Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) (11 page)

“That is the
North Wind
. The second of its
name,” Liran said. “It’s the size of a ship, so the company figured it should
be named like one.”

Suddenly Tyrissa had a second, obvious question.

“What happened to the first
North Wind
?”

“Fire. Burnt to ashes mere days before its maiden
voyage. A total loss. Central’s investigations concluded it wasn’t a rival
guild but that’s doubtful. We call it a
ccidental
arson.”

A temporary village encircled the
North Wind
,
a court neatly arranged around its king. Wagons and peaked canvas tents formed
a wall between the outskirt villages of Tavleorn to the north. They’ve been
here for a while, if the muddy and rutted pathways and patches of faded,
sun-deprived grass beneath the wagons were any indication. Each wagon and tent
bore the colors and crest of Khalan North, an outbreak of deep blues and black
among the normal tones of earth and stone that dominated Morgale’s cities,
landscape, and fashion. On the south side, the livestock pens used by shepherds
during the Harvest Fair were commandeered by the caravan’s herd of workhorses.

Liran guided their wagon through the camp towards
the base of the barge and he received a chain of hails and greetings from his
fellow merchants in black and blue. Many of the tents and wagons doubled as
small workshops or store fronts, bringing small doses of Khalan crafts hundreds
of leagues from their homeland. The caravan’s population was mostly male, but
Tyrissa spotted a few women here and there, garbed similarly in guild colors.
Equally mixed in were armed guards, with a sword stitched at the center of
their guild crests instead of a coin.

Liran pointed to one of the smaller wagons, one
with a rounded top that folded open like a writing desk and built of rich,
varnished wood. In attendance was a white-haried man in the company colors,
though his patches were more elaborate, his clothes subtly finer. He returned
Liran’s greeting with a half-attentive wave, too busy collapsing an array of
trinkets and papers into his odd wagon between concerned glances to the heavy
skies.

“That’s Ferdhan,” Liran said, “A sort of
generalist by trade but with a keen eye for books. He came along almost for the
hell of it, pulling seniority to get a place in the caravan. The long hauls are
more of a young man’s game, but we’re glad to have him for when you have to
fight off boredom and can’t stand a hundredth game of
daajik
.”

“Boredom? That’s more of a threat than anything
else I’ve heard of this trip so far.”

“Probably the most present, if anything. Ferdhan
has a small collection of books that he loans out buried somewhere in that
wagon of his. You’d like him, I got that book I gave you from his shop back in
Khalanheim.”

“Noted,” Tyrissa said, adding to a growing mental
pile of new sights and faces and details. They’d been on the road for two days
and she had already torn though most of the unread stories in
Tales from
Across the North
.

Tyrissa hopped down from the back of the wagon as
they reached the base of the
North Wind
, wincing at the slight, but
clearly improving shock from her bad foot. She ducked below the rim of the
barge to get a view of underneath. The wheels were as tall as she was, bound to
axels the size of tree trunks. Linked to them were a dizzying array of gears
and other mechanisms, the purpose of some Tyrissa could only imagine. Behind
her sounded the scrape of wood against wood and a ladder slid down from above.
She ducked back out from under the barge’s skirt of wood. Liran stood at the
side of their wagon, gathering their meager belongings. Tyrissa moved to help.

“How does this thing move?”

“Pulled. By animals,” he said with a grin.

“How many?”

“Two,” Liran said over his shoulder while
stepping onto the ladder. It would take a whole herd to move it. It sounded
absurd, but Liran had that slight twist to his mouth that meant he was holding
something back. Her brother climbed to the second level and slid the cabin door
above to the side.

Tyrissa hoisted her pack over one shoulder and
followed. “Two of what,” she called up to Liran as he vanished into the cabin.

“It’s a surprise.”

Liran’s cabin was as small as expected: a tight,
box-like space made all the more cramped by the stacks of crates and burlap
sacks that crowded one side. A mélange of scents assaulted her as she
side-stepped from the ladder into the cabin. The air was thick with the smell
of dried whitemint, storfbark and a dozen other herbs and spices taken from
Morgale’s forests and hills. It smelled like her mother’s cooking combined with
the forest floor of the Morgwood. When returning from longer trips in the
forest Tyrissa would stop to pick fresh samples as a little gift for her
mother. They were plentiful and essential for the long winters as meals grew
blander. In recent years most of these herbs were farm-grown, though they
always tasted better when harvested from the wild.

