CHAPTER 21
The men on the bridge were soldiers, in full uniform and heavily armed. They stood in front of a gate that blocked the south end of the bridge. Pitched nearby was an army-issue tent.
They did not appear to be there to sell vegetables. After a glance at them, Valder left the highway and made his way down the bank to the river. He drank his fill, wiped the sweat from his face and arms, splashed a little water on his tunic to cool himself down, then sat and rested for a few moments.
The last daylight was fading; on the bridge above him the soldiers were lighting torches. He glanced up at the hiss as the first one caught fire, and watched the procedure with interest. This was obviously a toll bridge. He had heard of such things, though in wartime they had been illegal outside the borders of Old Ethshar — or rather, the Small Kingdoms, since Old Ethshar had apparently collapsed before Valder was born. Toll bridges might have interfered with the movement of troops or supplies, so they had not been permitted.
The war was over, however, and that law seemed to have been repealed — assuming this group was here legally. With four of them and Valder alone, he had no intention of questioning their rights.
He glanced at the river. Already the far side was invisible. He could not possibly swim so far, he knew, and he doubted that a river of such a size could be forded anywhere within twenty leagues. Certainly, no one would get any goods across without using either a bridge or a ferry. He saw no ferries. All trade, then, would use the bridge. The toll collection should prove profitable.
When he was feeling somewhat less exhausted, he got to his feet and climbed slowly back up the bank to the highway.
No traffic was moving. Three small parties, perhaps a dozen travelers in all, were camped along the roadside up toward the fork, with campfires burning. The only other people in sight were the soldiers on the bridge; in addition to their torches, they had a small cooking fire in front of their tent.
Valder was at a loss as to what he should do next. He was tired, hungry, and lonely, with no idea what would become of him; these common problems seemed more important at present than his unique one of being linked for life to a magic sword he did not trust. The sword was strictly a long-term problem, while the others were all immediate.
He could handle his weariness by trampling out a circle in the grass and going to sleep — in fact, he could probably find an abandoned campsite and save himself the trouble of trampling one out. Food, however, was becoming a very serious concern, and the sight of a soldier hanging a kettle over the cookfire decided him. He trudged up onto the bridge.
The soldiers saw him coming, despite the gathering gloom. Two had cocked crossbows in their hands, but did not bother to aim or release the safety catches, while a third dropped his hand to the hilt of his sword. Valder saw five in all; the fourth was the man tending the kettle, and the fifth was dozing nearby.
“Hello there!” Valder called.
“Hello,” the swordsman replied.
“What are you doing here?” His assumption that they were toll collectors was, after all, only a guess.
“Guarding the bridge.”
“Guarding it against what? The war is over!”
“Guarding against unauthorized crossing. It’s one copper piece to cross for veterans or their families, and no one else is welcome.”
“On whose orders?”
“Lord Azrad’s.”
That made sense. In fact, Valder respected Azrad for thinking of it. Not only would it add to the coffers, but it would keep the people of the Small Kingdoms — who would not be veterans, since the army had not been responsible for the homeland and had long ago moved all operations, including recruiting, elsewhere — from coming to Ethshar and further increasing the crowding in the cities. While the war had continued, none would have dared to venture into the war zones and military lands without a good reason, but now that peace had come and the war zones were transformed into the Hegemony of Ethshar, some might think there were opportunities to be exploited.
Valder had no intention of crossing the bridge until morning, when he could see the other bank and decide whether it was worth a copper piece, but he was very much interested in food and conversation before he slept. “What’s cooking?” he asked, pointing to the kettle. “It smells good.”
“Just stew; Zak caught a rabbit this afternoon.” “Might I join you? I haven’t eaten in almost two days; I can’t afford the prices in the city.”
The swordsman glanced at his companions, and, although no objections were spoken aloud, Valder sensed reluctance all around.
“I’ll pay a fair price, if you want; I’ve still got my back pay. I just wasn’t willing to pay those robbers in the city what they wanted.”
“I can agree with that,” one of the crossbowmen remarked. “If I had any doubts about staying in the army, those prices cured them. Silver bits for ale, they wanted!”
“Four the pint at the Overflowing Chalice, and worse in Westgate Market!” Valder agreed. “I can’t pay that! Better to drink seawater!”
That broke the ice, as the soldiers all chimed in with complaints. A moment later the whole crew, Valder included, was clustered around the kettle, dishing out rabbit stew. No matter where or when, soldiers loved to complain, and Valder had given this group an opportunity for which they were properly grateful.
They even forgot to charge him for the stew.
The food did not stop the conversation. Between bites, Valder exchanged accounts of wartime action seen, commanders served under, and so forth. Coming as he did from the extreme west, Valder’s tales seemed strange and exotic to the guardsmen, even though he avoided any mention of his work as an assassin. Their stories, in turn, seemed odd to him; they had lived and served without ever seeing northern troops. Their only action had been against magical assaults, either sorcerous or demonic, or against rebellion among the civilian population.
Valder had never lived in an area where there were civilians, other than camp followers and perhaps a few traveling merchants or coastal fishermen. He had never heard of civilian rebellions and could not really picture how or why they might occur.
His lone scouting patrols through empty forests were just as alien to the southerners, of whom four of the five had never seen a forest. Also, it seemed that Azrad’s command structure was far tighter and more complex than Gor’s. When Gor had needed something done, he had pointed to a person and told him to do it; when Azrad had needed something done, he had formed a committee to study the problem and set up the appropriate chain of command. Both systems had apparently worked. In fact, as the soldiers described it, once Azrad had all his systems established, they ran themselves, leaving him free to devote his time to his own amusement, where Gor had remained closely involved with day-to-day operations.
This was all new to Valder; it had never occurred to him that there could be such variation within Ethshar, either Hegemony or homeland. He found great delight in this new learning.
When war stories began to wear thin, around midnight, Valder asked, “Why are there so many people in the city? Why doesn’t someone do something about it?”
“Where else can they go, and what can anyone do?” a soldier asked in reply. “Ethshar’s the only real city there is, and only soldiers are fool enough to sleep in tents. All these veterans want roofs over their heads, and the only solid roofs in the Hegemony are in Azrad’s Ethshar, so that’s where they go. Sooner or later, they’ll realize they can build their own, I suppose, but for now they go to the city.”