Tales of Anyar Read online

  Now . . . there were others? Even if they were also castaways, at least he could talk to them about things he otherwise dared not speak of.

  “What is it about this Amerika and the Kolsko man that interests the Narthani? I don’t think I’ve ever met a Narthani, so why are they so interested in me and this Amerika?”

  “They’ve never told any details to me or anyone else I’ve talked to. The only other thing I know is I overheard two Narthani say something about a place called Caedellium. I had to ask around to find out where it was. It’s some shitty little island northwest of Landolin. That’s all I know.”

  “Landolin? Christ! That’s on the other side of the world.”

  He had spoken in English, and Kroswyn looked blank at the unknown language. Mark knew where Landolin was but had never heard of an island named Caedellium. At the end of his first year on the planet, he had visited a library in Brawsea, the Frangel capital and the nation’s largest city. The world maps he’d studied allowed him to assign names to the major landmasses he had previously seen from orbit. He now mentally juggled distances.

  If this Caedellium is west of Landolin, that puts this island about twelve to thirteen thousand miles from here in a straight line. More with travel. Shit! Why couldn’t it have been near Drilmar or at least Fuomon or one of the Harrasedic states? Isn’t anything on this damn planet going to be easy?

  “Why are they interested in this, what did you call it . . . Cudelum?”

  “Caedellium. Who knows why the damned Narthani are involved with them? It’s not near Narthon. That’s all I know, I swear.”

  Mark’s thoughts roiled over what he’d just heard. He needed to know more about Caedellium. Why were the Narthani so interested in the island? What was their intent for him? Did any of this relate to the guild’s search for him? He sensed that Kroswyn was a dead end. The man was obviously, and justifiably, afraid of what Mark might do to him. From what he knew about the Narthani—and their willingness to pay handsomely for delivery of his person—he realized that he needed to leave Landylbury. Yet he ached to learn more about this Caedellium and the man named Yozef Kolsko.

  At a loss for how to satisfy the conflicting paths forward, he opted for security. He needed to get out of the city and back home. There, he would have time to plan what to do next. Time might be short. The man he’d cut had fled. Mark didn’t think the wound serious, so the man might be summoning help, while Mark sat thinking. Worse, the assailant might go get the Narthani, who were not known for subtleties. They could show up with twenty men, and Mark would be at their mercy, facing a future that might not include freedom or ever seeing his family again.

  “Don’t move, or I’ll gut you,” said Mark, once more showing the knife blade.

  Kroswyn nodded. Mark cut strips of fabric from the clothing of the dead man, then used them to tie Kroswyn’s legs and arms and gag him.

  “I’ll let you live, but if I ever see you again, I won’t be so kind. Do you understand?”

  Kroswyn nodded, his relief obvious.

  Mark quickly packed his gear. He stood in the doorway for several seconds, looking at the body and the trussed man. He mentally checked whether he’d left anything that might trace him home and wondered if it might be best to kill Kroswyn as a loose end. As he started down the hall, the two guards from the front desk thundered up the staircase, pistols in their hands. They stopped when they recognized him and lowered their weapons.

  “What’s happened?” yelled one of the men.

  “I was attacked in my room by three men,” said Mark.

  “Must be the three that just checked in for a room,” said the man from the front counter. “Something didn’t seem right. They didn’t have bags. One of them ran out dripping blood. Where are the other two?”

  “One’s dead, and the other’s tied up in my room. I’m getting out. Is that going to be a problem?” asked Mark, not sure of the protocol for leaving dead bodies.

  The two men looked at each other before the counter man sighed. “Damn. This doesn’t do our reputation any good. We’ll clean up the mess, if you agree not to tell anyone what happened.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t. I’m leaving Landylbury now and don’t know if I’ll ever be back.”

  Mark walked past the two men, then stopped and turned.

