Lynn Flewelling - The White Road

“We took a different way.” This was something he didn’t know before, though he’d seen a river marked on his map. A boat would mean close contact with these people, but he could probably stand it if it meant getting to their destination faster. River travel would save them weeks, if not months this time of year. It might be worth the risk and discomfort.

The man directed him to a town where they could find a boat south, then said, “If you came up from the south overland, you must have seen something of the armies, eh?”

Armies? Was there no end to this man’s curiosity? “Only from a distance,” Rieser replied.

“Which side? Skala’s or Plenimar’s?”

“I don’t know. We were too far away.” Rieser clenched his left fist under the table, resisting the urge to shout at the man. He was standing too close, making Rieser tilt his head back to look him in the eye.

“Well, it will be better if it’s Skala, friend. You don’t want to run afoul of any Plenimaran marines. They’re a rough lot.”

The man talked on, but Rieser’s increasingly brief answers finally got the message across and he left them alone, as did the others, though there was much staring. Perhaps it was because of Turmay, who was dipping his stew up into his mouth with his fingers, or of Nowen and the other three women of his company. They were comely, he supposed, and Sona and Allia looked young enough to be of interest. He was glad of the weight of his sword against his thigh under the table, in case things turned ugly.

But the night passed without bloodshed and they pressed on for the river.

The river town turned out to be a fair-sized place, no doubt because of the trade that went through it. The waterfront was a warren of warehouses and long wooden platforms that extended out from the shore. He saw stacks of wool bales everywhere, and tufts of the stuff blew about on the ground.

There were also soldiers. There was an encampment just outside the walls, and there were many uniformed men—and women, too—in the streets. They wore chain mail under tabards emblazoned with the shape of a red bird in flight, and many were armed with long swords.

Rieser paused at a stall where a man was selling roasted chestnuts. “Who are these soldiers?” he asked.

The man gave him much the same look as the Tír back at that tavern had. “Why, the Skalan Red Hawk regiment, of course.”

According to the man back at the tavern, this was a good thing. Encouraged, Rieser led his company down to the waterfront.

Boats were tied up beside the long wooden platforms, many of them little more than huge rafts, like the ones children played with on the lakes back home.

After some confusion he was directed to someone called the dock master. This turned out to be a friendly man with dishonest eyes whose palm had to be crossed with silver before he would take them to something called a “flat boat” that could carry their horses. Rieser paid the captain in gold for passage on one of the larger ones, what the master called a “barge.”

For the next week they kept to themselves as much as possible, but it was difficult. The bargemen picked up other passengers along the way, and stopped to let others off. Some of these people felt it necessary to pester Nowen and the other women with unwanted attentions, and Rieser and the rest of them with pointless questions. Young Rane and his brother Thiren were excited and curious, and a few times Rieser was forced to act as their interpreter, but he soon made it clear that they were to keep to themselves.

They began to see signs of the war now. Some of the villages they passed had been burned, and dead sheep and horses floated at the river’s edge.

“Who has done this?” he asked the barge captain.

“Damn Plenimarans, of course!” the man replied. “You’re in Mycena now, and they’ve always been Skala’s friend.”

“What are they fighting about, these two lands?”

“This river, for one thing. Surely you’ve heard it called the Gold Road? What do you think we carry down from Boersby, eh? It ain’t all Wolde cloth and apple wine.”

“They don’t have gold in the south?”

“Damn little of it, and they’re not content with silver.” He grinned and put a finger to the side of his nose. “But then, who is?”

This made sense. The mountains surrounding the North Star clan’s fai’thast were rich with metals, and some gems and rock crystal, too.

Just then Rieser caught sight of a large camp in the distance on the western shore. There were hundreds of tents and shelters, and what looked to be twice that in horses and men.

“There’s some of the Skalans, in winter camp,” the captain told him. “A good thing for us, too. The Plenimarans raid our boats whenever they can when they’re this far west.”

“How do the Skalans feel about the Aurënfaie?”

The man gave him a surprised look. “You ought to know better than me, what with the ’faie trading with them for horses and all the rest.”

Rieser cursed himself for breaking his own rule of talking too much. “We’re from the south. I don’t pay much attention to such things.”

“Ah, well, that’ll be why you don’t sound like any ’faie I’ve met, then,” the captain said, not looking entirely convinced. “As for the war, Skala still holds Nanta, so I won’t have to put you ashore before that. At least that was the last news I had. By the Old Sailor, it can change in the blink of an eye! You’ll do well to find a ship to make the crossing, rather than going overland. The two armies will start up again pretty soon and you wouldn’t want to get caught in the middle of that, believe me.”

“I thank you for this knowledge,” Rieser said. For once, a talkative Tírfaie had proven useful.

There had been no question of Turmay playing the oo’lu during the voyage, or in the teeming city of Nanta, when they docked at last. None of them had seen a city of this size before, or a body of water as large as the Inside Sea, and the young ones drew smiles from passersby as they gawked.

The harbor was full of huge ships with red sails—Skalan warships, the captain said—and there were soldiers everywhere, wearing long tunics with different emblems on their chests. A good many wore the sign of a white horse and walked with the swagger of horsemen.

As soon as their horses had been unloaded, Rieser led his people away from the city. They camped in a small copse overlooking the sea. It was much warmer here than in the northlands; there was hardly more than a dusting of snow on the frozen ground.

The map showed this sea, but being beside it was far different. The water stretched west to the horizon, covered in whitecaps in the evening breeze, and was undrinkable, as they soon learned. The waves surged against the rocks below their camp, sending up clouds of white spume. It smelled different than lake water, too. There was a sweet tang to it, and he could taste salt on his lips as the wind carried the spray up to where he stood.

As soon as the moon was up, Turmay took his place by the fire and began to play. The song was rich and deep, nuanced with sounds like the calls of birds and croaking of frogs. Tonight it also growled like a mountain bear.

The witch stopped suddenly and looked across the fire at Rieser. “The tayan’gil has left the place where it was. It journeys west, with many companions. One of them is a ya’shel with your blood.”

Rieser nodded. It made sense. The half-breed infant he’d pursued with Syall would be a young man by now. Somehow the dark witches had found him and made the tayan’gil. How they had gotten all the way back to Aurënen was as much a mystery as why the tayan’gil existed at all.

“Can you see their faces, Turmay?”