“Well,” he said, and made a face. “Here we are, again. We have the trade road to patrol, and fewer men to do it with than back in your day. Our farms and outlying towns are being attacked—mostly those to the south and east. Cortes Cilwan says the same, and Sorellin.”
“What about Andressat?” Arcolin said.
“The Count has accused us of letting brigands get away to harry his borders. He hasn’t told us of any other problems.”
“Is there concern that any of these brigands are part of an organization?”
“Well … the Duke of Immer, he that was Alured the Black, does say he should by rights take toll of the roads, even these up here. But Immerdzan’s a long way away.”
Arcolin looked at the map the commander had laid out. “One cohort can’t patrol that much territory—better to seek out your brigands and try to break them up.”
“Exactly. But our people have no idea where they’re hiding. From Andressat’s complaints, possibly in the rough country below the downs.”
Arcolin visited Kieri’s banker before returning to the cohort, to ensure that he could transfer funds to Valdaire as they had before, and then spent the rest of the day with Burek going over the maps the militia commander had given him.
“Someone here must know who the brigands really are,” Burek said. “More than two years—they’re getting support from somewhere or they’d be dying out; the problem would be smaller.”
“My guess would be Alured the Black,” Arcolin said. “Did you ever meet him?”
“No,” Burek said.
“He’s ambitious and cruel,” Arcolin said. “Easy to offend, but also a natural leader and a reasonably good field commander. My guess is that he wants it all—all Aarenis.”
“Not that different from Siniava,” Burek said.
“Quite so. Something none of us recognized when we made alliance with him. We needed his aid, we thought, and Siniava’s evil was so obvious …” Arcolin shook his head. “We erred. It wasn’t until after Siniava’s death, when we went downriver with Alured as we’d pledged.” He pushed the memory of those days from his mind and dragged it back to the problem at hand. “I think I’ll have Stammel send a couple of our best gossips around the taverns tonight and see if we can find out anything, but we’ll march tomorrow down this way—” He pointed.
“The brigands will find out we’re asking questions,” Burek said.
“If they don’t already know the details of the contract, I’d be surprised,” Arcolin said. “They’ll have spies in the city, of course. And they’ll be trying to find out things from our men. That’s a game all sides can play. We have some very good players.”
The five Phelani soldiers who started their evening at the Flowing Jug brought a momentary lull to conversation and an anxious look to the owner’s face. Peering past them, he said, “Is that whole mercenary company coming into the city?”
“Just us,” Devlin said, grinning broadly. “Sergeant said we’d done so well, we could come in and fetch him back a jug. We’ll each have a mug, to start with.”
“Here’s a table,” Jenits said. “We could eat—”
“You don’t think of anything but food,” Tam said.
Devlin leaned on the counter, ignoring their familiar and well-rehearsed opening. He tapped a Cortes Vonja nata. “I’m buying this round,” he said and pushed it across.
“This round?” the owner said. “And shouldn’t you take that jug back to your sergeant?”
Devlin laid a finger along his nose. “He doesn’t know which tavern we went to, does he? Happen we’ll need to visit them all, to find one with ale good enough for our sergeant.”
Three rounds later, the little group left that tavern, had a noisy argument in the street, split up, and the pair swaggered into the Blue Pig demanding drink while the trio joined a circle of gamblers playing Leg and Hand at the Cat and Crow. Each complained bitterly about their former comrades and dropped carefully planned nubbins of gossip about the Company. The trio, accused of cheating by the other gamblers, were invited to leave by the tavern’s security, quarreled again on the doorstep, and staggered off in three different directions. The pair, meanwhile, had struck up a friendship with a young woman and after serenading the tavern with an off-key rendition of “Sweeter than the Honey-Bee” were thrown out. They had their quarrel four doors down and like the others sought further adventure on their own.
Torre’s Necklace shone far to the west when they returned to camp, sober and well supplied with gossip.
“I’d forgotten how much fun this is,” Tam said. “You’d think they’d learn.”
“We do it best,” Devlin said. As the most cat-eyed of them, he led the way. “Trade secrets passed down from generation to another.”
“If any of it was true,” Jenits said.
“The bits we all heard will either be true or what someone’s passing as truth,” Devlin said. “But wait until we get to camp.”
In the light of the lamps in Arcolin’s tent, Tam’s idea of fun showed up as bruised knuckles and a cut on his forearm.
“What happened?” Arcolin asked.
“It became necessary to show fight, Captain. For the honor of the cohort—”
“Specifically,” Arcolin said.
“Oh—it was after we separated. I was supposed to be staggering drunk, and someone believed it. If he hadn’t breathed so loud, he might’ve hit me with that billet, but that and his breath-stink revealed him—so I ducked and he hit the wall where my head had been. The cut’s from his friend.”
“And?” Arcolin said when Tam seemed to have stopped.
“Well, Captain, you know it’s not safe for civilians to have weapons they don’t know how to use, so I tried to make the streets safer by disarming them. But sometime in the altercation the one with the club split the skull of the one with the knife, just as the one with the knife sliced the one with the club. I’m lucky to have got off with just a cut.”
“The night guard arrived, didn’t they?” Arcolin said.
“Yes, and I explained very carefully,” Tam said. “They thanked me for my intervention, but suggested I might want to return to camp. It was all polite.”
“I’m sure,” Arcolin said. “Did you by any chance hear anything useful?”
“Yes, Captain.” Tam’s expression changed from one of false innocence to that of a competent soldier. “I thought the fellow at the first tavern was overanxious about us, though we were just drinking quietly and saying how good it was to be back in the south, where it’s warmer and the food is better and the girls prettier.”
Arcolin glanced at the others. “You agree?” They nodded. “Go on, Tam,” he said.
“I noticed there weren’t any girls in the tavern, the way they were three years ago. We used that as an excuse to move on, and that’s when we split into three and two. I was with Jenits. We went on to the Blue Pig. It was more like it had been, there: three pretty girls, two of them from down the street, where there’s a house. They all kissed Jenits, but he’s younger than me.”
Jenits, Arcolin noticed, turned red.
“One man asked if we’d been hired to chase bandits, and we said yes, and he said good luck in a tone that didn’t mean it. Made the Trickster’s sign where he thought I couldn’t see. Jenits said he’d rather chase women than bandits, and the girls were all over him.”
Most of the stories were the same, but for Devlin’s. He had abandoned the pretense of drunkenness as soon as he was alone, and walked to the east gate of the city, where—on the pretext of trying to find some soldiers who’d overstayed their leave from the camp—he chatted with the gate guards. Then he’d gone outside the walls and walked back around the long way, noting which windows still showed light at the wall.
“I nearly ran into something,” he said. “Some men standing around a hole in the ground … and out came another, and handed over a bag of something that clinked.”