Making camp was, in Speranzi’s view, one of the things that the merchant and his entourage did even more efficiently than her practiced band of soldiers. They wasted no words, they made their camp close to their wagons and even used the wagon walls themselves to brace their poles and create little leaning structures. They shared the same fire and were done in minutes.
By contrast, the Black Quiver company set out their campsite in different little niche groups with campfires that each hosted only four or five soldiers around each flame. It was far less efficient, but it made them happier, and the flames ringed the encampment to provide ample light against monsters or brigands or both.
She’d long ago observed that these groups tended to cluster around the handful of women she’d brought into her company, ‘To think I ever worried about that.’ Speranzi thought while she prepared the fire for herself and Corwin. ‘After a dozen fights for everyone but the new meat, nobody is dumb enough to cross any lines I draw.’ She brought her hand down on the center of the fresh cut wood, the blade of her hand slammed into the center, splitting the wood in two. She repeated the gesture with both halves and then quartered them both.
Corwin, to his credit in her eyes, wasn’t idle while she worked, oversized as he was, he pulled his weight. He stood over a pot cutting strips of meat into what would be a magnificent field stew when he was done. Her belly was already aching for a bite as she listened to the noise of each plop of bright red meat and watched it tumble away from his knife, fall through the air, and vanish into the dark broth below.
Before she really knew it was over, over it was. The camp was laid out and the day’s ration of ale was distributed, the winking stars of the endless sky shone clearly that night, and in the gentle evening breeze, it was a rare moment of relaxation for the commander of the Black Quivers.
Corwin set his pot over the little fire pit just as Speranzi struck a spark to make the flame, and the tinder roared to life.
“I’ll mind the pot.” He said, and Speranzi sat down on the log without complaint.
Well behind her, she could hear the noise of a fife picking up, and then the strumming of a lute, the dulcet tones drifted toward the lead wagon, and Corwin remarked offhandedly, “Your soldiers are unusually musical.”
“Their fathers were of noble blood. Even if they did eventually throw them out to keep inheritance disputes at bay, they did at least somewhat prepare their children to live on their own. Music training is common for the children of nobles. I’d be surprised if there were any of them that didn’t know how to play at least one instrument.” Speranzi didn’t try to hide the pride she felt in her company when she looked back at them.
A song was picking up in a familiar voice. “They’ll take to her eventually, I think.” Speranzi said, though it was more to herself than anything, Corwin chimed in anyway.
“She’s still one of the reavers. She’d have gutted me and slept just fine the next day. You say I am the soft one? You get some sob story and melt like ice dropped into this stewpot.” It was a rebuke, and a harsh one, but Speranzi took it passively.
“Everybody has a story, sob worthy or otherwise. But I saved her life once before, it would be a waste to get rid of it. Besides, you saw what happened at the village. She saved that poor bastard’s life. If she’s so bad, why do that?” Speranzi retorted, and Corwin made noises with his mouth that weren’t quite words before he finally found some useful ones.
“Hoping to get in your good graces, probably. You be careful about that one. She slept at night beside ravishers, rapers, plunderers and butchers to make her way in this world. Nobody like that is worth a damn. You wait, she’ll show her true colors soon enough.” Corwin answered while applause went up.
Speranzi waited until the clapping died down and another song began before she changed the subject.
"So are you going to tell me how the lake got that name or am I going to have to ask somebody who lives there?" Speranzi asked while the flames crackled and the stew began to bubble. Most of the time she would have taken her meals with her company of soldiers, but as Corwin was distracted by the pending loss of half of his apprentices, she couldn't bring herself to leave him.
'Besides,' she glanced over her shoulder, the new woman in the Black Quivers was entertaining most of them with another song, her singing voice might not have been the very best, but it was passable and she could dance gracefully as a Queen while doing it, 'She's got them busy elsewhere, they won't notice if I don't join them this one time.' She thought and withheld her urge to snort with derision. 'They might even prefer it.' She added to herself.
"There are a lot of different stories, but supposedly the lake used to have a city on it, and it sank." He said and tore a piece of bread in half, he held it out to her, and Speranzi accepted it just as her belly rumbled with hunger.
"It 'sank'. That's your story? That's the big epic... no 'it committed great sin and the gods punished them' no 'they angered the creature of the depths by refusing sacrifice' just... it sank. That's all?" Speranzi asked and raised one golden eyebrow at her companion.
"I'm a merchant. I don't deal in fanciful tales unless I'm selling books to people who won't read them. There probably is no reason it has that name other than people making up stories. If we could look back on the ancients, some father probably saw a rock out there in the water and told his son out of boredom that the rock was the spire of a sunken tower from a lost city. Then that son told his children and..." He shrugged his arms out, "Go figure, here we are."
"Maybe. It's hard for me to picture that though. I mean who just 'tells stories' to their son or daughter like that? And couldn't there be a nugget of truth in the mountain of shit?" She asked, and again he shrugged.
