With a jerk of acceleration the pinnace shot toward the valley mouth. They still would go home blooded. They would disperse the herd of Northman cattle they’d seen on the prairie beside the forest’s edge, and shoot up the herdsmen, before returning to the city.
XVI
An endless undulating sea of grass, the prairie dried beneath a towering sun. A caravan crept across its vastness, raising a train of dust to mark its passage. Carts and wagons, grinding drought-baked ruts and clods to flour, lurched and jolted clumsily, their teamsters swaying more or less awake. Armed guards rode beside the wagons, spitting gray grit, cursing the lack of breeze, cursing the merchants whose pay had brought them here, cursing their fellows who rode as scouts or flankers away from the choking dust.
Milio Gozzi shifted his bulk fruitlessly in the silver-inlaid saddle and thought of his younger brother who sat at home envying his wealth. Envying at home on a cushioned chair, fanned by a servant, tended by a lovely girl-mistress eager for position, a girl with young breasts like lemons and small dimpled hips.
He shifted again and grunted. Wealth grew only partly from shrewdness. It also required will, the exercise of correct judgment, and attention to details.
Seldom, but occasionally, he wished he was the younger brother. Eat as one might, riding in the hot sun for long days was to feel the fat melt from one’s bones, trickling down over sensitive skin to gather and turn to butter in the loosening creases around the torso, marinating and stinking. The worst was behind and the worst was ahead. The mountains had been more dangerous, sheltering bands of brigands, but the days of open steppe ahead promised to be hotter and dustier.
It was hard to make an honest credit today. Since the orcs had lost their emperor, the peace had not been kept as well. Brigands had grown bolder, forming larger, more ambitious forces. His escort was three times as large as in years past, and cost ten times as much, because the danger was greater and because he would keep them all the way to the City. In other years the orcs had not allowed an armed escort to come more than a day’s ride past the mountains. Nor had it been necessary. Now bandits had attacked even farther out than this, it was said-two full days beyond the foothills. And it was rumored that barbarians had come into the country from a land of ice, infesting the mountains farther north and riding out to attack orc patrols!
One could hear anything, of course, but even lies often had roots in truth. The most disturbing evidence was that they had been advised to bring their escort to the City.
No one had encountered Northmen this far south yet. Gozzi laid a fat fist on the hilt of his short sword. He had no wish to be the first.
He squinted back along the string of wagons at the grimy toughs who rode in the dust, some with lances, some with bows, all with a shield slung alongside and a sheathed sword. A band of surly cut-throats who rode guard instead of raiding only because the pay was surer and because the orcs hunted brigands. They’d fought well though, that time below the pass.
Some rode shirtless. It would be better if they kept their mail on, but he did not press the issue. He’d lost several in the fight and couldn’t afford desertions.
The caravan master pulled his black Arabian alongside Gozzi. It was Gozzi’s caravan and Gozzi had hired him. The other merchants were lesser men who’d paid to join their wagons with Gozzi’s.
“Padrone,” he said, pointing toward the sun, “it is midday, and there’s a creek just ahead. It would be a good place to stop.”
Gozzi nodded and the man jogged his horse down the long train of wagons, calling instructions. When the first wagon reached the stream, the caravan stopped. Teamsters unhitched their horses and walked them in harness to drink below the trail. No fires were lit; they cooked at dawn and again at evening, but lunch was quick and cold.
The mercenaries ate together in a loose cluster of small groups, all but the outriders, joking and gibing in Anglic as best they could, for their own languages varied from Greek to Slovak, from Catalan to Croat. They believed themselves better than teamsters because they were more deadly and better paid. They considered themselves better than the merchants for half the same reasons, but kept it to themselves because they could not trust one another.
As they ate and talked, they paid little attention to what went on nearby. Vigilance was the duty of outriders; their own job was to discourage raiders by their presence, and to fight if need be.
Milio Gozzi, on the other hand, was alert by disposition and practice. As he chewed, his eyes in their creases followed a man trotting his horse toward them from the east. Nudging the caravan master, he motioned with his head.
“I haven’t seen that one before. Who is he?”
“I don’t know,” the man answered after a few seconds. “He’s not one of ours.”
The personal guards of the merchants rose to their feet.
A giant, thought Gozzi, and a resourceful one to have gotten past the outriders. The man dismounted four-score meters away, as if to reassure them, and led his horse, a stallion built to carry weight. Like a Turk, he wore only a breechclout in this season, though the merchant’s shrewd eyes knew he customarily wore more. His legs were tanned less deeply than his torso, and neither was as dark as his face, while his stubbly scalp was flaking from recent sunburn.
He looked as powerful as his horse.
The giant wasted no time. “I’m looking for hire as a fighting man.”
Gozzi wasn’t surprised. His eyes had noted the line of sword callus on the man’s right hand, like a ridge of horn from thumb to the end of the index finger, better developed than he had ever seen before. As for scars, he wore an ugly one on his left thigh, probably from an arrow, plus a trivial crease on the right bicep, but nothing more. Either he was inexperienced or very good, and the merchant was willing to bet that he was very good indeed.
“I’ve never heard that accent before,” Gozzi said. “Where are you from?”
“From Svealann, a country of broad forests and great fighters.” He grinned when he said it.
Gozzi sucked his upper lip thoughtfully. “Never heard of it,” he said. “Suppose I tell you I have all the men I need?”
“One seldom has too many really good men. And you have one less man than you broke camp with this morning.”
“You killed one of my men?”
The stranger shrugged. “He attacked when I only wanted to ask a question. And consider: I’ve saved you his pay and brought you a better man to replace him.”
“One of the others still should have spotted him before he got this far,” the caravan master said.
“And might have, if I’d been an armed band. But there are many low places where the grass grows tall, and my horse lies down on command. And perhaps your scouts were thinking about other things.”
“You’re hired,” Gozzi said abruptly. “But not as an outrider. Outriders must be men you trust.” He nodded to the caravan master. “He will ride beside the wagons.”
Except to water the horses, the caravan didn’t stop again until the sun was low in the west.
“Svealann? Never heard of it.” The speaker was a smallish sinewy man with a short brown beard parted on the left cheek and jaw by a scar. “They must grow them big there.”
“Some big, some small.”
“And you’re one of the little ones?”
The group of mercenaries broke into loud laughter.
Nils smiled easily. “I’m big in any company. Bigger in some than in others.”
“What do you mean by that?”
The tone was belligerent. The man who asked was almost as tall as Nils, with shoulders muscled nearly to his ears. An outrider, he’d been scowling since they had made camp and he’d first seen the newcomer. Trazja had always been the biggest, wherever he was, and the strongest, and he had always dominated, from his first service as a mercenary when he’d been but seventeen.
Nils shrugged, and his very nonchalance antagonized the big Montenegrin. “Here!” Trazja held out his waterbag. “It’s empty! Fill it!”