CY 579, Month of Readying 25 (Godsday)
Askyrja staggered through the fields, hands trailing limply through the dry fallow stalks that tickled her palms, the sun at her back. The long grass brushed her exposed skin with cat's-tongue licks and brittle saw-edged scrapes. She felt light and hollow and removed, as if she were floating above herself, numb in body and spirit, slipping from one field to the next following the angle of the land.
Distantly, she knew that a road meant people of some kind; goblin and their ilk did not build roads, nor jotuns or any other monster, though she could see no people on it, nor anything beyond the trees bordering the meadows. The road seemed headed north, by the sun. It was not so far from where she'd started – where she'd… found herself.
Before long she was there and arrived to find a dirt roadway bordered by a row of low hedges and bushes piled in the ditch running along beside it. She crossed through the brush and climbed up atop it.
There was no one in sight in any direction, as far as she could see. She wondered where the lane began and ended; it seemed like a track for wagons, or horses. It was overgrown here and there, and pitted with wheelruts and broad ditches.
Now what?
Examining the trail, she did not know which way might lead to people. She could not stay here but neither should she strike out blindly. She must choose a direction, but there was no sign to indicate which way she ought to go.
She was still a little chilly and at length decided to have the sun at her back. She went north along the lane, serronaded by the birdsong of early spring from the verges. They flitted back and forth across the road as she went along, or darted through the brush in front of her.
Morning passed and the afternoon drew on and still she was walking without a sign of anything or anyone else, just the road and the ditch and the meadows that turned to stretches of untouched grassland and heath, broken up by scattered trees and roadside bushes. Starved and thirsty, she decided she would forage for food, as she'd been taught.
She staggered off the road to gather new dandelions and dug up garlic bulbs – bitter but filling – and a few juniper berries and early ground elder shoots… which were horrible, but filling. She collected a little chickweed and plantain in the fields, even a few new violets in the road verges. There were plenty of pines and tamaracks with healthy needles which she could have boiled into teas, if she'd only had a container. As it was, she tapped a few trees and sucked the flowing sap, distantly savouring its tangy sweetness. She drank from a pond she found on the way. When night fell, she sheltered under a broad spruce and lit a small fire, the light shielded from the night by the fronds she pulled down around it. A colony of frogs, eager to start their season, began a chorus from a marsh nearby. She pulled her hood over her head and her cloak around her body, letting the frogs sing her to sleep.
She dreamt of blackness and the sense of pursuit.
She woke in a rising grey morning with the threat of snow in skies that rumbled fitfully. Her fire was down to smoldering wood and the chill had seeped right into her. She threw more kindling into the pit, and scraped sparks into it with flint and her steel knife until a small fire was burning, warming herself beside it.
She would need to be on the move and soon, for she needed water and food again; her stomach rumbled more ominously than the clouds. She had seen no sign of human habitation and it was like she would need to forage again as she went along.
She walked the whole day north without seeing another soul, a light rain drizzling on her. Perhaps this lane was an artery connecting distant towns. Or perhaps this really was the afterlife and the ignominity of her theft had doomed her to endless wandering, forever miserable and desperately scrounging for food. Could one starve in heaven?
No, that was absurd. Why would Bjorn's body have been there? It made no sense.
And that brought her mind back to the other thoughts which circled her mind like tireless ravens: Alone. Free. Bjorn. Dead. She closed her eyes. All these things were true, and she could not help them, and it did her no good to think on them. She must concentrate on her own survival; it was slow work to walk and search for food and she did not make many miles.
Two days she was on the road, seeing no one and nothing, leaving her to her thoughts. On the first night, she dreamed of Bjorn's bearded face, matted sometimes with his blood, sometimes with her own. Ghostlike his form came to hers, looming closer and closer. 'Why?' she entreated him in the dream-world, but his spirit-form answered her nothing as his big hands closed around her throat.
On the second, she did not dream of Bjorn. Instead, she was in a dark place: underground, it seemed. There was the slow, rhythmic dripping of water and a humid, unpleasant feel to the air. 'So!' a voice said and she whirled to find a man of middling height in some kind of brown dress or mantle, a belt of rope at his waist and a thick leatherbound book in his thin fingers. 'The one called for has come at last,' he intoned in a surprisingly heavy voice for one so lanky.
Fear immediately bolted up her spine; she did not like this man, nor the book he held. She stared at him, eyes wide. 'You… you know me? How? What do you mean?' her voice echoed in her mind.
'The time comes,' came his heavy, mocking voice, 'Fear not! Follow Lyertha. Seek the place where the waters of life and death meet, like the rivers that flow from Ginnungagap. Where the horns cross. Where the meadows wither. There – you will find your fate.' He grinned big teeth.
She stared in bewilderment. 'Lyertha – follow the sun? Where the waters… meet… ?Meadows? W-what does that mean?' she stammered.
'Askyrja,' the man mockingly, his grin growing larger and larger, jaws cocking obscenely wide, his teeth growing into two-foot fangs dripping with venom and his skin turning to wide, red scales. 'Askyrjaaaa!' he intoned, his voice turning monstrous. 'ASKYRJAAA!' he roared in a stentorian bellow, jaws lashing forward to swallow her whole –
She awoke with a jolt, dazed and empty, the horrors of her dream locked in her mind.
What in Hel had that been?
CY 579, Month of Readying 28 (Freeday)
On the third day, she struck upon what was surely a main thoroughfaire.
It appeared some ways ahead, and at a few hundred yards she could see where the lines of trees and shrubs cross-sected the ones lining the way she was on. Her steps faltered and she squinted, the sun fading in and out of the clouds. But her bright sapphire eyes did not mislead her and she could see it was a crossroads.
She came on carefully at first, then with quickening steps until she was running, hunger and thirst forgotten, dizziness evaporating, pulling up just before it, panting. The dirt track she was on intersected with this new road at a shallow upward angle, meeting it in a slushy lane of thick, greasy mud. She stepped around this and onto the road.
It was eight paces wide, the verges of its laneway actually paved in places with old stone blocks and cobbles and the wagon wheel marks and oxen hoofprints in the dirt stretches – and the amount of oxen dung, at which she wrinkled her nose – suggested it was well-used. It was an impressive construction; Rhizian roads were hard-packed earth, save in some of the big towns like Granrud, but this great turnpike merely straddled the far country itself. There was even evidence of repairs, with old gravel half filling some potholes made puddles by the rain. A nearly civilizational pang of jealousy sounded in her as she marvelled at its magnitude.
Whoever these people were, they were rich enough, for no one could make such a thing without money. Yet they were foolish, too: the road was bordered carelessly here and there with trees and shrubs, new buds already rising spring-green. In Rhizia, these would be immediately cut down or burned back since they could be used to hide bandits. Did these people give no thought to such? Or perhaps this was a peaceful land.
Bjorn would have liked to see this. He had often held forth about the improvement of Rhizia; it had been another passion of his that –
No. She shook her head, taking a deep breath.
She forced herself to study her surroundings instead. The roadway was littered everywhere with wheelmarks and the prints of draft animals going east and west, but there was no clue as to which way she should take, to go wherever it was they were going. As before, she hesitated. The sun moved, the light declined and still she stood, undecided, hearing only the wind in the bushes, and rattling the new grasses. Then, far to the north she caught sight of something that nearly took her breath away.
