Sitting by the side of the road, surrounded by confused, angry drovers, carters, and wagoneers as the sun rose, Wallan wanted to be back in his room at the Mother’s Pony Inn. Lying on his bed, maybe reading a book as Fleck either napped on his legs, or jumped and stalked around the room looking for errant little brown shelled hoppers. Wallan imagined it would have been nice; certainly a better experience than this one. However, he was here, and the excitement of the witnesses to the last moments of what they all insisted upon calling his “heroism” was daunting in its volume. All of the various drovers, tenders, and loaders frantically shouting around him both irritated, and exhausted Wallan.
An elderly man, sporting a very prominent nose, who Wallan had seen fast asleep at the edge of a burned down fire with a circle of others, all also asleep, now wandered through the crowd currently circulating in an amorphous, pulsing ring of shouting humanity about the spot where Wallan sat by the dead asologe. He held up his arms, and gestured for the throng to calm down, and reduce the volume of their mass of confused exuberance.
Slowly, too slowly judging by the look of exasperation on the older man’s face, the milling crowd began to settle as they noticed his gesturing for them to all “settle down.” Wallan could hear people addressing the man, some calling him “Lekk,” and others “Solson.” It was a name he remembered from his reading of the ledger entries; a man who headed up a large family of local carters and wagoneers.
Looking up, Wallan watched as the old man called first for silence, and then for someone named Pender to hop on his gelding, and ride to get some of the Tarestar’s guards.
The man wore sensible clothes, mostly in browns that would hide all but the worst stains, with a large, wide brimmed, floppy, gray and brown woven hat that Wallan thought must be wonderful at keeping the sun off of his face and out of his eyes. The man was heavy shouldered and thick bodied in the way one who works at a physically hard job gains after years of lifting, hauling, and tossing heavy freight day after day.
He squatted on his haunches in front of Wallan, and now, in the shadow of his wide brimmed hat, Wallan could see that he was a green-eyed Ocre, with a silvery white, closely cropped beard defining his chin and jawline.
“Son, what happened here? How did you kill this wizard? How did you both get into our camp without anyone seeing you?” The questions were asked in a measured, calm tone; one that might be used to calm a skittish horse. He stared at Wallan sitting in silence, and finally asked, “Are you okay, son?”
“Sir, this was not a wizard.” Wallan realized that he could turn the direction of this mess. Cut some of it off long before it got too far out of control. “This…” He struggled for a moment, choosing his words as best he could. “This thing was an asologe.” There was a sudden murmuring and several gasps of panic from the watching wagoneers. “I came here this morning from town on the Tarestar’s business to ask a few questions about the short deliveries.” This comment brought out almost as much agitation from the crowd as the term “asologe” had. Wallan even heard one man’s heavily accented grumble about factors checking up on the carters “like we’s children gone astray.”
The old man frowned heavily at this news. Questions from the local lord were probably not something that any tradesman looks forward to, and with the discrepancies in the deliveries, the tenor of the questions might range anywhere from harsh words to being strapped to a chair and finding out exactly how sharp are the guards’ knives.
But, Lekk Solson had spent years moving goods back and forth across the Southern Estar for decades, and had been to Corba several times, and even once had been all the way down to Ked on the southern coast. He was not about to let that bold statement go past without notice.
“Now, son, how would you know a thing like that?”
Wallan looked up at Solson. He tried his best to not grin, this was exactly what he wanted the man to ask, and within the hearing of as many of the others as possible. “He had magic, but he looked like a walking corpse. He was rambling and talking madness. And then, when he looked like he would attack me, he called down lightning, like in the stories about the wizards of the Golden Tower. But, I think he did it wrong. It hit him, not me.” He was betting heavily on the older wagoneer as being the kind of reasonable and solid, common sense, man that would latch onto a reasonable lie faster than he would an unreasonable truth.
The idea that Wallan was a Pride member on the run from the Kuljat Amulajat, thus also from the King’s army, a notoriously powerful Pride member who had seen many battles, and hundreds of men dead by his own means, now pretending to be an apprentice cartographer in Caerly, versus the sad faced young man who was trying to hold back tears after seeing a walking corpse destroy itself with magic and lightning. One of these two stories would keep him safe, while the other would send him fleeing again, only this time as far from the kingdom as he could manage.
