Arm Of Galemar (Book 2) (83 page)

“Sloan will skin you if you show up for the march
without any sleep.”

Marik glanced at the door, wondering how fast he could
make the round trip if he stole a horse from the vale.

“Try this instead,” Dietrik suggested, writing on his
palm with an invisible quill.  “Write her a nice letter and leave it with
Luiez.  He’ll make sure it gets on to Kerwin.”

“Right!” Marik barked, slapping the table and pointing
at Dietrik.  “Good idea!  Uh…wait.”

“What is it?”

“Damn it!  We don’t have any ink or parchment or
anything in here!”  He bit his lip before suddenly exclaiming, “Ah!  The old
bastard!  He’s got mountains of that crap!  Right!”

With that, he leapt to his feet, ran across the
crowded mess area and through the door.  Dietrik laughed before arching an
eyebrow at Marik’s remaining plate.  He shrugged and lifted Marik’s utensils
with his own, rinsing them in the wash basins before returning to their bunks.

Men drifted away when their speculations began
repeating without answers.  Within a half-mark, the room was empty.

Empty but for Colbey, who remained in his spot,
clutching his spoon in a knuckle-whitening grip, gaze fixed on the doorway Marik
had run away through.

*        *        *        *        *

They passed Kerwin’s half-constructed inn the next
morning.  Landon stood by the roadside while the refugees worked for their
wages.  Marik had hoped either of the former mercenaries might be readily
available.  He dashed from the column streaming past the framework to press the
rolled scroll into the archer’s hands.  Quick words passed between them before
Marik needed to run off and retake his place.  The entire band marched along
the Southern Road.  Individual squads would break away later to angle toward
their specified destinations.

Just as well he had no time to reconsider while he
conversed with Landon, and also as well that no sign of Ilona was to be found. 
She probably sat within her tent at that very moment, tracing invisible
connections between prosperous people.  Once she felt satisfied she thoroughly
understood the terrain, she would be returning to Thoenar in a month or two in
order to make further arrangements.  Armed men passing on the road would
interest her little.

If he’d had time to consider, he might have shoved the
rolled parchment under his belt and made sure it never went anywhere except
straight into the cook fire.  Half the night he had worked hard to put words
down that would express his feelings for her, at times speaking plainly, at
others scribing clever turns of phrase and witty comments designed for bardic
verse.

He had slept soundly, satisfied that he’d crafted a
work of art that would impress even her.  Not even Churt’s morning crossbow
bolt had jarred him completely from a dream where she confessed how deeply his
words had touched her.

The confidence lasted until he swept his gaze over the
words as he prepared to roll the scroll and seal it.  What
had
he been
thinking?  Bardic verse?  His appalling attempts at wit made the doggerel of
Wallace Mularian, whose compositions Landon delighted in disparaging, sound
like classic odes.

But the squad would leave within the mark.  There was
no time to rewrite it.  He had not given the scroll to Luiez, thinking to throw
it away, then he chastised himself on the road.  Did Ilona mean so little to
him that he would leave without a single word?  Was she so unimportant that
admitting his feelings shamed him in some fashion?

No.  That much he did know.

So he made an oath to pass the scroll to Landon or
Kerwin when they passed, silently praying Ilona would be elsewhere.  The scroll
laid his soul bare at her feet.  It expressed his emotions without equivocation
as he had never confessed them before, and in doing so left him naked and
vulnerable to her whim.  How would she react when next they saw each other?

Marik much preferred fighting a life-or-death battle
with his sword to this cringing, unarmored waiting in darkness to see if it
would be a dagger through his heart or a caressing hand across his shoulders.

After delivering the scroll, for three days Marik’s
legs tortured him.  They did during every new journey from Kingshome when
departing for a contract on foot.  Exercising by walking and running and
jumping never kept the muscles completely toned for the endless stress of
marching until dusk.  He hated being unable to maintain that level of fitness,
yet only constant walking all day, every day, during the winter months would
keep the muscle that firm.  The flaming itch that infested his legs until they
numbed always drove him crazy.