  “I left one of them tied up. I told him I’d let him live if he talked to me. He did, so I’d appreciate it if you keep my word.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer and hurried down the hall, then out the front door to make his way to the stable where his horses and wagon awaited.

  “Yes, yes! Stop banging on my door. You’ll wake my wife, and she’ll bitch at me for the next sixday!”

  Mark stopped pounding the door and waited for the stable owner to unlock and open it.

  The owner recognized him. “What couldn’t wait until tomor—”

  “Sorry, but something urgent came up, and I need to leave Landylbury.”

  The grizzled man sighed. “All right. Give me a minute to dress, and I’ll be out to help hitch the horses to your wagon.”

  “That’s something I need to talk with you about. I don’t really need the wagon anymore, but I do need three riding horses. Good ones. I’ll trade you my wagon and its horse team.”

  The owner’s eyes narrowed. No one came to his home in the middle of the night wanting to swap a solid wagon and two strong draft horses for riding horses unless there was a reason that could play to his benefit.

  “I’ll have to check the wagon and horses again, but you’ll need a saddle and other gear. You’d have to add six hundred soldors.”

  The dickering on price commenced and continued after the owner threw on a coat and they walked to the stable. Mark didn’t have time for the endless arguing over prices that seemed ingrained in the Frangelese and gave the man silver coins worth five hundred soldors, the monetary unit of Frangel. The tack was used but in good shape. The horses were adequate—they only needed to survive to get him home.

  An hour later, Mark knocked on another door, the sun still an hour from first light. Minyn Lustor wasn’t as annoyed as the stable owner had been, but he was surprised.

  “Kaldwel? Haven’t seen you for months, and why come calling this early?”

  “Sorry, Lustor, I need to make some purchases, and it can’t wait for your normal hours. Can you open your shop? It’ll be worth your while.”

  “Well . . . sure. Meet me at the front door.”

  Mark walked from the rear of the building, where Lustor lived in an adjoining house, and waited at the street door of the firearms shop. Heavy bars over windows and a similarly barred door were set into timbered walls. No one broke into the shop easily, and Lustor had once recounted that the few who did try had met unpleasant fates from the heavily armed owner and his sons, none of whom had compunction against shooting intruders.

  Mark had done business with the owner before. Lustor had taken Mark’s plans for the seventy calibre hunting rifles and manufactured the firearms in the forge shop next door. Once Lustor saw the plans and Mark’s descriptions, he offered to make two rifles at no charge, as long as he was free to produce and sell more of them. Their inevitable bargaining had settled on Lustor being free to sell more rifles in three years—one year of which was left in their agreement. Mark had figured that by then, he’d have saved enough to start his own ranch and quit hunting destrex, which would be a relief to both him and his wife—rifles and skill only went so far. Lone destrex hunters didn’t have long careers.

  With a clang of metal, the door swung open. Luster turned to light lanterns. One of his sons stood aside, holding a double-barreled musket shotgun. He and Mark nodded to each other. Then, satisfied that his father’s customer was who he claimed to be, the son disappeared into the dark workroom behind the now illuminated displays.

  “I won’t ask why the urgency,” said Lustor. “I expect it’s trouble and not something I want to know about.”

  Mark ignored the stateme
nt. “I need a number of firearms—to start with, two of those double-barreled shotguns like your son brandished, plus shot packets and powder. Also, four pistols that would stop a man but that a woman could handle. They should use the same caliber shot. And that double-barreled pistol you showed me last time I was here and tried to sell me. I didn’t need it then, but I do now. Is it still for sale, and do you have more than one?”

  Lustor call out to his son, presumably still in back, to bring out the shotguns. He then pointed to a display case of pistols. “Pick out your single-shot pistols. The others are locked away. They’re still hard to make, so they’re expensive. I have two ready to sell.”

  “Can we work out an agreement? The shotguns and pistols for the remaining year of our agreement on the rifles you made for me?”

