The major stared down at Ilbei for a long while, then stared past him, surveying the prior night’s battlefield. His eyes widened at one point, briefly, barely a flicker, but enough that Ilbei saw.
“He’s not dead. He ran off.”
“Mmm,” Ilbei hummed, sounding disappointed but resigned to that bad bit of luck. He changed the subject some. “So how come nobody told us he was counterfeitin coins? We might have been on the lookout for em as we come through the camps. Maybe asked around.”
“That’s exactly why we didn’t tell you. We had an operation underway to find them, which was why they sent me.”
Confusion set Ilbei’s eyebrows to contortions for a time. “I don’t take yer meanin, sar.”
“I came here to sample their coins, Spadebreaker. With ruffs. To find the counterfeits and the counterfeiters. It’s why they sent me.”
“Oh.” Ilbei hadn’t considered that before. He blinked a few times, then frowned, then twitched up one corner of his mouth, glancing to Locke Verity, who smiled a patient smile. Ilbei returned his attention to the major. “Well, ya might have said somethin, then. I could have served in like capacity.”
“No, Spadebreaker, you couldn’t. I played with you, remember?” The major’s tone was dismissive and annoyed. “When I saw how your game was, well … we didn’t tell you because you didn’t need to know.”
Ilbei looked once more to Verity, who was cleaning his fingernails with the point of an arrow. “Hmmph,” Ilbei relented. “So what now?”
The major drew a long breath, his jawline tight as he considered it. He didn’t look happy about the decision at first, but then he visibly relaxed. He let go the breath. “Well, my primary mission is accomplished well enough for now. We’ve found our counterfeiter—with, I suppose, some small thanks to you—and the Skewer is on the run. He’s wounded too, so he won’t get far. Besides your man shooting him a few days ago, he got another arrow in him by our friend Verity just before sunrise. He’s routed, and I have people on his tail. All that’s left is to get those molds in there to Hast—as you already had the foresight to have done with the obverse halves.”
“The what?”
“The front-half molds, you imbecile. The ones you sent to Hanswicket.”
“Right, sar. Of course.” Ilbei remained silent, waiting to see what the major would do. The major surprised him thoroughly.
“Go get those others, and load them on that horse you took from Pander. Then you and your people get them to Hast as fast as you can. I’ll be taking Pander back to Twee with me.”
Ilbei couldn’t believe it. He looked to Verity to see if there was some indication of surprise, but Verity was still working on his hunter’s manicure.
“Yes, sar,” Ilbei said, unable to hide his surprise. He watched the major’s eyes for a time longer, but the man merely stared back at him impatiently.
“Is there something else, Sergeant?” the major asked at length.
“No, sar. Sorry, sar. We’ll be right on it, then.”
“Good. Get moving.”
With his mind awhirl, Ilbei turned back and went inside the cave. He wondered if maybe he’d been imagining things all the while. The only thing he knew for certain was that it had been a long time since he’d felt as foolish as he did just then.
Chapter 22
“B
ut why?” Meggins asked as they marched along the stone wall of the steppe, heading northeast along it and following the trickling brook that ran out of the ettin cave. They were once more moving toward Harpy Creek and now several hours out of earshot of the major and Locke Verity, far enough for Ilbei to have told them what had transpired. “And,” Meggins went on, “why would Major want to game real money to win fake coins? Her Majesty doesn’t shine too kindly on fake money, and she’ll hang a man for having it, even a nobleman.”
“Well, that’s what he said he done, and it weren’t fer spendin hisself that he done it. He done it to flush it out. I reckon it makes sense to do it that way, as a man will get reckless tryin to reclaim what he’s lost.”
Meggins stepped over the brook, which had once again meandered in their direct line of travel, the others following suit. “I suppose that seems reasonable. Maybe that’s how he got to be a major so young, and it does explain why the army sent a cheat up here.”
“Did ya see him cheatin?” Ilbei asked. “Or are ya speculatin?” He hadn’t wanted to suggest such a thing about a superior officer to his men, but he’d had the thoughts sure enough himself.