The last of the morning mists had parted to reveal the largest river she'd ever seen. Hundreds of feet wide, it rivalled even the great Schnabel, back in Soull, as it rolled eastward like a slow blue avalanche, powerful and gleaming blue in the light. She could make out boats moving on it, big and small, the eastbound ships – knorrs and longships, mostly – racing along in the middle waters with their sails straining against their lines while skiffs worked against the shore. There was even a great caravel, its triangular sails lowered and rowers heaving as it crawled westward against water and wind. Perhaps its roots could be traced all the way to Ginnungagap itself at the very heart of creation.
The boats looked like nothing she knew, but in them she knew must be people: humans, perhaps, but not the evil races, for as they built no roads they neither made any ships, nor any crafted vehicle of Man. There were people on those boats.
As she looked around she could see moreover that she was not merely on some roadway somewhere, but that that she was in the middle slopes of some broad river valley, patched with little farms and clusters of houses here and there. The shining sun turned the vale a starker brown with the wet from the melted snow but there was green too: spring and life returning after the long wait. This was surely some settled land and it confirmed her suspicion that this was not Rhizia.
Where was she?
Then she caught a faint scent on the wind and turned. A broad shape had appeared in the far distance, east of her on the road. She squinted – her sharp eyes were good for long leagues and before long she could tell that it was a horse-wagon. Her heart rose with a thrill of anticipation. People!
It was far off and rolled along carelessly, rocking back and forth in the road's ruts and bumps and she realized she would have to wait a while. There was a puddle near and she peered into it, wanting to check herself.
Her hair was a blonde tangle and her clothes dirty and disheveled. She clawed at her mane as best she could and tried to brush the dust and dirt off her jerkin while she waited, then, almost jumpy with impatience, began slowly walking eastward to meet them.
She could see after a few minutes that it was a broad-bellied wagon, the horses unremarkable farm mares driven by a man with a woman sitting aside him. Behind them few boys of various ages chivvied along a small flock of goats, with a black goat leading them. All, to her relief, were human; wherever she was, Felix had at least not teleported her to some goblin-infested wasteland like the Bone Marches.
As they neared, she could make out more details: they did not dress in the furs and skins of her people, but rather wore modest straight-lined clothes of linen and cotton. The man had a plain dark jacket and patterned trews, with worn leather shoes and a dark broad-brimmed hat, square on top but warped with age, with a feather in the band. He puffed on a pipe as he drove. The woman – she presumed this was the wife of the man, for she seemed of the same age – wore a pleasant two-coloured patterned blouse, with striped skirts down to her ankles and a thick shawl on her shoulders. The boys ranged from perhaps eight to twelve in age and were dressed much like their father. None looked Suel; their colouration was more of a ruddy bronze, while to her surprise the woman and two of her children actually had black hair, flowing and shimmering like a raven's wing.
She approached slowly from the verge, hands open and held before her in what she hoped was a disarming gesture; her own people were suspicious and instinctively distrusted strangers, and especially foreigners. The driver slowed and she saw that the driver was blond with pale blue eyes. Was he Suel? 'Greetings,' she said hesitantly in the Cold Tongue, approaching and walking alongside as she talked. 'I am… newly here,' she said, deciding at the last moment not to give her name. What if she were not so far from home that her father could not find her? 'Will you tell me, sir, what town or place is nearest now? I would have food and shelter for a night.'
The man frowned, making a thoughtful but distasteful look. 'I… say… some Suel,' he grunted in a barbarous accent, 'but… not much. And I no… make talk to… strange foreign woman.' And with that he turned up his nose and flicked the traces, the horses picking up their pace as they all moved away. The family gave her strange looks as they passed, the mother hissing a warning to the boys driving the goats. A little girl sitting on the back of the cart gave her a curious look as she played with her doll, rolling away.
'Wait!' Askyrja cried after in the Common Tongue; her mother had taught her that at the behest of old Orvung so that she would know something of the languages of other lands, and very likely also so that one day she might spy on foreign visitors in her role as a palace servant. Common was as close to a lingua franca as Oerth had, though its exact syntax varied somewhat by place and speaker with numerous loan-words from a dozen nations, but he did not respond to this either, merely flicking the traces again so that the horses picked up their pace.
Completely confused, she watched him trundle away. He was Suel, she was sure, but he did not speak it, and his few words had been strange, even hostile. She wondered again where she was, feeling cold and alone. She supposed she could not entirely blame them; she must look as strange to them as they to her and the long days walking on the road could not have helped so that she must seem some wild, foreign wreck despite her simple ablutions of the moment before.
Still, she frowned, she had not deserved their rudeness.
The dream of the night before came to her and she twitched as she imagined the massive jaws reaching for her again. What had that been about? Where the horns cross? Where the waters of life and death met? She needed rest, and food. She was starving and her head was buzzing with fatigue.
More people and vehicles appeared in the distance, all heading west for whatever reason: mule-carts with heavy wares, peasants carrying reed baskets, even a pair of old shepherds leading a flock of sheep down the road. She turned and peered westward, but everything beyond a few miles was lost in the haze; there was thick fog pooling that way where the land descended. Still, there must be something that way.
A pang of hunger passed through her and she found herself feeling almost guilty for experiencing such a basic human need: she had passed through nightmare, her man – her love – was dead… and she was hungry? She pushed away the sensation with disgust, and cast a long, forlorn look back down the long road towards where Bjorn's sad little grave waited far away amid the gently waving fallow.
A ripple of misery rolled across her so powerful as to make her stagger. Was any of this real? Maybe it was all some mad illusion, conjured by the death throes of her panicked mind. Maybe this was the space between heartbeats, and she was still sliding down the side of the Hands of Lendor, her lover's sword raised high to slay her. But it was real; the air, the sun, the feel of the breeze. She was here, and alive.
Bjorn. Bjorn who she had loved with all her girlish heart had been about to kill her. Perhaps he had only intended that she die quickly, without pain, and that he never could have saved her. She had been in Rhizia, and her lover had been about to slay her, and Felix the Mad Mage had – for reasons best known to him – teleported her here instead, killing him and saving her. Had it been intentional… or accidental? If Bjorn had lived, would he have relented of his oath, and spared her? They could be together right now, exploring this strange new place. She would not fear so if he were beside her, her strong right arm.
So what would Bjorn have done? – embraced her or packed her off to Rhizia for a brief reunion with her father followed by an introduction to the headsman's block?
She let out a long, bitter breath, praying that he would be happy now; at least he could not feel the pain she would carry in her heart now until his spirit was put to rest there, too.
She walked westward on the road, dazed, questions swirling in her mind as a chill wind cut down the lane to ruffle her amber hair and cloak, emptiness warring in her soul with anger. Her sneaky soul made her look back east again and a wave of dizzy shock rolled over her so strong that she staggered to the side of the road and sat down there holding her head, trying to keep from being sick. Perhaps it was the relief of finding people, or the novelty that threatened to overwhelm her, but while she struggled gamely to ward off the feelings they came on relentlessly, plowing her down, frustrated by time and avoidance.
Her tears sprang out and she simply crumpled into herself, crying, clutching her head, wanting to tear her hair out by the roots; nothing made any sense, nothing mattered any more. Her heart was shattered, Bjorn was gone, everyone was gone, and she was utterly alone and in a foreign land. Her thoughts spun out of her control, her heart a cold leaden weight and the darkness rising up to swallow her as she sobbed helplessly…
Distantly, she could hear the ear-curdling squeal of a poorly-greased wooden oxcart axle. It grew louder and louder still until it nearly drowned out her thoughts, then ground shrilly to a halt beside her. 'Hey – hei there! what's the matter, girl?' a voice said. She looked up, cheeks sparkling with tears.
