Chapter Forty-Two

The ‘harbor’ if it could be called as such, was in Speranzi’s eyes, beautiful in its simplicity. A simple elevated area of stone and earth, the ramp itself was on long polished rails, and the barges were not at all what Speranzi expected. They looked like beehives cut longways in half and then laid down with the flat end up.

Each one was surprisingly large and had a metal rim around the side against which upright metal poles were secured. Chains ran between each pole to provide a loose rail that swayed back and forth.

As they drew closer, she saw one such barge slide down the rail and into the water, a thunderous splash rang out and the workers on the elevated area were soaked. But clad in loose pants and shirtless, the twenty or so barrel chested men were otherwise nonplussed by what must have been the expected result.

Speranzi watched the long barge sway in the water, but with its deep bottom, it moved far less than she expected and it was soon not only steady, but drifting along, going from a languid pace to one that carried it faster than a horse’s gallop until it was a distant dot. The elven prisoners turned faintly green in the face when they beheld their inevitable fate.

“What’s the matter with them?” Skana asked, inclining her head toward the shifting and uncomfortable elves who rode or drove the merchant wagons.

“They’re elves.” Corwin explained with a downward glance at Amarantha. “They don’t do well on the sea or open water. They’re unstable and uncomfortable off dry land.”

“Oh.” Skana answered and scratched her head, “I didn’t know that, we don’t exactly have many elves in Northern Qadish.”

“Imagine that.” Corwin said with a dry tone and wooden expression as they inched forward in line.

Skana pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes, ‘Is he making fun of me?’ She wondered, but set the matter aside to focus on the more immediate interest in the wondrous scenery before her. It was a beehive of activity with people going in all directions, a cacophony of endless voices, mostly laborers and seamen, ships being pulled in where the river slowed. The smell of fish and the cries of birds filled the air. The city of Laylan was alive with horses, dogs, cats, rats, and people.

For her, it was a mix of bliss and discomfort that left her fidgeting and watchful. Guards drew Skana’s eye most of all, her eyes narrowed with suspicion whenever a group of them walked by her wagon, which was mercifully rare. They avoided walking anywhere close to the hundred Black Quivers if they could. ‘Scumbags.’ She thought, hatred boiling up for everyone she saw in armor outside of her own little group.

Her glare heaped less scorn on the more overt criminal activity, which to Skana’s eyes was so plentiful that she thought, ‘There were fewer cutthroats and thieves with Bodger than there are on these docks!’

She tried not to think of the mob of humanity or the memories of the crowded, foul smelling, besieged city of Prioche, the dense crowds and unwashed bodies. The vicious ways in which the prisoners were turned against each other by deciding for themselves who would be offered to the demihumans or their demon allies as a blasphemous meal on the altars of the gods of men.

But it was hard not to. There was only one place she could look that kept those thoughts at bay, toward the blue waters of the Long River, even if the barge were going to be a little crowded, it wouldn’t be nearly as much so, and there again she would have the unending horizon to watch, and not just the high walls of the great city to stare at.

Her heart bounced a little to think about it, and so she narrowed her thoughts on that, as the line continued to shrink.

Brotus, for his part, kept his eyes wide not with awe, but in search of opportunity. The careful design of the clothing of prostitutes plying their trade at the docks caught his youthful eyes immediately. Sailors disembarking went straight for those, taking hand or belt or sleave and drawing them off to some alley shadow or house of ill repute for a brief but wild time.

The memory of his previous night was still heavy in his mind, not only in the whore’s beauty or skill, but in how much he’d had to spend on her. ‘A mere hundred like that, no, not even a hundred… ten! Just ten! That would be all it would take to set a man up for life!’

Dock toughs plied their trade as well, not where the guards would see, but elsewhere, where they could throw weighted dice with naive travelers or lure some fool traveler out of view for a more direct mugging than dice throwers.

Brotus made a game of it, picking out the scams and frauds, and recalling the words of his master, ‘There’s not one person in a hundred that doesn’t want the coin in your pocket, and that ‘one’ is you. That means you’re defending against ninety-nine people, some will be honest, a lot of them won’t be. A good merchant knows how to tell the difference! A bad one, ends up working in the warehouses of the good ones if he’s lucky.’

To that end, the lessons in theft were more numerous than those of the thieves guild. From phony sales of bridges the thief didn’t own, to throwing weighted dice or ‘investment opportunities’ that yielded nothing… or worse, brigands masquerading as escorts… ‘There are a lot more ways to steal money than make it honestly.’ The memory of sitting in his small chair at the desk and sweating onto his slate while Corwin or one of his workers tried to thump some knowledge into his skull was almost ‘pleasant’, now that he knew how to apply them through observation.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Brotus watched it all with the same careful attention he gave at the market, and at the inn, and even to the body of the prostitute who was his first. Watching as carefully as he did as they slowly wound their way toward the barge they’d be taking south, he saw what others did not.

A bedraggled boy in dirty clothes slitting a drunkard’s coinpurse and slipping away? Brotus’s eagle eyes saw it.

The way a dock working whore looked expectantly into the alley rather than at her customer. ‘Bait for the mark.’ He recognized, and doubted very much that he was going to get worked over the way he was expecting, and that it would cost the customer a great deal more than expected.

Even the layout of cheap food stalls had a simple organization that suggested that they all cooperated. Those selling alcohol were closest to the ships, even before the prostitutes. Farther from the ships were more common foods with the more expensive being more distant to catch officers and wealthier travelers eager to escape from the commoners and poor.

