The Redemption of Althalus (4 page)

He sourly returned to the inn where his horse was stabled and spent the rest of the night sitting on his bed glaring at the single piece of paper he’d taken from Druigor’s strongbox. The pictures drawn on the paper weren’t really very good. Why in the world had Druigor bothered to lock them up? When morning finally arrived, Althalus roused the innkeeper and settled accounts with him. Then he reached into his pocket. “Oh,” he said, “I just remembered something.” He drew out the piece of paper. “I found this in the street. Do you have any idea at all what it means?”

“Of course,” the innkeeper replied. “That’s money.”

“Money? I don’t follow you. Money’s made out of gold or silver, sometimes copper or brass. This is just paper. It’s not worth anything, is it?”

“If you take that to the treasury behind the Senate, they’ll give you a silver coin for it.”

“Why would they do that? It’s just paper.”

“It has the seal of the Senate on it. That makes it as good as real silver. Haven’t you ever seen paper money before?”

A sense of total defeat came crashing down on Althalus as he went to the stable to pick up his horse. His luck had abandoned him. This had been the worst summer in his entire life. Evidently, his luck didn’t want him down here. There was wealth beyond counting in these cities of the plain, but no matter how hard he’d tried, he hadn’t managed to get his hands on any of it. As he mounted his horse, he amended that thought. Last night in Druigor’s countinghouse, he’d had his hands on more money than he’d likely ever see in the rest of his entire life, but he’d just walked away from it, because he hadn’t realized that it
was
money.

He ruefully conceded that he had no business being in the city. He belonged back on the frontier. Things were just too complicated down here.

He mournfully rode his horse to the central marketplace of Maghu to trade his civilized clothes for apparel more suitable to the frontier where he belonged.

The clothier swindled him, but he’d more or less expected that. Nothing down here was ever going to go well for him.

He wasn’t even particularly surprised to discover when he came out of the clothier’s shop that someone had stolen his horse.

C H A P T E R     T W O

H
is sense of defeat made Althalus a little abrupt with the first man who passed his place of concealment late the next night. He stepped out of the shadows, grabbed the unwary fellow by the back of his tunic, and slammed him against a stone wall just as hard as he could. The man sagged limply in his hands, and that irritated Althalus all the more. For some reason he’d been hoping for a bit more in the way of a struggle. He let the unconscious man collapse into the gutter and quickly stole his purse. Then, for no reason he could really justify, he dragged the inert body back into the shadows and stole all the man’s clothes.

He realized as he walked down the dark street that what he’d just done was silly, but in some obscure way it seemed appropriate, since it almost perfectly expressed his opinion of civilization. For some reason the absurdity made him feel better.

After he’d gone some distance, however, the bundle of clothes under his arm became a nuisance, so he shrugged and threw it away without even bothering to find out if any of the garments fit him.

As luck had it, the city gates were open, and Althalus left Maghu without even bothering to say good-bye. The moon was almost full, so there was light enough to see by, and he struck out to the north, feeling better with every step. By dawn he was several miles from Maghu, and up ahead he could see the snow-capped peaks of Arum blushing in the pink light of the sunrise.

It was a long walk from Maghu to the foothills of Arum, but Althalus moved right along. The sooner he left civilization behind, the better. The whole idea of going into the low country had been a mistake of the worst kind. Not so much because he hadn’t profited: Althalus usually squandered every penny he got his hands on. What concerned him about the whole business was the apparent alienation between him and his luck. Luck was everything; money meant nothing.

He was well up into the foothills by late summer. On a golden afternoon he stopped in a shabby wayside tavern, not because of some vast thirst, but rather out of the need for some conversation with people he could understand.

“You would not
believe
how fat he is,” a half-drunk fellow was saying to the tavern keeper. “I’d guess he can afford to eat well; he’s got about half the wealth of Arum locked away in his strong room by now.”

That got our thief’s immediate attention, and he sat down near the tipsy fellow, hoping to hear more.

The tavern keeper looked at him inquiringly. “What’s your pleasure, neighbor?” he asked.

“Mead,” Althalus replied. He hadn’t had a good cup of mead for months, since the lowlanders seemed not to know how to brew it.