Corwin bit back his retort about a parent telling a child stories, 'There's no point.' He thought, but felt only pity for the armored woman with the murderous eyes.
Instead he answered her question, "Maybe. Places like Wenmark are older than old. The current city is built on the ashes of the one before it, so for all we know there was a city on the lake. There have been merchants who tried to use magic to get to the bottom in search of treasure, but there are monsters there even the most powerful adventurers can't hope to defeat."
"So there could be just this mountain of treasure or ancient ruins just a stone’s throw away from the walls of the current city, and just nobody can get to it?" Speranzi proposed, and Corwin, seemingly addicted to his shrug of dismissive indifference, repeated the gesture.
"That's the same as it not being there, and I still lean toward the 'bored storytellers' idea." Corwin replied and held out his bowl.
"You're a profitable client, but you could stand to be more entertaining." Speranzi critiqued him and accepted the bowl, taking up her own, she went to the bubbling stewpot and served them both.
The stew dripped down and she tilted her head over her shoulder, "Like that." She said as Skana flipped backward and tumbled through the air. "She's a showy one, I'll bet she had some stage time before she ended up going brigand."
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Corwin tapped his ample gut and accepted the bowl back when she offered it, "Not happening. I want warmth, ale, and a purse full of gold, not acrobatic skills."
"Figures." Speranzi replied and sat down on the log to eat her own stew with a little smile forming unexpectedly on her face while her soldiers cheered the performance behind her.
“I’m not exactly built for that. The heaviest thing I carry other than a purse full of gold is this!” His dry retort was followed by a repeated tap to his extended belly, but it was followed with a rich laugh.
Speranzi didn’t join in his laughter, she only ate the stew he made, which she had served, and savored the explosive flavor of meaty juices mixed with spices that he seemed to always carry on him.
“Since we have some time, there is one thing I wanted to bring up with you, Speranzi.” Corwin said, his laughter was gone and his tone became low and serious, he leaned forward over his bowl as much as his body would allow, and when Speranzi picked up on this, she leaned forward toward the flame that divided them in return.
“Yes?” She asked, the glow of the fire lit up his chubby face, the light fuzz of an unshaven beard gave him an almost bushy look in the dark, and matched his naturally deep and authoritative voice.
“This will be my last in person journey.” He said, and Speranzi blinked back her disbelief.
“Are you serious?” She asked, unsure if she’d heard him properly at first.
“Yes. It’s not as easy as it used to be, and I’ve built up a dozen lifetimes worth of wealth.” He looked over to where the little group of apprentices and soon to be ‘former’ apprentices were clustered around their own flames, some sullen with the dull eyes of those who gave up, others with eyes still brightly lit with the fires of their own inner ambitions. “I built up that fortune so that one day I wouldn’t have to go out, so that I could one day sit down at a warm fire in a big house and eat good food until I burst at a ripe old age. I have that fortune now, so why keep struggling?”
“Why come out here at all then?” Speranzi asked, her dismay at his statement catching her so off her guard she couldn’t think of what else to ask.
“Just for them. To pick my replacement among my apprentices. I guess some of them have made that choice much easier at least. But this is how it is done. At Laylan I’ll let them handle various goods and see who turns the highest profits. I’ll do the same at Wenmark and then we’ll do the same on the way back. Then I’ll go back to my manor and retire.” Corwin leaned back a little, setting his hands on the mossy log turned into an impromptu chair. “It is hard to believe, I got started selling on my own at ten. I sold a shell.” He chuckled and looked up at the stars, “I made my first real money off of pearls, or… the hope of pearls. I was a sneaky kid.”
“How so?” Speranzi asked and began to mop up the stew remnants with a chunk of bread.
“We had these shells that sometimes made pearls, and most people just wanted the pearl itself, but I made them want more. My mother was a well to do lady, a trendsetter of fashion, so much so that she was able to get noble ladies to come to her home for insights into the next fashion. I got her to host ‘pearl parties’ for me.”
“A what now? Sounds dirty.” Speranzi remarked.
He snorted, “That’s because you’re used to spending time with that.” He gestured to the soldiers laughing at some crude joke well behind her, “They make everything dirty.”
“Fair enough.” Speranzi did not see reason to argue, and so she acknowledged his words.
“This wasn’t anything like that. I gathered shells, cleaned them up, even put them on nice fluffy pillows. I then charged them for a chance to ‘open’ the shell. If there was a pearl, they kept it, I made it a game. Noble ladies aren’t allowed to gamble, even common women won’t be allowed into most gambling houses, but this wasn’t technically gambling.” He smirked, “After all, they were ‘buying’ the shell. So I got around the rules. My mother made it fashionable to have the pearls painted onsite, and soon ‘victory pearls’ were all the rage. I bought my first wagon with the money I made… the rest is history. Now it’s all coming to an end.”