“No, I never saw him do it, but he was. He whipped us like we were wearing mirror-shined breastplates and he was seeing every card. Not to mention, nobody gets cards as bad as we did and as good as those two got every time. Nobody.”
“I seen it the same,” Ilbei said. “A man could love up Lady Luck and do it real nice, take her like Anvilwrath hisself, and never get so much of her favor in return.” Meggins nodded that he agreed.
They continued along, working their way down the slope, following the angle of the rock as it gradually became less cliff face and more precipitous decline. The little brook turned and dropped down a declivity too narrow to follow, so they left it behind, staying with the upper steppe until eventually it turned them east and more directly downslope. Down and down they went, and as the sun grew hot and cumbersome in the sky, and the trees grew scarcer and stingier with their shade, the company found themselves once again winding through the low scrub and brushy dryness of the high foothills. Eventually, they caught sight of the little brook again, and followed it along until the occasional apple tree began to appear, indicating they were once more nearing Harpy Creek.
“Well,” Ilbei asked of Mags when they finally found the creek, “ya sure ya want to go on back there alone?” They’d promised to escort her downstream to Camp Chaparral before they cut across the bottom edge of the Sandsea on their way back to Hast.
“I suppose so,” she said. “With the bandits gone, maybe people will return. It’s not much to look at as a town goes, but this country is beautiful. Maybe I’ll get serious about my winemaking, maybe even enter it in the big apple festival they have every year in Hast. I’ve been meaning to do something like that anyway. Besides, I really don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“This country is hotter than the deepest places in a dragon’s arse,” Meggins said, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “You couldn’t pay me to live here. It’s only ten degrees better than the desert, I bet.”
She smiled. “It is hot in summer, I’ll grant that, but the evenings are wonderful at the end of the day, and come springtime, there is no more spectacular place to be. It explodes with color.”
“Oh, something explodes all right,” Meggins said. “It’s called the sun. No thanks.”
“Home sets in on folks like that, Meggins,” Ilbei said. “Don’t matter where it is.”
“What about the craze?” Meggins asked. “Won’t that keep people away? Home isn’t nearly as appealing when everyone’s dying all the time.”
She grimaced at that. “I don’t know what to do about that. But there’s nobody left to contract it from but me, so maybe it finally played itself out with poor Candalin.”
“I’m tellin ya, that disease is in the water,” Ilbei said. “I know ya got yer cask fixin up the water with whatever that alchemy is that feller taught ya fer them little demons and all, but who’s to say folks don’t drink straight outta the creek? I done as much at most creeks I come across all my life.”
She sighed. “Yes, I am sure you are right. I suppose it is possible that I am the only one who didn’t drink directly from it at some point. I admit I was more enamored with my big-city cask filtration system than anyone else.”
“Well, if’n you’re gonna stay out here, let’s at least pull that nasty harpy outta the water before we part ways.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Mags said. “Cask or not, I’d rather not have to know it was in there every time I took a drink.”
Everyone present agreed that was the best course of action, and in short order, they made their way the short distance up the creek that got them to the small opening out of which the creek emerged. The damp line of Meggins’ rope was still dancing in the water where it came out, apparently untouched since he’d secured it previously.
“All right, you two,” Ilbei said to Meggins and Jasper after they arrived. “Ya know what ya need to do. Get on up there and knock it loose. Holler when it’s comin through, and me and Kaige will fish it out. We’ll haul it down where it can’t wash back into the creek, bury it and be done with all of this.”
Neither Meggins nor Jasper appeared particularly happy about their part, but Kaige looked absolutely horrified. “You mean we’re gonna touch it, Sarge?”
“No, son, I’m gonna read me one of Jasper’s spells there so as I can levitate that carcass out with magic all by myself.”
Kaige looked confused for a moment, then seemed as if he might laugh, except then clearly realized that he was back to his original problem. He made a face that might have accompanied a growl had he not been afraid it might stir Ilbei’s anger, so he nodded meekly, waiting for the misery to begin.
Jasper rummaged through his satchel but could not find a levitation spell to help them get up the jumble of crumbling shale. He mumbled and muttered for some time before finally turning to Ilbei and pronouncing, “This is what happens when you let barbarians sort my scrolls.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I need to get the trunk down off the horse.”
