Ilbei straightened and put his hands on his hips, harrumphing loud enough for everyone to hear, though he had eyes for Jasper alone. “Well, he ain’t dead here.”
“I never said he died here.” Jasper turned to Kaige, who was standing at his side. “I never said that. You were there. Tell him I never said that.”
Kaige smiled weakly back at him and shrugged apologetically. “I don’t pay so close attention to when you talk. Don’t mean no offense by it, though.”
“Well, I didn’t say it was here.” Jasper put his hands on his hips, prepared to defend himself as he looked back to Ilbei.
“He’s probably down where the Softwater meets the Desertborn,” Meggins said. “His people were a good three days away. Maybe he’s down there waiting for them to show up tomorrow sometime.”
That did seem likely, and it aligned with Ilbei’s thoughts. “I expect you’re right. If’n he’s dead, could be that he fell in and drowned.”
“Or the potameide got him,” Jasper said.
“Damn. You’re right about that,” Ilbei said. “Forgot about her. Not sure we’d know if’n that’s the case, but we ought to go down and check all the same.”
The trip down the banks of the Softwater was easier than it had been coming up, taking only a day and a half. There were less of them traveling, and the slope was in their favor. They looked for signs of recent activity, but there were none—though Ilbei could admit it was hard to tell, given they’d only come through a matter of days before. When they got to their original landing spot, there was still no sign of the major anywhere. Both the rafts were gone, no longer tied to the trees where they’d left them, and recent marks showed where they’d been dragged back into the water for the return trip. Other than that, however, there were no signs that anyone else had come along in all that time. There certainly were no fresh hoofprints, no crescent-shaped marks from horseshoes turned in the direction of the river rather than away to suggest the major had come back.
“Well if this don’t bite my hide more than a basketful of bedbugs,” Ilbei proclaimed after a thorough inspection of the riverbank for several hundred paces upstream and down. “Wasn’t much fonder of that feller than a case of crotch warts, but I ain’t keen to leave him behind neither. That ain’t proper. I reckon we ought to have gone up to Cedar Wood before we come down this way. Maybe even on up to that other camp at Fall Pools.” Ilbei silently cursed himself for having not done so, even though he understood how hindsight worked.
“So we go back,” Meggins said, his smile easy, his voice merry. “It’s okay by me. I’d rather go up than head back to Hast. If we go back, we get rotated into desert patrols again, maybe stuck digging latrines in the heat. Pretty much everything that makes Hast the sewer of Kurr. I’d rather be here, even if it means climbing these damn hills. At least it gets cooler the higher we go.”
Kaige nodded that it was true.
“What do ya think, Jasper?” Ilbei asked. “You’re the one with the spell what brung us here lookin, and I admit we’re pushin pretty far past orders now.”
That seemed to shock the entire company, and both Kaige and Meggins looked as surprised as Jasper did. Jasper touched himself on the chest. “Me? You’re soliciting my advice?”
“Yes, you, unless ya figure there’s someone else here goin by Jasper now. Command put ya in the platoon fer a reason, same as me. What’s yer gut tell ya we ought to do?”
Jasper considered the question for a long time, so long that Ilbei began to regret having asked, but finally Jasper pulled his fingers from his narrow chin and spoke. “I think what you said about leaving anyone behind is likely the primary operating principle here, as much as I am loath to continue back into the hills. I can’t help but ask myself what I would want you to do if I were missing and presumed dead, and I am afraid, coward that I am, I would be hoping for rescue—of course assuming I am not dead already, at which point, if I knew that, I would not want you to come because, being dead, I wouldn’t want to put you through the inconvenience and expense. Traveling does not come without some degree of inherent dange—”
“Jasper! By the gods!”
The candid, oratory expression that shaped Jasper’s features when he launched into one of his speeches was replaced by a pinched mouth and raised nose, affecting his indignation at having once again been cut off. He made a point of studying the trees rather than looking at Ilbei. “You did ask, you know.”
Ilbei sighed. “I did, lad. I did.” To the rest he said, “So there we have it, then. Let’s make a few hours of it back before nightfall, then see to a meal and a bit of rest before mornin.”
