The Gambler's Fortune (Einarinn 3) (57 page)

“Wrestling,” Sorgrad grinned, seeing my expression.

I wished I knew a Mountain equivalent of that finger flick Caladhrians use to convey rebuke.

“Everyone’s bored.” ’Gren’s expression grew animated. “Same as when snow keeps you all to camp or stormy weather makes the mines too wet to work.”

“You’re not to get involved, you hear me?” Sorgrad’s face was serious. “Get overexcited and kill someone again and ten men will be dragging you up before Sheltya who’ll empty your head to your bottom teeth.”

“I thought the whole point was to get ourselves Sheltya? Oh, all right, I’m only yanking your hood,” ’Gren grumbled.

“We’d best steer clear,” I said noncommittally. “We don’t want to be noticed and you flattening all comers would start talk.”

The path took us up beyond a jagged spike of rock and away from the ranks of tents where tense men eyed each other like hounds chained too close in a kennel yard. We stopped to take our bearings.

This ridge of rock marked a deliberate division. There were women up here, some in voluminous drapes like the ones hampering my knees, others in long skirts dusty around the hems and blouses loose-necked in the heat. I looked back down the valley; there were no females of any age in the tents below the little waterfall valiantly making the most of its meager reserves as it tumbled glittering over the rock. A handful of women were lingering by the side of the stream, water pots in hand, idly chatting. One lass was paddling her naked feet in the frothing water.

“She’s trouble going begging for business,” remarked ’Gren with a certain relish. A burly man stripped to the waist as he laundered his linen was on the other side of the stream, watching with interest. He tossed a stone into the water, splashing the young woman’s skirts. She shook her head at whatever it was he said to her but her smile and the flirt of her skirts gave the lie to any denial. A second man, not over-tall but with shoulders massive from years of breaking rocks, came up behind her. Catching the incautious wench unawares, he shook her hard enough to snap her head backward. The other women scattered back to the dubious sanctuary of their tents.

“Our pal had better get this lot fighting some enemy or he’ll have them fighting each other,” observed Sorgrad thoughtfully.

“They’ll just knock the rough corners off.” ’Gren was unconcerned. “Remember early season in a trapping camp or at a new digging.”

“There aren’t any women to fight over after a wasted day at the trap lines,” countered Sorgrad.

“Would it be worth our while setting a spark to the tinder?” I wondered.

“I’m game,” volunteered ’Gren.

“Perhaps if we need a diversion on the way out.” Sorgrad turned to look at me. “You’d pass for a man better if you were wearing a hauberk.”

“In this heat, I’d pass out,” I retorted. “No one’s going to tell me buck from doe as long as I’m wearing this sack.”

Both ’Gren and Sorgrad were in sleeveless chainmail, burnished so bright by the sun it was painful to the eye. They bore the strength-sapping weight uncomplaining and with little enough sign of discomfort, but I hate wearing armor and wasn’t about to slow myself down with it in this heat. I eased the clinging linen of my shapeless overtunic as it clung to my sweaty neck. The sun beat down relentlessly and I envied these people the stuffy shade of their tents. “Has anyone got any water?”

Sorgrad passed me his bottle and nodded to the thirsty arrivals jostling for water below the little waterfall. “We’ll go higher upstream and get a refill.”

A man with a massive hammer sloped over one solid shoulder went past with a self-important air, a lad behind him struggling with a hampering bag of tools clutched to his narrow chest. I drained the last tepid mouthfuls of leather-tainted water, musty but still preferable to the cloying sourness of my mouth. We strolled across the flat stones separating the scored turf from the summer-shrunken river bouncing and sparkling down its rocky bed.

“Let’s take a seat over there for a while.” Sorgrad pointed to a scatter of angular gray boulders, the sun striking rainbow fragments from faint white lines of crystal. We’d see any interest turning to us before it could arrive and by splashing through the shallow river we could lose ourselves in the throng on the far bank.

“So where next?” demanded ’Gren. “We came here to get ourselves an enchanter.”

“So we need to know where he is.” Sorgrad’s eyes fixed on the gate to the fess. The broad sweep of the wall was enclosing a larger area than Hachalfess and the rekin within was both broader and taller. For all that, the whole still managed to look insignificant against the great heaps of broken stone on either side. The pitted face of the cliff behind was scarred with rock-cut stairs. Smeared across the yellow-streaked face of the gray mountain, inky stains glistened damply despite the heat as green-tainted water oozed from the pierced heart of the darkness.

