Echoes of Betrayal (25 page)

“Can’t trust ’em,” Harnik said, washing down the cheese with another swallow of ale. “Need someone to guide ’em but won’t listen. Not bad lads, but—” He put a slice of cheese on one of bread and took a huge bite. He almost choked but got it down with more ale. “They imagine things, you know. Being that age. One of ’em even thought he saw someone up on the mountain, going into a hole. Told him it was goats—had to be—but you could see he didn’t believe it.”

Attention at the next table might as well have been a spear, Arvid thought.

“I’m thinking about another apple custard,” Arvid said to Harnik. “Join me?”

“No, I don’t eat too much. Got to stay fit. Fact is, I won’t finish this. It’s enough for two meals for someone like me.”

In addition to the ale. Arvid smiled and excused himself. Across the room, he saw Jostin watching him and mimed bringing payment. He gave a tip to Grala.

“Was he a problem to you?” she asked.

“Not at all,” Arvid said. “A man with a grievance, I think, but no trouble to me. Though I don’t plan to hire him.” He went back to the room, thinking. Had the two veterans talking about some trail into the mountain been with the “young fellow” who thought he’d seen a hole in the mountain and someone going into it? Was that all one story or two? And was it true or made up?

He told Dattur about the man at his table, and Dattur had his own information about him. “When I went to the cobbler’s to pick up those short boots, mercenaries were there, too. Cavalry, by their boots and spurs and blades. They talked of one who had claimed position in their company, lying, to be hired by Fox Company, and how angry their commander was.”

“Did they say who they were?”

“No, but the cobbler did after they left. Clart Company. They said their commander found out only today.”

“I’ll take your tray out,” Arvid said. “They’re busy; it would be awhile before someone came.”

In the common room, he saw at a glance that the round-faced man now sat where he had been, talking to Harnik. No surprise; that was what he’d come to see. The question now was what to do about it. It wasn’t his business … it hadn’t been his business before, when he’d warned the two soldiers someone was listening in. Only because of Paks …

And me
.

Arvid’s heart skipped a beat and started again, faster. He handed the tray over the bar. “Has the snow stopped?”

“I doubt it,” Jostin said.

Arvid pondered. He could walk up to the Fox Company compound, but it would break the pattern he’d established for Ser Burin, and he doubted the mercenaries would let him in the gate to talk to their commander. Legitimate merchants did not come to do business in the dark.

Yet he felt he needed to do something. Tomorrow, in daylight, when the mercenaries might listen to him and he wouldn’t be as vulnerable on the way there … that should do. Across the room, his former tablemate—Harnik, that was his name—rose unsteadily; the round-faced man tossed a pile of coins on the table and then helped Harnik toward the stairs that led up to the second-floor rooms. So, drunk as he was, Harnik wouldn’t get far by morning. Arvid went back to the room he shared with Dattur and slept the night away.

T
he morning after dismissing Harnik, Selfer paraded his cohort and took their proxy oaths right after breakfast. Both cohorts worked to clear the courtyard of snow, and in the midst of that, the captain Clart Company had promised them arrived. Ivats was as different from Harnik as could be imagined, a cheerful, bright-eyed, red-haired young man.

“It’s my fault,” he said to Selfer. “I kept bothering the others, asking what I could do, so they sent me over here. You’re supposed to make me sorry, I think.”

“How are you afoot?” Selfer asked. “We’re infantry, you know.”

“I joined the cavalry, didn’t I?” Ivats said, laughing as he said it. “I don’t mind foot-slogging in the cold; it’s heat that bothers me, and I’ll be back with the Clarts by the Evener, if not sooner.” He looked around. “This place is so big—how many troops do you have?”

“Two cohorts, both a little under strength right now, but Lord Arcolin will be bringing down replacements in the spring and possibly another cohort.”

“You’re lucky. We’re all crammed into an inn on the far side of Valdaire, with our horses scattered through every livery barn in the city.”

