Patchy frost glittered in shadowed hollows, but clear morning sunlight touched the city's stone walls to warm gold as Kilthan's wagons creaked and rumbled towards Derm. The road sloped steadily down to the city's colorful roofs, the Saram River swept around its western flank in a dark blue bow, gilded with silver sun-flash, and the final line of rapids and cataracts foamed white less than a league above the bustling docks. The sails of small craft dotted the Saram's broader reaches below the city, lush farmland stretched away from the river in both directions, and the mighty, snowcapped peaks of the Eastwall Mountains towered far beyond it.
The Barony of Ernos had been blessed in many ways, from the richness of its soil to the accidents of history and geography which gave it unthreatened frontiers and a ruling family noted for sagacity. The current Baroness Ernos was no exception. She'd inherited and maintained both her father's efficient and well-trained army and his longstanding alliances with the neighboring Empire of the Axe, and she used them with considerable business acumen. Her relations with Axeman merchants were good, tariffs and taxes were low, and she allowed no brigands to take root in her well-settled lands. All of which, coupled with her capital's location as the northernmost port on the Saram River, had conspired to turn Derm into a major trade entrepôt.
It would be too much to expect Rianthus to lower his guard anywhere, yet a palpable sense of relief had settled over the wagon train as they crossed into Ernos from Moretz. The duty schedule remained as arduous and the penalties for inattention as severe, but now the road—far better maintained than on the Moretzan side of the border—ran through rich, well-tended farmland and comfortable villages, not rough hills ideal for outlaw roosts.
Brandark was fascinated by a land where most villages lacked so much as palisades and not even larger towns had any serious fortifications. The chance of any Navahkan army's reaching Ernos were slight, yet he shuddered at the thought of what one would do to those defenseless towns if it ever should. But the truly remarkable thing was that none of them seemed to feel any need to protect themselves from their own neighbors. He'd known from his reading that there were places like that, yet he'd grown to adulthood in Navahk, and even now, with the evidence before him, no Navahkan could quite believe in them.
Bahzell could. He could even see in this secure land the ideal to which his father aspired. Prince Bahnak could never have been happy ruling such a peaceable realm; there was too much of the hradani warlord in him for that, and Bahzell doubted, somehow, that his father had ever fully visualized the end to which he strove. Yet that was beside the point. Bahnak looked not to the reward of his labors but to their challenge, for it was the struggle he loved. The sense of building something, content in the knowledge that the task was worth doing.
In an odd sort of way, Bahzell understood his father far better now. Prince Bahnak would die of boredom in a world bereft of intrigue or the deadly games of war and politics. Indeed, he would regard the mere notion of such a world with puzzled incomprehension and laugh at the idea that things like altruism had any place in his life. He was a practical man, a pragmatic builder of empire! His reforms aimed simply at making that empire stronger, more self-sufficient, better able to withstand its enemies and conquer them when the time was right. Anything else was nonsense. Bahzell couldn't have begun to count the times he'd heard his father declare that a man looked after himself and his own in this world. Those who tried to do more were bound to fail, and the sooner they did it and got out of everyone else's way, the better!
Yet that was the same prince who'd raised his sons and daughters with the notion that they owed their people something, not the reverse. It was the commander who insured that the least of his troopers got the same rations, the same care from his healers,that any of his officers might expect in the field. And it was the father who'd raised a son who couldn't turn his back on Farmah. No doubt he was heartily cursing that son for landing in such a harebrained scrape, but Bahzell could imagine exactly how he would have reacted had his son not taken a hand. The fact that Bahnak saw no contradiction in his own attitudes might make him less of the cold, calculating prince than he cared to think, but it also made him an even better father than Bahzell had realized.
Now the first wagons were inching through the gates of Derm amid the friendly greetings of the city guard. Bahzell strode along in his post beside the pay wagon, and he saw a few of those welcoming guards turn thoughtful when they clapped eyes on him. But Kilthan was well known here; anyone in his employ—even a murdering hradani—was automatically respectable until he proved differently, and he saw little of the instant hostility he'd met elsewhere. Wariness and curiosity, yes, but not unthinking hatred. The observation left him cheerful enough to forget, for the moment, the vague, troubling memories of the dreams which still made his nights hideous, and he found himself whistling as the cumbersome wagons wound through the streets.
