However, the Ehleen mused, should an enterprising man act upon privately obtained information and ride out to meet the incoming train… hmmm… Unbeknownst to the two men closed in the tiny cabin, a sailing barge from upriver had furled sails, put out long sweeps and rowed in to berth on the opposite side of the pier. For all that she bore a small amount of miscellaneous cargo, this vessel was basically a passenger boat, but a single short glance at the passengers who lined the rail of the newcomer as the boatmen made bow and stern lines fast to ironbound bollards was enough to send most of the docksider pimps and petty criminals off to seek better-heeled or less dangerous prey. Within a cabin of the passenger boat, a long-limbed, fair-haired man sat brooding, his big hands clasped about the well-worn hilt of a fine broadsword, his blue-gray eyes seeing not the greasy, soot-stained wooden wall before him but rather the rolling, green leas of the land of his birth, a land now forever lost to him, the County of Geerzburk.
At a tentative rapping on the closed door, Martuhn of Geerzburk gave over his bitter reveries and turned his head to face the closed portal. “Come.”
At the basso rumble, the battered door swung inward to reveal a stocky, short-legged man known to all the world simply as Wolf. Hideously scarred was Wolfs face, by both blade and flame. Neither ear was intact, and a piece of waxed leather covered the empty socket which once had held the mate to his ebon right eye, while his hairless pate resembled an eroded and deep-furrowed hilltop. The plain steel helm which normally covered the bald head was presently held in the crook of Wolfs right arm, the hand of which had long ago been lopped off at the wrist. The arm was tightly laced into a leather cuff, to the tip of which was affixed a heavy knob of steel.
Wolf fingered his nonexistent forelock, executing a short, jerky bow. “Miud count, the boat done docked up and they’s a-shoving the planks out. Duke Gutly’s likely a-waiting.”
Count Martuhn smiled thinly. “Wolf, old friend, you’d best watch your tongue, else our employer may have it and your ugly head, as well. Surely you know that there is no man so proud and hypersensitive as a new-made noble? I like the corpulent old pirate no better than do you, but he pays well… and punctually, if you will recall.”
The nobleman arose, having to stoop in the low cabin. He was armed—a corselet of finest Pitzburk plate, worn and nicked but polished to a sheen, short kilt of scale mail, arm and elbow guards and the ornate greaves which were the mark of an infantry officer of the far-away Middle Kingdoms. Not until Count Martuhn had buckled on his broad, steel-mounted dagger belt did he settle the even broader leathern baldric onto his right shoulder and snap the links of the sheathed broadsword to it so that the weapon occupied its familiar place at his left hip. That done, he lifted from the table his fine but battered helm and turned to stoop lower and to the side so his height and bulk might pass through the cabin door.
By the time the nobleman-become-Freefighter came on deck, his young ensign, Flairtee, and his six big, burly sergeants had shouted and chivvied and beaten the five dozen recruits into a sort of formation. One brief glance at these fruits of his eastern recruiting trip was all that the exiled officer could bear—thieves, certainly, rapists, likely as not, murderers, more than one he was sure, broken men, outlaws, brigands; all men who, for one reason or another, had found it expedient to put a good thousand miles of territory betwixt them and their homelands.
But even as Martuhn winced at the tatterdemalion sight of the “formation,” his keen mind was consoling him with the thought that some few of his recruits showed definite promise. Back at Tchehsheerportburk, out of which he and his staff had operated and gathered their recruits, that slender, brown-skinned, silent Zahrtohgahn had demonstrated enviable skill in casting accurately dart, light axe, knife or stone; he was also a shrewd and accomplished wrestler. The middle-aged Harzburker (he denied Harzburker antecedents, but, to Count Martuhn, his accent gave him away) was obviously of gentle birth and even possibly, like Martuhn, a broken nobleman, for he was a first-rate swordsman and the habit of command was natural and automatic to him; men-tally, the former lord of Geerzburk was already priming the Harzburker for either sergeant or officer, likely the latter.
The third he considered a real treasure. This man, like the first, was also a Zahrtohgahn, but older, heavier of build and much darker of skin. His weapons skills were passable, but his true value lay not in the pursuits of war. Quite by accident, during the journey from the east, Martuhn had learned that the blue-black-skinned man who had signed on as Ahkmehd al Ahsrahf was a highly skilled and talented physician and surgeon—something so rare in a Freefighter company as to be almost unheard of.
When he had donned his helm, Count Martuhn returned Ensign Flairtee’s intricate flourish of steel with a hand salute, then drew the junior officer aside and spoke in a low voice.
“Keep these swine aboard, Rahnee. The last thing we need is to be held responsible for turning the likes of them loose on one of the duke’s precious ports, much as this one does need a thorough cleansing. “I would suspect that, when I report to His Corpulence, we will be ordered to garrison the new fortress at Twocityport. At least those were the plans when we were sent east, to recruit these reinforcements for the company.” The freckled young officer nodded. “You think well be sent by water, eh, your grace?”
“If I were the-duke, that’s what I’d do,” affirmed the commander. “He dislikes and distrusts even the best stripe of easterners, and you may be certain that his spy network has informed him that our little contingent is composed of the very dregs. No, he’ll not want this lot marching through his towns and grain lands to Twocityport… though Wolf and I may ride over; I’ve had enough of this damned boat and its foul, cramped stink. Give me a good bit of horseflesh between my knees.”
Old beyond reckoning and built upon still older ruins, the City Republic of Pahdookahport was ostensibly independent, free of homage to any lord save the hereditary Council of Merchant-Lords which had ruled from time immemorial. In grim reality, however, the port city had not exercised any latitude of self-determination for the twelve years since—besieged by a huge rabble of river pirates and in very tight straights—the then council had sought the aid of the Duke of Twocityport. At the head of his hundreds of disciplined, well-armed and battle-hardened mercenaries, Duke Tcharlz had not only broken the siege but had virtually annihilated the several bands of temporarily allied pirates.
Then had the council made its most serious mistake. All but bankrupt from the cost of the siege and the hefty sum exacted by the shrewd duke for his troops’ services, their port facilities in need of extensive repairs before they stood any chance at all of refilling their coffers, the councilors had irrevocably doomed their long-standing free status by contracting a sizable loan in specie, materials and slave labor from their savior.
Since that date, Pahdookahport had been a client-state to Twocityport in all save name. The duke’s interest rates on the loan went far beyond mere usury. After twelve long years, and despite large, twice-yearly payments’, the principal of the loan still stood untouched and the interest still continued. Even the densest head in Pahdookahport now realized that Duke Tcharlz’s stranglehold on the small republic would be loosened only by his death. Not feeling really safe inside his captive city, for all that his own troops patrolled the streets and docks of the close-packed aggregation of homes, warehouses, taverns, brothels, countinghouses and shops, the duke had raised up a fine, strong and commodious residence atop a low hillock a half mile away from the city on the road which wound to Twocityport. He alternated his residence between this edifice and his palace near the capital. Deliberately grinding the noses of the citizens of Pahdookahport into their hated serfdom to him, Duke Tcharlz had partially demolished several of their public buildings to face his new residence—christened Pirates’ Folly—and had stripped public buildings and the very homes of merchantlords of fine furnishings, statuary, wall hangings and artwork, allowing only fractions of their true value to be applied against the city’s indebtedness to him.