“Mead it is,” the tavern keeper replied, going back behind the wobbly counter to fetch it.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” Althalus said politely to the tipsy fellow.

“No offense taken,” the fellow said. “I was just telling Arek here about a Clan Chief to the north who’s so rich that they haven’t invented a number for how many coins he’s got locked away in that fort of his.”

The fellow had the red face and purple nose of a hard-drinking man, but Althalus wasn’t really interested in his complexion. His attention was focused on the man’s wolf-skin tunic instead. For some peculiar reason, whoever had sewn the tunic had left the ears on, and they now adorned the garment’s hood. Althalus thought that looked very fine indeed. “What did you say the Chief’s name was?” he asked.

“He’s called Gosti Big Belly—probably because the only exercise he gets is moving his jaw up and down. He eats steadily from morning to night.”

“From what you say, I guess he can afford it.”

The half-drunk man continued to talk expansively about the wealth of the fat Clan Chief, and Althalus feigned a great interest, buying more mead for them each time the fellow’s cup ran dry. By sundown the fellow was slobbering drunk and there was a sizable puddle of discarded mead on the floor near Althalus.

Other men came into the tavern after the sun had set, and the place grew noisier as it grew dark outside.

“I don’t know about you, friend,” Althalus said smoothly, “but all this mead is starting to talk to me. Why don’t we go outside and have a look at the stars?”

The drunken man blinked his bleary eyes. “I think that’s a wunnerful idea,” he agreed. “My mead’s telling me to go see some stars, too.”

They rose to go outside, and Althalus caught the swaying man’s arm. “Steady, friend,” he cautioned. Then they went outside with Althalus half supporting his drunken companion. “Over there, I think,” he suggested, pointing at a nearby grove of pine trees.

The man grunted his agreement and lurched toward the pines. He stopped, breathing hard, and leaned back against a tree. “Kinda woozy,” he mumbled, his head drooping.

Althalus smoothly pulled his heavy bronze short sword out from under his belt, reversed it, and held it by the blade. “Friend?” he said.

“Hmm?” The man’s face came up with a foolish expression and unfocused eyes.

Althalus hit him squarely on the forehead with the heavy hilt of his sword. The man slammed back against the tree and bounced forward.

Althalus hit him on the back of the head as he went by, and the fellow went down.

Althalus knelt beside him and shook him slightly.

The man began to snore.

“That seems to have it,” Althalus murmured to himself. He laid his sword down and went to work. After he’d removed his new wolf-skin tunic from the unconscious man, he took the fellow’s purse. The purse wasn’t very heavy, but his drinking companion’s shoes weren’t too bad. The trip up from Maghu had left Althalus’ own shoes in near tatters, so replacing them was probably a good idea. The snoring man also had a fairly new bronze dagger at his belt, so all in all, Althalus viewed the entire affair as quite profitable. He dragged the man farther back into the shadows, then put on his splendid new tunic and his sturdy shoes. He looked down at his victim almost sadly. “So much for wealth beyond counting,” he sighed. “It’s back to stealing clothes and shoes, I guess.” Then he shrugged. “Oh, well. If that’s what my luck wants me to do, I might as well go along with her.” He half saluted his snoring victim and left the vicinity. He wasn’t exactly deliriously happy, but he was in better spirits than he’d been down in the low country.

He moved right along, since he wanted to be in the lands of the next clan to the north before the previous owner of his fine new tunic awakened. By midmorning of the following day, he was fairly certain that he was beyond the reach of last night’s victim, so he stopped in the tavern of a small village to celebrate his apparent change of luck. The wolf-eared tunic wasn’t equal to all that unrecognizable wealth in Druigor’s counting-house, but it was a start.

It was in that tavern that he once again heard someone speak of Gosti Big Belly. “I’ve heard about him,” he told the assembled tavern loafers. “I can’t imagine why a Clan Chief would let his people call him by a name like that, though.”

“You’d almost have to know him to understand,” one of the other tavern patrons replied. “You’re right about how a name like that would offend most Clan Chiefs, but Gosti’s very proud of that belly of his. He even laughs out loud when he brags that he hasn’t seen his feet in years.”