“Is this your path to wealth, Liran? Herbs?”

“Only the luckiest merchants have a single path to
wealth, but yes, this is one of mine. What’s commonplace to us is exotic to
everyone else. Forest herbs, hard
kaggorn
cheeses, black wool… Morgale
has much to offer southern markets. If you go through the hassle of getting
there and back, you are justly rewarded.”

“Speaking of,” Tyrissa said, finding a square of
floor space to place her pack, “how long is the trip south?”

“Six to eight weeks, depending on weather, break
downs and how cruel of a pace Master Wilhelm wants to set. There’s little to
worry about. Most of what’s said of the journey is overblown. It’s not that
dangerous, especially with the numbers we have. It’s just long.” Tyrissa’s view
of Vordeum consisted of a scorched land of hidden ruins, lost treasures and
vicious monsters. That being overblown would be a relief and a disappointment.

Liran folded down a narrow bed from the wall and
lowered his pack onto it. “We’ll swap who gets the bed and who gets the floor.”
The mattress pad looked thin enough to be little better than the alternative.

“We’re just in time. The caravan’s scheduled to
move out in a couple days. There’s still the matter of your passage fee. Can
you walk on that foot without limping too much?”

Tyrissa gave her foot a couple hard pressed into
the floorboards. It complained, but felt stable enough. She nodded, holding
back the frown at the thought that it was perhaps
too
well healed.

“Good. We’ll drop off Izzy and the wagon then
head over to Wilhelm’s office. I’m sure he missed me dearly.”

Wilhelm’s office turned out to be a table and
chair set up under a collapsible canvas awning, a fair distance away from the
wagons and activity that ringed the main caravan. A wiry man in his fifties
with a heavily lined face, Wilhelm was busily flipping through ledgers as they
approached. He had a handful of rocks acting as paperweights for the short
stacks of paper on his makeshift desk, insurance against the light wind
crossing the festival grounds. Two brown dogs lazed near his feet, thin, short
haired beasts of little resemblance to the lupine Morg breeds Tyrissa was used
to.

“Liran,” Wilhelm said with the barest flicker of acknowledgement.
“Welcome back. I started to wonder if I’d get the chance to strand you here. I
could have filled your cabin with something profitable.” He spoke at a quick,
precise clip, and Tyrissa had to pay closer attention to understand him.

“I apologize for the first and dispute the
second. Call it a family emergency. Speaking of which, this is my sister
Tyrissa.”

Wilhelm gave a polite grunt and nod, focused on
scribbling a quick calculation on the paper before him.

“I’m going to bring her back to Khalanheim.”

Wilhelm looked up at her and blinked once. “Very
well.” he said. “I can take a passenger fare out of your current margins.”

“No, no. I was thinking more along the lines of
paying her way with manual labor.”

“Somehow I expected this,” Tyrissa muttered.

Wilhelm leaned back and tapped a pen against his
knuckles, thinking.

“How well can you climb, girl?”

“Better than most.” It was good to know those
years spent climbing and running through the forest wouldn’t be a complete
waste outside Morgale.

“Mmm. And how are you around large animals?”

“No complaints. I’ve lent a hand tending
kaggorn
here and there.” she spared a glance back at the
North Wind
. “How large?”

“The largest. Anton is always pestering me for
more hands, and he shall have them, for once. Report to him when he returns
with the animals tomorrow evening.”

With that Wilhelm waved them away and returned to
his reports, though he never left them through the entire conversation.

The next evening the ground quaked and the trees
quivered with the arrival of a living Morg myth as a pair of mastodon marched
up the Hearthroad from the south. Long since retreated to the hidden forests
and taiga of Morgale’s western wilds, the beasts were icons of the Morg
people’s past as half-wild clans of hunter-nomads. Many families still passed
down worn heirlooms of carved mastodon ivory and bone, relics of an era long
past. Tyrissa had heard and read many stories of modern hunters seeking out the
descendants of the herd that once roamed the North, toiling for months in the
wilderness for a mere glimpse of the creatures. Tyrissa couldn’t stop smiling,
faced with another idle dream in the flesh, the darkness and troubles of recent
days banished by a brief burst of light.

