtured whenever possible.  “We’ll never take the manor by force.  A dozen men could hold it against all of ours, and Higgins has twice that.  Our best hope is to enter under guise of civility, and gain an audience.  If we can feign a high enough rank, we will be invited to dinner upon arrival.”

                “How high a rank would you need to pull in order to get yourself invited?”  Bonn was starting to warm up, good.

                “I have reasonable confidence that I can convince him…”  Sol leaned in to the table, drawing the men in to his plan.

                In three days, Sol would have his king’s ransom.