But there was no sign of clean water channeled in beneath the walls of the fess from the stream or of foul drainage coming out to any kind of channel, so we wouldn’t be going in that way. I looked at the main gate. The massive lattice of beams was faced with jointed planks and studded through with iron bolts, proof against determined assault once closed. But it was standing heedlessly ajar, people going in and out, sentry sitting idly on a stool, sword at his waist and armor discarded in the baking heat.

Sorgrad’s gaze followed mine. “They’re not expecting trouble in the heart of the soke.”

My spirits rose. “He’ll be in there, surely?”

“I think we can spare the time to be certain,” Sorgrad said judiciously.

We sat and waited, idly kicking our legs, doing nothing that might attract notice, all our attention fixed on the fess. The sun slid slowly down from its scorching zenith and I waited in vain for the day to cool a little. In the meantime I studied the roof of the rekin, counting silently as the sentry made his regular circuit, trying to assess if I’d have time to climb from the top-most rank of windowsill’s to the parapet while he was still behind the massive bulk of the chimneystack. As long as this little adventure went according to plan, there was no reason why I should have to, but it never hurts to keep every alternative in mind.

“They definitely have Sheltya in there, look.” ’Gren pointed to a gray-clad figure walking briskly out of the gate.

The anonymous hooded figure went to an organized group of tents, two equal ranks drawn up in precise parallel. Men were watching a lad wedging a pole in the dusty turf with shards of broken stone. A man at his elbow swung a goat’s head idly by one curved horn. The rest of the beast was jointed and spitted some way beyond, a scarlet-faced woman sweating over a fire colorless in the bright sunlight.

“You said the Sheltya were healers?” I nodded toward the figure, now revealed as a woman with silvering hair and a thin, parched face, her hood pushed back as she bent to a young girl proffering a hand swathed in bloodstained rags.

“They are staying true to some part of their vows then.” Sorgrad’s eyes were cold in the heat of the day.

The men began throwing knives at the goat’s head, cheers and groans raised for every strike or overthrow. Newcomers drifted over to take their place in an ever lengthening line. A particularly inept throw sparked rowdy joking, but the voices soon turned sour and two men had to be pulled apart by their respective friends. ’Gren watched with interest.

“Is it worth waiting to see if our man comes out?” murmured Sorgrad, leaning forward, elbows on thighs.

“I can’t see him patching up a sliced finger, can you?” I shifted my seat on the unyielding rock, rough gray surface hot beneath my palms. “In any case, snatching him in plain view of half an army would be a fool’s notion. We have to get him on his own.” I resolutely ignored the fluttering of unease in the pit of my belly. We’d be three to one and we knew what we were going up against. If we played this right, he wouldn’t know what had hit him.

“So when do we go in?” demanded ’Gren.

“Once the sun’s going down?” Sorgrad squinted up, the heat and glare still merciless.

I nodded my agreement. “Before they eat or change the guard, so we catch that sentry tired and not paying attention.”

“My arse is going numb.” ’Gren was surveying the bustling campground. “Let’s get a feel for what’s going on down here.”

Sorgrad and I exchanged a look; best to keep ’Gren amused. We began a leisurely circuit of the crowded valley. I kept behind the brothers, head down and shambling along.

“This is no time to play the village idiot,” Sorgrad warned me as we passed rough huts newly lashed up from green wood and untanned skins.

“Who’s going to take an interest if they think I’m simple-minded?” I objected.

I caught a sardonic sapphire glance. “They’ll be curious to know what happened when you were driven into the soke at midwinter of your ninth year, to face Maewelin’s judgment on whether you should live or die.”

I pulled myself a little straighter.

In the upper reach around the fess, the women were busy baking on griddles over their fires, making the hard, pale biscuits you take on journeys, either to guarantee you food to eat, or better yet to smash and use in a sling to fell anything more tasty. Their men must have slaughtered every animal with meat on its bones within a day’s travel. A gang of reluctant youths were spreading dust and gravel on a blood-soaked stretch of land to baffle iridescent flies and racks of meat were drying in the fierce sun.

