“In my pack, sir,” said Paks.
“Best wear it,” he said. “With all the confusion around here, I wouldn’t trust leaving it anywhere. Then you can put your gear in that wagon—” He pointed. “For now, just patrol around the packed wagons. As soon as some of the others arrive, I’ll organize guard shifts.”
By the time they had been on the road a few days, Paks felt more comfortable with the other guards. She still did not feel like trusting them in a bad fight, but she found them much like other soldiers she had known. A few outcasts of this company and that militia, but most were reliable and hardworking. Some had never been anything but caravan guards, and had no skills beyond aiming a crossbow. Others were well-trained, and had left respectable military units for all sorts of unimportant reasons. Drinking, fighting, and gambling topped that list.
Days passed. It was hotter on the Copper Hills track than any place Paks had yet been; the others told her this was the hottest part of the year.
“The smart ones take the spring caravans,” said one, hunkered in the shade of a wagon one noon.
“When there is a spring caravan,” said another.
“Yes, well, what can you expect of merchants?”
“High prices.” A general laugh followed this. Paks sweltered in her chainmail, and looked east, toward the distant line of ocean. On some of the higher ground, when the heat haze didn’t blur it, she could see sand and water form long, intricate curves. It looked cool out there. Finally she asked someone why they didn’t travel closer to the ocean.
“Where are you from?”
“The north,” she said. “Northwest of Vérella.”
“Oh. That’s inland, isn’t it? You don’t know much about the sea. Well, if we went closer to the sea, we’d get down in the worst country you can imagine. Sand—have you ever tried walking through sand?”
“I walked on a little bit of beach, between Immerdzan and—”
“No, not a beach. Dry sand—loose sand. It’s—oh, blast. It’s—it’s worse than a dry plowed field.” That Paks could understand, and she nodded. He went on. “So think about these wagons—the wheels sink in, and the mules labor. We labor. And then it’s swamp. Sticky, wet, salt marsh. And more sand. And it’s not cool—it’s beastly hot, and the water is salt, and everything stinks. Ycch.”
“And don’t forget the pirates,” put in another of the guards.
“I was coming to that. Pirates—they call it the robber’s coast, you know.”
“But how do pirates live there?”
“Some people like eating crabs and clams and things. There’s plenty of that shellfish. There are fresh-water springs here and there, so they say. A few miserable shacky villages. And the pirates have ships, and can sail away.”
Despite the ominous name of robber’s coast, and the caravan master’s precautions—or because of them—no bandits showed their faces, and the caravan crawled steadily northward without trouble. Paks practiced the crossbow, and impressed the other guards with her fencing. She, in turn, spent plenty of time spitting out dirt after trying unarmed combat with the others. They had tricks she had never seen in the Company.
Finally she saw a smudge on the horizon ahead, where the Dwarfmounts crossed the line of the Copper Hills. As they came closer, she could see that the mountains ran east of the present coast line, and saw the angle of shore change from sand and mud to rock again.
“That’s the Eastbight,” said a merchant, when he saw her looking. “If you sail, you have to get well out for the best currents.
“And where you don’t ever want to go,” added one of the guards, “is over there—” He pointed to a wide bay that lay in the angle. “That’s Slaver’s Bay. If there’s a robber on the coast, there’s ten in Slaver’s Bay. It’d take a Company the size of your Duke’s to keep you safe in that place.”
“I’ve traded there,” objected another merchant. The guard looked at him.
“Well,” he said finally, “They must not have liked your face—or your fortune.”
The caravan had reached the crossroads, and turned west for the pass through the Copper Hills into the Eastmarches of Aarenis. Paks began to look at her map again, hoping she could find the trail that led to the eastern pass of the Dwarfwatch. The other guards kept suggesting that she find a companion, but she was reluctant to ask anyone; she didn’t want everyone on the caravan to know where she was going. Finally they took it on themselves to look.
“If you want a traveling companion, there’s another that’s leaving us at the Silver Pass.” Jori, some years older than Paks, had been one of the most insistent that she find a companion.
“Oh?” Paks kept working at the crossbow mechanism. “Who is it?”
“That elf.” She looked up, startled. She hadn’t known there was an elf with the caravan. Jori grinned wickedly. “Proud as elves are, you won’t have to worry about ’im bothering you.”
Paks ignored that. “What’s he leaving for?”
Jori’s smile faded. “Oh—says he’s going to the Ladysforest. You know, the elf kingdom. But he’d be going part of the way with you.”
“Huh.” Paks set the crossbow down and stood up, stretching. “Where is he?”
“Over there.” Jori cocked his chin at the group around the big fire. “I’ll introduce you, eh?”
“Not yet. I want to see him first.”
“In the gray cloak, then,” said Jori.
He looked to be a fingersbreadth shorter than she was, Paks thought, and he didn’t look like the elves she had seen, but for something a little alien in the set of his green-gray eyes, and his graceful way of moving. His voice held some of the elven timbre and music.
“No, I have business in my own kingdom,” he was saying to a merchant of spice.
“But don’t you fear the high trails alone?” asked another.
“Fear?” His voice mocked them and his hand dropped lightly to the golden hilt of a slender sword. The merchants nodded and murmured. Paks looked closely at the sword. Very slender—a dueller’s blade, she thought. If he had not been elvish, she would have suspected bravado rather than confidence in that word. He was slender and moved lightly. She could not tell, for the strange billowing style of his tunic, whether his shoulders were broad enough for a practiced warrior. His hands were sinewy, but she saw no training scars or calluses. Was it the firelight, or did elves not callus? One of the merchants looked up then and noticed her.
“Ho, a guard! It’s that tall wench—come to the fire, girl, and be warm.” He waved an expansive arm. Paks grinned and stayed where she was.
“’Tis warm enough here, by your leave. But I heard talk of the high trails, and came near to listen.”
“What do you want with that? Are you planning to skip the caravan and go north?”
“I’d heard of several trails,” said Paks. She didn’t want to say exactly how much she knew. “And I knew someone who’d been over Dwarfwatch. But if there’s a shorter way—”
“Oh, shorter,” said another merchant. “That’s with where you’re going in the north—” He looked closely at Paks, but she didn’t say anything. After a moment he shrugged and went on. “If you go straight across at Silver Pass, you come out between Prealith and Lyonya, but there’s a good trail on the north side that will bring you west again and out near the southeast corner of Tsaia.” Paks nodded. She felt rather than saw the elf watching her. “That trail meets the one crossing from Dwarfwatch; there’s a cairn at the crossing, and a rock shelter. If you’re headed for Tsaia, the distance isn’t less, but you can travel faster alone, and the passes themselves are easier than the Dwarfwatch route. That high one—” he broke off and shook his head.
Paks followed this with interest. “I thank you, sir,” she said. “I have no great knowledge of mountaincraft; I had heard only that the pass was short.”