The cart was piled high with long sawn wood planks that stuck out the back and was driven by a young man in dark wool plants, a white shirt and leather jerkin, topped by a broad-brimmed leather hat. He had curly reddish hair, a thin nose with a blunt tip, and kind brown eyes. He chewed a wheat stalk thoughtfully as he looked down at the girl sitting beside the ditch in her oddly coloured damp linens, sheared woolen cloak and doeskin trews. Plucking it out, he said again: 'Hey, what's the matter? You all right?'
It was Common, she realized belatedly, though of a dialect she'd never heard before. The man sitting next to him was dressed similarly, but much ruddier with brown eyes and a black-red beard; she had never seen a man with such colouration before. 'Everythin' all right?' the younger man repeated. He seemed earnest and his eyes were not unkind. 'Are ye lost?' One wheel of the cart had slewed into a thick mud slurry beside the road, she noticed, turning up thick sheaves of muck.
She swallowed and wiped her face, embarrassed at appearing so not only before strangers, but what were certainly foreigners. Still, she gave him a slow, miserable nod, not knowing how he had been so prescient.
The young man smiled warmly. 'Well… lucky yer on t' road, then! Best place to be lost is on a road! See, on t' road, ye can go where ye likes, and find yer own way again, like.' Then, having finished pontificating, he rubbed his scrubbly chin. 'Y' know, seein' as how yer lost and we got room… I tell you what. We're just taking this load o' wood from Eglath into town.' He pointed ahead down the road. 'If ye' like, ye could git up and sit yerself and we kin take yer there, and then ye can decide what to do. Best as ye'd get a room somewhere.' He nodded and smiled again, though also giving her a subtle, appraising look-over.
She gazed westward, shrinking a little from the looks of passers-by. 'Town?' So there was something there far out, just past the limits of her vision.
'Verbobonc City. Just up west on t' River Road, here: the Viscount's Road. Goes t' the city. D'ye not know it?' He gave her another quick look-over. 'Listen though – we ain't odd an' we wouldn't as harm ye! We'll take you t' our Coster House and get you something to eat: the great St. Cuthbert as me witness, we don't mean you no harm, and wouldn't let none come to ye. You got me word.' He held a hand over his heart. 'Fair enough?'
Askyrja had no idea who St. Cuthbert was nor what a coster house was, but if it was anything like a regular hall it would at least be warm and dry. She studied the man's face – practically a boy, though his companion was older – but sensed neither malice nor lies there. Unsteadily, she got to her feet and turned away, wiping her nose and cheeks, fixing her hair and straightening her clothes. 'I will come,' she said with a last little sniff, head bowed. 'Thankyou.'
'No trouble.' The boy broke out in a wide grin that showed a space where one of his front teeth was missing. 'Hop on!'
Askyrja gave the man-child a embarrassed look of thanks and clambered into the back of the cart onto the end of the lumber, her legs dangling over the edge.
'All right, 'ere y' go!' said the young man, nodding. 'Be there in naw time! Yah!' He flicked the little whip at the snorting oxen's back; the traces jounced, the oxen started to move and the cart trundled along, its screeching not lessened by her position.
'Colson,' the young man called back to her.
Askyrja frowned, turning forwards. 'What?'
'Colson,' he said again, tapping his chest. 'That's me. Colson. This here's Merrim. He don't talk much.' He jerked his head at the older, bearded one, who only glanced back at her. The cart rolled along slowly – to where, she knew not, but she supposed it was to the same place that everyone else was going – this Vergodonk City, or whatever it was called.
She quickly found that the end of the lumber pile was not the best seat. Even at their slow pace the length of the beams magnified the effect of every rut, jouncing her up and down as the wheels thumped down into potholes or slewed about, so that she was forced to grab hold of the lumber and lock her legs around the beams to keep from being tossed ungainly into the air. An armoured man passed on horseback and smiled broadly, tipping his hat to her, perhaps amused by her predicament.
Deciding that being shy and embarrassed were poor reasons to be flipped out of an oxcart into a muddy pothole, she turned and crawled carefully up the beams towards the drivers, who were discussing something amongst themselves; or at least the young man, Colson, seemed to be excitedly talking to his partner.
Neither of them, she noticed, was even really armed save for knives on their belts such as she always wore herself, as a Suel woman. How placid and unbothered they seemed! They never glanced to left or right, never checked behind. They seemed completely unconcerned and untroubled. Indeed, this whole land seemed calm and unconcerned. Could Ratik be so peaceful? Her heart thumped in alarm again, remembering the distance of Ratik from Rhizia across the great Bay; assuming she wanted to, could she even get home?
'Are you joking, Merrim?' Colson was exclaiming as she crawled up to them, silent against the clattering of the lumber and the shrill squealing of the cart's axles. 'I tell you, I've never even seen a girl sooooahhullo there!' the younger man yelped in surprise as he noticed her. The grain stalk fell from his mouth and he jerked the reins and the cart took a sharp back-and-forth rock that almost tumbled her over the bench and into their laps.
She righted herself with the help of his arm. 'Er – ah! Well! Hello!' he said again, a little too loudly. His face was red as a beet. 'How… how long have you been there?'
'Only a moment,' she said, finding a small gap she could put her legs into to steady herself on the lumber pile and jamming her foot in to hold herself in place as the cart rocked and juddered. 'I wished to say again – thankyou for – for the ride.' She sniffed a little again, ashamed by her display; could she not stop her blubbering? What must he be thinking?
'Not to worry! I – well, we were just… er… talking. I – uh – I never got your name, lass,' he said.
Lass he called her, though he could hardly be older than she. 'I am called… Askyrja,' she said, deciding to use her real name. It could hardly matter here, after all.
'Huf!' Colson exclaimed in delight. 'That's a right pretty name! but a real tongue-twister, you don't mind me sayin'. Really suits a… well, a beautiful girl like you,' he said, suddenly abashed. 'As-keer-ya? That right? Where're you from then, lass?'
'Rhizia. Do you know it?' Did he know where she was? But her hopes were dashed.
'Can't say as I've heard of that town, though I've been up an' down the River Road for years now,' Colson said, looking puzzled. 'You, Merrim?' But Merrim made no reply. 'Guess it's a bit far, eh?'
'I do not know how far,' Askyrja said quietly. 'Where… is this place? Where am I?'
Colson frowned incredulously at her. 'Verbobonc City, lass! Well, the Viscounty of Verbobonc, anyway; County and Town, as they say. We're just headed to the City now. Don't you even know where you are? How'd you get here?'
She was unsure what else to tell him or how to even lie about it. She did not like lying – for such was the realm of the hag, Syrul, and of that other, newer god – though she could do it readily enough. How could she explain that she didn't know where she was because she'd been teleported here? She knew nothing of this place. 'I was… on a ship,' she said with sudden inspiration, pointing at the river. 'With… someone. I … got very drunk, and…. fell off. Then I… swam to shore,' she said in what she hoped was a flash of inspiration.
'And he didn't stop to get you?' Colson said. 'Throw out the anchor or summat?'
'Um – no one hears me,' she mumbled. Stupid! No one had heard or even seen her fall in? She hadn't screamed? 'It was at night and I was… walking the deck alone.'
'If you say so,' Colson shrugged, seemingly accepting her feeble proposition though he gave Merrim a look. 'What was the name of the boat?'