“I’ve heard tell that he’s rich,” Althalus said, nudging the conversation around to the topic that most interested him.

“Oh, he’s rich, all right,” another confirmed the fact.

“Did his clan happen to come across a pocket of gold?”

“Almost the same thing. After his father was killed in the last clan war, Gosti became Clan Chief, even though most of the men in his clan didn’t think none too highly of him on accounta how fat he was. Gosti’s got this here cousin, though—Galbak his name is—and Galbak’s about seven feet tall, and he’s meaner than a snake. Anyway, Gosti decided that a bridge across the river that runs through their valley might make things easier for him when he had to go meet with the other Clan Chiefs, so he ordered his men to build him one. That bridge isn’t none too well made, and it’s so rickety that it’s as much as a man’s life is worth to try to cross it. But let me tell you, that’s not a river that a man with good sense would want to wade across. The current’s so swift that it carries your shadow a good half mile downstream. That rickety bridge is as good as any gold mine, since it’s the only way to cross that river for five days’ hard travel in either direction, and Gosti’s cousin’s in charge of it. Nobody who’s got his head on straight crosses Galbak. He charges an arm and a leg to cross, and that’s how it is that Gosti’s got a sizable chunk of the loose money in Arum salted away in that fort of his.”

“Well now,” Althalus said, “how very interesting.”

Different lands required different approaches, and up here in the highlands of Arum our thief’s standard plan of attack had always been to ingratiate himself into the halls of men of wealth and power with humorous stories and outrageous jokes. That kind of approach obviously would not have worked in the stuffier cities of the plain where jokes were against the law and laughter was held to be in extremely bad taste.

Althalus knew that tavern stories are almost always exaggerations, but the tales of Gosti Big Belly’s wealth went far enough to suggest that there was probably at least sufficient money in the fat man’s fort to make a journey there worth the time and effort, so he journeyed to the lands of Big Belly’s clan to investigate further.

As he moved north into the mountains of Arum, he occasionally heard a kind of wailing sound far back in the hills. He couldn’t immediately identify exactly what kind of animal it was that was making so much noise, but it was far enough away that it posed no immediate threat, so he tried to ignore it. Sometimes at night, though, it seemed very close, and that made Althalus a bit edgy.

He reached the shaky wooden bridge he’d been told about, and he was stopped by a burly, roughly dressed toll taker whose hands and forearms were decorated with the tattoos that identified him as a member of Gosti’s clan. Althalus choked a bit over the price the tattooed man demanded for crossing the bridge, but he paid it, since he viewed it in the light of an investment.

“That’s a fine-looking garment you’ve got there, friend,” the toll taker noted, looking with a certain envy at the wolf-eared tunic Althalus wore.

“It keeps the weather off,” Althalus replied with a casual shrug.

“Where did you come by it?”

“Up in Hule,” Althalus replied. “I happened across this wolf, you see, and he was about to jump on me and tear out my throat so that he could have me for supper. Now, I’ve always sort of liked wolves—they sing so prettily—but I don’t like them well enough to provide supper for them. Particularly when I’m going to be the main course. Well, I happened to have this pair of bone dice with me, and I persuaded the wolf that it might be more interesting if we played dice to decide the matter instead of rolling around on the ground trying to rip each other apart. So we put up the stakes on the game and started rolling the dice.”

“What stakes?” the bearded clansman asked.

“My carcass and his skin, of course.”

The toll taker started to laugh.

“Well—” Althalus began to expand the story. “—I just happen to be the best dice player in all the world—and we
were
playing with my dice, and I’ve spent a lot of time training those dice to do what I want them to do. Well, to cut this short, the wolf had a little run of bad luck, so I’m wearing his skin now, and he’s up there in the forest of Hule shivering in the cold because he’s running around naked.”

The tattooed man laughed even harder.

“Have you ever seen a naked wolf with goose bumps all over him?” Althalus asked, feigning a sympathetic expression. “Pitiful! I felt terribly sorry for him, of course, but a bet
is
a bet, after all, and he
did
lose. It wouldn’t have been ethical for me to give his skin back to him after I’d fairly won it, now would it?”