The next day, they continued upstream, threading through the thickening trees, staying near the river but far enough away that they didn’t have to pick their way over boulders and wade through ankle-deep pools. When they stopped for lunch, Meggins swore he saw a pair of harpies circling overhead, but by the time he’d decided they were harpies and not vultures, the air currents had already carried them off.
“Ya got harpies on the brain,” Ilbei said. “Ever since we come across that dead one, you’re seein em like illusionist magic: they ain’t there but in yer head.”
Of course, Meggins insisted he’d seen what he’d seen, but as no further instances of harpies showed themselves—and because Jasper explained in tedious detail the improbable odds of seeing a harpy this far east of the nearest, and last, recorded location of a harpy wild—the subject was dropped, especially by Meggins, who, by the end of Jasper’s lecture, was nearly begging to be forgiven for having brought it up.
They arrived at Cedar Wood shortly before dark on the second full day of travel, having made excellent time up the hill. The smell of pork fat and baked bread wafted out of the little tavern welcomingly. They tied the packhorse to a tree, near enough to the river that it could enjoy the greenery growing there, and then went inside. Ilbei’s stomach growled almost as loudly as the door hinges creaked upon entering.
The tavern keeper looked up from the rough planks of the bar and sneered at him. “You red-stripes ain’t welcome here no more, so just get out. Don’t need no more trouble from you lot.”
Ilbei walked into the remark as if it were a stone wall, and he took a step back on impact. He looked to the table where the men had gambled with Major Cavendis the night Ilbei asked about the highway robberies. No one sat there now. Only one other patron occupied the establishment at all, and he made a studious effort not to look up from his meal.
“I don’t recollect that kind of incivility a few nights back,” Ilbei said. “Mind if I ask what’s got yer feathers all afluff?”
“Just get out. Nobody’s got anything left. You people are as bad as that damnable Skewer in the end. He only picked a few pockets before he went away. Sure, there were a few murders and a beat down for good measure, but at least he left. He never pretended he was other than a villain. But not you. You people are going to steal it all. Keep coming back until what? Till all the boys give up and go like the rest? Or just till they starve and die?” Contempt warped his features as he spoke. “You were supposed to come and help us.”
Ilbei’s mouth moved side to side beneath the bramble of his mustache. “Well, I ain’t stole nothin from nobody, so I reckon ya might consider slowin down and tellin me what this here hostility is about. Weren’t nobody tryin to starve ya out.”
The tavern keeper’s eyes narrowed as he studied Ilbei and the rest of them. That’s when he noticed Mags. “Magda? How they’d get their hooks into you? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Topper. What’s going on? I’ve never seen you like this. You know Bessy wouldn’t have approved of you turning folks away out here.”
“Well, Bessy’s dead, ain’t she?”
“You know what I meant.”
“They come in here night before last and cleaned out the boys again. Sent em all home before they had time to pay their tabs. Couple of the lads are pretty riled, but most are just fed up. Old Mitty and Juke was down, and they said they’re done. First the Skewer, now that major of theirs.” He pointed at Ilbei as if it had been Ilbei that spawned the major out of his own womb, birthing him out of pure malice no less. “He took all they had and then some. Even followed em home to get em to pay up. Baited them boys so bad they were betting out of their heads. Gamers the both of em, that major and his old friend Locke Verity, and they completely wiped em out. Mitty and Juke left for Hast in the morning. Gave up their stake to Zoe, didn’t even ask him for a speck of lead to pay. Just walked away.”
“Over a gamblin debt?” Ilbei had heard of poor losers before, and he knew well enough how people could get if they’d been cheated at cards, or even if they simply thought they’d been cheated, but walking away from everything they owned simply because they lost one game? “How much did they owe?”
“Came near a crown, as I heard it. Maybe more. And them two had nothing near that much in all they owned. And that major of yours wasn’t laughing or even seeming to enjoy winning much. He was as serious as a man pulling arrows out of his mother, he was. He told Mitty, and I heard it clear, ‘If you got a crown buried up there and I find it before you do, it’s not going to go well for you.’ That’s what he said, and he said it mean, like a threat.”