She almost froze: Odin send me wisdom. 'The… Hands of Lendor,' she said after a moment.
'Never heared o' that one, though I never heared o' most ships. Where'd you come out of then? Rhynehurst?'
She had never heard of any such place. 'Y-yes,' she said nervously. Then, to give herself room: 'I… think that was its name. Do you know it?'
'Sure. Been there plenty of times!' Colson said, his words making a ball of ice form in her chest. Her lies would come apart quickly now. 'Lots of excitement, I can tell you that! The best place to eat there has got to be the Gull's Wing. Me and Merrim go there when we're in town.'
She hoped the pang of terror in her heart did not show on her face. 'Uh – yes,' she said, forcibly calming herself and giving him a broad smile as she swept back her long blonde locks. 'It is a very… nice place. Near the river,' she blurted out, then cursed herself: why was she adding details? 'Well, not very far,' she said, lamely when Colson said nothing for a moment. Oh, gods – shut up!
'Yeah, I bet you prefer the Fishermen's Feast, right? More for the… well-to-do,' Colson said, face inscrutable.
Her mind raced: obviously she had no idea what he was talking about. She nodded, letting out a little disarming giggle. 'Yes, of course. It is… very nice there. I… I like the salmon.' Colson nodded flatly and instinctively she knew she'd put a foot wrong. 'Colson, I am sorry,' she said quickly, 'Truly, I know little of Rhynehurst, and I have not eaten in either of these places. I just did not wish to seem ignorant. Perhaps one day I will visit there, but… while we did stop there I stayed aboard and did not see much of it.'
He studied her. 'It's odd. You don't know much about Rhynehurst, and I've never heard of Rhizia.'
Her cheeks burned a little out of embarrassment and some indignation. She shrugged. 'I cannot explain this. But surely you can tell from the way I speak that I am not from here?'
'I s'pose,' he conceded, then shrugged. 'So you're on some boat with some feller… rich, I guess, if he owns a boat… so you're some kinder… what's they call them fancy ladies as hangs out on boats w' rich fellers? One o' them… upper society women, huh? Social climber? Whaddya call 'em… socio… social… socialite? Oh, I know: socialist.'
'Uh… yes,' Askyrja said blithely. Whatever it was he meant, it was probably better for him to think that than to know that she was in fact a kinless outcast ex-thrall and criminal on the run from her father, a vicious, cruel king backed by an army of barbarians.
'Well! Never was a big one for schoolin', me, but just look how I turned out!' Colson said, nodding sagely. 'Me and Merrim… we're carters, as ye can tell: Colson Carter, that's me,' he said, smiling his broad, gap-toothed smile again, his nervousness seeming to evaporate as he got talking. 'Guess this'd be Merrim Carter then – no relation!' He laughed. 'Anyway, just kidding you, his family's name is Dalai, like the flowers. His dad comes from way out west, he was a cattle herder. Or maybe horses. As for me, me mum's a charwoman, no idea who me dad was – me mum never knew which man it was done 'er!' He laughed again, elbowing Merrim, who frowned but did not speak.
She recoiled in horror at his suggestion, and the casual way in which he'd announced his bastardy in such mixed company. The Suel knew their fathers. Her father might not acknowledge her – publicly, at least, and probably less so now – but even so she knew him, although she might have been better off if she never had. 'That is very sad,' she said sympathetically in her halting Common.
'Never known any different,' Colson shrugged indifferently to her comment. 'Just how things are. You take the road as the road comes, that's the way,' he nodded. 'Life is like that,' he said, philosophizing as he gestured grandly before them. 'Like a road. It rises and falls. There are bumpy patches and straightaways smooth as a still pond. Oh, there's ruts fit to break your axle – sure! – but you stay aboard and just hold your seat as best you can, and let that road take you where it may. The road knows, you see! It knows.' And he stared ahead, as if into some grand horizon of revelation while the cart rocked and shook as it rolled westward through the potholes, jogging her about a little.
Askyrja did not think that a road knew very much about anything, and would have said something about the random will of the Suel god Norebo, or perhaps of the fixed threads of the Fates in the new religion, but decided it would have been rude right at that moment. 'Do you cut lumber in the winter here?' she asked instead.
'Oh – this was stored up from last fall, in a warehouse out east. Hell if I'd want to be muckin' about with a saw and axes in the winter, I can tell ye! We're just picking it up and bringing it back to Verbobonc. We've been gone seven days now, an ah'm lookin' forward to gettin' back to the Coster.'
As they rode along, she saw many farms along the road with long lanes stretching off to distant farmhouses, both the regular A-frame barns to which she was used and also strange taller barns shaped like upside-down, angular 'U's. She wondered how they were not simply blown away by the bitter winds of winter; perhaps they were made differently, she could not tell. A few cattle were scattered over the meadows, pulling at dried grass from the season before, as the gaps in the fields gleamed with the last sheen of winter snow. All the actitivies of home were here, though each looked different.
She questioned Colson as they rode along: the City of Verbobonc was in the Viscounty of Verbobonc, whatever a viscounty was. It was a very large city, or so he claimed, on a mighty river, the Velverdyva – which was very difficult for her to say – which was the one she could see through the mist to the north, and which many boats plied, as she had seen. There was all sorts of trade done there – he seemed very knowledgeable in this area and talked endlessly of it – in every kind of goods imaginable, though the very notion seemed incredibly boring. Verbobonc, he said, was mostly a human land, though it did have many other kinds of people – but not evil humanoids, obviously. Neither goblins nor Orcs nor any other evil kind were allowed here, which was a good thing; her people knew that well enough. No, he had definitely never heard of Rhizia, or even of Thillonria, the great northern land in which Rhizia was found, or of the Bone March. He did know of the Great Kingdom, but said it was far to the east. But this could not be; clearly she was south of Rhizia, going by the sun. So she must be somewhere near the Northern Province, which was near the Great Kingdom. Little that he said about that made sense, and after a while she gave up asking. In fairness, neither had she ever heard of this Verbobonc either, though she was not fool enough to admit to it; for how else could she be here, but to know something of this land? Where exactly did it lie? It was a riddle without clues. At length, she gave up and sat quietly resting, trying not to muse on old problems. For his part, Colson let her be, sensing her melancholy mood.
The fog from the river rose and rolled in as they went along and the road became busier, such that she really did begin to believe they were near a city; wagons emerged onto the main road from country tracks and side-lanes, peasants traipsed down the lane – they even passed armed riders coming the other way, as if for patrol or war. This was indeed some kind of great thoroughfare going to some city, for who ever would create such a road were that not so? But where was this mythical place? She was about to ask again, but the words died in her throat as she looked up at the road ahead as it levelled and straightened, the back-and-forth jouncing finally ceasing.
An enormous bridge slowly loomed out of the fog.
It was old and massive, easily thirty paces across and three times that long, stretching over yet another great river a hundred feet wide which joined the massive Velverdyva in a broad channel at the juncture of the rivers, bordered by churning whitewaters. It was made nearly entirely of stone, its weight supported by great stone arches with pylons shored up by huge blocks of granite and massive bulwarks of piled boulders, so enormous that small boats glided underneath the centre of the span, drawn by men with oars or even with sails billowing with the mid-morning breeze. Yet another, smaller river emptied into the second one from the west, a mill astride it with big wheels turning in the flow.