And he had grown to truly enjoy his life here in Caerly. He thought he might now even own a cat, as much as, Wallan reckoned, any cat could be owned. He briefly wondered what Fleck was up to this morning.
Solson harrumphed, and blew out a sad sigh. “Now, I know that’s what it might have looked like to you, but we’ll want to keep a tight rein on all of this until the Tarestar can send some guardsmen to get this all sorted.”
It was reasonable. And a solid plan, Wallan knew. But, much to his relief, Wallan could now hear others in the crowd talking about “the asologe who killed himself with magic,” rather than about “the young man who killed a wizard.”
Several people were nodding at that, and Solson stood, and started giving directions to other carters, wagoneers, and drovers. They all moved, if slowly, to follow his commands. Some may have still been drowsy from the sleeping compulsion, some may have just been stunned from what they had woken up to witness; Wallan judged that many in the milling group of men and women were all just caught up in their own varying degrees of confusion and curiosity.
Wallan watched as they all began to disperse, and go about their morning chores; some got fires rekindled, others checked their equipment.
He closed his eyes, and stretched his back and neck. With a decidedly groan-heavy heave, Wallan regained his feet, and started walking toward where the asologe had his own grain wagon and horses. He had made it halfway there, when Lekk Solson caught up with him, and demanded to know what he thought he was doing.
“Sir, I’m checking these horses, and the wagon they're pulling to see if what I suspect is true.”
“And what do you suspect, Son?”
“Wallan, sir.” He said simply as he continued to walk.
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“What?”
“My name is Wallan, sir. I’m Wallan, son of Madu, the Mapmaker.”
There was a palpable silence from behind Wallan as he walked on to the waiting wagon and team. Then, “Well, Wallan Maduson, what is it you suspect?”
The frost in Lekk’s tone made it perfectly clear that Tarestar’s man or no, Wallan had better not point fingers at any of Solson’s carters, or friends.
“Sir, I suspect that THAT team,” and here, Wallan pointed to a wagon in a bad state of repair laden with sacks, and attached to two very ill looking horses. “...are being employed by the asologe. And the sacks in the wagon are filled with grain stolen from your wagons. And I suspect those sacks of grain were on their way to wherever all the other missing grain from this season’s harvest has gone. I would like to know where it all went. And so I will look to see if the wagon has anything in it that might tell us where that might be. I don’t want one of your well meaning carters moving that wagon, or driving that team away from the road, and further muddying up that wagon’s tracks, until we can possibly see which direction it came from.”
“Huh. Well, Wallan Maduson, this sounds,” and here the older man paused, causing Wallan to look back at him from where he now stood just by the rear of the wagon. Lekk looked like he was considering something, and then shook his head in a sign of resignation of whatever thought he might have been entertaining.
Solson restarted; “This sounds like a good idea.” He turned his head to the south, and shouted three quick names, one of which Wallan thought he recognised from the ledger. “I need Teeler, Brick, and Tarsi! OY! OY! OY!”
Wallan was impressed with how loud the old man could yell, and was glad to have not been standing in front of that call as it had gone out over the carts and wagons. Wallan glanced into the back of the wagon as Solson walked towards the direction into which he had just bellowed. Sacks of possibly grain were poorly stacked in the wagon’s bed. Nothing else there that he could see.
He went to the front, to look at the box seat. The seat rails were both broken, the left set long enough ago that where the wood had broken was now rounded with wear. The footrest and toe board both were heavily bowed out. The seat lacked any padding, though Wallan doubted anyone suffering asologee would have noticed. There was, however, a small cloth sack in the joint where the footrest met the toe board. Glancing up to see that he wasn’t being watched, Wallan grabbed the sack, and pulled it near to see what it held, grimacing as something heavy in the bag made a hard “clunk!” noise against the wood of the wagon.
The bag held food… and one surprising personal item.
There was half a square of yellow cheese. And a small waxed cloth wrap of nut meats. Several of the green tubers the locals liked to put in every kind of dish they made, it added a starchy, spicy, sweetness to their meals. Wallan preferred them pickled, as Kamma often served them to him in the mornings, along with eggs.
And a very tarnished bracer of bronze, silver and gold. One of a matched set of bracers, the likes of which a Master of the Kuljat Amulajat would be awarded with the accomplishment of their Mastery of Magic, and their graduation from a Pride into a full Circle.