A woman standing at the alert with her spray of green leaves offered us each a strip of dark, slightly sticky flesh. I tucked it in the broad pocket across the front of my smock. I could always use it to resole my boots if I wore this pair out.

’Gren chewed with appreciative noises. “There’ll be plenty of rations on the march, then.”

“Have you heard something?” The woman swatted at a few hopeful flies, the nails on her hand broken and chipped, dried blood stubbornly staining their edges. “Is there to be a real strike into the lowlands at last?”

“We don’t know,” Sorgrad shrugged apologetically. “We’ve only just arrived.”

“My husband could always use more swords at his side.” The woman’s shale-gray eyes turned calculating. “Why don’t you join up with us?”

“Shouldn’t we get our orders from the rekin?” queried Sorgrad.

“What rights have they over you? Just tell them you’re tying up with Yannal’s men,” she urged. “You’re Middle Rangers, aren’t you? We’ve not been at outs with any soke over the Gap since my foremother’s time.”

I could sympathize with her eagerness to put more swords between her husband and the enemy. That way she stood a better chance of not going back home a widow.

Sorgrad smiled at her. “I’ll go and suggest it to the others.”

We moved on down the valley. “This army’s holding together about as well as a madwoman’s knitting,” I commented to Sorgrad.

“Let’s hope yanking the enchanter out sets the whole thing unraveling.”

We continued our apparently aimless circuit of the valley, pausing here and there to admire the new arrivals showing off their spoils. Wooden trinkets and some gold and silver jewelry suggested they’d cleared Folk out of a stretch of woodland but the bulk of the loot was barrels of flour, bales of blankets, household goods of little value. A whiff of smoke suggested fire as well as blades had been used to good effect. These returning heroes had just gone on a rampage through defenseless upland villages.

No, the brave warriors had been driving off armed intruders, greedy interlopers, according to the fragments of gossip the three of us picked up along with bits of bread, meat and fruit kindly offered. Their appetite for fighting was undimmed and all the talk was of carrying the battle down into the lowlands proper, even of reclaiming the entire Ferring Gap, reuniting Easterlings and Westerlings. What they couldn’t understand was the reason for delay.

I found it increasingly hard to choke down the well-meant gifts as the day crawled sluggishly on. Apprehension was filling my belly and gnawing at my ribs. I just wanted to get things in play. I’d be able to name my own price to Messire, or Planir come to that, I reminded myself firmly. I could invite the other to match it and stand back while their rivalry made me rich. Coin gives choices the poor are denied and I wanted to explore my preferences with Ryshad. That did more to settle my stomach than any apothecary’s remedy as we worked our way back to keep watch on the gate of the fess.

“Sun’s sinking,” ’Gren observed finally.

Sorgrad nodded. “Let’s get you ready for your performance.”

“We should have brought Niello,” I joked feebly as we moved to a conveniently obscure hollow among the abandoned diggings.

Sorgrad lounged casually on the turf to keep watch and ’Gren and I started work. He opened his belt-pouch while I pulled seemingly endless folds of linen over my head, relishing the touch of the cooling air on my stifled skin. I bent and untied one garter, stuffing it in a pocket and letting my stocking droop.

“Let’s be having you.” ’Gren tipped a little water from his belt-bottle into a wooden dish. “Head back so I can make you beautiful.” He was mixing a nauseating palette from cosmetics we had begged from the Forest women.

I tilted my face obediently as he rubbed black, purple and yellow into my cheek with gentle hands. “It’s got to look a few days old,” I reminded him, “and make sure that bastard isn’t going to recognize me. If he sees me for who I am, it’s all over.” I swallowed hard to clear my throat of qualms.

“Your own mother wouldn’t recognize you.” ’Gren smeared a convincing fakery of old, dried blood around one eyebrow and temple, drawing painful cuts across the corner of my eye.

“She hasn’t seen me for ten years or more,” I pointed out. “That’s no great achievement.”

“A bit of green as well, I think.” ’Gren applied judicious pigments to his fingers and laid them carefully around my neck to leave the prints of a strangle, grinning evilly at me. I stuck my tongue out and crossed my eyes.

My spirits were rising as I rolled back the sleeves of my shirt, warming my blood, as is generally the way, once a game’s in hand. ’Gren seized my forearms, drawing me close for a moment. “We’ll be right beside you, all the time.”