Two fighting seasons past had been the worst, walking
long marks with his body still not fully recovered from cooking in the
hedge-wizard’s flames.  This year he might have suffered less had they departed
in warmer weather as sane men would, but the cold bit sharply and his breeches
agitated the discomfort.  Icy needles stabbed into his limbs.  The cloth
constantly rubbed his legs in feathery caresses that soon made the skin feel chafed.

This was the primary cause behind his usual surly
temper whenever they set out from Kingshome.

Edwin walked as he pleased, at times near Marik and
Dietrik, at others off with acquaintances in different squads.  Talbot usually
stayed near Floroes, chatting with the huge man who never seemed put out by
it.  Sloan remained off wherever the other sergeants were.  He only appeared
before his unit when the band stopped to camp for the evening.

Though surrounded by a crowd matched only by the
tournament’s press, Marik thought the road echoed without Landon and Kerwin
discussing their destination or the history of the region they walked through. 
No Hayden matched their pace with his thumbs tucked into his sword belt,
commenting on life in general.  Nial and Duain, too, were gone.  He hardly knew
anybody in his unit any longer.

Marik fought against the depression.

Life on the road afforded him too much time alone with
his thoughts anyway.  Not five minutes would pass without his mind picking away
at his father.  Sennet had answered a handful of the many questions that had
plagued him relentlessly since first setting out to find Rail.  It frustrated
him horribly that the answers only raised twice as many new questions to take
their place.  His visualization training had originated from his father?  A
technique that had served him so well, yet which no one else seemed to know of,
let alone give credit to?

And the sword.  Both his mental visualization tricks
and the unique sword that could only be effective when utilized by a person of
enhanced strength…it raised possibilities on which he could not begin to
speculate.  His mind refused to leave these questions alone to simmer in his
subconscious, insisting on endlessly picking away in fruitless effort.

What usually broke his mind away from the mysteries of
Rail were the sunken eyes watching from the roadside.  His refusal to take the
easy path, to actually pass the letter to Ilona, had awakened in him a shame
when he gazed upon the shivering refugees.  It was so easy to shrug them away
and believe that there was nothing he could do to help them in their plight. 
Was their wretched misery truly none of his business?  Were
they
so
unimportant as to be trash littering the road and clogging the fields?

He saw no solutions, easy or otherwise…and yet he
could not pass them off with the same ignorance as before.  His own feelings
sympathized with them.  Equally as poignant, he knew full well that Shalla
would have been stopping to help each and every one with whatever meager aid
she could offer until she had far less than they.  In so many ways, she had
been a stronger person than he.

The band forded the Spine the fourth morning after
breaking camp.  With so many men, it would have taken the entire day to cross
by ferry or pallets carried by rivermen.  Instead the column waded into the
freezing water following five half-naked men who guided their footsteps.  When
the first mercenaries stepped out onto the west bank, men still had yet to
enter on the east.  A twisting snake of arms balancing packs atop heads wound
through the cold river, a human dam to block the flow.

Time insisted they press on.  The men were forced to
drip-dry as they walked into an increasingly frozen barony.  Snow fell with
greater frequency west of the Spine, and the temperatures tended to reflect
that.  Marik and Dietrik gripped themselves while they shivered, wishing for a
blazing hearth, forcing their feet onward along the road.

A burst of swearing erupted close behind them less
than a mile from the river.  That in itself surprised neither man; curses and
oaths were drifting from every mercenary at the rate of approximately twice a
minute.  What made the two look back was the long string of vile curses flowing
from Cork.

Marik half-expected to find a duel about to flare up. 
Instead several men from the Second Unit were crowded around to listen and grin
while they continued walking.  Cork swore with impressive speed, colorfully
imaginative curses following one upon the next.  Many Marik knew.  Others he
had never heard before.  Several, Marik would have taken pride in had he been
the one to craft them.

