Tournament of Losers (19 page)

"I don't suppose there is any hope you will stop calling me that?" Rath asked. She grinned, and he sighed. "As to my cloak, this is all I've got. This is my only jacket, too."

Fynn looked at him in horror. "That won't do! We're headed for the mountains—it'll be snowing there. You need proper winter gear."

"Yes, well, not all of us can afford to buy clothes whenever we want," Rath replied, feeling stupid, even though he knew very well it wasn't his fault. "This is always enough to get me through winter in the city. I'm sure I'll manage just fine."

Fynn's frown deepened. "But what about the ten marks you were given at the start of the tournament?"

Rath's cheeks burned, and he stared at his horse as he tersely replied, "Taken by my father's creditors." There was only silence as he finished speaking, and Rath didn't need to look to know that they weren't quite certain what to say. He sighed. "I'll be fine."

"You won't," Teller said. "The mountains get cold enough your fingers and toes will freeze right off. Snow can come down so hard and fast in the mountains around here that you're warm one moment and frozen solid the next. We can buy you supplies in Cartina, and what we don't find there, we'll definitely be able to obtain in Falton." He grinned, winked. "Can't have our champion getting frostbite."

"I am three challenges away from being a champion," Rath said. "It's ill luck to brag about what the Fates intend. I could fail miserably at this challenge. I must be the least qualified to go gallivanting about. I can barely ride this damned horse."

"Aww, now don't be mean to Thief. She's sweet as can be when she's not stealing carrots. And you
are
champion so far—you performed the best in the first two challenges and did well in the preliminaries. Everyone is excited for you. None of the other groups have such strong, stand-out leads, though to be fair, there's a lot more of all of them."

Rath made a face, but didn't say anything. Even he knew he sounded ungrateful and cranky about a situation so many envied. "If I'm succeeding, the Fates favor me for reasons beyond my comprehension."

"I think more than a bit of skill is involved," Fynn replied. "Come on, I think you've got the hang of riding enough that we can go a little faster."

"We're going plenty fast!" Rath protested and held on for dear life as he was overridden and his horse increased her pace alongside the others.

They stopped for a brief lunch a few hours later, sitting by the side of a large stream that teemed with fish that Rath wished he knew how to catch and clean. Fish was one of those things he didn't get very often, even though the city was right against the ocean, and he hauled the damned things from time to time when the fishermen needed help. His favorite pub sold a decent fish chowder for cheap, but otherwise, he mostly didn't eat it.

"Shall we push on?" Fynn asked as they all finished eating, brushing crumbs from her hands and pants as they headed back to the grazing horses.

Rath groaned at the idea of getting back on his horse, already sore in places he wasn't accustomed to being sore and still a long way from convinced that the horse, no matter how sweet, wouldn't be the death of him. He was too old for things like learning how to ride and questing and freezing to death on mountains.

Of course, he was also too old to do something as stupid as have an affair with a noble, but that hadn't stopped him.

And there was the main source of his misery. He hadn't gotten to see Tress before leaving, had been too exhausted to go out in the hopes that Tress would find him as he always seemed to. Bad enough he'd barely seen his friends and hadn't had a chance to visit his mother, but now he would be missing Tress as well.

They stopped for one more break to refresh the horses and stretch their legs, then made the last stretch as quickly as Rath could manage, reaching Cartina village just as the sun was setting. "I have no idea what I'm supposed to do now. It seems a little too late to trouble the village chief. I suppose we should find a place to rest for the night and speak with him in the morning?"

"Whatever you feel is best, champion. I certainly wouldn't mind a meal and a bed before we go traipsing off to slay a dragon."

Rath laughed, and Fynn rolled her eyes. "There'd better not be any dragons. I'd have to figure out who imported them," Fynn said. "And we'd have to delay the quest to arrest smugglers."

"It'll probably be something much simpler," Rath said. "Or so I hope, anyway. Where should we bed down for the night? I have no idea where to go. This place is so
small
."