One’s fur was a blend of white and gray, like the
fitful first snows of autumn on the mountaintops, and the other was an earthy
brown. Hardly the ‘woolly mammoths’ of the stories, their fur was shorn short
but the tusks were as advertised, ten-foot lengths of curving, pointed ivory.
They were as tall as the
North Wind,
towering over some of the trees
that lined the trade road. Each wore a large platform built of rope and leather
across their backs, like giant versions of a horse’s saddle. A driver stood at
the fore of the platforms, men wearing long bracers on their thick, muscled
forearms that linked with similar bindings on the mastodons’ tusks with long
ropes. A fleshy trunk dangled between the tusks, occasionally flexing or
batting at an unseen annoyance on the mastodon’s face. An array of other
handlers and attendants, perhaps five or six per animal rode atop or walked
alongside the beasts. A trail of open mouthed children followed behind them, completing
the parade. They came to a halt on the south side of the camp, near the horse
pens.

Finding Anton was easy, all Tyrissa had to do was
follow the voice booming out orders from among the mastodon’s feet. She felt a
slight thrill walking beneath the gray one’s stomach to find Anton standing
near the column of wrinkled skin that was the beast’s front left foot. The
master handler took after his animals, a big, round, and hairy man with a
swarthy complexion and large black beard. Tyrissa waited for a break in the
torrent of commands to make her introduction.

“Wonderful,” he said with no decrease in volume,
“I shall have more hands than I need, though always fewer than I could wish
for.”

“This is Regun,” he gave an affectionate pat to
the leg towering over them. “The other is Roth. They are our lifeline on the
trip south. If either dies or falls too ill we’ll be little more than salvage.”
He was a font of gregariousness, even when discussing disaster, with a voice
that held only a touch of Khalan speed. “But with you and especially the robed
one, we’ll make good time for Wilhelm.”

“Robed one?”

“Hali,” he called up to the top of Regun. A head
peaked over the side, the face obscured by a deep raised hood and the
lengthening evening shadows. She gave the slightest nod and disappeared.

“Another ringing endorsement from the mysterious
one. Pay no mind to the talk around camp over what she may or may not be, that
woman works miracles. The ‘dons are healthier than they’ve ever been with her
around. Follow me, observe and listen. I shall literally show you the ropes.”

The complex network of harnesses, ropes and reins
tied to each mastodon made her head spin, yet all were shed and neatly stowed
in an organized pile when preparing the creatures for the night. The result
left them looking strangely naked while splayed on their sides like corpses,
asleep. By the time Anton’s tour ended, it was well past sunset and Tyrissa’s
mind was packed full of facts and tricks and processes.

When Anton let her go for the night he said,
“Sleep well, for starting tomorrow I will work you close enough to death for
the difference not to matter.” His tone never dropped below jovial through the
entire tour, and didn’t now. Tyrissa couldn’t tell if he was joking, but
decided it was close enough not to matter.

The morning of their departure was damp and cool
from overnight rains. The camp began to collapse in on itself, the mobile
village disassembling at remarkable speed. It was a frenzy of activity and
efficiency, though Tyrissa had little time to marvel at any of it. She woke
with the dawn and hurried to the mastodons, pausing only for a quickly devoured
breakfast of simple porridge from a briskly served line near the base of the
North
Wind
.

Anton’s instructions the night before were a
blur, but she went where bid, aiding in whatever way she could. The underside
of the massive saddle each mastodon wore was padded with thick wool, and it
took half the team of handlers to drag over the back of Roth, the beast
kneeling down and utterly patient with the process. What followed was an
endless series of ropes and clasps and straps. Hold this, tie that here, thread
this rope through there. Her hands were sore and half-raw from handling ropes
within an hour. Then they had to repeat it all again for Regun. Tyrissa didn’t
even touch the web of ropes and straps and hooks that connected the mastodons
to the dozens of towing points at the fore of the
North Wind.