Kilthan's couriers had preceded him, and his local factor was waiting. The compound the dwarf's trading house maintained just off Derm's docks was larger even than his seasonal camp outside Esgfalas, for his wagons would be left here for winter storage when he took to the river. Bahzell knew from overheard comments that Baroness Ernos paid Kilthan a handsome subsidy to make Derm the permanent base for his eastern operations, and her motive became obvious as he watched the other merchants haggle for similar facilities. Just as Kilthan's caravan served as a magnet to draw the others with him on the road, so his headquarters drew them into leasing winter space for their wagons . . . or disposing of them to local carters who would cheerfully sell them back—at a profit, no doubt—next spring.
Bahzell watched it all, making mental notes to share with his father, but then they reached the docks, and the sight of the river drove all other thoughts from his head.
The Saram had looked impressive from a distance; close at hand, it was overwhelming. Bahzell had seen the upper reaches of the Hangnysti, but they were mere creeks beside the Saram. The broad, blue river flowed past with infinite patience and slow, deep inevitability, and the thought of that much water in one place was daunting. He could swim—not gracefully, perhaps, but strongly—yet hradani and boats were strangers to one another, and he felt a sudden, craven longing to keep it that way.
Unfortunately, he had no choice, and he drew a deep breath and spoke sternly to his qualms as the train unraveled into its individual components. The largest string of wagons—Kilthan's—rumbled gratefully into a vast brick courtyard between high, gaunt warehouses, and work gangs were already descending upon it. Bahzell joined the six other men Hartan had told to guard the pay wagon and shook his head as he watched the bustle engulf them.
Rianthus had told him Kilthan intended to spend no more than a single day in Derm, but he hadn't quite believed it. It hadn't seemed possible to unload, sort, reorganize, and stow so much merchandise away aboard ship in so short a time; now he knew the guard captain had meant every word of it.
Teams of hostlers joined the train's drovers to unhitch the draft animals. Foremen with slates and sheafs of written orders swarmed about, shouting for their sections as they found the crates and parcels and bales whose labels matched their instructions. A full dozen local merchants circulated with their own foremen to take delivery of goods Kilthan had freighted to them from Esgan or Daranfel or Moretz, and a dozen more bustled in with new consignments bound further south or clear to the Empire. Squads of officers and senior guardsmen kept an alert eye out for pilferers, racing fingers clicked over the beads of abacuses, sputtering pens recorded transactions, fees, and bills of sale, and voices rose in a bedlam of shouted conversations, questions, answers, and orders. It was chaos, but an intricately organized chaos, and the first heaps of cargo were already being trundled off to dockside and the broad-beamed, clumsy-looking riverboats awaiting them.
"Quite, ah, impressive, don't you think?" a familiar tenor voice drawled. Bahzell turned his head, and Brandark grinned up at him. "Did you ever see so many people run about quite so frantically in one place in your life?"
"Not this side of a battlefield." Bahzell chuckled. "I'm thinking some of these folk might have the making of first-class generals, too. They've the knack for organization, don't they just now?"
"That they do." Brandark shook his head, ears at half-cock, then turned as his platoon commander bellowed his name and pointed at a line of carts creaking back out of the courtyard towards the docks. The Bloody Sword waved back with a vigorous nod, then glanced at his friend.
"It looks like I'm about to find out what a boat is like." He sighed, hitching up his sword belt. "I hope I don't fall off the damned thing!"
"Now, now," Bahzell soothed. "They've been sailing up and down the river for years now, and you're not so bad a fellow as all that. They'll not drop you over the side as long as you mind your manners."
"I hope not," Brandark said bleakly. "I can't swim."
He gave his sword belt a last tug and vanished into the chaos.
* * *
True to his word, Kilthan had every bit of cargo stowed by nightfall. The final consignments went aboard by torchlight, and even Bahzell, whose duties had consisted mainly of standing about and looking fierce, was exhausted by the time he plodded across the springy gangway of his assigned riverboat. He felt a bit uneasy as his boots sounded on the wooden deck and the barge seemed to tremble beneath him, but he was too tired to worry properly.
As usual, his size was a problem, especially with the limited headroom belowdecks, so he was one of those assigned berth space on deck. He would have preferred having a nice, solid bulkhead between his bedroll and the water, given his recent restless dreams, but he consoled himself with the thought that at least the air would be fresher.