Then she caught her breath as they rolled onto the bridge itself, the cart's iron-capped wheels making a thundering rumble coupled with a slow, rhythmic clack as they thudded over the seams between the stones of the bridgehead. It was wide enough for four carts and the traffic was enough that vehicles and horses were packed in, crossing. To her surprise, there were little stalls and tiny shops atop the bridge itself, each with its own little board of goods and with merchants hawking food, wine, horseshoes, or shouting directions to what she thought must be inns and taverns. Her stomach grumbled uncomfortably and she was reminded sharply of the weeks on her thin diet of forage and fear.
As they crossed into the middle of the span, she was further astonished to see that the centre of the bridge was of a stretch of thirty feet where massive timbers of whole, planed trunks from some enormous tree took the place of stone; enormous machines waited oiled and ready on each side of the span, attached to the timbers by massive metal brackets, with hand cranks at man-height. Did this section move, somehow? And if so, why? She half-stood to see better, grabbing one of the poles on either side of the cart – she imagined, distantly, that they were for mounting a tarp on to cover the cart's bed –and saw that the mast-tops of taller vessels passing under the bridge narrowly avoided striking its bottom. So this part of the bridge did rise up, and those machines would make it do so. That was ingenious; she had certainly never seen the like before.
Then she looked up to see that beyond the bridge was a sight far more impressive than a mere machine: it was an enormous walled city.
The walls themselves rose thirty feet high with merlons and crenellations along the top to provide men cover from arrows. Four squat towers were set into the walls nearest her, the middle two bracketing a set of mighty gates that currently lay open to let the flood of people and carts from the River Road pass through, and there were more in the walls as they ran southward. Beyond the walls, numerous woodsmoke fires smeared the sky grey and a few of the tallest buildings peeked high bastions over the edge, including what appeared to be another wall, higher and further into the town. She gasped aloud as over the walls her sharp eyes made out the rounded bastions of what could only be an actual, high-walled castle, pennants streaming from the high towers at each corner of the walls and above that loomed a great, square keep of dark stone. Through the open gates she could see a scattering of buildings and long, open lanes with people seemingly everywhere. The wall itself ran away south more than a quarter mile to where she saw a small port with a few river-skiffs and narrow longboats, and to the north right onto a wide stone pylon mounted in the river itself, where a massive turret towered over the river, with what looked like a war engine of some kind atop it. Her jaw dropped open in surprise.
'Never seen Verbobonc before, lass?' Colson leaned back, noticing. She shook her head, listless yet still awed. 'Biggest city for a hundred leagues any direction, though you'll find some big burgs along the Velverdyva; busiest river in all the Flanaess!' He pointed to the massive river to the north, finally giving it a name. 'Runs all the way to the Nyr Dyv!' She had no idea what that was, but it started a monologue on the importance of the river, the city and indeed all Verbobonc itself, describing the long waving fields, great forests and purple-tinged hills. His voice was tinged with a deep, solemn pride.
Nor was the enormous city on the southern bank all: just across the river to the north, there was still another town, complete with piers, homes and great warehouses well visible at the distance. 'That's Ryemend on the far bank there – southernmost town in Furyondy, actually, not Verbobonc. Lots of goods passing through there, mostly things going back and forth to the Gnomes of the Kron Hills. Y' need a skiff to cross to it, mind; y' could never build a bridge that big! Nice place, been over plenty o' times taking cargo north to Hall's End, or Towestock, Ribbeny; far as Jarl or Stone River, sometimes, mostly with big groups. There's a few small holdings up north of the river, kinda frontier-like, but that's Furyondy territory. Their army wanders around there sometimes, used to see them around and abouts.'
Finally they clunked off the bridge and the River Road continued as a wide cobblestone lane that led to the huge Eastern Gate. As they neared she saw that each of the the wall's towers was surmounted with a great kind of crossbow controlled with winches and levers which threw a massive, murderous bolt, as long as herself or longer. The walls themselves were of some kind of greyish stone that must have been drawn from the river bed itself, going by the exposed stretches of rock she could see when she looked behind to the near shore. Men swarmed over those rocks, tapping out great pieces with hammers and iron splitters, busy even on a cold, brisk day like this.
'Big city, it is, very big! Let me see… maybe… eleven thousand people? Twelve thousand? Something like that.' That was twice the size of Soull, she thought, staring at the slowly approaching walls. 'The Royal castle's here, of course – Castle Greyfist, it's called – and the good Viscount, you'll know of him, of course. We're still 'sposed to be part of Veluna, the Arch-clericy, they say, but no one minds about all that now, though I'll say you'll still find our Baron, Wilfrick, pretty well disposed to 'em. You religious?' he asked her next, and she nodded. 'You'll like it here, then: got temples and churches here to St. Cuthbert, Rao, Heironeous, even Berei, though he's more for farmers.'
'And to Thor?' she inquired. Askyrja was one of a few worshippers of that new god in Rhizia, a religion that had emerged a few years before, though no one seemed to know from where. His worshippers did not often speak the name of the new gods aloud, for the clerics of the old gods did not like to hear such names, but she judged it was safe enough to say them here.
Colson frowned. 'Never heard of that one,' he admitted. 'But, whatever your likin's, you'll find it in Verbobonc City. It's a place of lights! Of excitement! Fate and fortunes made and lost!'
She frowned, feeling weary again. 'Why do you say so?'
'Well… it's exposition, isn't it?' Colson shrugged. 'But any road, if you need somethin' or need somethin' done, here's where you'll get it. I guess you don't know much about the Viscounty, eh?' She shook her head. 'Well, there's lots more than the city. Verbobonc itself – meanin' the viscounty, now – runs from the Velverdyva – ' he waved a hand at the river ' – all the way to the Kron Hills in the south – and that runs right down to the mighty spine of the Lortmil Mountains, an' west out to Tristane an' Irondelve! South of us there's all kinder towns and the lot, lots of farms and good folk, salt 'o the earth: Etterboek, Cienega Valley, Penwick, nice places. Gets a bit stranger as you go south and east – there's the Fens of Tor way out east on Imerdy's Run – but still, Verbobonc's grand. A lot of stuff moves on the Velverdyva too, upstream to Veluna and the western marches of Furyondy, and down all the way east to Dyvers, Greyhawk, Urnst and beyond! Lots of river traffic all around where the waters will take a boat, though me I prefer carts and solid ground under me feet to messing about on a river – as I guess ye could agree, eh?' He chuckled but, failing to prise a laugh out of her, he went on. 'All kinds of people here, too – Oeridians like me, Flans, Bakluni, even some Suel. You're – er – Suel, right? You look Suel. Meanin' no offense, mind,' he added quickly.
Askyrja did not know quite what to make of that. A few of the people around them now looked somewhat Suel, but their dress and behaviour seemed nothing like her people. Still, her heritage mattered nothing right at the moment. What was her bloodline worth to her now, accursed bastard betrayer daughter of the Jarg Orvung, except as a death sentence?
Before the gates was a broad cluster of buildings nearer the river, where many men loaded and unloaded barrels and bundles from wagons and carts, fixing wheels, or dealing with draft animals like Colson's oxen, and that was where they were headed. The people there mostly appeared human, but she noticed a Dwarf among them. It was strangely reassuring, though she had no especial liking for them. 'There's the Little Folk in the city too,' Colson went on, noticing her gaze; Askyrja assumed he meant Dwarves, whom she had never heard called that, and was surprised when he mentioned another people. 'I've always found the Gnomes a thoughtful, kindly bunch. Good workers too, for their size and they don't shy away from the hard doin's, although there's rumours that their people down in the Krons might be thinking about breaking away.' He trailed off. In truth, Askyrja knew nothing of Gnomes, save that they were very short, and bearded, and mined the earth, much like Dwarves, but that they favoured hills and forests over the mountains. She had never seen one herself and had half thought them legendary nonsense from the faraway lands of Oerth. There were also tales of another kind of small people, but that was one species too many to her mind so that she did not believe them, even if she had heard them from… no. She would not think of him. She shook her head angrily and tried to turn her thoughts elsewhere.