All of the bronze had turned to greens and purples with neglect, and the silver had gone a uniform dark, matte gray; but the gold stood out from the filth of the surrounding material like the Sun peeking out from behind dark rain clouds. The interior of the bracer was in no better shape, and the entire thing smelled of mold. Wallan shuddered at that, knowing that the stench came from the asologe’s own person. Wallan suspected the poor thing cherished the bracer, though he would have bet the thing had no clue as to why.
Looking up from the bag, he saw Lekk talking to three people in equally sturdy earth toned clothes.
He shoved the bracer on, and up his own left sleeve, before anyone could see. Wallan didn’t want anyone to know about it, if he could help it. The last thing he thought he might want was the Golden Tower taking notice of Caerly in any meaningful way. If they were missing a mage, that mage could stay missing.
Turning back to Lekk and his company, Wallan held up the small sack, and proclaimed, “His lunch, I’m guessing.” He looked back over his shoulder at the wagon and continued. “Some grain in the back, though from the look of his horses, none of it was being used to feed them. I’m no expert, but these animals look bad to me.” He gestured at the sickly team.
One of those accompanying Lekk looked stricken as they saw the poor, starved beasts, and dashed past him to get a better look. It was a woman of middle years, and she was incensed at the condition of the animals.
“Mind how you go, Brick!” One of the men who remained at Lekk’s side called out.
Lekk addressed the two who stood with him, a middle aged blue skinned Gorma man who would have stood a head taller than Lekk if he could have stood up straight, he had been the one to call after the woman, Brick, and a very elderly Ocre woman, who had more wrinkles than Caerlt had fields of grass and grain. “Cho Teeler, Mama Tarsi, this young man is Wallan Maduson, he’s the Tarestar’s man. He wants to know if you two can track this wagon back to its yard.”
Mama Tarsi looked Wallan up and down. She may have approved. She may not, Wallan was sure he didn’t know how he measured up to her, or what she measured him against, but she nodded to him, and removed a pipe from between her very red teeth as she walked steadily passed him to where Brick now checked over the health of the horse team.
He could hear the elder murmur to the younger woman about hooves and shoes.
The Gorma man, Cho Teeler stepped up, and loomed over the much younger Wallan, and nodded politely to him. “This about the missing grain, yeah?” The tall man spoke in a reedy, piping voice for someone so tall. “You’re here’n on Master Khorik’s coin, yeah?”
“I believe so, Sir, and Tarestar Khorik and Tarestia Chania want to see this cleared up. Soonest as can be, Sir.”
Teeler stared at Wallan for a few moments longer than was comfortable for Wallan. The blue skinned man’s eyes bugged larger and ever larger in his face before he broke out in a staccato guffaw at being so addressed. “SIR! Sir? SIR! You hear’n that’un, Lekk? I’m a Sir now!”
He stalked over to the wagon, and began inspecting the wheels very closely, occasionally venting a snort of derision at the shoddy nature of the vehicle, the nature of the world where their grain went missing, and at being called “SIR! Like I’m from proper people, yeah! YEAH?”
Lekk gestured to get her attention, and then told Brick to take care of the horses, “Your best opinion is mine, and you know it. See it done, will ya?”
Brick nodded to Lekk, thin lipped with anger over the state of the horses, and got back to it.
Lekk then took the sack from Wallan’s hands, and turned him toward the rear of the wagon to inspect what it held. He exhaled slowly at the sight of the haphazardly tossed bags of grain. He poked at some of them, then straightened.
He turned Wallan toward the center of the camp that ran alongside the road, and when they had reached the now reignited campfire where Wallan had first seen the old man and his party asleep as he had run past, they sat. There was a tree nearby that would have given them some shade, had they been sitting closer to noon, but the sun having only recently risen, they sat in the dewy morning light, by a fire, as three young children, all with noses big enough to prove their close relation to the Elder Solson, brought Lekk a steaming cup of tea, and another for Wallan.
The youngest of the children, Wallan guessed, brought over a pair of wooden bowls, both of which were filled to capacity with boiled oats which steamed and smelled heavily of ginger.
Seeing Wallan eye his bowl, Lekk told him, “Dig in, we won’t be saying prayers before we start today. They might have helped yesterday, but now we’re in it, and prayers are little and worthless.”
“Thank you, Sir.” Wallan began eating, and it felt too much like he had finished eating far too soon.
“You have. Eaten yet today? What drew you out here without having eaten?” the Elder Solson looked scandalized.