"This way, Champion. Follow the sound of drunk people laughing. Those can be found in even the tiniest village."

"I didn't know they could be this small," Rath said. "I can count all the houses, even in the dark."

Fynn snorted. "Come on." She led him down the street—if it could even be called that—to a building that seemed larger than all the rest, with raucous laughter and the smell of roasting meat drifting out. Dismounting, Fynn tied her horse to a post in front of the building. Rath tried to follow suit, but in the end, Fynn had to help him because the knots she used were beyond his ability to duplicate.

The chatter faded into silence as they slipped inside, and Rath tried not to notice—or show that he noticed—the stares that followed them as they took a seat at an empty table. They'd barely done so when a tall, broad-shouldered man with graying brown hair and dark skin with scattered, paler patches strode up to their table. "Begging pardon, weary travelers, but one of you wouldn't happen to be a tournament competitor, would you?" He looked at Rath.

"That's me," Rath said with a laugh. "Are you, by chance, the village chief I'm supposed to speak to?"

"That I am, son," the man said with a grin and pulled a much-folded, smudged piece of paper from his jacket. "What's your name?"

Rath winced. "Rathatayen Jakobson."

The man laughed. "Devout parent, huh?"

"Just romantic and sentimental," Rath said. "Rath is fine, please."

"Well, nice to meet you. I'm Gennis, and if you're not too tired, then I think we can get you some food and get right on with the challenge. We've been having a bit of a village-wide squabble, you see, and when we were approached by His Majesty to participate in the tournament, well, we knew just how to settle the squabbling once and for all." He winked and motioned for them to stand. "Everybody, everybody, the royal competitor has arrived!"

The pub went silent for a beat, then everybody cheered and lifted their cups, then rose and started moving the tables and chairs around. Several went around the bar and through the door behind, appearing shortly thereafter, rolling out small barrels and stands that they set up against the far wall.

Rath stared as Gennis guided them out of the way. "Um. What did you say the challenge was, good sir?"

Laughing, Gennis clapped him on the back and said, "Why, you're going to select a few ales for us, of course."

"I'm going to what?" Rath replied.

Gennis clapped him on the back again, hard enough that Rath wondered if he was perhaps related to Montague in some way. "The biannual market competition is coming up this spring, and we've got a whole slew of new ales to submit to the ale competition. Only problem is, we've got too many, and the village is so divided between them all that no clear favorites shine through. So, competitor, you are going to select the three ales we'll submit to the competition."

"You want me to drink ale and tell you which ones are best," Rath said slowly. "Is this some village prank?"

"Not at all. Sit, sit." Gennis laughed as he ushered Rath into a chair at a long table that had been improvised from three small ones. The tavern was much more crowded than it had been when they'd first arrived. Tension coiled in Rath's shoulders, and he ducked his head to avoid all the staring.

But it was hard to stay completely miserable as people carried trays full of cups of ale poured from the barrels they'd set up. Teller and Fynn sat to his right, and Gennis sat to his left, rambling through introductions to the various brewers and all about the different components of the ales. It all went right by Rath; the only thing he cared about when it came to ale was that it was cheap and not too sweet.

"All right, then, that's that. Now try the first one." Gennis pushed the first cup toward him.

Rath vaguely remembered being told there'd be food, but he let it go, unable to refuse when so many eager faces were watching him. The first ale was slightly sweeter than he liked, but there was a bit of apple flavor to it that was unusual. "Delicious," he said. "I like the apple." A small group in the corner cheered and shoved and squeezed each other.

"Next!"

This one was darker, less sweet, even better than the first. Rath said as much, provoking even louder cheering from another group. By the time he was done sampling the first, second, and third rounds, he was drunk. They were just getting started, however, and he had to do it all over again, whittling down the remaining six. That left his head spinning and his stomach so full of beer that it had momentarily forgotten the lack of food.

And by the time he had picked the three ales that would go on to the competition, he could barely stand, let alone walk. That was not going to make traveling fun in the morning. Teller and Fynn helped him to his feet, and he thought he heard one of them calling for food. He swayed as people came up to thank him, talk for a few minutes, and say things he barely understood.