Colson started up again. 'But the Gnomes here are great folk, great folk! A lot of the city's architecture is their work though they had to… you know, expand it a bit. Make it bigger,' he explained. 'For the Big Peoples. Us and the Elves, you know.' Askyrja blinked at that. She'd never met an Elf either, though she'd known a few people in Rhizia who many said had had Elven blood; the descendants of sly visitors or captured concubines, rumour said. No one knew for sure, of course, and so it was all only hall-tales. 'There's an Elven Quarter away on the west side, too: beautiful stuff, houses and shops right up in the great ipt trees there! They're wonderful things, they are. You should see 'em if you get the chance.' He smiled wistfully. 'Rare's I get a chance to, but I do try. They do say Verbobonc was an Elven river outpost before us and the Gnomes arrived – all wood and polished glass – and later on the Gnomes set up a freehold here, though I couldn't say exactly how long ago all that was. Some Elven work is still around here and there, too. I could, er… show them to you sometime, if you've a mind.' He cast a glance back at her that, distracted with grey musings, she did not notice.
'Anyway,' he put in, 'Both the other Folk – meaning the Little and the Fair, if you follow me – still live in the City, allus have: Earth and Stone, Man and Gnome, as they say. Then Furyondy took us over for a bit and then we were one of Veluna's vassal states, like I said afore – it's got a rich history, Verbobonc, and it's a wonderful city – an' the shops of the Market are something else! You'd never believe all the things you can get – they do say if you can't get it in Verbobonc's Market, it just can't be had. I've even heard tell they sell – ' he added conspiriatorially ' – magics. It's true!' he said, interpreting her sad, pensive look as disbelief. 'My cousin saw an Elf buying magic potions from a shop once! Verbobonc's a great place, safe and civilized-like. Still,' he mused, 'there's them as say the army should be called out to deal with some of the wilder stuff on the borders and I can't say as I blame them. The trouble hasn't got up here yet and I hope as it never does! Baron Wilfrick's a good man, but he's old as the hills and won't sort it out proper; he hasn't got a lot of the old fire left in him these days, really and his son John the heir ain't the man Wilfrick was. I think a lot of people prefer his other son Horrus for the seat – but he don't want it! Figger that one, eh?' He laughed. 'That don't leave much; obviously his daughter Elysia can't rule – er, not that I think that women can't rule, o' course,' he added quickly, glancing back at Askyrja, but the Northern girl didn't seem to have noticed that either.
'Could do w' a bit o' that old leadership these days,' Colson added, half to himself. 'Lots happening hereabouts last few years: the Kron mebbe breakin' away, rumours about evil risin' in the south again, mercenaries and knights and adventurers all over the place. I hear there's more river pirates recent, bandits on the road, even humanoid marauders: Orcs and goblins and whatnot! Some people are a bit worried.' He shrugged. 'But thankfully, all that's still a ways off. No threat on the ol' River Road an' it's hard work as keeps away the demons, we say 'round here!' He grinned, though it seemed to make little dent on her mood.
They rolled into the cluster of buildings – not just warehouses, but artisan's shops, inns and taverns, even a few dwellings. 'This is what they call Merchant's Village,' Colson said. 'Lots of business done here; mostly stuff people don't want going through Verbobonc's custom – ' he indicated the town with a thumb ' – headed upriver or down. Verbobonc City's kind enough that they don't tax it if it don't pass their walls, y'see,' he said, leaning in conspiratorially. 'Freight from Greyhawk City and Dyvers comes through here for Rhynehurst, Veluna or further still, and ships can go right down Nigb's Run there – ' he pointed at the big river that ran into the Velverdyva – 'all the way to Etterboek, though smaller craft can get to Cienega Valley and even past it. You can get passage all over the whole Flanaess from here, an' there's those as come here from all over too; it's a hub of trade all right, Verbobonc. Ah!' he suddenly exclaimed. 'There's the Eel! – the blue lanterns there are wonderful in the evenings, nothing like them!' He pointed at an inn down near the flowing water of the Velverdyva. It did seem to have some blue lanterns lit even now, though they were only a feeble cerulean in the bright afternoon sun. 'Good place, old but roomy and a friendly feel to her. They always lay on lots of food too, lots of sailors and wanderers there. I guess ye're kind of a wanderer too, eh? You might like it.' He turned to frown at her. 'Ye don't mind cats, though, do ye?' Askyrja shrugged. 'Old Aster who owns the place has got a dozen if he's got one.' Colson frowned and scratched his ear. 'I don't mind them so, but they're always underfoot. But Merrim here loves it there. Suits his nature, you ask me.' Merrim did not respond. 'Anyway, if you're looking to get back to this Riz-ee-yah place, you might find someone there as can take you by ship.'
Askyrja spotted what looked to be a small wooden fort standing in the centre of the scattered clutch of buildings before the gates, complete even with small towers and a short palisade of newly hewn logs surrounding it. It was startlingly out of place in this civilized district of business and trade.
'Oh – that's the River's Edge,' Colson smiled. 'We move things for them sometimes – wood, cloth, seeds, tools, even weapons and armour for the – er – more daring sorts. We even brought in the logs to make their little wall, there. They're a bit different, that's true. I think they reckon there's going to be some trouble hereabouts but I can't say as I think it's likely, you ask me and most people. Here? This close to the city?' He shook his head. Askyrja frowned, studying the place closely.
Colson looked along what seemed to be the main street of the merchant village. 'That there's the Maiden, as we say round here' He nodded at a four-storied beerhall with red shutters and wide balconies garishly painted in pink, orange and red, though it looked closed at the moment. 'Veera's… er… Voluptous Maidens,' he mumbled. 'The drinks are… eh, well it's not much for food really I guess, but the barmaids are – uh – well, actually maybe you wouldn't be interested in all that – although with your looks, you could probably… uh… well, anyway,' he trailed off again, suddenly seeming fascinated by a gull riding the cool breeze overhead, its wings still. 'There's other stuff here in the Outer City too, though. That big white building – you can just see the spire there, just right of the Maiden – is the temple for sailors and the gods of the waters.'
'Like… Osprem?' Askyrja asked softly. She decided not to mention the new god of the seas, Njorđ, and wondered about his powers and presence here in the south.
'I suppose some o' the more outlandish folk do follow him,' Colson said. 'But here they prefer Procan. He's a wild one, they say. Sailors swear up and down by him, though I can't say as I've ever felt the urge of religion. For me, it's the open road,' he said wistfully, looking down their long lane into the city of Verbobonc. He flicked his short whip and the oxen ignored him, plodding along as before. He pointed out other businesses as they went along: 'There's Roster's Rosters, they do contracts for shipmen, insurance, that sort o' thing; the Bullwark, old John Tucker there trades in cattle, mostly; Smith's Smithing for your light ironwork for ships and carts and the like – ' and on and on until Askyrja was able to mostly tune him out. 'But, anyway, great place to live, Verbobonc! Civilized, friendly people, and the troubles of the world far away,' he finally concluded, the oxen swaying placidly onward, the cart gently creaking as they took a turn onto a side-street. A few curious eyes turned their way at the odd sight: a two-man lumber cart filled with planks and a girl perched atop them.