The riverboat's master was a stocky, squared-off human who knew a landlubber when he saw one. He took a single look at the enormous hradani, shook his head, and pointed towards the bow.
"That's the foredeck," he said. "Get up there and stay there. Don't get in the way, and for Korthrala's sake, don't try to help the crew!"
"Aye, I'll be doing that," Bahzell agreed cheerfully, and the captain snorted, shook his head again, and stumped off about his own business while Bahzell ambled forward. Brandark was already there, sitting on his bedroll and gazing out at the stars and city lights reflected from the water.
"Looks nice, doesn't it?" he asked as Bahzell thumped down beside him.
"Aye—and wet." Bahzell grunted, then grinned. "Deep, too, I'm thinking."
"Oh, thank you!" Brandark muttered.
"You're welcome." Bahzell tugged his boots off, then stood and eeled out of his scale mail. He arranged his gear on deck and groaned in gratitude as he stretched out. "You'd best be taking that chain mail off, my lad," he murmured sleepily, eyes already drifting shut. "I'm thinking someone who can't swim's no need of an extra anchor to take him to the bottom."
He was asleep before Brandark could think of a suitable retort.
* * *
For the first night in weeks, no dream disturbed Bahzell, and he woke feeling utterly relaxed. He lay still, savoring the slowly brightening pink and salmon dawn, and a strange contentment filled him. Perhaps it was simply the consequence of undisturbed sleep, but he felt oddly satisfied, as if he were exactly where he was supposed to be. The river gurgled softly down the side of the hull, reinforcing the novelty of being afloat, and he sat up and stretched.
Others began to stir, and he sat idle, content to be so, while cooking smells drifted from the galley. The other boats of Kilthan's convoy floated ahead and astern of his own, nuzzling the docks, hatches battened down, and a peaceful sense of expectancy hovered about them. He gazed out over them, and it came to him, slowly, that for the first time in his life, he was free.
He'd never precisely resented his responsibilities as a prince of Hurgrum—not, at least, until they took him to Navahk!—but he was who he was, and they'd always been there. Now he was far from his birth land, an outcast who couldn't go home even if he wanted to, perhaps, but in command of his own fate. No doubt he'd return to Hurgrum in time, yet for now he could go where he willed, do as he chose. Up to this very moment, somehow, he hadn't quite considered that. His mind had been fixed first on getting Farmah and Tala to safety, then on keeping his own hide whole, and finally on his duties as a caravan guard. Now it was as if the simple act of boarding the riverboat had taken him beyond that, released him from some burden and freed him to explore and learn, and he suddenly realized how much he wanted to do just that.
He smiled wryly at his thoughts, drew his boots on, and stood. Brandark snored on, and he left his friend to it, rolled his own blankets, and ambled over to the forward deckhouse. It was higher than the bulwark, more comfortably placed for one of his inches to lean on, and he took advantage of that as he watched the barge master pull a watch from his pocket. The captain glanced at it and said something to his mate, and the crew began preparing to cast off. They picked their way around the snoring guardsmen wherever they could, with a consideration for the sleeping landsmen's fatigue that almost seemed to embarrass them if anyone noticed, but they couldn't avoid everyone.
One of them poked Brandark in the ribs, and the Bloody Sword snorted awake. He scrambled up and dragged his bedroll to the side to let the riverman at the mooring line he'd blocked, then stretched and ambled over to Bahzell.
"Good morning," he yawned, flopping his bedding out on the deckhouse roof and beginning to roll it up.
"And a good morning to you. I see you weren't after rolling overboard in the night after all."
"I noticed that myself." Brandark tied the bedroll and glanced somewhat uneasily at his haubergeon. He started to climb into it, then changed his mind, and Bahzell grinned.
The Bloody Sword ignored him pointedly and buckled his sword belt over his embroidered jerkin. Crewmen scampered about, untying the gaskets on the yawl-rigged barge's tan sails, and halyards started creaking aboard other boats while mooring lines splashed over the side to be hauled up by longshoremen. The first vessels moved away from the docks while canvas crept up the masts and sails were sheeted home, and Bahzell and Brandark watched in fascination as the entire convoy began to move. They understood little of what they saw, but they recognized the precision that went into making it all work.
