Dave Duncan - Children of Chaos

Benard climbed in and sat on the bindle to think about Hiddi—Hiddi the statue, not the flesh-and-blood one, whom he had not seen since their first meeting. He had decided to show her with her chin a little higher than she had held it when she posed for him at the temple. This would produce minor changes in her neck, and...

Old Guthlag came hobbling across the yard, his pall already rumpled. Beside him trudged a hulking Werist cadet carrying a leather bag. Benard stood up. The hunk said "Here!" and swung the bag up to him, but the artist's eye had noted how far the titan had been tilted as he walked and how much effort was needed to lob that load. Benard caught it with both hands and against his thighs instead of where it had been aimed, so he did not drop it and it did not disable him. The chariot rocked, provoking snorts of protests from both onagers and Nastrarian. The Werist had the grace to look impressed as well as disappointed.

Benard lowered the bag to the floor. It chinked. What in the world did they need so much gold for?

Guthlag said, "Ready?"

"Ready, lord."

"No baggage?"

Benard just shook his head. He gave the old man a surreptitious hand up, gripping his wrist and not his arthritic fingers. He was surprised to find himself on the left side.

"You expect me to drive? Lady Ingeld used to say it would be easier to teach onagers to paint. The only time she ever let me try by myself, I nearly tipped the car over. Wow! You 're going to let me drive ?"

"Boy, it's time you grew up!" The growl came in a gale of beer fumes. Beer was the old man's usual tipple, but beer could not be transported in chariots. Neither the beer itself nor the crocks would stand the bouncing. It was a surprise that Guthlag thought he could.

"Yes, lord. Right away." Benard unwound the reins, remembered to check that the brake was up (handle down, remember!) , took a firm grip on the rail, and yelled "Ready!" at the Nastrarian. Reluctantly the youth returned to the world of people and stepped aside, withdrawing both himself and his god's blessing. The long ears shot up. With angry brays, the brutes lurched forward against the neck straps. The chariot hurtled along the yard, heading straight for the far wall, where each brainless ass would inevitably try to turn outward and create complete disaster. A pull on the right-hand onager's reins—a stronger pull—brought the car around in a death-defying U-turn. As it settled back on both wheels, Benard aimed the team at the gate and resisted an urge to close his eyes.

Out in the alley, he could do little more than hang on as they careered down the long, winding slope to the river, through crowds, carts, wagons, and carrying chairs. Guthlag blew long warning yodels on the bull's horn. Pedestrians and livestock leaped aside, howling curses and choking in the roiling clouds of red dust.

"Which way?" Benard yelled.

Guthlag stopped bugling long enough to snap, "Left!"

Left it was. They veered madly around an oxcart, and after that life became a little simpler. True, it was there, where land and water met, that the main business of the city was conducted. Being both quay and road, the levee teemed with people buying and selling, loading and unloading, coming and going. Porters toiled like ants under seemingly impossible burdens; wagons rumbled between high piles of wares and gaudy market stalls. The wealthy rode by in carrying chairs or chariots, whose drivers screamed and cracked whips at the mob, yet went no faster because of it. But at least there was space enough to dodge and no wall for an incompetent driver to butter bystanders against.

"There!" Guthlag said as they swept out of town. "That wasn't hard, was it?"

"I'd rather chisel marble," Benard muttered under his breath, but he did feel pleased with himself. Heading upstream with the wind in his hair and the sun in his eyes, he even began to enjoy life. The traffic was light, just the occasional wagon or chariot, and his onagers had lost their first furious speed. On the rutted track the car bounced. And bounced. And bounced. It also swayed, pitched, and rocked. The trick was to keep one's knees slightly bent, so they said.

Hard as it was on him, it was much harder on Guthlag. The rheumatic old warrior clutched the rail with hands all knobbly and twisted. His brass collar bounced up and down his scraggly neck, his face repeatedly twisted with pain.

Benard eased back on the reins, and the winded onagers condescended to slow to a trot. "How far to Whiterim?"

" 'Bout a menzil."

A chariot should get there before noon. "Do we go through any interesting places?"

The Werist opened his eyes, the better to scowl with. "Only place on the plain that's interesting is Kosord—an' even that's half a finger from boredom."

"How about Umthord? Isn't that where holy Sinura's sanctuary is?"

"What if it is?" the old man snarled. "Heroes have no truck with Healers, nor them with us. Stop. Need a drink."

Discard first theory—despite his grotesquely swollen joints, Guthlag had not been sent along on this expedition so he could seek a healing in the famous sanctuary. So why so much gold?

The onagers did stop on Benard's signal, much to his surprise. Giving the old man the reins to hold, he knelt to untie a wineskin. Guthlag took a very long drink.

The sun was brutal already, the long baking of summer that ripened crops. The clouds impressed Benard—innumerable little puffy clouds scattered like grain on a slate and extending forever. Landscape was soon obstructed by hedges or houses or something , but that heavenly ceiling stretched on in all directions until it was lost in the haze of the wall of the world. To his right flowed the river, which was another and far greater highway, coils of ochre-colored oil peppered with three-cornered sails in red-browns. In the other direction lay endless green spreads of growing grain mottled with silver ponds.

"What'ch waitin' for, boy? Drive on, an' stop daydreaming."

"Yes, lord. Giddyup!" Benard slapped the onagers with the reins.

"You got the brake down."

Ah, yes...

♦

After a long period of bouncing, Benard said, "Any word of Cutrath?"

Guthlag cackled. "Pimple's still in the sweatbox. You miss him?"

"No. Who does?"

"No one I know of."

"So you don't think I'm in any danger?"

"Arr! Didn't say that. You're in plenty danger."

"Even after what the satrap said?"

"Hope so," the old man said grumpily. "Honor of the host's at stake. Course, it'll take some planning. Anything happens to you, then Horold'll have to ask a seer who dun't, right? Means the pimple wouldn't dare do anything himself, 'cause he knows his daddy'll beat him bloody for disobeying. No local Hero will, for same reason. But a twist of copper in a beer house can buy all the thugs you want, and there's Heroes coming through town all the time, heading for the Edge. Uphold the honor of the cult, see? By morning the culprits are long gone and you're feeding the eels."

"My lord is kind," Benard said, but he said it to himself. If it happened it happened.

He still did not know why Guthlag had brought a fortune in gold along on a simple two-day outing, but he knew better than to ask. Besides, there were more interesting things to think about. The Anziel statue was like a sore tooth, impossible to ignore for long. The angle of Her gaze would be critical—

♦

After the second wine break, Guthlag's painkiller began making him talkative. "That drawing of your'n really took me back," he mumbled. "Handsome man, then, Satrap was."

"Even when I knew him. Must have been a vision in his youth."

"He wash at that, lad. Spec I wound be here if he hand bin."

"My lord is kind," Benard said blankly.