'Except, o' course,' Colson ominously added, 'for that bad business away down south.'
Askyrja frowned. 'What is it? You talked of this before.'
'Well! Funny you should ask,' Colson said, giving Merrim a dark look though Merrim said nothing. 'See, the Southlands are a bit odd, sure. I do the river routes, local cargo, east of Verbobonc you see, but I been down that way a few times. It's about thirty leagues or so south on the main road and while it's nice enough it's not like up here in the north, with quiet fields and farms and decent, quiet people. It's wilder and… looser, if ye know what I mean? I mean, ye'd never know what ye might find wanderin' about down there near where the waters of Imerdy's Run and Nigb's Run start, an' bein' right at the foot of them dark Iron Hills an' the very southern tip of the Gnarled Forest an' all! though I warrant it's calmer these days than it used to be… still, there's rumours afoot and they're dark ones. Why, the Southlands of Verbobonc is halfway to Celene: I don't mind the Fair Folk, but I'm just not so sure about a whole nation of them and their eerie, magick ways. Frankly, anything south or east of this little village called Hommlet gets a bit odd – last town before the edge of the Krons. All that said, I'm not surprised as it started down there.'
'But back twenty year ago, it was a definite trouble and no mistake. They say as there was a temple or summat down there devoted to the worship of evil: terrible dark gods and demons and whatnot. Some say as it came from out near Dyvers, others as it slithered up from the Wild Coast, but Merrim here figures it had to do with the lack of local infrastructure and community investment or somethin' like.' Colson shrugged.
'Anyway, it started out quiet as trouble allus does – but you know how evil is: allus spreadin' an' attractin' things, and so it did. There were bandits and Orcs and goblins and trolls and whatnot in the forests away south, and a lot worse even than all that afore long. Folks started disappearin', or being found out in the woods dead, or wakin' up in the night w' their throats sli– oh, er: sorry about that,' he said apologetically. 'I don't mean ter shock yer – you bein' a delicate sort and not used t' such harsh things – but it's all true, as they say. So there were goblin-kin raidin' and stealin', travelers and farmers killed and 'et and pretty soon, they say, they had a fair army of evil trampin' round there, though how their basically introductory economic index could support all them non-producin' folks I couldn't rightly say!' He shook his head in dismay.
'Anyway, the land all round the Temple and this other fort was despoil too, as they say: crops gone bad, disease, starvation and robbery. Monsters prowling, men, women and children enslaved or sacrificed t' the dark powers. Why, they say a very demon goddess come to live there, right in the very bottom of their dark Temple! Well, ol' Viscount Wilfrick – that's the Viscount, you see – one day he wasn't puttin' up with this no more, after a bit, an' he decided summat had to be done. So he got hisself an army together and marched on 'em!'
'And what happened?' Askyrja asked, finding herself absorbed by the story despite herself.
'Well!' Colson said, pleased by the interest of his audience. 'All kinds o' people came together to fight the evil ones: the Big People, an' Dwarves from the Lortmils, an' Gnomes from the Kron, an' Prince Thrommel of Furyondy an' the Knights of the Hart! There was even Elves come up from Celene! The forces of Good on the one side, and the foul servants of Evil on the other! And arrayed against them wasn't just Evil: it were an Elemental Evil,' Colson nodded sagely.
'Elemental evil?' Askyrja said, confused. 'What is that?'
Colson inclined his head, thinking. 'Well… I couldn't rightly say. Mebbe I s'pose as it refers to the corruption of the elements themselves by malign powers. You've heard of an ill wind, right? This is… er… like that, I suppose, but more of an… evil wind. One as blows no one no good! Now, Merrim here thinks that the concept merely reflects the existence of elemental corruption in the irreducible parts of reality itself as agents of chaos, aligned against mankind as a maker of order! … but I says ol' Merrim here can make a right evil wind himself some nights after a pot of mussels at the Eel, eh, Merrim?'' he jeered with a snort, jostling his partner's elbow. Merrim said nothing.
'Anyway,' Colson went on, 'Wilfrick's army marched south and they had a great big fight, out on Emridy Meadows! Loads o' goblins, and Gnolls – they're these big kind o' dog-people, dunno if you ever heard o' them, a cultured girl like you – and lots o' bad men an' bandits – even ogres! They come at Wilfrick and Thrommel, but they was tricked somehow. Made 'em fall right in their trap! The forces of evil had a bit too much on their plate that day!' he chuckled. 'So with the evil army destroyed an' dead, Wilfrick marched for the Temple. Now, somewheres between Hommlet and the Temple was an old moathouse: a small fortress, like. It's just ruins now, but back then it was what they called a bastion for the evil powers, guardin' the road east to there. Wilfrick's army attacked and broke in after a terrible pitched battle, then threw down the gates and slaughtered the lot of 'em. Then they marched to the Temple, broke into that too and razed it, though I guess they couldn't cleanse all of it; too big or somethin'. So, story goes, they set up these great gates, so as to keep whatever evil might be left after all that down there an' away from the rest of us, so's nuthin' could ever get out again. And so it went! Things went quiet and peaceable after that, and so it's been for a long time.'
'But now you say there is bad business there again?' she asked, intrigued.
He shrugged and fussed a little. 'Well, now: as I say, I've heard tell of a few strange things happenin' again round those parts all recent-like – but I ain't seen nothin' meself, and I'm not one to just believe everythin' I hear … 'cept… 'cept for this one town just east o' Hommlet called Nulb.' He frowned. 'I only been there twice but I 'member it well enough, and even if I never saw what all went before I can tell you they didn't seem a friendly lot at all, and the thing is it's right near that evil Temple, right in the heart of all what went on before.' He scratched his head, looking nervous and confused. 'I don' like ter say hard words about a place or a lot o' folks, but… there was somethin' definitely off about 'em and no mistake. It was like they was… I dunno, against you, or hated you on sight if you wasn't from there. Or it was like they… they knew somethin', somehow, that'd make 'em like… rude t' you, like they knew how things really was, an' you didn't, an' it weren't good for you. That make any sense?' Askyrja shrugged. 'Well, make of that what you want, I guess, but maybe old Wilfrick'd ought to get down there again, have a look round and see what's what; and mebbe sooner rather'n later, you ask me. An' old Prince Thrommel, what won the Battle, just up and disappeared a few years back, right from the middle of Veluna, just before his weddin' to the Lady Jolene, daughter of the Archcleric there! Vanished like a Cienega Valley fog, no one knows where he went to. That's damn strange, you ask me. Still, that's for bigger folk than me t' fix! Ah look – we're here, at long last!'
He pulled the right rein hard and the oxen turned into a short track around the side of a sagging split-level building. Moments later, they pulled up at a yard with a tall warehouse and a two-story building that Askyrja surmised served as some kind of office. Was this the coster house Colson had spoken of? 'Well! here we are, lass,' Colson said, hopping down as Merrim climbed out on the other side. 'Hope it was enough of a lift; saved your feet a few miles anyway!'