He could have wept from relief when he was finally upstairs in a quiet room inhabited only by him, Teller, and Fynn. "That was… interesting." He really wished the room would stop spinning.

"Drink this," Teller said after he'd had Rath sit on the bed furthest from the door. "It'll keep you from feeling completely awful in the morning." He turned to Fynn. "I could string them all up by their damned genitals for doing this to him the very moment he arrived. They couldn't wait until tomorrow, spread it out over a few hours with plenty of food and water? What were they thinking?"

"Eager… to please…" Rath mumbled. "King doesn't even pay much attention to Low City, I doubt he's ever really noticed the people out here. They're probably lucky if they see any sort of royal official. Think how much they'll get to brag if I win the tournament." He laughed a bit. "Unless they lose the market competition." He distantly felt his head thunk against something, but paid it no mind, vastly more interested in letting exhaustion have him.

When he woke later, it was because his stomach was protesting the way it had been treated the previous night. Rath retched into the chamber pot until his stomach hurt and his throat was raw. He stumbled over to the table and sat down, picked up the small hunk of bread on a plate and slowly ate it, chasing bites with some of the strange tonic he vaguely remembered Teller trying to make him drink.

Across the room, sharing the other bed, Teller and Fynn were fast asleep. He hadn't woken them; that was good.

Shoving another bit of bread in his mouth, he wandered over to the window and looked out at the village below. There wasn't much with only moonlight to see by, but he could see shades of the houses, movement of some stray animal darting from one shadowy corner to another. It was so quiet. The city was always noisy, even in the deadest hours of the night and morning.

He yawned and padded back over to the bed, lay down, and settled comfortably, pleased that his stomach did not try to act up again.

The next time he woke up, it was to sunshine and noise. His room was empty, but given it looked to be fairly late morning, even early afternoon, Teller and Fynn had probably been up and about for some time. He hauled out of bed, found his bag where someone had put it at the foot of his bed, and used a basin of warm, soapy water left on the table to wash up before pulling on clean clothes, shrugging into his jacket, and packing the rest. Slinging the bag over one shoulder, he headed downstairs.

In the tavern, practically everyone there lifted their cups or called out greetings, a few playful jibes. "Like none of you have ever gotten that drunk," Rath retorted. "You make the ale. Don't try to tell me you're not at least partially drunk all of the time." That got him several laughs and a bowl of porridge with honey and cream, along with a cup of hot ale that he almost refused, but in the end, it was too good to pass up, even if his stomach tried for a moment. "Thank you," he said when he was done, and pulled out a penny.

"You're paid up," the barkeep said with a smile. "If you're looking for your friends, I think they went in search of supplies for the next leg of your trip."

"Thank you," Rath said again, tucking the penny away as he left the tavern.

He could not get over how
small
the village was. Did they all know each other? Rath knew his own little circle of friends and shops that he saw and spoke with nearly every day, but he knew almost no one in West End, and nobody in High City, except Tress and a couple of the people his mother worked with. It would be strange to know every single person he encountered; no wonder they'd stared so hard at him and the others last night.

The sound of Teller's laughter caught his ear, and Rath followed it around the edge of a small house to what proved to be an open area featuring a large well and several open cook fires, where people were busy baking and roasting food enough for at least half the village. Must be their equivalent of the way everyone in Low City took what they made to the nearest baker to have them cook it.

Teller and Fynn stood near one of them, speaking with the two women watching over the food. Rath headed toward them, keeping to the edge and well away from the fires, and lifted a hand in greeting when Teller saw him and smiled. "Merry morning! How are you feeling?"

"Too old for this nonsense," Rath replied, smiling when they laughed. "Thank you for tending me."

"An honor to assist you, Champion," Fynn said, giving him a playful half bow.

Rath made a face at her. "So what are we about today?"

"Leaving, unless you prefer to linger here today and leave tomorrow."