Half the barges were away, already sweeping downriver with thin, white mustaches under their bluff bows, when a commotion awoke ashore. A brown-haired, spindle-shanked human with a flowing beard of startling white scurried past piles of cargo. He was robed in garish scarlet and green, and he grabbed people's shoulders and gesticulated wildly as he shouted at them. The hradani watched his antics with amusement, and then, just as their own mooring lines went over the side, someone pointed straight at their boat.
The robed man's head snapped around, his expression of dismay comical even at this distance, and then he whirled and raced for the dockside with remarkable speed for one of his apparently advanced years.
"Wait!" His nasal shout was thin but piercing. "Wait! I must—"
"Too late, white-beard!" the barge master bellowed back. A gap opened between the riverboat's side and the dock, and the old man shook a fist. But he didn't stop running, and Bahzell glanced at Brandark.
"I'm thinking that lackwit's going to try it," he murmured.
"Well, maybe he can swim," Brandark grunted, but he moved forward in Bahzell's wake as the Horse Stealer ambled towards the rail.
There was eight feet of water between the barge and the dock when the old man reached it, but he didn't even slow. He hurled himself across the gap with far more energy than prudence, then cried out in dismay as he came up short. His hands caught the bulwark, but his feet plunged into the river, and his dismayed cry became an outraged squawk as water splashed about his waist.
"Here, granther!" Bahzell leaned over the side. His hands closed on shoulders that felt surprisingly solid, and he plucked the man from the river as if he were a child. "I'm thinking that was a mite hasty of you, friend," he said as he set his dripping burden on deck.
"I had no choice!" the man snapped. He bent to glare at his soaked, garish garments, plucking at the wet cloth, and Bahzell raised a hand to hide a smile as he muttered, "My best robe. Ruined—just ruined!"
"Oh, now, it's not so bad as all that," Bahzell reassured him.
"And what do you know about it?" The old man—who wasn't so old as all that, Bahzell realized, despite his white beard—gave his soggy splendor a last twitch and turned to glower over his shoulder at the gales of laughter rising from the dock workers who'd watched his exploit. "Cretins!" he snarled.
Bahzell and Brandark exchanged glances, ears twitching in amusement, and then the barge master arrived.
"And just what the Phrobus d'you think you're doing?" he snarled.
"I told you to wait!"
"And I told you it was too late! This is a chartered vessel, not a damned excursion boat for senile idiots!"
"Senile? Senile!? Do you know who you're talking to, my good man?!"
"No, and I'm not your 'good man,' either. I'm the master of this vessel, and you're a damned stowaway!"
"I," the newcomer said with dreadful dignity, "am a messenger of the gods, you dolt."
"Aye, and I'm Korthrala's long lost uncle," the captain grunted, and spat derisively over the side.
"Imbecile! Ass!" The bearded man fairly danced on deck. "I'll have you know I'm Jothan Tarlnasa!"
"What's a Jothan Tarlnasa and why should I give a flying damn about one?" the captain demanded.
"I'm chairman of the philosophy department at Baron's College, you bungling incompetent! Do you think I'd have come down here in full ceremonials and set foot aboard this rat-infested scow if it weren't important?!"
"Ceremonials?" The captain eyed Tarlnasa's water-soaked splendor and barked a laugh. "Is that what you call 'em?"
"I'll have your papers revoked!" Tarlnasa ranted. "I'll have you barred from Derm! I'll—"
"You'll go for another swim if you don't shut your mouth," the captain told him, and Tarlnasa's jaw snapped shut. Not in fear, Bahzell thought, but in shock, judging by his apoplectic complexion. "Better," the captain grunted. "Now, I've no time for you—no, and no patience with you, either. You're on my vessel, and how you got here is your own affair. If you think the dockmaster will fault me, you're an even bigger fool than I think, and that'd take some doing! You stay out of my way if you want me to put you aboard a boat headed back up this way." Tarlnasa started to open his mouth again, but the captain shot him a dangerous look and added, "Or you can just swim back ashore right now. It's all the same to me."
Silence hovered, and then Tarlnasa sniffed. He turned his back upon the captain, and the riverman rolled his eyes at Bahzell and Brandark before he stumped back to his helmsman.
"Moron!" Tarlnasa muttered resentfully. He ran his fingers through his beard, then gave his long hair a settling tug, squared his shoulders, drew a deep breath, and looked up at Bahzell.
"Well, now that he's out of the way, I suppose I should get down to the reason for my visit."