  Thirty minutes later, the shotguns, the pistols, shot, and powder were wrapped in waterproof leather and tied on the two horses he wasn’t riding. The weight was compensated for when Lustor swapped silver coins for gold. Mark usually took payment for hides in bulkier silver, which was less conspicuous to spend than gold. Now, Mark’s fear of drawing attention with gold coin was less important than ease of transport and concealment.

  He rode at a steady but unhurried pace until mid-day. He estimated he’d covered thirty miles from Landylbury to the top of the escarpment, where he sat watching the road behind him. The horses were tied next to a spring. He’d fed them a portion of grain from the sacks the stable owner had provided. The pause and the grain were in case of pursuit. He still wondered whether he shouldn’t have killed the leader of the three men who tried to capture him.

  An hour passed. Two hours. Traffic on the road slackened the farther he got from the city, but at thirty miles there were occasional wagons and riders: farmers bringing goods to sell or returning home, single or multiple riders traveling for whatever reason, freight wagons loaded or empty, heading in both directions.

  “Well, we’d better get going,” he said to the air and the horses thirty feet away. “Nothing so far. We’ll stop again tomorrow when we get to the top of the Balgorn pass to check for anyone following.”

  He’d always had the habit of talking to horses, first on his family’s ranch and then in Frangel. At home, it was a point of laughter within the family. Here, it was just the oddity of a man speaking to empty space in a foreign language.

  He saddled a different horse this time and tied the packs on the other two, after giving each horse another double handful of grain. Before mounting, he took one last look north toward the city . . . and stopped. A cluster of horses had just come into view about three miles distant. It took five minutes before he got a count of ten riders and three pack animals. At fifteen minutes, he believed a large rider had one arm in a sling and a smaller rider had something covering the middle of his face, as if they’d suffered a wounded arm and a nose injury. He didn’t believe in coincidence. It had to be the two men from the night before, and now with eight comrades.

  I should have killed them , he thought. Definitely the one I let go. He talked like the leader.

  There was no way they’d tracked him, not on the roads and through multiple forks. They had to have found out his name and where he lived from someone at the pub. Maybe the Ostyns. Maybe another patron he’d spoken with on past visits. It didn’t matter from whom. They were coming for him—meaning whatever price the Narthani were willing to pay was significant.

  If he’d had one of his “doomsters,” the name he’d given the destrex rifles, he’d be tempted to discourage them. With its longer range and striking power greater than anything they’d carry, he could pick them off out of their range. A couple of men with fist-sized holes all the way through their bodies might stop them, but maybe not. Enough gold could overcome any hesitation, and even if these turned back, there could always be more later.

  He briefly considered ambushing the party, perhaps with help from the ranch owner and friends, but that would put them in danger during the ambush and from later Narthani agents. Even with the doomsters, the help of other men, and picking a spot to trap his pursuers, he couldn’t be sure of getting them all after endangering people he cared about. He couldn’t turn such men back forever, and there was no safe haven at home. If the Narthani wanted him badly enough, they might send hundreds after him.

  He felt angry and bitter. After all that had happened in the first years, he thought he’d settled into what the rest of his life would be. And now this. He would have to move again. No, not just move, but run. Run away from Narthani agents. Where to? It couldn’t be in Frangel. He’d already moved south, away from the major cities. He needed to go where he might not be known, maybe far into the south where few people lived—for good reason. No, he would have to leave Frangel entirely. For the first time since hearing the word Amerika , he acknowledged the nagging thought he’d tried to suppress. He had to get to “Caedellium” and find out what was there.

  Time for the leisurely pace was over. He transferred all the packs to his own horse and one of the others. The third horse would travel light and be the least tired when he needed it. If the opportunity occurred, he would look to buy fresh horses on the way. He had to get home as fast as possible. The riders were an hour behind him because climbing the road up the escarpment was slow going and added distance by its winding switchbacks. He would push the horses and rest as little as possible. If he was lucky, he would cover the 340 miles back home a full day ahead of the ten men—perhaps two days, if all went well.

