“I’m not sure,” Lucan said. “I celebrate my birthday on the spring solstice.”
“Do you have some idea?”
“Seventy, eighty. No matter. I’ve got some years yet to live.”
“Famous last words,” Kithri interjected. She scuffed a spot in the coals for a comically battered metal teapot. Setting it in the ashes, she scooped dried herbs into a spoon of metal mesh and set it on the rim of the mug she was never without. She had brought a loaf of bread to the fire too, setting it on a rock to warm.
“Possibly, Kithri,” Lucan said. “Good morning to you. How old are you, since we’re interested in each other’s natal moments?”
“Forty-four,” she said. “Remy?”
“Nineteen,” he said.
“I can tell you right now you’re by far the youngest of us,” Keverel said. “I have thirty-six years and can guarantee that both Iriani and Biri-Daar are older.”
“And what that means,” Iriani said as he broke off a piece of bread, “is that you should go get water.”
Remy did, a bit annoyed but also satisfied that he was being taken into the group. He was past being grateful but not past appreciating the way Biri-Daar and the rest had brought him along and made him a part of their group.
Part of that, of course, probably had to do with the mysterious enchanted box that swung against his hip as he walked. If they had just wanted to take it, they could have killed Remy easily enough. He was no longer worried about that. He was, however, still conscious that however much they might gesture toward making him a part of the group, they were still more or less forcing him to come along. Now that he had a horse, he could have turned around and headed for Toradan, but…
He looked around, remembering. Scorpions, kobolds, the cacklefiend… they were after him, no doubt about it, which meant they were after what he had. He drew the water, filling everyone’s skins at a freshet that ran down into a narrow gully and disappeared into the valley. Returning with them strung together across his shoulders, he put a question together in his mind and asked it of the first person he saw. “Keverel,” he said. “Should I just open the box?”
The cleric was just standing up after his morning prayers. “What?”
“The box I’m carrying. Why not just open it? If it’s going to draw pursuit either way, wouldn’t we be better off knowing what’s in it?” Remy took it out and tapped the latch with a fingernail. The characters carved in its lid glowed dimly and a buzzing sounded in Remy’s ears.
With both hands held out in front of him, Keverel said, “Don’t.”
“Why not?” Remy felt the latch under his thumbnail. Two of his other fingers pressed against waxen seals worked into the seam under the box’s lid.
“Remy, none of us know what will happen if you do that. You might well not survive it. Do you think Philomen put those seals on it so they would tickle you if you opened it?”
“You’ll die, boy,” another voice said, just off to Remy’s right.
Reflexively he looked in that direction; as he did, Keverel stepped forward and ripped the box from his hands. Remy reached after it and Biri-Daar, who had appeared at his right to distract him, pinned his arms. She held him fast, and after an initial struggle Remy relaxed. “Are you going to stay settled if I let you go?” she asked.
He nodded. “I will.”
Biri-Daar released him. “Remy,” Keverel said. Remy noticed that the rest of the group was watching. “Either we should open this or you should give it to one of us for a while.”
“Open it, then,” he said, knowing they wouldn’t. “Open it.”
Keverel looked at the box, then around. “In favor?”
Only Kithri raised a hand.
Looking back at Remy, Keverel said, “Settled. We’re not going to open it. What we are going to do is deal with whatever appears to take it from you. Then, when we get to Karga Kul, we will seek the help of the Mage Trust in either opening the box, destroying it, or figuring out another course of action.” He looked at the rest. “Yes?”
A round of nods. Keverel looked back to Remy. “It is probable,” he went on, “that every time this box leaves your hands, that draws the vizier’s attention. It is also probable that whatever draws the vizier’s attention draws other attention as well.”
“What he’s saying in his excruciatingly diplomatic way,” Lucan interrupted, “is exactly what Roji told you back at Crow Fork Market. Every time you make one of us take the box away from you, you endanger all of our lives. By Melora, it is about time you understood that.” He stalked back toward the fire, then stopped halfway there. “We didn’t save your life for you to cost us ours!” he called.
Keverel walked up to Remy and held out the box. “I wouldn’t have put it that way,” the cleric said. “Now that it has been said, however, I do not repudiate what Lucan said. Our lives are not yours to toy with because you’re having second thoughts about accepting your package. Take it.”
Remy did.
“Now hold it. Do not open it. Do not complain about it. Show it to no one else until we arrive at Karga Kul. Understood?”
“I understand,” Remy said. “Sorry.”
“We want no apologies,” Biri-Daar said as she walked by him carrying the waterskins he’d dropped when she grabbed his arms. “We want-we need-to be able to rely on you.”
They broke camp and saddled up to ride without saying anything else. It was a quiet day after that, down into the valley and on along the road as it rose toward the next range of the Serrata… until they saw the first of the orcs.
Remy spotted it first, leaning out from an overlook on the steep slope that broke up from the road to their right. Lucan was riding next to him. Without pointing, he said, “Lucan. Orc on the mountain, up to the right.”
In one smooth move, Lucan unslung his bow, nocked an arrow, and fired. The snap of the bowstring got the rest of the party’s attention; they came ready, hands on hilts. At their last river crossing, Remy had picked up a pouch full of lemon-sized stones. He shook his sling loose and fitted a stone into it, looking up the slopes on either side of the road as Lucan’s arrow found its mark. The orc sentry crumpled out of sight. For a moment none of them said anything; they held still, putting every sense to work finding out whether there were any more.
“Should we go make sure?” Kithri said quietly.
Lucan shook his head. “No need.”
“I believe him,” Biri-Daar said. “We go on, but carefully. There is never only one orc.”
Never only one, Remy thought. That was the first one he had ever seen.
“And where there are orcs, there are usually hobgoblins giving their orders,” Biri-Daar added.
The followers of Gruumsh had been the material of stories to scare the children of Avankil since Remy had been old enough for his elders to want to frighten him. He had always known they were real, but until seeing that one Remy had never expected to see an orc in the flesh. He certainly hadn’t seen it for long.
And now he was learning that they were serving the hobgoblins. It was as if all of the fables Remy had heard as a child were coming to life around him.
“Wouldn’t be surprised to see ogres before it’s all over,” Kithri said.
The horses’ hooves clipped along the ancient stones. They looked up and saw nothing except scrubby pine trees and hawks riding the updrafts along the faces of the mountains that rose up around them. Occasionally a lizard skipped between rocks. Every motion wore at their nerves a little more. “Bring them,” Lucan repeated every so often. “Bring them. Anything to kill the suspense.”
About an hour after the first sighting, they saw smoke in the sky ahead. An hour later, the road rose next to a tumbling creek until they crested a ridge and discovered the source. There had once been a farmstead there; three or four thatched outbuildings arranged around a central home with stone walls and a beam roof. They could tell it was a beam roof because the charred stumps of some of the beams still angled up from the top edge of the walls. The outbuildings were collapsed into smoking rubble. In the yard just outside the doorway lay a body, facedown. Not far away lay a dog, eviscerated, its limbs cut off and flung away. They approached and Keverel said, “Gnawed the bones. Not just of the dog.”