"Aye, well, don't let us be stopping you," Bahzell rumbled. He started to step out of the man's way, but Tarlnasa shook his head irritably.
"No, no, no!" he snapped. "Gods give me patience, you're all idiots!"
"Idiot I may be," Bahzell said less cheerfully, "but it's in my mind you'd do better not to be calling it to my attention, friend."
"Then just listen to me, will you? You're the reason I'm here!"
"I am?" Bahzell's eyebrows rose, and Tarlnasa snorted.
"You are, gods help us all. Why they had to pick me, and get me out of bed at this ungodly hour and send me down here to endure that loudmouthed dolt of a captain and now this—!" He broke off and shook his head, then folded his arms. "Attend me, Bahzell Bahnakson," he said imperiously, "for I bring you word from the gods themselves."
He raised his chin to strike a dramatic pose, and Bahzell leaned back, ears flattened, and planted his hands on his hips. Bahzell glanced at Brandark and saw the same stiffness in his friend's spine, but then the Bloody Sword made himself relax, shrugged eloquently and stepped to the side. He leaned on the bulwark, gazing back at the receding docks, and Bahzell looked back down. Tarlnasa had abandoned his theatrical pose to glare up at him in self-important impatience, as if the Horse Stealer were a none-too-bright student who ought to have sense enough to beg his mentor to illumine his ignorance. The man was an ass and a lunatic, Bahzell told himself . . . unless the gods truly had sent him, in which case he was something far worse. The Horse Stealer remembered his dreams, and a spike of panic stabbed him. If it was some god sending them, had they left him in peace last night because they knew this madman was coming?
"And what if I'm not so very interested in hearing what 'the gods' have to say?" he demanded at last.
"What?" Tarlnasa gaped at him, and the hradani shrugged.
"I don't meddle with gods," he rumbled, "and I'll thank them not to be meddling with me."
"Don't be an ass!" Tarlnasa snapped, then shook himself, recrossed his arms, and fell back into rolling periods. "You've been chosen by the gods for great deeds, Bahzell Bahnakson. A great destiny awaits you, and—"
" 'Destiny,' is it?" Bahzell grunted. "You can be keeping your 'destinies'—aye, and tell whatever god sent you I said so!"
"Stop interrupting!" Tarlnasa stamped a foot and rolled his eyes heavenward, pleading for strength. "Why the gods should choose a blockhead like you is beyond me, but they have. Now be still and listen to their commands!"
"No," Bahzell said flatly. Tarlnasa goggled up at the towering Horse Stealer, and elemental hradani stubbornness glared back down at him.
"But you have to! I mean— That is—"
"That I don't." Bahzell glanced at the docks, beginning to dwindle in the distance, then back down at Tarlnasa. "We're a mite far out from shore," he said. "I'm hoping you can swim if it's needful."
"Of course I can! I was born in Derm, though what that has to do with anything is more than I can see. The point is that the gods have chosen me to reveal to you their plans for you. You are commanded to— Stop! What are you doing?! Put me down, you—!"
The high-pitched, nasal voice cut off in a tremendous splash as Bahzell dropped Tarlnasa overboard. The hradani leaned out across the bulwark, gazing down into the water, and watched a head of streaming brown hair break the surface in a seaweed cloud of white beard and a furious splutter.
"The shore's that way," he said genially, pointing at the riverbank while the riverboat's crew howled with laughter.
"You idiot!" Tarlnasa wailed. "The gods—"
"Take yourself and your poxy gods off before I'm after pushing you back under," Bahzell advised.
Tarlnasa gawked up at him, treading water as the barge pushed on downstream away from him under full sail. He seemed frozen, unable to believe what was happening, and Bahzell waved cheerfully.
"Have a nice swim, now!" he called out as the philosopher fell even further astern. Tarlnasa raised a dripping fist and shook it at the departing boat with a wordless screech, only to splutter again as he went under once more. He kicked back to the surface, spat out a mouthful of water, shouted something far less exalted than his earlier peroration, and then swam strongly for the shore while Bahzell leaned on the bulwark beside Brandark and watched him go.
"You know," Brandark said after a long, thoughtful pause, "you really ought to work on how you deal with others in social situations."
"Why?" Bahzell asked mildly as Tarlnasa dragged himself up the bank and stood knee-deep in mud, shaking both fists and screeching curses after the barge. "He made it, didn't he?"