What nobody living it saw, Brotus would not have missed in a thousand years. ‘My master’s teachings were worth the risk.’ He thought, recalling the feel of the rain and the shouting of the brutish mercenary leader who still protected them even now.

That one was a person he studiously avoided, as did the rest of his former comrades. ‘If being a traveling merchant means spending time around people like that, count me out.’ It was a sentiment that sparked their mass resignations, every time she looked their way, he and his fellow apprentices wondered, ‘Why does she look at us like she wants to kill us? Why does she hate us so much?’

‘It’s one thing to occasionally face a brigand, it’s another to have to spend every day around one.’ Brotus thought sympathetically.

But all his observational skill did not save him from what happened next.

He felt the impact on his shoulder, and the little ‘pat’ noise like butter dropped to spatter on a table, and instinctively looked toward the source.

A little white stain on his clothing, his head snapped up, the bird was already soaring away, oblivious to what he’d just done. Brotus glared up at the creature, pouring his hatred toward the white winged beast as it sailed away in happy ignorance.

“Damn it!” He cursed and grabbing the nearest cloth he could, he began furiously wiping the stain away, gritting his teeth and growling under his breath until it was gone.

Only then did he drop the cloth away from his hand and saw it yanked away from him. A small slender hand trembled before its owner backed a few inches away from him until her body was against the side of the wagon.

Brotus looked at her, ‘One of the elves? Oh.’ He realized and saw the way the woman clutched at the cloak she wore, the one he’d so casually grabbed the end of to wipe away the bird droppings.

She said nothing, only looked at the stain, then toward him, and then down at the wooden floor of their shared wagon.

Brotus opened his mouth to speak, or to give her an apologetic smile…

But then looked away, unable to look or speak to her directly. Instead, he focused his attention ahead, where their turn to board was fast approaching. He did however, put his hand into his coin pouch and mumble, “A price for everything. Even if it’s used.” He then took out a few coins, checked them, put the silver ones back, and tossed a copper coin that landed with a wobble that was thunderous to his ears before falling still by her foot. She only drew her knees up to her chest and did not take the coin, leaving it to sit untouched, looked at like it was a viper about to bite her hand if she were to reach for it.

‘I tried.’ He told himself and left the coin alone, it was a divider between him and the elven laborers that shared the wagon with him, right up until the bargemaster’s booming voice shouted, “Out of the wagons! Everybody outta the wagons! File onboard two at a time an stay away from the edge of the gangplank! An remember this…” He leveled a truncheon at the little string of wagons and the accompanying Black Quivers, “it’s a hanging offense to push anyone off the side of the barge while you’re on the water, whether they drown or not!”

He had a glower on his face that said there was a reason he made a point of announcing the penalty before anyone had even done it. Brotus wasn’t one to argue, he just snatched up the copper coin again, put it back into his coin purse, and then joined everybody else on the elevated stone surface to file up onto the long, wide ship.

Ahmorantha’s eyes darted about like mad, his short steps were still plodding as the stink of horse manure, cattle that were blessedly no longer present, and worst of all, humans, surrounded him.

At his side, Corwin moved at more of a waddle than a plod. Step by weighty step caused the thick wooden gangplank to creak and groan. More than once the slender little elf boy felt fear shoot through his body when he thought about what lay ahead, and it was hard not to think of it, given that the gangplank was wobbling, albeit very little. But if wood on a solid surface could wobble, what would the boat do?

He tried… unsuccessfully, not to think about it. ‘How did I end up here?! At least back at the inn I didn’t have to worry about drowning! How am I supposed to be ‘better off’ surrounded by these… things?!’ He felt the icy chill all over again, the blue eyes in the back of his skull, it was like a hand was wrapping around his heart and threatening to squeeze.

And she was walking only a few feet away. In a manner of speaking, Ahmorantha felt something closer to relief creeping over him that the human who bought him seemed to get on well with the woman, and seemed to control the other armored humans thereby.

But still.

‘Going south… it’s the same as dying, to hear some folk tell it… we don’t come back from there…’ He thought, the hopeless faces of the captives at his back who were now working for the merchant as a means to gain some safety were proof of that. ‘All the way to Laylan and then snatched up like it was nothing.’

And that barge was bringing back unpleasant memories.

The smell of oil on armor, leather soaked with human sweat, the confined space, even without real walls around the barge, the fact that there was only water below that would carry the unlucky under never to resurface still made the vessel into a prison. ‘It’s like confinement all over again…’ Ahmorantha thought and squeezed his eyes tight shut so he would not have to see where he was going. Didn’t have to see it as if it were the cage he once called home before his sale, didn’t have to think about the way he’d been made to leap and prance like a horse while up on the auction block to show he was healthy and spry.

‘Will this hell ever come to an end?’ He wondered, and felt the firm hand of Corwin on his shoulder.

“Hold on.” Corwin said, and because Ahmorantha’s eyes were shut, he did not see why he was being told that.

Nor did he know it was instruction given too late.

The barge slid down the rail and hit the water with a crack and a crash and water sprayed outward as it was displaced by the bulky vessel.

It shot forward on the water, and the elf boy shot forward as well, thrown free of Corwin’s hand and into the metal and leather clad body of the person in front of him.

As the elf boy struggled to regain his feet, he looked up and saw the unbreaking death stare of the commander of the mercenaries in service to his master, and held in her winter stare as if her eyes were chains binding his tongue fast, he was unable to even speak his usual servile apology.