Long after Marik thought Cork should have exhausted
his breath, the man stumbled over a word.  A laughing spectator called a halt
and Marik noticed he held two fingers to the pulse in his wrist.  “Whoa there! 
Hey, that was pretty sharp!  Eighty-seven beats!”

“What did I tell you?” Cork boasted.  “I grew up with
fisher-folk!  No one can top us at dressing down Fate, or each other for that
matter!”

“Yeah, but the day a fisher can beat a mercenary is
the day I trade my sword for a long pole and a net!” announced a second man
walking beside Cork.  “Start counting, Tilden.”

Tilden replaced his fingers to his pulse and gave the
challenger a nod.

Cork’s adversary used a different descriptive oath to
begin his litany, an interesting accusation regarding Cork’s mother and the
village drunk.  He delivered his outflow at a slower speed, and when he nearly
stumbled, then repeated an earlier profanity, every mercenary listening called
him down.

“Only sixty-four beats, Errol!  Let us know how the
fish are biting!”

The other Second Unit men snatched at Errol’s sword
dangling from his belt, laughing and threatening to carry him back to the
river.  Errol beat their hands away with hard slaps.  Cork beamed with victory.

Marik watched until Cork noticed him walking sideways
so he could observe the scene.  He gave a quick laugh which sound closer to a
huff
. 
His breath clouded into mist which obscured his half-grin.

Cork’s smile lost its edge.  Marik had hoped that
would not happen.  Every new recruit disliked being around him, except for
Chiksan, who never appeared unsettled by anything.  He started to turn away,
but Cork suddenly stiffened his back and returned a smile that looked strained,
though genuine.

That night, Cork wandered to Marik and Dietrik’s fire.

“So, uh…I’ve been wondering,” Cork opened by way of
introduction.

Dietrik bobbled his head as he poked at the stew
bubbling in the small pot he always carried in his pack, inviting the young man
to sit.  The Kings hardly ever used the supply wagons that spent their lives
nestled against the northern wall.  Each man carried his rations and was left
to his own devices if he desired a hot meal.

Cork dropped his pack across the fire from Marik,
sitting on it as an impromptu chair so he could avoid enduring the frozen
dirt.  “You’re…well, uh…”  He paused, then must have thought that might be
insulting.  “You’re a mage.  With, uh…with magic, right?”

“Last I heard,” Dietrik commented over the pot, “that
is what it means to be a mage.  Isn’t a mage without magic simply a man?”

“Yes, um…”  Cork scratched his head with one hand.  “I
guess I wanted to ask why you’re here with us instead of with other mages?  And
why you’re carrying a sword around?  I heard from Churt that you’re the one who
fought the knights that everyone talks about, but that was a swordsman!”  He
dropped his hand to his lap.  “I mean, you were a swordsman then, weren’t you?”

“I still am,” Marik stated.  Dietrik cast an amused
glance at him.  Marik knew exactly
what thoughts his friend
entertained.  He supposed he might as well tell his story and see if Dietrik’s
assertions regarding the newer men held any water.

Cork was clearly nervous at first, as though sharing
the fire with a loan collector about to take out interest payments for gold
lost gambling.  Marik watched closely without being overly obvious lest he
spook Cork into flight.  It fascinated him, seeing the man subtly change the
longer he listened.

When Cork realized he would be staying to hear a
lengthy tale, he tossed his own rations into Dietrik’s pot in an effort to be
polite.  Dietrik interrupted long enough to berate Cork for his
thoughtlessness, seeing as the stew would be partially raw if he served it when
he had intended, or partially leather if he waited for the new additions to
cook properly.  Cork attempted to save grace by offering advice on how adding
certain spices could mask any mistakes by the cook, which only annoyed Dietrik,
who sharply pointed out that if any amateur chefs in the band carried a
garnishing rack stuffed into his smallclothes, he doubted they would find the
man before their dinner burned black.