“What I need most from you,” Selfer said, “is backup to whichever of us is taking out both cohorts at once. One of us should be here in quarters.”

“Better than that inn,” Ivats said. “Where do I sleep?”

“Officers’ quarters here,” Selfer said, leading the way. “Lord Arcolin has the one adjoining the Company offices; then me, and you can have this one, between Burek and me.”

“A room to myself? This is luxury indeed!” Ivats said. He tossed his pack onto the bed. “What do you want me to do first?”

“We were going to have a skirmish out on the hill beyond our wall,” Burek said. “You and I can do that. M’dierra said she was sending a nephew over to act squire.”

“To get the bur out of her own saddle blanket,” Ivats said. “He’s following her around like a puppy.”

“You’ve met him?”

“Not to speak to. Just seen her with a wide-eyed, excited boy tagging at her heels. He looks a likely lad, but he’s at that age—you know.”

“I do. Well, if you’re ready, I’ll get the troops together and we’ll go.”

“Did you want me to wear your uniform?”

“No,” Selfer said. “You’re a guest of sorts.”

Burek took the cohorts out with Ivats beside him. “You’ll take my cohort—Devlin’s a long-time veteran, and he’ll see you right. Our commands may be different from yours, but you’ll catch on. I’ll take Selfer’s—I don’t know them as well, or they, me, so it makes it more even.”

Soon the open ground just north of the compound was a trampled mess as tensquads and half-cohorts maneuvered, closed, and drilled with hauk and shield. Ivats, Burek decided, was everything that could be hoped for. He seemed tireless and enthusiastic. Near midday, a slender youth in a Golden Company tabard came into view around the corner of the compound, marched up to Burek, and gave a Golden Company salute.

“Captain Burek, Captain Selfer asks that you return to the compound.”

“Who are you?” Burek asked, though he was sure it was M’dierra’s nephew. That bone structure certainly fit her family.

The lad flushed. “Sir, I am Poldin M’dierra, assigned to this Company as squire.”

“Thank you, squire,” Burek said. “Please tell Captain Selfer we will be on our way immediately.”

Ivats followed the cohorts into the mess hall, and Burek went to report to Selfer. He found Selfer in the Company office, talking to a merchant.

“I’m not surprised he was drunk,” Selfer was saying. “But I don’t understand what your concern is, since he’s no longer with this Company.”

“It is not his being drunk but some of the things he said,” the man said. “And the interest what he said provoked.” He was tall, lean-faced, dark eyes and hair, with a neatly trimmed beard in the southern style, and something about him did not fit “merchant” to Burek’s eye. “And it connected, in my mind, with something I heard in the same inn some nights ago, which also provoked interest, though from a different listener.”

“Other than yourself,” Selfer said. He looked at Burek. “Captain Burek, this is Ser Burin, resident for the winter at the Dragon. He says he has information that concerns us.”

“About Harnik?” Burek asked.

“That was his name,” the man said. He had an easy, skilled voice, clearly a man used to persuading others. “Some days ago, when I was newly arrived at the Dragon, a number of soldiers were gaming there. One of yours, a redheaded fellow, won a wager on his skill at arm wrestling. It was after he won that I noticed two older men in your uniform talking at the next table. And beyond them, standing at the bar, someone listening.”

“What were they talking about?” Selfer asked.

“A journey they remembered that they said others in your Company did not. It had to do with gnomes and a short way through the mountains—that’s all I know. I recognized that the man listening to them was a spy of some kind, so I … caused a disturbance, and that gave me a chance to warn them.”

“Why?” Selfer said.

“It’s difficult to explain,” the man said. “Look here, Captain, if I share something with you, can you keep it between us?”

“Depends what it is,” Selfer said. “If you’re going to tell me you’re picking pockets at the Dragon, I’m not going to keep that secret.
Best you know I’m a Girdsman—we don’t tolerate that kind of thing.”

“Not at all,” the man said. “I’m not a thief.”

“Well, then, if you trust my judgment, I will hold my tongue.”