“So why tell me?” Speranzi asked, her already vicious looking narrow eyes, narrowed further as a sneaking suspicion crept up her spine.
“How many battles have your Quivers fought since the Demon God’s destruction? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?” Corwin asked, his darker eyebrow raised at her.
“Not that many, but we’ve been in a lot. It’s a chaotic world away from places like this.” Speranzi answered and turned her eyes up at the stars, largely to avoid Corwin’s stare.
“You’re young, and by the law of Qadish you’re a Baroness, you could reclaim your family estate if you wanted-” His tentative words were severed like a limb struck by a well swung sword.
“Never. I don’t want anything from them.” Speranzi snarled and Corwin’s heart froze in his breast at her furious glare.
“Speranzi… they’re dead, they’ve been dead a long time…” Corwin said it gently as he could, but all she did was spit into the fire which hissed where the spit landed.
“I don’t care. I don’t want a damn thing of theirs. I’d get rid of my name if I could!” She exclaimed, and then stiffened when she felt eyes turn toward her from her soldiers, she didn’t look back, only waved her hand back and forth to dismiss them from her outburst.
“Then why not retire from that and come work for me directly? Wouldn’t you rather just make a few trips a year escorting merchants on the road where all you have to worry about is the occasional monster or a handful of hungry brigands? Why keep throwing yourself into battle after battle where you could be killed if things go wrong?” Corwin asked, or in his mind, it was almost begging.
But whether it was a plea or a casual request, it mollified the fire of Speranzi’s anger, she rested her arms on her knees and leaned toward the fire, savoring the warmth of its glow, the weight of her armor was to her no more than his clothing was to him, but the weight of his question was a hundredfold more.
“What do you see behind me, Corwin?” Speranzi asked, and he straightened up a little, looking past her, he watched for several seconds before he answered.
“Soldiers, some sleeping, some playing games, a few sneaking off to a tent somewhere I’d say, and the stray you picked up is telling a story to three or four of them… why?” He asked.
“Micah’s mother was a scullery maid. She prostituted herself to the Lord of the estate to pay for a healing caster from the temple to save her first son’s life. Micah is the result of that prostitution. He and his half brother hate each other. Micah was thrown out of his father’s home by his father’s wife when her husband fell sick. He came to me four years ago. I have another soldier, Darion, whose father wasn’t as kind as Micah’s. He simply ravished a maid, and Darion was born. He wasn’t thrown out, his brothers tried to kill him, so he fled as soon as he came into his majority. All of them are from at least half Awakened Lines. Where do you think they’d be if they weren’t with me?” She asked.
She didn’t wait for his answer. “They’d be in mercenary company or a lord’s army somewhere being thrown into a fight like rampaging bulls. Or they’d be leading a bandit tribe or something somewhere. Or they’d be dying as adventurers because those guilds don’t really care enough to train anyone. In short, they’d all be dead men. The women might fare a little better, they have options as glorified prostitutes to strengthen a bloodline somewhere by becoming a courtesan to another strong line. At least they’d get more amenities. But otherwise?” She stared down into the flames.
“Nobody wants them. Nobody gives a shit about them, they can’t ever go back home without waiting for a knife in the dark. So their only hope is to make a famous name or save enough money to buy land and retire as a farmer somewhere. With me, I can keep an eye on them, and watch out for them. I guess I have a soft spot for lost and unwanted things. If I left them, I doubt they’d endure for long before things went bad.” She raised her eyes from the fire where flames danced in imitation of many a past battle.
“And don’t say you’ll let me bring them. You and I both know that you can’t afford the upkeep of a hundred men-at-arms and even if you could, no lord in any country I know would let a jumped up peasant have their own private full time military company, no matter how much wealth you have.” She kicked a bit of dirt toward the slowly dwindling fire.
“So thank you, Corwin, but my answer is no. This is where I belong, there’s no other place in this world for me, I’m fine with that, and there are worse ends than the one you imagine for me.” She pushed up to her feet and crossed the dividing flame to clap him on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, and I mean my thank you. But that’s not the life for me. This is my trial from the gods, and I’ll survive. You just enjoy your journey, and then enjoy your retirement. If you wouldn’t mind, it would please me to stop by your estate some day to say hello.”
“My hearth will always be open to you.” He said and put his hand over the back of hers, his voice was quiet, her hand was like steel and cool to the touch even through his clothing, and he didn’t need to see her to know she was nodding.
“Goodnight, Corwin. Get some rest, being out in the open like this is potentially dangerous even with sentries posted and in a peaceful place, so I’d like to reach Layan as soon as possible.” Speranzi said and drew her hand out from beneath his.
She went to her tent, slid within the cloth, and stared up at the darkness until she finally fell asleep to the safety of dreamless hours.