Ilbei looked to Kaige, who immediately set himself to it. After a few minutes working at the ropes—all the while Jasper bemoaning the onerous imposition of Her Majesty’s mandatory service and the injustice of having been “sent to the bottom of the sweatiest pore in the rankest part of Prosperion’s most unwashed armpit” where he’d been “cruelly bound to butchers, bumpkins and illiterates”—Kaige set the trunk full of spells on the ground. Jasper continued to mumble as he opened the trunk, but then he fell silent. His movements in the chest became more and more frantic, and the rustle of the scrolls grew louder and more conspicuous to the rest of the company.
“You’ve lost them, you great, mindless mastodon,” Jasper said. “How could you be so reckless? You left most of them behind. Did you even bother to look around?”
Kaige splayed his hands out at his sides innocently. “I looked. I swear I did. I just did what Sarge said and picked up what I saw.”
“Well, you didn’t pick them all up. Half of them are gone. Look here, there isn’t one speaking spell, and all the long sight spells are out. I had four major levitates and five minors, and now all I’ve got are two minor ones. I don’t even have the one version of ‘Rainbow’s Beacon Spell’ we had.” He dug around some more. “All the fireballs are gone, and the lightning and ice lances as well. You’ve let them all be blown away.” He tipped the trunk toward them to illustrate his point. “Look, it’s all minor healing spells and a handful of fogs, oils and other garbage spells. What am I supposed to do in a fight?”
Lines rippled down Ilbei’s forehead as he listened. He stepped closer to the chest and glanced in, but he didn’t know how many were in it before.
“Well, I just don’t know how the army can employ people if they have no value for expensive equipment like this. I certainly never—”
“Jasper, let off,” Ilbei cut in. “He done as I told him, and ya seen yerself when we left that cave that there weren’t none lyin around. I’d have got em myself if’n there had been. They been blown off, or the locals grabbed what they could. Like ya said, there’s money in those.”
Jasper continued to grumble. “Then why didn’t they take any of the divining spells? I’ve got a dream-reading spell that they could have sold for three crowns and a handful of silver.”
“They likely just reached in there and run off with whatever they come up with,” Ilbei said. “So you’re gonna have to get to it with what spells ya got. Ya can replace what’s gone when we get back to Hast.”
Jasper was not happy about that, but he found his levitation spell, which calmed him some. He drew in a long breath and looked back through the chest, taking a less emotional inventory this time. He found a few fireballs he’d missed and one lightning spell. He held two of them up, one in each hand, triumphantly. He stuffed the spells into his satchel along with a handful of others, and then spent a bit longer than Ilbei would have liked trying to reorder the rest in the chest. Eventually, however, he was ready to assist Meggins in getting up to where the water ejected itself from the rock face, and soon enough, both of them were inside.
Ilbei was helping Kaige tie Jasper’s chest back atop the panniers on the packhorse when Meggins’ call came. Ilbei left off with the packs and immediately waded into the creek, stooping and holding his arms out wide. He looked up and saw Kaige staring at him, unmoving and clearly reluctant, the big man’s arm lying limply across the horse’s rump where it had fallen at Meggins’ call.
“Get yer fool self in here and help me, Kaige, or I’ll tap yer gizzards with this here pick,” Ilbei shouted. “I ain’t keen to go chasin some rotten old harpy corpse halfway to Chaparral.”
Kaige pouted, but he came down and waded into the creek beside Ilbei. Mags took a position on the shore beside them with her quarterstaff ready to help stop the harpy as it washed down the creek.
They waited, all of them watching the white spray where the creek spewed out.
There came a fluctuation in the flow of water, a thinning sort of pulse, only for an instant, and then a dark shape flew out as if spit out by the mountain itself. It landed with a wet
thwap
on the rocks at the farthest edge of the spray, half in the water and half out. Mags ran up to it and pinned it with her quarterstaff as Ilbei and Kaige climbed out of the creek and joined her. Kaige could not have looked happier.