  Maghen Kaldwel had spent the morning with friends—the owner’s wife and four workers’ wives—preserving what Mark insisted on calling figs , instead of the nurster fruit’s correct name. She could never get a satisfactory answer for why he had to use a different name. It was just one more unexplained trait she had come to accept, a minor annoyance in exchange for such a fine husband.

  As she walked from the ranch owner’s house to her family’s cottage, she shifted two-year-old Alys to her other arm. She noticed that she’d missed cleaning off a spot of nurster juice from her elbow. The preserves would be shared by all the ranch’s families.

  “Mama. ’Orses,” called her daughter, who hadn’t mastered all sounds yet. Maghen looked behind to check what Alys saw. She raised a hand to shade her eyes from the sun. It was a rider pulling a single packhorse. A rider whose shape looked familiar.

  “Damnation, Mark. It’s not fair for any of us,” argued the ranch owner after Mark apprised him of the Narthani. “I’d hoped to eventually take you on as a partner with the ranch. Plus, we’ll all miss you and Maghen. But you’re right. If they want you that bad, for whatever reason, even if we drove them off now, they’d come back with more men or when we weren’t looking for them. We’re too remote and the local authority too weak to help us. It’ll gall me the rest of my life I couldn’t stop all this from happening.”

  “I do have a favor,” said Mark. “We’ll have to leave on horses for speed and so we’ll have the option of going where wagons can’t. I left my own wagon in Landylbury, and the horses I arrived with are done in. We’ll need six horses.”

  “Pick any you want. You know them all. It’s the least I can do. And when those assholes get here and we tell them we don’t know where you went, there’ll be enough of us here to discourage them from doing anything. It’ll force them to go looking for your trail and give you time to lose them.”

  “I hope you’re right, but my gut feeling is that they’ll be persistent. I don’t know how much the Narthani are paying, but it must be impressive. As for not telling anyone where we went, I’ll think of something for you to say. I don’t want them to assume you know where we’re at and aren’t cooperating.”

  Twelve hours after Mark arrived home, he and his family rode away from the ranch. He reined in his horse at the top of a rise. He turned to look past his wife, riding with Alys, and four pack horses roped, two each, to his and her mounts. The ranch and their cottage would likely vanish forever when they started down the opposite slo
pe.

  “I said it before, but I’m so sorry, Maghen. Neither you nor Alys deserves to lose your home and the future we thought we had.”

  Her eyes were moist, as she looked back one last time. “From what you described, Mark, it’s nothing you could have prevented. I, too, thought we were safe here from the guilds, but for whatever reason, the Narthani are after you, and we have to leave. And don’t say anything again about you going without us. You’re my husband, and we’re a family. Even if we don’t know whether we’ll be safe from the Narthani, our places are still together.”

  He had argued with himself and then discussed with her the option of him leaving alone. In no scenario could he conceive of her being safer without him. If the Narthani found him gone, they might take his family as hostages, and chances that they’d see one another again would become vanishingly small. If rumors were true, the Narthani might ship them to Narthon and a fate that could not be contemplated.

  After the initial shock of hearing her husband describe the events in Landylbury, Maghen had begun sorting through their possessions. They’d gotten four hours’ sleep, then loaded six horses and said goodbye.

  “We’ll stop at Maghen’s family’s farm on the way,” Mark had told the ranch owner. “It’ll be a quick stop to see her family and let them know we’re leaving. Maghen will tell them why and that we can’t say if we’ll ever see them again. Then we’ll continue on east to Nurburt and beyond. If the Narthani or their agents or whoever they are show up here, you can tell them the direction we’re headed. You don’t need to know more than that, but we’ll be watching to see if they follow us. If not, and if I’ve been an alarmist for no reason, then maybe we’ll come back here in a few sixdays or a month. Otherwise, we’ll try to disappear.”