Ilbei glanced over his shoulder at Meggins, who shrugged, his expression suggesting he was as perplexed as Ilbei.
“Well, I’ll grant that’s a peculiar way fer an officer of Her Majesty’s army to behave,” Ilbei said. “And I’ll take it up with him when I see him next. I can’t promise much, but I’ll see if’n I can’t get him to let ya folks alone at cards. Fellers what grow up with money like he done don’t figure the value of coins same as you and I, so they don’t reckon the damage they do.”
The man Mags had called Topper studied Ilbei for a while, considering whether to believe Ilbei was as he presented himself to be. The barkeep seemed to conclude that the grizzled sergeant was, and shortly after, the rigidity in his posture dissipated. “Well, you give him an earful from me, too. They went upriver, as I heard them say, so you go on and tell him. And if he don’t listen, which he won’t, then you take it back to the garrison at Hast and tell someone over him what he’s done.” He turned away from the bar and rummaged through the shelves behind him, muttering mainly to himself. “A man like that comes in here, fancy blades hanging from him, each one worth more than most will earn in all their lives, and yet fleecing common folks for sport.” He put a bottle of wine on the counter and poured himself a glass. “There’s bacon, stewed taters and biscuits for you all, and it’s on me on account of my lousy hospitality.” He glanced at Mags. “You’re right about Bessy. That was a poor showing on my part.”
Mags forgave him with her smile, and the four of them took seats at the nearest table while Topper brought the food around. Ilbei invited him to join them if he hadn’t eaten, and said he’d like to pay for Topper’s meal, to which the tavern keeper agreed.
Over the course of that meal, Ilbei fished for more bits of information about the major’s game, wherein Cavendis and the hunter Locke Verity had wiped out the tavern’s patrons two nights before.
“I noticed ya called that hunter an old friend of the major’s. Was that just figurin speech, or do ya know that as fact? And if so, do ya know how they come to meet?”
“I know exactly how they met,” Topper said. “Verity was the ranger sent up from the garrison at Hast a year and a half ago when Bessy died. He’s the one that told us that the harpies got her, way up near Fall Pools. He was up there looking for her when he met Lord Cavendis and that magician he used to come around with. That was before Cavendis took the colors of Her Majesty’s army, of course.”
Ilbei turned to Meggins and asked, “You’ve been stationed at the garrison over a year. Ya never saw Verity?”
He said it at the very same time Meggins slapped his forehead and proclaimed, “That’s where I know him from.”
Ilbei cocked a gray eyebrow. “Go on.”
“Verity was at the garrison when I transferred in. He didn’t have the long, fancy mustache or the expensive clothes, but I knew I’d seen that bow of his before. In fact, he got his discharge same day I showed up. I saw him leaving as I was processing in. That’s why I barely recognized him, and I wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for that bow. You don’t forget an exquisite weapon like that once you’ve seen it. Funny thing was, I actually wondered if I might get one too. Dumb me thought they might be standard issue.”
Topper nodded. “Well, that would be about the time when he showed up here and started hunting for the camps regularly. Said his time was up with the army and there was money to be made. True enough for that. He makes more selling the boys meat than they make digging, that’s sure.”
“Can’t fault a man fer seein the smart angle to pay his way,” Ilbei said.
“No, I don’t suppose you can.”
Chapter 17
T
he trek to Fall Pools the following day was steep and arduous. The trees grew farther apart and gave way more easily than the low hills, but the slope was merciless. Here and there along the way, they would come to the small domiciles miners had built. Most were abandoned, with trenches left half-dug into the sides of the riverbanks and wooden rockers left rotting in the moist air. In a few places, they did find men still at it, and in particular, one old man who looked to Ilbei to be at least three hundred years old—though when Kaige tactlessly asked him how old he was, it turned out he was only one hundred and fifty-three. Most common folks in the modern era could make a hundred and seventy-five, even crack two hundred if they could afford a doctor mage from time to time, but life out in the wilderness had taken its toll on the old man, that was sure.