'Oh,' Askyrja said softly, climbing into the cab and then down. Colson held out a hand and she stepped gingerly to the ground on his arm, finding to her surprise that he was an inch shorter than she was. He barely seemed to notice as he grinned into her face, the gap of his missing tooth plain. 'I suppose this is…' he started to say, then stopped, frowning. 'No. No, Colson, ye can't just let some poor girl wander off, who don't know where she's going or even where she's at. Yer ma u'd have yer feet for bootstraps. It ain't right!' He shook his head. 'Askyrjer,' he said, mispronouncing her name, 'I want to help, I really do, but I've no idea how ter get hold of the people what lost ye on the boat. Or maybe as you lost them?' He scratched his head. 'Either road, I dunno how to get ye to them, if you take my meanin'. You said you was comin' from Rhynehurst – where was he headed, then, this feller that didn't even hear ye fall overboard, the one what owned the boat? Maybe you got family there?' Merrim had climbed down and was unhooking the traces and leading away the oxen team to the stables towards the rear of the yard.
Askyrja was jolted into frenzied thought; now she must confound lie with lie. She knew none of the places near here. She felt herself reddening, though for some reason she'd felt the question was coming. Would he believe her if she said she didn't even know where this fictitious boat had left from? Quickly she racked her brain for a word that Colson has said when he was talking about things far away – the further the better, maybe. 'Urnst,' she said after a moment. 'Yes… yes, that was the place he mentioned.' She remembered the word and reasoned that the last place he'd mentioned in his panoply of destinations was most likely the furthest away.
'Hell's bells, that's a ways off, and downstream,' Colson said with a whistle and she felt a little burst of relief – he must not know it well. 'That's not so good: the winds have gone all eastward now, and with the river movin' like it does, there'll be dozens of leagues passed under their keel already.'
'Oh,' she said, not knowing what else to say.
'Maybe we could send a letter or summat, tell him yer alive an' well here. But Urnst is a big place, I reckon, prolly like the Viscounty, mebbe even bigger. We'd have to know exactly where he was goin' for a letter to reach him. D'ye remember what city he was takin' to there, in Urnst?'
That was an unexpected curve and she pretended to rack her brain while she tried to quickly think up another lie. 'Uhh – he… did not talk about what city we would to go – only that… it would be pretty there, and fun,' she elaborated lamely with a helpless shrug, choosing to play the pretty but foolish Fru or Jarlkona; no one expected wisdom or knowledge from such a woman.
'Huh. Just like them rich types, I expect – oh, sorry, lass, didn't mean nothin' by it,' Colson said. 'Hope he wasn't nothin' special to ye.'
'No,' she said evenly. 'No, we – it was over. There was… nothing between us any longer. He… he abandoned… me.' Her lips trembled at the admission, and she looked away. That at least had been no lie.
'Ah, well, that's too bad, lass. Ah'm right sorry to hear it. I am,' Colson said, though he did not seem at all upset. In fact, he seemed to be smiling a little. 'But I have no family in Urnst at all,' she added, 'nor I think anywhere around here. They are all… back home.' Wherever that was from here.
'Well, maybe you can remember what town he was from, or maybe if he had an estate or somethin'? You could send a letter there. D'you remember where he's from?'
She shook her head again. 'I met him… in Veluna,' she said, snatching another name out of his talk. Where in Hel was that, she wondered? 'But I did not know him before that. He… he talked well. And I was… visiting a shrine,' she added, hoping to explain why she'd been there if not visiting family, which she'd almost accidentally said. She must be vague.
But why should she bother with this dissembling nonsense at all? She'd got her ride and could resume for herself now. Still, she didn't want him to contact the authorities and tell them that some strange foreign girl was wandering loose in their lands. A little more pretense, and then she would take her leave and figure out what to do next.
Colson sighed. 'Then… I don't know. Maybe we could write your family?'
She blanched and shook her head again, and now tears started to well in her eyes as a genuine pang of loss smote her unexpectedly. 'P-please,' she stammered, 'I – my family – we are not close. I cannot write them, not for anything. In fact, I should like it much more if they never knew where I was.' She wiped at her tears, cursing herself for breaking down in front of this man. She was a proud Northern girl, of the old Suel blood! No one should see her cry, especially not some city Southerner, and now she had done it in front of him twice.
'Now, now – no need to cry!' Colson searched his pockets to produce an old handkerchief which she took gratefully, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. 'But you can't even talk to your own family?' He frowned, hesitating. 'Askyrja, are you… in some kind o'… trouble?'
She looked at him over the hankie, big green eyes wide. Jerkily she shook her head.
To her immense relief, he seemed to accept this implicitly. 'Well that's a relief at least, though what else we can do to help you I don't know. Have you… got any money? Hey, now: I'm not one to take it!' he said soothingly when she instinctively clutched her coinpurse – Bjorn's coinpurse, anyway – and backed away. 'I'd never do summat like that, ever! Ma Carter didn't raise no thief! I just wanted to know if ye had any way t' support yerself, which it seems you do. Are ye all right to stay a few days at an inn?'
Askyrja hefted the small bag. She thought so, though she was not sure she should tell some Southerner she'd just met how much money she had. No one could say what the Fates had planned. 'I – I think so.'
'How long d'ye think ye could stay at a place here? We could find ye someplace nice, or middlin' if yer worried about yer funds.'
'I think… a few weeks?' She had looked in the bag, of course, on the long walk here and even counted it. There were many gold coins, more than a hundred. She thought that must go far, but how? She'd been a palace thrall, not a free woman on a budget. She had no idea how much things cost here.
Colson made a pained face. 'I'm sorry, girl, but that… probably won't be enough. This fellow – what did you say his name was?'
She blanked. 'Sigurd,' she said too quickly, thinking of a one-eyed man in her father's guard.
'Well, it'll take a long while for a letter to reach this Sigurd, wherever he is, and then for him to come back upstream to get you. He could be a long way off. I'm sure he'd come back to get you, but – an' I hate to say this, Askyrja – that's too long. It'll be months, like as not. If you've only got enough scratch for a few weeks… you might need to do summat else for a bit.'
'I can clean, wash clothes, do all the things that… women do,' she said.
Colson nodded skeptically. 'That's somethin', though it don't pay a lot and it'd be hard on a… a rich girl like you. I don't s'pose you know anything else? A trade, like?'
She opened her mouth, then closed it again, shrugging helplessly. She could hunt, fish and forage, knew the ways of living in the wilds, but surely all that was of no value here.
'Has you… well, I guess as you hasn't got a place t' stay in town…' He hesitated, thinking hard, and glanced towards the door into the building. 'Listen… I got an idea,' he ventured as Merrim returned, giving Colson a quizzical scowl. 'Our coster house is right here,' he said. 'All's them that works here stays here when we're they're town, you see. It's roomy and clean and… nice… an'… an' we do have extra rooms, an' all…' he said, trailing off. 'What I figure is… I can ask if you can stay here tonight at least. I mean, it's already passing dark an' it's already been a long trip for ye so I figgered… why not stay here tonight? Just for tonight, an' then you can see what's what in the town. I'll take ye, in the morning.'
Askyrja considered. It was a strange offer. She did not really know this man. Still, she had her knife, and she'd always had a keen sense of the impulses and motives of people, when she took the time, and she sensed no deception in him. And it might be cheaper than a room at an inn. 'I… could,' she said hesitantly. 'How much is it?'
'Oh!' said Colson, 'It's – uh – nothing! You can just stay for a bit! We'll say you helped on the run; that'll count as aidin' the coster. Then you don't have to pay nothin'. Right, Merrim?'
The man gave Colson a disapproving, baggy-eyed frown, then turned around and went into the front building without a word.
'There,' said Colson with satisfaction, tucking his thumbs into his belt. 'See? Settled.'