“Very well. I am known in the north by a different name and came south on an errand for the Marshal-General, on the trail of a certain … item. And some years ago, I knew the paladin who was once of your Company. Paksenarrion.”

Selfer scowled. “Do you have any proof—are you Girdish yourself?”

“No. Although both Paksenarrion and the Marshal-General seem determined I shall become Girdish. At any rate, you knew Dorrin Verrakai, did you not?”

“Yes,” Selfer said. “Most recently, I had a contract with her after she became Duke Verrakai.”

“So I had heard. Then you surely know of items she found and took to Vérella to give the king, and perhaps you know of the gossip surrounding them.”

“Yes … but how did you hear?”

“Gossip, as I said. I was asked to report what gossip I heard and from whom. I was … uniquely placed, you might say, to do so.”

Selfer’s expression changed. “You! You’re the … you
are
a thief!”

“No. I was a member of the Thieves’ Guild, but not a thief. Just as you have persons in your Company who are not themselves soldiers, do you not?”

“Yes, but—you’re the one who got Paksenarrion out of that place?”

The man inclined his head.

“Then you’re the one who gave her a certain—” Selfer stopped as the man laid a finger to his nose.

“
Item
. An item, yes, that she took to Fin Panir and gave to the Company of Gird and that—most important—was stolen from under their noses last summer.”

“I suppose not by you?”

“Not by me; that is correct. I was in Fin Panir at the Marshal-General’s invitation to tell what I knew of Paksenarrion to their archivists. However, she was aware that the item might become a target for thieves; there was concern about the other items as well.”

“I knew that,” Selfer said.

“Alured,” Burek said. “It would be Alured wanting it.”

“Quite so,” the man said. “I foiled one set of thieves, but another got the … item. The Marshal-General thought perhaps I could trace it, but I left Fin Panir too late; I had been injured. I found what I believe was the successful thief’s body, with Thieves’ Guild marks on it. I wasted more time going back to Vérella to see if it had gone that way. Instead, I believe it came south.”

“Did you contact the Thieves’ Guild here?” Selfer asked.

“Unfortunately, yes. I had been here before, on business for the former Guildmaster, but this time—this time I was betrayed by the Vérella Guild, and the Marshal-General’s letter explaining me to Marshals fell into the Guild’s hand. I was taken and nearly killed but escaped and returned through several changes of identity to become, as you see, Ser Burin.”

“But you have no proof.”

“No. But I have a kteknik gnome companion at the inn who will corroborate what I have said. As you know, gnomes follow their Law and even when cast out do not lie.” When Selfer said nothing in answer, the man went on. “Your soldiers spoke of a secret way across the mountains, or through them, and my gnome companion, when I told him, became frightened. I saw no more of the man who had listened that night, and I do not know how much he heard or what he understood of what he heard. Last night, however, your former captain spoke of another captain here who had seen a line of men—or beings, anyway—moving along the mountain away from known trails and entering a hole. Harnik was convinced it was not so and ridiculed the man as young and inexperienced, liable to imagining things. But the fellow listening to him—the fellow who came and sat with him to drink after I left, which I saw when I came back into the common room—was clearly interested. It is none of my affair if you have a secret passage through the mountains, but others think it theirs … and if you asked me who might have such interest, I would say—”

“Alured,” Burek said again. “A way to take an army secretly into the north, unseen by those at the pass.”

“But we have no such secret way,” Selfer said. “It is true we met gnomes on the way south because it was late in the year to cross the
pass.” He looked puzzled. “I don’t remember much … We made better time than usual with their guidance.”

“Your soldiers—at least two of them—think they remember that secret road,” the man said. “You might ask them—they were boasting of their better memory and that others did not seem to know.”

“Can you describe them?”

“Certainly. One was tall, stocky, balding, with a scar like this—” The man ran a hand down his own face. “The other had dark curly hair with a little gray in it and a wide scar on the forearm of his heart-hand.”